“Was there ever really any doubt that we wouldn’t?” Elenari asked, smiling crookedly, her bright jade eyes gleaming like emeralds reflecting the firelight.
“You weren’t that nervous were you, Mike?” Saya teased. After our recent exertion, her muscles were etched in her tanned skin like they had been carved in oak. “Surely a big, brave dragonmancer like you—”
“A man who is fast gaining a reputation as one of the biggest and baddest,” Elenari cut in, poking fun at me further.
“Surely, a dragonmancer like that doesn’t get nervous about anything?” Saya finished, with an innocent smile that convinced no one.
I feigned as much nonchalance as a stark-naked dude could and sat down on the sofa. “Had you said no, I might have been able to find another pair of women blind enough to marry me,” I said with theatrical composure. “But I’d have lost a lot of scales in the process. I’ve already put a deposit on a huge buffet from Old Sleazy. You know what that guy is like. The amount of scales I paid him was practically highway robbery.”
Elenari tilted back her pretty head and laughed, while Saya grabbed a sofa cushion and threw it at my head.
Chapter 5
Show me a guy who says he’s not at least a tiny bit nervous on his wedding day and I’ll show you a liar.
Happily, I had very little to do with the actual planning and organizing of the wedding itself. This was good for all concerned because I was not much of an organizer, but more of a doer, especially when it came to events that required the choosing of flowers and everything else that went along with a wedding. Luckily for me, I was getting hitched to two of the universe’s more decisive and pragmatic women—a category in which there was some pretty stiff competition.
The wedding only took a couple of days to organize, which coincided nicely with the final preparations that were taking place for our mission to Galipolas Mountain. In that time, I did what all grooms with even a modicum of self-preservation do: stayed the hell out of the way, left the women to their business, and agreed with anything that was asked of me in terms of music, food, clothing, guests, and aesthetics.
Weddings were damn expensive, even in a place like the Mystocean Empire, but thankfully I’d earned a good deal of scales after I’d sold the boot from the battle with the wildmen and the giants.
My coterie and I spent many hours in the practice yards, drilling with swords and spears and bows. It was crucial that we be as well-prepared—and as lethal—as we could be. It wasn’t just about surviving this trip. It was about going there and back again, identifying and gathering the ingredients and items we needed, and then hot-footing it back as quickly as possible to save Wayne.
After the overcast weather of the last week or so, the days had turned bright and cold. They were days unique to the mountains; skies so clean a blue that they looked almost purple at the zenith, air so crisp that your breath smoked as you breathed out each invigorating lungful, sunshine that felt newly minted.
While the lads and I were out there, tucked away in a little private corner of the sparring grounds in the middle bailey and sweating in our practice armor, my squad took the opportunity to inundate me with some of the most moronic and nonsensical advice on women ever to see the light of day.
“Now, boss, if there’s one thing you gotta remember about women,” Bjorn said, “it’s this.” He thrust at me with his spear as hard as he could. I batted it aside with the back of my hand so that it punched into the ground next to me.
“What’s that, big man?” I asked, trying to keep the dubiousness in my tone to a minimum.
“You have to remember,” Bjorn grunted, pulling his spear free and swinging it around his head in an attempt to hit me in the throat, “that as soon as they start yappin’ away about clothes or jewelry or what have you, it’s in your best interest to at least look like you give a shit, even if you don’t.”
The tip of the dulled spear whisked an inch past my eyes. I stepped forward and struck Bjorn a medium-strength blow in the gut, my fist thudding into the padded jerkin he was wearing and knocking him to the floor.
“Women like it when you pretend to be interested in what they’re blabberin’ on about,” the half-Jotunn wheezed from the deck.
Gabby stepped in to take Bjorn’s place and, for a moment at least, I was spared any more brilliant and enlightening advice.
The agile mute was armed with a couple of stout wooden staves, and he came at me like a whirlwind. He spun left and right, going high and low with the staves, while occasionally throwing out a kick to keep me guessing. I parried everything he had with relative ease, judging each strike with a concentration that I did not often apply to my combat training.
One of the staves came down toward my face with force enough to pop my eye out of its socket. I caught it, the wood slapping into the palm of my hand, and wrenched it from the other man’s grip. Thanks to my dragon-infused strength, I barely felt a blow that would have broken an ordinary man’s hand. Gabby went to swing at my kneecap with the other stave, but I stepped my leg back with inhuman speed, voiding the attack, and struck his biceps with a backfist that made him drop the other heavy wooden stick too.
Trapped as he was, Gabby chose this moment to give me
