A Percian, Raz realized, somewhat surprised. Seems we’re not the only outsiders around, are we, sis?
“The lizard means to bring the bounty hunters here,” Azzeki said aloud, though he seemed to be only addressing the Chairman. “He plans on standing his ground, luring them each in turn into fair combat, rather than keep running.”
“I’d gathered,” Tern responded quietly, watching Raz bristle at the slur. “And please watch your tongue, Azzeki. There’s no need to dredge up your personal feelings here.”
The soldier didn’t respond, instead choosing to stand at attention slightly behind and to the side of Tern’s chair, refusing to meet Raz’s eyes.
“Excuse Captain-Commander Koro, Master Arro,” the Chairman said with a disarming smile. “He has been with us for many years, and yet somehow has not seemed to shake off his old life entirely.”
“My kind aren’t often seen as more than property where he comes from,” Raz said simply, still staring up at the Percian, daring him to look down. “I take no offense, Chairman, though I do hope Azzeki here decides to try his luck at collecting the ten thousand crowns for himself…”
“He won’t,” Tern assured Raz, giving Azzeki an indicative look over his shoulder. “But, as we are back on the subject of your bounty, I would still like to hear this alternative plan of yours. Our method has worked out very well for us thus far and—”
“Your ‘method’ has left the entirety of your town fearing for its safety,” Raz growled, feeling himself grip Ahna’s haft in anger. “What’s left of it, that is. You’re lucky to have come across me in the unique position I am currently in or, I promise you, Chairman, you would already be dead. I’ve cleansed one city of its foulest, and I would be obliged to repeat the endeavor if you continue to tempt me.”
The motion was so quick it even took Raz by surprise. He was on his feet in a fraction of a second, towering up to face Azzeki, his gladius hissing from its sheath as Ahna fell to the ground. The dark-skinned man’s gaze had finally found his, a curved saber held threateningly before him. As they squared off, each eyeing the other with silent contempt, Raz noticed an utter stillness in the Captain-Commander’s form. There was a discipline there, a preparation of mind and body.
Raz realized suddenly that there was vastly more to Azzeki Koro than he might have ever given the man credit for.
Then Tern’s voice rose over the gasps and exclamations of the other councilmen.
“I said ENOUGH!” he spat, waving them down from his chair, which he’d never left. “Arro, sit. Azzeki, away with you. If I’ve need of you, I will say as much.”
Neither Raz nor the Captain-Commander moved for a good few seconds. Then Azzeki spat into the fire, sheathed his curved blade, and turned on his heel towards the back wall. Raz watched him walk away, only sitting down again and laying the gladius across his knees when the man had returned to his space against the stone.
“You have made your distaste for our ways clear,” Tern told Raz, and again he seemed to be having difficulty keeping the anger out of his voice. “But, while we are all quite aware of your exploits in the South, we also know that the freeze is upon us and you have no place to go. Not to mention your apparent affection for the Koyt brother and sister. So, if you are done making empty threats, Arro, I would like to move on with this conversation.”
Again Raz was surprised—and, resentfully, somewhat impressed—by this fat little man. He had no fear. Perhaps it was a life of wealth and luxury that had deluded him into thinking he was untouchable. Or maybe he just felt safe in the situation, his company outnumbering Raz nearly twenty-five to one.
Whatever the case, it was an irritating confidence.
“I was suggesting you send messages to the fringe cities in the South,” Raz started again, looking away from Tern to address the council as a whole. “And the other Northern towns, come to think of it. If you received word from the Mahsadën, then I’m sure you’re not the only ones. Tell them I’m here. Tell them the price on my head is up for grabs to any man or woman that wants it, and that you will guarantee that I am kept within the walls of Azbar until they arrive.”
“To what end?” one of the councilmen demanded.
Beside Raz, Tern snorted impatiently.
“To fight, obviously,” he snapped. “Old fools. Arro believes he can take on a world’s worth of bounty hunters and mercenaries, it seems.”
“On an even playing field, I can take on this world’s and the next’s,” Raz snarled. “I offered myself to fight in the place of Arrun and Lueski, and you accepted that. The only change is that I am now offering myself in exchange for the rest of your town. You think people will always want to see your trained men slaughter a handful of farmers and baker’s hands with nothing but a rusty blade to their name? The appeal will wear off, not to mention the obvious issue that you are butchering your own people. Eventually you’ll have no one left to throw in your precious pit. You’re tearing yourself apart from the inside, you fat trim, and you’re blinded by the gold you’re making hand over fist.”
He raised the gladius, letting it shine impressively in the firelight.
“I’m offering you a way out of all your problems. What have you got to lose? You said yourself you can make ten thousand crowns in a few weeks in this place. Even if I only last a fight or two, you’re bound to make up the lost bounty on sheer hype and skimmed profits from the bets. And if I live up to what I promise? If I thrash every sad excuse for a fighter you throw at me? How much do you stand to gain?” He was staring at Tern intently. “How much am I worth to your Arena if I’m as good as I claim to be? As good as you’ve been told I am?”
He was playing on the man’s greed, the only thing he was still positive held some sway on the Chairman. Sure enough, he could see the words sink in, see the avarice and desire shine in those mean blue eyes.
“Worst case?” Raz finished finally. “You make your twelve thousand gold, I get myself killed, and who’s to stop you going back to your old ways then. Best case? You make dozens that amount, and you stop poaching from your own people. You cannot lose.”
He knew he had convinced them before he’d even stopped speaking. All around the fire the councilmen were muttering amongst themselves, and Raz could tell from the words he caught over the flames that they were intrigued. In what Raz was starting to feel was his usual fashion, Tern was not looking away from him, taking him in as though again trying to discern if there was more than what he could see directly in front of him.
“And the freeze?” one of the other men asked. “The snows could start within the week. Your plan is all well and good, Master Arro, but it would have been better proposed as summer started, if not earlier.”
“Is it impossible to travel through snow?” Raz asked. It was both a sincere and rhetorical question. Though he assumed the answer was no, he had very little concept of what snow actually was, so he was gambling.
“Well… not exactly…” the councilman replied hesitantly. “But if you expect many to travel through the freeze just to—”
“I do,” Raz cut him off. “You might have your own concept of how much money ten thousand crowns is, but that notion is relative. It’s more than many men could accumulate in several lifetimes. If it is possible to travel during the freeze, they will come. I assure you.”
“Even so, that could take weeks,” the man on Raz’s right threw in. “We have fights scheduled in those times. Are you suggesting we cancel them?”
“If I could convince you to do so, I would.” Raz sighed. “Sadly, I get the feeling that’s not going to happen. I’ve met the Doctore. She’s informed me you have gladiators you keep on retainer. Pit me against those.”
“So you can kill our prized fighters?” the hard-faced man with the missing fingers interjected. “Not likely!”
Raz thought quickly.
“Then pit me against two or three of them at a time, unarmed. I can only imagine the bettors in the stands will shit themselves over that, a
nd you’ll only profit more. And I swear”—he held up a hand to stop the aged councilman from interrupting again—“your men will survive unscathed… relatively.”
The old man blinked, then smirked as though Raz had let slip some lewd joke.
“I wasn’t concerned for them. I was going to ask if you seriously expect us to believe you can take on our gladiators, unarmed, and come out on top? And without killing any of them?”
For a response, Raz reached up and undid the chest buckle of his gladius sheath. The scabbard fell to the floor, followed by the blade itself. As he drew his war ax from its belt loop, he looked at Tern.
“Chairman, can I assume your guard are as well trained as your gladiators?”
Tern watched Raz tug his dagger free from its sheath and put it on the ground beside his other weapons before responding.
“They’re trained well enough. Why?”
Raz undid the clasp of his cloak and stood up again. The entire wall behind him was cast into shadow as he stretched his wings to their fullest extent, smiling at the paling faces of the council.
“Because,” he replied casually, looking around at the uniformed men along the back wall, “I truly feel there is no better method of convincing a man than by example.”
Raz appeared a half hour later at the mouth of the Arena, mud soaked and freezing, but smiling. Ahna was thrown over one shoulder, his gear all strapped back into place. As he started down the steps towards the square, he saw Rhen catch sight of him, halting in her hushed discussion with one of the officers that had escorted them into town. Arrun and Lueski, sitting huddled together on the bottom steps with their backs to the Arena, saw her movements and looked around.
Lueski was first on her feet, stumbling up the stairs in a rush to throw her arms around Raz’s waist.
“Didn’t know if you were coming back,” she mumbled, her voice muffled as she pressed her face into his cloak which was, mercifully, still dry.
“Promised you I would, didn’t I?” he told her softly, reaching down to pet her head. She looked up at him, her eyes red but no longer tearful.
“Can we go home?”
Raz nodded, and he looked past her to Rhen. Reaching around to pull a thick roll of parchments from the back of his belt, he tossed it to the Doctore.
“They say that Arrun and Lueski can return to their properties, clear of debt, and are assured a small sum for expenses until I pay it back with any winnings I might make,” he called to her as she caught them, taking Lueski’s hand and leading her down the stairs. “They also guarantee me lodging, food, and drink in any establishment I choose, though I think I’ll be staying with these two for the time being.”
He let go of Lueski so that she could run and hug her brother, who was holding on to Raz’s pack as promised. Behind them, Rhen was scanning the documents quickly, flipping through them one at a time.
“They also say you’re to report to me at dawn in three days’ time for your first match,” she said as he came to stand beside her. “Three days, huh? I’m surprised they gave you a night, let alone that much time.”
“I was convincing,” Raz told her simply, watching Lueski dance around her brother as the boy laughed. The little girl looked happier than Raz had yet seen her. “They didn’t refuse me much of anything.”
“Well, let’s hope you’re as convincing come time to fight,” Rhen replied, rolling the parchments up and handing them back. “I’d hate for it all to turn sour for those two the moment things finally start to go their way.”
Raz looked sidelong at her. The woman, too, was watching the children, but there wasn’t a hint of sarcasm in her voice or scarred face as she spoke. Instead, she looked sad.
“I convinced the council to stop conscripting for the lists from within the town,” Raz told her in a hushed tone, still watching her. Rhen blinked, then whirled on him.
“Wha—! How?”
“You’ll see. Like I said… I was convincing.”
Leaving her dumbfounded, Raz moved back to the siblings, grabbing his heavy pack from Arrun, and shooing them on.
XI
“There is yet beauty in the cruelness of winter. It takes a true love of the world to look beyond the freeze, to look beyond the wind and snow, but if you can manage it you will see the serenity that lies hidden there. As I sit here beneath the wide limbs of great trees, I must say I have found a rare moment of true peace. The silence of morning, the warmth of some measure of sun clashing with the icy chill of the season air… Now, if only Talo would stop muttering in his sleep.”
—PRIVATE JOURNAL OF CARRO AL’DOR
TALO WAS dreaming of warm water and hot food. He was in his rooms back in the Citadel, enjoying a soak in the High Priest’s private bath chambers. Great wooden trays stacked with all manner of cooked meat, steamed vegetables, and toasted grain were floating around him, and he was thoroughly enjoying picking at anything that came within easy reach. He was far too comfortable to move, but fortunately the water seemed to be flowing just right, so that every few seconds another tray with a different tasty morsel would slip close enough to grab. He sighed, reaching beneath the surface to scratch an itch on the bottom of his foot.
“Delicious.” He spoke to no one in particular, merely addressing his own delightful satisfaction. “Mouthwatering. Absolutely hits the spot.”
He tossed a fat grape into his mouth, lounging back against the tiled wall of the bath. How could I have ever desired to leave this? he asked himself. He was so comfortable, so content. It was a rare commodity to be able to live like this. Why had he ever wanted to leave in the first place?
He reached down again to scratch the bottom of his foot. Suddenly, it was less of an itch and more of an odd throb.
Talo closed his eyes, breathing in deeply. He felt the warm vapor pleasantly muddle his thoughts. He wanted to sink below the hot water and never come up. He would never be cold or hungry again.
What was that annoying sensation?
Talo opened his eyes again and looked down. It took him a second to blink away the water that trickled from his forehead, but finally he made out his foot.
Was that a boot kicking him below the surface? And… wait…
Why in the Lifegiver’s name was he fully clothed?
Talo awoke blearily. Something was knocking harder and harder against the bottom of his foot. Groaning, he turned over under his thick swaddle of furs.
Carro was grinning down at him, kicking the bottom of his boot.
“Rise and shine, old man. It’s past time to get going.”
Talo groaned again, but sat up. They were camped out beneath the lowest branches of a massive pine, the ground around them a soft layer of brown needles. The air was chilly, still smelling of the thick Arocklen Woods they’d left behind only the day before, and the winter winds had finally started in earnest. They were under the last of the trees before the Dehn Plains, and from beneath the canopy Talo could just make out the distant greenery of hills and valleys.
It was beautiful, this place.
But it was also as cold as the freeze’s arse.
“I was having—quite possibly—the most wonderful dream a man could ever conceive in our current position,” Talo grumbled, throwing the furs off and shuddering as the cold morning air whooshed over him.
“You’ll have plenty more nights to continue it,” Carro snorted at him, bending down to fold up his bedroll. “We’re still a week out, and if we don’t get going we could get caught in the open if the snows start.”
“Bah,” Talo muttered sourly, but he got to his feet, flinching at the spasm in his bad knee. The remnants of the previous night’s fire still smoldered at the foot of his bedding, radiating vestiges of warmth, and it was with some regret that Talo extinguished them with a flick of his hand.
“Come on,” Carro called from outside the tree, where he was strapping his packs back on his horse. “If we make good time we’ll reach Ystréd before nightfall.”
Ystréd was one of
the few towns along the road to Azbar, and the thought of an actual bed and a hot meal was all Talo needed to galvanize himself into action. Not a quarter hour later the pair of them were leaving the camp behind, hoods pulled up and hand-spun-wool scarves wrapped loosely over the lower halves of their faces to fend off the wind.
The Dehn was truly a magnificent place. Steep hills rose up around shallow riverbeds that glittered in the cloudy sun. Everything was dark green, the earth grown thick with tall grass that made the world look like it was shifting and moving as the winds changed. Short waterfalls pooled into shallow depths where fish glimmered along the bottom, hardly moving as they prepared for the coming cold. Deer leapt across the hilltops in groups, and once Talo caught sight of a lone wolf eyeing them, seated at the mouth of its den beneath some stony outcrops.
Leaving well enough alone, though, it didn’t move to follow.
It had been years, Talo realized, since he’d been this far south. The Arocklen he’d still ventured through on the occasional summer days when his knee would allow it, but even then he could only ever explore the few miles that hemmed the great mountain stairway without making camp. Not to mention that as High Priest—and before that as Eret’s caretaker—he hadn’t the luxury of such freedoms in quite some time.
Now, though… such scenery was half the reason he had wanted to make this trip in the first place.
Talo smiled behind the wool scarf, looking out over the plains. He couldn’t help the memories rising up unbidden from past years. He remembered taking this very road—little more than a pair of tracks through the grass torn up by years of wagons and horses—with Syrah, Reyn, and Jofrey, winding in and out of the hills as they made for the grand dry deserts of the South. And before that, when he’d first brought Syrah back to the Citadel. She’d been such a little thing…
“What’s so funny?”
Carro was looking around at him, raising his voice to beat the wind. Talo realized he was still grinning behind his scarf. He raised an eyebrow.
The Warring Son (The Wings of War Book 2) Page 10