Chapter 7 : Run

There were many moments in my life I wasn’t exactly proud of. That time I’d cut Mal’s hair with a pair of broken shears trying to emulate the haircut of Magnus Ironsides and failing. The time I’d taken sweets from Maud’s sister’s—Linny, the royal cook—kitchen without her knowing. The time I hid Shepard’s makeup underneath my dirty petticoats so she wouldn’t leave me to attend an important soiree at the Summer Palace (and then confessed to my crimes with snot pouring out my nose).

When I had told Regulus that he would never have any real friends and everyone hated the little tyrant heir on the eve of his twelfth birthday when he’d—in a moment of vulnerability—had asked me where all the other children had gone to, and why I was the only one who’d come (because he had ordered me to if I didn’t want to lose my lunch in the river).

There were many more examples of moments I wasn’t proud of.

The Quartering was about to be another one.

“HOLD FUCKING STILL, YOU LITTLE DEEP LORD!” The blade of a double-sided battleaxe sailed over my head as I ran along the edge of the arena, jumping over the bodies of those already dead and dying. A chunk of horn popped off, clattering to the packed earth, crushed under the heavy sandaled tread of the angry minotauress. “YOU SON OF A BITCH! GET BACK HERE AND FIGHT ME LIKE A MAN!”

“No, thanks!” I shouted back, glad that Gundrin was one of the few men who had a light enough voice that I could emulate. The metallic distortion from speaking through the helm’s grated faceplate also helped to disguise my voice better. “I’m allergic to pain!”

“There you are!”

I skidded to a halt, my wings itching underneath the confines of this accursed heavy ass plate. What I wouldn’t give to have my own scale armor back. Light enough to really move in, but with a dense enough weave that I would immediately be killed once struck.

In front of me was the bugbear Thrask, his mane of mossy green hair wiry like a boar’s. He had a spear pointed at me, poison coating the tip. Not enough to kill me, thanks to my doxy blood, but just enough that I might get sluggish from it. Drunk of it, if it was like any of the poisons the Fae from across the plains dabbled in. I didn’t do well with drider venom, never had.

Thrask lunged forward, a harsh stab that I clumsily parried, pinning the blade to the wall. He looked angrier than a long-tailed cat locked in a room full of rocking chairs. “I see you’ve learned some type of skill since last we fought. I was hoping one day our paths would cross again on the battlefield.”

“Thrask, I thought you were dead.” I jogged in place, ready to run at a moment’s notice. The minotauress was in a three-way battle with some dryad siblings that were currently losing, so that gave me some time, but not much. “Where on Gaia have you been these past few years?”

“Recovering from what you did to me!” He yanked his spear out, cracks appearing in the wall that shot up all the way to the Pit. Oh, don’t tell me that this was an odd day! Bugbears always were stronger on the days of odd numbers, a weird condition for their magic, but one they used to their advantage.

I threw myself to the side as Thrask used his spear to send a wave of dark magic at me, that scorched the sands to glass. He knew fucking dragon fire spells!? “I’ve been waiting three years for my revenge!”

“What in the Void did Gun—did I do to you?” There had to be an opening, a weakness in his form. I could hear the minotauress break free of the vines the dryads had placed to slow her down and the wet sound of bodies being sliced. I was running out of time!

“You know damn well what you did, you bastard!” Thrask reached under his leather cuirass to pull out a golden locket, ripping the delicate chain to chuck it at my feet. The heart-shaped locket hit the sand with a pitiful plink, opening to reveal the face of a young lady bugbear with hair and eyebrows similar to Thrask. “Look at her you callous lout! Look upon her sweet face and know despair! The woman you got fat with your spawn! My darling little sister!”

“Oh, my Gods…” I pressed a hand to my face. Of course, Gundrin would be a deadbeat father, of course, he would. Wait—“Oh my Gods, is that what Maud was talking about when she said to be careful?”

“You mean she knew!?” Thrask slashed at me, a flurry of smooth strokes I could barely keep up with parrying. Had I my blade—stupid! I was stupid! The moments’ distraction had done its job, and the lancer caught me round the middle with his last flurry. Thrask shouted his victory, pinning me to the fractured wall. If I hadn’t been wearing the plate mail, I might have been killed with a thrust like that.

As it was, the pressure of his blade pushing into my armor was causing my stomach to rebel. My hand banged against my helm, wishing beyond all reason that I could cover my mouth. I was going to be sick if he kept pushing like this! I twisted my hand, the guard to my sword catching the edge of the spear’s small hilt to ease some of the pressure.

Thrask noticed right away, and pressed down hard, growling low, “No, you shan’t get away this time, Dorlunsson! We are going to forfeit the match together and then we are going to Natty Hills where Thuma has made a home with your wailing bastards! And you, you prat, will wed her at a proper bugbear ceremony.”

“There’s more than one!?”

“We are born in litters, you ignoramus!” He smacked the stone to the right of my head, more cracks fissuring in the sandstone. “It takes about three years before the kinder are strong enough not to need both parents to watch them. Three years you robbed me of my duty as a knight and my sister as an archivist. Gods, did you learn nothing of our people all those nights we drank together? You sired ten children who still haven’t the foggiest about their father!”

“Good Gods above!” No wonder Gundrin avoided the Westerlies like the plague whenever guard rotation came about. “Listen you have the wrong idea, I’m not—”

“What? The father!? Are you calling my sister a whore?”

“That’s not—wait? What on Gaia is blocking the sun?”

The axe that tore Thrask in two was taller than I was and whistled as it swung down.

The minotauress had found me.

“Gundrin Dorlunsson,” she boomed, plucking me up to dangle nearly eleven feet in the air. She huffed, steamed blue-tinted air flaring from bovine nostrils, her gold-dipped horns curved up in an almost halo around her head as I quaked in her grip. “Your reign of terror will end today!”

Had Gundrin made an enemy of everyone at the Quartering?

“I assure you, ma’am.” The minotauress walked off, holding me in one hand like a child’s toy, kicking some of the other contestants away like a horse might whip flies away with its tail. Brutally efficient. “I have done nothing to bring you ire!”

“But you have, little man!” she thundered. “It was on the eve of a quarter moon over the last harvest that you promised to write me after we made sweet, sweet love beneath the stars!”

“And I’m still alive!?” What the fuck? How the fuck? I shook my head as the near giantess laughed, the whole arena seeming to shake with her. “I mean to say—”

“I know, little man.” She pressed the pad of her whole finger to my face and I had a brief vision of her popping my head off like one might a grape. Instead, she stroked me, gently. “I’ve said many hurtful things to you, but when I saw you about to die—”

“—you’ve been trying to kill me,” I squeaked, “not even five minutes ago—”

“—I knew I couldn’t bear to end your life.” What was even happening? “Now’s our chance. I will crush the remaining contestants and when we are crowned victorious, we will tell the world of our love! Oh, kiss me, you rake!”

Had I…died? Had I had some type of aneurysm upon hearing the announcement that this year’s preliminary match was a battle royal? Was I seizing on the floor now, dying, these current visions just a fever dream before I slipped into the hereafter?

It certainly seemed so…

Maybe Death’s door was just the pursed cow lips of a minotaur coming to descend upon you.

Or maybe it was the eruption of flowers exploding out of her eye sockets, nose, and mouth that was really dead.

“Oh no,” I said to myself as the dead minotauress swayed on her feet as flower shrubs became oleander trees. The arena ground was slowly coming quicker, as the air rushed around me. The fall wasn’t so great but if the mintotauress fell upon me—“OH FUCK!”

There was a great whoosh, and then nothing.

Until…

“Do you remember me, Deep Lord?”

Oh no, a harpy, and one I’d personally known!

Claudia’s main confidant and henchman, Duchess, was another one of Linette’s brood, an older daughter from her seventh clutch. She was one of the least pleasant of her sisters and covered in the scars from her constant scraps to prove it.

Duchess laughed a discordant little song that sounded like breaking glass and forks on clean plates. Her narrow dark face was framed with the ash-brown feathers of a brown shrike, and as her feather suggested, once Duchess had joined the guard, she was more than happy to execute her foes via some good impaling.

Which her circling over some upright tridents, suggested.

“Try to call me ugly for not seating myself upon your puny cock,” Duchess lilted, getting closer to her target. “Let’s see how you like a little prick in your ass!”

But, fortunately for me, Duchess didn’t realize I’d battled her before and knew all her weaknesses.

How she had a bad right shoulder.

“NOPE!”

It was hard getting the angle right for the kick, I had to swing up twice, but once I heard the distinct pop of a winged arm dislocating from its socket, I knew I’d be okay.

Once again I was falling but this time not so high.

We screamed together, me curling in on myself to protect my middle as Duchess squeaked about like a frightened chicken. Fuck, there wasn’t enough space or time for both of us to avoid the spikes. Well…

“Sorry about this,” I said, “but you were always kind of a real sadistic bitch you know?”

I kicked her with everything I had, sailing through the air to safety, as Duchess impaled herself upon the silvered tridents below.

Oh, Claudia was going to look for revenge for that later no doubt, but at least I was safe for no—

“DORLUNSSON!”

Oh, goddammit! It never fucking ends!

“WHAT!?”

I turned, irritated by the Quartering and everything, only to notice most of the competitors had been defeated. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine—oh.

“Congratulations on getting within the top twenty, Knight,” Knight-Commander Shepard began, smile darker than normal. “I wasn’t expecting you to make it this far.”

Neither was I if I was being honest as I watched the healers cover the arena floor collecting the dead and tending to the injured.

“Thank you, Commander.” I saluted her, arm shaking from having to run in about nearly twenty pounds of the sweltering oven for the last hour in a half. “It’s been an honor.”

“Oh, it’s not over, Knight. Take a break, and get some food and drink in you. For in round two, the forty of you face the likes of me and Mahoganaea in hand-to-hand combat.”

Fuck. Me.