“Bad idea to turn your back on a ‘Witch,’ isn’t it?” Raz asked the last two men still left ahorse, grinning nastily at them. “I’d have expected better of you.”
The pair looked terrified, sweat gleaming on their faces in the fading light, heads twisting this way and that as they tried to keep both Raz and Syrah in their sights. One hefted a twin-bladed battle-axe, the other a sword and banded shield, but both looked unsure of themselves. Penned on one side by the Dragon and on the other by the magics of a Northern god, the two men appeared to be struggling with a decision.
Raz made the choice easy.
“HYAH!” he screamed, slapping Gale’s flank with the flat of his sword. The stallion reared and lanced forward, head plunging and mane whipping with every great stride of his strong legs. The two mercenaries yelled and brought their mounts around, driving them desperately toward Syrah in an attempt to escape Raz. Before they got within twenty feet of her, weapons held ready at their sides, the flames in Syrah’s right hand solidified into two twin points of brilliant white, which shot forward in parallel streaks to meet the pair. The spells made no sound as they flew through the air, whisking toward the men like birds of prey on silent wings. One took the axe wielder square in the chest, and immediately the man went limp, toppling from his running horse.
The other, though, pinged harmlessly off the iron ribbing of the second man’s shield.
Syrah’s eyes went wide in alarm. The sellsword howled in triumph, barreling forward the last ten feet. His horse screamed as he drove it even faster, urging it forward for the kill. His sword came up, ready to descend on the woman’s exposed neck. The steel shone, lethal and terrifying in the orange glow of the setting sun and the arcane gleam of the fiery whips the Priestess still held stubbornly in her right hand.
He was just about to drive the sword down, about to claim her head for his own, when Raz’s skillfully thrown gladius took him squarely between the shoulder blades.
Thunk.
“Urk!” was the only sound the man made, his own weapon falling harmlessly to the road, his horse charging past Syrah so closely Raz saw the wind of its passing blow about in the loose strands of her white hair. The man made it another twenty feet or so, looking as though he were clawing at the blade that must have been protruding from his chest, before he too keeled from his saddle, landing in a bloody heap on the ground.
After that, the evening settled again, the only sound coming from the crackle of white fire and the groans and yelps of the pair who still had the magic wrapped around their necks. Gale’s hooves clomped dully over the grassy earth as Raz nudged him forward, reaching for Ahna’s haft and jerking her free from the ribcage of the first man.
“Close one,” he said as he drew Gale up alongside Nymara, watching Syrah. “I didn’t expect him to deflect the stunning spell like that.”
He had presumed the woman would be shaken, anticipated that she would stare at him blankly, or look down at the blood dripping from Ahna’s blades with disgust, maybe even horror. He was taken aback, therefore, when she did little more than sigh. The only expression she had—casting over the remnants of the fight, over the men and women scattered dead and alive across the road—might have been slight disappointment.
“I didn’t either,” she said, sounding like she was chastising herself, her mouth twisting into a frown. “I should have. I’ll know better next time.”
Raz stared at her, stunned, at a loss for words.
When Syrah noticed this, she cocked her head at him. “What?” She glanced down at herself in sudden concern. “Am I bleeding?”
Raz blinked, thinking of what he could say, then looked away. “No.” He nearly tripped over the word. “It’s nothing. We’ll speak of it later.” He shook off the confusion, indicating the twitching and yelping man and woman Syrah still held leashed in her lashes, and the unconscious man she’d stunned. “Let’s finish this.”
At that, Raz finally witnessed what he’d expected to see. The Priestess blanched, looking at him sharply.
“‘Finish?'” she quoted, as though unsure what he meant. “They’re done, Raz. Beaten. You don’t have to—”
“I’m not going to kill them,” Raz said with a half-amused snort, throwing a leg off of Gale as he dismounted, tossing Ahna over his shoulder once he did. “What sort of man do you think I am?”
Syrah hesitated, then looked sad. “Sorry,” she said after a moment, what little color she had returning to her cheeks. “I-I wasn’t sure. There was a second there, when you were pretending you’d split my bounty with that woman…”
Raz laughed and gave her a lopsided grin. “Who says I was pretending? I asked for fifty-fifty. She didn’t give it to me.”
Syrah scowled. “Not funny.” But she seemed to relax a little.
Raz chuckled again, then turned and started making for the pair of bound sellswords up the road. “It’s a little funny. Now, can you release the spells?” He tapped one of the lashes of solidified fire with a steel-clad finger as he walked, making the magic vibrate. “I’ve been on the end of these things before. They're not comfortable.”
Behind him, he heard Syrah grumble something like “It’s not funny,” but a second later the flames dissolved in a shower of white dust, glistening and vanishing as it tumbled toward the ground. Before him, the mercenaries began to hack and cough, breathing clear for the first time in well over a minute. The woman was the quickest to attempt to get on her feet, pushing herself shakily onto one knee and going for a long knife on her belt as she did.
“Oh no you don’t,” Raz told her, taking the last few steps in a flash. In three quick moves he caught her wrist with his free hand, twisted the knife out of it, and swept her legs from under her once again. The woman landed on her back in the dirt for a second time with a hard thud, gasping as the wind was knocked out of her. A moment later, Raz had stepped away from her, moving toward her companion just as the man managed to push himself unsteadily up onto his hands and knees.
“And you,” Raz snarled, slamming the bottom of his gauntleted fist into the back of the man’s head. “Stay down.”
With a puff of dust and a grunt, the mercenary did exactly that.
By the time Raz turned around again, Syrah had dismounted and moved to stand over the armored woman, who was still struggling to catch her breath as she lay flat on her back in the road.
“What’s your name?” Syrah was asking her in an—in Raz's opinion—unnecessarily kind voice as he stepped back to stand on the other side of the fallen figure.
The woman glared at her. “Fuck off,” she grumbled between groans. “If you’re gonna kill me, then kill me, and be done with it.”
“Killing’s finished for now,” Raz growled at her. “Answer my friend’s question, then you can take what comrades are still breathing and get out of our sight.”
The sellsword continued to glower, but whereas Syrah’s calm query had done little to persuade her, Raz’s less-patient tone seemed to loosen her tongue.
“Alana,” she grumbled through a clenched jaw.
“Alana,” Syrah said with a smile, setting the tip of her staff into the ground and kneeling beside her. “Are you hurt? I can assist you, if you are.”
Alana the mercenary looked at Syrah as though she had three heads. “Back off, Witch. I don’t need none of your damn sorcery.”
Raz growled. “Watch your tongue. I had half-a-mind to cut it from your head already, and that was before you opened your mouth.”
Immediately the woman shut up, eyes widening in fear. Sure he had her attention, Raz set the heavy steel point of Ahna’s bottom end suggestively close to the mercenary’s ear and grinned wickedly at her.
“So, then,” he said, his crest rising once more behind his head and his wings spreading several feet to either side of his body as he spoke. “You don’t look hurt. You can thank the Moon for that. You’ll stay that way, too, if you do as we say and answer our questions. Understood?”
Alana swallow
ed, but didn’t hesitate as she nodded up at him. On her other side, Syrah looked on in silence.
“Good,” Raz said, not moving the dviassegai’s pointed tip away from the woman’s ear even as she glanced at it nervously. “First question, then: who put out the bounty?”
The answer was prompt, and expected.
“Mountain men,” Alana said quickly, her eyes flicking to his. “Western tribes, as the freeze ended.”
“What tribes?” Syrah pressed her. “Sigûrth?”
Alana shook her head, complexion paling as she looked at the Priestess, like she didn’t want to give the answer she had. “I don’t know. I don’t think Thera knew, either. We were assisting with the rebuilding efforts and security in Metcaf. When winter broke, we heard the Kayle’s army was no more, and how it happened.” She glanced at Raz again. “They released most of the mercenary groups from our contracts just so they wouldn’t have to feed us through the summer. We heard about the bounty on the road.”
Raz frowned at that. “Then anyone could have posted it. Who were you supposed to deliver her to, if you found her?”
Alana looked even more nervous. “Any of the tribes,” she answered in a shaking voice. “Rumor was any of the Vietalis clans would be willing to pay for the Witch’s head.”
Raz looked up at Syrah, catching her eye and raising a brow.
This complicates things, his look said, and she nodded briefly in understanding and agreement.
“Who knows about the price?” Syrah asked the woman. “How many groups like yours were in Metcaf?”
“Just in Metcaf?” Alana asked with a harsh snort. “A hundred. In Harond, though, there was half that again.”
“And they were all made aware of it?”
Alana shrugged, taking the opportunity to scoot her head an inch or two away from the steel point still buried in the ground beside her. “Enough,” she said eventually, “but that was weeks ago…”
“And by now most of the North would know, if not all of it,” Syrah finished for her, eyes distant. After a second or two of thinking, she looked up. “Shall we let them go?”
For a moment, the mercenary looked relieved. Then her face tensed in fear as Raz answered.
“No. Not yet.”
With a jerk he pulled Ahna’s tip out of the ground, twisting her so that her blades plunged down toward Alana’s neck like a guillotine. The woman screamed and Syrah gasped, but Raz stopped the dviassegai just short of the sellsword’s throat. The blood dripped off Ahna's blades, trickling down to spatter the mercenary's dirty skin, and the woman’s whole body shook from fear as she continued to stare up at Raz.
“You’re going to deliver a message for me, Alana,” he said in a low, dangerous voice, leering down at her. “You’re going to hear what I have to say, and share it with any of your kind you come across. Understood?”
The woman’s nod was an almost-imperceptible twitch as she swallowed, like she was nervous any greater movement would leave her as headless as her former captain.
“Good,” Raz snarled, “then listen carefully. The bounty on the Witch’s head is void. Any who would attempt to claim it can count their lives as forfeit.”
He lifted Ahna away from the mercenary’s throat then, throwing her over his shoulder once again and allowing himself to be outlined against the rising moon at his back, like some winged demon of the night.
“Tell them the Dragon says no one touches Syrah Brahnt.”
CHAPTER 7
“Thank you.”
Raz looked at Syrah, taking her face in beneath the light of the new day. It was the morning after their little battle along the north road, and these were among the first words she’d spoken since retrieving Raz’s gladius and leaving the mercenary Alana to gather her living companions and be on her way. Syrah had been strangely quiet for the short remainder of the evening they’d spent ahorse, and had even kept her silence when they’d stopped to make camp and settle in for the night. Raz had wanted to press her, wanted to ask her the questions boiling about his brain since the moments before the fight, but thought better of it in the end. Syrah had something on her mind, that was clear enough, and when she’d settled into her habitual spot beside him, curling up against his chest to sleep, Raz decided he’d give her the evening to gather herself.
Now, as they set about saddling their horses in preparation for their last few hours before reaching Ystréd, he suspected he was about to have his answers.
“For what?” he asked in response, strapping his rolled-up bedroll to the back of Gale’s saddle.
She glared at him. “You know what,” she said, and he was pleased to hear more of the old fire in her voice. “For the sword… the man… last night…”
In his mind, he saw again the flash of the rider’s sword, ready and waiting to cleave her head from her neck.
“I killed that man, Syrah,” Raz said evenly, not looking at her as he double-checked that he’d packed what little provisions they had left.
There was a pause.
“I know,” Syrah finally said. “And I’m glad you did.”
At this, Raz looked around at her. His concern must have been plain on his face, because Syrah looked suddenly strained, barely managing to give him a twisted, forced smile.
“I know I’m not allowed to say that,” she said in a tense voice. “Believe me, I know. But…” She stopped, glancing down at the reins she’d been in the process of getting over Nymara’s head.
“Are you doubting, Syrah?”
It was the heaviest of the questions Raz had been fumbling with, and—if he was honest with himself—it was one he’d been harboring for much longer than just the one night. He hadn't known the woman all that long, in truth, let alone before he’d pulled her from Kareth Grahst’s cruel clutches. Still, Raz had developed the distinct sense over the course of the winter that something—No, he thought. Many things—had changed about the woman during those months of the freeze. He’d noticed it less in his own interactions with her than he had in her interactions with the other occupants of the Citadel. Syrah had conceded her post on the council as soon as she’d been given a free moment to do so, but she’d still been a well-known and popular figure within Cyurgi ‘Di’s walls. Men and women and children of all ages recognized her and sought to speak to her, wanting to ask her how she was, or what had happened, or what she expected for the future of the faith and the Citadel.
It had been hardest at first, in the weeks following the fall of Gûlraht Baoill. As far as Raz knew, he was still the only man she would allow to touch her, but in the month or so after the disbanding of the Kayle’s army, Syrah could barely function if he wasn’t by her side, if he wasn’t there to pull her back when the darkness took over. After a time, that passed—largely because the men of the Citadel came to understand and respect her aversion to them—but even once Syrah returned to what Raz thought was very likely to be most of her old self, something was off. He saw it in the concerned looks her friends gave her as they ate in the great hall, heard it in the toneless manner she spoke her prayers and blessings. He felt it in the manner others sometimes pulled away from her in conversation, like her opinions had suddenly become taboo. He witnessed it when she’d requested to be relieved of all teaching responsibilities except for combat instruction in the keep’s practice chambers.
Only there, beneath the cavernous arched ceilings of the rooms where the men and women of the faith learned to channel and control their bodies, staffs, and magics, did Raz ever get the feeling that Syrah really and truly became herself again.
But it hadn't mattered, then, Raz thought privately as he considered this.
At the time, Syrah was safe among friends and comrades who cared for her. As she’d recovered, learning to move past the violence and horrors Kareth Grahst and his men had visited upon her, she’d been in an environment of warmth and love, and Raz hadn't worried too much about it. She would find her balance, he had told himself. With his help, she would come to terms with the
brutality she’d suffered. The nightmares had started to pass, becoming less and less frequent until she’d had almost none for a month before they were set to depart. Raz had dared hope her soul had found that steadiness he’d prayed to the Sun for every day.
But now, out in the brightness and warmth and savagery of the world beyond the safety of the Citadel’s ramparts, he was getting the sense that that steadiness was not as solid as he’d hoped.
“‘Doubt’…? No… ‘Doubt’ isn’t the right word.”
Syrah’s answer pulled Raz out of his whirlwind of thoughts.
“Oh?” he pressed her gently.
Syrah nodded, looking out over the southern horizon, which was growing flatter by the hour. “I don’t doubt, Raz. The Lifegiver is to me as your Sun and Moon are to you. He exists as a part of me, as alive as any limb or organ or soul.” She frowned. “I’m not doubting his existence, or his plan for the world. I just…”
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