As his soldiers finished off the last few, Gaius pushed the blade still rammed into Egnatius’s back deeper, and said against his cousin’s ear, “If you want me to end this quick, cousin, you’ll have to tell me what I want to know.”
“Know?”
“Where’s Vateria? I want Vateria. Your sister will never escape paying for what she did to Agrippina.”
“I’ll tell you nothing,” Egnatius shot back.
Gaius wasn’t shocked by this. Egnatius was one of the stronger of Thracius’s offspring. He would not go down easy.
Something he quickly proved when he rammed his elbow into Gaius’s face, forcing him back. Briefly free, Egnatius dropped to the ground, but quickly shifted from human to dragon. His legs might be dead, but not his wings.
He lifted himself up, hovering off the ground, and yanking his sword from its sheath.
“Come, cousin!” he ordered Gaius. “Let us see the good king fight.”
Gaius nodded. “As you wish.”
Kachka found the one to be forced upon her in one of the only wooden huts in tribal territory.
Wooden huts were not usually built because they took additional time to breakdown when the tribes went on the move. More important, they weren’t nearly as warm as the yurts.
But, every once in a while, there was a call for a wood hut. For it was to these dwellings that those who had wronged their own were sent. The Southlanders would call it a prison. The Riders called it, “The place for those who cannot be killed.”
This hut wasn’t filled with criminals the way the Southlanders’ prisons were. Instead, there was only one inhabitant. A woman. On her knees, her arms bound in chains. The chains were secured to the ceiling so that her arms were raised above her head and stretched wide apart. This was to keep her from using her hands for anything.
More chains were wrapped around her ankles, and the chains stretched across the floor and were staked to the ground by thick metal spikes.
There was no light in the hut. No fire to warm. Just the prisoner.
Nina Chechneva, the Unclaimed.
Unclaimed because no tribe would have her. The tribe she’d been born to had disowned her nearly two hundred years before. And no other would take her in. So she was nothing more than Nina Chechneva.
As soon as Kachka walked into the hut, she knew that Nina sensed her.
Without lifting her bowed head, she said, “Kachka Shestakova. I knew you were coming.”
“Did your dark gods tell you that, Nina Chechneva?” Kachka asked as she carefully moved closer.
“No. Just the damned souls who roam these lands. Lost and desperate and so ripe for my use.”
She said that last bit on a hissing little whisper. Over her three hundred and thirty-six years, Nina had terrified many with that hissing whisper. She’d been using it to her advantage since before she could walk, terrifying even her birth mother, who had given her up to the shamans of the tribe not long afterward. But after a time, even their shamans had wanted nothing to do with Nina Chechneva. No one had.
So they’d tried to kill her. Many times. Her own mother had attempted to bury the first blade in Nina’s chest. But, instead, she’d buried it into a mighty oak that had abruptly appeared where the child had been standing, the blade breaking on impact. Then, suddenly, Nina Chechneva had been standing behind her mother, and the five-year-old had slammed her mother head-first into that tree.
Was all that true? Kachka didn’t know. Every Rider child was fed stories like these from birth. But true or not, Nina Chechneva was feared by all. Not because she’d embraced the magicks of these lands. Riders appreciated magicks as much as anyone and those who were gifted by the gods were looked upon with slight envy and great respect.
But Nina Chechneva hadn’t been blessed by the gods. Her dark soul had been tainted by something else. And the longer she’d managed to live, the more she’d been hated.
So now, the Anne Atli was using Kachka to get rid of that which she could not get rid of herself.
Steadying her nerves, Kachka went down on one knee in front of Nina. She placed two fingers under the woman’s chin and lifted until their eyes met. Those dark, soulless eyes, filled with hate. Not the casual hate of someone hated by her own people. But the hate of everyone she encountered. Nina, it was said, absorbed that hate to use when she cast spells. Now that hatred swirled through her body like blood.
“You have so few choices, Nina Chechneva. You can stay here, an outsider among your own—”
“Just like your sister. Does she miss her eye terribly? Does she cry for it at night, tears only dripping from her one remaining eye?”
Unwilling to ask how she’d known about that—no one talked to Nina Chechneva if they could help it, not even to gossip—Kachka went on as if she hadn’t heard her. “—or you can join me.”
“What makes you think you can trust me any more than anyone else, Kachka Shestakova, no longer of the Black Bear Riders of the Midnight Mountains of Despair in the Far Reaches of the Steppes of the Outerplains?”
“The Tribes are giving you a chance to live. Outside of this hut that they’ve built specifically for you. To allow you to breathe fresh air. To be free of these chains. But they offer you nothing more. The Cult of Chramnesind, however? They won’t even give you that. When they take over, even your dark gods will not protect you. But join us and you’ll have a chance to stop them. Then, when this is all done, you can go to your dark gods. You can become one with them and do whatever you and your dark gods do. Free from tyranny.”
Kachka gripped Nina’s chin tight until the woman couldn’t help but wince from the pain. “I promise you, Nina Chechneva, the Unclaimed. You will get no better offer than this. From anyone.”
“But?”
“But you will swear to your dark gods at the risk of your unholy soul that your loyalty will be to me and to our team. No one else.”
“And what of your mad Southland queen? She thinks her tormented soul is too good for the likes of me. She won’t be happy.”
“My loyalty is to the Mad Queen of Garbhán Isle. Your loyalty will be to us. But you must swear it, Daughter of Darkness. You must swear it.”
Nina’s eyes cut across the room. She took in a deep breath and slowly let it out. When she was done, “Fine.”
“Swear it.”
Her eyes ripped back to Kachka’s face. Kachka saw all that hate there. More than usual, actually. But it didn’t surprise her. She’d never seen Nina Chechneva look any other way.
“I swear it. On my soul and to the dark gods of pain and suffering and despair.”
Kachka studied Nina Chechneva’s face a little longer. She saw resignation in those hate-filled eyes, so she released her grip.
“Zoya Kolesova. Unleash her.”
The massive woman gawked at Kachka from the safety of the hut door. She’d come in just far enough that she could watch the proceedings but was still able to flee if necessary.
“Have you lost your wits, Kachka Shestakova?”
“Do as I tell you. Release her. She is one of us now.”
“Foolish,” Zoya muttered as she began the process of pulling the spikes from the ground and tearing the chains from the ceiling using her bare hands.
Once the chains fell to the ground, so did Nina.
“Remove the chains . . . from my . . . arms,” she gasped into the ground. “They are . . . bewitched.”
That made sense. Nina Chechneva would definitely need something extra to keep her under control.
Together, Zoya and Kachka removed the chains that controlled Nina while the others stood by the exit and waited. They were clearly concerned, but they said nothing.
Once the chains were off and tossed across the room, Nina Chechneva pulled herself up until she was once again on her weak knees. Her fists against the ground, she panted hard, her head still bowed, her frail, thin body—most likely weakened by starvation—shaking.
Then she was gone.
“Ready?
” Nina Chechneva asked from outside the hut, her voice strong again, her body filled out and healthy.
Sadly, that one question sent all of them jumping, but it was Kachka’s own cousin Tatyana who screamed—like some weak male!—and ran into the hut for protection.
“Some pride, Tatyana Shestakova,” Kachka barked in disgust. “Any, to show me that you are part of the tribe I still love.”
“She’s a witch, cousin,” Tatyana accused. “Everyone knows that!”
“If only that were the simple truth of it,” Zoya muttered as she walked by Kachka. For once, her voice shockingly soft.
Maris watched his leader take on one of his own blood. Poor King Gaius. There was so much hatred between him and his own kin. But the thought of one of those bastards or bitches becoming ruler of the Sovereigns did nothing but fill him with dread.
With all the enemy soldiers now dead, they could all work together to take Lord Egnatius down, but the King wouldn’t allow it. He wanted to be the one to finish his cousin without any help from his Praetorian Guards.
Maris approved of that, but he also knew that, even without his legs, Lord Egnatius was a strong fighter. His sword skills were unparalleled, which was one of the reasons they’d crept up on him and his men so carefully. They’d taken days to move up on them, making sure not to alert any of them to Gaius and his guards.
The wind from dragon wings brought up swirling fountains of dirt. Some of the humans were forced to grab hold of nearby trees so as not to be swept away.
Swords clashed, glinting in the early morning light, and, at first, everything was very proper. One royal fighting another.
Then Lord Egnatius disarmed Gaius, the king’s sword flipping end over end until it landed in the ground many feet away.
Maris gasped, worried his king was about to find his honorable death much earlier than any of them had believed.
But as Lord Egnatius’s sword came down for a hard blow against the other dragon’s shoulder, King Gaius moved in and caught the base of the blade with his claw. The cut it made was deep, blood spurting, hitting a few of the soldiers, but Gaius didn’t even cry out. He didn’t feel pain the way most of them did. Of course, none of them had been raised around Overlord Thracius, who, many of the old soldiers said, was one of the cruelest bastards to have ever drawn breath.
So with one claw, King Gaius held that sword. And, with the other, he caught hold of his cousin’s throat. Using his wings, he spun them around, slamming his cousin into the closest tree. The two snarled, their jaws snapping, trying to tear scales from each other. But there seemed to be a pause, as if King Gaius could not take his cousin down. As if he could not finish him off.
“Is that the best you can do, cousin?” Lord Egnatius mocked.
“I was just waiting,” Gaius growled softly. “Until I connected with my sister. So that she can feel every moment of me killing you!” Gaius finished on a bellow. Then he yanked his cousin away from that tree and slammed him into the ground, the land around them shaking from the power of it.
King Gaius pinned his cousin down, pressing his knees against his forearms to keep him in place. Then he gripped his cousin by the snout and began pulling his jaws apart.
Lord Egnatius tried to knock the king off, but he was dead below the waist and, with his arms pinned down, he was helpless.
And he knew it.
Lord Egnatius’s screams tore through the land, sending birds from the safety of the trees in wild, panicked flocks.
Yet Gaius didn’t stop. He just kept pulling—his fangs gritted, his dragon face a mask of rage and hate—until a sickening sound of bone cracking made Maris jump, and Gaius suddenly held up the lower half of Egnatius’s jaw.
The royal wasn’t dead yet. No. He was still quite alive.
“How does that feel, cousin?” King Gaius asked as he stepped off his kin. “Aggie is laughing. She’s loving every second of this. Your pain. She adores your pain. And I love when she’s happy. I love hearing her laugh.” He stared down at his cousin. “Let’s make her laugh some more, shall we?”
Gaius held out his claw and one of the dragon soldiers handed him his own gladius. A short sword, but an effective fighting weapon, as many enemy armies had learned over the centuries.
With his back foot against Lord Egnatius’s chest, Gaius started with the claws. Cutting off each one as his cousin gurgled and wept beneath him. Then he cut off the forearms. Sliced the shoulders. Then the legs but, as he reminded his cousin, “You really can’t feel that, huh?”
King Gaius stopped for a brief moment. Nodded. “My sister, she’s not like me. She can only tolerate so much of someone’s suffering. She wants it done. And I want her happy.”
King Gaius raised the blade and brought it down, taking what was left of his cousin’s dragon head.
With that done, King Gaius shifted back to his human form and took the Praetorian armor and helm handed to him by one of his soldiers. He put them on, not bothering to wipe off the blood. Once dressed, he cracked his neck and began to give orders that would have them out of this valley by suns-set.
Maris let out a sigh, silently glad it was all over. Now they could return home and—
Maris blinked and looked down, saw the arrow head that had come through his armor into his back and straight through his body. He dropped to his knees, unable to really breathe, as he saw his brother Praetorians taken out with arrows from the trees.
Gaius spun around, sword raised, eyes wide in shock. No arrows hit him, though.
“King Gaius,” a human woman said from behind him.
Gaius turned, his sword ready, but he didn’t strike. She was beautiful despite her missing eyes, sensuous, and clearly human in her white gown. She suddenly leaned forward and placed a gold torc around the king’s neck and he, like Maris, dropped to his knees, the power drained out of him immediately. The gladius fell from his hand and he desperately pawed at the torc he now wore, trying to yank it off.
Blindly, the woman stared down at the king, head tilting to one side as if she could still see him without her eyes. Perhaps she could. “She said you wouldn’t strike down an unarmed human woman,” she said softly. “She was right.”
Another arrow tore through Maris’s chest, this time hitting his heart, and he fell forward, never knowing whether the king ever said anything to the beautiful eyeless woman or whether he died in that moment.
But it no longer mattered.... Maris’s ancestors were waiting for him, waving him forward....
Chapter Three
They traveled for days in silence. Even the normally chatty Zoya didn’t speak.
By the fifth evening, as they waited for Ivan to finish cooking the boar Kachka had taken down earlier in the day, they sat on boulders and stumps, in a circle, in a thickly wooded forest deep in Annaig Valley. It was a risk to travel through this area, but as Daughters of the Steppes, they could slip through easily enough. Duke Salebiri’s men often gave them a wide berth. At least for now. Perhaps, the more power Salebiri obtained, the more difficult it would become. But, so far, no one had bothered them.
Silently, they watched the boar turn on the spit as Ivan cleaned potatoes. His sister had started to help him, but when they all stared at her, wondering what she could possibly be thinking, she stopped.
Then, suddenly, Nina Chechneva closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. At first, Kachka assumed she was scenting the boar. Ivan had seasoned it nicely. But then the strange female slowly got to her feet and her body began to . . . undulate in a manner that made Kachka entirely uncomfortable.
Nina lifted her head, sniffing the air like one of Dagmar Reinholdt’s dogs.
“I smell,” she whispered, “fresh, untainted souls. Tortured. In pain. And oh-so-ripe,” she panted out. “Ripe for the taking.”
Marina Aleksandrovna leaned over and muttered to Kachka, “Are we going to have to put up with this sort of thing all the time? Because that does not work for me.”
Kachka gave a wave of her hand. ?
??Don’t worry, comrade. I will handle this.” She focused on Nina Chechneva and, after a brief moment, punched the air-grinding female in the leg.
“Ow!” the witch screeched, turning on Kachka, black eyes flashing. “You vicious goat!”
“Whatever you’re doing, fiend, stop it. You’re making everyone uncomfortable!”
“Not me,” Zoya happily argued. “Let the demoness dance to her dark gods! Everyone should do what they love!”
Marina glared at Zoya for a moment, green eyes twitching, until she snarled, “Shut up.”
Nina sat back on her tree stump. “I was just telling you that there are people over there.”
“In the future, find a better way to do that.”
“She is right,” Zoya Kolesova said, her stomach grumbling like an angry bear. “I can hear them. There are people, maybe a mile or so, over there. I hear weapons.”
“You hear weapons a mile away?”
“I am Kolesova. We always know when there are men around . . . fresh for the plucking.”
Ivan snapped his fingers, and he and his sister switched places so that Yelena sat closer to Zoya.
“Why did you say they were in pain?” Tatyana asked. Always inquisitive, that one. She simply couldn’t leave well enough alone.
“Because they are,” Nina replied. “I feel their despair. Their misery. They cry out to be . . . helped.” She shrugged. “My guess . . . probably slaves being taken to market.”
“Slaves?” Zoya asked. She abruptly stood to her mighty, towering height. “Then we must go!”
“We don’t need to go anywhere,” Kachka replied.
“There might be a boy or two who would be good for my daughters.”
“We don’t have time to buy slaves.”
“Not buy, Kachka Shestakova. Rescue.”
“We don’t have time to rescue slaves either. Do you not understand what we’re doing?”
“Actually,” Marina cut in, “none of us understands what we’re doing. You haven’t told us.”