“It took but a few simple words to ignite the embers of discontent,” declared the man on the platform. “Brotherhood. Liberty. Equality. Choice. These were the words that drew the embers together, and sparked the great fires of revolution.”

            The morning sky above the cobbled square was overcast. Dark, bloated clouds poured great sheets of rain upon the gathered crowd.

            “Simple words. Simple words that bore a heavy price! We call it the Glorious Revolution, the People's Revolt, yet it was they who started it!” He cast an accusatory finger towards the steel-clad hulks. They stood stolid at the rear of the platform. “The Company instigated that revolt, their provocateurs stirred up the colonies to rise against the Crown of Nandolin.”

            The crowd surged. From atop the platform, it seemed a tempestuous sea of angry faces. They glistened in the falling rain, their mouths gaping shadows that spewed impatience. “Get on with it,” someone heckled.

            “What are we now,” the man continued undeterred, “but slaves to the merchant machine? They fanned the flames of rebellion so they could form a state of free trade for the rich. We, the citizens, cast off the shackles of Nandol imperialism in order to cast ourselves new ones. New shackles stamped with the Company's mark! They lured people from across the world with the prospect of free enterprise, of a liberal life devoid of kings, of cities where anything is possible and no man is set above another. Is that the truth of this nation?”

            “Yes,” the crowd yelled. He knew many of those shouts were obligatory. It was all a show.

            “Traitor,” came a more singular voice from one of the windows that surrounded the square. Those windows were jammed with faces silhouetted by the light within.

            “No,” the man replied with grave countenance. “No, it is not. Their lies blind you. Look about you, look to your crumbling hovels and your unfed children. Look at your ragged clothes and the pittance you carry in your pockets. You are not free, you are chained to the machinery of the Company, and if you do not work the machines you are destroyed. If you resist the Company, you are hauled away to work and die in the mines.”

            “Sirrethea is free,” one of the crowd insisted.

            “Is it?” The man asked. “Sirrethea is a nation controlled by a board of directors, what does that tell you? This land is free for those who are a part of the Company. It is free for the Empress, for the Board of Directors, for the commanders, for the Titans. You think those monstrous metal suits are here to protect you, they are here to control you, to suppress you. To crush you when you rise against the rulers of this nation. You think you escaped the yolk of kings and aristocrats by coming to Sirrethea, you are sorely mistaken. You are not free; your labour and your lives are expendable commodities!”

            “We have choice,” another called out.

            “Choice?” The man barked an incredulous laugh. “Choice, yes. Yes, you do have choice. You differ from the slaves of antiquity in that regard. The people of Sirrethea have two choices; you can submit to the Company, or you can starve! That is your freedom of choice.”

            “So, what would you have us do, traitor?”

            “Rise!” he cried. “You must rise against this tyranny; become the sentient beings you claim to be! They subdue your dreams, your ambitions, your desire for a better life than this. They keep them locked down in deep, dark dungeons full of smoke. They suffocate your will for change. But the saddest fact of all is that you are your own gaolers. It is you who possess the keys, can't you see? Unlock those doors, free your dreams, let them surface and breathe of the fresh air! Let them soar and spread their wings. You must rise!”

            He heard the great mechanical movements behind him. The lumbering metal feet getting closer and closer. “Rise,” he shouted. “Rise damn you, rebel against the yolk of the Company. It is you they fear, you!”

            The blow struck him about the ear, a firm connection from the back of a metal hand. It drove him sideways and he lost his footing. The wooden planks were slick beneath his palms, his head rattled and the din of the crowd seemed distant, underwater. “Rise,” he muttered to the crowd, and to himself. “Rise.”

            A great, solid hand grasped him by the shoulder and heaved him to his feet as if he were a child's doll. “Let us be on with it, eh?” boomed the man within the suit of metal and gears.

            The crowd cheered. The rain kept pouring from the brooding skies.

            The noose hung there silently, waiting for him. It had loomed at his back while he harangued the crowd, ever whispering of the fate that awaited him. Now the sodden hempen rope was about to embrace him. There'd be no silk for such a man. A noose wrapped in silk was saved for the wealthy criminals, members of the Company offered up as a flimsy show of justice to the population. To see a rich man, an insider, hanged for his crimes allowed the masses to hold onto the illusion of freedom, of a fair nation where no one was above the law.

            It was all a façade, he knew it. A few others knew it too. The crowd did not, for crowds are fickle, blind, and dangerous.

            The metal colossus shoved him towards the noose, where the executioner stood in sombre stance. The rain pelted his black mask, making a sound as it would on a tin roof. The man staggered, but the vice like grip of the metal fingers returned to steady him. The pain was incredible, but he did not scream. He would not scream.

            The crowd was a haze now, through the downpour and the tears that filled his eyes. He could no longer hear the armoured man on his right, for the ringing of his ear and the blood that filled it. It trickled down his neck, a warm rivulet mingled with the cold rain.

            From his left the executioner thrust a piece of paper under his nose. “Your death sentence,” said the black mask of death.

            He forced himself to read the ink that sealed his fate. The paper was sodden, the ink running, but he managed to make out the words. “Did you write this?” he asked through teeth gritted from the pain.

            “I did sir, yes. It is one of my duties.”

            The man gave a derisive snort. “I see you've made three spelling mistakes.”

            The executioner stiffened, then snatched the sentence back. “It'll be easier for you if you stand still,” he said as he stuffed the parchment into his tarpaulin coat. “Don't make a fuss now, die like a man.” Then he placed the noose around the man's neck.

            The rope was coarse, wet, and tight. It seemed to carry the weight of a boulder, chafed at the skin and subdued the soul. Darkness gathered, Merradir was waiting.

            “Last words?” asked a voice from within the battle-suit.

            The man blinked, and gazed at the armoured giant through the blur of tears. It was a colossus, eight feet of steel plate and intricate gears powered by Storm Silk. Across Sirrethea the suited men had many names. In the north they were known as Iron-men, on the coasts they were called Men-of-War. In the Capital they were revered as Knights. To the south they were Storm Lords, and on the western slopes of the White Mountains they were named Guardians. To the citizens of Dree, they were Titans.

            The man blinked again. In the towering form of the rain slick Titan, he saw his world destroyed. He saw oppression and malice, tyranny and avarice. He saw his wife, his son, his daughter. The Titans arrested them all in the raid, despite his pleas of their innocence. His wife, sweet Anor, had already been executed as a radical and a traitor. He knew not the fate of his children, they refused to tell him.

            “Last words?” the Titan asked again.

            The man took a deep breath, filling every crevice of his lungs. “Rise,” he bellowed with every fibre of his being. “Let the horns blow! Let the trumpets sound! Let the drums beat the tattoo of rebellion! Unite! Rise above the fear! Rise to freedom! Rise, rise, rise, and rise again. Rise!”

            The trapdoor was loosed, he found himself without footing and dropped. The rope cracked like a whip as it went taut, and mist sprayed out from its soaked sinews.

            The crowd fell silent. Those near the front, and those in the high windows in possession of a quality spyglass, could watch the grim spectacle beneath the gallows. They could see the man kicking and jerking on the end of the rope, struggling in his death throes. Those further back saw little but the bouncing of the rope above the trap door. It spoke of the unseen gallows dance as well as the man performing it.

            Eventually the rope's motion calmed, and regulated into a pendulous and macabre swing.

            The vast majority of the crowd had come to watch the gruesome spectacle of a traitor hanged. Nothing drew a crowd like a man bound for the gallows, and even the rain could not deter them when the man to be hanged was a traitor. Even the most mild-mannered citizens seemed to transform into hardened nationalists when the traitors were marched up the scaffold.

            But not everybody came to gawp. There were those in the crowd with hearts grown heavy at witnessing tyranny in action. Some had eyes red and sore, grateful for the concealing downpour that mixed with their tears. Others stood silent with tight jaws and clenched fists, numbed by the death of Chalvern Reyn.

            “Let us be off lass,” said Gylas dully. “There's naught else to be seen, or done.” He rested a firm and calloused hand on the girl's slender shoulder. They stood under one of the many archways that fed the broad square. The rain cascaded from the gutters above in great streams to feed the puddled cobbles.

            “Rise,” the girl muttered the word. “We will,” she vowed.

            “Less of that talk,” Gylas hissed. “You want to join your father? Your mother?”

            “My brother?” she asked darkly.

            “We'll find him,” said Gylas. “I promise. Right now, we need to get you out of the city. Come on, there's nothing left for you in Dree.”