The War Priest

by Ann Aguirre

  “Are you mad? It’s dangerous! And yes, you can hug me.”

  “I’ll talk to Callum for you when I can. When he understands why you did that, he’ll be lenient, I’m sure. And we’ll help you save your family.” Big promises, ones she hoped she could keep.

  “My issues don’t matter right now,” Renna said. “But I appreciate the thought. Just come back safe, okay?”

  “Will do my best.”

  Later, it took some smooth talking for her to get the guards to open the gate. Doubtless they thought she was unhinged, setting out alone at night on foot with only a small pack. After some debate, she’d decided it made sense for her to move in this form. Otherwise, the wolves and Eldritch wouldn’t be able to understand her if they arrived to find a bobcat waiting for them, and the Eldritch weren’t as casual about nudity as the Animari.

  Traveling as a woman meant she was more vulnerable to attack. She couldn’t run as fast or dart up trees to hide. Joss allowed plenty of travel time and navigated the mine field with care, grateful that she had a good memory. She had traversed this zone once, and did so safely again, though she didn’t relax entirely until she reached the haven of the trees. Behind her, the churned earth revealed all too clearly how many battles had been fought outside Burnt Amber, how many mines were detonated by the Golgoth.

  Joss moved carefully, constantly scanning for threats. While the main Gol force was hunting Callum’s army, there could be deserters looking for trouble. With acute senses, she avoided a few stragglers and hid until they passed. She’d always preferred stealth to open conflict. Shortly before the appointed hour, she reached the spot she’d selected for the rendezvous.

  The site was open, plenty of space for vehicles and equidistant from factory and Burnt Amber. It wouldn’t take long to reach the hot spring from here in Rovers, but they probably wouldn’t have vehicles for all the ground troops. That meant an overland trek and would add to the arrival time.

  Please, Callum, just hang on. We’re coming.

  Joss lost track of how long she waited, but she ate some of the food in her pack and tensed when she heard engines. But they were Eldritch, not Golgoth make, and when Thalia swung out of the lead vehicle, she almost wept in relief. Raff followed close behind, along with a mix of wolf and Eldritch soldiers. It seemed like they had heavy equipment, too, including two aerial support units. She recognized Korin from Daruvar and a few others.

  “What’s a pretty girl like you doing in a place like this?” Raff asked with a roguish smile.

  But he didn’t flirt beyond that silly remark, and Joss noticed that he stayed close to Thalia’s side. “Waiting for the world to make sense again,” she said.

  “It will soon,” Thalia promised. The Eldritch queen was cool and elegant in the moonlight, but her eyes held a fierce glitter as well, as if she was ready to impose logic forcibly on those who resisted.

  A few hours later, the contingent from Ash Valley arrived, and Joss ran to Pru, who leapt out of the Rover and started calling her name. Dom was close behind, but Joss was too busy hugging her cousin to care. “Gods, I’m so glad to see you. It’s been…” Words failed her.

  “I can imagine,” Pru said somberly. “I did everything short of evil magic to get this lot assembled.”

  “She promised to make my life a living hell if we didn’t ride to your rescue. And the bears too, of course,” Dom added.

  “I would have, too. This war has taken enough from us.”

  “We’re here now. Things are a bit better in Ash Valley at last.”

  “Because the bears have been fighting for you.” Joss fixed a sharp, angry stare on Dom, and he looked away first.

  “We’re just waiting on Prince Alastor then?” Pru smoothed the moment over while giving Joss another hug.

  She respected her cousin’s peacemaker tendencies or maybe she would’ve picked a fight with Dom. It seemed like everyone had been content to let the bears suffer until Pru stepped in and started yelling. Without the Pax Protocols, they had no legal obligation to render aid, but Joss gave no damns about that.

  “It’ll be another half day at least,” Raff said. “We had word from him just before we left Pine Ridge.”

  Ah, that was why they got here first.

  Urgency clutched at her with icy hands; they didn’t know how weak and desperate Callum had been in the dream. “We can’t wait, we should move now. They have coordinates for the hot spring?”

  For a moment nobody responded, then Thalia said, “We can’t defeat the main Gol force with our numbers alone. We need Alastor’s army.”

  Later, provided that Callum survived the next twenty-four hours, he would insist that the order include this story among the other holy parables—the Miracle of the Fishes. Because those slow, lazy cave fish saved so many lives. Those who lacked the strength to shift cleaned them and sliced them thin, steamed them a little on the rocks heated by the spring. The bears ate them raw, until the hidden pond in the Goddess cave was nearly tapped. They scraped the lichens from the walls and fueled up for one last conflict.

  They’re coming. They must be.

  He helped Trini in building the traps on the cliffs that framed the pass, and it was tough, precarious work. Once, she slipped and he broke her fall with his body. She held on, breathing hard and refusing to look down.

  “Don’t tell Emilia about this.”

  Callum smiled and let go of her. “About what?”

  Trini nodded like that was exactly what she wanted to hear. “We’re good now. Do you ever intend to tell us what you have planned? These rockfall platforms won’t do enough damage to win the day.”

  “Wait and see,” was all he said.

  As the day wore on, he started to get nervous. And his people grew restless as well. Distant noise indicated that the Gols were incoming, and though the boulders blocking the path would slow them down, they would either clear it or climb. The fight was inevitable.

  The waiting was interminable.

  Distant shouts reached him, threats and promises of gruesome death, but the Gols couldn’t get to them. Callum tried to rest, but as the enemy drew closer with no reinforcements in sight, his nerves screamed, and dread pooled in his gut. Maybe he’d just been dreaming, a hopeful hallucination, and he’d taken an abandoned worship site to mean more than it did.

  We have a little time left.

  Then the first boom rang out. Shit. They have explosives, maybe looted from the factory. These awful bastards.

  “Get down,” Callum shouted, as the barricade went flying in stony shards.

  Not entirely clear yet but with a few more blasts, the Gols would be on them. Resolutely, he turned to what was left of his army. “Shift if you can. If not, retreat to the caverns. The goddess will protect you in your time of need.” He turned to his hawk scout. “Take to the skies. Three cries if help is in sight.”

  Only five volunteers slipped into the pool and dove. The rest became bears, with a few wolves and cats mixed in. Overhead, the great hawk soared, ignoring the enemy to scope out the longer view. Callum was among the last to shift, and he took position in front, determined to fight with the last of his power. The first wave of Gols crested the tumble of rocks and charged, all spines and talons and leathery plates. Though he knew damn well it was a pejorative, he understood why they had been dubbed demon-kin.

  He hit the first enemy with his full strength and swiped. Tough hide, no good. Then, incredibly, three sharp cries rang out, over the din of battle.

  Did he understand me correctly?

  Then Callum saw them with his own eyes, air support coming in hot, two wolves in war machines. Wolves never fought alone. The rest would strike from the ground, hopefully soon, as his people would be overwhelmed in no time. A volley of shots hit the Gols trying to squeeze past the narrow gap they’d blown, and chunks of flesh flew. The smell of burning meant filled the air, and then there were Eldritch on the cliffs above, firing with deadly precision, raining death on the Gols.

  T
he wolves and the Eldritch. They came. I didn’t dream it.

  Like ferocious ghosts, the cats struck from the shadows, attack and retreat, slashing at the Gols, until they were practically assaulting each other in the confusion, unable to get a lock on the enemy. Callum powered through the Golgoth dragon-thing he was fighting, using his bulk to break bones that wouldn’t heal. As that foe fell, the thunder of thousands of boots rang through the pass, the heavy stomp of Golgoth warriors.

  And not the ones they were fighting.

  Fucking Prince Alastor too.

  Somehow, his voice rang out over the racket. Ah, he was using an amplifier to cast his words. “My offer of clemency has expired. There will be no mercy for any of you. Now that you’ve proven yourselves to be the monsters that others rightly fear, I can offer nothing but a swift death.”

  Then on some signal Callum didn’t catch, the rebel Gols slammed the attackers from behind, so many bodies that there was hardly room in the pass, and if the enemy tried to flee, they’d likely be cut down on the other side.

  With so many others in the fray, he called, Fall back. Take no risks. Defend from this point on.

  They fought in bursts with some Gols trying to take a few more bears with them to the afterlife, but mostly they tended their wounded while the battle raged just beyond the narrow pass. For hours, a united Numina—without Pax Protocols in place—fought the same enemy. The conflict raged through the night and onward until dawn.

  Around first light, the last of the enemy fell, so many bodies that there was a mountain of them blocking the way. Those would have to be cleared before Callum’s people could get out or before aid could get in. The wolves dropped supplies via their war machines, packets of protein bars, and Callum could have kissed Korin when she pulled off her helmet.

  “We’re working on a solution, but it may take a while to get you out of here. You bears sure do love your caves,” she joked.

  Exhaustion and disbelief circulated among the survivors, as the Eldritch rappelled down from the cliffs, carrying more supplies. Grateful to be a man again, he donned the clothing they offered.

  “It’s not humane but a few shots would reduce them to ash and then we can move out,” he said.

  “Wouldn’t do much for air quality,” Korin noted, “but if you can stand passing through the death cloud that will linger, I’ll get Raff’s approval.”

  “I’d appreciate a swift extraction. We’ve been here long enough.”

  “That’s for damn sure,” Trini said.

  He glanced around, seeking Emilia, because the two were never far apart. Thankfully he found her, checking on a wound that wasn’t healing as fast as it should. Exhaustion did that. Rest and food should take care of it, unless the man had contracted some rare bacteria that would require medical intervention.

  As Korin gestured for space, he stepped back and she jetted straight up in a fiery burst. Trini gazed upward with a mix of wariness and admiration. “What do you suppose that’s like?”

  He shrugged, feeling an ache at the movement all the way to his bones. “Don’t know. Don’t plan to find out.”

  The wolves had built such things because even hunting as a pack, they couldn’t kill the Gols in numbers. It had been a long time since such weapons were needed but the Animari remembered the time before when war was a constant threat, and when they stopped heeding the stories, the bad days came again.

  Dazed and dirty faced, his people washed up in the pools and then dressed in apparel provided by the Eldritch, simple drawstring pants and loose tunics, but better than standing around naked as the wolves incinerated the Gol bodies blocking the pass.

  Soon enough, relatively speaking, Callum led the way back down the stony passage. Tension seeped out of him when he saw the full might of Alastor’s army gathered on the plain. Those numbers dwarfed what the combined Animari had fielded, and he shivered to think of the Gol prince ever turning his own forces against them.

  But that would never happen. The woman sitting beside him was Animari, and she wouldn’t have chosen her mate without knowing what lay in his heart.

  Alastor strode toward him and offered a deep bow. “I’m truly sorry it took me so long. We didn’t know the situation was so dire or we would’ve come sooner.”

  This was Joss’s doing. She had no difficulty reaching out to people, but Callum wasn’t convinced anyone would’ve heeded his pleas, even if he’d made them. Her charisma and her ties to Ash Valley had made this miracle.

  “You’re here now,” he said. “Let’s get to Burnt Amber and discuss the rest.”

  28.

  Joss wasn’t in the thick of the fighting—her strength lay in moving folks, not killing them—but in the aftermath, she searched for Callum everywhere.

  If anything irrevocable had happened to him, she’d sense it. Their connection was real, but her heart wouldn’t stop racing until she found him, touched him. Finally, he came striding out of the ashes like a damn phoenix, disheveled and scowling and gaunt, so gaunt, especially around the eyes. While he spoke with Alastor, she drank him in.

  And when he turned, she ran to him, leaping into his arms from two meters away. Without hesitation, he caught and spun her, lifting her entire body in the air before cradling her against his chest. His instant, instinctive response would never get old, fucking never.

  “Missed you,” she whispered.

  His dreamy hazel eyes, all gold and green shot like precious agate, crinkled at the edges, and up close, the tips of his lashes were even more bleached by the sun. “I can see that, kit. So can everyone else.”

  “Are you protesting?” she asked.

  “Hell no. I’m a free man and I can kiss you before the entire world if I want.”

  As it turned out, he did want to, quite thoroughly, and with such urgency and finesse that Pru had to pull Joss away physically to get her attention. “I can see we have a lot to talk about,” her cousin said pointedly. “But now isn’t the time. Callum said something about moving out, and that’s a good idea. There’s a great deal that we need to decide before we go our separate ways.”

  Dom nodded, slinging a possessive arm around Pru’s shoulder, like everyone didn’t already know the woman belonged to him. Joss made a face as he murmured, “Spot on, as ever.”

  “We don’t need my entire force at Burnt Amber,” Alastor put in. “Nor do I imagine there’s room. And I collect that the exterior is currently a bit…inhospitable. Would anyone object if I sent them back to Hallowell? Sheyla and I will, of course, attend the conclave to confer about what comes next.”

  “I’m fine with that,” Callum said.

  Pru nodded. “We only need the leaders.”

  “Excellent. Give me a moment, then perhaps we can catch a lift with the Eldritch. Do you think Thalia would be so inclined?” Alastor asked Sheyla, as they moved off together to consult with his second in command, an imposing Gol woman with a stern demeanor.

  “We don’t have enough vehicles, and I won’t leave my people until we’re safe,” Callum said then. “Joss, go with the lead Rover. They’ll have to park a ways out, though, because there’s no safe passage wide enough for vehicles anymore.”

  “Not very sociable,” Raff quipped.

  Joss shot him a look of pure annoyance. If he knew what the bears had gone through, he wouldn’t be able to joke. Pine Ridge had certainly seen the least casualties of all the Numina. Gods knew how Thalia put up with Raff’s nonsense; Joss already wanted to kick him in the shins.

  She stretched up to kiss Callum’s cheek, and he closed his eyes like the sensation was too lovely to resist. Then she whispered, “If you’re not home by tomorrow, I’ll come after you.”

  “Wouldn’t want to make you cross with me,” he said, brushing a strand of hair away from her face.

  Dom stared between them with exaggerated awe, then he stage-whispered to Pru, “She’s tamed the bear.”

  On some level, it was good to see him playful again, but Joss still glared at her cousi
n’s mate as Callum aimed a lazy scowl in the other man’s direction. “What of it? You, of all people, know precisely how powerful a little cat can be.”

  Dom glanced at Pru and said, “True enough.”

  “Enough chatter!” Thalia called. “I’m sending our forces back to Pine Ridge as well. There’s room in our convoy if anyone needs transport to Burnt Amber. Leaving in five minutes.”

  Joss kissed Callum once more, a promise of more to come, and then she hurried to the lead Eldritch vehicle. They’d need her guidance to know when to stop driving. She watched out the window until they left the combined armies behind, and then she settled into her seat with a sigh.

  Thalia eyed her with a blend of curiosity and amusement. “You know, I proposed a marital alliance to Callum. He was second choice, after Alastor.”

  A snicker burst out of Joss, as she slid a look at Raff. “And you’re fine with being her third pick?”

  “She didn’t know me then,” he said easily. “And if I know her as well as I think, she’s curious how you managed to ‘tame the bear’ as Dom put it.”

  “For one thing, I didn’t consider that he needed taming. Or changing. In the beginning, I just wanted to be his friend.”

  “I understand,” said Thalia.

  And Joss thought that maybe she did, at least in hindsight. Callum didn’t care about accruing personal power or gaining the most leverage among the Animari. If Thalia had approached him with that sort of alliance, of course he’d rejected the offer. Also, he was simply destined to be mine.

  At heart, he had been a lonely person who had given up on the idea of connecting with other people. I can help him do that. I will. If I devote the rest of my life to interpreting Callum’s moods for other people and helping him understand what they want from him, I’ll consider it time well spent.

  “Is the war truly over?” she asked then.

  It was hard to believe, but so many Gols died. How could there be many more, even in Golgerra? Tycho Vega shouldn’t have more forces in reserve, right?