““Fire smiled and sipped the bitter Dellian wine. She doubted that Brocker’s history would put her to sleep. All she knew about armies and war came from Brocker, and he was never boring. Twenty-some years ago, in the heyday of old King Nax, Brocker had been the most brilliant military commander the Dells had ever seen. Until the day King Nax had seized him and shattered his legs—not broken them, but shattered them, eight men taking turns with a mallet—and then sent him home, half-dead, to his wife, Aliss, in the northern Dells.””
