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

by Bryce O'Connor

  He paused, still gathering his thoughts.

  “Baoill hated her,” he said uneasily. “He despised the work she was doing, accused her of attempting to rob the tribe of its culture, the people of their gods. Syrah even said he suggested more than once she be made a prisoner, and treated to the old ways of execution.”

  “Which were?”

  Carro turned slightly green and shivered. “Too unpleasant to describe. Needless to say, if the new Kayle has a grudge…”

  “He may act on it, now that he has the means,” Raz said with a nod. “Two birds with one stone.”

  Carro looked confused at that, and Raz sighed.

  “He pays back an old enemy, and handicaps the one institution that may prove to be a major threat to his crusade in the immediate future,” he explained, voicing his earlier thoughts. “If the Laorin really have—or had—the ability to marshal the remaining valley towns, then by marching on the Citadel the Kayle has the opportunity to get his hands on Syrah and remove a majority of the faith’s influence in one go.” He looked back down at the camp. “All in all, I think your Kayle is one clever bastard.”

  Carro continued to watch him, the look on his face equal parts impressed and terrified.

  “Apparently he’s not the only one,” he muttered after a time, finally looking away.

  “Hmm?” Raz asked, not taking his eyes from the milling throng of mountain warriors moving about their cooking fires, shouting to each other and shifting as patrols and sentries came and went.

  “Nothing,” the Priest said shakily. “But I’d like to get moving. Staying here makes me nervous.”

  “Is our goal still the stairs?”

  Carro stopped, half stooped as he’d been making to stand and turn away from the firelight.

  “Of course,” he said, his tone almost accusing in his surprise. “Did you think there was another option?”

  Raz said nothing for several seconds, still not looking away from the glow of the camp.

  “It’s going to be risky,” he spoke up finally. “This changes things, Carro. Getting to the stairs isn’t going to be a simple matter of finding them and making the climb. There are bound to be men watching the base of the path, and even if we do get past them, what have we accomplished? Nothing more than getting us stuck in the Citadel with the rest of your people. It’s not the smart play. We would be better off turning around and making back for Ystréd.”

  “Ystréd?” Carro demanded shrilly, looking suddenly furious. “Ystréd? And what are we going to do there? How does turning and running help those trapped atop the mountain?”

  “How does getting trapped up there with them help them?” Raz retorted. “It doesn’t. We have nothing with us that will be of use, no information that might solve their predicament. They must know they’re trapped, by now. They know the Kayle’s men are waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs. But if we turn around and make back for the valley towns, we do have information. We can tell them that we think the Kayle isn’t actually pushing south. We can tell them they have time to prepare, to gather an army and launch a counterassault before Baoill even has a chance to make for Ystréd. We could—”

  “Leave my people to die,” Carro cut across him in a harsh, hissed whisper, his face still set in fury. “You’re suggesting we abandon the faithful, suggesting we sacrifice them to their fate in order to buy the rest of the North a few months of time to prepare.”

  Raz was taken aback. “That’s not what I’m saying. I just think we—”

  “No, you’re not thinking,” Carro spat. “You’re not thinking at all. If we leave now, we sentence the men and women of the Citadel to nothing more than a delayed death. By the time we reach Ystréd again—in the full freeze, mind you—contact the valley towns—again, in the full freeze, which I’ve already told you is difficult enough as is—and marshal them to our banner, it would be summer at minimum. And that’s if Talo had been with us!”

  He calmed suddenly, as he spoke his lover’s name. For a moment, pain and sadness replaced anger, and his body seemed to sag as his gaze fell to the ground. When he spoke again, it was with a softer, kinder tone.

  “I’m sorry, Raz. I know you don’t have an ideal grasp on all the players in this game, so this time I need you to trust me. I understand the logic of your idea, but it won’t work. There are too many factors, and I don’t have the pull Talo did with the towns. The best we could hope to do is get back to Atler and have her petition Ystréd’s High Court to reach out to the other municipalities, and you can be damn sure no one will answer—at least not in time.” He sighed. “I know there’s probably nothing we can do. I know it’s a fool’s errand, but I know the only life I would be saving by turning around now is my own. Worst of all—” he looked up at Raz, his face pained but composed “—I know I can’t do anything alone.”

  Raz watched him carefully, taking in the man and processing his words. There was truth there, Raz conceded. He didn’t know all the factors, and he just couldn’t imagine Carro letting emotion cloud his judgment in this crucial moment. If he said Raz’s plan was scrap, then it was scrap. If he said leaving now was equivalent to condemning the residents of the Citadel to their fate, then he meant it.

  And that, Raz told himself as the dreamt image of a dancing woman crept among his thoughts again, is unacceptable.

  As the self-preserving wedge of himself screamed in frustration, Raz knew he had made his decision.

  “Alright,” he said simply. Carro blinked in surprise again.

  Then he looked suddenly hopeful.

  “Al-Alright?” he asked tentatively, eyes brightening.

  “Alright,” Raz repeated with a nod. “I’ll help. Moon knows I’ve been dodging Her long enough as it is. Might as well keep gambling. But it’s one thing to knock out a pair of distracted sentries in the half-dark, Carro. It’s another entirely to take on whatever guard the commander of this—” he waved down at the tents “—has undoubtedly posted. We’re already going to have to go around the edge of the camp to even get to the path. After that… I have no idea what’s waiting for us, but whatever it is there’s a good chance we’re going to have to fight our way through.”

  Carro’s face lost its hopefulness, looking suddenly green again, but when he opened his mouth to speak, Raz cut him off.

  “Don’t bother asking me not to kill, Carro. I’ve done your Lifegiver one favor already today. I intend to do him—and Talo—another by getting your neck up to the Citadel in one piece, if I can manage it. To do that, I can’t keep playing the saint. I’ll do what needs doing, despite your hounding.”

  “You can’t,” Carro pleaded. “Please, Raz. You can’t. They’re people. They’ve been granted life by something far beyond you and I. They have families. Children. Please. You ca—”

  “I can, and I will,” Raz growled, edging away from the hill and getting to his feet, lifting Ahna back over his shoulder from where she’d lain crossways on the ground before him. “You can’t win this one, Carro. I know they have families. I know they have children. If that were enough to stop death—even enough to stop cruelty—then the world would have no use for people like me. Maybe it would be better for it, and maybe not. Either way, you have a choice. I’m not giving you an ultimatum. It’s simply the reality of your situation: either you accept my help in every form it comes and we have a shot at actually making it to your High Citadel, or we turn back.”

  “Before you say anything,” he continued quickly, interrupting Carro’s angry spluttering as he started to reply, “consider the consequences: if we make it up the stairs, you have a chance to help your people. If you’re thinking of leaving me here, ask yourself if you can get to the path on your own. If not, then it’s worse than if we had made for Ystréd again. I die—likely to this damned cold—you die, and the Laorin die in their fortress on the mountain, with no chance of anyone sending help. Personally I think we’re all fucked either way, but that’s my business.”

  Carro’s face
was deathly white. “Th-they could send letters,” he stuttered. “Syrah and the council can plead for assistance on their own! I’m sure they have already!”

  “And to what end? You’ve done your best to convince me that Talo was the only true solution the Laorin had to this mess. Talo is gone, Carro. I’m sorry, but he’s gone. So what good will inked words from some nameless Priest or Priestess do your people now?”

  Carro was quivering. Not out of anger, Raz knew, but out of horror. He was at an impasse with his own ethics. Whatever direction he chose, death awaited. It was the inevitable difficulty of holding true to a code, of wielding iron morals.

  And it had been the undoing of more than one man who’d been unable to bend his rules in order to make a decision.

  Carro seemed to be fighting that exact struggle. He was shaking, a permanent expression of hopelessness imprinted across his features. He looked practically on the very edge of going mad, like he’d been handed a blade and told to murder one of his children.

  After a while, Raz decided to throw him some rope.

  “Your lover had to make a similar decision, not so long ago, Carro,” he said kindly, taking a step forward. “In Azbar. Talo had to choose in the space of a very short time whether he would lend me—me, the bloody, savage Monster of Karth, the murderous Scourge of the South—his aid, and the faith’s aid. He had the same struggle, with the devil of my persuading logic sitting on one shoulder and the godly words of Kal Yu’ri on the other. He had to make a choice, and do you know what he said?”

  Slowly, Carro shook his head, his blue eyes shining in the orange glow reflecting off the icy canopy above them.

  “He said, ‘Until the day comes when He sees fit to end all wars, the Lifegiver is not unaware that violence will exist among His flock.’ He spoke of the difference between a life taken, and a life given, and said that if any were to ask him what he would prefer—the death of less or the death of more—then it would be an easy answer to give. He said that, when your Lifegiver saw fit to give him the opportunity to save those he could, he would take it. Even if that opportunity was me.”

  It was all true. They were the words that had convinced Raz that Talo was a man worth respecting, a man worth following, and they were the words he had kept with him ever since that day in the Koyts’ cramped home.

  “I need you to take the opportunity that is me, Carro,” he said finally. “I need you to accept that the world is not black and white, and that there are times when the only path that can be taken is the better of two shitty opportunities. I need you to pick the lesser of the evils, as Talo did before you.”

  The words struck Carro hard. Raz could see that. The shaking had ended, but the man seemed also to have stopped breathing, like the disclosure of Talo’s actions had shaken something loose within him and he were struggling to replace it.

  When he moved again, he surprised Raz by giving a slow, unsound laugh.

  “That sounds like Talo,” he said wearily. “To a letter, that sounds just like him. I always envied him that ability. That strength…”

  “And you were one of many,” Raz told him. “But you have a chance now to borrow some of it for a purpose.”

  Carro nodded slowly.

  “You’ve backed me into a corner, Raz,” he said with a twisted grimace, looking down at the camp below them. “I’m not sure I like it.”

  “I told you, I’m giving you no ultimatum. These are simply the facts of the situation.”

  Carro nodded again. “I suppose so. Still… I don’t like it.”

  “No one would. It doesn’t change the fact that you need to make a choice…”

  Carro gave a pained, warped sort of smile.

  “Aye, that I do…” he said almost inaudibly, as though speaking to himself. “And if that’s the case, I might have an idea. Let’s go find out if there really is a difference between less and more.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Raz was not a fan of Carro’s plan.

  He’d been thoroughly impressed with it, at first, as the Priest explained, outlining the concept to him on their brisk walk back along the path, Gale plodding along at their back after they’d retrieved him from where he’d been hidden among the trees. When they’d gotten to his role in the scheme, though, Raz had bristled.

  “You want me to what?”

  “Not actually,” Carro had told him in a huff. The man seemed to have found a bit of his old self now that they’d made a decision. “You’ll just need to pretend. Your hands won’t even be bound.”

  It didn’t make Raz feel any better. Still, as he hadn't been able to come up with anything better—mostly, he thought, because he knew shit-all about what they were getting themselves into—he went with it. It was several minutes of rapid walking later, therefore, that they arrived at their initial destination.

  They’d snuffed out the torches the sentries had been carrying and dragged the unconscious forms behind the thickets along the left side of the path, out of easy view. By the time they returned, one of the mountain men was slowly coming to, groaning and blinking as he attempted to clear his head.

  Quick as a snake Raz fell to one knee beside him, drew his gladius, and slammed the sword’s pommel down between the man’s eyes, knocking him out cold once more.

  “What?” Raz asked innocently as Carro caught up to him and gave him a scathing look.

  The Priest had seemed to decide that silence was the best punishment, and set about his task without so much as a word to Raz.

  It took a while for them to make their preparations. They began by selecting the larger of the two men—the one closer to Carro’s size—and stripping him of his armor, leathers, and most of his furs. Raz would have taken him down to his loincloth and let him freeze, but Carro’s withering warnings of where he’d light his magical fires next time resulted in the man being left in a thick shirt, heavy cotton pants, and socks.

  He’d probably catch a cold, but it was doubtful he’d die before he or his companion woke up.

  This done, they moved north up the path again, then off into the Woods to get Carro dressed. It was tedious work, requiring the man to change first into the lighter traveler’s attire he’d apparently worn most of the way to Azbar when they’d left the Citadel at summer’s end, then don the heavier leather and iron armor they’d scavenged off the sentry. Both he and Raz shared in a number of curses throughout this process, Carro because the bulky layers stank and his broken arm made him grunt in pain every time it shifted, and Raz because he was so accustomed to the exquisite work of Allihmad Jerr that he had practically forgotten how much of a headache it could be to strap a man into armor. At last, though, they managed, and eventually Carro stood, huffing and wheezing, looking very much the part of a true mountain man in weathered gear, his blond, braided hair and beard touching it all off nicely.

  Next came Ahna and Carro’s staff. Raz had always done his best to keep the dviassegai easily accessible, but after some deliberation they concluded it was neither likely nor practical for the plan at hand. In the end Raz had covered her blades with her old leather sack, then—with much help from Carro and no help from the horse—strapped her and the staff lengthwise along Gale’s left side. They’d shifted as much other weight as they could to the animal’s right, including Raz’s gladius and war-ax, and eventually seemed to find a good balance.

  Barring a deliberate inspection, Ahna and the steel staff could now pass as a pair of plain spears, and Gale as the well-armed charger of a mountain warrior.

  At last it was Raz’s turn. Grumbling all the while, he used a good length of browning vine he managed to pull down from a nearby sapling to wrap his heavy furs tightly about his hands and wrists. This served the dual purpose of hiding the steel of his gauntlets and making it look as though his hands—when held close together—had been bound. Once he’d managed this he pulled his tail in and about his waist, then tucked his wings in as tight as they would go. Drawing his hood up as high as he could over his face, Raz did a fi
nal check to make sure his gladius and ax were within easy reach, hanging off Gale’s saddle behind Carro’s thigh, having helped the man clambered up onto the horse a minute earlier.

  Then Raz reached up and, with a scowl he couldn’t help, grabbed the back-most saddle straps, keeping his wrists close together.

  In the space of twenty minutes, Carro al’Dor and Raz i’Syul Arro, Priest of Laor and the infamous Monster of Karth, had become nothing more than a tribesman dragging along a vanquished, enslaved prisoner.

  “Did I mention how much I really don’t like this?” Raz asked for the fourth time as they started to walk north and west again, back towards the mountain men’s camp, Gale limping steadily along. He wasn’t sure if it was just in his head, but he thought the bare skin of the twin scars that encircled his wrists beneath his gauntlets was itching suddenly. “I mean I really, really don’t like this.”

  “Well next time you can come up with a plan,” Carro snapped under his breath. “Now be quiet. We’ll be there soon.”