The Wings of War: Books 1-3: The Wings of War Box Set, Vol. 1

by Bryce O'Connor

  Then he jumped, flying through empty air, limbs flailing until he crashed onto the slanted roof of the bookstore.

  By the time the guard got through to the garden, Raz had disappeared, leaving nothing but a handful of mottled green leaves to float down around their perplexed heads.

  A quarter league away, an old woman caught a glimpse of a figure jumping across her field of vision, leaping from roof to roof, a great two-headed spear in one hand. For the briefest of instants something like a memory pricked at her mind, and the half smile widened the tiniest fraction before she found herself surrounded by limbo once again.

  CHAPTER 33

  “Since before written memory there were legends and stories of the dahgün, the mountain dragons of the old North. The Laorin claim that the creatures were the Lifegiver’s first children, his first Gift, but when Laor discovered that his creations were capable of nothing but chaos and destruction, he grew terribly angry and wiped them from the face of the world. Yet despite the tale, every so often one may come across those who will claim to have seen a great winged beast circling the skies far above the highest peaks of the Saragrias Ranges.”

  —Legends Beyond the Border, by Zyryl Vahs

  Syrah crouched low to the ground, inching her staff down into the grass at her feet so gently her shoulder ached. She had to. Any sudden motion would scare off the doe standing not ten yards from her, ears flicking back and forth while it bent to graze between the trees.

  The Arocklen Woods stretched almost half-a-hundred leagues east, west, and south from the base of the wide, winding stairs that led up the mountains to Cyrugi Di’. During the winter it was a harsh place, the pine groves growing so thick and tall that when they were coated with snow the floor of the Woods was almost pitch black and all but impossible to navigate. Wolves hunted in packs in the forested hills, and snow leopards crept along the lowest branches. There was even the occasional news of the great white-and-brown ursalus bears mauling foolhardy travelers to death.

  All that, though, was during the freeze.

  Now, in high summer, the Arocklen was an utterly different place. Even as Syrah crept forward, careful to stay downwind of the deer, she had to skirt around bright patches of sunlight and be sure not to rustle the thick beds of white mornin’loves that patterned the ground. Birds sang in the branches above her head, and it was warm enough that she’d finally been able to exchange her white robes for a thin sleeveless leather jerkin and comfortable cotton shorts.

  Off to her left, Syrah could barely hear Reyn moving on a parallel path forward, trying to catch the deer from two angles.

  It was the gathering time, the apex point of summer where the residents of the Citadel capable of doing so took turns making the trip down the mountain every other day to aid in stocking the temple’s stores for winter. Carro was somewhere nearby, partnered with Jerrom, Reyn’s former Priest-Mentor. Four score others were spread out in the first dozen acres from the base of the stairway, all heeding to their own tasks. Some were foraging, gathering roots and mushrooms and any other edibles they could find. Others were collecting kindling and chopping firewood from the fallen trees that succumbed to the weight of the snow and ice every year.

  And others were hunting for meat that would be salted and preserved, hopefully lasting long enough to get them through the ten months of freeze without having to resort to a staple diet of wheat porridge and dried berries.

  Ducking silently beneath a pair of low-hanging evergreens, Syrah saw Reyn hunch behind on old stump. Catching his eye, she motioned that she was ready. The man nodded and returned the gesture. Exhaling slowly, Syrah lifted a hand and slowly curled her fingers into a loose fist.

  They had no bows and arrows, no slings and certainly no hunting spears. The Laorin had little use for them, and as far as Syrah knew the only weapons in the Citadel were dulled steel imitations Reyn taught with under the weapons master, Audus Brern. There was no need for such things, after all, when other tools could replace their uses…

  Feeling the flash and coolness in her palm, Syrah leapt up only seconds after Reyn. She watched as the man hurled a tiny white orb of light, throwing with the same motion he might a javelin. The doe, though, ever on the alert, darted away, leaping aside so that Reyn’s bolt zipped harmlessly through the air and hit the underbrush, fizzling out with a tiny pop.

  Syrah ignored her partner’s curses, studying the animal’s frantic path through the pines. She watched her target zigzag deeper into the Woods, disappearing behind one tree before appearing again for the briefest of moments on the other side.

  Then Syrah saw her chance, and she threw.

  The little ball of light shot through the air like an arrow, flying between the trunks. Guided with a skillful hand, it caught the doe in midair just as the animal leapt over a fallen log, striking the unfortunate beast squarely in the front shoulder.

  There was another flash of white light, and the deer tumbled to the ground, dead.

  “Praise Him for his goodness,” Syrah prayed quietly, touching the fingers of her throwing hand to her forehead before looking up again. Reyn was already crashing through the bushes toward their kill, whooping when he came to a stop over the animal.

  “That was incredible!” he yelled back to where Syrah was retrieving her staff before making her way through the trees toward him. “That’s the best shot I’ve seen you make yet! What are they feeding you out there in the world?”

  “Baby rabbits, clumps of dirt, and hard stones,” she teased with a laugh, hopping over a felled log. “And it was more luck than anything else.”

  “Luck my ass,” Reyn snorted, crouching down. Aside from the dirt and leaves that clung to its body from the fall, the deer looked practically untouched. There was no sign of injury, no wound or blood. To the human eye it was as though the animal had keeled over on its own and died.

  Which was pretty much the case, Syrah thought, sticking her staff in the soft ground before unwinding the leather straps she’d had wrapped around her waist and kneeling down.

  Laor’s gifts were many and great, but the small talent he granted his faithful in the arts of magic were possibly the most potent of all. In their varying years of training the Priests and Priestesses learned to control and manipulate the powers, changing them to suit their needs. Most of their studies were devoted to healing, something Syrah had unfortunately never had a true talent for. On the other hand, these other—less docile—aspects of magic certainly had their uses…

  And what Syrah had always had a talent for was fighting.

  Maybe it was the fact that she’d practically been raised by a former gladiator. Maybe it was the remnant memories of a thatched mud-brick house, the floor covered in blood and dust and bodies. Regardless, what Syrah lacked in ability for the mending hand she made up twice over with her skills in the field. Even before she’d been granted her staff she’d often been a member of choice for the rare expeditions the Laorin took down the mountains during the freezes. Eret, bless his soul, always knew that she could take care of herself, even within the boundaries of the faith. The cardinal rule of the Laorin still held her firm and—while Syrah had left more than one man bloody and unconscious in her life—she’d never gotten near the edge of killing. It was an experience, even if it had been allowed, she was sure she’d never want to explore.

  Taking a life is like falling off a waterfall, Talo once told her on a rare occasion they’d discussed his former life. There’s a moment of exhilaration, a minute where you feel invincible as the red dyes your hands… And then you hit the water below and it rushes over you, flooding into your lungs until you can’t breathe.

  No. That wasn’t something Syrah ever wanted to experience.

  But it wasn’t merely the horror of the actual act that stopped her. Murder was an unforgivable sin, and the punishments for a Laorin knowingly taking a life were severe and brutal, even by the kindest standards. Priests, Priestesses, and even acolytes who partook in the knowledgeable death of a person
were cast out of the faith, carted to Ystred, the closest of the North’s mountain towns, and given enough money for food and shelter for a single night. Then they were left to find their own way in a harsh world many of them had little experience dealing with.

  But not before they were Broken.

  Even in the summer warmth Syrah shivered, giving the leather straps she’d tied around the deer’s feet one final tug. Laorin who were Broken were separated from Laor’s gift, had the magic ripped out of them in a ceremony that left them scarred and marked forever as a traitor to the faith. She’d only seen it happen once, to a young Priestess who hadn’t been more than three or four years her senior, but Syrah had prayed every day for the next two months that she would never witness such a thing again.

  The screaming had been the sort to craft nightmares not quickly forgotten.

  “Wait’ll Carro and Jerrom get a load of this one! They’ll piss themselves, the old tarts!”

  Syrah blinked and looked up at Reyn, who was smiling mischievously, already wrapping one of the leather strap’s loose ends around his wrist. Getting to her feet, Syrah smirked, doing the same.

  “You don’t think it’s a little early to be gloating?” she asked, pulling her staff from the earth and grunting as they started making their way back through the Woods toward the mountain stairway. “I think you said something like that two days ago, and those two came back with a net-full of fish the size of your body…”

  “Yeah, but that day we only caught a couple of hares and a pheasant.” He smiled again, pushing aside a pine branch. “This time we’ve got enough meat to last a whole table the night!”

  Syrah rolled her eyes and laughed, watching Reyn smile and tug the deer around a rock with arms toned from years of instruction under Master Brern.

  It was good to be home. It was good to see her friends again, and to be free of the responsibilities she’d had working in Metcaf and Harond. The past few years had been hellish, a constant war to forge relations between the mountain clans of the Vietalis—the ranges that capped the west and northwest corner of the North—and every nearby town. She’d been homesick for a majority of it, disliking the feeling of being hundreds of leagues from where she felt safe, and so far hadn’t regretted a moment of returning.

  But what she had been regretting of late were the strong hands of the young night-watch captain she’d been seeing for the better part of the last half year.

  Her fair features, despite her pale skin and pink eyes, had always been good at supplying certain comforts…

  “It’s always the same with you men,” she huffed playfully, pushing a lock of her white hair out of her face and tucking it behind an ear. “Size always has to come into play, doesn’t it?”

  Reyn tripped over a protruding root, almost tumbling to the ground.

  “I-I—Wha—? I mean—Who said—?” he stuttered, fumbling over his words.

  Syrah smiled, winked, and said no more as they kept moving through the trees, deer in tow. Reyn, for his part, was open mouthed and silent the rest of the walk, lost for words.

  The only sound he managed to make for a while, in fact, was a hopeless groan once they arrived back at the stairway.

  Carro and Jerrom were waiting for them, smiling knowingly and lounging in the grass beside the bodies of an antlered buck and a boar whose shoulder would have reached a short man’s hip.

  CHAPTER 34

  “I never saw him fight, a fact I will always regret. I heard say he could enter a ring bare-handed and give the crowd a show, plucking the sword from another man’s grasp before running him through with it. Even when he didn’t kill he was the one the people always thronged to. Above all else, I wish I’d been there just to understand how he could do it, how he could fight and kill so many and yet claim to hate it so much...”

  —Xerus Junt, Doctore of the Stullens Arena, c. 865 v.S.

  The documents hadn’t yielded a fraction of what Raz hoped they might. Barely any of the šef seemed to keep records with anything more than numbers and a few coded words to spare, and those foolish enough to mark down such things as times or places had scrambled to change their plans before Raz could do any real damage. He’d been pleased to hear he’d caused a minor financial crisis for Sass and a few others but, infuriatingly, the biggest coup he’d been able to pull off in the month since was freeing all the Caged prisoners from their confinements two weeks back.

  And now the sentries along the market square had been tripled, so even that opportunity was gone.

  Raz sat on the dirt floor of the cellar of an abandoned butcher’s shop a few blocks west of the east slums. He’d been there for almost a week now, and knew he would have to move again soon. Sharpening his gladius in the sparse light of a few candles, though, he had other things on his mind.

  He was losing momentum. Twice now Raz had approached old contacts only to discover they were shocked to see him, informing him the rumor was he’d been killed. He hadn’t flung himself into this crusade to give people hope for a better future, but it still somehow irked him that so many thought him dead when in truth the Mahsadën had simply tightened their defenses tenfold. Plans he’d started forming weeks ago were now that much more difficult to pull off. Chances were missed, opportunities snatched away. The whispers said Ergoin Sass was behind it all, urging the other šef to treat Raz as a direct threat after the mess he’d caused.

  Thank you for that, cousin, Raz thought bitterly, holding the sword up and examining his reflection in the steel. The amber eyes looked back at him, full of judgment.

  Putting the gladius aside, he reached to grasp Ahna’s shaft and pulled her across the ground into his lap. The bleached wood of the dviassegai was marred and chipped, evidence of the years of abuse he’d put her through. The leather wrappings Jerr had strung around the shaft were worn and frayed from use. There were nicks and scratches that gave her twin blades a scarred appearance, crisscrossing over the steel and chipping tiny fragments from her honed edges.

  Raz reached up and ran a finger over his snout, feeling the three dents of the scars he’d had there for as long as he could remember.

  “Figures you’d end up looking like me in the end, huh, sis?” he chuckled, putting Ahna aside again and climbing to his feet. Crossing the cellar, he moved to lean over an old table set up against the far wall, the only other furniture being the sleeping mat he’d rolled out directly in front of the room’s door. A pair of candles lit the table’s surface, illuminating the array of objects littered across it.

  There were the fiscal records, flattened and scattered now, piled around an old brass inkwell and feather quill. Beside them a bone-handled knife doubled as the paperweight for a few sheets of blank parchment and a series of useless correspondences he’d intercepted. The remainders of his last meal, the stripped bone of some raw lamb he’d stolen, sat below one of the candles.

  Uninterested in all of these, Raz pushed the scattered papers aside, searching. It took a minute, but eventually he managed to find the bundle of rolled-up scrolls, pulling them free of the mess. Unlooping the twine that held them closed, he spread the thin parchments out across the table.

  He’d stolen the maps from Adrion’s office half a week ago without his cousin realizing, layouts to a building Raz suspected to be the center of operations for a good many of the Mahsadën’s bigger dealings. It had been a desperate move, especially after Sass tasked a half dozen of his hardest enforcers to look over his accountant’s house, but Raz hadn’t known what else to do. Adrion was his only link to the heart of the Mahsadën. Raz knew of other hideouts and estates where a few of the šef themselves lived, but they were too well guarded to be worth risking his neck for the life of one or two of eight ringleaders. He had to figure out a way to get them all in the same room, or at least closer together.

  Looking down at the maps laid out before him, Raz’s mind whirred.

  Maybe this would be his chance. He would have checked it out more thoroughly, but lack of proof and the recent
ly bolstered measures of the entire organization had pushed him to decide it wasn’t worth the risk. Now, though, risks were all that were left. Sass had been right, in a way: all the things Raz had done, with some exception, were small fish, little more than annoying pokes in the back of the Mahsadën’s leg. He could pull off pranks like that for the rest of his life and accomplish nothing at all.

  No. He had to make a bigger move. He had to cut at the šef’s hold on the city somehow, had to deliver a blow that would actually damage them.

  To do that, though, he had to gamble…

  Raz picked up the knife and used it to trace the lines in the upper-left quadrant of the first map, lifting the corner up so that the candlelight could shine through the paper. He’d only suspected the building because he’d heard rumors of deals and meetings taking place there, but the fact that Adrion had had these plans must have meant something, right? The man was one of the group’s top bookkeepers. They probably trusted him with safekeeping the records they didn’t deem important enough to lock away.