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The Fall of Cadoria by Paul R Willson

“After war comes betrayal.”

Once more, Prince Tyrran is summoned to defend his land against the menacing Empire of Thargoẑa. With his small army, he must make a stand at Heldwr Fort against the empire and its vain commander and heir to the throne of the empire, Chema of Gravia.

Prince Tyrran has faced the Thargoẑan army many times and has yet to taste defeat. So confident of victory are the Cadorians that his wife, the exiled Thargoẑan Princess Branganẑa (Bragansha), niece of the Thargoẑan emperor, and his children accompany him to watch the preparations for battle before returning to the capital of Cadoria, Cadora. Yet as his army races to Heldwr Fort to cut off the Thargoẑan army before it can march on Cadora, Tyrran is gripped by a growing sense of foreboding because he has not yet seen or heard of reports of any Thargoẑan scouts. Something feels wrong, very wrong.

Once in the fort, his sense of foreboding and worry becomes a crisis of confidence for the first time in his career. On the surface everything is going well, his army arrives earlier than expected at the fort, morale is high amongst his men, and the preparations have been completed in enough time for his army to be trained on the tactics he is determined to use to break the Thargoẑans on the fort’s walls. However, his chief of intelligence has gone missing, and his scouts have started not to return.
The battle at Heldwr Fort is fierce and savage after the Thargoẑans arrived earlier and in greater numbers than his intelligence reported trapping Branganẑa in the fort. The battlefield is ravaged by fire and death as the fate of the battle hangs in the balance as the well-trained and highly disciplined Cadorians hold their own. The walls of the fort bear witness to the loss of countless Thargoẑans. Yet for Prince Tyrran, this senseless carnage defies reason. Nothing leading up to the battle made sense until an act of betrayal and treachery brings about the Cadorians’ downfall. Chema of Gravia lacked the cunning to orchestrate such a betrayal so who now leads the Thargoẑan army and who has supplanted Chema of Gravia?

As the Cadorians begin to tire, Tyrran sees a flaming arrow fired into the sky just before Thargoẑan soldiers pour out of the fort’s keep and he is gripped by the horror that his army had been betrayed.
Outnumbered and surrounded, the Cadorians desperately fight on, but it is soon clear that the battle is lost and Tyrran orders the remnants of his army to perform a daring escape of the fort. Lost in the fog of battle Tyrran makes the fateful decision not to leave with his men, wanting to save his family first, but is captured in the process.

As Tyrran is taken to the Thargoẑan command tent, it occurs to him that the tactics used were far too sophisticated for Chema of Gravia and is witness to Chema being cast aside by the emperor. With great trepidation, he prepares to meet the emperor’s new heir only to find with dismay that it is his wife, Braganẑa.

Braganẑa attempts to justify her betrayal of her husband and their marriage and life together hangs in the balance and in doing so lets it slip that it was the head of Cadorian intelligence chief, Bartolo Lis, who betrayed the Cadorians at Heldwr Fort.

Tyrran struggles to come to terms with what Braganẑa has done. He watches as Braganẑa orders the execution of Chema of Gravia and he no longer knows who his wife is anymore. Braganẑa then, when Tyrran is at his most vulnerable, forces him to choose between betraying his country by helping Thargoẑa take Cadora without a fight or watch Cadora burn. With his heart breaking, he reluctantly agrees to help Thargoẑa take Cadora and complete the conquest of his country.
Without Tyrran to lead the defence, Cadora capitulates and Tyrran falls into melancholy. Unable to cope with still feeling love for Braganẑa yet unable to forgive her betrayal nor forgive himself for his betrayal of his country.

Braganẑa for her part is torn in many directions. She struggles to keep her incompetent generals in line and prevent them from taking retribution against Tyrran and Cadoria for their years of resistance while desperately trying to reconcile with her husband and deal with her children’s anger towards her as the unintended consequences of her betrayal begin to haunt her.
The Thargoẑan generals’ incompetence comes to a head as one of the plots to take Cadorian children as slaves and Tyrran’s last surviving general manages to steal a stockpile of weapons and simply walk out of Cadora undetected. She executes one general and sends the rest home as she exerts her control over Cadoria with an iron fist on behalf of the emperor.
To save her marriage she permits Tyrran to take vengeance on the Cadorian traitor, Bartolo Lis, and reconcile with his men for his betrayal of Cadoria. Unfortunately for Braganẑa, Tyrran goes on the rampage to find Bartolo Lis and she is forced to rein him in for his own sake before she is forced to take action that would destroy her world.

However, before that happens, Tyrran finally takes his vengeance on Bartolo Lis and Braganẑa is now able to prepare to take him and their children to the Thargoẑan capital, Garrol, to take her place as the heir to the Empire of Thargoẑan which leads to the sequel, “The Empress of Thargoẑa.”

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