Horns of the Ram (Dominion Book 2)

by Austin Rogers

  Ahead, beyond the dark dust cloud kicked up by the horses, enormous towers of slate gray slanted over each other, looming over the path of the track. Waxen smooth patches peeked through the rough and gritty rock that coated the natural structures, revealing the resource that made Triumph the epicenter of Sagittarius. The closer Cristiana rode to it, the more staggering the magnitude of wealth inside this deposit alone became.

  “Yah!” Cristiana snapped the reigns, legs rigid as she held herself above the saddle, curled forward as much as her armor would allow. Hovercams whirred behind her shoulders, pushing hard to match Starflash’s speed. The electric motor on one of them whined as it pulled ahead of Cristiana and swiveled its camera undercarriage to get the shot from the front.

  So many watching. So many of her own. She represented so many sons and daughters of Eagle.

  The laser walls tapered toward a cavelike entrance between the two main diamond structures leaning against each other, one extending longer than the other. She saw a scuffle between a handful of riders ahead. The cave entrance was actually multiple entrances, each too narrow to let more than a few horses through at a time. One distracted rider drove his horse straight into the angled rock at the centermost entrance. The horse saw it and ducked its head, but the rider didn’t, too busy lashing his whip at the neighboring rider. His head and chest smacked into the rock wall with a hardcrack, knocking him backwards off his horse. The other rider escaped into the cave.

  The downed rider, wearing the tomato red and glossy black of Redweaver, heard Cristiana approaching, thrust himself up to his knees, and rested on his greaves, gripping his whip flail. He released the corded blade and twirled it in circles over his head. Cristiana thought about changing course to another entrance, but it would take more time. Instead, she reached over her shoulder, whipped out her pre-loaded crossbow, and waited for the perfect moment . . .

  Snap.

  The Redweaver rider tried to bat the incoming bolt away with a swing of the whip but missed. It thunked squarely into his breastplate, driving him backward onto his back. Starflash leaped gracefully over the rider and galloped past his idle horse.

  It wasn’t much of a cave inside. A generous triangle of light poured into the open space from the far side. Smaller shafts of soot-crusted diamond made the ground a jagged minefield, only a few meandering paths smooth enough to traverse on horseback. The white- and blue-colored rider from Capricorn and the stocky, silver-and-white rider of Colossus had gotten stuck in patches of barbed rock. The Colossus horse, a beastly black Clydesdale that seemed designed to frighten children, let out a sharp whinny as its rider urged it forward and reared its white-furred front hooves into the air, bucking off the heavy-built warrior. His body wedged between two shafts of diamond sticking out of the ground.

  Cristiana pulled back on the reigns to slow Starflash. She traced the relatively even paths with her eyes, looking for the way out. In her peripheral vision, she saw quick movement from the Capricorn. Cristiana noticed the crossbow just before it snapped off its bolt. She jerked her body backward and barely dodged the shot. The Capricorn growled inside his horned helmet and reloaded. She wouldn’t have enough time to get out before he had another shot ready, so she jammed her own crossbow between the horn of the saddle and her breastplate and fetched another bolt. The string resisted her pull, but she grunted and forced it into place. Loaded the bolt. Hefted the crossbow. Capricorn lifted his at the same time. No time to aim. She loosed the bolt with asnap, a fraction of a second before Capricorn.

  His bolt landed in the side of her upper thigh, right in the gap between her titanium skirt and scaled cuisses, puncturing the leather padding and digging into her flesh. She groaned through clenched teeth, feeling blood leak into her underlayer, and touched the iron bolt. A wave of pain screamed into her hip and down her thigh. She considered pulling it out. No, no, that would make the bleeding worse.

  She’d almost forgotten about her own shot. Across the way, the Capricorn slumped over a bolt lodged into the base of his cuirass. His crossbow slipped out of his hands and to the ground. Cristiana refocused on the race, steering Starflash at a fork in the smooth path and out of the jagged patch. Wan light bathed her as she breeched the shade of the diamond structures.

  The other riders charged on about seventy or eighty meters ahead. A closable gap.

  “Yah!” Cristiana spurred Starflash on. Faster.

  Sharp bursts of pain cut across her skin from the embedded bolt in her thigh, a dozen a second, exacerbated by the jolting ride. She tried shifting her weight to the other foot, but that made Starflash swerve to that side. No, she would have to endure the pain. Across a wide, relatively flat plain, her powerful horse reduced the distance with the main group of riders by twenty-five meters or so.

  “That’s it, girl,” Cristiana muttered, trying to ignore the spreading pain. “Push!”

  She came upon a slowed rider in green and brown—Mallard. At least a half dozen bolts stuck out of him like stubby whiskers. With one hand he held his reigns and while the other gingerly gripped a bolt embedded in the armor at his hip.

  Cristiana stayed the course, passing him without pause. The medics would come for him when the race ended. She had to concentrate. Coming up, another pair of riders had slowed to a modest gallop, locked in a battle of flails. The green-black of Serpent and the orange-blue of Minkowski’s Wings. They swung their whip-cords over their heads and slashed each other with maybe fifty percent accuracy—one swing clinking armor and the next whooshing through air.

  Cristiana wedged her crossbow between the saddle horn and her breastplate again to reload, keeping an eye on the combat ahead of her. A speedy hovercam zipped past her to capture the action.

  The Serpent rider made contact with the Mink horse, the blade catching in its armor. The Mink rider swung his blade in reply, but the Serpent ducked nimbly to evade it. Then he yanked his own blade out of the Mink’s equine armor, tearing that piece off and leaving half the creature’s neck and breast exposed. This apparently upped the Mink rider’s zeal, as he swung his whip flail even harder. The Serpent twisted in his saddle so that the blade just barely grazed his cuirass and snatched it with his open hand. Now holding the Mink at striking distance, the Serpent twirled his flail to make the blade whip right into the horse’s shoulder. The creature emitted a horrible, agonized bray and collapsed forward, hurling the Mink rider through the air and to an emphatic crunch against the ground.

  Cristiana glimpsed the blue- and orange-speckled Minkowski Butterfly embossed on the back of his motionless armor as she passed by. She lifted her crossbow and aimed, barely keeping the Serpent rider in her crosshairs for half a second from all the bouncing. And her thigh seared in pain, making it harder to concentrate.

  The Serpent glanced over his shoulder, the eyes beneath his cobra helmet catching sight of Cristiana. He slowed his horse’s pace just enough to let her catch up to him. Cristiana panicked. She snapped off the loaded bolt at the cobra head, but he shrugged and caught it in the thick of his pauldron. It stuck but apparently didn’t break the skin. At least not enough to wound. He steered his horse toward her and swung his whip flail overhead. Closer, closer. Cristiana wrestled with her crossbow’s string, trying to prime the damn thing.

  The attack’s timing was obvious enough. Hard to hide it when every movement had to be exaggerated by the restraints of the armor. Cristiana leaned sideways, leading Starflash to swerve with her. The blade zipped past her head, close enough to hear the air ripping.

  Her crossbow string finally locked in. She nocked a bolt and aimed before the Serpent could launch another attack. Only a few seconds to wait for the opportune shot—

  Snap.

  This time, the bolt hit just under the arm, where the cuirass didn’t reach. The low, fleshy sound it made and the deep yelp inside the cobra helmet confirmed its significance. But then, to her surprise, the Serpent rider reached around, gripped the bolt, and thrust it out of his ribs, taking a trail of blood along with
it. He threw the bolt back at Cristiana like the proverbial gauntlet and resumed swinging his whip flail.

  Cristiana didn’t want to play this game anymore. She’d already grown tired of it. Two hovercams now whirred overhead, camera lenses watching expectantly. Hoverstands also soared above, on either side of the track. Time to give the people a show.

  She grabbed a bolt from the quiver hanging at Starflash’s side, holding the sharpened tip down and out of sight, then steered the horse toward the Serpent—hard. Her enemy recognized the charge and reacted, initiating a quick strike. It didn’t have quite the potency of a full swing, which Cristiana counted on, but it struck hard nonetheless. Right into her lower back, blade piercing armor and flesh alike, wedging solidly into place. Her skin closed back around the cold steel. She let out a ragged growl—breath punched from her lungs—but didn’t stray from her tactic. Starflash pulled close enough to the Serpent to allow Cristiana to ram the bolt into the slight gap between his thigh cuisse and the titanium cup protecting his manhood. One of the most sensitive areas of the body. A spurt of blood shot from the wound and painted a red flower on his armor. He howled in torment.

  Even so, he didn’t let go of his whip flail, instead keeping it pressed against his chest as he whimpered.

  Starflash shook her head and emitted a nervous whinny. Cristiana looked up. They were approaching another charred spire that fumed at the top. Not just fumes; it glowed. The Serpent rider saw it, too. As Cristiana tried to pull away, he hauled her back toward him by the cord of his flail. He moved further, positioning himself to the side of the spire and her directly in its path. The spire was coming at her fast. She had to do something. Starflash tried to pull away, but the Serpent rider kept Cristiana on his torturous leash, slowly bleeding her as he led her toward death.

  Cristiana picked up her crossbow and battered him with it—in the arm, in the side, in the leg, one blow after another doing nothing. Then, finally, she leaned her body over and landed a hard shot to the groin, hammering the bolt further into his tender flesh but losing the crossbow in the process. He screamed and released the hilt of his flail. Cristiana jerked the reigns and leaned her body away from the upcoming spire, coming close enough to touch as she passed it.

  But from the top of the spire she heard a disconcerting noise—a bubbling explosion. Instantly the air grew ten times hotter. A bright orange glow ignited overhead. The spire had erupted like a geyser, spewing globs of superheated magma in a shallow umbrella pattern all around it. A steaming, red-orange sheet came down on the Serpent horse and rider, sending them both to the ground immediately in a radiant blaze.

  Cristiana directed Starflash away from the magmatic rain, feeling waves of stifling heat and bits of molten glass thrash her on the way. Starflash leaped to the side to avoid a falling mass, but another heap of magma still slapped against Cristiana’s backside. All of a sudden, a fiery, searching heat consumed her, seared her skin as it melted away her breastplate. It was like ten blazer swords pressed against her at once. She wailed in panic, in shock, in utter horror. Reached for the leather ties on her shoulders and yanked them off easily as they’d already charred to dry twigs. Tore off the ties on both sides of her waist, separated the front and back of her breastplate, ripping the blade from her flesh in the process, and let it fall away. Then pulled up the mesh faceplate and threw her helmet away.

  As Starflash galloped on down the track, Cristiana looked herself over, felt her arms and sides, searched for more of the glowing matter. There was no more. Her bangs and sideburns matted to her face. Her skin poured sweat, stinging with sharp burns on her shoulder blades and neck. But she was alive.

  Her eyes lifted past the track and the riders now only fifty or so meters ahead. The red laser walls curved toward a sharp slope lined with coal-gray streaks of solidified lava. At the peak, a slanted aperture gleamed in flickering reddish light like an entrance to Hades.

  Cristiana was headed up an active volcano.

  With two open wounds.

  Without a crossbow.

  And without armor on her head or chest.

  Chapter Seven

  Cristiana leaned sideways as Starflash flew around a curve in the laser wall. The muscles in her quad spasmed and burned as her leg threatened to give out. It quivered. Blood leaked from the iron bolt, still lodged solidly in her flesh, its razor points wide enough to make extraction a nightmarish thought.

  She came upon a rider in tan and gold, whose horse galloped slow from a bolt jammed into its armor at the hindshank. The Scorpion rider must’ve sensed her coming. He twisted his gilded torso around exchanged his reigns and crossbow between hands. Cristiana lashed her reigns to push Starflash faster.

  “Yah! Yah!”

  She pulled up next to him as he shifted in the saddle, crossbow firmly in his grasp. The golden bolt rippled along its short shaft like the tail of a scorpion, its point shaped like the tip of a quill. A proper hit from its business end could rip through her unarmored flesh to the heart, instantly take her out of the race, if not kill her outright. She waited for the medieval gun to tilt down at her, then thrust out her whip flail and slashed at the crossbow in one quick motion. The Scorpion rider jerked his weapon away, as she suspected he would, causing the swing to miss. Instead, Cristiana used her rotational momentum to slide an iron-toed boot out of its stirrup, twirl it over Starflash’s tail, and kick—hard—straight into the gilded rider’s side. He let out a muted cry inside his helmet as he fell askance, grasping the saddle horn to keep himself up as his horse veered through the laser wall.

  A band around the horse’s neck flashed red and beeped, signifying he’d been disqualified for going outside the boundaries of the track.

  The Scorpion let out an infuriated howl as Cristiana righted herself on Starflash and grinned back at him. He aimed his crossbow at her anyway—which she also suspected would happen. If he was going to feel the shame of loss, he’d want her to feel it, too, in the form of a bolt to the back, if necessary. She yanked Starflash to the side and ducked away as the golden bolt whizzed past her, whisking the horse’s blond mane as it passed. Starflash moved fast enough to escape the threat of a second shot, and the Scorpion rider instead slowed his horse, removed his helmet, and threw it like a tomahawk across the igneous rocks.

  The hovercams watched Cristiana traverse the rugged terrain as it began to slope up the mountain. Ahead, riders slowed as their horses leaped over streams of oozing lava. The dark ground moved alongside the glowing rivulets like a slow-motion rockslide. Only a few horses had the courage or tenacity to leap through the scorching heat. One—apparently Larkin, based on the orange and white—caught fire in midair over a particularly wide stream and slapped his legs to smother the flames licking out from his underlayer. The others trailed down the slope toward a tapered point in the lava, where horses could jump without scorching themselves. Cristiana steered Starflash that direction, toward the mass of riders snapping bolts and slashing whip flails at each other. She hesitated at the chaotic skirmish. A single hit could knock her out of the race for good, and every rider in the cluster was taking hits. Their armor had dulled with dents and scrapes and painful-looking crevices. Strikes clanged in the air. It was a whirlwind of grunts and whooshes and metallic peals.

  Cristiana bit her tongue, swept back her sweat-slick bangs, and changed course. She steered Starflash toward the wider stretch of the lava stream. It was the only way to bypass the others, at least without picking up a dozen gashes across her body. The wound in her back and bolt in her hip were enough.

  Her heart leaped into her throat as waves of heat splashed against her face. Sweltering, suffocating heat. Filling her lungs. Searing her eyes. The ground slithered ahead. She closed her eyes, whipped the reigns, and squeezed her knees together against the saddle. Starflash neighed, a shrill and panicked sound, but jumped anyway. A long, strong jump.

  The air burned. Cristiana felt her skin bubbling. Her underlayer ignited in invisible fire as she fell. Flames danced acr
oss her back and down her arms as Starflash’s hooves smashed into the rippling, black rock. The horse let out a sustained neigh, a pained cry. Cristiana glanced down and noticed the fur singed off her underbelly, the poor creature. Flames enveloped the Eagle warrior in searching heat but died down in the passing wind. Her leather material had been treated for resistance to fire.

  She breathed, struggling to concentrate, to stay conscious, as Starflash blazed on resiliently. Rough clothing rubbed against raw, tender skin.

  Cristiana glanced side to side. A rider bearing the golden sun of Corona on his back galloped beside the laser wall downslope. And far ahead, Larkin’s jubilant orange shone amongst the blackened earth all around him, tracing a relatively even path along the mountainside. A glimpse over her shoulder revealed the rest of the riders still caught by the lava stream, horses baying and whips lashing and warriors yelping. One fell out of his saddle and landed with a hard crash, but not hard enough to prevent him from swinging his whip over his head to block others from crossing. It created a reassuring gap behind the top tier. Behind Cristiana.

  She’d bypassed almost a dozen riders in one leap. But the extreme heat and burns and flesh wounds had left her fatigued, her body fueled thinly by adrenaline and her quick change of fortune.

  Starflash snorted and slowed her pace along the rough, uneven terrain. Her hooves slid down in the gravelly surface until catching. Triumph’s planners certainly didn’t make the track an easy ride.

  Cristiana noticed Starflash edging downslope as she trotted, sliding steps taking them toward the Corona rider. He glanced up through the eyeholes in his daisy-yellow helmet, spiked along the sides and back like rays of sunlight. In two seconds his crossbow was out and loaded. Cristiana had only one card to play. She flicked the reigns and drove Starflash hard downslope. It felt like falling. A shot of panic rushed through her at the vertigo of stampeding fast and uncontrolled, not to mention the crossbow aimed at her body. She slung herself sideways in the saddle as the bolt ripped through the air where her ribs had been, just barely missing her hip, then lugged herself back up. Starflash didn’t slow her descend as they approached the Corona rider. Both horses collided at the shoulders before either rider could produce a whip flail. The Corona jerked his reigns toward Cristiana to stay in bounds.