In the night when their army camped, Amrik and Kossuth shared a large black tent set apart from the rows of their men’s bivouac. The servants of the black tent went about in obvious fear, laid out the dishes of food and wine, and quickly went away. Amrik, they told curious soldiers, ate on human flesh and drank human blood, and Kossuth did not eat at all, but drank one cup of fiery nectar that boiled and fumed.
And at that, men wiped their mouths and looked at the clouded stars and swore upon their gods. Yet not one of them dared voice the idea of deserting.
“We attack the first city we come to,” Amrik told his retainers one afternoon on the march. “It will fall, and every city we touch will fall.” He laughed. “If I led an army of babies and apes, these cities would fall!”
A day later,
