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

by Bryce O'Connor

  “Give the children to me,” he said, resting Ahna against the trunk of a nearby tree and reaching up with one hand. “Then get down.”

  “Are we making camp?” Tern asked, speaking for the first time in several hours as he slowly eased the Koyts into the crook of Raz’s good arm.

  Raz didn’t respond.

  Once Tern had slid his weight down the horse’s side and onto his feet, Raz drew his gladius from over his shoulder and pointed to a spot beneath the rocks.

  “There. Move.”

  Tern did as he was told, hands up and head bowed as he hurried over, clearly not upset about getting out of the snow. Raz could feel the cold get to him now that they had stopped. Riding hard had kept him tense and warm, and if he didn’t keep moving he knew the winter night was going to be the end of him.

  Still… he would take the time for this.

  Thrusting the gladius into the ground by his fur-wrapped feet, he pulled his knife from his belt and tossed it to Tern. The Chairman eyed it suspiciously.

  “And what,” he asked in a wavering voice, “am I supposed to do with that? If you think I’m going to fight you—”

  “What I think you’re going to do,” Raz growled, “is dig.”

  Tern blinked. Then he looked at the knife, then at the body and head in Raz’s arms, then back at the knife. Finally, with a sigh that said he had given up all hope, he lifted the blade in his gloved hands and started at the earth.

  It was long, hard work. The ground was cold and solid, and even the looser soil beneath the frozen top layer was marbled with rocks and roots. It was a time before Tern made much of a dent in the space below the outcropping, the knife thunking and pinging dully through the night, any echo swallowed by the thickness of the trees. For half an hour he toiled before saying a word.

  “This is your fault, you know.”

  Raz blinked, jerking into a full wakefulness. He was almost happy Tern had said something, because the chill had definitely started to make him sluggish. The statement, though, brought on a rush of fury that chased away all fatigue from his body.

  “What did you say?” he demanded in a hiss.

  “This. Is,” Tern said again, punching every word in with a stab of the knife. “Your. Fault.”

  “And how do you figure that, Chairman?” Raz asked sarcastically, shifting to get his body moving again.

  “We had a deal,” Tern told him simply. “We made a contract. I even had the paperwork drafted, fulfilling every irritating condition you required. The Koyts had their freedom, had their debts cleared. The Arena stopped drafting from the dungeon and prisons. I sent the birds, built the demand, gave you your chance to fight your demons on even ground.”

  “You did,” Raz said with a nod. “You did do all that.”

  “Then why,” Tern huffed, a note of annoyance building in his voice as he continued to hack at the earth, “did you have to fuck it all up?”

  “I didn’t.”

  Tern stopped at that, looking around. He frowned.

  “You did. You changed the deal. If you’d left with the Laorin, it would have—”

  “I wasn’t going to.”

  There was a second of icy silence.

  “What?” Tern hissed, staring up from his hole in the ground.

  “I wasn’t leaving,” Raz said. “Whoever your informant is didn’t give you all the facts. I was asked to leave, yes. Brahnt and his friends and I had been speaking for weeks, trying to figure out how to drag your fat ass out of the false throne you’d built for yourself. When they got called away, they asked me to go.”

  “And you said what? ‘No, thank you’?”

  “Essentially.”

  For a time Tern only stared at him. Then he started to laugh.

  “What’s the joke?” Raz asked in a deadly whisper, pulling his gladius from the ground.

  “You!” Tern chuckled, returning to his work. “To the world you’re the great beast, this mythical Monster of Karth! Even the North sees that now! But you’re not, are you? You’re given a chance to leave, to get out of my city, and you don’t take it? You had to know the Arena would claim you eventually! You had to know one day you would die there, if you didn’t leave!”

  He stopped only long enough to look over his shoulder.

  “You’re no Monster. You’re a fool.”

  Then he looked back around and started at the earth again.

  Raz watched him for a time more, feeling the anger burning inside him, feeling it bubble and churn. He remembered the jeering glee of the crowd, the delighted screams of thrill and joy as he murdered for them, butchered for them.

  Those people he had saved from the pit. Those people he’d snatched from the greedy mouth of Quin Tern.

  Raz felt the anger die, replaced by sadness.

  “You’re probably right,” he said.

  Tern didn’t say anything.

  The hole was just wide and deep enough for a small body to fit, tucked up against itself. As Raz stepped over it to judge, he nodded.

  “Get out.”

  Tern hauled himself up at once, puffing and sweaty. He’d been at it for over an hour, which Raz mused silently was probably more hard labor than the man had ever done in his life.

  “Now take off your cloak.”

  At that, Tern stiffened.

  “W-What?” he demanded. “No. You can’t—!”

  “You can take off your cloak now, Tern, while you are willing and able to do so, or I can cut it from your corpse in about five seconds. I’m not fussy on which option you choose really, but the second one would warm me up more.”

  “But I’ll freeze!” Tern yelled, taking a step back and clutching at his furs in the dark. “What am I supposed to do without it?”

  Raz shrugged. “Have it your way, then,” he said, stepping forward and raising the gladius in one hand.

  “WAIT!” Tern said, throwing his hands up.

  Raz stopped, but kept the blade raised poignantly. Muttering curses to himself, Tern undid the fastenings to his heavy mantle and pulled it off his shoulders. It fell in a thick pile to the forest floor.

  “Now what?” Tern asked through gritted teeth, clutching at his arms as the winter night bit immediately through the thinner cottons and wools of the decorative shirts he had on beneath.

  “Now,” Raz said.“… I let you go.”

  Tern looked surprised.

  “G-Go?” he asked, almost hopefully. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you can go,” Raz told him. “I said I would do it, so I am. And if you think I didn’t notice you sticking the knife in the back of your pants, think again. Keep it. It might come in useful.”

  The Chairman stared at him, shivering, obviously suspecting some trap. When Raz said nothing more, though, he started for the horses.

  “Ah,” Raz interrupted, bringing the gladius up to block the man’s path. “No. I don’t think so.”

  “You’re not going to give me a horse?” Tern spat in disbelief. “You can’t be serious!”

  He quailed under the cold look Raz gave him then.

  “Be grateful I’m giving you even this small chance, Chairman,” Raz growled. “You took more from me than even you realize. You ripped and tore and destroyed something I thought I’d never have again. I’m only giving you this chance because I think the freeze will find you before any of the search parties Azbar has undoubtedly sent out by now do. A blade to the heart is too quick for you, but I’m not going to dishonor the Koyts by torturing you to death beside their grave.”

  He moved the gladius, pointing it north. “The road is that way. If you start now and run to keep warm, you might make it before you lose your feet to the cold. Maybe they’ll find you then, maybe not. All I know is this: if I still hear you by the time I’m done bidding farewell to these children, I’ll drag you far enough away to ensure their spirits can’t hear your screams.”

  “Bastard,” Tern gasped, stumbling and tripping as he backed away. “Bastard!”


  Then he was gone, running off through the dark trees faster than Raz would have thought the fat man was capable of.

  For a minute Raz listened to him go. After a time, though, the snow and woods swallowed all sounds, and Raz was on his own.

  Alone. Again.

  Turning away from the trees, Raz kicked Tern’s discarded cloak closer to the outcropping, then moved to follow. Bending to seat himself on the cold ground—hissing in pain as he did—he set the Koyts down gently beside him. Picking the cloak up, he cut several feet of the extra material from its end with the gladius, then another foot’s worth as a separate piece. Setting the sword aside, he reached out, gently lifted Arrun’s head into his lap, and began wrapping it in the smaller of the fur strips.

  Lueski was next. Raz’s fingers shook as he felt the stiffness in her tiny form, the rigidity of death, as he wrapped her up.

  When he was done, Raz got to his feet and pulled what was left of the cloak over his own shoulders, welcoming the extra warmth. Bending down, he lifted the girl, hidden away in the swaddling cloths, carefully into his arms. Carrying her into the grave, he set her upon the cold, churned earth tenderly. Arrun’s head he tucked in the crook of her lap.

  For a long time Raz stood over the pair of them, looking down through the dark at their bundled outlines. He didn’t think of anything in particular so much as he fought to find and hold on to the feelings and emotions he’d discovered again with the two of them, things he’d thought lost a long time ago.

  He didn’t want to forget, this time. He refused to forget.

  When he’d had his moment, Raz moved to the loose pile of dirt that hovered over the hole. Grunting as he got to his knees, he shoved it to spill over and cover the bodies, hiding them from view forever. Once he’d patted the mound down, flattening it until the grave was little more than a faint lump in the earth, he got to his feet again. This time he looked to the sky.

  Though he couldn’t see Her Stars, he knew they were there, somewhere, eternal witnesses overhead.

  Take care of them, he begged of the Arros, thinking of his mother and father. Then, bringing up the image of his little sister, he spoke to her privately.

  You’ll like her, Ahna. I know you’ll be friends.

  With that Raz turned, found the dviassegai and gladius in the dark, and made for the horses.

  Once he’d wheezed and tugged his way into the gray stud’s saddle, reaching down to wrap the reins of the other around its pommel, he pulled Ahna up to set her back across his lap. Thumbing the white wood of her haft, he kicked the animals into a trot through the Moon-lit trees.

  “‘The northbound road for Ystréd,’” he quoted under his breath, shifting the horses to head back for the road. “What do you think, sis? What are our chances of catching up before we freeze to death?”

  Chuckling bleakly to himself, Raz allowed his hunched form, shivering in cold and pain, to be swallowed by the night.

  CHAPTER 40

  “To wage the game of war with success, one must garner and gain hold of all advantages. Most chief among them: surprise. There is an old saying in the Seven Cities, which we all know have had their fair share of blood and battle over the centuries. They say, ‘Defeat comes when you least expect it,’ which I find admirably sage. Even the greatest of warriors cannot see behind them, after all.”

  —The Art of Sword & Shield, by Kelo ev’Ret

  Syrah ran as she had never run before. Her white robes whipped about her, her sandled feet smacking the stones of the hall loudly, echoing ahead. She took the twists and turns at full speed, not bothering to excuse herself as she dodged around other residents of the Citadel out enjoying a morning walk or heading to breakfast. She ignored their exclamations of surprise and curses.

  Jofrey was down in the furnaces. He’d told her as much last night, saying that Kallet Brern had wanted his opinion on a crack in one of the forges first thing in the morning. The heating systems of Cyurgi’ Di were an engineering miracle, rekindled and maintained by the Laorin since the great fortress had been first rediscovered by the faith. They required a lot of work, though, and a crack in the mechanisms could be nasty business if it meant shutting one of the forges down for repairs.

  The letter in Syrah’s hand, however, held far graver news.

  Syrah turned a corner, pounding the slanting ground of the ramp leading downward into the mountain. For a time it twisted and turned, one solid incline going back and forth through the stone. Eventually, though, the ramp ended, and roughhewn stairs, their middle slick and well worn by a thousand years of booted and sandaled feet coming to and fro from the forges, descended steeply into a tunnel lit only by candlelight.

  Grasping the old iron chain strung along one side of the stairs, Syrah took them as fast as she could.

  Old man couldn’t have found a worse place to hole himself up, Syrah thought bitterly as she moved. Typical. First Talo, now Jofrey. When you need them most, they’re always on the other side of the damn world.

  The steps seemed to go on forever, down and down and down into the earth. In truth they were rather long but—as is so common when one is pressed for time—Syrah’s mind decided to drag them out eternally.

  By the time she reached the bottom, the woman was half-convinced her news would arrive too late to do anything about.

  The glow that greeted her at their base was semi-blinding to her sensitive eyes after the relative dimness of the tunnels. As she hurried forward into the room, Syrah had to block the blaze of the nearest forge with one hand while her vision adjusted. Despite this, even as her eyes watered in the light and heat, she looked around, trying to find Jofrey.

  The furnace room, while awe-inspiring in its own way, was possibly Syrah’s least favorite place in the Citadel. Her old classroom, where she’d spent hours every day in her youth, bored to the point of screaming with Reyn and two dozen other acolytes, was a close second, but the uncomfortable warmth and unbearable brightness did the furnaces in for her. Three great forges took up the colossal cavern, massive oblong things jutting upwards from the floor towards the curved ceiling high above. A plethora of copper piping spined outward from each one, some feeding water into the boiler that formed the top half of each forge, some pushing warm, humid air upward into the halls and rooms above, and some using the provided vacuum to drag fresh air in from outside.

  Once, when she’d first come to the Citadel, Syrah and a number of her new friends had snuck down into the furnaces on the dare of an older acolyte. They’d run screaming back up the stairs, yelling about the lost heads of three wicked monsters with glowing eyes and shining golden hair.

  It was estimated that—when the Cyurgi’ Di had been a fortress of war, before written memory—over a hundred men had been needed to keep the furnaces going. Coal had to be mined and hauled from great shafts in the back of the room that had since been sealed by the Laorin, and the forges had to be maintained and carefully overseen.

  Now, kept and conditioned regularly by magic, the furnaces needed only a half-dozen Priests and Priestesses per forge.

  It was one such woman, dressed in the simple cotton shirt and pants of the trade, that Syrah ran into first.

  “Jofrey al’Sen?” she asked, breathless after her run down the stair. “Is he here? Have you seen him?”

  The Priestess blinked in surprise, then nodded, pointing towards the backmost forge at the far end of the room. Peering through the haze, Syrah saw the white robes of someone not planning to spend all day in the heat.

  Suffering the blazes, Syrah made a line straight for him.

  “I think you’re right, Kallet,” Jofrey was saying as she reached them. “I don’t think we’ll have much of a choice. The residence halls will have to go without heat for a few days.”

  He was speaking to Brern, also in simple cloth clothes, who nodded.

  “I’ll talk to Petrük,” the forge master responded. “I’m sure she’ll enjoy informing everyone of their forthcoming misery, then playing the hero when s
he finds volunteers to keep the halls at least temperate overnight. I’m not looking forward to—Oy! Hello, Syrah!”

  Brern smiled at her, the motion crinkling his tanned, leathery face as he lifted a hand in welcome. Beside him, Jofrey turned at once to meet her. Surprise and concern etched the lines of his sweating face. He knew her well enough now to know that, if she was suffering the discomfort of coming to him down here, something was definitely wrong.