The Suns Heir: A War of Two Kings

Orianna: Visitors.

Visitors seldom graced the Reyne keep. When they did the whole island was abuzz.

Two clans under one roof often meant only one thing.

Orianna knew this better than most. When clan Seaswept had darkened their ports some hours ago, her father had told her what it had meant.

Alliance...

The hall was hazy with smoke and heavy with the smells of a feast; roasted meat, freshly baked bread, fish and ale. It's logged walls were swathed with banners. Red, grey and black dominated the white and blue. Clan Reyne's crest; a sword, dripping with blood, raining it onto the ground below. Clan Seaswept's crest: two ship's riding over a wave.

Orianna's father had placed a spearman betwixt every cloth that draped the wall. Her father was not a trusting man.

Their clan was different from the others, the Reyne's had learned from their oppressors. Over the years, her father had brought back blacksmiths from the mainland, farmers, and builders. He had taken them by force during raids, and like the other clans, he stole wealth, food, livestock and steel. It was the taking of people that differed the Reyne's from the rest.

It had all started with her father. Chief Radyn Reyne. He strived for more than what their clan had taken over the generations, he wanted to be greater and to prosper as the mainlanders did. Until her father took the chiefship there had never been a stone structure on the island, on any raider island. Her father was a visionary, and she was honoured to be his blood.

The other clans mocked them for it, for wanting to be different, better. It was because of this mockery, the Reyne's had stepped away from the other clans. They did not deal with alliances, for they knew they were easily broken. The raider clans were not built for long-lasting friendships. Each thought themselves the greatest clan, each chief believed he would be the one to take them back to the mainland. Though, none of them knew what Orianna's father had told her, all of them were blind to a simple truth. Without a leader, a chief of chiefs to unify them, the clans would never return home.  

The Reyne family and the chief of the Seaswept clan had been seated on a raised platform at the head of the room so that all could look and drink to their chief and his guests.

Orianna's father sat at the centre of the table, he was a large man, built like a bear, with hair as dark as one's fur. It had begun to grey in some areas, and the once black and braided mop that rested on his had looked as if had begun to turn to dark ash. His beard too had begun to lose its colouring, it was clear to all that her father, the great Radyn Reyne was no longer a man in his youth. He was ageing, yet he still looked as strong as ever. The hardy warrior-chief had a chiselled face, one that seldom wore a smile. Instead, it was dressed with scars, some had been covered by the beard he bore, others were not so easy to conceal.

On the left side of the chief was chiefess Twyla. She too had a mess of ebony that plunged over her shoulders, with eyes as dark to match, eyes that she had passed onto Orianna, onyx eyes, that appeared a chocolate brown in the candle light. Twyla was a vision; her face was unlined and the woman appeared not to age. When Orianna looked at her parents it seemed as if her mother was a babe compared to her father, though that was not the case. Twyla had some forty years on her, and Radyn fifty. To look at them one would not believe they were so close in age.

As the feast radged on into its third hour, there been no talk of an alliance, only drinking. And Orianna was finding herself with a man's thirst, the thirst she saw in her father's warriors below. She found herself emptying tankard after tankard, gleaming with amusement each time she did so. Every so often she would catch her father glancing at her, his raucous daughter and he would almost smile.