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

by Bryce O'Connor

  Landing lightly at its side, confusing the bear with his sudden disappearance from its sight, Raz began his rain of death.

  For a long time Raz made no big moves with the gladius, using the narrow sword’s lightness and speed to his advantage as he dealt the bear cut after cut about its head, neck, and front legs. There was no opportunity for risk in this dance, no slack to be given or chance to be taken. Raz was done for if he took so much as a single blow by those great claws, and he knew it. The sheer power backing every one of the bear’s moves, the weight behind its lunging attacks, were no less fearsome than a battering ram. Raz could not make mistakes. There was no leeway or latitude to give this battle. He dodged every strike the bear made at him, making sure to dig his claws into the scarred ice each time he shifted his feet. He never attacked unless his footing was true, never darted in for a slash or stab unless he knew the opening was there. A hundred times his blade lashed in, and a hundred times he darted, rolled, and leapt away from grey claws and blood-stained teeth. The duel dragged on, Raz’s breath coming in ragged heaves of rolling vapor, illuminated thickly in the Moon’s light so that it looked like smoke. When he tired too much he retreated, always giving himself the moment’s reprieve he needed to keep from tripping up, keep from making a mistake.

  And so, when the opportunity for the killing blow arrived, Raz was ready to throw all of his strength into it.

  The chance came abruptly, brought on by the bear’s wounds and its own exhaustion. Raz had just dealt the beast a nasty slash across the muzzle, barely missing one of its gleaming black eyes, and it roared, utterly enraged. Shoving itself onto its hind legs, the bear lunged down at Raz from above, as though intent on crushing him with the sheer force of its weight. Raz barely got out of the way in time, flinging himself sideways and dragging himself across the ragged ice with steel claws. The bear fell all the same, though, slamming both paws down exactly on the spot he had just been.

  The right leg, though, weakened by the very first crippling blow Raz had dealt, crumpled and collapsed beneath it under the force of its falling body. With a crash Raz feared might actually break the ice, the bear smashed onto its side, roaring as it fell. For a moment it lay, suddenly exposed, paws clawing at the air as it tried to get back up.

  A moment was all Raz i’Syul Arro had ever needed.

  He was on the bear in a flash, lancing forward, bringing the gladius down at a savage angle just as the animal managed to roll itself onto all fours again. Piercing steel, stained with icy rivulets of red, cut high into the side of the bear’s neck. Raz had gone for the spine, seeking the delicate nerves at the base of the brain.

  He had aimed true.

  The ursalus spasmed as though struck by a cannon ball, and it let out a garbled scream of pain. The gladius slipped further in, and the bear seemed to lose control of its right legs, collapsing and rolling halfway onto its side. Raz held onto the blade, gripping it like a handle as it was dragged along with the beast, using the weapon to pull himself right up onto the bear’s massive furred body. Letting go he stepped sideways, grabbed Ahna with both hands, and wrenched her free of the creature’s ribs.

  As the ursalus gave a final, furious scream, blood pouring once more from its mouth, Raz matched the sound with his own roar. At the same time he leapt, launching himself as high into the air as he could, twisting as he did. The night air whipped around him, the Moon illuminating the crimson ice that marked their battlefield like some violent painting of red and blue. For half a moment he hung suspended, howling as he brought Ahna up and over his head with both hands.

  Then he fell, driving the dviassegai’s twin blades downward like some beastly woodsman’s ax.

  They caught the bear in the neck, between the edge of its blood-caked jaw and the place from which the gladius protruded from its spine. Unstoppable behind the force of the weapon’s fall, steel cleaved through fur, flesh, and bone, severing all in one blow. Chips of ice flew in all directions as Ahna crashed into the frozen lake beneath the bear, flung like shards of shattered red glass, wet and glistening.

  Then the ursalus’ head tumbled free of its huge, beaten body, and the bear was finally silent.

  At once Raz fell to his knees, heaving in gulps of cold air as he tried to catch his breath. Dragging Ahna back towards him, he lifted her up with a grunt and set her points into the ice, using her to support his weight as his limbs shook. For a long time he stayed there, feeling his mind catch up to his body, hearing the world around him settle and return from the distant place it had faded to as he fought.

  “Talo. Talo! No… Please. Talo…”

  The words, pitiful and quiet, reached him as the calmness of the winter night fell over Raz once again. Slowly, viscerally afraid of what he would see, he raised his head and looked to the center of the lake. A furrow in the snow, streaked dark with blood, led from where he knew the man’s body had lain. It climbed up, onto the slow incline of the tiny island, and under the branches of the pine, twisting and swaying in the wind.

  There, bathed in white gold light as al’Dor worked some great magic with one hand over his broken form, Talo Brahnt sat propped up against the trunk of the ancient tree.

  “Talo, please.” al’Dor was whispering through streaks of glistening tears. “Please. Don’t leave me…”

  Raz got up slowly, using Ahna to haul himself to his feet. It seemed that the Woods themselves grew still in reverence as he began to walk, unsteady on shaking legs, letting the dviassegai fall to the ice behind him. As though the wind were bowing its head in sadness, a clear silence gripped the clearing. It wasn’t the muffled, oppressing dullness of snow, nor the eerie emptiness of the Woods. This was a stillness of the world itself, a calming of spirit and soul and elements.

  An elegy of the very land.

  Raz made his way steadily through the snow, not feeling its cool chill against the steel of his armor, nor the resistance of its weight as he walked. He reached the edge of the island and climbed, claws gripping as they found stiff earth. Gently he pushed aside the boughs of the old pine and bent to pass beneath them.

  All the while, he never looked away from the broad, broken body of Talo Brahnt.

  The man lived yet, by some cruel miracle. He was seated, his back against the trunk, arms hanging limply at his side. His eyes were half open, watching al’Dor work with his good hand, and there was a sad sort of smile on his lips as he witnessed the desperate need with which the Priest wove his magics.

  Lips that bubbled with hardening blood.

  The man was a mess. One shoulder looked out of place, either dislocated or broken high up on the arm. The left side of his face was lacerated and bruised, as though it had found some rock beneath the snow when he was thrown, and Raz realized with shocked anguish that he could see the streak of pale bone behind cut skin and torn, silver brown hair. Blood dripped from his ears and nose, and Raz followed the trails down, along his neck, past his collarbone, and on to the real damage.

  al’Dor had managed to tear open the front of the High Priest’s robes, revealing what had only a few minutes before been the strong figure of a once powerful man. Silvery blade scars crossed each other over Brahnt’s skin, leaving a latticework of pale lines through thick grey chest hair. Other marks were dispersed about as well, the writhing patches of long-healed burns, the lumped, purplish scars of past puncture wounds. Talo Brahnt’s body told a violent story of a different life, one lived by the sword rather than by the faith.

  And now it looked as though it would have fit better as a sad fate found at the end of that old path…

  Brahnt breathed in shallow, wheezing swallows even as he watched his partner work. Nothing moved except the bruised skin of his abdomen, almost every rib broken and splintered, some even protruding through bloody holes from his sides, ugly reminders of the great wound. His thick robes had foiled the cruel edge of the bear’s claws, it seemed, but all the same four dark, discolored streaks ran the diagonal length of his chest, from right shoulder to left
hip. The center of this area, where the sternum of the ribcage was, seemed oddly dented, almost caved in.

  His chest had been crushed.

  “Brahnt…” was all Raz managed to say as he fell to one knee opposite al’Dor.

  At his name, the High Priest slowly turned his head. His sad smile seemed only to grow as he met Raz’s amber eyes, revealing bloodstained teeth.

  “I-I’m afraid,” he wheezed in inhaling gasps, “that this is… this is where we part ways… lad…”

  On his right side, al’Dor started to sob.

  “Shh, h-handsome,” Brahnt said, rolling his head back to look at the Priest and trying to raise a hand to reach the man. “Shh. There’s nothing… nothing to be afraid of now.”

  “No,” al’Dor said as he cried, ignoring the outstretched arm while his right hand continued over the man’s body, his left clutched awkwardly to his chest, twisted in an odd way. “No, no, no …”

  With every word, the magic he was working seemed to intensify in strength. Raz watched, half horrified, half mesmerized, as slow moving tendrils of golden light, like captured lightning, shivered over the skin of Brahnt’s chest.

  “Enough, C-Carro,” Brahnt said weakly, coughing blood and trying again to reach for him. “Please… Enough…”

  al’Dor only gave a jerking, denying shake of his head, and again ignored the plea, continuing to work his spells.

  It was Raz who stopped him.

  Gently he reached out and took al’Dor’s right hand in his, halting its motions. The Priest made a feeble attempt to pull away as the magic sputtered out and died, but it was a half-hearted try, and after a moment he stopped even these minimal struggles, his sobs becoming deeper and harder. Raz guided his hand, then, pulling it to the side slowly until it settled atop Brahnt’s.

  al’Dor’s knuckles turned white as he clutched at his lover’s fingers, interlacing them in his.

  It was darker now, but the Moon was bright above, slipping through the branches to illuminate and reflect off the snow and ground about them. Raz watched Brahnt continue to gaze at al’Dor for a moment, then turn his head once again to face him.

  “I never… never got to ex-explain,” the High Priest wheezed quietly.

  “Explain what?” Raz asked him gently, meeting the man’s gaze as bravely as he could.

  “Why they’ll… like you. Why our p-people will… will like you.”

  With what seemed like a great effort, Brahnt lifted his left hand up, bringing it to chest level. There was a dim flash of white, and their little shelter beneath the tree was suddenly bright with ivory light.

  Once again, Brahnt held the flames out to him.

  “Take th-them.”

  Raz shook his head, reaching out to put a hand on the man’s shoulder carefully.

  “Save your strength, Brahnt,” he started. “You need to—”

  “Take them, you b-bloody fool,” the man growled weakly as blood began to stream from his lips.

  Raz hesitated, eyes moving to the flames.

  “Take them, Raz.”

  It was Carro who said it. The Priest didn’t look up from where his eyes were fixed on the ground beneath his knees, left arm still clutched to his chest, right hand still clinging to Brahnt’s.

  Raz reached out.

  This time the flames fell into his palm as Brahnt poured them shakily into the cup of his fingers. Raz jerked reflexively as the magic settled into the leather of his gauntlet, bearing with it a sort of ethereal weight, like the better part of his arm had been submerged in a pool of water. It didn’t burn though, as he was frightened it might. Instead the fire flickered warmly in his hand, reflecting in white and red shivers against the bloodied steel of his claws.

  “All f-fire… can burn, boy,” Brahnt croaked, and Raz clung to his every word as he gazed into the flames. “Ours burns… ours burns at our c-command. Ours burns… at our bidding.”

  The hand that had conjured the magic moved to settle on Raz’s forearm.

  “Your fire… burns t-too. Your fire burns… burns hotter than ours, and more savagely. Your fire is… darker, d-deeper. But Raz… it does not consume you.”

  At that, Raz tore his eyes away to look at Brahnt.

  “It could… c-could have,” the High Priest continued in a rasp. “Maybe… it did, once. But it does not consume you. You… You control it, now. You c-command it. There is… is violence in the world, Raz. We… the Laorin know this. And we hate it, yes… but we kn-know it.”

  Raz felt the man’s fingers twitch against the steel of his bracers, and knew he was trying to squeeze his arm through the gauntlet.

  “Consider for a moment… what you are. Consider what you… r-represent. You are the world’s violence, Raz. You… you are death, and blood. You are… are the darkness to our l-light. And yet… you are light itself, as well. You are… kind. You… you are c-caring. You seek to protect, seek to… shield the world. Syrah… Lueski and Arrun… Me. You are… a s-sword, Raz. You are a bloody… sword. But you are a sword raised in the… the defense of all.”

  Brahnt’s gaze took on an almost pleading cast, making it clear how much he needed Raz to hear his words.

  “They will… will like you for that, l-lad. They will… love you, for that. They will love you, because your fire… your f-fire does not consume you. Do you… understand?”

  For a long time, Raz only looked at the man. He had no way to convey how carefully he had listened, how passionately he had heard this final message.

  In the end, he simply nodded.

  It seemed enough for the High Priest, who smiled and let the magic fade from Raz’s hand.

  “G-good,” the man said through the newly restored dark, coughing again and spraying more blood down his front. “Now, on the t-topic of… of swords… Do you have yours?”

  Raz felt a chill crawl down his spine, but he didn’t voice the fear. He just shook his head.

  “Be a friend and… and g-get it. Give Carro and I… a moment.”

  At once, Raz got to his feet. Turning, he ducked under the edge of the tree, onto the snow, and into the full light of the night sky once again. For a time he stood there, looking up at the Moon and Her Stars, offering up a prayer for the strength he would need.

  Then he started down the island’s embankment, back onto the ice, and made for the still outline of the ursalus, a great shape of indistinct black against a backdrop of bluish ice.

  He returned a few minutes later, having taken his time to extract the gladius from where it sat, buried nearly to the hilt above the stump of the bear’s neck, and cleaning it against the animal’s matted fur. When he stepped under the branches again, he averted his eyes from the men for a second, allowing them to finish a private moment. When he looked back, al’Dor was wiping red from his lips and beard, and the blood was smeared about Brahnt’s mouth.

  The High Priest turned his eyes on Raz again, and Raz felt the great emptiness that had become his heart expand and swallow every part of him as he saw that the man had tears in his eyes.

  Raz knelt down beside him, blade hanging from his side.

  “What-what’s that for?” Carro asked, his voice hoarse and braking, eyes on the gladius.

  Raz couldn’t answer him.

  “It’s… m-mercy,” Brahnt wheezed, squeezing the Priest’s hand. “It’s… kindness, Carro. Please… let him be…”

  al’Dor’s eyes, red and raw with tears, widened in sudden realization. For a second Raz thought the man was going to throw himself at him, or cast some blasting spell that would send him flying back out into the snow. He at least thought the Priest would howl his denials, shaking his head and sobbing in refusal to accept what was to be done.

  al’Dor, though, demonstrated a strength Raz had only seen hints of in the time he had known him. Instead of speaking, the man’s eyes moved from the sword to Brahnt’s tearful face, then down to the terrifying image that remained of his body. He was a healer, Raz realized. He must have known—of all the people b
eneath that tree—what Brahnt’s wounds meant. Lungs filling with blood. The slow constriction of the heart and the arteries around it. The pain of broken bones and ruptured organs…

  A stillness overtook al’Dor, broken only by the redoubling of his clinging to the High Priest’s right hand.

  Then he nodded.

  Raz looked to Brahnt.

  “Are you ready?” he asked him quietly. For a long few seconds the old man didn’t say anything, his eyes on al’Dor. When he finally rolled his head over the tree to look at Raz, he blinked rapidly, as though trying to chase away the fear that was threatening to overcome him.