Wrath of the Greimere (Hell Cliffs Book 2)

by Case C. Capehart

  Light drained from her eyes and her sight went dark the moment her head bounced against the ground. She could not feel the hatchet in her hand; she could feel the hand closing around her throat. The punch landed hard on the side of her head and threatened her with unconsciousness. She would not be able to hold on through another one.

  Her leg curled up underneath the warrior above her and her fingers found the knife in her boot. She would only get one shot; she had to go for the neck. Without her sight, she had to gauge her strike off a guess and luck. Her knife lashed upward and sunk into flesh.

  The strike hit early and she realized the hand missing from her throat. The Badger had released her to get an arm between the knife and her neck. Chev’El had stabbed the Rathgar’s bicep.

  The Twileen girl pushed against the ground, desperate to escape from under the Predator, but her vest snagged something, or was grabbed, and she felt the warrior’s body jerk forward.

  The Badger’s skull smashed into her face and she was gone.

  Chapter 18

  Raegith raced to the infirmary as soon as he received word. Hitomi sat up on her bed when he entered. She had already ripped off the thin shirt covering her and was inspecting the jagged, cross-hatched scars along her side. Careful of her wound, Raegith took her face in his hands and kissed her forehead. She scowled at him and grabbed his tunic, pulling him into a deep kiss.

  She smirked as she pulled away. “I think I probably deserve a more than a little peck on the head after what I’ve been through.”

  Raegith returned the smile and placed his hand on her shoulder. “I know this isn’t something you’re particularly good at, but you should slow down a bit.”

  “How long have I been out?” she asked.

  Izanami entered the room and slid beside Raegith, pulling her hood back to gaze at Hitomi. “Winter has passed. We are halfway through… whatever season this is. About four months, I believe.”

  “Then I’ve taken it too slow for too long.” Hitomi swung her legs over the side of the bed and leaned forward.

  The Lokai warrior froze in shock and her breath caught in a gasp. Her body swayed and she tilted quickly toward the floor. Raegith caught her and leaned her back against the bed. She breathed short, quick breaths and her eyes were wide with confusion. She gripped Raegith’s tunic like the edge of a cliff.

  “Hitomi, calm down.” Raegith smoothed her hair away from her face and looked over to Izanami. “What’s happening?”

  “Her mind obviously has not kept up with her body during her sleep.” The witch approached Hitomi and stared down at her. “I sealed a hole in your side the size of a Gimlet’s fist and forcibly inflated your punctured lung… then you fell into a sleep and did not move for months on end. The teas and juices we forced into you all went toward mending your wound and the rest of your body suffered for it.”

  The witch placed her hand on the Helcat’s chest and attempted a look of empathy. “You’re lucky to have awoken at all. It will take time for you to acclimate to your new life, but Naoko has already taken great strides to fill your role as…”

  Raegith cut her off. “That will be all, Izanami.”

  “What do you mean by my ‘new life?’ What does Naoko have to do with me recovering?” Hitomi looked at Raegith. As realization crept into her head, water formed at the edges of her eyes.

  Izanami looked at Raegith and then turned right back to Hitomi, ignoring his command. “My dear, you nearly passed out trying to get out of bed. With months of serious training, you might be able to lead your Blade Dancers through their drills, but… you will never be able to fight on the battlefield again.”

  “No.” Hitomi spat the words like repeating a command to some dull subordinate and continued to cut into Raegith with her eyes. “Grass-Hair, you know how tough I am. You know what I’ve survived already…”

  “We need your strategy too badly, Hitomi. Even if you can beat yourself back into fighting shape, you won’t be the same.” Raegith caressed her cheek. “I won’t risk losing you to some inexperienced little shit who manages to catch you in a moment of weakness.”

  Hitomi swatted his hand away from her face. “Get away from me.”

  Izanami moved to comfort her, but the Lokai lunged and grabbed her by the throat. Izanami seemed shocked, but then she glanced down at the hand on her neck and sighed. The Helcat could not even close off her airway and her bare chest heaved rapidly from the exertion.

  Hitomi shoved her away. The turquoise-haired warrior shuddered and stared forward, refusing to meet Raegith’s eyes. “This is nothing. This means nothing.”

  Raegith started to speak, but the look on her face when she turned on him gave him pause. Nothing he could say to her now would make her feel better. He put his hands up and backed away, taking Izanami with him. He heard her sobs as he walked down the hall to meet Helkree.

  “No one goes in. Not until she’s ready.” He clenched his jaw in frustration when he looked at Helkree. “It’s not going to be easy for her. We need to give her time to get accustomed to this.”

  “She won’t ever be accustomed to this.” Helkree looked past Raegith to the door of the infirmary. “Not that one.”

  Raegith nodded, then he pushed his face in front of hers. “What about you? How’s the foot?”

  “Still hurts a little when I step wrong.” Helkree put her hand on Raegith’s chest and pushed him back a few inches, giving him a sour look. “The little bitch is still not talking. You’re going to need to make a choice soon. Either you let Magda get serious with her or you realize she’s too damn tough for this shit and you put her head on the chopping block.”

  Raegith smirked. “Is that respect I hear in your voice? You like her, don’t you?”

  Helkree punched him hard in the shoulder, enough to stagger him. She turned and started the rest of the way down the hall and out into the courtyard as Raegith laughed and fell in beside her.

  “You can admit it; there’s nothing wrong. You’re both women doing a man’s job. You’re both taking it to an insane degree…”

  “She crippled my toughest, smartest Helcat; she’s killed nearly as many of our warriors as the entire army that stormed the Citadel; and she’s a fucking Northerner who dances in the sun. She’s nothing but another enemy to me.”

  “Bullshit.” Raegith tagged her in the shoulder in retaliation. “She’s not Rellizbix Army. She’s either self-trained or raised by an ex-Hunter deep in the Wilderness where no one gives a damn what happens to little Twileen girls. That said, she’s half your size and was coughing up blood when you fought her and she still almost killed you. Brimgor admits her skill was impressive.”

  “Brimgor should be in the cage, getting his fingers broken right beside her for letting the little shit get past his big ass.”

  Helkree came to an abrupt stop, growled and then pulled her tomahawk and chucked it into the ground beside her. She turned her head and glared at Raegith. “When I had nothing in the world of my own, stripped naked and lashed to a rock, I refused to betray the warrior inside me for leniency. She is the same. This is a matter of honor; nothing else. Let me finish her instead of allowing her to rot. A warrior deserves a warrior.”

  Raegith pulled the tomahawk from the ground and handed it back to Helkree. “The torture ends today. I doubt we’ll get anything useful out of her, anyway.”

  …

  Chev’El jerked awake and realized she was screaming in her sleep. She had been confused when the guards abandoned the room and left her alone. She had not been allowed to have more than half an hour of sleep at a time; never enough time for the kind of deep sleep she just experienced. After three days without so much as a food delivery, a strange loneliness ate at her almost as fiercely as hunger.

  A Twileen stood on the other side of her cell door, his scarred, yet handsome face staring intently. His ears did not point as sharply as hers and his crooked nose hinted at a bad break in his past. He was larger and more muscled than any of her kind in
the West. His deep green hair spiked up in a strip down the middle of his head, the same as the humongous Rathgar that blocked her path to the falls on the day they captured her.

  “You have nightmares, as well?” He spoke in the Rellizbix tongue with an accent she did not recognize from the Wilderness. “Those you’ve killed come back to haunt you in your sleep, don’t they?”

  She saw death in his eyes, as well, but he hid it away like most. He came closer and peered through the bars at her. His face twitched a bit as he gauged her. “Or perhaps you’re like me and you don’t run from your victims in dreams. Perhaps you scream for those you could not save.”

  Chev’El gulped and stared forward as the lump crowded her throat. After months of starvation, sleep deprivation, broken fingers and hundreds of beatings no one had ever offered a genuine conversation; not even the enslaved Stone Seer who tended her wounds and broken bones. Until that moment, she had been completely alone in her misery.

  “I expect you’re hungry. I’ll have something warm brought for you.” The man motioned said something unintelligible to someone else in the room outside her cell and then looked back in at her. “Your misery has come to an end. Though I feel you’ve at least some information to offer me, like why you cowardly sniped my Helcat from cover, my Second demands that I cease this foolishness and allow her to execute you in a duel. She says you deserve that honor.”

  Chev’El recognized his voice just then; the voice that plagued her dreams and woke her from her first decent sleep since her capture.

  “Fix her?” She had not meant to say that, but it escaped her lips like wily prey.

  “What was that?”

  Chev’El had already broken her silence, and if what the man said was true, soon she would be dead. She turned and looked at him through the bars. “You were the one screaming after I shot the Blue-haired warrior. You begged for someone to fix her. Why?”

  “You don’t get to ask questions of me after refusing my questions for months.” The man tilted his head. “But since you’re in the mood for talking now, I will trade a question for a question.”

  The man opened the door and stepped inside, closing it behind him. On a closer look, he might have been the oddest Twileen she had ever seen; as if his body did not realize its own race.

  “What is your name?”

  “Chev’El.”

  He sat down across from her and motioned that it was her turn.

  “Why did you scream for the warrior?”

  The man stared directly at her. “Because I love her and I didn’t want her to die. Where are you from, Chev’El?”

  Chev’El considered stopping there. Giving him any more information felt like treason, but more than death, she feared him leaving and no one else talking with her until she died. She feared having no testimony given before she left this world and that fear pained her far greater than the torture.

  “The Wilderness… Duransk.” She could not look him in the eyes. “Who are you?”

  “That very much depends on who you ask.” He shifted. “To the Caelum family I am a scourge. To Rellizbix I am blight. To my people I am the Grass-Haired Demon. Once, long before any of this, I was simply a little boy living peacefully with his Twileen mother.”

  Chev’El jerked her head up. “Nature… you’re the Warlord?”

  “It’s my turn.” He held up his hand in a halting manner. “Why are you waging this vendetta against me, Chev’El? You’re not a Hunter of Rellizbix. You’re skilled enough to have hid from me forever and I would not have cared to look for you had you not attempted to assassinate one of my Helcats.”

  “The Blue-haired warrior-“

  “Hitomi.” The man interrupted her.

  “Hitomi destroyed my village. Her raiders killed innocent men, women and children. They killed my father.” Chev’El fought back the tears as she defended herself. “Why are you here? Why do you lead these monsters into my home to destroy it?”

  The man hesitated for a few moments, refusing to answer as he stared at her. Finally, he looked away. “This was not my original intention. I sought to free the men, women and children who suffered within the Greimere. I wanted to end the needless warring between the nations and make the Greimere stand on its own feet.”

  He stood and Chev’El wondered if it was time for her execution already, but he simply went to the door and took a plate of hot vegetables from a guard. Passing the plate to her, he continued. “Soldiers from Rellizbix came looking for me and when they could not find me, they settled for my woman. Kalystra was smart and brave. With tears streaking her face and knees trembling, she strapped armor to her breast and stood against trained veterans. She was a diplomat, not a warrior, but she refused to flee before them.”

  The Warlord paused, his breathing becoming more deliberate before he continued. “They stripped her, sheared her hair and put her on a spike in the middle of the Greimere capitol. That’s how I found her. That’s when I realized this war was undeniable. The only way it will end, the only way Rellizbix will allow peace, is if I fling this gluttonous nation from its high perch and shatter it amongst the rocky shores of Hell.”

  He made for the door and shut her back in the cell. Before leaving, he looked back through the bars. “Your nightmares, are they for those you killed or those you could not save?”

  “Neither,” she replied, staring down at the muck-covered floor. “I had killed before Hitomi, but in defense of another; she was the first I killed with intent. Until I heard you begging for her life, I had never considered how death deprives the living. I’m haunted by those who are still alive.”

  The Warlord nodded with understanding and then smiled. “Hitomi wasn’t your first kill, though. She’s still alive. We’ll pick up with your next question tomorrow. Be ready.”

  Chapter 19

  “Someone wake up the hero and get him home, please?”

  Nero barely heard the bartender in his stupor. Was it last call already? How long had he been passed out?

  “We’ll take it from here, sir.” Nero did not recognize the other voice, but it must have been someone from the 1st dispatched to round him up.

  “And his bar tab? You taking care of that, as well?”

  “Of course,” the strange man replied. “The Order would like to handle any of his outstanding debt to this establishment.”

  “You guys, huh? Alright, I guess that’s fine, then.”

  A pair of armored hands lifted Nero from his corner booth and hauled him towards the door. Outside in the chill air, a mug of cold water doused his face and sent him into a panic.

  “What the fuck-? Who the hell do you think you are?” Nero sputtered and spun about. He ran into the broad chestplate of a soldier bearing no regimental patch.

  “High Paladin Andronicus would like to meet with you at the temple,” the man said in a deep, commanding voice.

  “He’s not my commander. What time is it? I need to report back to my barracks.” Nero looked toward the black sky as if to gauge the time. “I’m still on leave, aren’t I?”

  “The High Paladin is a member of the Rellizbix Senate. He will vouch for your absence.” The large man motioned forward. “Please, follow us.”

  Nero felt too drunk and tired to argue so he fell in behind the Paladins. He had heard a bit about their Order over the last few weeks in Thromdale. They were practically unknown when he first enlisted— a private sect of warriors, all from well-to-do families, who worshipped the Fates and kept to themselves. Sometime after the defeat of the 9th, they became much more public.

  “Corporal Octavius Nero, of the Storm Line, hero of the Wilderness, I welcome you.”

  High Paladin Andronicus wore armor so polished it glowed in the candlelight of the inner temple. The gray at his temples contrasted his youthful face. He held out his arms, almost as if inviting a hug, and then bowed deeply before him. Confused, Nero copied him.

  “Come, my son, make yourself comfortable before the hearth.” The High Paladin beckoned
him before the fire and sat down in a lush chair. “Would you like something to drink? Some hot tea, perhaps?”

  “Hot tea?” Nero asked, taking a seat and looking at the clean-faced men who brought him.

  “Active members of our Order do not imbibe. It dulls the senses and weakens our connection to the Fates. Besides, it looks as if you might need something a bit more… cleansing.”

  Nero felt the ale in his gut start to turn on him and refused the tea. “Sir, I-“

  “You will address the High Paladin as ‘your Grace,’ Corporal.” The deep-voiced Paladin corrected him and Nero felt the urge to glare at him.

  “Your Grace, I don’t understand why I’m here. I am not in a proper state of mind to have a meaningful discussion. Perhaps in the morning?”

  “I see. Perhaps you are correct.” High Paladin Andronicus stood. “I must insist that you take the room we’ve prepared for you here. I will alert your commander of your presence with me. I have appointments in the morning, but will return close to noon. Please remain here and I will meet with you then.”

  Nero was led to a room in the back where he gladly plopped onto the bed to slumber.

  He woke in the morning to sounds of a bell tolling in unity with the hammers in his head. A Paladin found him several minutes later emptying his guts in the courtyard.

  “You finished desecrating our Temple, yet?”

  Nero waved the Paladin off with a hand. “I’m sorry. I’ll go back to bed as soon as I’m steady.”

  The Paladin laughed. “Beds are for rest. That’s not what you need, soldier. Wipe yourself off and follow me.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m just waiting for his Grace to return. I can do that from my room.”

  “Nero, he knows what you’re looking for. He will help you find it.”

  Nero turned on the dark-skinned Saban. “What did you say?”

  “Tour this temple with me, Nero. High Paladin Andronicus would have you see what we are about before he comes to discuss things with you.” The Paladin motioned for him. “I am Paladin Adept Lucius. Please allow me to show you who we are. Not many Commoners are afforded this privilege.”