The Oathless
Salt and Iron
R.C. SANCHEZ
A disgraced Kingsguard walks the kingdom on foot with a cheap sword and no name worth using, and someone is carving his old oath into dead men's chests.
Epic fantasy with the pace of a thriller.
About the Series
He broke his oath once. Never again.
Eleven years ago, on the night they now call the Night of the Lion, King Oswin III of Caradon was murdered in his bed. By dawn, the youngest of his seven sworn Kingsguard was gone over the river wall. Every reeve's broadsheet in the realm named him the Kingslayer.
Conall Varrick has been walking ever since. He goes on foot because horses make you visible. He carries a plain iron sword because the black one was too easy to recognize, and he threw it into the river. He walks into towns the king's law has forgotten, notices what nobody else will look at, and leaves at dawn.
But somebody has started carving the old Kingsguard sigil, a crown pierced by a sword, into the bodies of dead men, one town at a time. Somebody knows exactly who Conall Varrick is.
Stands alone
Every book is a complete story. Start anywhere.
Moves the road
A new town, a new corner of the map, a new piece of the conspiracy.
Grounded
Low magic. No fireballs, no prophecies, no chosen ones. Salt, iron, coin, and frightened people.
Competence
He wins because he notices: the rut of a wagon, the angle of a wound, the rust on a hinge.
- Book OneSalt and IronSaltreach, a salt-mining town on the western flats.In progress
- Book TwoPort VellA forge city on the western coast.Coming next
- Book ThreeFerrybridgeA barge town on the river Tess.Planned
- Book FourHarrowgateA fort on the eastern border.Planned
Book One
Salt and Iron
The salt road runs forty miles across the flats to Saltreach, and in all forty miles there is no shade, no water, and no reason to walk it unless you have to.
Conall Varrick walks it anyway.
He's been walking for eleven years, ever since the night King Oswin III died in his bed and the youngest of the Kingsguard went over the river wall with blood on his hands. Now he's just a big man with a cheap sword and no interest in anybody's business.
But the salt wagons leaving Saltreach are too heavy to be carrying salt. Travelers who ask questions don't come back. A girl has vanished into the fenced-off pans at the edge of town, where a single red lamp burns all night above something nobody will name. And on Conall's first night in town, a man is murdered in an alley with the sigil of the Kingsguard carved into his chest.
Someone in Saltreach knows who Conall Varrick is.
And they want everyone else to know it too.
Why you'll love it
- A lone wanderer with a past he won't talk about
- A small town under a corrupt lord
- A murder only he can read
- A secret mine, a buried conspiracy, and a steel that shouldn't exist
- Low magic, high stakes, and a hero who notices everything
From Chapter One
The salt road ran forty miles across the flats from the Greyhallow hills to the town of Saltreach, and in all forty miles there was no shade, no water, and no reason to walk it unless you had to. Conall Varrick walked it anyway, because a wagoner at the last waystation had told him not to.
He carried a pack, and a sword in a plain leather scabbard on his back. The hilt was wrapped in old cord, and the crossguard was a simple iron bar. It was the kind of sword a man bought from a village smith for two silver crowns. That was exactly what he had done, eleven years ago, the week after he threw the other one in the river.
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The Oathless
Conall Varrick
- Age
- Forty-three
- Height
- Six-foot-four
- Born
- The Fells, the northern hill country
- Once
- The youngest of the seven Kingsguard sworn to the Lion Throne
- Now
- A man the whole kingdom believes murdered his king
He travels on foot and owns nothing he can't walk away from. He sits facing the door. He pays for everything and never takes thanks. He doesn't start fights. He finishes them.
He has never told anyone what happened on the Night of the Lion.
Ride the salt road
Read Chapter One free.
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Chapter One
16-page PDF with the map of Caradon
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About the author
R.C. Sanchez
R.C. Sanchez writes epic fantasy for readers who like their heroes quiet, their magic scarce, and their stories moving. An engineer by trade, he has spent his career figuring out how things are built and how they break, and it shows in his fiction, where the hero wins by noticing the rust on a hinge.
The Oathless is his first fantasy series.
Write to him at [email protected]