Barbarian Gladiator (Princesses of the Ironbound Book 4)

by Aaron Crash

  Then Jennybelle threw Tori aside and took up with Lillee, and the pair danced. By how the pair moved and swayed, the gentle touches, the long gazes, it was clear the two were so very much in love. There was real passion in their movements, such romance.

  There were a hundred other quartets spinning on the floor, but for that moment, the world was reduced to Charibda and the other three ladies...and really, it was only Jennybelle and Lillee, lost in the music and in each other’s eyes.

  The mermaid wanted to cut in, to push Jennybelle away, to do something rash because she wanted that love, that connection. Perhaps before the Flow courtyard battle, she would’ve cut in, but not now. She was learning restraint.

  The mermaid turned to Tori. The little dwab was breathless and laughing and trying to keep up though her legs were so short and her body so wiggly and wide.

  Then it was time for all four of them to join hands and spin and spin and spin. The music grew faster and faster, too fast for Tori, who soon fell back. Too fast for Jennybelle who nearly tripped but caught herself at the last second. And soon it was too fast for even Lillee, who had the grace and dexterity of an Ohlyrran princess.

  Charibda was the final girl, dancing, spinning, keeping to the beat, and even going fast enough to add flourishes to her movements, until she leapt up, spinning, and landed with the last drumbeat, the last call of the fiddle, the last piping of the flute.

  The entire room paused, and it took a moment for Charibda to realize she was the last person to match the rhythms of the band.

  Everyone was staring.

  She went to pout, or scream at them, or to call them names. That moment of silence was interminable. She was breathing hard with her dumb lungs, her muscles burned, she couldn’t gasp in enough air. And so she couldn’t pout, or scream, or shriek.

  Then? The applause filled the room. Clapping, for her, whistles, shouts of encouragement, and Charibda felt something...maybe not love...but appreciation.

  She looked at all the faces of her classmates—humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, even some fairies spinning about, laughing and clapping. There were other merfolk, yes, but not many. Most were from other, lesser families. Even the ones from Delphino seemed beneath her. Yet all were clapping for her. She’d done what no one else could.

  It was too much. She couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes as she hurried through the people and right out into the Librarium. She didn’t stop. She was running by the time she hit the Sea Stair Market. Most of the shops were dark, but the taverns were open, hoping to lure scholars away from the Summernight Festival. Once the music stopped, many would come drifting down to keep drinking.

  Charibda ran down the covered walkway at the bottom of the Sea Stair and out onto the hidden docks. Stripping out of her fancy dress, she dove naked into the water.

  She couldn’t see anything at first, but then her eyes changed, and she could see even in the darkest of depths. Her teeth changed as well, becoming fangs that could rip through fish, and she chose a fin for her legs. Swimming hard with her transformed body, she went streaking through the sea, naked in the cold, comfortable water even while she breathed that cold, comfortable water.

  She was home.

  And yet, she was lonely.

  Tori would be there in the Zoo, to talk with her, to comfort her like always. But would Jennybelle speak of her? Would she appreciate her dancing? Would Lillee think of her when she removed her forearm cuff?

  Could she be friends with those women? Perhaps.

  But Gatha would never take her in.

  And Ymir didn’t need her.

  Charibda felt like weeping. Instead, she swam as fast as she could, as deep as she could, until the speed, the effort, the black water, the cold depths washed away all of her doubts and fears.

  Chapter Eight

  SUNDAY MORNING, YMIR woke alone in the master bedroom of Jennybelle’s suite. This was new. He’d come in late after drinking with Gharam, who insisted they go get Brodor from the Throne Auditorium. The three of them had stumbled down to the Unicorn’s Uht for more whiskey. While the two had gone inside, Ymir had gone to the door of The Paradise Tree to say hello to Ziziva. The fairy wasn’t anywhere to be found. The shop was closed up tight. For a brief moment, he was worried Ziziva might’ve escaped Vempor’s Cape altogether, taking the possibility of more profits with her.

  But there were lights on in the back, so she was home, and besides, Ziziva was making too much money to leave. And there had been a great deal of flirting. Would the fairy want to repeat the hot encounter they’d had in the shower with Jennybelle? He hoped so. Lillee was fascinated by the fairy. When the elf got frisky, she’d ask him to tell the story again to her, how the fairy was afraid to get pregnant and so she had a creative solution for sex. It always ended with him pounding Lillee until she came all over the place.

  Gharam and Brodor called Ymir over, and they bustled into the tavern to drink and to hear about Brodor’s divorce again. Gharam bought the drinks, getting louder until the two women who ran the place had to tell the professor to shut the hell up.

  Gharam wasn’t about to get kicked out of their favorite local tavern, and so he talked in a relatively hushed voice about the Kurzig Durgha. Brodor was angry he’d not been asked to join their team, though Ymir thought it was more bluster than anything else. Brodor was old, a bit fatter than he needed to be, and comfortable in his lab with his potions, powders, and alchemical compounds.

  Then Ymir went back to Jennybelle’s apartment. Both Jenny and Lillee were already asleep. They were curled up in each other’s arms, so Ymir left to go sleep outside. The chair was comfortable, and he liked being outside, smelling the ocean.

  Then, when Lillee got up to draw, he moved inside and went to sleep on the bed. Jennybelle, though, had other ideas. He opened his eyes to her sucking on his cock, which any man would agree was the ideal way to wake up. He growled, wanting her warm slit rather than her mouth. He pounded her, which brought in Lillee. Once the swamp woman came, he turned his attention to Lillee. Then, while watching the elf girl kiss Jenny, he came, pumping his seed into Lillee as she whimpered into Jenny’s mouth.

  That Sunday morning, with nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to study, Ymir had fallen back asleep. Hence, when he woke up, he was a little baffled as to where the women had gone. He had vague memories of them talking about Ribrib. Something about dancing?

  He didn’t know. However, he was hungry, and he’d gotten into the habit of kaif in the morning. The stuff was as seductive as kharo. He took it black, dark, and bitter. He’d learned to make it in their apartment early on, and he moved into the main room, naked and scratching his stomach. He’d wanted to talk to Jenny and Lillee about the Kurzig Durgha, and about Gatha, who had given up trying to sleep in the suite. She had her room in the Sunfire housing on the east side of campus. The she-orc was wrestling with the enormity of their situation, though Ymir knew she was more worried about facing her father than the death match.

  There was also the Gather Breath Ring business to attend to, which wasn’t a business, but most likely an unhealthy obsession. Lastly? They had their new products to finalize with Ziziva. That had been Tori’s department, and now that the school year had ended, the dwab could cook her little heart out. The xoca puff corn still needed some work, as it hardened into inedible balls. Her xoca kaif was excellent, if too sweet for Ymir, but the product they were really excited about was the sweet cream, a frozen milk dish. Getting the Flow magic right had turned into a real challenge. Also, they had to keep it frozen. They had Flow cupboards for that, but they were too small to store any great quantity. At this stage, they were pondering selling it by the spoonful, a silver sheck for just a taste.

  It would all have to wait. His women weren’t around. If only they had a big space to all live together. That was another thing he wanted to talk with Toriah Welldeep about.

  He started a fire using a Sunfire cantrip and got the wood burning and the water boiling. He then poured the kaif and the b
oiling water into a special glass tube, which looked like something out of his alchemy class. He pressed down a flanged plunger, which drove the grounds to the bottom, while bringing the kaif to the surface. He poured it into a mug and padded out onto the balcony. The sun was up, the day was warm, and it would soon be hot. He figured it would be a good day to swim in the cooling waters of the Weeping Sea. He could swim and then relax in the sunshine. It brought back memories of summers up north, when they’d escape the cold and work of winter to enjoy a few afternoons of pleasure in the Hell Sea after cheating the Summertown merchants.

  That made him remember the night bear hunt, the same hunt that had taken him down into the southern regions of the Crack. That would be the same ravine where he would face the Lonely Man ten years later.

  The night bear had killed a family in late autumn, and Grandfather Bear and some other elders of the Black Wolf Clan had taken some warriors, including Ymir and a few of his battle brothers, out to kill the fiend. It was well known that night bears didn’t simply eat flesh and drink blood—the beasts also ripped through souls. It was important the bear die so the Black Wolf Clan family could go on to paradise, to run across the sky as wolves, along with the Great Wolf himself, away from the troubles of the world. Across the heavens, you didn’t have the worries of humans, only the play of wolves. Not all clans believed that, of course, but Ymir liked the idea. He’d seen the life of dogs, and if those animals weren’t starving or sick, they were far happier than any of the people he’d ever met in his life.

  Ymir had barely been a man, had barely been able to wield his battle ax, when he’d gone with Grandfather Bear and the other men across the tundra where the wind could turn chill at any minute and a snowstorm would either wipe them out or keep them in their elk-hide tents for days on end. Either way, they’d hurried, riding their otelkir, huge animals like the horses of the south, only the otelkir had antlers and were smarter. You didn’t eat an otelkir unless you had to. There were plenty of elk for that, and they tasted better and were far dumber.

  Maybe Ymir had seen thirteen summers, possibly fourteen, it was hard to remember. Either way, it was more than ten years ago, and he’d been so determined to be the hero of the day. He wanted to be the one to kill the night bear. He wanted the older men to look on him with envy. Grandfather Bear said it didn’t matter who did the actual slaying. The demon needed to die—to free its victims and to stop it from killing again.

  Warm southern winds blew upon them the evening they left. They didn’t want to let another night pass because the tracks were fresh on the wet ground. It wasn’t long until the freezing winds of the north froze the tracks of the bear.

  They reached the Crack, and at first, Ymir had been glad to get out of the wind, but it was getting dark and the bottom of the ravine would be darker still. Even in daytime, there were certain regions that would be lost in shadows.

  They’d gone down—Ymir, his friend Ykor, his friend Raynan, and the youngest, Byeor, who was equally ambitious to be the one to strike down the demon. Ykor told them he had the best chance since he had his bow, the weapon he preferred. They would’ve made fun of him more, but they’d seen how deadly he was with the weapon. Raynan preferred hatchets, and Byeor had a family heirloom, a claymore too big for him.

  Ynyo, newly married and seeming old even then, teased them all, saying that they were more apt to kill each other with their weapons than the night bear.

  Grandfather Bear told them to stay back and out of the way.

  Ymir’s own father hadn’t gone. The king claimed he had other clan duties to take care of. That had seamed hollow to the youthful clansman. What was more important than a monster killing?

  Even now, better than ten years later, Ymir thought there was no excuse.

  The oldest man agreed to stay out of the Crack, tie up their otelkir, and wait. Ymir felt sorrow for him. The rest had gathered bunches of grasses for torches, which would burn fast and smoky. It would be light enough. There was wood down in the ravine, actual trees, though these trees were so very odd and they didn’t like to burn. It was easier not to even try. Besides, some said the smoke was poisonous. Others said burning the strange trees would bring even more demons descending down.

  Ymir had come to learn that the trees in the Crack were actually sanctum trees, holy to the Therans. Sanctum sap tea helped southern women get pregnant.

  Ymir and the men of his tribe went down into the darkness. The older men were scared, but not Byeor and his ridiculous sword. Byeor was hungry for battle, as were Ymir and all their battle brothers.

  Poor Byeor. He wouldn’t make it out of the Crack. Many would die, but his death hurt them all the most. He’d been the youngest.

  The northern winds had been cold, but the air at the bottom of the ravine felt colder. The darkness ate away at their burning brands.

  Grandfather Bear had stopped suddenly and said something that froze them all, froze the blood in their veins. “Maybe we’re not chasing the night bear,” the grizzled old warrior had said. “Maybe the night bear is chasing us.”

  The ravine narrowed in front of them, and to get out, Ymir and the twelve other men would have to climb through snow and ice, ice that had survived not just the previous summer, but all summers. It was treacherous going.

  Ynyo had laughed. “Trying to scare us, Grandfather?”

  Grandfather Bear had grown to the age where all men called him grandfather, though Bear still had enough grit and muscle and skill to be a warrior in his own right. Grandfather Bear wouldn’t die in that blasted ravine. Others would. Many others.

  They carefully followed the tracks through the snow, through the ravine. It opened up into a grove of frozen trees, which shouldn’t be possible. There wasn’t light down there for the trees to grow. It was too cold. It was impossible. They started through the grove, silent except for the burning brands, which were growing smaller and smaller. All was quiet except for the growls of the night bear behind them. From the north.

  But there hadn’t been tracks to the north. And yet, it was behind them.

  Ymir was lost in the past when Tori called out to him from inside. “Ymir! Jenny! Lil? Where is everyone?”

  The clansman exhaled. He welcomed the distraction. He would have to tell someone the story of the night bear hunt to be free of it, but it wouldn’t be that day. It was Sunday. He deserved a day off.

  Chapter Nine

  “YMIR!” THE FRIENDLY, freckled dwab yelled again. He heard the door slam close.

  “Out here,” he called. He was sipping the last of his kaif as Tori came charging out onto the balcony. She was in a green dress with a green vest that brought out the green in her eyes. Her curly red hair was combed back from her face to show her happy freckles. She grinned.

  “You wanna have some fun with me? I was going to take our little sweet cream problem to the fairy herself. I have samples of the xoca kaif as well, though that’s easier. We have the powder, though the love charm doesn’t work so well with the powder. If only the sweet cream could stay frozen without a Flow cupboard. I still don’t know how we’re going to make that work.”

  Ymir wasn’t sure he wanted to deal with Ziziva on such a fine, warm day, but he didn’t want Tori going alone either. The Fayee had powerful magic, and while he was sure their memory-wiping magic didn’t work on him, he wasn’t so certain about the dwab.

  Tori saw his concern. She patted a little leather pouch on her belt. “Don’t worry. I have this little trinket, so she can’t undo my memories. And I have more alchemical biscuits for Fluffy. Problem is, he’s eating them quicker and quicker.”

  “I don’t think we’ll need the Veil Tear Ring for this,” Ymir said. “The contract is fair. And Ziziva knows not to cross us. I’ll go with you. Why not?”

  Tori brightened. “Yeah? Why not? It should be fun, though that Ziziva can embarrass me like nobody’s business. She’s just such a...” The dwab wrinkled her nose. “Such a nasty fairy!”

  They locked the apart
ment behind them and made their way down the Sea Stair Market. Most shops were closing for summer, and even the Unicorn’s Uht would have shorter hours. The Paradise Tree was open, but there were no customers inside.

  He and Tori pushed their way inside. The bell on the door tinkled.

  From the backroom, an old woman’s voice called to them. “Ziziva, we have a customer, sweetie. A sweet customer looking for a sweetie!” The singsong voice came from a mechanical woman, full of gears. This wasn’t common knowledge. Only Ymir and his princesses knew about the golem.

  “No, no customers at all,” Ziziva sighed. “No customers at all have come to call. A bad old barbarian and a dwab is all.” She was on her perch, a bronze pedestal on the front counter, sitting at a little desk with a tiny pair of spectacles perched on her nose. Ymir had never seen spectacles before, not even when dealing with the Summertown merchants. He’d read about such things in books, however.

  Tori had brought her big leather case, and she hurried forward, a wide little woman, so different from Ymir’s hulking form. The Paradise Tree was cool since Ziziva’s xoca sculptures had to be kept cold or else they’d melt. On the left were wooden shelves of candies, a variety of colors and textures. On the right was the xocalati on stone shelves and in stone cubbies kept cold by Flow magic.

  Ziziva took off her little spectacles, and she danced up, rising high and flying about the room, soaring here and there. “Well, now, well, and here we are. A little sweetness in a dwabby little package, a little meanness in a great, big Ymirry.”

  Tori’s smile was goofy. “Yes, the rhyming, the near-rhyming, the singsonging, and all that. I kinda like it.”

  “I enjoy it as well,” Ymir agreed, “as long as I’m not being ensorcelled. And what protects me also protects Toriah here.”

  Ziziva landed on Ymir’s shoulder, grabbed his ear, and whispered inside. “Her name is Tori, Tori, Tori is what I hear. And she’s a special one, a little dwarf girl with some undwarfly appetites I fear.”