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

by Bryce O'Connor

  Eight was a completely different story.

  Raz didn’t give away the thought, though. He met the eyes of each of the fighters evenly as they appeared, but didn’t turn to study each one like some trapped animal frantically looking for a weak link. No. Such desperation would be apparent, firing up his opponents, and as much as Raz’s every instinct was yelling at him to run, he knew there was nowhere to go.

  “But there is one final surprise for you today, patrons of our wondrous Arena! There is one more for me to introduce to you, one more who will brave the pit, putting himself in arm’s reach of your Monster at his own great risk. Good people, I bid you join me in applause of him, as you know him well! Please welcome the last member of today’s final event, gambling his life for your entertainment! I give you, from our own city… YOUR COUNCIL CHAIRMAN HIMSELF! QUIN ETURIUS TERN!”

  At first, Raz was utterly convinced he had misheard, had not understood what the herald had said. He blamed it on the voice in his head that had practically been screaming in panic at the thought that yet another would be added to the list, bringing the total to nine. His mind had gone straight to Azzeki Koro, a promising duel on his own, or perhaps the Doctore herself, forced into the pit after him against her wishes.

  So when he heard Tern’s name, he didn’t believe it until the man himself waddled into the light.

  At once it became apparent that the Chairman had no intention whatsoever of actually fighting. Apart from the fact that Raz would have bet Ahna the man had hardly lifted a sword in his life, Tern hadn’t changed out of the luxurious furs and jewels he always wore on fight days. In fact, two attendants were flanking him, each bent on on keeping the edges of his sleek silver mantle clear of the mud and snow. The only thing Tern himself was carrying was what seemed to be some sort of box wrapped in dark-red cloth.

  Raz’s gaze lingered only a moment on this oddity, though, before moving up to search the Chairman’s face. Tern was grinning with almost boyish delight, raising his free hand to acknowledge the cheering of the stands at his appearance. If the man had some trick up his sleeve, some plan to get Raz through this all in one piece, he wasn’t about to show it.

  For now, Raz was on his own…

  “Thank you!” Tern’s voice boomed out, echoing upwards as it bounced off the walls of the stadium. “Thank you all! It has always been a dream of mine to stand here, in the same place where each member of the Hall of Heroes once stood, and ten thousand more between them whose names have sadly been lost to memory. Today, on this first true day of the freeze, it was my desire to offer you something special, something heartwarming the likes of which will supply you with stories aplenty through the winter. Today I offer you a chance to witness more than just a battle for glory and freedom. I offer you a chance to witness a fight for true survival, an opportunity to see what happens when the world’s most dangerous animal is cornered and given no place to run!”

  The fear tugging at Raz’s mind was suddenly withdrawn and replaced by a rush of anger. Animal? he thought. It was one thing to make such comments as asides and remarks, but to insult him so openly, before thousands of witnesses, was a fool’s mistake.

  If Tern was looking to get a rise out of him, he was well on his way.

  “Can you imagine it, friends, compatriots? Can you imagine a beast greater still that anything you have yet seen, more dangerous even than your beloved Monster of Karth? DO YOU WISH TO WITNESS THAT?”

  The rolling screams of agreement were answer enough. Tern grinned even wider.

  “Then your desire is my duty, and I shall pull the beast forth, drag it from the bowels of whatever hell it hides, and force it to rear its head.”

  At this, Quin paused to say something quiet to one of his attendants. Then he held out the cloth-covered box.

  The boy—for he couldn’t be more than fourteen or fifteen—abruptly looked exceedingly nervous, but took it dutifully, handing his corner of Tern’s mantle off to the other servant. As the Chairman returned to his speech, the attendant started walking towards Raz, passing between Zeko and the spearwoman to get to him. Raz gave the boy his full attention, wary of a trick, and not the least bit bothered by the Chairman’s continued windbaggery. What did bother him, though, was the fact that the fighters around him seemed to be shifting, giving up their advantage of surrounding him in favor of lining up directly between him and Quin Tern. By the time the boy had reached him, the eight of them had formed a sort of pack, Zeko at its head, watching Raz warily.

  Suddenly, the box in the attendant’s arms was more frightening than anything the Arena could have ever thrown at him.

  “M-My Lord Chairman bids you take this, and his message,” the attendant stuttered, swallowing nervously and not meeting Raz’s eye. “He says, ‘Maybe next time you’ll remember to tell the Lifegiver not to stick his nose where it doesn’t belong.’”

  The boy held it out then, the thing quivering in his shaking hands.

  Raz was frozen, all will struck down by Tern’s words. He didn’t want to know what was in that box. He had tasted madness before. It seemed a lifetime ago, though the years had been short and brutal. If whatever was hiding beneath the cloth and wood in the attendant’s hands was truly something Tern thought might bring back some of that darkness, Raz wanted nothing less than to open the box, than to know its contents.

  Few things were left to him, after all, that could pull him back to that place.

  But time is a tricky bastard, and as much as Raz would have liked the moment to extend into infinity, allowing him the eternal bliss of not knowing, there was no such power invented by man or god. He tried, though. Raz found himself, as though guided by some unseen hand, stepping away from the boy and his box, keeping as much space between the two of them as he could. The attendant, in turn, looked back over his shoulder, unsure of what to do.

  Raz saw Tern’s grin widen even as he continued to address the crowds, and the man nodded before raising a hand in signal.

  As the boy stepped forward, egged on by his master, there was a clunk. Behind him, feet from his back, Raz heard the whirl of loose chains, and the portcullis fell shut with a crash that shook snow loose from the wall around and above it.

  It didn’t stop him from backing up, though, right up until he ran into the very wood itself.

  And the boy kept coming.

  Raz could hear the blood rushing through his ears, could feel his heart, feel it pounding in his chest so hard he feared the thing might tear itself free of his body. There was nothing he could do, nowhere to go. Ahna hung loose by his side, all but forgotten as Raz watched the attendant follow him hesitantly, the wrapped box still held before him like some unholy relic.

  When he got within reach, and with nowhere else to go, Raz did the only thing that made sense in the moment.

  He struck the box right out of the boy’s hands.

  Even if Raz had thought to, he would not have had the willpower to look away. As the covering cloth untangled itself from the wood, it was pulled away almost at once by the wind, carried off until it caught on one of the iron torch brackets hammered into the wall of the pit. It clung there, a red flapping streak against the gray of the stone.

  The box itself, though, fell hard to the ground, bounced, broke open, and allowed the nightmare within to roll out onto the snow.

  CHAPTER 36

  Arrun’s face looked up at Raz from the ground, only it wasn’t his face anymore. His features had been mangled, his flesh ripped and cut. The lids of his eyes had been removed, leaving behind staring orbs that never looked away. His ears had been sawed off, matching the gore of where his nose had been. His lips were sewn shut, the holes through which the twine snuck ragged and ripped as skin had stretched and protested.

  And blood. There was blood everywhere.

  It was this fact that punched though Raz’s walls, a realization that wrapped like rope about his throat, making it hard to breathe. The invisible weight of it pulled him to his knees, Ahna falling from this nu
mb hand.

  Blood… blood only flowed when the heart was beating…

  Winter was suddenly welcome, the wind and snow nothing more than a companion in its unrelenting fury. The cold flowed through Raz’s arms like an icy stream. He couldn’t look away even though he wanted to. He took in the boy’s disfigured head for every bit it was worth, unable to see anything else. The world dissolved around him.

  “And so, my dearest friends,” Quin Tern’s voice shouted from the other side of the veil, “prepare yourselves! Prepare yourselves to meet the creature tucked away for too long! Welcome the true Raz i’Syul Arro! Welcome him! Welcome the beast!”

  But there was no beast, Raz thought, looking within himself. There is only cold in this place, emptiness.

  There is nothing.

  As though Arrun’s staring blue eyes had drained him of his very existence, Raz felt no more. He forgot time and place and purpose. He forgot name and body and soul. There was nothing left to do, nothing left to be. He was devoid of meaning, sucked empty. Sucked empty by that horror, by that abomination still on the ground barely a pace away. Flecks of snow were already catching in Arrun’s blond hair, thatched with blood.

  Then the word came.

  Tern.

  At first it was only a spark. From the bleakness in which Raz found himself falling, a tiny flame rose, barely a flash in the dark. It grew, though, as the word clung to his mind like some rabid animal, latched on and unwilling to let go, shifting into a name.

  Tern. Quin Tern.

  The name fed the spark, the words like dry leaves over dying embers. For a moment there was only a building smolder, a realization of potential and existence.

  Then, in one abrupt instant, fire engulfed Raz from the inside out.

  For the first time in months, the animal returned.

  Purpose came back in a rush. Awareness rocked through Raz like a cannonball, punching across the empty desperation Arrun’s tortured grimace nearly drowned him in. The abyss ripped open, and Raz felt himself falling, plummeting down into the dark.

  He didn’t even try to slow his descent.

  QUIN TERN!

  Still on his knees, a snarl built up in Raz’s chest, erupting into a screaming roar of defiance that silenced every sound from the spectators. The attendant who had brought him the box squealed and stumbled backward, tripping repeatedly as he sprinted back to his master. Lifting Ahna from the ground, Raz stood slowly, setting amber eyes back on the group before him.

  The somberness of the Northern winter was gone from the day. No more were the stands around him accented in white and gray, highlighted by snow and stone. Instead, the world had fallen into shades of dark red and darker black, swallowing the details of the scene. There was nothing left to see, regardless, beyond what was directly in front of him. Even the eight men and women between him and his goal barely gave Raz pause, because behind them, still leering with obvious pleasure, Quin Tern was bathing in his success.

  And all Raz knew was that he was going to peel the man’s smile from his face with his bare hands.

  The silence held its reign over the Arena for a long moment. No one spoke, no one cheered. Like the world itself had paused, holding its breath, ten thousand people watched Raz, waiting, wanting desperately to see what he would do.

  When he finally moved, it was with such speed many would later swear the Monster of Karth became nothing more than a blur of black, red, and silver steel.

  Zeko, at the head of the group, was the first to go down, and it happened so quickly the others barely had time to blink before the giant Percian was screaming. Raz hit him with the force of a bull, toppling him, while his free hand grabbed at the man’s face, a clawed finger finding each of Zeko’s eyes beneath the lip of his helm. The crowd barely had time to roar in thrilled amazement before steel buried into brain, and the man died.

  It was the only easy kill Raz got, because then the rest were on him.

  Raz ducked under the thrust of the spearwoman’s blade, then somersaulted backwards off Zeko’s body to avoid the simultaneous downward strikes of Pirate King Kehnt’s saber and the mace wielder’s morning star. Both weapons hit the dead man with echoed thunks, but caught nothing else.

  Meanwhile, Ahna had begun her dance of death.

  The dviassegai moved like a silver serpent about Raz, less graceful in his rage of insanity, but all the more deadly for it. She slashed left and right, up and down, striking with such vicious speed the men and women about him were hard-pressed to hang on to their blades as they blocked and deflected. They tried to press forward, tried to force him back, but Raz roared in defiance, the crest along the back of his neck flaring red, his wings whipping out from beneath the silver-and-black mantle to join the melee. As numerous as they were, the remaining champions could do nothing to get around him, nothing to position themselves to enclose him. Every time one tried, something knocked them back. It didn’t matter if it was Ahna, a mailed fist, a clawed foot, rippling wings, or even a lithe, scaly tail. Something was always there to block them.

  After a minute of chaotic combat, someone shouted, and the seven fell back to regroup. Most at that point would have scattered to get around Raz, but it seemed they’d all seen enough of his fights to know that would only make it easier for Raz to break up their defense. Instead they stayed close, a living wall between Raz and the Chairman, unwilling to give him the man he so desired.

  Well beyond reason, Raz simply followed them, barreling into the group as a tempest might strike at the mountains.

  They let Helena and the second shield bearer take the brunt of his rage, trusting the pair of them to play the defense and leave the rest up to the others. It was a good plan, and Raz’s mindless assault cost him a deep slash across his abdomen and several nasty holes in his left thigh as the mace wielder’s flail came out and around, crashing into the armor there and perforating the steel.

  The wounds he granted them, though, cost the seven much more than they gained.

  Barely feeling the metal points in his flesh, Raz twisted his hips away, pulling the embedded flail with him and dragging it from its owner’s hand. At the same time, Raz grabbed the top of Helena’s shield and—as the woman yelled in surprise—hauled it down to the ground with one hand, dragging the woman attached to it along for the ride. There was a snap as the arm the shield was strapped to broke, and Helena’s shouts for assistance turned to shrieks of pain and fear. They were cut short when Raz’s foot caught the bottom of her chin in a ferocious kick, snapping her neck back.

  The corpse of Helena, Shield Bearer of the Seven Cities, flopped to the ground chest first, her head dangling by nothing more than flesh on her back, dead eyes staring into the sky.

  There was no pause in the fighting, though. On the contrary, the six left standing pressed their advantage, seeking to attack in the moment Raz was finally open, leaving himself vulnerable as he went for the kill. Raz grunted as the spearwoman’s blade bit into his side barely an inch below the old scar of a crossbow bolt that had punched through him not a few months before. The mace wielder acted fast, too, leaping up and swinging his morning star high for Raz’s head. Instead of the killing blow he’d hoped for, though, he met Raz’s outstretched hand, which caught him about the wrist and dragged him up and around, using the man’s own momentum to roll him over Raz’s back and slam him to the ground so hard it was possible to hear ribs break.

  The man didn’t have time to do more than gasp in shock and pain, though, before Raz reached down, ripped the flail still stuck in his thigh free, and brought the spiked metal ball down on the mace wielder’s face.

  Blood, gore, and bits of bone flew in every direction.

  Raz tried to stand up then, but for once he was too slow. It had been a foolish move, leaving himself open to the five left alive, and even in the thrall of the all-consuming madness, Raz screamed in pain as what felt like white-hot iron was shoved into his back. A sudden weight seemed to collapse in on the left side of his chest, and Raz knew st
eel had nicked lung.

  Reaching over his shoulder, he tried for a blind swipe at the offending attacker. His hand caught hair, and he had traction for a moment, but in the same instant whatever blade had taken him between the ribs was withdrawn, and his hold went slack. He whirled around to see the West Isler, Atheus, dancing back, a blade in each hand, his dark hair suddenly cropped short, leaving a handful in Raz’s palm.

  The pressure of his leaking lung pulled at Raz’s chest, but it barely slowed him down. Taking a breath, he roared at the last of the champions, flecking the snow between them with blood that came up with the scream. Atheus, the shield bearer, the mountain man, and the spearwoman didn’t flinch.

  The Pirate King Kehnt, though, took a single step back, and Raz had his weak link.

  Bolting forward, he dodged a spear thrust, sent the shield bearer tumbling with a heavy kick, and rolled under Atheus’ horizontal strike. In a blink he was in the middle of them, the last place they would expect, and came up directly in front of Kehnt. The Pirate Kehnt shrieked, sounding unbefittingly womanish for his title, and struck blindly with his saber.