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

by Bryce O'Connor

  Kareth’s grin slipped into a wide, crooked smirk, and he waved the comment away with a lazy hand. “Whatever ideas of torment Gûlraht can weave will have to be saved for another man, I’m afraid. I know too well how my cousin would take false hope in this matter.”

  “Then you have her?” the man asked, eager now, taking another step forward. “You have the Witch in truth?”

  Kareth, still smiling, nodded once.

  “Then bring her to us,” the man said quickly. “Bring her forward, that we might return to the march with news of this great victory.”

  Kareth made a great show of hesitation, as though contemplating whether he truly wanted to show the Gähs anything. He pretended to study them, looking each one up and down with slow deliberation, enjoying the subtle shift they made as his eyes found theirs, as well as the building impatience that was almost palpably emanating from their leader. Kareth considered delaying even more with further questions after his cousin’s health and wellbeing, but ended up thinking the better of it.

  Lifting a hand, he flicked a finger, and there was the rustle of dead leaves shifting beneath booted feet.

  The Witch didn’t fight as she was dragged forward from around a tall weaving of roots on the other side of the tree. Two men pulled her along, one by each arm, carelessly trailing her legs and bare feet across the icy ground, uncaring of the torn cloth of her white robes, or the bloody state of her knees and shins.

  They were the same two men Kareth had sent earlier to beat her senseless, ensuring her submission as she was tendered to the Kayle’s envoys.

  There was a collective inhalation from the Gähs pack as they recognized the woman. Though it was doubtful any of them had actually ever seen the White Witch before, there was no mistaking the pallor of her skin, nor the bone-pale color of her hair. Her hands, still shackled behind her back, were almost luminescent in the bluish rays pouring through the ice above, then ashen as they came into the light of the torches. Her bare legs were the same, though marred by bruises and cuts. As the Sigûrth dropped her unceremoniously to the ground at the feet of the Goatmen, rolling her over with a rough boot on her shoulder, her face was revealed, ivory skin smooth despite the weeks of abuse she’d suffered.

  Kareth watched the leader frown as he looked down on the woman, now in a limp heap on her back before him, hands pinned beneath her.

  “Her eye,” he said, bending down to trace the dirty cloth that ran diagonally across her forehead, covering the right top-half of her face. “What happened to it?”

  “We asked her to make a choice,” Kareth said, his voice almost a laugh. “It would be something of an understatement to say she chose wrong…”

  The Goatman’s frown only deepened at that, but he said nothing else. He stayed kneeling over the woman for another half-minute, turning her head this way and that on a slack neck, opening her good eye to peer at the pink orb, examining the ugly scar of her right ear, and even checking for a pulse. As he did his own eyes traveled down her body, noticing the large tears in the robes and the feminine parts of her that might otherwise not have been exposed to the cold.

  “You’ve defiled her,” he said plainly, reaching down to drag away what little modesty the woman had left, revealing the bruises and bite marks along the front and inside of her legs.

  For the first time, Kareth’s smile faltered.

  “And what of it?” he asked defensively, suddenly questioning his assumption that Gûlraht would care little for the state his gift was in when he received it.

  The Gähs, though, merely shrugged.

  “Just an observation,” the man said, reaching down to draw a long, slim knife from his hip. “The Kayle welcomes you to any amusement you can take until he arrives. He only requires that she be able to speak when you present her to him.”

  Then, quick as the wind, the Goatmen gathered a handful of the frayed braids of the woman’s white hair and lopped them clean off with a single quick slash.

  “That being said,” he went on as he sheathed the knife and got to his feet, “I recommend you allow her to keep her other eye, if only for the time being.”

  Kareth’s smile returned with confidence, and he gave a small nod. “I’ll take the suggestion under advisement. I hadn't intended to claim anything else from her just yet, regardless.”

  The Goatman smirked at that, but said nothing in reply. Only after he had torn a long piece of thin string from his chest piece, looping it quickly about the bunching of braids before stowing the whole thing carefully in some hidden pocket of his cloak, did he speak.

  “The Kayle will be pleased with your triumph, Kareth Grahst. I imagine you have just gained yourself much favor in his eyes.”

  And with that he whirled about and vanished back into the Woods, the rest of his pack no more than a moment behind, their footsteps less than whispers before they were gone.

  After the last hint of them had disappeared among the trees, Kareth breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Still smiling, he allowed his head to tilt back and rest against the rough root behind him. He had essentially just hand-delivered his cousin’s greatest desire to his feet. Kareth had little doubt he had just made himself the favorite, had little doubt he had just won himself Gûlraht’s ear.

  In one move, he had forged himself into the second most powerful man in all of the North…

  He couldn’t help but grin even wider at the thought.

  There was the sound of crunching snow, and Kareth looked around. The men who had brought out the unconscious Witch were picking her up again, turning to head east once more. They started back at once, towards the very edge of the camp where fear of her sinful magic didn’t have quite the same effect as imprisoning her amongst his men had.

  But this night, Kareth found he cared little for the weaknesses of the superstitious rabble.

  “No,” he said aloud, directing the command at the pair. Immediately the two men froze, half-turning as Kareth finally got to his feet, pulling himself up by the roots around him.

  “No,” he said again, lifting a hand to indicate a more southeast line. “My tent. Leave her atop my furs.”

  The two didn’t so much as hesitate. Nodding together, they shifted course, making for the distant twinkle of firelight that was the Sigûrth clump, separate from the rest of the encampment.

  Kareth felt a surge of anticipation as he watched them leave, dropping his hand down to toy with the pommel of the sword on his hip. He had much to do before his night’s work was done. Elrös had assured him Gûlraht would be arriving before noontide the following day, and he had many things and more to prepare to ensure his cousin was impressed with the siege he found on his arrival. When that was done, though, Kareth would break a fast he had forced upon himself for nearly two weeks. He had allowed the Sigûrth free rein of the woman in that time, granted them their pleasures and their cruelties.

  But, now, as the White Witch’s last night pulled darkness across the ice and snow above them like a closing eye, Kareth wanted to ensure it was his face she cursed when the Kayle arrived to take her head.

  CHAPTER 35

  “I have often wondered, looking back, why we so easily criticize the rashness of youth, the impunity of immaturity and the imprudency of children. When I consider many of the things made to bear fruit by such ‘ill-judged’ acts, I cannot help but wonder if it is—rather than a growth of the mind and spirit—simply the innate fear and cowardice that is the unfortunate harvest of years that stops an old hag like myself from having the guts to do what boys and girls not even a quarter my age will do without doubt or hesitation.”

  —the Grandmother

  The quarter-hour Reyn forced himself to wait after the infirmary attendant came around to extinguish the lights for the night felt like the longest fifteen minutes mankind had ever been made to suffer in all its history. He put a smile on his face and returned the niceties when the acolyte had nodded to him and muttered a hasty “goodnight,” then settled in to wait. He listened to the boy m
ove about the chamber, hearing the quiet puffs of his breath as he blew out each candle one after the other, and the hiss of dying magic when he extinguished the half-dozen torches on each wall with a wave of his hands.

  When the room was dark and tranquil, and the boy had moved off to a different part of the ward, Reyn started to count.

  When he reached five hundred he slowly, silently—and ever so painfully—eased himself up from the bed.

  Reyn had made his decision in the hour after Wence and the others came and went. It was, in fact, Cullen Brern who had forced the choice for him, when the man had come and—believing Reyn hadn't noticed him—watched from the corner of the room. When the master-at-arms had left, Reyn had settled in his resolve.

  If the councilman had had no words of comfort, no hint of hope to give and draw from all his stoic and strong bearing, then Syrah had well and truly been abandoned to her fate.

  And that singular thought had been enough to convince Reyn to cast aside all other things.

  He grit his teeth as he pushed himself up, refusing to utter a single sound of complaint when his broken ribs burned in protest. He already had trouble breathing, sitting at the edge of his bed, feeling his left side strain with every inhalation. He gave himself a minute there, in part to see if anyone had noticed his rising in the dark, but also to allow himself to get accustomed to the pain.

  When the ache became a constant but manageable presence, and he heard nothing but the shallow breathing of the other patients all about him in their own beds, he eased himself down to the floor.

  His feet found warm stone, and he stood up in full. The farther stretch of his chest made his side cry out again, but he pushed the throb away, feeling about carefully to his right. Another acolyte—a woman nearly half his age again, in fact—had deposited his cleaned and folded robes on the small table by his bed an hour before the lights went out, in case he was summoned by the council. There had been no summons—for which Reyn was grateful—and with a small, ironic prayer of thanks to the Lifegiver, he pulled the robes over his head, inch by inch.

  When they fell over his shoulders, settling with comfortable, familiar weight around his ankles, Reyn began to move.

  He knew his boots would be somewhere about the bed, delivered at the same time as his robes, but he wasn’t sure where and he didn’t have the time or patience to try and find them. Instead he took two careful steps to the side, then started making a steady line straight ahead, as slowly as he could convince himself to go. He knew the infirmary well enough, given the number of times he had visited as a patient after one of Brern’s brutal lessons, but he had requested assistance to the latrine twice that evening just to memorize where exactly he was in relation to the nearest door. As he’d suspected, his little bed-space faced the back wall, curtained off from the other patients. If he was careful, and just kept a watchful eye out, eventually he would see…

  The door, he thought in triumph, finally making out the faint outline of the arched doorway some fifty feet to his right. Feeling about himself and sidling sideways a little, he found nothing barring his way.

  Picking up the pace, he made directly for the light.

  It was a clear lane, he was sure, kept so by the healers in case they were needed for an emergency. He grew more and more confident as he got closer and closer, seeing the whitish outline grow in the dark before him, the stone around his feet becoming more distinct in the limited light. He arrived before it quickly, reaching out a hand to lift the handle and let himself out into the hall.

  The latch rose, then struck a lock with a loud clang of metal on metal.

  At once there was a grumbling rising of noise as several of the sick and injured closest to the door were roused from their sleep. Reyn felt his heart skip a beat as someone asked “Who’s there?” in a loud, tired voice. Whether it was in his head or actually happening, he thought he made out the beat of boots on the stone, come running from another part of the ward.

  Without thinking twice, Reyn drew as much power as he could into the palm of his right hand, then pressed it to the handle of the door.

  BOOM!

  The door latch blew outward in a deafening crash as the blast of magic tore it free of the wood. Without a moment to lose Reyn reached into the hole, ignoring the splintered timber that bit into his fingers as he used it to swing the door wide. Several shouts of fear and anger followed him out into the hall.

  Then he ran as fast as the pain allowed.

  Reyn knew now that he didn’t have long. It wouldn’t be more than a few minutes before the healers figured out who was missing, and another ten before the council was summoned and pieced together where he might be going. He had to move, and he had to move fast. Reyn took every turn he could, every passage and shortcut he could find and think of. Even at this late hour he passed a number of Priests and Priestess about their own business, some walking in groups or pairs, others on their own, turning to watch him curiously as he ran by. After the first few of these individuals grew wide-eyed at the sight of him, Reyn reached back and pulled the hood of his robes over his blond hair, keeping his head bowed as he ran. When he was half a mile from the infirmary, well away from any chasing healers wanting to make sure he didn’t hurt himself further, Reyn forced himself to slow to a fast walk.

  All it would take was a question as to what he was fleeing from, and curiousity might very well turn into suspicion.

  He wasn’t worried about his bare feet. Even in the middle of the freeze it wasn’t uncommon for some Priests and Priestesses to walk about without shoes or boots, usually when they couldn’t sleep, or between lessons in unarmed combat in the practice chambers. Indeed, the next few men and women he passed didn’t do more than give him a polite nod as he hurried by, one older Priest not even bothering to look up from the great tome he had his long nose buried in as he moved languidly down the hall.

  All the same, Reyn didn’t relax until he reached his final destination.

  It took him nearly ten minutes to arrive at the larders, the old halls that were second only to the furnace room in how deep they descended into the mountain. They were a ways from the kitchen, unfortunately, but the dark coolness did well for certain foodstuffs, and—more to the point—no one had ever been able to come up with a good suggestion on how better to use the Citadel’s dungeons, relics of a bloodier part of Cyurgi’ Di’s history.

  Relics, that was, until this day.

  For a moment, as Reyn arrived at the top of the steps that led down into the underground prison, he feared suddenly that he had been mistaken. He had deliberated all afternoon, gone over every option he could think of, and in the end had always come to the conclusion: the council would lock Raz i’Syul Arro up in the only place that was—or had at least once been—designed to detain him. No one guarded the stairway, however, and as Reyn started down carefully, keeping one hand on the thick chain that served as a guardrail along the wall, he saw no sign of anyone else waiting along the stairs.

  He had almost reached the bottom-most steps, in fact, before he discovered his guess had been on the mark.

  Voices.

  They belonged to two, maybe three people. A pair of men at the very least, but Reyn didn’t discount that there might be others he couldn’t make out, or who weren’t talking. He descended the last steps slowly, ignoring the continued ache in his side that had only worsened during his hasty flight from the infirmary.

  When he reached the landing, he snuck to the edge of the closest wall and peered around.

  Two men, both of whom he recognized, stood opposite each other on either side of the larder’s long, wide hall. They were leaning back, clearly bored, talking casually as one man thumbed the steel of his staff, tucked under one arm, and the other motioned excitedly with his hands.

  His staff stood some ten feet away, propped up in the nook of one of the dozen iron-and-wood doors that staggered each other on either side of the hall.

  Reyn found himself subconsciously noting that he would h
ave to speak to Cullen Brern about putting some thought into how they instructed their sentries.

  Like they’ll ever let me teach again, after this.

  Something caught the corner of Reyn’s eye then, causing him to startle and twist only to find the flicker of shadows as some draft blew over the candles set in the stone walls that surrounded him. He cursed himself and his paranoia, but the anxiety built up, reminding Reyn of how little time he had.

  Taking a breath, he steeled his resolve, then stepped out from around the corner.

  The man on the right, opposite the edge Reyn had been creeping behind, spotted him first. Gane Trehl was a pudgy, heavy-framed youth of twenty-two, but he’d been born into the faith and had earned his staff after proving himself a deceptively quick and capable fighter. Reyn had helped train him, and knew what the boy was capable of.