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

by Bryce O'Connor

  “I am Alyssa Rhen, Doctore of the Azbar Arena, handler of the gladiators that compete within. I manage the discipline and training of the fighters deemed worth keeping in good health, and prepare them as best I can for the pit. It is my honor and obligation to supply satisfying entertainment for the crowds.”

  “Ah,” Raz said slowly, cocking his head to the side and speaking with a venomous dose of sarcasm. “So you’re the bitch who teaches men how to slaughter the helpless. Bravo, madam. You’ve successfully earned my utmost respect.”

  Rhen’s jaw clenched at the pointed insult.

  “I’d heard you were strangely honor-bound,” she said, crossing her arms as she looked over the fire at him. “But then again, the whole phrase used to describe you also included the term ‘insane,’ so I hope you understand if I tell you I wasn’t really sure what to make of it. Would it be so hard to convince you that there are others who share your distaste of the Arena, no matter how close they might seem to it?”

  “It would,” Raz growled. “Don’t feed me your bullshit, woman. Or maybe you still think I’m an idiot? Your comfort around someone like me? Your scar? The manner in which you hold yourself and the fact that you are master of a group of trained, proven fighters? There is only one way the gladiators you discipline hold enough respect for you to heed your words, a woman of your age.”

  He lifted a hand, pointing directly at her chest.

  “You were one of them, once. And a damn good one, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “You are clever, aren’t you, Master Arro?” the woman drawled. “Although that deduction could have been made by a beggar sick in the head. Yes, I fought once as well, years ago before the Laorin shut down the Arenas in the first place. And yes, I was good. Does that necessarily mean I still approve of the way they are run?”

  Raz was silent. Then he decided to give her a chance.

  “Explain,” he said shortly, sitting back on his hands.

  Rhen knelt by the fire. “The code of ideals upon which the Arenas were first built some three hundred years ago was far different from the code they follow now. Back then, the pit was a method of dealing judgment and assigning punishment. Everything but minor disputes were handled with fists or blades, depending on the severity of the issue, and the victor of the fight was deemed blessed by the Stone Gods—older deities whose faiths have mostly died out, except in the tribes—and was awarded his demands by a jury of spectators. The system was not without its faults, but, when controlled, the Arenas kept a good balance in places where law and order were often thought of as things you needed to look somewhere else to find.”

  She picked up a burning stick from the fire, watching it go out and following the wafting smoke upwards into the dark.

  “The first problems occurred when bets started being made on the outcomes of the trials,” she continued. “Few were ever on a jury at once—maybe eight or nine selected individuals at most—but the winner and loser of the fight were always announced to the public. It made gambling easy. From there, you can imagine how the problem grew. The curious and wealthy started bribing the town council to grant them position on the juries so they could watch the fights. Then other seats started being sold, advertised as ‘witness slots.’ After that it wasn’t long before the system grew into what it is today: a source of entertainment for people whose lives see too much hardship to find excitement in anything but brutality and blood.”

  “So you’re claiming you were around when the Arenas still had some dignity left in them?” Raz asked her skeptically.

  Rhen laughed. “Laor knows, no,” she told him, shaking her head. “If the ledgers are at all accurate, the Arenas barely made it half a century before becoming what they are today. Believe it or not, I’m not that old.”

  Raz was somewhat pleased to hear the humor in her voice—otherwise nothing but business until that moment—but he didn’t show it.

  “Then you’ve yet to tell me how this makes you anything but the murdering hag I’m itching to think of you as,” he said, plastering a false smile over his alien features.

  “Oh, murdering hag I am many times over,” Rhen said with a harsh laugh. “I might give your body count a run for its money, in fact, and I promise there is more innocent blood on my hands than on yours.”

  Raz’s smile faded, and his neck crest pricked upward slowly.

  “Then, Doctore, I challenge you to give me one good reason not to add your name to my ever-growing list. And don’t try too hard, please. The more I listen to you talk, the more I feel we have less to discuss than you seem to claim. And I get bored quickly.”

  “My reason, Raz i’Syul Arro, is that if you struck out to eliminate every person who has ever made poor decisions in their life, you would find yourself alone in an empty world when you were done, with your blade at your own throat.”

  Raz paused at that, and the woman continued.

  “Time,” she said, waving upwards at the passing Moon. “Time is my one reason, and much of it has passed since my years as a champion of the crowd. I was a young woman then, and hungry for many things, though not what was generally expected of me. Instead of a husband or home, I wanted strength and glory. Instead of seeking an apprenticeship under a baker or basket weaver, I sought to feed myself through the winnings I made in the pit. It wasn’t unheard of for a woman to partake in the fights, not even for one to become a successful gladiator, but no one had come through the Arena with my skills in living memory. It made it hard to stop, and I likely wouldn’t have, had I not received this.”

  She traced the scar along her right cheek with a finger.

  “It was the first time I think I ever realized I could die at any moment. Even if I was better, faster, and smarter than my opponents, they could always get lucky or I could get unlucky. As soon as the physician stitched me up, I announced my retirement from the fights. The Chairman at the time, though, Markus Tern, knew I had nowhere to go, and he offered me the position of Doctore and a place in his home until I found my own.”

  For the briefest of moments, Raz thought he saw the woman’s harsh face soften with something close to sadness.

  Then it was gone.

  “It was the middle of the freeze, and I had little choice,” she kept on. “Still, he could have left me to die in the snow, but he didn’t. Why, though, I have no idea. I always got the sense that Tern had a hidden distaste for the Arena that he didn’t share because of how it bolstered Azbar’s economy. He didn’t come to the games much—particularly any of the fights involving women—and when he did he never joined in the cheering. I didn’t think he held much respect for me. I don’t blame him, though… It was years before I could even respect myself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Raz admitted it to himself: he was intrigued. This was not a woman pouring her soul out to some stranger. He had only to take one look at Alyssa Rhen to get the sense that she was a stoic person, one who likely disliked the idea of talking when doing was an option.

  Which meant that she had a point, if she was divulging this much to him…

  “I mean,” the Doctore replied, “that it all caught up to me one day.”

  She was silent then. For a long moment the woman sat, watching the fire with distant eyes. Raz didn’t interrupt her thoughts. He knew well the signs of a mind reliving past actions, considering he was more often a victim of it than most.

  “I woke up one day,” the woman continued eventually, “and every face of every person I had ever killed was suspended between each of my thoughts. I could see them watching me, even when there was nothing there, and for the first time in my life I looked back and realized what I had done…”

  Another silence. Rhen’s face was still, and she hadn’t taken her eyes off the fire.

  Then, all at once, she seemed to break free. Her face grew hard again, and she looked back up at Raz, who was still studying her silently from across the flames.

  “In short, it took me a long time to come to terms with my
self,” she said quickly, as though eager to wrap up the story. “The woman you see before you is what came out the other side. I can stand the fights now. There was a time when they made me sick and I had to put up a front for my fighters just so they wouldn’t turn on me. That’s gone, but it doesn’t mean the way I feel has changed.”

  “Then why did you stay?” Raz asked her curiously. “Why are you still here?”

  “Markus,” Rhen responded at once. “The Chairman gave me everything, kept me alive when I would have been done for. I owe him.”

  “Not anymore you don’t, assuming he’s dead, since another—I’m assuming his son?—is in control of his seat.”

  “I owe his name,” Rhen said. “I owe it to him to see Quin through whatever trials he brings upon himself, no matter how much of an ass the man is. A child growing into something further from his father, I have never seen.”

  “Fine,” Raz replied, waving the discussion away. “Then I only have one more question. If you dislike the fights as much as you claim to, even if you won’t leave your position, then why would you add more to the mix? Why would you take Arrun and Lueski?”

  “If those two were what the town wanted, I wouldn’t have bothered coming personally. The Chairman would have sent a regiment of guards out after you instead, considering you seem unwilling to part with the pair, but I’d bet my horse you’d be gone before they got close enough to figure out where you were hiding them. No… I’m here to discuss the terms of your deal.”

  “Ah,” Raz said with a humorless smile. “Now I understand. Doctore, trainer of gladiators, here to get a feel of what she might have to work with.”

  Alyssa Rhen smiled.

  “Exactly.”

  CHAPTER 9

  “Foolish boy, you’ll be the death of me. I should have had you beaten as a child. Maybe then you’d have grown up a decent man.”

  —Markus Tern, Azbar council Chairman

  “You’re sure this is a good idea?”

  Quin Tern laughed, his pudgy jowls bouncing as he plucked a fresh frostberry from the bowl on the balustrade by his elbow. Popping it into his mouth, he picked up another and tossed it to Azzeki Koro, who caught it. The Captain-Commander of the Azbar guard stood beside the Chairman, looking out over the midnight horizon from the front palisade of the town hall estate. At the edge of the firelight-dotted hill that was the walled town, they could make out the indistinct shouting of the south gate guard yelling back and forth to each other.

  “No, I’m not,” the Chairman managed to get out between sucking the bitter juice from his thick fingers, each well adorned with at least one silver- or gold-set ring. “Call it a calculated risk.”

  “If the bounty hunter is right—”

  “Let’s hope he is.” Tern smiled gleefully. “Can you imagine? Think of the notice, the attention. It’s a shame the lizard had to show up on the brink of the freeze. Still, I’ll bet you a thousand gold we’ll have people coming from all over the North to see him!”

  They could make out the metallic clanking of chains and the keen of protesting wood now, and though they couldn’t see it, the two men knew the distant gates had been lifted.

  Alyssa had returned from her errand in the woods.

  And by the looks of the flaring trail of candle- and firelight as shop and homeowners threw open their doors and windows, she hadn’t come home empty-handed.

  Spitting the pale berry seeds out over the side of the porch, Tern stepped back towards the warmth of the building.

  “Wake the council. It’s time we go meet our guests.”

  Raz felt as though he was being paraded, like a sideshow in some freakish caravan. It wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling. He could still remember how he’d been a major source of attraction the first few times his parents had allowed him within the walls of the Southern cities, how people had flocked to their camp and stalls to catch a glimpse of the “tame lizard.”

  Still, that had been out of necessity. Agais Arro had decided it would be safer for the world to know Raz existed rather than attempt to hide him and let the desert-folk speculate on their own.

  This, though… this was something else.

  Despite the late hour as they made their way up the winding cobbled street—Rhen in front, leading her horse by the reins—people were peering out at them from every open door and cracked window. Refusing to meet any of their curious gazes, Raz pulled his hood a little further over his head, hiding his face completely.

  It irritated him, this little charade. It was just past midnight when the Doctore had led them into town under the pretense of wanting their arrival to be kept quiet, but clearly word had spread. Arrun and Lueski, huddled together a little to the side and in front of him, were certainly a source of fascination all their own in this unprecedented voluntary return. Still, Raz doubted the siblings were the reason so many of Azbar’s citizens were wide awake when by all rights the town should have been dark and quiet. Judging by the lack of surprise from their escorts—a handful of officers uniformed in the same maroon and brown as the gate guard from the previous afternoon—Raz couldn’t quite bring himself to believe the Chairman had ever intended their entry into town to be quiet.

  Thoroughly annoyed, Raz distracted himself by taking in Azbar itself, looking around and marveling once again at the contrast this new world had to the one he’d left just weeks ago.

  There were no mud-brick huts here, as far as he could tell. Granted, he doubted their retinue were taking them anywhere near the poor quarters of the town for the sake of advertising their presence to the right people, but even so. The buildings were solid timber and stone, decorated with wood carvings and simple pebble murals. Moss clung to walls and hugged the jagged lips of slated rooftops. Thin smoke from a few late-night fires furled here and there out of short chimneys. Evergreens towered above them in places where the space between structures allowed them to grow, making it feel like they’d never truly left the woods. Even the cobblestones beneath their feet were patched with narrow grass. Raz soon forgot about the eyes staring at him from every direction, half-hidden behind shutters and cracked doors. He was lost in that feeling again, that splendid revelation of discovery, opening his mouth to taste the crisp Northern night air.

  This place… This place is wonderful…

  Ahead of him, Arrun turned his head to look over his shoulder.

  “What are you staring at?”

  “Everything.” Raz dropped his gaze to look down at him. “This town… I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Arrun nodded but didn’t reply. He had one arm wrapped around his sister’s narrow shoulders, eyeing every unlit corner as though half expecting someone to jump out at them, rattling chains and leather bindings. Lueski seemed even more terrified, and as he watched the pair, Raz heard her whimper and duck even closer to her brother.

  It made him sad, this contrast between their feelings and his own. Raz couldn’t help his spirits from dampening a little as he turned his head to look around again. Somewhere out there, hidden in the twilight shadows of what to him was this magnificent fairy-tale city in the woods, something much darker slumbered. It wasn’t just Arrun and Lueski that he felt the fear radiate from. The people, too, now that he looked, were watching their little party with mixed parts curiosity and fright, ducking away from the torchlight as it crept over them, only to poke their heads out again once they’d passed.

  And here we thought we’d be getting a chance at a fresh start, huh, sis?

  Ahna bumped up and down on his shoulder with each step, and Raz frowned again, watching a mother shoo her two young girls away from the open door. She glanced back at the guardsmen in fright before shutting it with a snap.

  It all reminded him too much of the broken souls and ragweed-wasted street runners of the South. To find that same fear here, in this fresh green world… It was disheartening.

  They walked for twenty minutes or so, following the road Raz quickly realized must have been the main thoroughfare from the
south gate to the center of town. Sure enough, not long after his toes had started to go numb from the coolness of the stones beneath their feet, the streets opened up and split into a wide ring. In its center, abruptly visible from where it had been hiding against the dark sky, a great stone structure towered towards the heavens.

  “Sun take me,” Raz hissed, tilting his head back to look up.

  The Arena was a colossal thing. At least eight stories high, it towered so far above most of the town Raz couldn’t think how he had possibly missed it when they’d first seen Azbar sprawling across its hill from a distance. There were no carvings or murals here. The walls were weather stained and worn, and somewhere in the back of his mind Raz noted that Rhen had not been lying about the age of the place. It had the look of a giant who’d withstood many beatings from the elements and still held strong to withstand many more. Wide stone arches ringed every few floors, and he made a mental note to climb to the top if he could, and look out over horizon. Maybe he’d better understand the lushness of this cold land if he could take it all in as a whole.