The Blackfyre Sword lay across Harry Strickland's upraised palms.
In the flickering firelight inside the tent, the ancient scabbard shimmered with a dark sheen, like a savage beast that had slept for a hundred years, waiting to be awakened.
"Your Grace."
Harry Strickland tilted his face upward. Flushed with excitement, every crease in his face brimmed with devotion and fervor, and his voice trembled slightly with the force of his words.
"May this sword... help you restore the glory of the True Dragon and reclaim the Iron Throne!"
The tent fell deathly silent.
The eyes of fifty or sixty Golden Company officers were fixed, as though drawn by a magnet, on that sword and the figure before it, still shrouded beneath a black hood.
Several exchanged looks of doubt and calculation.
His Grace's face... was completely concealed. This defied ordinary etiquette, let alone the openness expected of a king about to receive the allegiance of the masses.
But Lord Griff stood quietly beside him, his expression composed. He had been the former captain-general's most capable deputy; had he not abruptly left, the command would have been his. His prestige alone was enough to suppress their rising doubts.
Aegon bowed his head slightly. The shadow of his hood concealed his entire face, with only a few strands of silver-white hair slipping out beside his neck, dazzlingly white in the firelight.
He slowly raised his right hand.
It was clad in a black leather glove.
His five fingers were long and slender. Without the slightest tremor, his hand hovered an inch above the scabbard.
Then it stopped.
Time seemed to stretch beneath an invisible hand.
The crackle of burning torches, everyone's restrained breathing, even the faint neighing of horses from the distant camp-all were amplified in that moment, filling the suffocating silence.