This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2022 by David Dalglish

  Excerpt from Vagrant Gods: Book Two copyright © 2022 by David Dalglish

  Excerpt from The Pariah copyright © 2021 by Anthony Ryan

  Cover design by Lauren Panepinto

  Cover illustration by Chase Stone

  Cover copyright © 2022 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Map by Sámhlaoch Swords

  Author photograph by Myrtle Beach Photography

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Dalglish, David, author.

  Title: The bladed faith / David Dalglish.

  Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Orbit, 2022. | Series: Vagrant gods; book 1

  Identifiers: LCCN 2021031245 | ISBN 9780759557086 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780759557093 (ebook) | ISBN 9780759557109

  Classification: LCC PS3604.A376 B53 2022 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021031245

  ISBNs: 9780759557086 (trade paperback), 9780759557093 (ebook)

  E3-20220211-JV-NF-ORI

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Chapter 1: Cyrus

  Chapter 2: Mari

  Chapter 3: Cyrus

  Chapter 4: Stasia

  Chapter 5: Cyrus

  Chapter 6: Cyrus

  Chapter 7: Cyrus

  Chapter 8: Cyrus

  Chapter 9: Rayan

  Chapter 10: Rayan

  Chapter 11: Cyrus

  Chapter 12: Cyrus

  Chapter 13: Mari

  Chapter 14: Cyrus

  Chapter 15: Arn

  Chapter 16: Cyrus

  Chapter 17: Cyrus

  Chapter 18: Sinshei

  Chapter 19: Soma

  Chapter 20: Stasia

  Chapter 21: Cyrus

  Chapter 22: Cyrus

  Chapter 23: Cyrus

  Chapter 24: Cyrus

  Chapter 25: Magus

  Chapter 26: Sinshei

  Chapter 27: Arn

  Chapter 28: Mari

  Chapter 29: Cyrus

  Chapter 30: Sinshei

  Chapter 31: Rayan

  Chapter 32: Cyrus

  Chapter 33: Cyrus

  Chapter 34: Arn

  Chapter 35: Magus

  Chapter 36: Cyrus

  Chapter 37: Mari

  Chapter 38: Magus

  Chapter 39: Cyrus

  Chapter 40: Magus

  Chapter 41: The Night Before

  Chapter 42: Cyrus

  Chapter 43: Stasia

  Chapter 44: Rayan

  Chapter 45: Vagrant

  Chapter 46: Magus

  Chapter 47: Vagrant

  Chapter 48: Vagrant

  Chapter 49: Sinshei

  Epilogue: Vagrant

  A Note from the Author

  Discover More

  Extras Meet the Author

  A Preview of Vagrant Gods: Book Two

  A Preview of The Pariah

  Also by David Dalglish

  Praise for David Dalglish

  To my wife, Sam, who was calm when I needed it, confident when I wasn’t, and helped salvage what would become of this new trilogy.

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  CHAPTER 1

  CYRUS

  All his life, Cyrus Lythan had been told his parents’ armada was the greatest in the world, unmatched by any fleet from the mainland continent of Gadir. It was the pride of his family, the jewel of the island kingdom of Thanet. Standing at the edge of the castle balcony, his hands white-knuckling the balustrade, Cyrus watched their ships burn and knew it for a lie.

  “Their surprise will only gain them so much,” said Rayan. The older man and dearest family friend stood beside Cyrus as the fires spread across the docks. “Hold faith. Our gods will protect us.”

  Smoke blotted out the harbor, but along the edges of the billowing black he saw the empire’s ships firing flaming spears from ballistae mounted to their decks. Thanet’s boats could not counter such power with their meager archers, not even if they had fought on equal numbers. Those numbers, however, were far from equal. Thanet’s vaunted armada had counted fifty ships in total, though only thirty had been in the vicinity of Vallessau when two hundred imperial ships emerged from the morning fog, their hulls painted black and their gray sails marked with two red hands clenched in prayer.

  “Shouldn’t you be down there with the rest of the paladins?” Cyrus asked. “Or are you too old for battle?”

  The man’s white plate rattled as he crossed his arms. He was a paladin of Lycaena, a holy warrior who’d dedicated his life to one of Thanet’s two gods. It was she and Endarius whom the island now relied upon to withstand the coming invasion. The castle was set upon the tallest hill in the city of Vallessau, protected by a wide outer wall that circled the base of its foundational hill. Thanet’s soldiers massed along the outer wall, their padded leather armor seeming woefully inadequate. Paladins of the two gods gathered in the courtyard between the outer wall and the castle itself. Despite there being less than sixty, the sight of them gave Cyrus hope. The finely polished weapons of those men and women shone brightly, and the morning light reflected off their armor, be it the gilded chain of Endarius’s paladins or the white plate of Lycaena’s. As for the god and goddess, they both waited inside the castle.

  “You are brave to call me old when you yourself are not yet a man,” Rayan said. His skin was as dark as his hair was white, and when he smiled, it stretched his smartly trimmed beard. That smile was both heartfelt and fleeting. “His Highness ordered me to protect you.”

  Cyrus tried to remain optimistic. He tried to hold faith in the divine beings pledged to protect Thanet. A seemingly endless tide of soldiers disembarking from the ships and marching the main thoroughfare toward the outer castle walls broke that faith.

  “Tell me, Rayan, if the walls fall and our gods die, how will you protect me?”

  Rayan looked to the distant congregation of his fellow paladins of Lycaena at the outer gate, and his thoughts clearly echoed Cyrus’s.

  “Poorly,” he said. “Stay here, and pray for us all. We will need every bit of help this cruel world can muster.”

  The paladin exited the balcony. The heavy thud of the shutting door quickened Cyrus’s pulse, and he swallowed down his lingering fear. A cowardly part of him shouted to find somewhere in the castle to bury his head and hide. Stubborn pride kept his feet firmly in place. He was the fourteen-year-old Prince of Thanet, and he would bear witness to the fate of his kingdom.

  The assault began with the arrival of the ladders, dozens of thick planks of wood with metal hooks bolted onto their tops so they could lock tightly onto the walls. The defenders rushed to shove them off, but the empire’s crossbowmen punished them with volley after volley. Swords clashed, and though the empire’s losses were heavy, nothing slowed the ascent of the invaders. What started as a few scattered soldiers fighting atop the walls became a mile-long battlefield. It did not take long before the gray tunics overwhelmed the blue tabards of Vallessau.

  Next came the battering ram. How the enemy had built it in such short a time baffled Cyrus, but there was no denying its steady hammering on the opposite side of the outer gate. Even the intervals were maddeningly consistent. Every four seconds, the gate would rattle, the wood would crack, and the imperial army grew that much closer to flooding into the courtyard.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Cyrus whispered to himself. “The gods protect us. The gods will save us.”

  The fight along the walls was growing thicker, with more ladders managing to stay upright with every passing moment. Cyrus could spare no glance in their direction, for with one last shuddering blast, the battering ram knocked open the outer gate. The invading army flooded through, and should have easily overrun the vastly outnumbered defenders, but at long last, the castle doors opened and Thanet’s divine made their presence known.

  The goddess Lycaena fluttered above an accompaniment of her priests. Her skin was black as midnight, her eyes brilliant rainbows of ever
-shifting color. Long, flowing silk cascaded down from her arms and waist, its hue a brilliant orange that transitioned to yellow, green, and blue depending on the ruffle of the fabric. The dress billowed outward in all directions, and no matter how hard Cyrus looked, he couldn’t tell where the fabric ended and the goddess’s enormous wings began. She held a rod topped with an enormous ruby in her left hand; in the right, a golden harp whose strings shimmered all colors of the visible spectrum. Cyrus’s heart ached at the sight of her. He’d witnessed Lycaena’s physical form only a few times in his life, and each left him breathless and in awe.

  “Be gone, locusts of a foreign land,” Lycaena decreed. She did not shout, nor raise her voice, but all the city heard her words. “We will not break before a wave of hate and steel.”

  Fire lashed from the ruby atop her rod in a conical torrent that filled the broken gateway. The screams of the dying combined into a singular wail. The other god of Thanet, Endarius the Lion, charged into the ashen heap left in her attack’s wake. His fur was gold, his claws obsidian, his mane a brilliant collection of feathers that ran the full gamut of the rainbow. Wings stretched from his back, the feathers there several feet long and shifting from a crimson red along the base to pale white at the tip. Those wings beat with his every stride, adding to his speed and power.

  Endarius’s paladins joined him in his charge. They did not wield swords and shields like their Lycaenan counterparts, nor did they share their long cloaks of interlocking colors resembling stained glass. Instead their gilded armor bore necklaces of fangs across their arms, and they wielded twin jagged swords to better support their ferocity. They bellowed as they ran, their version of a prayer, and they tore into the ranks of the invaders, the spray of blood and breaking of bones their worship.

  In those first few minutes, Cyrus truly believed victory would be theirs. Thanet had never been conquered in all her history. Lycaena and Endarius protected their beloved people. The two divine beings rewarded their faithful subjects with safety and guidance. And as the imperial soldiers rushed through the gate with their swords and spears, the gods filled the courtyard with fire and blood. From such a height, Cyrus could only guess at the identities of the individual defenders, but he swore he saw Rayan fighting alongside his goddess, his sword lit with holy light as he kept his beloved deity safe with his rainbow shield.

  You burned our fleets, Cyrus thought, and a vengeful thrill shot through him. But we’ll crush your armies. You’ll never return, never, not after this defeat.

  The arrival of the twelve tempered his joy. The men appeared remarkably similar to Thanet’s paladins, bearing thick golden platemail and wielding much larger weapons adorned with decorative hilts and handles. Unlike the rest of the imperial army, they did not wear gray tabards but instead colorful tunics and cloaks bearing differing animals. The twelve pushed through the blasted gate, flanked on either side by a contingent of soldiers. They showed no fear of the two divine beings leading the slaughter. They charged into the thick of things without hesitation, their shields held high and their weapons gleaming.

  Cyrus knew little of the Everlorn Empire. Journey to the mainland took several months by boat, and its ruling emperor, arrogantly named the God-Incarnate, had issued an embargo upon Thanet lasting centuries. The empire worshiped and acknowledged no gods but their emperor, and claimed faith in him allowed humanity to transcend mortal limits. Seeing those twelve fight, Cyrus understood that belief for the first time in his life. Those twelve… they couldn’t be human. Whatever they were, it was monstrous, it was impossible, and it was beyond even what Thanet’s paladins could withstand.

  God and invader clashed, and somehow these horrifying twelve endured the wrath of the immortal beings. Their armor held against fire and claw. Their weapons punched through armor as if it were glass. Soldiers and paladins from both sides attempted to intervene, but they were flies buzzing about fighting bulls. Each movement, each strike of an invader’s sword or swipe of Endarius’s paw, claimed the lives of foes with almost incidental ease. The battlefield ascended beyond the mortal, and these elite, these invading monsters, defied all reason as they stood their ground against Thanet’s gods.

  “No,” Cyrus whispered. “It’s not possible.”

  Endarius clenched his teeth about the long blade of one of the invaders, yet could not crunch through the metal. His foe ripped it free, and a crossbow brigade unleashed dozens of bolts to pelt the Lion as he danced away. The arrowheads couldn’t find purchase, but they marked little black welts akin to bruises and frayed the edges of Endarius’s increasingly ragged wings.

  “This isn’t right,” Cyrus said. The battle had started so grand, yet now the defenders were scattered, the walls overrun, and the paladins struggling to maintain their attacks against wave after wave of soldiers coming through the broken gate. In the center of it all raged gods and the inhuman elite, and the world shook from their wrath. Thanet’s troops attempted to seal off the wall entrance and isolate the battle against the gods. It briefly worked, at least until the men and women in red robes took to the front of enemy lines. Their lack of weapons and armor confused Cyrus at first, but then they lifted their hands in prayer. Golden weapons blistering with light burst into existence, hovering in the air and wielded by invisible hands. The weapons tore through the soldiers’ ranks, the defense faltered, and Cyrus’s last hope withered. What horrid power did these invaders command?

  Time lost meaning. Blood flowed, bodies fell, the armies meeting and striking and dying with seemingly nihilistic determination. A spear-wielding member of those elite twelve leaped into the air, a single lunge of his legs carrying him dozens of feet heavenward. Lycaena was not prepared, and when the spear lodged deep into her side, her scream echoed for miles. It was right then, hearing that scream, that Cyrus knew his kingdom was lost.

  “How dare you!” Endarius roared. Though one invader smashed a hammer into the Lion’s side, and another knocked loose a fang from his jaw, the god cared only for the wound suffered by the Butterfly goddess. Two mighty beats of his wings carried him into the air, where his teeth closed about the elite still clinging to the embedded spear. All three crashed to the ground, but it was the invader who suffered most. Endarius crushed him in his jaws, punching through the man’s armor, smashing bones, and spilling blood upon a silver tongue.

  A casual flick of Endarius’s neck tossed the body aside, but that was merely one of twelve. Eleven more remained, and they closed the space with calm, steady precision. No soldiers attempted to fill the gap, for what battles remained were scattered and chaotic. There was too much blood, too much death, and above it all, like a sick backdrop in the world’s cruelest painting, rose the billowing smoke of Thanet’s burning fleet.

  “Flee from here!” Endarius bellowed as a bleeding Lycaena fluttered higher into the air.

  “Only if you come with me,” the goddess urged, but the Lion would not be moved. He prepared to pounce and bared his obsidian teeth.

  “For the lives of the faithful,” Endarius roared. His wings spread wide, unbridled power crackling like lightning across the feathers.

  Cyrus dropped to his knees and clutched the side of the balustrade. He could feel it on his skin. He could smell it in the air. The overwhelming danger. The growing fury of a god who could never imagine defeat.

  “Strike me with your blades,” the Lion mocked the remaining eleven. “Come die as the vermin you are.”

  They were happy to oblige. The eleven clashed with the god in a coordinated effort, their swords, axes, and spears tearing into his golden flesh. The god could not avoid them, could not win, only buy time for Lycaena’s escape. No matter how badly Cyrus pleaded under his breath for the Lion to flee, he would not. Endarius had been, above all, a stubborn god.

  A blue-armored elite was the one to strike the killing blow. A spear pierced through Endarius’s eye and sank to the hilt. His fur rumbled, his dying roar shook the land, and then the Lion’s body split in half. A maelstrom of stars tore free of his body like floodwaters released from a dam. Whatever otherworldly essence comprised the existence of a god burned through the eleven like a swirling, rainbow fire before rolling outward in a great flare of blinding light. Cyrus crouched down and screamed. The death of something so beautiful, so noble and inseparably linked to Thanet’s identity, shook him in a way he could not fathom.