Blood Warrior

Honnas was by Tallis’s side when they charged the nest of men dressed head to foot in black Indranan armor. Swords lifted, the Guardsmen seemed ready. The pitiful nature of their defense said they definitely were not. When Serre joined his brothers in the fray, he did so as a monster contained within the body of a young man in his prime.

Blood surged through Tallis’s body. Consumed him. Overwhelmed higher function. He was only turn, thrust, duck, spin, hack. They had taken on greater armies. They had taken on men with greater courage. And they had fought for the safety of their families. No opponent suffered more when stoking that enormity of purpose.

“They barely know how to wield a sword,” Honnas said on a laugh.

By Pendray standards, Tallis’s older brother was right. The Guardsmen had grace, yes, but their determination to see an attack through to its bloody conclusion was lacking. Had they relied on telepathy so much during their raid of Kavya’s followers? Did these men have any real substance when it came to physical fighting?

With a low swing of his seax, he struck a Guardsman’s foot from his leg. The man crumpled. His bravery was admirable in that he tried to keep fighting from his kneeling, crippled position. Tallis raised the Dragon-forged sword as a threat. The Guardsman’s face melted into white, streaking fear as he dropped his weapon and rolled onto his back, bare hands lifted in surrender.

Might as well be dead.

Perhaps something of Tallis’s higher thoughts remained, because he experienced a flash of pity. Any Pendray would have branded the man a coward. But what did this Indranan have worth fighting for? Without children to nurture and protect, very few Dragon Kings knew what sacrifice meant anymore.

Tallis knew. He’d seen Nynn and Leto rip open the world trying to find the people they loved, and to find each other. He was that lover now. He would die before he let anything happen to Kavya.

Then die.

Pashkah’s psychic strike lanced down Tallis’s vertebrae. His spine was a lightning rod that conducted pain through his entire body. He dropped to the rocky, sea-damp earth. His skull bounced off a mossy patch mere inches from a rugged upthrust of rock. Agony registered on all levels. Physically, his head throbbed as if it had been cleaved like a fresh melon. Mentally, he was a sizzle of fried nerve endings and thoughts mashed into a sickly soup. All of the layers that made him Tallis blended until they were screaming ghosts. Every victim. Every time he’d ever shed blood or taken a life. A lava flow of memories rolled over him.

He crawled to his knees. Around him the battle still raged. His sisters were fierce. Honnas’s wife, Olla, was particularly adept at a Pendray woman’s greatest strength: screams that had inspired tales of banshees. They fought as if their own loved ones were the potential victims, not Indranan strangers.

Another stab of anguish was beyond Tallis’s ability to describe. His consciousness fled down, down, using his berserker as a shield. The animal could not be harmed. He scanned the scene with the quickness of a predator that had momentarily lost its evening meal. He gained sharpness to his eyes and sensitivity to his hearing. Pure instinct.

Pashkah.

The man stood a hundred yards away, in the shadow of the Mother. He was dressed in colors Tallis recognized on some higher level, but his animal side jumped in the way of those analytical thoughts. All the beast knew was that those colors meant death. Death for Kavya.

Pashkah held a sword that gleamed gold in the fresh rays of dawn. Dragon-forged. They would finally meet each other as equals in armaments.

Tallis jumped to his feet and ran. His boots gripped with sure traction, even on the slippery coastal rocks. A Guardsman put himself between Tallis and his enemy, which made that Guardsman another enemy—one simpler to dispatch. Tallis lifted the Dragon-forged sword without thought. And sliced.

The Guardsman’s head spun away from the lifeless body that collapsed sideways in a sickly arc.

The animal was satisfied, although Pashkah was still his target. The rest were mosquitoes to be swatted away.

Pashkah was laughing, and he was attacking again. The warmth in Tallis’s brain turned to hot steam, then burst into an inferno so hot and deadly that he crumpled. And he understood a new, terrible truth: Pashkah could kill his family with a single sweep of his crazy mind. If they emerged from their fury long enough to become thinking creatures again, they would be paralyzed from the inside out.

Pushing up to his knees—forcing his body to cooperate—Tallis staggered toward Kavya’s brother. Pashkah’s amber eyes glowed with manic energy and a nauseating twist of madness. At his feet was Chandrani, hog-tied and gagged and bloody. Her armor had been stabbed, leaving red-stained holes. None of the wounds would be fatal. That hadn’t been the purpose.

“I couldn’t find Kavya,” Pashkah said with a snake’s smile, “I needed a compass.”

The man’s features were a mystery. He shimmered and altered with every few syllables. He was fragments sewn together in an ever-morphing skin. Nothing genuine remained except that he was shorter and thinner than Tallis. “Kick a beloved puppy. Listen for where the puppy screamed. Keep traveling in that direction. Until . . . here? A wasteland.”

“My home.”

“Keep thinking, Reaper. I’ll make you suffer for it.”

Tallis stabbed his seax into the ground and attacked. Dragon-forged energy snapped with sparks when their swords collided. In strength alone, Tallis had the advantage. He hacked and thrust, welcoming the return of every fighting, spitting impulse to guide his weapon. Pashkah staggered until his back hit the boulder, then he retaliated with his mental prowess—just enough to slip inside Tallis’s mind and wrench. Pain was a wash of red paint.

Pashkah grunted, then spun away. The quick maneuver gave him a few seconds to recover, but Tallis pressed the advantage.

“She took so long to find,” Pashkah said, adjusting his grip on his sword’s hilt. “Maybe that had something to do with the Reaper animal she’d taken as her lover. You’re quite the beast. Have you made her into a dog, too? Rolling in the grass and howling to the moon?”

Had he been able to shut out spoken words, Tallis would have done so. Just fight. He parried, braced with a low squat, and thrust up toward Pashkah’s sternum. The man barely jumped away in time.

“I’d never hoped anything for Kavya. That she sank so low as to crawl into your bed—that was a gift I’d never expected. To know she’d been so debased before I saw her again. Just precious.”

He stabbed the sword into a swath of earth softened in the shadow of the boulder. From behind them both, Chandrani screamed. Kavya’s scream followed, as if her heart were being torn from her chest—or her brain from her skull.

“Do you think I want you dead, Reaper?” Pashkah held his hands wide, inviting attack. “I couldn’t care less. You’re that mosquito you pictured. You’ve done so much killing. Your life is dripping with blood. Now listen to those women scream, your beloved Sun—your Kavya—and I’ll tell you exactly who you’ve been killing for.”

Tallis’s hesitation was enough—that moment that wasn’t a moment, when his decades-old need to know won out over every other consideration.

To be free of it, at last? To know?

Two Guardsmen stripped his Dragon-forged sword and felled him with three sharp blows.

—

Kavya saw Tallis fall. Slow motion. Nightmares.

She screamed her husband’s name.

Her barely imagined future lay in an unconscious heap.

Across a battlefield where berserkers clashed with Guardsmen, she met Pashkah’s eyes. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in as many months, years, decades as her.

As if without fear—although she feared the next few seconds more than any in her life—she walked through the melee. She wasn’t there. She was only with Pashkah. This was the duel they’d postponed for most of their lives.

“Let them go,” she said with spoken words.

His eyes widened, apparently taken by surprise. When the first manifestation of their gifts had been more amazing than fearful, they hadn’t used tongues, mouths, or lips to vocalize thoughts. They’d been so close. Baile,