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

by Bryce O'Connor

  “The Laorin,” he hissed, more to himself than anything. “Son of a—No. Not possible. There’s no way he knows…”

  “The Laorin?” Rhen asked, perplexed. “What do a bunch of old religious zealots have to do with Tern?”

  Raz eyed her then, judging her in truth. He respected the woman. He even thought he liked her somewhat, if he allowed himself to consider it honestly.

  I liked Mychal, too, though…

  After a moment the Doctore raised an eyebrow. “Are you blind to our predicament, or just stupid? I’ve told you before, and I’ll say it again: you die, and everything you’ve done dies with you. I have no interest in allowing the Arena to revert to the old way of supplying entertainment, so you might as well stop being hardheaded and just tell me what’s going on.”

  When Raz still didn’t say anything, she sighed.

  “Look,” she said, seating herself in the hard chair behind her desk, “I’m in here with you. I’m not out there”—she waved a hand at the room door—“screaming for your head or cheering you on as you take someone else’s. Whatever you have to say doesn’t have to leave this room.”

  “That, or the minute we’re free you’ll run to Tern,” Raz growled.

  The Doctore’s face turned sour.

  “You’ve been in Azbar for nearly two months now,” she spat, pointing a finger at him. “Nearly two months. In all that time, in all those days, if you haven’t figured out that’s not something I would ever do, then there’s nothing I can say that would convince you otherwise.”

  For a brief time they glared at each other in silence. Then Raz decided she was right.

  “A few weeks back I was approached by two Priests,” he told her, moving forward to seat himself in the chair across from her, leaning Ahna against the wall beside him. “One was master of the local chapter, the other of some temple up north. Very long story made very short, they asked for my help in closing down the Arena again.”

  The Doctore hissed at that, but said nothing more, obviously expecting him to continue. Raz obliged.

  “I wasn’t keen on the idea at first,” he said, leaning back in the chair and crossing his arms. “At all. I’ve had my… uh… run-ins with their kind before, and let’s just say it left me with a bad taste. But they convinced me to hear them out. In the end, their arguments were compelling.”

  “So you agreed?” Rhen asked. “You said you would help them?”

  “Of a sorts,” Raz said with a shrug, looking down at the desk as he spoke. “One of them, Yu’ri, wasn’t too happy with my way of doing things, but Brahnt did a job of—”

  Raz stopped, though, as the woman gave a sharp intake of breath, and looked up. He hadn’t thought it possible for Alyssa Rhen to feel much more than sternness, anger, and mild amusement, so the myriad of emotions darting across her face took him completely aback. Shock, sadness, pain, even grief. All these and more registered one after the other, beating out the composure she so usually held and was clearly struggling to recover. One hand came up to cover her mouth, the most indicatively feminine gesture he’d ever witnessed from her.

  “What?” he asked, suddenly concerned. “What’s wrong?”

  Rhen opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. She closed it, then tried again, with similar results. The third time, though, she managed to get out a few sparse words.

  “Brahnt,” she breathed. “T-Talo Brahnt?”

  Raz blinked, surprised. “You know him?”

  Rhen seemed partially frozen, staring at him. Then she lowered her hand slowly, took a breath, and nodded.

  “This… this temple,” she said in broken words. “You’re talking about… about the High Citadel, aren’t you?”

  Raz thought about it. “… I think so,” he said after a moment. “They might have said something like that. And Seeurgee, or Seeyurgee—”

  “Cyurgi’ Di,” she finished for him. “That’s it.”

  They sat in silence for a time, Raz waiting for an explanation, while Rhen seemed so caught up in old memories that words were failing her again.

  “Rhen,” Raz said finally, tiring of the wait. “What is it? What’s got you so scared all of a sudden?”

  Rhen jumped, then looked at him, bewildered, as though she’d only just noticed him.

  When she spoke, though, it was with her normal, authoritative voice.

  “If Tern found out you’ve been speaking with Talo Brahnt, that’s not good.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Raz grumbled crossly. “Brahnt wouldn’t shut up about it someti—”

  “No, you don’t understand,” the Doctore hissed. “Tern hates Talo. He hates the Laorin as a whole, but Talo holds a special place for him. He was responsible—”

  “For shutting down the Arenas in the first place—yeah, I know,” Raz said, thinking that he might as well get his interruptions in, too, where he could.

  “It’s more than that,” Rhen insisted, and Raz was surprised to hear something like desperation in her voice. “Talo isn’t some Priest who made it his life’s work to preach the ending of the pit fights. Arro… Talo was a gladiator. Before you, he was the best. Nothing like him had ever been seen. There was a time when he was the one chasing the Laorin out of the Arena—sometimes out of town—whenever they came around trying to make people see reason about the fights. The crowd gave him a name for it, one that spoke to his brutality in the pit and his hatred of the faith. They called him—”

  “Lifetaker.”

  It hit Raz, then. All the pieces fell into place. He remembered his first night in Azbar, climbing up the Arena’s stairs into the Hall of Heroes. He’d never gone back, as he’d planned to, but he remembered vividly most of the statues he’d paused to peruse. The Queen of Arrows. The Ax Maiden. Retribution.

  Lifetaker.

  Raz remembered the oddity, the hollow iron-cast feet on a pile of skulls. He remembered the empty space where a plaque should have hung, denoting name and title, and the worn letters carved over time in the surface of the marble pedestal. He’d run a claw through them, intrigued by the mystery of the thing, curious as to the history.

  And he hadn’t given it so much as a thought since.

  “He’s a traitor,” Raz said in realization. “To Tern, he’s a traitor.”

  Rhen nodded furiously in agreement. “Talo was the man’s favorite when he was a boy. He was the reason Tern loved the games so much.”

  “So when he left, Tern felt betrayed…” Raz finished for her. “No wonder Brahnt was so insistent on secrecy.”

  “Is it possible someone gave you away? Maybe one of the temple residents, in the hopes of gaining favor with the city council?”

  “It’s always possible,” Raz mumbled thoughtfully. “Doubtful, though. I don’t think anyone other than Brahnt, al’Dor, and Yu’ri knew we were in contact.”

  “Who’s al’Dor?” Rhen asked with narrowed eyes.

  Raz shook his head. “Another Priest come from the Citadel, but I wouldn’t bother being too suspicious of him. I only met him two or three times, but I got the feeling he and Brahnt were more than riding companions, if you catch my drift.”

  Rhen looked surprised at that.

  “Well that would explain a lot. When he was fighting, Talo had women of all kinds throwing themselves at him on a weekly basis. I always thought he turned them down because had some secret wife tucked away somewhere, hidden where no one could use her against him in the pit.”

  “Oh, is that how you know him, then?” Raz couldn’t help himself smiling despite the predicament. “Were you one of his scorned women? Did he let you down easy?”

  “I know Talo Brahnt because the Lifetaker is the one who gave me this scar.”

  Raz felt as though the whole room had gone silent. For a moment even the crackle of the flames and the rumbling of the men and women on the other side of the door were quieted. He took in Alyssa Rhen’s face pointedly, marking the details of the ugly lines that marred her otherwise attractive features, pulling down th
e edge of her right eye and twisting up the corner of her mouth.

  “That was the fight that ended it for Talo,” the Doctore continued, not waiting for Raz to pose a question. “For both of us, actually. We’d never been close, always in our own circles, but the crowd had demanded the match, and so we gave it to them. I’m told Talo was reluctant to agree, but I leapt on the chance, thinking it the perfect opportunity to prove myself once and for all. To my credit, I gave it everything I had, and I wasn’t the only one left bleeding. Still, I knew the instant we started our engagements that I was going to lose. Talo was just too strong, too fast. The only reason I lasted as long as I did was because he was hesitant. I thought it was because he saw me as nothing more than a woman, and it infuriated me, making me fight even harder. Looking back, though, I see his hesitation was more due to the Lifetaker’s unraveling than anything else. Talo must have had his doubts for some time, to leave like he did. I was just the push that sent him over the edge.”

  There was another moment of silence. Raz was processing all of this in a rush, coming to terms with every puzzle piece that was falling into place.

  “He has more history with this place than he ever let on…” he said quietly. “He should have told me…”

  “If he didn’t, it’s because he was protecting you,” Rhen said. “The Lifetaker died that day, and the man Talo Brahnt was always meant to be was finally allowed his birth. The next time I saw him was years later, and the Priest’s robes fit him well. Over the course of a decade he spearheaded the shutting down of Azbar’s Arena, and every other Arena in the North shortly after. In the same way people used to be drawn to his presence in the pit, so were they drawn to him as he preached. No one else could have done what he did.”

  “He should have just burned the place to the ground and been done with it,” Raz growled.

  “Azbar would have only rebuilt.”

  Raz nodded in resigned agreement. “Talo Brahnt,” he said slowly, speaking to no one in particular. “What kind of trouble have you dragged me into?”

  CHAPTER 33

  “All are capable of evil. It often seems, in fact, that it is in the very nature of man to be evil. Greed, envy, lust… We blame all wars, inevitably, on some outside causation, some external factor. Religion, resources, revenge. The truth, however, is more base: war comes from within. War comes from man himself. Man, and his infinite capability to do evil.”

  —Xaviun Fuerd, High Priest of Cyurgi’ Di, c. 550 v.S.

  “I think we’ve found ourselves a new favorite,” Azzeki had to shout over the cheering crowd.

  Quin nodded in agreement, but didn’t say anything. He was too enthralled in the mayhem that was ensuing below them, too enraptured in his own creation.

  The melees weren’t his idea, in truth, but the suggestion was an old one, and he couldn’t remember who had come up with it initially, weeks ago when the Monster had first shown up on their doorstep. It had been toyed with, then discarded, because it seemed a total waste of resources. In a duel or skirmish, the Arena only ever lost a few fighters at a time. In an all-out melee, though, the toll was much greater. While not all the defeated ended up dead, some ended up close, and the remainder were often too maimed to be of any use to the pit. Quin had decided, placing profit above desire, that such battles weren’t worth the cost.

  Today, though, he’d resurrected the thought, and was seriously reconsidering his prior decision.

  Quin intended this day to be a one to shame all days within the Arena’s walls. He didn’t just want the men and women of the crowd to remember their experience, this time. He wanted them to feel it, wanted them to carry word of it home, beyond the borders of Azbar’s woods, and all throughout the North.

  Today was the day Quin Tern, Chairman of the council of the great city of Azbar, brought the terror of the Monster to heel.

  And to start: the melees.

  On opening day of the tourney, the Arena lists held over five hundred names. Raz i’Syul had frightened off a huge portion of that number with the actions of his first fight—as he had intended, Quin had no doubt. The lizard had probably expected the names would continue to dwindle until no one was left to face him, but Quin had seen to it that that plot failed miserably. By promising a building pot as time continued and the Monster remained undefeated, he had created an irresistible pull to the Arena. Today, with the coming of the freeze’s first true storm, was the first day less than a score of new volunteers had slunk through the city gates to add their names to the lists.

  It made for a large pot to draw from, and suddenly the council’s fears of having no one left to fight had seemed much less significant.

  The melees consisted of eight names each, drawn at random. The Doctore had not been asked to consult, nor had any special consideration been given to who faced who, and the results were spectacular. Of the four battles they’d already seen that morning, only one had been at all balanced, and it had been by far the most uneventful of the lot. The others, like that which they were witnessing now, were tilted so unfairly in one direction or the other that each brawl was almost as fun as watching Raz i’Syul fight.

  “Zeko won’t last much longer if he keeps this up,” Azzeki said disapprovingly, still watching the pit.

  “He’ll last long enough to end it,” Quin disagreed.

  Ajana Zeko, the Percian they spoke of, was a massive specimen, nearly as broad as the mountain men who’d descended out of their cliffs to throw their names in for the pot, and half a head taller. He wore little more than furs around his waist and over his shoulders, along with a steel round helm crowned with a long, thin spike over a chain-mail neck guard. In his thick arms he wielded a massive two-handed warhammer, which he was flailing about to devastating effect. Two of the other seven were already still at his feet, one with her head caved in and the other with his hands resting where he’d clawed at crushed ribs that must have ripped through lung and heart alike. The other five were in chaos, half-concerned with steering clear of the dark-skinned behemoth while also attempting to smartly engage each other during the tumult.

  It was utter chaos, and Quin couldn’t take his eyes off it.

  Nor, it seemed, could the crowd. Their combined voices ebbed and spiked as the battle ensued, reaching heights they usually only achieved on a four-day when the Monster himself was in the pit. As Zeko barreled around the ring, swinging his hammer with the same efficiency he might have had a battering ram, the stadium fawned over him, cheering him on in a bloodthirsty chorus. When one of his blows took a helmeted head so completely clean off its shoulders and sent it inadvertently flying into the crowd, the only piercing wails to be heard were the jealous cries of those not flecked in the dead man’s blood.

  Quin smiled. He had wanted to give the spectators an experience, today. He’d wanted to give them something almost tangible in its appeal, something sublime in its violence.

  And he knew he was well on his way to succeeding.

  “My Lord.”

  It took a moment for Quin to register the greeting, and another to realize that the voice didn’t belong to Azzeki. Finally pulling his gaze away from the maelstrom of muscle and heavy steel that was Zeko below him, Quin looked around to find Kerret Terovel—one of Azzeki’s most trusted soldiers, and the eldest son of a councilman—hovering behind his right shoulder. The man was out of uniform today, clothed in plain, uncolored layers that would have made it impossible to distinguish him in a crowd.

  Which was the point, because the package he held in his hands was the most important part of Quin’s plans for the day.

  Quin felt his face fall at the sight of it, though.

  “Already?” he asked, disappointed. “I’d hoped it would have taken the morning, at least.”

  Kerret shook his head, holding the package out for Azzeki as the Captain-Commander stepped forward to take it.

  “Barely lasted two hours, My Lord,” he said with a shrug. “Wasn’t much to him in the end.”

  “I suppo
se so,” Quin muttered in annoyance, following the parcel as Azzeki brought it forward. It was a box, he knew, but the pine lining of the thing itself was all hidden by a heavy burgundy cloth that had been wrapped around it for safekeeping. As Azzeki set it down on the wide arm of his chair, Quin itched to reach out and peel away the layers to see the wood itself, maybe even crack it open and peek at what lay inside.

  He refrained, though, knowing the moment would be worth the wait.

  There was upheaval of noise from the crowd, and Quin looked around in time to see Ajana Zeko pin his last competitor, a narrow spearwoman with the tanned skin of the Imperium, to the slanted wall of the pit with both hands. His hammer had been discarded—though whether this was out of necessity or in desire to provide the greatest show possible, Quin didn’t know—but Zeko had hardly need of it. At first Quin thought the Percian would snap the woman’s neck and be done with it, but to his great delight the man did no such thing. Instead he merely held her there, squeezing slowly, choking the life out of her one second at a time. The stands were suddenly quiet, the spectators falling silent as they watched, so that the rasping wheezes of the dying woman were just discernible, echoing off the walls of the stadium. For almost a full minute she kicked, her fingers scrabbling at Zeko’s wrists, trying in vain to pull the man’s hands free of her throat. It wasn’t long before her face went pale, then blue, then purple, and shortly after her fighting began to lessen. First her motions became sluggish and lazy, her kicks grew slow and her grasps at the Percian’s arms broad and pointless. Then her larger motions stopped altogether, and only the jump of her legs and the twitch of slack arms remained.