O'Connor, Bryce - The Wings of War Series - Books 1 - 4, page 170
The slave drivers glanced at each other. Whatever was going on, Raz could tell it made them uneasy.
“…Nothing we couldn’t handle,” the other man said, lifting his whip as though to make a point. “It’s been taken care of.”
“Has it?” the officer asked mockingly, his voice falsely-impressed. “My, you will have to teach us that trick. A lashing always keeps the difficult ones in check, does it?”
Again, the overseers shared a look.
“Not… always,” the first answered hesitantly. “Not at first, anyway. They learn eventually.”
The soldier nodded sanctimoniously. “Of course, of course.” Then he turned his attention back to the atherian. “Leave her here.”
There was a splutter of outrage.
“Leave her?” one of the drivers demanded, like he couldn’t believe his ears. “What do you… We can’t just leave her!”
“Oh?” the head of the patrol asked, still in his mocking tone. “I do believe you can, as that’s the order I’ve just given you.”
“They’ll dock our pay,” the other man grumbled indignantly. “If we lose one on our watch, the cost comes out of our pockets.”
“Then you can tell your supervisors that the army commandeered your slave,” the soldier said evenly. “A city laborer, isn’t she?” He waited for one of the drivers to nod reluctantly. “Excellent. Then she is the property of the Tash, to be dealt with at his pleasure.”
Raz heard the two overseers grumble at that, but he could tell they realized they were going to lose the argument.
“And if they want to know what you needed her for?” one asked, his voice resigned and heavy with annoyance. “What then?”
The soldier shrugged, motioning to the four others behind him. “Tell them there is more than one use for a slave that causes trouble for her masters.”
After several more seconds' hesitation, it seemed the men understood they weren’t being given a choice. Raz watched them disengage themselves from the female slowly, then step away to leave her shivering before the patrol. With some last rebellious grumbles, the overseers turned and walked away, one of them even glancing back when they were a dozen yards down the road.
Was that pity Raz saw in the Percian’s eyes?
Then the men were gone, leaving the atherian to stand, head bowed and clearly terrified, alone with the soldiers.
“Look at me, scaly.”
The leader’s voice was a strange combination of stern and excited, and he took a step forward as he said the words, coming to stand directly in front of the female. At once she did as commanded, lifting her eyes to meet his, revealing the bright markings along her throat again. It was hard to tell, but Raz didn’t think she could have been more than sixteen or seventeen summers old, judging by the bluish-orange webbing of her ears.
“Tell me what happened,” the officer continued, sounding almost kindly, except for something cruel behind his words. “Why were you causing trouble for your masters?”
“I-I tripped, sir.”
The female’s voice jolted into Raz, rippling in a chill down his back and arms. She spoke the Common Tongue as easily as the soldiers did, like she’d been born to it. It was bizarre and amazing and terrifying to hear it, to come to terms with the fact that for the first time he was perceiving his language from an atherian that wasn’t him. It was strange, too, hearing her speak, like experiencing an echo of his own voice, though softer and higher.
“You tripped?” the soldier said, sounding saddened by the news. At his side, his hand rose into a two-fingered gesture. “You chose to be difficult because you tripped?”
In a flash, the slave was surrounded. At their commander’s signal, the other four had moved at once to encircle her, cutting her off from every direction.
Raz felt the anger start to build again.
“I-I didn’t mean to be difficult, sir!” the female squeaked in fear, her head flicking this way and that to take in the men who flanked her from every side. “I wasn’t trying to—!”
Wham.
The blow fell so fast, even Raz didn’t see it coming. The officer’s hand came up in a fist, catching the poor slave across her serpentine jaw. She staggered with a cry and would have fallen, except that the two soldiers at her back grabbed her under the arms and shoved her forward again. The man punched a second time, this time catching her squarely in the gut as she stumbled toward him.
Raz heard the breath erupt from her lungs.
“No…” Syrah whispered in terrified realization beside him, watching the slave fall to all fours at the officer’s feet.
It was the man, though, that Raz heard more clearly.
“The Tash,” the soldier said, half-squatting, like he wanted to ensure the atherian could hear him from her hands and knees on the road, “has no use for troublemakers among his servants.”
Then he stood straight, and sunk his boot into the atherian’s side.
“No!” Syrah said again, louder now and turning on the room. “Raz, they’re going to kill her! Please! They’re going to—!”
Raz, though, was already gone. By the time the others knew what had happened, Ahna was in his hands, and the Dragon was out the window, dropping thirty feet to the road below on spread wings, little more than a black-and-red shadow in the night wind.
CHAPTER 45
“You can’t truly understand it until you witness it for yourself… It’s as though Laor, in some fit of madness, took all that is terrifying in the world and molded it together to form a single man. There is no stopping him, once he begins his dance. I have a hard time imagining that death itself would be brave enough to meet his challenge, should he ever decide to give it…”
—Alyssa Rhen, on seeing The Monster fight
Karan knew she was going to die.
It was a strange sensation to experience, curled up there on the cold stone of the empty street as the Tash’s soldiers pressed in around her, their leather boots and fists pummeling her body from every angle. Despite all the hardships of her life, despite all the misery and fear the existence of a slave entailed, Karan had never truly feared she might be killed. Her kind were an expensive commodity. Her masters even sent for physicians and surgeons when one of their charges fell ill or injured, because paying the fees for exams and medicines was far cheaper than replacing a lost head. For this reason, Karan had never been afraid of death, even though there had been plenty of times when she’d wished for it.
Now, suddenly, she was acquainted with that terror.
It was the presence that had led her to this torment, she realized. It was that damned sensation that something more lingered nearby, that something she needed to know was within reach of her. It had passed over her mind as she and her field-mates had been returning home after a long day of labor. Once more the warmth had broken through the dim misery that was her life for a brief moment, bearing with it the feeling.
It had distracted her so much, Karan’s feet got caught in her own chains, and the tumble that followed had very likely cost her her life.
The soldiers ringed her on all sides, beating her thin form bloody. She didn’t know why, exactly, they seemed so intent on seeing her dead, especially so brutally, but even as the blows rained down on her Karan couldn’t help but think that it was never a slave’s place to question. She didn’t even fight it, honestly, didn’t do more than yelp and moan when fists caught her in the neck and head or boots took her in the back or sides. All she did was pray, reaching up to the Moon and Stars above and asking that one of the men might draw their blade and end it, that someone would make quick work of her misery. She fought to listen, waiting desperately for the sound of metal on leather that meant a sword was being pulled from its sheath.
What she heard instead almost made her jump out of her bruised skin.
“RRAAAAAAAAAAWR!”
The roar seemed to shake even the heavy stone slabs of the road beneath her. It shattered the night, drowning out the huffs and grunts and laughs of the five men as they pummeled her. It ripped across her ears, so deafeningly loud it left her skull ringing—or maybe that was just from her head being slammed into the ground a few too many times?—and even through dimming consciousness Karan realized blearily that the blows had stopped. Her mind struggled to catch up to her senses, fought to link what she had heard with what seemed to be a sudden hesitancy in the soldiers.
Then, though, there was the sound of shearing flesh, a howl of agony from one of the men, and something wet and hot splattered Karan’s arms and cheek. Even before she pulled her hands away from where she’d been trying to shield her face, she tasted the iron on the air. She blinked uncertainly, staring at the crimson sheen of the blood dripping from between her fingers. She didn’t understand, couldn’t understand. Her heart hammering in the cage of her bony chest, she looked shakily about, wondering what had happened to the men.
That was when she saw him.
At first, between the scrambling legs of the shouting soldiers, Karan couldn’t make out much. A darkness, solid and shifting, shining like silver and steel. It moved with incredible speed, a massive flicker in the waning light of the lamps overhead. Like an avalanche of power it surged into the four men left standing, fearless and roaring in fury, clawed feet scraping against the stone as it whirled and danced among the soldiers.
Clawed feet? Karan thought in confusion.
Then, though, the legs before her shifted, and she saw the wings.
They extended like omens of a bloody battle, whipping out to slam men aside or buffeting them about their heads and helmets as they screamed in fear. A deep, sunset red, they were beacons in the night, shifting and undulating to glow in the light cast from above.
The atherian from whose back they extended, though, was even more awe-inspiring.
He was the biggest male she had ever seen. Though he never stood straight as he fought, Karan was sure even Brahen would have had to look up to this frightening figure of claws, muscle, and steel. Finely crafted armor encased his right arm, left leg, and both shins, and plate gauntlets covered both his forearms, tipping each finger in a wicked metal claw. In one hand he wielded a strange, narrow-headed axe, while in the other he hefted the most terrifying weapon Karan had ever laid eyes on. It was some sort of spear, the broad, double-bladed head of the thing looking like it weighed a hundred pounds on its own, but in the atherian’s hands the weapon looked to be lighter than the air it shrieked through. Even as she watched, the thing moved in an arcing blur that transitioned flawlessly into a series of stabbing slices, engaging two men at once while the male used his axe to meet a third.
The other two, including the officer who had put her on the ground, were already lying in ragged heaps on either side of her, twitching and coughing up blood as they died.
Even if Karan had been able to believe outright what she was seeing, the next thirty seconds did nothing to manage her stunned astonishment. As she watched, the winged atherian cut down the other soldiers in quick succession, felling them with such graceful, brutal ease he might have been little more than a skilled butcher handling a few fine cuts of meat. The first dropped as he stepped out of the way too slowly. He crumbled to his knees, howling in pain and clutching at his abdomen and the massive diagonal gash that had been carved into it by the cruel, curved edges of the spear. The second—fortunately for him—died much faster, the axe looping and crushing his sword hand, than zipping back to crash through the steel of his helmet before the soldier even had time to scream. Finally, with no other distractions to bother with, the atherian turned his full attention on the last man standing, bringing both spear and sword to bear.
The soldier didn’t last more than a few seconds, shrieking in fear and pain as the male’s steel sliced his flesh to ribbons, then becoming suddenly silent as a clawed foot caught him in the side of the head in a spinning kick, breaking his neck with an audible crack.
When this fifth body fell to the ground, there were a few seconds of stillness, the quiet of the night returning to the world except for muffled shouts of confusion and alarm coming from the buildings around them.
Then the male’s eyes turned on Karan.
Had she noticed them during the fight, she knew it was those eyes she would have found most fascinating. More than the male’s size, more than his strange weapons and armor, more even than his damn wings, it was his eyes. She had seen danger in the gazes of her kind before. She had seen wild savagery in slaves who had had enough, as well as protective ferocity in the mothers of those poor babes born into a life of chains. She had seen insanity and madness, brought on by hunger and fear and grief and every combination in between.
But she had never, not once, witnessed even a measure of the cold, confident lethality that shone bright in the amber depths of this male’s stare.
And it was that, more than anything, that convinced Karan of the truth.
“Dragon,” she managed to say, pushing herself up to a side-sitting position, wincing and almost passing out as she did. “You’re… You’re Arro. You’re the Dragon.”
The atherian blinked at her, almost in surprise. He looked about to say something, his mouth cracking open, when a shout from over his shoulder drew his attention.
“Raz!”
The male—Raz i’Syul Arro—turned quickly, and Karan looked past him. A human woman had come rushing out of a building along the east side of the road, one of the city inns that housed the hundreds of sellswords and travelers that passed through Karesh Syl on any given day. This particular woman, though, looked nothing like any mercenary Karan had ever seen. She was tall and fit, her entire body covered in white robes of thin, breathable silk that extended in long sleeves down her arms, a heavy steel staff clutched in one hand as she ran. Her hands were covered in bleached leather gloves, and her dirty boots were made of the same material, giving her the look of a shifting apparition as she passed beneath the staggered brightness of the lamps. In the night, she was about as strange a sight as the winged Dragon.
“Syrah!” Arro snarled in what seemed almost to be protective anger. “What are you doing? If they catch us out here—!”
“If they catch you out here, it would be problematic enough!” the woman—Syrah, the atherian had called her—snapped back as she rushed right past him. To Karan’s utter surprise, she took a hurried knee directly in front of her. As she did, Karan noticed even odder things than the stranger’s attire and weapon. The skin of the woman’s face was ghostly pale, and a single, rose-red eye shone with concern as it took in Karan’s shivering form, the other hidden behind a wrap of frayed black cloth. Her hair was bone-white and scraggly, like it hadn't been washed in too many weeks, loose lengths of it falling across her cheeks.
An albino? Karan thought, so stunned she didn’t even think to flinch away when the woman reached out with a gloved hand.
“Poor girl,” the woman murmured, sounding heartbroken as her fingers settled against Karan’s cheek. “Hold still. This won’t take a moment.”
Karan didn’t think she could have moved far even if she hadn't been rooted to the spot, staring between this strange, white-haired figure and the towering form of the Dragon looming behind her, head flicking this way and that at every muffled shout from the buildings above. Before Karan could think to ask what was about to happen, there was a flash of white light that left her blinking, and she started in surprise.
Then, like water draining from a bowl, the pain and the thrumming of her head faded, her thoughts clearing at once.
“W-what was that?” Karan demanded, scrambling back and realizing as she did that much of the ache of the beating had fled her body. “What did you do?”
“Only a small thing,” the woman answered, trying for a smile and holding up her hand as though she meant no harm. “The magics will do what they can, which will hopefully keep you from waking up tomorrow feeling like you were trampled by a horse.”
“Magics?” Karan repeated, unsure she had heard correctly. “What do you…? Magics?”
The woman only held her smile. “My name is Syrah Brahnt, a Priestess of Laor, the Lifegiver. This is Raz.” Still kneeling, she gestured back to the atherian behind her.
“I know who he is,” Karan said quickly, taking in the massive male again. “I’ve heard the stories.”
Behind Brahnt, Arro grunted in annoyance. “I’ll bet you have,” he grumbled, still keeping an eye out for trouble. “I’ve about had enough of these damn ‘stories.’” Then he looked down at the woman between them. “Syrah, what about the others? Are they going to—?”
“I told Akelo to stay put,” Brahnt said quickly, using her staff to push herself to her feet. “He had Cyper spread the word to the others.”
“Good,” the Dragon grunted, looking like he was thinking fast. “We have to get off this damn street, now.”
As though to punctuate his words, there was a slam above, and all three of them glanced up to see shutters being shoved open and a pudgy, ugly face peek out of the open window. The fat Percian blinked for a second or two as he peered up and down the road, beady eyes adjusting to the dark.
Then he saw them.
“There!” he howled, leaning out to point with a thick finger as he hollered at the top of his lungs. “It’s him! It’s him! Guards! GUARDS!”
The Dragon moved in a blink, too quick for Karan to realize what he was doing before she felt the steel claws of his strong fingers grip her under the arm, hauling her quickly to her feet.
“Can you run?” he demanded, already dragging her toward the mouth of the nearest alley.
“N-no,” Karan stammered, staggering and almost tripping again, much of the ache returning to her legs as they accepted her weight.
Apparently, the Priestess’ magic could indeed only do so much.
“Raz!” Brahnt hissed, following them in a rush. “The chains! The chains!”
The Dragon looked down as he pulled them into the shadows of the side-street, taking in Karan’s manacles with a curse. Obviously, he had forgotten about them.
