The biting north wind battered Frosgard's towering stone walls and sharp spires day and night without pause.
At the center of the great hall, a bonfire blazed fiercely, its dancing tongues of flame casting the rugged, savage faces of the Sauron Tribe's chieftains and military commanders into shifting light and shadow.
Ten large-caliber cannons, gleaming with the cold luster of bronze, their long barrels mounted on heavy gun carriages, were being carefully unloaded by Sauron soldiers and forcibly conscripted slaves from wagons covered in snowproof tarpaulins.
The cannons possessed sleek lines and exquisite craftsmanship. One could even faintly make out the fleur-de-lis crest of the Broomflower Royal Family and inscriptions from the manufacturing workshops on their bodies.
They were a "gift" from the south—from the Goldflower Kingdom, their hereditary enemy.
Upon the throne, Harald's eyes reflected the leaping firelight—and also the figure kneeling below, clad in Sauron-style leather armor, though the contours of his face clearly belonged to a southerner.
That man was Luo Yao.
Ever since, several months ago, he had narrowly escaped with only a few battered boats and fewer than a hundred routed soldiers from that desperate breakout off the coast of Carnford, then fled all the way north until he declared his identity beneath the blades of a Sauron patrol and begged for shelter, Luo Yao's fortunes had been a tale of violent twists and turns.
At first, he had been no more than a defeated commander with nowhere left to turn, coming to beg for his life as he struggled on beneath the Saurons' contemptuous and scrutinizing gazes.
But Luo Yao was clever. He understood exactly where his worth lay. Not only did he provide a detailed account of the true state of the defenses in Field Territory and Golden Scale Port, he also laid