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

by Bryce O'Connor

  Finally, she stilled altogether, and Zeko let the woman’s corpse slide to the snowy pit floor with a dull thump.

  Quin should have known to expect the explosion of cheering by now. He had borne witness to a dozen of the Monster’s fights, after all. Still, the roar took him by surprise, pitching with the keening shriek of excitement usually reserved only for the atherian.

  A new crowd favorite indeed, Quin thought with a smile, watching Ajana Zeko turn slowly in place, both fists held in the air in triumph, basking in the glory of the crowd’s approval. Then Quin’s eyes shifted to the box at his arm, hidden beneath the red cloth that hung over it like the veil of a grieving woman, and he smiled.

  He smiled , because he had so, so much more to share before the day was done.

  CHAPTER 34

  “Of all the evils I have witnessed in my life, there are a few that cling to my dreams like angry spirits, insisting on haunting my very thoughts. That day, as the crowd rose above me and the chill of snow and wind bit into my flesh and bone, is perhaps the greatest of those nightmares.”

  —the Monster of Karth

  Raz and the Doctore had been sitting in silence for some time when the clunk of the handle and the grind of hinges told them someone was opening the door. They’d been in Rhen’s offices for hours by then, and had long since exhausted all theories they had about what might be going on out in the world and the Arena above. The only visitors they’d been allowed were an attendant who’d brought them each meals at midday, and another later to replenish the wood supply so they could keep the fire fed and the chambers warm.

  Raz had been rapidly approaching his last nerve by the time the door opened this third time. He had told himself he would give the Chairman his mystery, grant him some patience. It wasn’t as though he had any other choice with two dozen guards outside the room and another several hundred swords looking for any excuse to claim his head just beyond them. Still, Raz had to do something, and pretending he was giving Quin Tern some leeway was a heck of a lot easier than admitting there was virtually nothing they could do.

  “Master Arro, I’ve been instructed to tell you to prepare yourself.”

  Raz looked around. Officer Erute was in the arch of the door, peering in at them. Raz had a retort on the tip of his tongue prepared, but decided to stow it.

  There is a time for bravado, he told himself instead, standing up to face the man. This is not it.

  “Can I at least prep outside?” he asked, reaching up to tap knuckles against the ceiling’s wooden crossbeams for emphasis. “I could use the space.”

  The officer paused, then nodded. Raz heard Rhen stand up behind him as he pulled Ahna from her place on the wall, joining him as he made for the door.

  “Have you heard anything more?” she asked Erute quietly as they passed. “Anything else you can tell us?”

  The officer said nothing. Instead he instructed his men to stay put, then indicated a space between them and led the way.

  The underworks were almost empty compared to what they had looked like that morning. A few stragglers—maybe a dozen in all—were still huddled about the walls, most groaning and nursing wounds, trying to get the strength together to get back on their feet. One or two of them, Raz realized as they passed still forms huddled in corners, would never stand again.

  They weren’t taken to the physicians? he wondered in amazement. Why? Were they not deemed worth saving? Or maybe there have just been too many injured for the surgeons to keep pace with?

  “What’s the Chairman been up to?” he asked once they were out of earshot of the other guards. “Where did everyone go?”

  “Most were sent away this morning shortly after your arrival,” Erute said, coming to a halt in the wide space at the bottom of the gangway. “Heralds arrived to draw names, and those not chosen were told to go home.”

  “Draw?” the Doctore asked him, obviously surprised. “How many? For what?”

  The man shook his head. “I’m not at liberty to tell you,” he said sternly before waving at the dirt floor around them. “I’ll leave you to your preparations. My men and I are at your disposal should you need anything more.”

  With a final nod, he turned on his heel and walked away.

  At once Raz began to loosen up, rolling his shoulders and flexing his arms as he stretched his wings out to their full extent. He hadn’t put them to much use of late, given how much more vulnerable their thin membranes were to the frigid cold than the rest of him, but it never hurt to be prepared.

  The Doctore, in the meantime, stared at him.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded of him as he squatted and bounced, stretching out his hips and knees.

  Raz looked at her blankly. “Getting ready?” he stated, unsure of what other answer she might expect. “I don’t know what’s waiting for me up there. Could be a hundred armed men. Maybe they’ll just set the stands loose on me and give the purse to whoever is left with the biggest chunk of Monster at the end.”

  “You’re going to fight?” the woman hissed, stepping in front of him. Even kneeling so that he sat nearly on his heels, they were practically eye to eye. “Without knowing what you’re up against? Without a plan?”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” he told her with a shrug, standing up. “The real world doesn’t run on a schedule, Rhen. Your battles aren’t picked from a list. If I survived the Mahsadën and all their horrors, I can survive whatever Tern is going to throw at me.”

  “But this wasn’t part of the deal, Arro! This wasn’t part of the contract you—!”

  “No, it wasn’t,” Raz cut the woman off, reaching back to loosen his gladius in its scabbard. “And if Tern feels he’d like to renegotiate our terms without informing me first, I’ll let him know in spectacular fashion how poor a decision that is. For the time being, though, you and I are stuck. So—if you don’t mind—you should get out of the way. It would be poor form for the Arena Doctore to get herself killed during my warm-up exercises.”

  Rhen frowned, but stepped back, and the next ten minutes were spent with Raz moving the dviassegai about him in smooth, gentle circles, prepping his body for whatever was to come. His concentration was hard to come by, his focus broken by the sound of battle rolling down the ramp from the pit above them. Still, he did his best to block it all out, and by the time the sounds quieted he was feeling good, the tension of sitting all day having been worked from his body.

  Above them the portcullis started to rise, and abruptly attendants were all about them, come dutifully running from whatever chores they’d been about. Over a dozen in all, a few stole glances at Raz as they passed, but most ignored him, which he didn’t mind. He’d been around the Arena too long now for any of the place’s workers to be truly mystified by him anymore. In a ragged line they filed up the ramp, ducking into the light of the afternoon outside as a herald’s voice began to call out over the crowd.

  “Winner of your eighth and final melee!” the voice roared above the noises of the stadium. “All stand and hail the mighty Helena, Shield Bearer of the Seven Cities!”

  The cheers pitched in response. There was a thump, and the first body came rolling down the gangway.

  “Not one among you can deny the spectacle you have observed today, citizens of Azbar! You have borne witness to eight trials, and seen eight titans emerge victorious from them.”

  Thump, and the second body came.

  “Have you had enough? Have you basked in the glory of the Arena to your fill? Or do. You. Want. MORE?”

  The roar of approval drowned out the sound of the third and fourth bodies hitting the dirt, but they rolled into view just the same. Beside him. Raz felt Rhen tense, watching the dead pile at their feet.

  “We thought not! We have prepared for you the most savage battle any man has ever witnessed within these great walls! We have designed a crucible, a match of such proportions, none has ever seen the like!”

  Thump, thump. Two more came tumbling down the hill. The Docto
re was positively shaking now as Raz continued to listen.

  “You know what is to come, my lords and ladies! You can feel it in your bones, can taste it in the air! You have need of a champion to lead you in this fight, to hold your colors in the battle that is to come. Call on him, citizens of Azbar. LET US HEAR HIS NAME!”

  As the seventh body made trails in the dust on the way down the ramp, the chant began. At first it was muddled, offbeat and unsure. Quickly, though, it built, gaining rhythm and tone and volume with every second. Before long it seemed the word would shake loose the stones of the Arena itself.

  “MONSTER! MONSTER! MONSTER! MONSTER!”

  Raz looked to the looming shape of light that was the open gate to the pit above them. Then he looked down at the pile of corpses at his feet.

  A melee. He had heard it, had made out that word. An all-out, no-holds-barred melee. Eight went in, and only one was left standing. It explained the wounded and the dead scattered about the underworks around them, some groaning as they clutched at injuries, others not likely to ever make a sound again.

  And he thought he could curb Tern’s thirst for violence…

  The prick of fear returned.

  “Doctore,” Raz said quietly, not taking his eyes off the bloody mass of bodies before him. “I have a favor to ask.”

  Rhen didn’t turn towards him.

  “A-a favor?” she asked.

  He could hear the shake in her voice.

  Raz nodded once. “The Koyts. Get them out of the city. If something should happen, get them out and as far away from here as you can. They have the papers. It shouldn’t be hard, at least not if you move fast.”

  “If I… if I move fast, yes…” Rhen said unsteadily.

  Raz turned to look at her then. The Doctore’s eyes were fixed, wide and empty, on the dead. Even as the attendants swarmed down from the pit, pairing up to grab limp wrists and ankles, she couldn’t seem to look away.

  The woman had been bred and baptized in the blood of the pit, but even to one such as she this level of needless slaughter seemed almost too much to bear witness to…

  “Alyssa!” Raz snapped. “Listen to me!”

  At that, Rhen jumped. Blinking, she looked around at him.

  “The Koyts,” he said again, hating the hint of desperation he heard in his own voice. “I owe them. They are my responsibility. If I fall, they have no one and nothing to look forward to except hoping Tern forgets they ever existed. Get. Them. Out.”

  For a long moment Rhen stared at him. He steeled himself to argue with her, to contend with whatever resolve she might have that he wasn’t going to die today, that Tern placed too much value on his life.

  Instead, though, she nodded. Only once, and only briefly.

  But she nodded.

  Raz felt something like relief mix with the torrent of all the other feelings he was experiencing. The fear was true now. Raz wasn’t afraid to die. Hell, a few months ago he’d have shrugged the concept off without much concern. He lived a violent life, full of violent people with violent tendencies. Any day could have been his last, and he’d grown comfortable with the concept.

  Now, though, there were things he wasn’t ready to leave behind just yet…

  “MONSTER! MONSTER! MONSTER! MONSTER!”

  When the last of the fallen had been hauled away, Raz started up the ramp, holding the dviassegai tight by his side.

  Let’s see what the bastard’s cooked up for us, then, Ahna.

  CHAPTER 35

  Raz blinked in the dim gray light of the stormy afternoon. The pit, he realized with some relief, had been cleared at least once that day, though the still-falling snow was claiming back the ground around him in rapid fashion. A thin layer of white hung weakly over the churned red and brown of spilled blood and wet earth, but it was nothing compared to the heavy slush that piled everywhere in the stands that had not needed to be swept clean. Across from him, standing on the other side of the ring, was a lone woman. On one arm Helena, the final victor, carried a wide buckler, her other hand wrapped around the hilt of a plain longsword, whose tip rested against the ground. A white bandage was wrapped around her forehead where someone had managed to get a strike in, and she looked exhausted, her heavy breathing misting in the air.

  Raz didn’t for a second allow himself to think this was the extent of his trial.

  Instead, he looked up above the woman’s head, into the Chairman’s box. The herald stood front and center, a tall man in heavy robes of white and gold that reminded him a little of those Brahnt, Yu’ri, and al’Dor had sometimes worn. The man was waving about him for quiet, trying to control the ten thousand voices that had exploded into cheers the minute Raz had stepped under the grounding tips of the portcullis. He was alone, though.

  Quin Tern was nowhere to be found.

  The prick came yet again, and Raz felt the crest along the back of his neck flick instinctively, as though in warning. Though he knew it was pointless, he couldn’t stop himself scanning the crowd around the box, looking for a rotund figure with long blond hair.

  “Where are you, you fat fuck?” he grumbled to himself.

  The herald, meanwhile, seemed to have finally gained some control over the noise.

  “Your champion, citizens of Azbar!” he called out with infectious enthusiasm. “You called for him, and he has come to deliver on you the entertainment you so desire! The Monster of Karth is here to fight for you, my lords and ladies! The Scourge of the South is here to kill for YOU!”

  The crowd roared in response. Giving up on his search for the Chairman, Raz turned his eyes back to the herald, figuring he might as well pay attention and see what it was he could glean about the mess he was in.

  “But where are his foes, my friends? Where are the vile men and women come to take him from you? Is Helena, the Shield Bearer of the Seven Cities, to stand against the Monster alone? I think not! Citizens of Azbar, allow me to reintroduce you to your day’s other victors, the vicious fighters who will have to set aside all the rivalries of today’s melees and work together now to take on your champion. From the West Isles I give you… SURY ATHEUS!”

  Footsteps behind him made Raz step away from the gate and turn around. From the shade of the underworks, a narrow figure with tanned skin and long jet-black hair appeared. He had the thin, slanting eyes of the Islers, and the same wiry build. Despite his slimness, though, he walked with a confident bearing, hands resting on the slender handles of the long, narrow blades on either hip, strapped over thick leather armor padded with fur for warmth.

  As Atheus walked carefully by, Raz heard other steps crunching on the gangway after him.

  “From the port city of Acrosia,” the herald continued. “PIRATE KING KEHNT!”

  The next man was a Southerner in truth, but unlike any Raz had ever seen. He’d forgone the skins and furs in favor of layers on layers of colorful silks and shirts, all tucked beneath a leather tunic and wide, baggy pants of very odd fashion. He had a wide-brimmed hat dipped lazily to one side, and a curved saber he held by the sheath in one hand.

  “From the great lands of Perce… AJANA ZEKO!”

  Zeko was a black behemoth, lumbering from the darkness of the underworks, the two-handed warhammer clenched in one fist looking like it might have matched Ahna for weight. After him the herald called out four others, but Raz didn’t bother listening for their names. A spearwoman, another shield bearer, a large mountain man with a two-handed claymore over one shoulder, and a mace-wielder with a long-handled morning star in one hand and a flail in the other.

  It was all he needed to know, watching each step out onto the pit and move to ring him. Their names were irrelevant compared to their number.

  Four. Four was a number he could face—a number he had faced—and win. He’d taken on more in the past, of course, but rarely by choice and never of a caliber of the men and women that surrounded him now. Four he could handle and put on a show. Four had been the maximum, as agreed on when Tern had made his Chairma
n’s Tourney.