The Wings of War: Books 1-3: The Wings of War Box Set, Vol. 1

by Bryce O'Connor

  The ride was longer than most might believe. In the Cienbal, where only dunes and dry mountains marred the endless sands, one could usually see for leagues in all directions. The heat could trick the eyes, bending the light so that oftentimes things that seemed so distant one moment looked close the next. More than once Agais had been fooled into believing a town or oasis was minutes away, only to arrive a half hour later.

  At night, though, the Cienbal stilled, and the sensation was akin to sailing out of a storm into calm sea. The world became serene, hushed, glowing an evening-blue as the Moon lit the desert just enough to travel by. The only sound was a rare wind and the muffled pounding of hooves across the sand. Nothing moved. It was Agais’ favorite time, and he could often be found forgoing the evening celebrations to sit outside the light, taking in the landscape.

  Jarden whistled suddenly. He was pointing southeast, slowing to turn. Agais mimicked him, peering in the direction his brother was indicating. It was only a few seconds before he, too, made them out. Three still forms, lying only slightly apart from each other, sprawled over the sand. Dark shapes hopped and hovered around them, black wings spread wide, fighting for meat.

  The brothers didn’t slow when they finally reached the corpses, driving right between them and scattering the vultures. The birds screeched and cawed, hopping awkwardly away from their meal. A few fled skyward at once, startled by the arrival. It took another two passes to run the rest away, Jarden swinging his bleached-wood staff around his head and yelling “Hyah! Hyah!” as they rode.

  When the last of the buzzards had disappeared into the night, Agais pulled Gale to a steady halt. Dismounting, he approached the bodies with his cloth mask pressed against his face. It couldn’t have even been half a day, but the ravages of the Sun and the desert’s occupants had left the closest two putrid and barely recognizable. Human, the pair of them, the clanmaster could tell. Likely males, based on the size of the leather boots still clinging to what was left of their legs. Whoever they’d been, though, they were now little more than a mess of bloody rags and exposed bone. Most of the flesh had been stripped away from their skeletons, leaving leering skulls specked with slips of skin and sinew as the only reminders of what must have been full, healthy faces just hours before.

  Still, what was left was more than enough to attract the cats…

  The third body was an anomaly. Atherian, Agais had no problem identifying, and a young one at that. The size of the infant—just under four feet tall—pointed at the child being somewhere between two and four summers old, the latter only likely if he was a runt.

  “What the hell is a lizard-babe doing in a place like this?” Agais muttered to himself, perplexed and moving closer to examine the creature.

  Lizard-kind hide was thick, explaining why the birds seemed to have gotten to the infant least of all three. Lying on its back in the sand, the babe’s major injuries—three long gashes across its shoulder, thigh, and chest—looked more like sword wounds than anything the birds could have done. Windblown sand covered half its body, mounding in odd piles around it. New scars crisscrossed the atherian’s chest and the arm that Agais could see, and its wrist bore a ring of missing scales and raw flesh the vultures seemed to have managed a few good picks at.

  Shackle marks…

  “Slavers,” Agais sighed, looking back at the mutilated corpses that Jarden was already digging graves for, scraping away a pit of sand with one of the two shovels they’d brought.

  At the word, his brother paused to look up.

  “You sure?” He stepped out of the shallow hole and came to stand on the other side of the dead babe. Agais nodded, pointing to the raw ring on the atherian’s wrist.

  “Only chains could have done that.” He kneeled beside the creature’s serpentine head. “Can’t even guess as to what happened, but it must have been bloody to end up with these three dead. They got stripped of anything useful and left behind. The others probably took the irons with them.”

  Jarden nodded, respect in his eyes as he looked down at the infant.

  “I know his kind can be vicious, but Sun’s praise goes to this little one. Probably got to both these brutes before the others overwhelmed him.”

  Agais nodded, standing up. “Praise goes to him,” he muttered out of habit.

  He was about to turn away, thinking to help Jarden with the graves, when something else caught his eye.

  The child’s face was cut up and picked at, but otherwise left whole by the birds. There was one spot, though, just below the torn membrane of its webbed ear, that was crusted over with blood. In the dark it was hard to be sure, but it looked like the infant’s jaw was askew, broken by some blow to the head or face.

  It would be difficult to kill an atherian, even a young one like this, with blunt force. Their skin was tougher than hide, their bones twice as strong as man’s. Trouble was, while the gashes the child had sustained were bad, none were life threatening. A quick examination told Agais there were no other visible wounds. Perhaps hidden under the sand that partially covered it? Or on its back?

  “Jarden…” Agais began, intent on recruiting his brother’s help in rolling the lizard-babe over. Before he could say another word, though, he took a step to the side, around the child’s head, and put his weight down on one of the curious mounds of sand that surrounded the body.

  There was a sharp crunch, and the desert exploded.

  The atherian came to life in a whirlwind of teeth and claws, screeching in pain and anger. Wide wings, hidden under the scattered sand, shot upwards in a shower of loose earth. Agais felt the ground pulled out from under him like a rug as the wing he’d been standing on was tugged free, and he tumbled backwards. The infant was on its feet in an instant, and the clanmaster’s throat clenched. The babe’s right wing, its membrane an aquamarine blue, hung loose just above the shoulder, and Agais was looking up from his back into sunset eyes that burned with agony, fear, and hunger.

  “Agais! Get BACK!” Jarden yelled, leaping between his brother and the pain-crazed atherian, wielding the shovel he’d been digging with, his body free of the heavy furs. On his rear, Agais scrambled away across the sand, heeding the warning. He watched as Jarden danced around the lizard-kind, shouting taunts to draw its attention, prodding the babe with the blade of the shovel whenever he got the chance.

  And then it fought back.

  With a throaty hiss the atherian leapt clear into the air, claws outstretched and fangs bared despite its broken jaw. Jarden had just enough time to block, throwing the shovel up before him, but it made little difference. A swipe of its arm connected with the thin wooden shaft, snapping it in two, and in the same motion the clawed fingers of a scaly hand nicked his cheek. Both feet planted directly into Jarden’s broad chest, kicking him back and drawing blood yet again. He stumbled and fell into the sand, still holding both halves of the shovel.

  The atherian landed heavily, spitting, mouth agape and eyes fixed on Jarden. It was about to attack again when Agais did the most foolish thing he’d ever done in his life. Completely unarmed, he dashed forward, howling like a madman and swinging his arms frantically. The infant’s attention shifted only a second, but for Jarden it was enough. With all the speed he could muster, the man rolled to his feet and leapt forward, swinging the bladed end of his shovel. The flat surface of the spade connected sharply with the side of the lizard-babe’s broken jaw, and a sound like a bell toll rang through the night. Jarden’s swing carried through, knocking the creature to the ground in a heap of claws and wings where it lay, finally still.

  For a long moment Agais and Jarden stood at the ready, breathing hard, anticipating another surprise attack. It was only when nothing happened for almost a full minute that they finally relaxed.

  “Her Stars!” Jarden cursed, dropping to his knees in the sand. The two halves of the shovel that had saved his life fell limply from his hands. “The damned thing is winged, Agais! A winged male! I’ve never seen one!”

  “That makes
two of us,” the clanmaster agreed, not taking his eyes off the prone form.

  Atherian in general were a flightless species, wingless. They typically kept to the Crags, the arid mountain range that looped down into the Cienbal from the east. Agais himself had done little trading with the lizard-folk, but he knew merchants who had. To a one, they all said the same thing:

  Stay away from the males.

  Male atherian were a rarity as it was. Hatchlings were one in twenty at best, and the natural instincts of preserving their gender within the lizard-kind’s crude society led them to be far more unpredictable than their female counterparts. Atherian culture—it was generally agreed—was a primitive, animalistic one. One male could mate with over a score of females in his lifetime but never stay with any of them. The males were nomadic loners, moving from place to place while doing their utmost to avoid each other. But those were the flightless males.

  Winged males, on the other hand…

  Agais had only ever heard little about them, much less seen one with his own eyes. A winged atherian was said to be—lacking a better description—a feral, vicious creature. They were territorial and savage, even from a young age, and kept harems of females rather than traveling from place to place. Anyone who came too near their land or mates, they slaughtered.

  Lizard-kind or not.

  “What are we going to do with him?” Jarden hissed, voicing the question just as it rose in Agais’ head as well. “Kill him?”

  “No.”

  That answer was easy, and glancing over Agais knew his brother was thinking the same thing. Murder was unacceptable amongst nomads outside of self-defense. Like burying your dead, it was unwritten desert code.

  And, despite their brutal nature, the atherian were a people like any other.

  “Well, if we’re not going to kill him, then what?”

  “Sun only knows,” Agais muttered under his breath.

  Killing the lizard-babe was out of the question, but just as much was leaving it to die when day came and the heat returned. Abandoning a living person to the sands was an incomparable cruelty.

  “Are you badly hurt?” Agais asked, giving himself time to think. Jarden wiped blood and sand off his face, tracing the shallow cuts that ran along his cheek with a finger. He winced, but shook his head.

  “Just a few scratches,” he shrugged, getting to his feet and tearing open his shirt. His chest was much the same, though it bled a little more from where the infant’s talons had caught him.

  “Good,” Agais breathed, feeling things fall back into place. The last few minutes had been a storm of action and disjointed thought. “Get back to the caravan and fetch the Grandmother. Once you’ve been patched up, bring her here, along with any of the men that are still awake. And bring bindings, but no ropes or chains. This poor child has had enough of both, I think.”

  Jarden nodded. Tossing aside his useless shirt, he picked up his fur coat, shaking it clean before moving to stand beside Sandrider. There he paused, bending over, and pulled something large out of the sand. He smiled and threw it to Agais, who caught it barely.

  It was the other shovel.

  “In case he wakes up before we get back,” Jarden explained, leaping atop the horse and turning to face his brother. “Seems to keep him in check.”

  Agais snorted, watching the man galloping off toward the wagons, pale braided hair whipping behind him. When he was gone, the clanmaster shrugged off his own furs and got to digging, too wound up from the evening’s events to pass the time calmly waiting.

  Unknown to him, three pairs of golden eyes watched through the dark, blinking just out of sight.

  Jarden returned within the hour, heading a small party. They raced across the desert, pulling up when the dark shapes that were Agais, his horse, and the unconscious atherian bloomed out of the night. Agais—just finishing the second of the two graves—stood up and waved when he heard them, making sure they didn’t ride past him in the dark.

  “Any change?”

  Jarden drew Sandrider to a halt. Agais shook his head, looking down at the prone boy. He’d carefully thrown one of his fur coats over the still form, unsure of how well lizard-kind dealt with the cold, but even when the soft pelts fell over him like a blanket, the creature remained still.

  “He’s alive. I checked just a few minutes ago. I’m not surprised the slavers left him. Probably thought he was dead, the way he’s barely breathing. You didn’t hold back…”

  Jarden dismounted and shrugged as he moved to meet the other three riders that followed. He was bandaged up hastily, the wounds on his face cleaned but uncovered, a smudge of blood seeping through the rough white linens wrapped around his chest.

  “If I’d hit him any lighter, there’s a good chance neither of us would be here to argue about it.”

  “If you’d hit him any harder, you’d probably have dented the shovel,” Agais muttered, watching the Grandmother hurriedly let their cousin Kosen help her off her horse.

  “Is he hurt?” she demanded, rushing forward. “Let me see him!”

  Catching sight of the child, she fell to her knees beside him and pulled out a small leather healer’s kit from the folds of the thick skins she wore.

  “Achtel, come help,” she snapped, surprising everyone, setting the kit on the ground and opening it. Achtel, a friend who had taken on the family name years ago, hurried to obey. Together the two of them gently lifted Agais’ coat from the child, revealing the battered body once again. Agais felt a rush of fear and relief when the lizard-babe twitched, cawing softly from the depths of stupor at the cold night air washing over his skin.

  “Shh,” the Grandmother murmured into its torn ear, stroking the child’s scaly cheek fearlessly with one hand. From the leather case beside her she pulled out a hooked needle. “Shh, my child. Sleep. You’re in the company of friends now. Sleep.”

  The old woman worked with a fervor that surprised every one of the men around her. She labored over the atherian babe as though it were one of the family, cleaning raw flesh and open wounds, gluing together the tissue that had been split by steel. All the while she muttered prayers to the Twins, the words too soft to make out. The four clansmen stood behind her, watching the miracle unfold before their eyes. The Grandmother’s talents for preserving life were unmatched even by the trained physicians that held offices in Miropa, the Gem of the South, the largest of the fringe cities.

  After what seemed like hours of meticulous work, the Grandmother asked Agais to retrieve the broken shovel for her. Jarden must have told her the events in detail, he decided, scrounging the area for the pieces. He found them together, right where his brother had dropped them.

  Handing them over, Agais looked on in amazement. The Grandmother clipped the shattered wooden edges away with a small, whisper-thin silver surgeon’s knife. Twisting the two parts of the haft free, one from the handle and one from the blade, she held up two similarly long bars of strong wood. Still praying, she quickly slit three small cuts straight through the lizard-kind’s membranous wing just below the two halves of the bone Agais had mistakenly broken.

  The atherian twitched when the knife pierced skin, and again when the Grandmother set his wing, but otherwise remained dead to the world. Even as Achtel splinted the break with the wooden shafts, slipping horse-gut twine through the cuts in the membrane, the child didn’t move.

  “That’s all that can be done for now,” the Grandmother said finally, closing her kit and getting to her feet. “There’s no sense is setting that jaw until we’re back at the caravan, but I’ll need to work on it as soon as possible. If he wakes in pain, it will mean trouble for all of us.”

  “You mean to bring him back with us?” Agais asked, stepping forward. He might be master of their clan, but when the Grandmother spoke, the Arros listened. Even him.

  The old woman, for her part, stared at him blankly. “Do you see another option?”

  None of the men had a response to that. Even so, neither were any of them to
o keen on the idea of having a winged atherian tagging along to the Garin, no matter how young he might be.

  “If he comes to…” Kosen began, but trailed off, leaving the obvious dangers unspoken. He was the oldest of the Arros apart from the Grandmother herself, an aging man with a cropped, bristly beard peppered white and gray, and he was rarely known to speak foolishly.

  “He won’t,” the Grandmother assured them. “Bring him back, and have a cot made up in my wagon. Make sure that wing of his is extended, or it won’t heal properly.”

  Unanimously all four men nodded. The order was given, and there was no arguing. How the Grandmother was going to keep the babe sedated none of them could guess, but she seemed confident enough to dispel any lingering concern.