Free Prince of Wrath by Tony Roberts Page A

remnants. Bragal was larger in area than Frasia and was as large as any province that existed within the Empire. To the west it was bounded by the Sea of Balq, to the south the great River Ister, the north the provinces of Frasia and Makenia, and to the east the mountainous region known as Kral, which formed part of Venn.
    Astiras knew that the southern and eastern parts of Bragal would still be wild and outside imperial control for the time being, but eventually his control would extend to even those parts. He needed the frontier manned and watched, just in case his neighbours decided to invade. He also wanted a trade route safety established, and a wild and unpatrolled frontier would mean banditry and robbery, and this he wouldn’t countenance.
    For the moment, though, his mind was on his former estates, to the east of Zofela in the next valley. During the siege he’d not been able to take a look but now that hostilities had ended he felt it was time. The fifty-man squadron rode easily along the bottom of the Zofela Valley, the river to their right. Here the land was grassy and looked fertile, not having suffered in the siege, and the river hadn’t been diverted.
    The mountains rose sheer to either side, but the valley was fairly wide. Up ahead the land rose to a pass that separated the valleys. The river tumbled down into the Zofela Valley in a series of mini waterfalls, meandering lazily where the land was flat. A few shepherd’s huts could be seen, and here and there a small farm. The higher they went there were more huts and less farms, until they reached the top of the pass. They turned and looked back.
    Zofela stood in the distance, a black blight on the beauty of the valley. Astiras knew that in a year or so it would fade and the land become green once more. It would need careful husbandry and tending to make it fertile once more, but he was confident he would be able to attract enough farmers and artisans to Zofela to make it a viable and important centre of the Empire. The ravages of war would pass, given time.
    The other side of the pass fell away gently. The river didn’t come this way; it had turned off into the mountains, which was from where it sprang. This valley was wider, and opened out to the north much more than the Zofela Valley had. To the south the same mountain range ran off into the distance, a series of white peaks in row upon row. Ahead, as the land fell, there came woodland. Sparse at first, but gradually thicker and thicker until it almost could be called a forest. This was what had made the Koros rich, timber. Their estate was in this valley, at the centre of logging country.
    They had made sure that they hadn’t destroyed the woods, for to do that would have destroyed their basis of wealth. For every tree cut they planted one. The business had been well organised, having a logging division and a planting division, equally administered from the estate lying at the bottom of the valley directly ahead.
    Astiras sat in the saddle, breathing in the air. He had returned! Nothing looked destroyed, but forests would endure no matter how many wars there were. He waved the scouts on and they trotted off down the track into the deeper part of the woodland. Astiras knew that the track snaked down into the valley, then branched into three. The middle track ran straight to the estate; the other two ran past it at a distance, one eventually to the River Ister, the other to Kral. They would pass through villages, and he wondered whether the four villages that had been in the valley were still there. They had been all Bragalese, but he’d never had any issues with those villages. He’d made it known that their relatively rich livelihoods depended on the Koros estate continuing.
    It had been abandoned when the war had started, and the best part of a decade had gone by now. The woodland would be wild. It needed constant care with coppicing and thinning, and so ten years of neglect would mean a lot of hard