Bound to the Battle God

by Ruby Dixon

  On a whim, I take the food tray and carry it to the entrance of our apartments, then open the door. I put the tray down outside and glance around. Sure enough, guards line the walls, and they all turn to look at me as I peek out. I quickly duck back in, feeling a little sick to my stomach.

  We need a plan.

  18

  Aron continues to gaze distantly out the open window. I want to ask him what we're going to do, but I remember how pissy he was earlier. I suspect that if he knew, we'd already be doing it. Well, shit. I begin to pace, and when that doesn't help, I start to go through the room itself, looking for ideas. There's a chamber for toiletries, complete with water basins and pitchers, and a table of soaps, perfumes, and other things I don't recognize but might be cosmetics. I open every cabinet and find soft, fluffy towels, more soaps, and a variety of hair combs. Gee. I guess Tadekha figures the combs can't be weapons. I take a few of them anyhow, because fuck her, I'll figure something out.

  I move to the main chambers of the apartments. The rooms we're in today are bigger than the one I was in yesterday—probably because Aron's with me now. The ceiling is high and arched, with triangular glass windows near the top of the ceiling to let light in. Everything sparkles, and the furniture is artsy and delicate and utterly useless. I have no doubt that it'd all shatter into a million tiny pieces unusable for weaponry, or she wouldn't have left them. I still grab one of the chairs and try to break it against the wall anyhow, just because I'm stubborn like that.

  Of course it doesn't break. I turn to Aron and gesture at the feather-light chair in my arms. "Can you break this? Maybe we can make weapons out of it."

  He grunts and moves to my side. With one swing, Aron's able to shatter it against the wall, and then we're surrounded by nothing but tiny glass shards, none large enough to use as a knife. Figures. Tadekha's thought of pretty much everything, damn it.

  "Shall I break anything else for your tantrum?" Aron inquires, and I resist the urge to shoot him the bird.

  "Let me think," I tell him, pacing the room—and now avoiding the area with glass shards. I've got nothing but a boatload of towels and a bed and…I turn and stare out the window that Aron's been so fascinated with. Oh. In the movies, someone would make a rope ladder and climb their way out of captivity.

  I race forward, pushing past Aron's big body to stare out the window. Immediately, I get dizzy at how high up we are. Jesus. "How high up do you think we are? One hundred feet? Two?"

  "Feet?" He frowns at me. "You measure your feet?"

  He really is a teeth-grittingly infuriating man. I snap my fingers in front of his face. "Focus, big guy. What's the unit of measurement in this crazy world? Feet? Meters? Leagues? Lengths? What?"

  "How should I know? I am a god, not some fool tradesman."

  I groan. "You really are impossible sometimes." I lean over the window and stare down at the ground below. It's more of the desolate waste of the Dirtlands, nothing but rock and dirt and more dirt. I notice that the Citadel is floating…no, drifting like a cloud. In the distance, there's a rocky outcropping that looks a little higher than the rest of the surroundings. All right, then. That's what we aim for, provided I'm not out of my ever-loving mind in thinking we might be able to reach this with a rope ladder. I look around the room, then push past Aron, racing toward the bathroom once more.

  "What are you doing?" he demands.

  I ignore him, grabbing one of the cakes of soap and returning to the window. I lean over, gazing below, and then carefully drop the soap, trying to count the seconds it takes for it to hit the ground below.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Four.

  Five.

  Six.

  The soap disappears into a puff of dirt far below.

  Okay, six. So that's…what, sixty feet? Six hundred? I don't know enough about physics to make my experiment work. All I know is that we're up high and we need a way down, and this is it. I take a deep breath, wondering if this is going to kill us. Then I think about how Tadekha turned last night into an orgy. Yeah, fuck that bitch. I'm not staying here. I glance down again. Two hundred feet is a good estimate, I decide. Surely between all the towels and blankets I can make enough rope to cover that length. I slap the windowsill as if to put an exclamation point on my plan and turn away. "Time to get to work."

  "What do you mean?" Aron follows behind me as I head to the bathroom and grab armfuls of fluffy towels, hauling them out to the bed. "What are you doing?"

  "I'm making a rope ladder so we can climb down."

  He snorts with derision.

  "Oh, I'm sorry, did you have a better plan?" I haul the linens onto the bed and then go back for the second armload. I wish there were more, but my second armload is pretty paltry. That's all right, though. I'll make it work. I can rip the towels into strips. Same with the bed linens. It doesn't have to be the best-looking rope. It just has to be long enough and sturdy enough to hold my weight.

  He crosses his arms and watches me as I sit down on the bed with piles and piles of towels. I grab the first one and begin to rip it in half. Or, I try to. Fabric doesn't tear as easily as I expect, and I struggle with it for a painfully humiliating moment before giving up and using my damn teeth. That works, and I'm able to rip it in half and then tie the two together. "This is your plan," he states, as if I've lost my mind. “A rope.”

  "Yup."

  "You do realize we are quite high up?"

  "You said we weren't going to fight the guys in the hallway, right? Because they'd go after me to get to you? So yes, this is my plan. I'm not staying here for Orgy 2.0 and I'm sure not staying to see what other fun ideas she has for us. You said she's your enemy. That's enough for me. We need to get out of here, and this is the only way out. So yes, this is what I'm doing."

  He grunts and crosses his arms, watching me as I work. "What do you know of this land?"

  "So far? I know it sucks and everyone thinks I'm a tart and all the gods wandering around are assholes, including you. That's all I need to know." I take my frustrations out on the fabric in my hands. Man, it feels really freaking good to rip it into strips. I imagine it as Aron's unhelpful face.

  Riiiiiiip. Oh yeah. That's the ticket.

  "I know that Aventine is a city that worships me," he says, his voice cutting and blunt.

  "I remember that part," I tell him. "I also remember the part where they tried to kill your ass."

  "Nevertheless, they pray to me. And in their prayers, they ask for certain things. Lately, they have asked for glory as they mount their attack on the Citadel. It has stripped their lands and bankrupted their people, and so they are mounting an offense against it. They plan on destroying it and everyone inside. And they ask their god for glory as they do so."

  I pause. “When is this happening?”

  “Soon. Very soon.”

  “Today soon?”

  He shrugs.

  Yeah, okay. Not helpful. I go back to making my rope.

  I tear sheet after towel after sheet after towel. When my hands start to ache from tearing, I switch to knotting, and my rope grows by leaps and bounds. It's utterly quiet in the room except for the sound of me working, and my occasional glance over at Aron shows that he hasn't moved from his watchful spot at the window.

  Yeah, I guess it'd be too much to ask for him to help his poor lil ol' anchor with, you know, the freaking escape plan.

  That's all right, though. A girl wants to get out of here, she'll just do it herself, I reason. If he doesn't like it, he can just stay.

  Then I remember that we're stuck together, and my jaw clenches. I'm not going to worry about Aron right now. I'm going to focus on getting out of here.

  After a good hour or two of this, I'm starting to run low on strips, my rope covering the bed itself. At his spot at the window, Aron grunts. "They're here. Come and see."

  I glance over at him. His mismatched eyes gleam with excitement as he leans out the window to get a better look a
t something. “See what?”

  The smile on his face is brutal. "Aventine and its troops. And they've brought trebuchets."

  Trebuchets? I don't know what those are, but a vague memory brings a mental image of catapults. Yeah, that isn't good. I scan the surrounding area. To me, it looks the same as it always does, nothing but dirt and hills and more dirt. It's brown on brown and ugly as sin. The clouds roll through the blue sky, and it looks like a beautiful day. I don't see anything, and I'm just about to say so when something in the distance gleams like metal. I squint, and sure enough, one of the clouds hangs lower than all the others. It's dust kicked up from horses, I realize…or land-hippos. He's right. Someone is coming.

  And if it's an army of men from the city that just tried to assassinate Aron…

  I grab his arm, wincing at the angry buzz his skin gives me. "We've got to get out of here before they arrive."

  "I have been saying such a thing," he tells me, with a slight roll of his eyes. "You think Tadekha and her people are equipped to fight an army? They will just play music at them and blow kisses and this pretty, floating city of hers will topple at the first lob of the trebuchet."

  "All the more reason to go," I tell him, racing back to the bed. I snag one end of the rope and then race back toward the window. "Help me find something to tie this to."

  Aron sighs heavily, but he takes one end and we search the room. Eventually, we figure out that tying it to one leg of a long shimmering chaise and then wedging it crossways against the enormous flat, cushion-like bed provides the best anchor we've got. It makes me nervous, but there's no time to spare, and nothing budges when we tug on it, so it'll have to do. I tuck a few of the combs and soaps into the front of my filmy dress, since we have no money or weapons—again—and I'm hoping maybe we can barter once we get away from here. I'm not going to think about the fact that I have no shoes and my dress is see-through. One problem at a time, and I've got Aron with me. He's like a weapon all on his own.

  For a brief, shining moment, I wonder if we should take our chances with the guards in the halls. I hesitate, staring at the ornate double doors. There were at least a dozen guards waiting out there, sure. But I can try and hide in the room, let Aron handle things, and come out when it's safe. But I don't trust Tadekha to not have something up her sleeve. For all I know, they could lob a grenade into the room the moment Aron shows his face at the door, and then I'm toast. Even if we do take the guards down, what then? We're still trapped here with Aventine about to attack.

  Rope ladder it is.

  I turn back toward the window…and Aron is already climbing out the damn thing. "Hey!" I sputter. "Wait for me, asshole!"

  "Then hurry up," he says impatiently, already out the window and moving down the rope. "You take far too long to get moving. Or is that the plan? Be recaptured by the Aventinians?"

  "Wow, just when I think you've hit the height of arrogance, you prove me wrong yet again," I tell him, heading to the window myself. "So kudos for that."

  "Less talking and more climbing," he tells me, and then his head disappears over the side.

  "It's my damn rope," I declare, but it's pointless trying to reason with Aron. He's a god and he's got the ego to boot, and I shouldn't be surprised. With an irritated sigh, I grab onto the sheet-rope and turn to climb out the window.

  19

  They make this shit look so easy in the movies, but in reality, it's a nightmare. My arms are weak and strain under my own weight. Aron below me makes the rope shift back and forth, and the high breeze makes it almost like trying to climb down a pendulum. We're so high up it's terrifying, and I'm actually glad I don't have shoes on, because my toes cling to each knot. It's only the knots themselves that keep me from falling to my death, because I can rest my hands on each one. If I had to rely on my arm strength, I'd be dead already.

  Still, I don't make fast enough time for Aron. He paces ahead of me quickly, shimmying down the rope as if he's done this a hundred times. Me, I've never realized just how out of shape I am until I have to use my arms for climbing down. I know we have to hurry. I'm trying.

  I refuse to look down at the ground, because if I notice just how high up we are, I might freak the fuck out. I've never been afraid of heights that I know of, but I don't want today to be the day I acquire that fear. I just hope no one from above figures out what we're doing and cuts our rope—

  Oh god, why did I just think that?

  I force myself to move faster, to keep going. Because this is not safe, and no matter how scary it is, I have to get to the ground, and fast. Whimpering, sobbing, I keep moving down, foot by painful foot. My hands feel raw from how tightly I've gripped the rope, and each knot burns against my skin. Doesn't matter.

  Just keep moving down.

  Just keep moving down.

  Something grabs my ankle. I let out a terrified scream, nearly losing my grip. Only sheer terror of falling to my death keeps me from letting go.

  "Calm yourself," Aron shouts up at me.

  I look down, and sure enough, it's his hand on my ankle. "Don't fucking do that," I hiss at him. "You almost made me fall!”

  He lets go of my ankle and then gestures at the open expanse below us. "There is no more rope. There is nowhere else to go."

  "What?" Horrified, I try to peer around him. I don't see any more rope dangling below him, and so I study the ground. Or I try to. It's still a huge drop away. Thirty feet, maybe. Fifty? Does it matter? I can't do that and survive. "Oh my god. We've got to go back." A sob forms in my throat. I'm not sure I can go back. I press my face against the straining rope knots. This is an utter nightmare.

  "We cannot go back," Aron calls up to me. "Look at the troops. They are almost upon us. If they see our rope, they will fling their trebuchet at us, thinking we are with Tadekha and her minions."

  I force myself to lift my head and scan the horizon. It's not hard to do, because with Aron and me both at the bottom of the damn thing, we're swinging and swaying in the breeze like a true pendulum, and the rope just keeps twisting and spinning us around. It eventually spins in the direction of the soldiers, and sure enough, what was a faint maybe sort of line before is much, much closer. I can now see lines of troops and big wooden machines that must be the trebuchets.

  I hate that he's right. I hate that we have to get out of here, and fast. But there's nowhere to go. Frantically, I look around. "Is there an outcropping nearby? Have we drifted close enough—”

  "No time." Aron grabs my ankle again. "Slide down farther and hold onto me."

  "What? NO!" Is he insane? He's insane.

  "Do as I say," he barks up at me, and I resist the urge to kick his face. His hand tightens on my ankle and then he's pulling on me, the asshole. "Move farther down—”

  "What the fuck are you doing?!"

  "Let go, Faith—"

  "No!" The rope twists, swaying, and Aron tugs harder on my ankle. Oh fuck, now he's climbing up the rope, and his big body is covering mine. "Stop it," I cry out, wanting to slap at him, but I don't have a free hand to do so. "Fuck off! We can't—"

  "Let go," he says again, and his voice is in my ear, the heat and electricity of his big body against my back.

  I don't let go.

  I don't have to, because in the next moment, the rope snaps somewhere above and all the tension disappears from my hands, and then we're falling, and falling…

  I smack into the ground with enough force that the air slams out of my lungs. Everything hurts and throbs with pain, and I lie completely still for a moment, stunned.

  It takes me a moment to realize that I'm not dead.

  It takes a longer moment to realize that I didn't land, belly-down, onto the dirt. I landed on top of Aron.

  Gasping, fighting off the blackness that creeps at the edges of my vision, I struggle to sit up. I'm having trouble focusing and the world is a messy blur. My head throbs and there's still no air in my stupid lungs and I can't breathe and that's terrifying enough on its own—

/>   And then I'm able to take a shallow breath. Then another. I cough, desperate and relieved. The blackness fades away and I'm able to focus on my surroundings despite the throb in my head. I realize after a moment that I'm still straddling Aron, my legs thrown over his, my butt resting in the cradle of his hips.

  I landed on top of him and it nearly killed me. I don't know how it didn’t kill me, and yet I'm still here. Even so…that must mean Aron's dead. I stare down in horror at the man underneath me, his eyes closed, his dark hair spread out around him like a halo in the dust. That dusky red scar that bisects one half of his face stands out like a bloodstain.

  He opens his mismatched eyes and scowls at me.

  "Oh my god," I choke out. "You're alive."

  "Why would I not be?"

  "Because we shouldn't be?" I glance up, looking for the dangling end of the rope. It's swaying in the wind, high above us, barely visible in the shadows of the Citadel. Oh god. "How did we survive that?"

  "I believe I am still immortal, despite being trapped on this plane. You are the mortal part of this pairing. As long as I protect you, I suspect I am safe."

  That makes a lot of horrifying sense. It explains why I'm eating and why he's not. Why I'm sleeping and why he's not. Why everyone would attack me and not him. "I have no idea how that makes me feel," I whisper.

  "Me either." And Aron frowns to himself, as if displeased with this realization.

  As he does, it comes to my attention that I'm still straddling him. My hands are splayed across his chest. Our bodies are posed not as if we've just taken a tumble but as if we're in bed together and I've decided to be on top. I can feel my cheeks grow heated at the thought, and Aron's eyes narrow as he gazes at me, and I wonder if he's thinking the same thing.