by D. Brumbley
Ziem was washed off to the side of the group by the wave, out of reach of the chain. As he stood, he saw a man walk slowly through the water towards the main group, hands outstretched at his sides, obviously the Oceanborn behind the attack.
There were a number of things that should have gone through Ziem’s mind at that moment, but did not. One was the fact that the Oceanborn was alone, and was obviously powerful enough to sustain such a huge force by himself. Another was the fact that his hair was partially white, and he looked like a mature wolf, in his full prime and probably well into his third century, making him one of the most powerful of their kind. Still another absent thought was the fact that there was blood by the man’s mouth, which meant he had just gotten a taste of wolf flesh and was still smiling about it.
The only thing that did go through Ziem’s mind, though, was the fact that the man looked familiar. “Hey, I know you!” Ziem shouted over the sound of rushing water and the clash of combat.
Coren looked over at Ziem out of the corner of his eye, not even turning his face to spare a real glance at the young and fairly stupid-looking Ironborn that was calling attention.
“Yeah, that’s right, I’m talking to you, you smug bastard.” Ziem said as he walked through the water, the iron boxing gloves on his hands and forearms slowly growing spikes in various places. “You’re the one supposed to be in charge of this whole operation, right? The top dog?” He hurled the insult at Coren with a grin as he looked him up and down. “Nice of you to come out here personally and show us all what you’re compensating for.”
Coren lifted a hand and the wave rose up again and lashed out at Ziem directly, but Ziem was already moving to dive through it. Having been knocked off his feet by one wave already, he was ready for the second, and managed to right himself and break out in a run at Coren with a laugh that resounded off every piece of metal in the area.
Lea heard Ziem’s shout over the water, but she couldn’t really understand it until she turned around to look for him, her chains wrapped around at least four of her comrades. When she saw Ziem and who he shouted after, she looked around to see if any more Council members had infiltrated. All she saw were struggling wolves everywhere, and while she wanted to run out and help Ziem again, there was no way that she could get across.
Coren had the Stoneborn between him and the rest of the Ironborn, and with the flood pounding at them from all angles, the one Ironborn that had managed to slip away from his companions would be easily enough washed away. “There are two kinds of wolf that have your manner, you rust spot. The very brave and the very stupid.”
“Well, don’t strain yourself trying to figure out which one I am.” Ziem said with a smile as another wave hit him full in the face. He put up a hand in front of him to divert the spray of water and stepped around the side of a mostly-demolished building to get out of Coren’s sight.
A moment later, two spears made from the building’s remains flew through the air, the first missing the Council Speaker entirely, the second cutting him deeply along one arm. The sudden pain distracted him enough to stop the water cascade for a moment as Ziem came in sight again. “I’m the very stupid. Bravery’s for people trying to make a point. Me? I’ll settle for pissing in your dead skull!”
Coren renewed his attack with a snarl on his face and moved across the surface of the water, almost flying towards Ziem in his fury. He set Ziem spinning in the whirlwind of mud and frothing water that was let loose.
Ziem managed to get enough deep breaths to avoid being strangled by the water itself, and never gave Coren enough peace to do the precision work necessary to choke him. He threw every manner of weapon he could fashion together at the Councilor, but the waves around him slowed and blocked most of his attempts.
Lea could see most of the fight through the mist that had been kicked up from it, and she could see Ziem still yelling foul insults at the top of his lungs as he tried over and over again to get close enough to Coren to strike him, but nothing got through. Coren knew he wasn’t as physically strong as Ziem, but the water around them kept Ziem off his feet more often than not. Coren dragged him down and folded him in wave upon wave of water, trying to drown him. But every time he seemed to be down, Ziem would launch himself up out of the water just long enough to get a breath, and the fight would continue.
Finally, Ziem managed to corner Coren in what once was a large central building the Stoneborn built. It held the water well, and Coren was using it to his full advantage, but Ziem was still fighting desperately between gasps for air. With nowhere to go, Coren drew all the water in the room into one corner, a solid mass of swirling chaos in which he and Ziem were both caught, but Coren had the luxury of not needing to breathe while submerged in his element. His opponent did not.
Ziem struggled to get out of the mass of water, needing just one more breath before the air in his lungs gave out.
But Coren was just close enough to strike.
He hesitated, just for a moment, before he turned around and actually swam towards Coren, catching the Council Speaker completely by surprise.
Before the old wolf could even react, Ziem flailed out wildly and managed to latch a hook from his armor in Coren’s rib cage. With that leverage and Coren’s submerged scream of pain, he pulled himself in closer to wrap his arms in a bear hug around the Oceanborn’s torso. His armor flowed off his limbs as his lungs burned for a breath, and the steel wrapped around Coren’s body, binding his arms to his sides and clasping his legs together so tightly he could do nothing but fall to the floor beneath their feet.
There beneath the water, Coren’s eyes looked up at Ziem, wordlessly accusing him of the pointlessness of his actions. The water continued to swirl and push Ziem down, but Ziem wasn’t even fighting against it. He knew he was going to drown, and his strength was fading quickly as his lungs burned for oxygen. But as his hands started shaking with the last of his power, he formed a single spiked knife from the gauntlets he still wore, and drove it straight through Coren’s chest.
Ziem knew he had missed Coren’s heart in his fatigue, but only barely. As the spark went out of his eyes, the hazel of them was clouded over by the red of Coren’s blood filtering up through the water.
Before the rest of the Ironborn realized what had happened, the continued force of water that battered them quickly disappeared around them. With nothing to sustain it, the torrent quickly lowered as it was allowed to sink into the ground, settling into bloody channels running in every direction as the killing field drained.
Lea dropped her chains as soon as the water settled just around her calves and she ran, through the water and over bodies, to where she had last seen Ziem go under.
Coren was lying on his back, completely encased in scrap metal from neck to foot, and with a band of iron keeping his head back at a painful angle, completely exposing his neck. She could see the simple knife that had been stabbed through his chest, and the look of agony on Coren’s face as he struggled to breathe against the pain.
Beside him, she could see Ziem’s body lying still, his lips already blue, his hazel eyes empty and glazed over. His hands were bare for the first time in the fight, and he had one hand in the other, clutching at the gold ring that Aura had given him as his eyes stared skyward through the receding water.
Lea’s eyes burned at the sight of Ziem’s dead body, but she turned back to Coren with a murderous look. She leaned in and spat on his face, knowing that he could live for quite a while the way that he was stabbed, since the knife was actually preventing a lot of blood from being lost.
Good. She wanted him to live so that her Alpha would have the pleasure of making him pay for the lives he had taken.
After a long moment’s glare into Coren’s defeated and pain-stricken blue eyes, Lea reached out with both hands and brought in the sheets of metal that had formerly been Ziem’s body armor, wrapping her friend’s body with it like a blanket so that she could take him back to his home.
As the water receded
and the Ironborn began to fight again behind her, Lea caught sight of something else coming towards her from the same direction Coren had, and it was a noise of enough people to make her take cover until she could see who was coming through the wet mud left by the Speaker’s attack.
Through the mists and dust that churned in the air, she could hear a hundred wet footsteps coming closer, some of them on two legs, some on four. When they finally came in sight, she could see that they were dressed, those of them that were dressed at all, in jeans and t-shirts, though they mostly ran barefoot. But it was their eyes that caught her attention, blazing red like the eyes of demons set in human faces.
It didn’t take long for them to get some idea of what was going on, or to tell which side was which even at a distance, with one side throwing stones and the other wearing plate mail armor. The Fireborn gave a cry and leapt into the fight, but it was the Stoneborn they were attacking from behind, trapping the group between a hammer and a hot place. Steam rose from the ground everywhere they stepped, and there were two that stayed behind, a wild-haired man and a woman who stood casually beside him to survey the horror.
He spotted Lea and raised a fire-rimmed hand before he realized her eyes were hazel, not grey, and lowered it again. “Your Alpha sends his regards. We saw him near the gate on our way in. Thought you folks might like a hand over here.” His American accent was alien-sounding even in the midst of all the recent additions of nationalities, and his casual manner as well.
“You’re the other Fireborn pack. Veronica’s cousin.” Or something. She couldn’t exactly remember who was who anymore, especially since she had a dead friend in front of her and many more strewn around.
“Somethin’ like that.” He looked down at Ziem, his eyes still open, and at Coren, writhing in pain nearby, and shook his head. “I’m sorry we’re late. For his sake and everybody else’s. But we’ll do what we can.” He nodded at her and headed off with his mate beside him, as several of his men ran off in other directions to purge the entire compound of the New Council’s enemies.
As much as she wanted to move away from the horrible scene around her, Lea just sat there with Ziem’s body in front of her, wrapped in the metal that she had claimed for him. Others still alive started to look around for anyone else that they could recover and the sounds of the war and the hiss from the Fireborn steam started to drown out her thoughts. She placed her hand on Ziem’s steel-covered shoulder with a sob. “You did a great thing, you crazy mutt.” She said between tears. “But why’d you have to go and die doing it?”
* * * * *
Nick took to sitting on the edge of the porch farthest from the metal that Aura leaned against inside, keeping his thoughts as quiet as possible. The arrival of the Fireborn had put him more at ease, and slowly some of the Guard began to realize where he was. They brought him reports almost by the minute, stepping over the bodies of a dozen Oceanborn to get to the house. Nick hadn’t waited for the wolves to realize he was there before he destroyed them. If they had been Reston’s people, they wouldn’t have been coming from outside the compound.
The fight was nearly over with the Fireborn pack’s arrival, but there were more Oceanborn and Forestborn to deal with as well, and Nick knew that meant Council fighters had been present, not just the traitorous packs he had welcomed in with open arms. Sedovin had been confirmed dead, but he had no reports of Osvald, though he knew William had challenged him directly. When he saw Lea approach, carrying a body wrapped in steel in her arms, he feared it must have been the old knight.
She was quiet as she approached the house, but there were still tears streaming down her face as she placed the body in front of Nick. Once Ziem’s body was on the ground, his face was visible, and she let out the softest of whimpers. “He trapped Coren. Coren is still alive, pinned to the ground and slowly bleeding to death back there.”
Nick didn’t hide his surprise, and he shifted into his human form so that he could speak to Lea. “He did what?” He looked back down at Ziem’s face with new appreciation and not a little awe. Ziem had always been a brawler as a child, always in the middle of a fight, and the years obviously hadn’t changed that about him. But to go up against the Speaker of the Council? That was something else altogether.
“Coren. He’s wrapped in every bit of Ziem’s scrap metal and pierced with a sword through his chest.” She whimpered in emotional distress as she held out her hand, which had a gold ring in it. Ziem’s ring. She didn’t want it to get lost, so she had taken it to give back to Aura. Lea had always been a tough fighter, but she was always one of the first to break down once the violence was over. “All of his metal except for this.”
He took the gold ring from her and gripped it tightly in his hand as he looked back down at Aura’s husband. He looked at Ziem for a long few moments in silence with his head bowed before he spoke to Lea again. “Set a guard over Coren and make certain he doesn’t die. Have the Fireborn dry him off and keep him bound in Ziem’s steel. Bring him to the Court and gather everyone that’s left there once the compound is secure.”
Lea nodded and turned as quickly as she could force her exhausted body to move to fulfill his command. She didn’t want to look at Ziem any longer, and she didn’t want to talk about it any longer. She just wanted Coren to suffer for everything and everyone that they had lost.
When Lea was gone, Nick set Ziem’s ring down over the dead wolf’s chest and shifted again, one paw still on the steel, not looking back at the house behind him.
When Aura could feel Nick’s mind there again, open to speak with, she felt a little better. Who came? She knew he would only shift out if someone needed to speak to him in his human form, and so that’s what she supposed had happened.
He turned back toward the house, though she was sealed behind sheet metal and unable to see him at the moment. I’m so sorry, Aura. She could feel his sadness, and could hear Ziem’s name beneath his words.
Stop it. Don’t. She went to the wall and growled at the metal, at his voice coming through to her thoughts even though she couldn’t see him. Don’t you dare.
She could feel him shift again, his mind leaving hers for the moment, and the metal beneath her paws groaned against itself, splitting open at Nick’s touch. It separated just enough to let in sunlight, which she hadn’t seen in hours, but as her eyes adjusted, she could see Ziem’s form wrapped in steel across the porch. Nick was sitting off to one side, again as a wolf, looking away from her, not wanting to intrude on her grief.
It was like she was trapped in a nightmare, and the only way she could go was forward. She walked slowly toward Ziem’s body, starting to whimper as though she had been struck. Aura looked down at his face once she was close enough, and she licked his cheek gently as she let out a howl that cracked the air and set the metal around them vibrating with her pain.
You said you liked living. You were supposed to come back alive. Not like this. I can’t…I…Aura felt completely shattered as she stared at his dead body, and she moved to lie next to him, with her head on the metal covering his body. He was the only one left in the world that thought that she mattered, and he was the only one who had made her happy in a world that seemed ready to collapse in on her. He had deserved better.
Nick forced himself to remain in his wolf as she mourned for Ziem, looking out at the shattered compound beyond the porch and mourning for the rest of his pack at the same time. They had survived, but at what cost? It was the first time anything they had done had caused so many of them to die, and Ziem was among those casualties. The man who had been taking care of Aura. Who was going to be the father of her children. They had been a part of his pack, and he had wanted them to be safe, but they weren’t. Maybe they never would be.
He brought down Coren by himself. He said finally, though he knew that telling her how Ziem had died wouldn’t make him any less dead. He’ll be remembered. Not just by us, but by everyone here. Your children will hear their entire lives, from everyone they meet, how great a wo
lf he was.
To them he’s only great now that he’s dead. She whimpered loudly again. Now that he died for something they thought worthy. But he was already a great wolf long before that.
He didn’t answer that, because he didn’t want to fight with her, but he did look over at her. He was. I’m sorry, Aura. I don’t know if you believe me or not, but I am. He saw several members of the Guard coming their way as wolves, sent by Lea to watch over him and the house. He stepped down off the porch and gave them orders to stay nearby, then finally looked back at Aura one last time as she cried over Ziem’s body.
No one said anything to Aura and all kept their distance, but they remained in a tight circle around the area as the entire compound began to settle from rage into grief.
One of the younger women of the guard, a blonde wolf, came up to Nick with a message. We received news of Zara, Alpha. Reports say that she was last seen being chased through the Earthborn sector, and then someone saw her run out of the compound.
Even at the mention of Zara’s name, he didn’t look away from Aura, but he finally did turn and look at the young wolf with a nod. Thank you. Only then did he look back at Aura for a moment, then turned and started running off. Watch over her.
XIV
As Nick ran through the remains of the compound that had been torn apart from top to bottom, all he could feel was the ringing pain of all the wolves crying over their loved ones. The ground was a destroyed chaos of rocks, pitted earth, scorched bodies and blood-soaked mud.
Some were celebrating the victory, wolves here and there pissing on their enemies’ bodies with a leg in the air and laughing about it among themselves. But there were too many others howling at the afternoon sun to let victory linger too long in any one mind.
Those who saw him nodded or bowed to him, no matter the color of their eyes, but he couldn’t even acknowledge them as he began to worry more and more for Zara. Finally he broke out in a run toward the fence, and leapt through a hole in it, headed towards the stream. His thoughts were half with his people as he looked for her, and he didn’t dare shout out for her in case there were still enemy wolves out in the forest. So he stuck to his senses and kept his nose to the ground, trying to catch the scent of her that he’d come to know so well in the last few months.
