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

by Bryce O'Connor

  Then, when she was done with her prayers, Syrah conjured up one last face, one more monstrous and terrifying than any before, and settled into the old, comforting habit of studying the grace of his inhuman features, taking in the fierceness of his golden eyes that always made her feel safe, always made her feel calm.

  The crunch of snow ripped that peace from her in an instant.

  Syrah’s good eye snapped open at the sound, and she gasped involuntarily, feeling adrenaline wash through her in an unbearable cascade across her back, arms, and legs. A few times she had heard men’s voices about the tent, but they’d all been either grouped up or too distant to be of any relevance to her current situation.

  This time, though, the approaching man spoke not a word.

  It seemed an eternity then that she waited. Each of the man’s steps rumbled through her mind, echoing in the cavern of terror that opened up once more within her. She tried not to listen, tried not to care as she made out the rustle of his armor and furs, then the light pant of his breathing. She failed though, the sounds warping together to pull at her, to bring her to a state of near panic as her own breath began to come in shallow heaves, her heart pounding in her chest like someone where striking her from the inside with a heavy club.

  There was the bending sound of creasing leather followed by the chill of icy air pouring in from the outside, spilling around Syrah like some vile omen.

  Then the man stepped into the tent.

  CHAPTER 39

  Kareth Grahst stood over her for some time, leering down with a look of such inhuman anticipation that Syrah felt herself go numb. She was stiff with fright despite having known what was coming, unable to move or speak or even breathe. She took him in with her one eye, marking his worn leather and fur armor, the sword slung on one hip, and the beads and metal rings wound into his dirty hair and beard. She saw again the thickness of his form, the terrifying breadth of his shoulders and the wretched hunger with which his gaze sought her out. She saw again the demon who had butchered the Priests and Priestesses that had stood alongside her at the bottom of the mountain pass.

  This time, though, his attention was directed wholly and undistracted at her, and his bloodlust had been replaced by simpler, raw desire.

  At last the man spoke.

  “Welcome, Witch,” he said, not moving and not taking his eyes off of Syrah. “I hope you’ve been comfortable while you wait.”

  The way he said it made Syrah understand without a doubt, then, that Kareth Grahst had known all too well the sort of torment delaying the inevitable must have caused her. It was a tactic, a ploy to shake her, to start the final, gradual process of breaking her.

  Instead, it just reminded Syrah of what sort of man—of what sort of monster—stood before her. Instead, it drove the terror and trepidation away, shoved it aside for something harder, stronger.

  Fear was suddenly replaced with cold, shivering anger.

  “Let’s get on with this, Grahst,” she said in the Common Tongue, shifting herself more comfortably up on the furs and spreading her knees in mockery of his lust. “I doubt you’ve ever lasted long enough to be entertaining, so the sooner you embarrass yourself, the sooner the real men can get about their business again.”

  It was only for a half-a-moment, but it was there. Grahst’s face twisted, his smirk vanishing to transform into a furious grimace. In that time Syrah felt a thrill of victory.

  Then Grahst smiled again, and the viciousness there, lying in wait like some half-starved wolf, made Syrah suddenly wish that she had kept her mouth shut.

  In a flash Grahst’s sword was in his hand, and he swung it down at her, striking at her leg. Syrah screamed instinctively, first in shocked fear as the blow descended, then in pain as the flat of the man’s cold blade struck the inside of her exposed thigh, hammering into the bruised flesh. She had just enough time to close her legs, rolling her body to one side, when the blade fell again, this time striking her calf with such force she thought any more would have broken the bone. After that it fell a third time, then a fourth, then a fifth. Each time the steel connected with some fleshy part of her hips, thighs, and shins, but Syrah—after two weeks of being fed little and less—was not the fit, healthy young woman she had been in the High Citadel. She was too thin, too ragged, and the hammering metal sent waves of fire through her bones and limbs. She screamed with every strike, wailing in pain.

  When the blows finally stopped, she laid there, awkwardly twisted on the furs, shaking as her legs spasmed, half-numb and half-burning below her.

  “Speak out of turn again, bitch,” Grahst said, standing directly over her now, sword held by his side, “and it won’t be the flat of the blade when I strike you next. Do you understand?”

  Syrah said nothing, partially in defiance but mostly because she had no space to give thought to respond. She was dominated by the torment, trying not to cry out while struggling with the residual pain of the blows, her breathing coming in uneven, anguished inhalations.

  There was a thump of a knee settling down beside her, and a hard, calloused hand clamped suddenly around her jaw, wrenching her face up again.

  “I said,” Grahst repeated in a low, threatening hiss that didn’t match his smile, “‘do you understand?’”

  Given little choice, Syrah nodded.

  Grahst smiled wider. “Good.”

  Then he backhanded her, striking her across the face so hard Syrah felt her lip split as she gasped.

  There were stars dancing across her vision as she looked back around at the man, her vision blurred. Grahst was busying himself by unfastening the loops of his armor, stripping out of the hardened leathers piece by piece until his torso was covered by nothing but a stained cloth shirt. She blinked up at him, still kneeling across her, and it took a moment for the horror to return as she realized what he was doing.

  Grahst was getting undressed.

  Suddenly overcome with panic, Syrah did the only thing that came to mind. The man was half-straddling her, a knee on one side of her, a boot on the other. Bucking herself up, Syrah drove a leg upward, aiming for his crotch, yelling vengefully as she did.

  Grahst, though, was faster. Demonstrating all the speed and agility he had shown as they’d fought up the first steps of the pass, he blocked the blow by shifting his high knee down, shielding the fragile parts of his anatomy from her abuse. Then, before Syrah had so much as an instant to brace herself, he drove a gloved fist into her stomach, right in the center of her gut.

  “Pitiful,” Grahst said, watching Syrah retch and hack as the breath was driven out of her. “You’ll have to do better than that to save yourself. And if you can’t even fight me off, imagine how little amusement you’ll provide the Kayle on the morrow.”

  Syrah said nothing, trying to curl around herself as waves of nausea wracked her body. Grahst, though, wouldn’t hear of it, and his smile only widened as she struggled against his touch, tears of desperation and panic forming unwillingly to trail down her left cheek while she fought to breathe. Syrah gasped and heaved, trying to free herself of the man’s hands even as she felt them begin to wrench her legs apart. She fought him, this time, thrashing about even after Grahst settled his hips between her knees, preventing her from closing them again. Finally catching her breath, Syrah began to shriek, her composure broken, the beating having done its job.

  Grahst just pulled off a glove with his mouth and shoved the leather between her teeth.

  Syrah retched again, then, gagging on the taste and feeling of the hide against the back of her throat. She kept trying to scream, though, as she watched Grahst reach down with his other hand and shift his hips out of the thick cloth pants he was wearing. It took a moment, but soon he was free of them, the fabric falling about his knees. Syrah began to buck again as he revealed himself. He struck her once more, this time across the other side of the face, then moved his hand to pull at her robes, trying to hike them up and out of the way. As he did a wave of cold fear washed over Syrah, tinglin
g across her skin and drawing gooseflesh to its surface. She looked around at him again, blinking as the blow and the braziers played tricks on her muddled mind, shifting the shadows so that it seemed Kareth Grahst became a demon in truth, dark wings blooming out to either side of him while he smiled, managing finally to get the torn cloth of her clothes out of the way. He laughed in wicked triumph, starting to press his hips forward. She could feel him now, feel him seeking the space between her legs where he could take his pleasure.

  Schlunk!

  Abruptly, Grahst’s laughter cut short. In the same moment, he stopped fighting, his eyes growing wide, their gaze shifting slowly from Syrah’s terrified face downward, towards his chest. It was only when they rested there that Syrah, too, looked to see what had drawn the man’s attention away.

  The leather glove muffled her howl once again.

  Grahst’s ragged shirt, originally loose and baggy around him, stood out from his chest in two twin points. Even as Syrah watched, the cotton around these tips grew steadily darker, spilling downward to form ragged, thick lines of uneven blackish red along his torso. Grahst started to make a noise, a bubbling rasp of agony and death, but before he could get it out in full it was swallowed by a different, much more terrifying sound.

  A throaty, deafening roar that chilled Syrah to the core.

  Grahst made a last “urk!” as he was lifted off his knees, pulling the glove from Syrah’s mouth as he hung suspended three feet off the ground on the end of whatever strange device had impaled him. As the roar pitched higher he was whipped sideways, his body careening into the side of the tent to Syrah’s left. There was the ripping sound of thread, and the cloth and hides split as the man’s corpse tore through a section of the wall and tumbled over the ground to come to a rest, twitching, in the basking glow of the Sigûrth camp’s main fire.

  Syrah, though, didn’t see the hole. She didn’t see the flames, or the shadows, or hear the shouts of men come running to see what the commotion was about. The only thing she noticed, in fact, was the cold brought in from the night outside. The cold, mirroring the chill of Grahst’s entrance into the tent.

  And the cold moments before, which she’d thought was fear, but was in fact the winter air pouring through a great slash that had been in the back wall, behind the figure that stood over her now.

  A figure she had never thought to see again, except in her dreams.

  He was a massive, terrifying thing, far bigger than she remembered, all dark scaled muscle and worn steel armor. The membranes of his ears and wings glowed red in the firelight now, long matured from the sunset shades she had last seen. He had an ax on one hip, the hilt of a sword peeking over the opposite shoulder, and a massive, twin-bladed spear held in hands gloved in clawed gauntlets. His face had changed, too, the angles of his serpentine features having grown sharper, harder than she recalled.

  And almost every inch of him, from the leather wraps about his arms and thighs down to the matted brown furs of the huge mantle that hung over his shoulders, was splattered with blood.

  All these details, though, Syrah only vaguely registered, barely noting them as her gaze lifted, seeking the most striking thing she remembered about the man. She found what she was looking for at once, meeting his eyes even as they sought hers.

  Those sharp, amber eyes, the color of burnished gold, warm—to her—as the rising sun.

  For several seconds they just stared at each other, she drinking him in, he doing the same.

  When she finally spoke, it was in a choked, sobbing whisper of unbearable relief.

  “Raz?”

  For an instant Raz i’Syul Arro’s face changed. As she recognized him, Syrah witnessed a relief of equal measure wash over the atherian, dragging the anger and hardness from him. She saw, in that brief second, a glimpse of the boy she had met so many years ago, the boy who had thrown himself into the wolves’ den to save her, the boy who had killed for her.

  And the boy who hadn't, when she’d begged him not to.

  Then there was a howl, and one of Kareth Grahst’s Sigûrth came leaping into the room, closely followed by two others. In a blink the atherian’s face settled into a beastly calm.

  Then he was between her and the mountain men.

  What Syrah witnessed in the minute that followed was something she would only ever be able to describe as terrifyingly beautiful. Too shaken to voice any denial, with sickened fascination she watched Raz i’Syul Arro dispatch the Kayle’s warriors one after the other, never granting them so much as an inch in her direction. The great spear in his hands moved with the grace and speed of a bird of prey, twisting and turning and diving into the melee, joined by striking kicks, lithe lashes of a heavy tail, and blurred slashes of steel claws ripping through leather and flesh or else darting out to pluck swords from hands and wrench shields out of the way. In less than thirty seconds the three men were slain, then a fourth, delayed behind them, a fifth, and finally a sixth. After that it seemed all who had been nearby lay dead or dying at the atherian’s feet. There were shouts in the distance, others who had made out the sounds of the fight, and for the space of a breath Raz kept his back to her, the red blade of his crest rising threateningly above his head, wings spread to either side.

  When he turned again, though, his golden eyes finding hers once more, the menace died, the animal fled from his face, and the heartbreaking warmth returned. He approached her, dropping to one knee at her side, falling as though dragged helplessly down by the intense deliverance that painted his alien features, the spear clunking atop the furs beside him.

  “Syrah,” he breathed, the word choked by some mix of joy and misery. “Syrah. Thank the Sun.”

  Raz knelt beside Syrah Brahnt, deaf and blind to all but the woman before him, lying on her back on the layered elk and wolf pelts, chained up like some animal readied for the slaughter. He didn’t know how to feel, how to think. All he could do was stare at her, taking her in, bathing in the realization that she was alive, that she was whole.

  Or almost.

  Raz, helpless in his growing outrage, stared at the woman’s face. His eyes first flicked to the knotted remnant of her right ear, then to the rag, worn and dirty, wrapped diagonally over her right eye. He felt cold fire spring up within him once more when he saw the hint of a vertical scar above and below the frayed edges of the cloth.

  The mark of a blade.

  “What did they do to you?” he demanded with wrenching fury, ignoring the rumble of voices building up and approaching in the distance behind him. “Syrah, what happened?”

  Syrah looked suddenly ill, turning her face away from him to hide the eye. As she did he noticed her shifting uncomfortably, trying to cover herself after the savage had hitched her robes above her hips. Raz made to help, reaching for the tattered remnants of the clothes in the hopes of saving what modesty she had left.

  But before he could do so, he froze.

  He saw the marks, then, all along the insides and outsides of her thin thighs, fiery welts that looked like the flat of a sword overlaying dozens of black and blue bruises. He saw the yellowed imprint of teeth—human teeth—in her flesh, marring the otherwise calm paleness of her skin. He saw the way her legs shook, and the way she spasmed when he took ahold of the bunched cotton around her hips. He saw the way she refused to look at him as he—slowly and with delicate, gentle care—finally covered her up.

  It took everything he had not to drop into the pit that had ripped open inside of him at the sight of the damage that had been done.

  More shouts gathered behind them, and Raz slipped.

  “I need to get you out of here,” he said hurriedly, getting to his feet, lifting his spear in one hand as he did. Syrah turned to look at him again as he took stock of the bindings around her wrists.

  When he grabbed hold of them with one hand, she looked suddenly fearful.

  “What are you going to—?” she started.

  “Cover your face,” he interrupted just as the sound of approaching
feet, running towards them at full tilt, became clear over the snap and crack of the fire behind him.

  Syrah, hesitated, then did as she was told.

  When he was sure her eye was covered, Raz gave the post a single crushing kick.

  The timber—despite being as thick as a man’s arm—didn’t have a prayer under the force of the blow. It snapped in two without so much as a fight, partially collapsing the tent around them. Raz started to haul Syrah up, intending to help her towards the slash he’d cut in the back of the tent. As he did, though, he realized with a heavy pitting in his stomach that the woman weighed next to nothing, her tall form almost pulled right off the ground by his assistance.

  She’s so thin, he thought, noticing for the first time the prominence of bone in her arms and legs, and the shallowness of her cheeks. Syrah groaned as she settled onto her feet, swaying dangerously.