by G. A. Aiken
“Or perhaps we can come up with another option,” Gaius suggested. “One that involves little to no bloodshed.”
Now the Dwarf King locked on Gaius. “Who are you?”
“Gaius Domitus of the—”
“Domitus? An Iron?” the king suddenly bellowed, jumping to his feet, and the dwarves around them also stood, their weapons now out.
Although these dwarves were small in height, they were wide, strong and, Kachka knew, well trained in warfare. From hand-to-hand combat to full-on assaults.
What the Dwarf King had said to Kachka had been what she’d expected. They heard this from many males outside the Outerplains who had never gone toe-to-toe with the Daughters of the Steppes. They’d all heard of the damage the Riders had done. The cities they’d destroyed. They saw the Daughters as a “challenge.” Females to be conquered and possessed before being tossed away for others younger and prettier.
They found out the very hardest way possible, though, that Kachka and her tribal sisters were not to be fucked with lightly. Or at all.
Yet despite all that, she had not expected their reaction to Gaius. The Sovereign Empire’s reputation had mellowed over the years under Gaius’s rule, but perhaps if Overlord Thracius had come after her people, she’d be less inclined to deal with anyone from his bloodline. Even an enemy of the old guard.
The Dwarf King glowered at Aidan. “You bring an Iron here? To my kingdom?”
“I didn’t—”
“Do you know what Thracius did to my people?” the king went on. “The lives he destroyed? What he did to our children?”
“He’s the Rebel King,” Brannie quickly explained. “Overlord Thracius’s enemy. He defeated him in battle and took his throne.”
“So? Blood is blood.”
Gaius took a step toward the Dwarf King, and the other dwarves moved a bit closer to the group, ready to strike should Gaius make the first move.
“When I was young,” Gaius said calmly, “Overlord Thracius thought my sister had been rude to his favored daughter. Vateria. But . . . my sister is very pretty and he had plans to mate her off to a friend of his. So he decided to teach her a lesson by using his talon to tear the eye from my head while we both begged him not to.” The Rebel King pulled off his eye patch, revealing the brutal scar and the eyelid sewn shut all those years ago to keep dirt and dust out of the now-empty space. “He wanted her to understand, you see, that he was not to be questioned. Not to be challenged in any way by anyone.”
“Why didn’t you kill your uncle then?”
“My sister and I were twelve winters old. We couldn’t even fly, much less take on my uncle. Then he killed our father in front of us and . . .” Gaius let out a breath. Kachka immediately understood this was still hard for him.
“But,” he finally went on, “we never forgot. And we never forgave. Not this. Not him.”
“So you killed him during the great battle of Euphrasia Valley?”
Gaius laughed. “No, no. That was her,” he said, pointing at Brannie.
“It was not me. I just distracted him until Izzy could fuck up his spine enough so he couldn’t fly away. My cousin Éibhear did the rest.” She looked at the Dwarf King. “And it was not pretty. He was in a really bad place then. Éibhear. You see, he blamed himself for the death of—”
“I don’t care,” the Dwarf King cut in.
Brannie stopped telling her story, but she did mutter, “Rude,” under her breath.
“There. Feel better, Dwarf King?” Kachka said. “Now will you help or not?”
“Come,” he ordered, walking past Kachka and Gaius to the pub’s front door. “I already know what you’ve come for.”
Aidan stared at his father. “Do you care at all about what’s happened to your family?”
Lord Jarlath continued to drink his ale, showing no interest in much of anything.
Brannie tapped her friend’s arm. “Come on. Let’s get this done. So we can get you back to your mates and your sister.”
He nodded and walked out, the rest of them following.
The Dwarf King led the way, a few of his warriors bringing up the rear. As they moved, Kachka asked, “How do you know what we are here for?”
He glanced back at her, smirking. “A god told me.”
“You know,” Brannie explained, “once you’ve been around Annwyl for a while, you’ll realize that information is not as shocking as you’d think it would be.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ainmire, eyeless, stared at his old home, but he felt nothing as he watched the True Believers use catapults. They weren’t trying to take the castle down. He’d warned them nothing would take it down. But the attack was keeping his father’s armed forces quite busy and that’s all they wanted.
It had hurt when they’d taken his eyes from his head, but his commitment to his god had given him vision he hadn’t had before. Now he could truly see.
And hear.
They came in without words or battle cries, but Ainmire heard the flutter of their wings, the tiny clacks of their talons.
A female came down onto the dragon beside Ainmire. That dragon had not fully committed to Chramnesind. He still had both his eyes. So he never saw the She-dragon until she’d landed on his back and slammed her broadsword into his spine.
It took a lot to fully commit to their god the way Ainmire had, so many of his brothers and sisters didn’t know they were under attack from behind until it was too late.
Moving quickly, Ainmire backed away from the battle, which was now much closer. And, as he did, he prayed to his god. Not for salvation, but for what was happening inside that mountain to be a success. Before he’d walked into his old home earlier that evening, both his eyes still in his head, he hadn’t been worried. But then he’d seen Aidan and his Mì-runach chums. And the Cadwaladr bitch.
That’s when he’d become worried.
The Dwarf King led them out of his city but deeper still into the Western Mountains until they came down a long passageway to a narrow crevice protected by a small battalion of dwarf warriors.
The king moved them aside with a gesture and pointed. “In there.”
“You must be joking,” Gaius said to him. “We can’t fit through that crevice.”
“Neither can we. But what you want is in there, Iron. Placed there by the gods an age ago. How you get it out is your problem.”
Gaius shrugged. “Fair enough.” He gestured to the crevice. “Zoya.”
The dwarves moved farther back as she approached, then faced the crevice. Doubling up her fists, she began to pummel the stone face. They all turned their heads as chunks of rock began to fly.
After about five minutes, Zoya stopped and faced them all, raising her hands with their now bloody knuckles. “Now we can all enter, comrades!” she crowed.
“Thank you, Zoya.”
“You are welcome, Rebel King.” She slapped her hand against Gaius’s spine as she walked past him and Gaius looked to Kachka.
“Owww,” he whispered to her.
Then Kachka did something rather remarkable. She rubbed his back before entering the battered opening. An effort to ease the harshness of Zoya’s hearty backslaps.
He doubted that Kachka had any idea what that small move meant to him. More importantly, he doubted she understood what it meant to her.
Gaius followed behind Kachka, but she stopped before he could go into the crevice with her.
“Stay here.”
“Kachka—”
“I am the one they sent, Gaius. Not you. Me. Stay here. Watch my back.”
She disappeared inside and Gaius began to pace back and forth, his gaze constantly straying to the Dwarf King and his soldiers. Finally, he stopped.
“What haven’t you told us?”
“You Irons. You don’t trust anybody.”
“Have you met my family? Oh. That’s right. They destroyed half your people! So, yeah . . . I don’t trust anybody.” Gaius stepped closer. “So what haven’
t you told us?”
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“I don’t know. Are you?”
The king studied him a moment. “I’m sorry, Rebel King, but I can never risk what happened under Thracius’s rule happening again to my people.”
“Why would I attack your people?”
“Not you.”
Gaius frowned. “Then what are you talk—”
“Gaius.”
Gaius turned toward the voice behind him. Kachka stood in the opening, a small leather bag in her hand. She held it up for him and smiled.
Letting out a breath, Gaius started toward her, but he stopped when something wrapped itself around Kachka’s waist. She looked down at what appeared to be something living. By the time she looked back at him, she was yanked out of sight.
“Kachka!”
The slimy tentacle dragged Kachka back through the small passage, through the tiny cavern where she’d discovered the eyes of Chramnesind and into a larger cavern filled with a lake.
“Hello, dear,” a beautiful woman said to her. She reached down to grab the bag from Kachka’s hand, but Kachka yanked her dagger from her belt and stabbed the tentacle around her waist.
The woman roared and the tentacle released Kachka. She rolled backward and got to her feet.
The woman shook off the pain. “Foolish bitch. Now give that to me.”
“I give you nothing.” Kachka looked down and realized that the woman stood in water that covered her from the knees down. And whatever was going on under that water was . . . unnatural.
There was more than one tentacle down there.
“What are you?” Kachka had to ask. Had to know.
“Blessed,” the woman replied. She held out her hand. “Now . . . give it to me.”
Kachka didn’t reply, she simply crouched down to avoid the arrows shooting past her and into the woman’s neck and shoulder. Marina’s aim, true as always.
And that’s when the woman exploded, her rage shaking the walls of the cavern, the water she stood in bubbling as if it boiled.
Flames suddenly erupted around her and she went from human to She-dragon.
“Vateria,” Gaius gasped from behind Kachka. And Brannie ran up, abruptly grabbed Kachka by the back of her neck, and yanked her out of the way just as he shifted into his natural form.
“Vateriaaaaaa!” he bellowed.
The She-dragon grinned, showing row after row of fangs. “Cousin.” She held open her forearms. “It’s been so long. Come! Greet your kin!”
Gaius charged across the lake, and Brannie pushed Kachka toward Zoya just as she and Aidan shifted to dragons.
Kachka thought that was so they could all attack Vateria, but the She-dragon wasn’t alone. Two more steel-colored dragons ran in from another entrance. One had two axes, the other a sword and shield.
Brannie took on the two interlopers while Aidan rushed to Gaius’s aid. Something Kachka was eternally glad to see since Gaius was not just fighting that She-dragon . . . he was also fighting her multiple tentacles, which had only grown larger and more disgusting when she’d shifted.
Zoya helped Kachka to her feet.
Gripping the leather bag in her hand, Kachka pointed to a high spot on the cave wall that was like a small balcony. “Marina! Go!”
She pulled out her own sword and backed up. “Zoya . . . move mountains, comrade.”
Zoya grinned and ran to the other side of the cave, where she grabbed large boulders and began flinging them directly at the She-dragon’s head.
Kachka stepped back, looking for a way out. She didn’t want to leave her friends, fighting to protect her, but her main concern was this thing that Vateria wanted. From the little Kachka knew about the She-dragon, she understood that the last being in the world who should get her claws on anything with this much power was Vateria Domitus.
As she kept backing up, kept searching, Kachka walked into something small. She turned around, expecting to see the currently unhelpful dwarves, but found a little boy standing behind her.
“Hello,” he said.
Kachka just stared at him.
“Mommy says a Rider would never hurt a child.” He pulled his hand from behind his back, a steel dagger held tightly in his fist. “Let’s find out if Mommy’s right.”
Kachka growled in pain as the child’s blade sank into her leg and she stumbled back. The boy raised the weapon again and Kachka made a mad, wounded dash for the entrance she’d come in from.
Gaius heard Kachka’s muffled grunt and turned to see her being attacked by a small boy.
Vateria wrapped one of her tentacles around Gaius’s throat and squeezed. “Isn’t the boy beautiful? Exquisite, really.”
She ducked as Zoya threw another boulder at Vateria’s head.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she babbled on as several of her tentacles battered poor Aidan across the chamber. “That what I have done with Duke Salebiri is exactly what my god is fighting against. But you see, I will be what defeats Annwyl the Unholy Whore. Me. And my children. We will defeat her and her Abominations and then, our sweet god will honor us all. How do you feel about that, cousin?”
Gaius, unclear on what Vateria was talking about, closed his eyes, reached out past the cave walls, and called to his sister.
Aggie.
Gaius.
I need you, sister.
It was something they’d only done once before. By accident. When Thracius had torn out Gaius’s eye. The pain. The pain had been so unbearable that Gaius hadn’t realized he’d silently called out to his sister until he felt her inside his head. She removed the pain while, at the same time, giving him the strength to run as she used her own body to shield him from their uncle. Preventing Thracius from removing the other eye as he was about to do.
This time, however, Gaius had no intention of running.
Gaius gripped the thing around his neck and yanked it off. Squeezing it between his talons, he gazed directly into Vateria’s shocked face as he said, “Cousin . . . my dear sister sends you greetings,” before flinging her and her gods-damn tentacles across the cavern and into the opposite wall.
Kachka shot through the opening and found the dwarves standing around, looking incredibly uncomfortable about what was going on. Uncomfortable and confused. But not helping without their king’s say.
“What did she promise you, Dwarf King?” Kachka asked while turning and kicking the little boy chasing her back into the cavern.
“That Duke Salebiri will leave my people alone,” he replied.
Kachka stared at him. “Who do you think that female is?”
“Ageltrude. Wife of Duke Salebiri.”
“No, Dwarf King. That is not who she is.” She kicked the boy, who charged her again. “She is Vateria. Daughter of Overlord Thracius.”
“You’re lying.”
“I do many things. Lying is not one of them.”
The boy burst out of the crevice and charged Kachka again. She wasn’t about to start killing children, but she was more than happy to slap one around. But as she pulled her hand back to knock the weapon away from him, the Dwarf King let out a deafening scream and swung his axe.
The boy, quicker than she expected, stumbled back, falling on his ass, and Kachka caught the king’s weapon before it split the boy in two.
“What are you doing?” the king demanded.
“Kill his mother if you can. But the boy—you wait until he is old enough to wipe his own ass. That should be the way of things, Dwarf King.”
The king yanked his axe back. “Fine.”
The boy jumped to his feet, running back the way he’d come, screaming, “Muuummmm!”
“What are you waiting for?” Kachka asked him. “Go. Get your revenge on Thracius by killing his daughter.”
She watched the dwarves, led by their king, follow after the boy. Once she was sure they were gone, she turned and went the other way.
Gaius had Vateria on the ground and was strangling the life f
rom her, enjoying the way her eyes were bulging from her head, and she was hitting at him, trying to get him off her, when he heard Brannie yell, “Gaius! Behind you!”
Annoyed, he looked over his shoulder. Dragons, former soldiers of Thracius’s army he was guessing, poured into the cavern from another entry point.
Brannie batted the She-dragon she’d been fighting out of her way to protect Gaius’s back. That’s when he realized that the other two dragons Aidan and Brannie had been fighting were also cousins of his.
A claw slapped across his face and he was tossed off when Vateria pressed her back claws against his chest and shoved.
Gaius flew back, watching Vateria get to her feet. She started to come toward him. That god she’d chosen had changed her, but he didn’t really have time to be disgusted. Not with the Dwarf King and his soldiers coming in from the other entrance.
Their war cry rang out, and although they were considerably smaller than the dragons, there were suddenly a lot of them . . . and they went for the weakest points on dragons’ bodies with the most deadly weapons.
The dwarves climbed over Vateria and her soldiers, chopping at them with their axes and swords.
A small group of Vateria’s soldiers attacked Gaius, old Praetorian Guards who recognized him on sight. He blocked several weapons with his sword and shoved them off. He wanted Vateria. He would have Vateria!
But when he turned around . . .
“Where is she?” Gaius bellowed at the Dwarf King.
Blood covered half the king’s head, face, and shoulder. He pointed with his sword toward the entrance they’d come through. That was also when he realized that Kachka was gone. He knew she was trying to get the eyes away from Vateria, and Vateria had gone after her.
“Marina! Zoya! With me!” he yelled, shifting to human and sprinting after his bitch cousin.