To the Greimere, the Stone Seers had also suffered under Rellizbix rules meant to keep them subdued. When Raegith freed them from their social bonds, the Rathgar females embraced them as “Kindred of Suffering.”
“Is it to your liking, Grass-Hair?”
Raegith turned to see Brick climbing the stairs. “It’s unbelievable, Brick. I’ve never seen a stone building without seams. Without mortar or grout. Did you know you had this kind of power?”
The rust-hued Stone Seer brushed his long fingers against the wall and he stared at his work. His deep, yet light-as-a-feather voice made Raegith feel as if the man had come from a different world than the others; a world without dread nor delight. “A part of me did, I suppose; the part called by stone. It was a part I had to bury. Like all Stone Seers, I resigned myself to abstain from magic, from art… from purpose.”
Brick strode from the stairs to the edge of the unfinished floor and gazed out over the bones of the Citadel as laborers worked to complete it. “I won’t stop with this Spire. I can’t. I will raise the stone and shape it until the land runs dry. I could build a city; work for decades pulling entire buildings from the ground, and never tire of it.”
“Good,” Helkree said. The Helcat leader regarded friend and foe alike with grumbling threats and dismissals, but she acted completely different around the Stone Seers. When she smiled at Brick, Raegith remembered the first night he shared with her. The angst and bitterness she had greeted him with dissolved and she became just a girl happy to be free of bondage; rolling along with a much-unexpected situation. That version of Helkree was useless in their current world of conquest, but Raegith missed it nonetheless. “An entire fortress built by outlawed magic; I like it.”
“Built faster than any Saban or Faeir could think possible,” Raegith added. He looked out over the edge, to the completed section of the outside wall. “I have a question about the giant wolf heads coming out of the walls, though. Where did those come from?”
Brick’s face wrinkled and he gazed at Raegith. “Was that not your wish? The Urufen Helcat with the black hair conveyed your wishes to me about the aesthetics of the Spire.”
“That little shit,” Helkree grumbled, reverting back to her more recognizable form. “It’s bad enough that her kind have taken to capturing the beasts and taming them as pets. Now we’re going to have them all over the fucking house.”
Helkree hooked her tomahawk on one of the torch brackets along the wall and swung out over the edge to take a better look. “Wow, they look real, though. Like they might come alive and bite my face off.”
She swung back into the Spire and turned to Raegith. “Maybe we should keep them.”
Far to the North, a howl rose up above the trees and soon more joined in. Below, Freya raced through the buildings and up the stairs in seconds.
“That’s the invader call,” she yelled as she flew up the stairs. “They must be crossing the river.”
Freya grew quiet as she held up her hand for silence as the howls changed pitch two more times. “A bridge. West of our old home.”
“They rebuilt it.” Helkree spat. “They must know we’ve retreated further in by now. They’re finally growing some balls.”
Freya and Helkree both stared at Raegith.
Raegith looked at the confused people below, as people went indoors and the warriors began to assemble in the courtyard. Then he gazed out over the forest. “We knew this was coming. The Greimere have claimed everything below the river. I won’t abide Rellizbix occupying even the shore.”
Helkree turned around and leaned out over the edge of the Spire. Raising her tomahawk over her head, she bellowed a war cry out over the courtyard that the warriors below picked up. Soon the entire Citadel echoed the war chant of the Greimere.
…
In the early morning, just before dawn, Raegith and his army hid within the concealing trees along the shore of the Pisces River. Thousands of Sabans slept in the open or under a lean-two. Only a handful of actual tents could be spotted. Dying campfires dotted the ground in between what appeared to be families with women and children. Those who stood guard did so without armor or forged weapons.
Near the bridge, a company of Sabans in plate armor that reflected the firelight stood vigil, but none of them spread out into the campsite.
“That’s them,” Hitomi hissed next to Raegith and he felt her begin to shudder. “That armor… the hammers. Those are the ones who attacked our home and slaughtered our young. Those are the ones who killed Naoko and Magda.”
“Why are they only by the bridge?” Brimgor flexed his shoulders and twirled his axe between his fingers. “Cowardice?”
“They’re worried they might have to fight a warrior instead of a child.” Helkree looked over the camp. “They’ve put all this fodder between us and them. Disgusting.”
Fenra and her scouts returned and she went straight to Raegith. “We couldn’t find anyone in the trees. No scent from horses, either.”
“They could be on the other side.” Hitomi pointed out to the hill beyond the bridge. “It’s not the best plan, but if I needed to ambush us without being caught, I’d keep my reinforcements on that side of the river.”
“Beretta can fly over and cut them off with fire before they make it to the bridge,” Raegith replied. “That would give us enough time to regroup… pull them into the trees for our archers.”
Hitomi nodded and turned to the warriors waiting behind them. “We fall on them fast and hard, but we do not lose our honor. I thirst for vengeance as much as any of you, but I will fight only the fighters. Killing children is an embarrassment reserved for the weak and cowardly.”
A rumbling began among the warriors that swelled and then resonated. The Urufen chanted. Rathgar stomped and banged their weapons against their armor. The Lokai danced in place, hopping from foot to foot and shaking their katanas and naginatas.
Yumiko and her Reapers wore all black and painted their faces with white, fanged skulls. Skirts of sun-bleached bones rattled at their waists. They formed a squad of dreadful wraiths swaying in the darkness with their charred, serrated blades. The Reapers made themselves as terrifying as possible, inflicting profane carnage in the midst of battle. They yearned to sow chaos among the Saban ranks and break their discipline.
As the war rally rose up in the darkness, so did the Sabans among the camps. Some near the bridge broke for the safety of the armored soldiers, but to Raegith’s confusion, they were turned away at sword point.
“Hitomi… take back my shore.”
With a shout, the Greimere army burst forth from the trees and charged the mass of Sabans along the coast. Men with improvised swords and wood-cutting axes and hay forks moved to intercept them, but they faltered as more and more Greimere came at them. Screams shattered the quiet of dawn as his warriors cut through the defensive lines with ease.
“I don’t understand. This has to be a trap.” Hitomi called up to Chev’El, high in the trees. “What do you see up there? Call it out.”
“I would, but there’s nothing.” Raegith strained his eyes, but even in the growing light he could not find the Twileen girl among the tree branches. Her voice came from thin air somewhere above them. “The soldiers have moved in tighter at the bridge opening. They’re… Nature’s kin! They just cut a man down. They’re raising their shields against the people trying to cross the bridge.”
Hitomi looked at Raegith, possibly for some answer, but Raegith merely shrugged his shoulders.
“Nothing about this seems right.”
Raegith turned to see Helkree out among the Sabans, holding her tomahawks against the neck of a pleading Saban man whose children clung to his side. “One of you bitches want to get out here and tell these chicken-shits they’re supposed to be fighting. I don’t think they understand what’s happening.”
All around her warriors slowed and stopped their assault as the defense broke into disorder and men huddled in front of families instead of forming up. Brimg
or roared in the faces of a group of Sabans, challenging them in a tongue they couldn’t comprehend. The Reapers hung back at the edge of the group. The masses of women and children were thoroughly terrified without their assistance.
“Fucking Fates,” Raegith growled as he came out of the trees and jogged into the melee. “Stand down. Dammit, stand down and get a perimeter up. Keep eyes on the bridge and the Eastern shore. They’re up to something… weird, here.”
Helkree abandoned the man she had braced to execute and joined Raegith’s side as he ran through the group of confused and weeping Sabans. They made it to the front of the assault and halted as a small group of Sabans managed to organize into a wall of flimsy weapons.
Raegith strolled within striking distance of the men before addressing them. “There is no way out. We’re taking all of you. You can live through this, or watch as I cast your children into the river without legs.”
“I’ll die before I let you take my family, traitor.” One of the men took a step further with his sword and looked as if he might charge. The others beside him grew even more on edge.
“No, you’ll die after, Saban.” Raegith stared right at the man.
In the next instant, Helkree lunged at him. The man barely got his sword up, before Helkree slapped it aside and took his arm off at the elbow. With a kick, she knocked the man to his back. Parying a pitchfork at her side, she delivered an uppercut with her tomahawk that took the man’s jaw off and split his face up the middle.
Two of the other men dropped their weapons immediately and two others turned and fled. The others simply froze.
“I won’t need an army to go through the rest of you. Just her.” Raegith snatched the point of a pitch fork, holding it rigid before him and stared down the man wielding it. “Pride will not save your families from a gruesome end; only submission will.”
…
Raegith watched the soldiers at the bridge as his warriors disarmed the captured Denizens. At no point did they move to assist. They guarded the bridge and nothing else. Helkree wanted to charge in force to retake it, but Hitomi devised a plan that kept warriors alive.
Behind him stood every able-bodied man who had crossed the river to retake the Wilderness. After accepting their surrender and rounding up the entire mass of refugees, Raegith chose an elder Twileen and asked her for an explanation. He learned of the order to send all refugees back to the Wilderness to retake their homes on their own; that they would not be given assistance from the army.
Raegith rubbed the back of his head as the frightened and confused Twileen woman knelt before him. “I knew Helfrick was getting desperate, but this is insanity. First, he sends men to kill our children and now he sends you all here on a suicide mission. He had to have assumed I would kill all of you.”
“No, not the King. The Paladin.” The woman shook her head and looked up at Raegith. When he did not respond immediately, she pointed at the men near the bridge. “Those are Paladins. They worship the Fates. They’re the ones who attacked you at the fort. King Helfrick’s daughter, Senator Helfria, was furious about it. Everyone else praised them.”
The woman reached out and grasped at his pant legs. “But not me. I never cheered them, Warlord, you have to believe me. None of us here did. We know death like those in the North do not.”
“That doesn’t matter, woman. What’s done is done.” Raegith knelt before her and removed her hands from his clothes. “You said his daughter is… a Senator? Is that some kind of priestess or something? If she disagreed with it so badly, then why did Helfrick give the Paladins the mission? Why did he have them bring you here? Why is he giving them so much power?”
“He- he’s not, Warlord.” The woman looked at him with shock. “I thought your spies would have told you by now. King Helfrick is dead. All of the Caelums are. High Paladin Andronicus is in charge.”
Raegith flinched. He stepped back and looked at the woman as if she had transformed into some strange creature. “What are you talking about? He’s not dead. How could he be dead?”
“Grass-Hair, what’s happening?” Helkree reached down and grabbed him by the shoulder, but he violently threw her hand off him.
When the woman did not answer him, he reached out and snatched her by her shirt. “What do you mean King Helfrick is dead? How? Explain yourself.”
“The Paladins… they overthrew him.” The woman withdrew into herself, clearly not wanting to offend him anymore than she already had. “They claimed that the family leapt to their deaths, but no one believes them. The High Paladin and the King fought in public before it happened. Everyone who took part in the Treaty was executed. Then the Paladins sent us back here to reclaim the Wilderness.”
Raegith let go of her shirt and backed away. He retreated from everyone who tried to approach him as his world spun away. Helfrick’s death explained the change in tactics and the arrival of these “Paladins.” It explained why men in non-regulation armor held the bridge instead of soldiers. It explained why innocent Denizens, not an army, were sent to retake their homes from a blooded and vicious enemy.
“No. No, this isn’t how it was supposed to be.”
Raegith turned away and then turned back. In that moment, the emotions overtook him and battled for territory. “I was meant to face him. I was going to force him to tell me why.”
“Grass-Hair, what are you doing?” Helkree looked back at the woman. “What did you tell him?”
Raegith did not bother reminding her that the Twileen couldn’t possibly understand that question. He struggled to keep himself together in front of his army; a struggle he quickly lost.
“How… how am I supposed to know, now?” Raegith twitched and tried to retreat from the tears forming at the corners of his eyes. “Who’s going to explain to me how my father could send his eldest son to die among strangers. I’m stranded without an answer… just like back then.”
Raegith turned toward the bridge and seethed through trembling lips. “You miserable cowards, what have you done?”
…
“Grass-Hair… you’re shaking.” Helkree stood beside him, her tomahawks at the ready in her hands. “You’re sure you want to do this? It won’t retake the bridge.”
“It will damage them.” Raegith stared forward and spoke through clenched jaws. “Or maybe it won’t. Maybe they just don’t give a shit. Either way, I won’t give them a victory they can rejoice in. I’ll give them a victory they’ll want to hide from.”
Raegith strolled forward, Helkree and Fenra at his side. The Paladins formed up, ready to repel the attack, but they did not hail him. Even as the leader of the Greimere army drew within shouting distance, they did not advance.
“Denizens?” Raegith’s voice exploded from him, rocketing across the narrowing space between him and the soldiers. “Farmers and milkmaids? Children? Is this who you send against me?”
Raegith did not need to focus or call upon the rage inside him. When his fists burst into flames, the line of armored Sabans seemed to tense, but they held the line.
Raegith struggled to contain the energy swelling within him; to keep the flames bound to his hands. He whipped his arm back and pointed toward his hostages. His chest shook with his roar. “This is not honor.”
He turned and thrust his hand like a spear toward the soldiers. “You are not worthy of my fist.”
For a moment, everyone was still and only the wind spoke up as dark clouds brewed up from the South. Raegith smoldered as he stared at the defenders of the bridge.
Then, without another word, he turned and stormed back to the group of armed Sabans kept in line by warriors. The men shied away, gawking at Raegith as his arms blazed.
Raegith glared at the men and pointed back to the bridge and its defenders. “Bring me their heads and I will spare your families. You have ten minutes.”
With that, Raegith turned away from them and started for the trees with Helkree and Fenra in tow. Voices cried out, begging him for mercy, but he ignored their pleas.
News of his father’s death at another’s hand and the dishonorable turn his battle had taken that day drained the liveliness out of him. He just wanted to get this over with, go home and get drunk.
“Go now! Fight!” Hitomi yelled at the men and struck one with the butt of her naginata. The other Lokai prodded them with their blades, getting them moving.
“Swear it, you bastard,” someone yelled after him. “You swear my girls will live, or I will haunt you for eternity.”
“You’ll have plenty of company,” Raegith mumbled as he reached a tree and slumped against it to watch the battle.
He heard the man cry out and start running. The rest of them called out similar messages to him and followed, charging across the field. The soldiers broke ranks and backed up onto the bridge to bottleneck the oncoming assault. An officer pointed his sword and appeared to try to reason with the men or turn them away, but Raegith knew they would commit their all to the attack. The soldiers had already proven they would not rescue any of the Denizens. Fighting for the Greimere was their only hope.
“You think they’ll do it?” Fenra asked. “There are a lot of them. We might actually have to spare everyone.”
“We’re sparing everyone anyways, you idiot,” Helkree replied. She smirked when Raegith gave her a confused look. He had not even made a decision on that yet. “I know you better than anyone living, Grass-Hair. You’re angry. You threatened all those men to make them desperate enough to charge off to their deaths, but unless they come running back, you won’t follow through. You’re going to make them work for us… just like you did the others.”
The three of them watched as the Denizens clustered onto the bridge and ran up against an immovable shield wall. At first Raegith thought they were going to try to block them, but then the screaming started. Men collapsed and soon blood spilled over the edges of the bridge and stained the river. The Denizens kept pushing, right into the meat grinder.
Wrath of the Greimere (Hell Cliffs Book 2) Page 29
