The Steel Remains

In just a few short years, Richard K. Morgan has vaulted to the pinnacle of the science fiction world. Now he turns his iconoclastic talents to epic fantasy, crafting a darkly violent, tautly plotted adventure sure to thrill old fans and captivate new readers.The Steel Remainsis the first of a trilogya stunning reinvention of the fantasy genre that places Morgan in the elite company of modern mythmakers like China Mieville and George R. R. Martin. A dark lord will rise. Such is the prophecy that dogs the footsteps of Ringil EskiathGil, for shorta washed-up mercenary and onetime war hero whose world-weary cynicism is surpassed only by the quickness of his temper and the speed of his sword. That sword, forged by a vanished eldritch race known as the Kiriath, has brought him unlooked-for notoriety, as has his habit of poking his nose where it doesn't belong. Gil is estranged from his aristocratic family, but that doesn't stop his mother from enlisting his help in freeing a cousin sold into slavery. Grumbling all the way, Gil sets out to track her down. But it soon becomes apparent that more is at stake than the fate of one luckless young woman. Grim sorceries that have not been seen for centuries are awakening in the land. Some speak in whispers of the return of an all-but-legendary race known as the Aldrain, cruel yet beautiful demons feared even by the Kiriath. Now Gil and two old comradesEgar, a fierce warrior from the savage Majak tribes, and Archeth, a half-Kiriath fighter still mourning her departed brethrenare all that stand in the way of a prophecy whose fulfillment will drown an entire world in blood. But with heroes like these, the cure is likely to be worse than the disease.

Richard K. Morgan is the acclaimed author of Thirteen, which won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, Woken Furies, Market Forces, Broken Angels, and Altered Carbon, a New York Times Notable Book that also won the Philip K. Dick Award. Morgan sold the movie rights for Altered Carbon to Joel Silver and Warner Bros. His third book, Market Forces, has also been sold to Warner Bros. and was winner of the John W. Campbell Award. He lives in Scotland.


From the Hardcover edition.

Chapter One

When a man you know to be of sound mind tells you his recently deceased mother has just tried to climb in his bedroom window and eat him, you only have two basic options. You can smell his breath, take his pulse, and check his pupils to see if he's ingested anything nasty, or you can believe him. Ringil had already tried the first course of action with Bashka the Schoolmaster and to no avail, so he put down his pint with an elaborate sigh and went to get his broadsword.

"Not this again," he was heard to mutter as he pushed through into
the residents' bar.

A yard and a half of tempered Kiriath steel, Ringil's broadsword
hung above the fireplace in a scabbard woven from alloys that men had
no names for, though any Kiriath child could have identified them from
age five upward. The sword itself also had a name in the Kiriath tongue,
as did all Kiriath- forged weapons, but it was an ornate title that lost a lot
in translation. "Welcomed in the Home of Ravens and Other Scavengers
in the Wake of Warriors" was about as close as Archeth had been able to
render it, so Ringil had settled on calling it the Ravensfriend. He didn't
likethe name especially, but it had the sort of ring people expected of a
famous sword—and his landlord, a shrewd man with money and the
potential for making it, had renamed the inn the same way, setting an
eternal seal on the thing. A local artist had painted a passable image of
Ringil wielding the Ravensfriend at Gallows Gap and now it hung
outside for all the passing world to see. In return, Ringil got bed and
board and the opportunity to sell tales of his exploits to tourists in the
residents' bar for whatever was dropped into his cap.

All that,Ringil once remarked ironically in a letter to Archeth,and a blind eye turned to certain bedroom practices that would doubtless earn Yours Truly a slow death by impaling in Trelayne or Yhelteth. Heroic status in Gallows Water, it seems, includes a special dispensation not available to the average citizen in these righteous times.Plus, he supposed, you don't go queer baiting when your quarry has a reputation for rendering trained swordsmen into dogmeat at the drop of a gauntlet.Fame,Ringil scribbled,has its uses after all.

Mounting the sword over the fireplace had been a nice touch, and
also the landlord's idea. The man was now trying to persuade his
resident celebrity to offer dueling lessons out back in the stable yards.
Cross blades with the hero of Gallows Gap for three Empire- minted
elementals the half hour.Ringil didn't know if he felt that hard up yet.
He'd seen what teaching had done to Bashka.

Anyway, he dragged the Ravensfriend from the scabbard with a
single grating clang, slung it casually over his shoulder, and walked out
into the street, ignoring the stares from the audience he had been
regaling with tales of valor about an hour ago. He guessed they'd follow
him at least part of the way to the schoolmaster's house. It couldn't do
any harm, if his suspicions about what was going on were correct, but
they'd probably all cut and run at the first sign of trouble. You couldn't
blame them really. They were peasants and merchants, and they had no
bond with him. About a third of them he'd never even seen before
tonight.

Introductory comment from the treatise on skirmish warfare that the Trelayne Military Academy had politely declined to publish under his name:If you don't know the men at your back by name, don't be
surprised if they won't follow you into battle. On the other hand, don't be surprised if they will, either, because there are countless other factors you must take into account. Leadership is a slippery commodity, not easily manufactured or understood.It was simple truth, as gleaned in the bloody forefront of some of the nastiest fig

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Excerpted from The Steel Remains by Richard K. Morgan
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