The Trials of Empire, page 51
Heinrich ran off ahead of me as I approached the village. But whilst I had been expecting to find a ruin, instead I saw the ground had been cleared, the burnt, blackened beams removed, and in their place, a walled garden containing several dozen graves. I looked about as though I might see Lady Frost and her pagan warriors nearby, standing at the edge of the forest, watching. But there was no one.
I dismounted and approached. Heinrich would not come in with me, sensing something. I felt it too. A feeling of cosmic weight filled me as I crossed the threshold into the garden. It felt as though a loop were being closed, as though something in the aether which had been stuck or jammed was now loose. It was as if the entire world had been holding its breath; now it was quietly released.
I brushed my fingers over the cold stone of the graves. I read the names. I sat amongst them in silence, my hands on the grass, as though I might commune with them. As though I might apologise to them. I felt a deep sadness, but also a sense of renewal and optimism.
I stood a while later. It was beginning to gloam, and a light drizzle filled the air. I left the garden, and prepared the animals to leave.
“Come on,” I said to Heinrich. I looked south. Ahead of me stretched a broad green country, once desolate and frightening, and now a place that was filled with opportunity. I took a deep breath. “We have a lot of the world still to see.”
The world has already changed so much in the threescore years since I left Rill for the second time. The pessimists call this era the Great Decline, as the Republic slowly fell apart; first the north and south being repatriated to the pagans, and then the alliance of Western Kingdoms – Grozoda, Venland, Jägeland and Denholtz – seceding. In my twentieth year I had considered my already storied life over. In fact, it was just beginning.
Our parting of ways following the end of the Empire and the beginning of the Sovan Republic concludes my tale of Sir Konrad Vonvalt. As he predicted, he is already a controversial figure. His supporters say he ushered in urgent reform without which even the Sovan rump state would not have survived; his detractors call him the “architect of the decline and fall”. I consider that latter moniker to be a little dramatic.
The life I have lived has been one full of adventure, and which Claver’s heresy and rebellion now forms a small and distant part. What happened to Sir Konrad afterwards? A great many rumours abound. Some say he returned to the life of a travelling Justice, one no longer confined to the borders of the Republic. Others say he lived the life of a hermit and achieved nothing more of note, dying in obscurity. I have even heard that he lives still, his life prolonged unnaturally by magicks, as he seeks to unlock the secrets of the holy dimensions and so discover the eventual fate of mankind.
Yes, a great many rumours abound as to the eventual fate of Sir Konrad Vonvalt, though – of course – there is only one true account.
But some things I shall keep for myself.
Acknowledgements
I can remember sitting down and planning what would become the world of the Empire of the Wolf. It was in June 2019, and I had just been on a long weekend break to Bruges with my wife and (then only) son. Inspired by the city and its heritage, I soon found myself deep down a rabbit hole of research on medieval France, Imperial Flanders, and the Holy Roman Empire. During lunch breaks in the offices of my law firm in London, I pored over maps of the Carolingian and Holy Roman Empires, the Hanseatic League and the Confederation of the Rhine; and from there I began to sketch out the Haugenate family tree, draw my own maps of the Sovan rump state, provinces and suzerainties, and think of customs, languages, religions and social mores which would define the Sovan people and those living under the yoke of the Autun.
A few months before this, we had been on a trip to Exmoor in the south-west of England. It was a cold, dreary weekend in February, and we spent most of the time hiking through the wintry moorland, taking it in turns to have my son strapped to our chests. It was and remains a strikingly beautiful part of the world, unpopulated and desolate, and it was there that I wrote a short, self-contained story entitled The Witch of Rill. I spent some time in the following weeks trying to sell this story – which would go on to become, in an almost unadulterated form, the first two chapters of The Justice of Kings – to a number of short story publications, and those efforts were unsuccessful. However, pleased with what I’d written, seeing potential in the characters of Vonvalt and Helena, and invigorated from that weekend in Bruges, I returned to the world to see if I could tease a novel out of it.
Suffice it to say that I did not imagine, exactly four years later, that I would be finishing my final readthrough of the copyedited manuscript of The Trials of Empire. As I write this, the paperback edition of The Tyranny of Faith is still not out for several months, and yet the Empire of the Wolf series as it currently stands has sold well in excess of fifty thousand copies and has six extant and planned foreign language editions. It has been a long and, for me, extraordinary journey.
It is a wonderful and satisfying thing to complete a trilogy of novels; it is a harder thing still to bid goodbye to a world and its characters which have formed the focus (though not the totality) of my creative labours of the last four years. For the longest time, the manuscript for The Justice of Kings was just another book. I have, after all, been writing since my early teens, and even self-published a number of science-fiction novels – The Art of War trilogy and its attendant spin-offs and novellas – the better part of a decade ago. But after I finished The Justice of Kings and immediately began work on a new science-fiction novel, I felt that perhaps I’d struck upon something more deserving than an eternity languishing on my hard drive, or mostly unread on my KDP account.
It isn’t an exaggeration to say that being published by a major SFF imprint had been my life’s ambition. I’ve been writing since I was twelve, and I can still remember being so hungry for it. I wanted to be published so urgently and desperately, with an intensity that only seems possible in adolescence. I wrote novel after novel, thinking they were brilliant, knowing they were terrible, all the while hoping that publication was simply a matter of when, not if.
Whilst the act of writing is a solitary one, it is of course not possible to write anything without the help and support of many people over many years. Having the time, and the physical, mental and emotional ability to even indulge in the act of fiction writing, stems in the first instance from being raised in a stable and loving environment. That my creativity and love of genre fiction was encouraged from a young age – be it by my dad taking me to see the Pokémon movie at the cinema, or by my mum letting me take home armfuls of A L I E N S graphic novels from a rural Lincolnshire library – was as much an influence on me as anything else. That I was ever able to write these books at all is thanks, in the very first instance, to my parents, Mark and Jackie.
I would also be remiss if I did not mention my secondary school English literature teacher Jo Lawrence, whose active encouragement of my writing went well above and beyond the call of her teaching duties. It is difficult to overstate the impact you had on me as a seventeen-year-old.
Thanks go to my literary agent, Harry Illingworth, and my editorial team at Orbit – Hillary Sames, Bradley Englert, and especially the point-man, James Long. Taken all together we have a wonderful creative partnership, and the world of the Empire of the Wolf is much richer for your input. Thank you for taking a chance on me and my work, and for making it into the success it has become.
Thanks to my beta readers and dear friends, George Lockett (and it is thanks to your advice, George, in one of those rare Sliding Doors moments, that these books even exist in their current form), Will Smith, and Tim Johnson. I’m grateful for your patient and thoughtful feedback over the years.
Thank you to Martina Fačková for the beautiful book cover illustrations – the sort of beautiful artwork I always desperately hoped for and never thought I would get – and to Lauren Panepinto for your creative vision and direction. Thank you, too, to my publicists, Nazia Khatun and Angela Man, for spreading the good word about the trilogy.
Thank you to my friends in the Write or Die Growlery Discord, a collection of some of the most wonderful and talented writers operating today, for providing me with a place to both celebrate my successes and to vent my spleen. The world of book publication can be a difficult one to navigate; I am grateful to have found my tribe.
Thank you to book bloggers, Instagrammers, book Twitterati, podcasters, YouTubers – you are the unpaid and often underappreciated champions of genre fiction. My heartfelt thanks go to you for spreading the word about the Empire of the Wolf, for plugging these books, and for letting readers everywhere delight in your infectious enthusiasm.
Thank you to my beautiful wife, Sophie, and my precious sons, Scott and Leo. I couldn’t ask for a better trio of cheerleaders. The Empire of the Wolf trilogy is dedicated to you.
Finally, thank you to my readers. Ultimately, it’s all for naught if nobody actually reads the damn things. You are legion. Thank you for giving me the honour of entertaining you.
Lots more to come.
Richard
Sydney, June 2023
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By Richard Swan
EMPIRE OF THE WOLF
The Justice of Kings
The Tyranny of Faith
The Trials of Empire
Richard Swan, The Trials of Empire
