Chapter 7 - Rada #2
The pimply-face Alpha lifted his face first, and his voice was choked with tears.
“Kill me, please, Omega. Deliver me from the shame I have brought upon my village, my family, my people. Drive your sharp dagger into my heart and allow me to die knowing that my error, my unworthy existence, has been stripped away from the land of my forefathers. Let my name be wiped from the rolls of my ancestors, let me be the end of my line…” He kept on and on, getting more and more dramatic, beating his chest with both hands by the end of his speech.
Alexios blinked at me, his unspoken question clear. I shrugged. “Get up.” I raised my voice and lifted my uninjured arm. “Get up, all of you.”
Everyone who could stand obeyed at once, and I had the decidedly peculiar experience of seeing a hundred pairs of eyes filled with an odd kind of reverence and avid curiosity… but nothing else.
No lust, or rage. The camp still stunk in the way of army encampments everywhere, and the icy air held a hint of my own honeyed, fresh blood, but not one speck of the bitter, acrid ferality that usually resulted from my discovery.
I was a little insulted. I lifted my arm a bit higher and sniffed my armpit. I was fairly rank, and no sponge bath would touch the layers of ash, blood, and mud from the dungeon in Mirrenar and the battle here. “Do I stink?” I wondered aloud.
The Alpha cried out, his expression stricken. “My lady, let me soothe your fears. Hark!”
Oh crap. I knew what came next. Starlakian warriors only loved one thing more than cleaving their enemies into bloody pieces.
Poetry. Memorizing it, reciting it, and above all, composing it.
“If the lilies of the field blessed by the morning dew, would boast of their sweet perfume, and then run into you…”
“Lilies can’t run,” Alexios whispered. I kicked him.
The young Alpha didn’t stop. “If roses winding on the cliffs, their petals pink and sweet, had any hope of matching you, or violets, or… or…”
The Alpha blinked a few times, until someone called out, “Or feet?”
“Or things to eat?”
A few of the older warriors closed their eyes, crying with silent laughter as the younger ones fought for their lives to find a suitable rhyme.
Alexios muttered, “Or meat?”
“Wheat!” someone else shouted.
“As violets, or wheat?” the pimply idiot suggested.
I felt a headache coming on, but nodded for him to go on. I knew better than most that if you didn’t allow a Starlakian warrior to finish a poem, the sulking would make you wish you had.
“If any flow’r on any plain could match your sweet bouquet, I’d fling them all into the sea, or burn them all away.” He grinned, his nose wrinkling up as if he were acting it out. It was almost… cute. “If anyone should mock your pits, or shame your filthy shirt—”
Alexios was laughing silently, but so violently, I worried he’d burst all the blood vessels in his face.
“Well done, warrior,” I said, hoping he’d stop.
The second stanza was usually the one that delineated the horrible fate that would befall the poet’s enemies, and I wasn’t sure I could keep from laughing along with my valet.
Thankfully, he was either out of rhymes or breath, or both.
“I’d cut him down and teach the knave just what it means to hurt.
” The poet bowed low, then threw himself back on the ground, on his knees.
“My lady. I beg your forgiveness. I offer you my life to do with as you will. I lifted a weapon against you. Give me the chance to cleanse myself of dishonor, by serving you for the rest of my days. I swear I will obey your every command. I vow it on my honor and my line.”
I blinked. He’d tried to get a hit in, but he hadn’t managed it.
The one who’d gotten the lucky slice in was Pig Nose.
He was kneeling in the mud, too, his gaze fixed on the ground before him, his hands folded in prayer and his lips moving as he quietly recited the Final Prayer for Fallen Warriors, though none of the others joined him.
They’d moved away, acting like he was already dead.
Goddess’s bunions, I’d forgotten how dramatic they all were.
“I’ve got an idea. Let’s pretend none of this happened, hm?” I reached down to help the kid up, but before I touched him, the sounds of approaching hoofbeats had us all turning.
Goran’s massive black warhorse was the first to emerge from the tree line, followed by the rest. All of the others, it looked like, or at least there were no injured warriors riding face down on their mounts.
“Goran.” I breathed his name, stepping toward the group as they rode closer. A hand on my arm stopped me. Alexios’s face was troubled, and he dropped back into one of his more subtle fighting stances. I peered around. I guess we had incapacitated a good number of his fighters.
Oof. Ones he might need, if the Mirrenese army was coming.
Goran reined to a halt in front of me. “What happened here?”
I took a breath to answer, but the pimply Alpha shocked me by beating me to it. “Warlord Goran, we acted dishonorably toward the Omega. I offered the first insult. I accept full blame and my life as recompense for the offense.”
“It wasn’t that bad a poem,” Alexios muttered. My lips twitched.
“Acted dishonorably, you say.” Goran’s jaw clenched.
The poor kid’s lip trembled, but he nodded. “I… raised an axe against her, ah, companion. The little guy.” Alexios hissed out a breath.
“You attacked a guest in my camp?” Goran’s eyes fell on my bandaged wound. “You cut her?”
The boy shook his head frantically. “No, sir.”
I tilted my head at the praying man. “To be fair, I think he was caught up in the moment. And it was a very small wound. I’m fine. We were just agreeing to a new slate,” but Goran was already dismounting and pulling his sword, stopping beside the pig-nosed Alpha who’d cut me.
“Zander of Thornblade village,” Goran muttered, his jaw still clenching. “You raised your sword to an Omega. You drew her blood and broke your most solemn vow. You understand your crime?”
He stopped praying long enough to answer. “I do.”
“May the Goddess have mercy on your soul.”
I didn’t let myself close my eyes as Goran raised his sword and sliced the warrior’s head from his neck. We stood in near-silence for a long moment, the only sounds Alexios’s muttered prayers and the warriors’ breathing, before Goran faced the others again.
“Dustin of Warrior’s Ridge. You admit you raised a weapon against a guest in our camp? My guest?”
The pimply-faced youth nodded, but the other two redheads who’d started the fight also stood at attention, their legs shaking so hard, it had their leather armor creaking. One of them admitted, “Warlord, we were mocking her as well. We thought… We did not understand who she was.”
“No. We knew she’d been the Warqueen. We knew she’d left you and th-thought she deserved our insults,” Dustin admitted, his voice cracking. His body trembled in the cold gust of wind that hit us all.
“Warrior.” Goran’s voice was filled with menace and more than a hint of Alpha power. “Warqueen or not, there is no excuse. You saw a woman in our camp, one I sent here to keep safe, and you insulted her?”
“Y-yes, my lord.” He closed his eyes.
“What is my teaching, Alpha?” Goran’s voice was colder than the wind. “What is the central tenet of this army? The pledge you learned when I allowed you to join its number?”
His lips moved, but every warrior in the camp spoke with him.
“To return our homeland to its former glory, to undo the wrongs and heal our souls, we pledge this day and every day onward to lift up our mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters, to restore to them their rightful places at our sides. We pledge to protect the young, the broken, the widows and orphans, and call upon the Goddess to forgive us and bless us once again with our queens. May the Goddess strike us down if we harm one of Her line, and send us to the lowest of Her hells until the mountains no longer stand.”
“Oh, I like that,” Alexios murmured.
Dustin dropped to his knees. “Please don’t punish any more of the others, Warlord.
Zander died for his crime. I was the one who…
who reached for her first. P-please, take my life as payment for us all.
” Goran’s bloody sword was rising again before he finished the final word.
Dustin wasn’t looking at him, though. His eyes were on his friends.
Somehow, he mustered a shaky smile before he closed his eyes, waiting for the blow to fall.
“He can’t,” I interrupted, casually stepping between them. “You already offered it to me, remember? Your life’s mine, Dustin.” The young man peered up at me uncertainly. “You swore it on your honor and your line,” I said loud enough for everyone to hear.
Goran growled, but resheathed his sword reluctantly. “You reached for her?”
“For her breast,” Alexios added, watching Goran carefully. “He commented on their size and reached for her breast.”
Goran roared and lunged to one side, trying to get to the boy.
“Mine,” I said, my sword lifted now. “The idiot is mine to punish.” I was challenging him in front of his army, and I wasn’t certain what he would do. I’d never heard that pledge before, but it gave me hope.
Eleven years ago, when Goran gained his title, the country had been one of the least friendly places for women to live.
Three centuries before, the Omega Plagues had hit Starlak harder than most countries.
Since then, more and more of their young Alphas had been driven into madness, for lack of Omegas to temper their darker impulses and meet their sexual needs.
They’d adopted brutal traditions, including chaining new Alphas for the duration of their first sexual rut, in order to keep the women safe from the ones who went feral.
Close to half of them had gone feral, no matter what they tried, their own fathers and elder brothers forced to put them down out of mercy. Mothers had wept for too many dead sons.
They’d wept behind thick walls and barred windows, though.
Starlak’s women had been confined to their homes, stripped of the right to travel freely or use weapons, all in the name of keeping them safe.
Goran and I had whispered plans late into the night more than once, dreams of how we could change the culture, knowing it would take decades or even centuries to roll back all the oppressive customs. Starlakians loved their traditions.
Goran bared his teeth. “He took an oath. He broke it. He has to pay the price.”
I sighed and took out a cloth, wiping down my blade. “He will. I’ll make certain of it.”
The boy whimpered. Alexios stepped next to me and bowed to Goran. “Might I suggest, Warlord, that we finish this discussion later? The Mirrenese soldiers—”
“Are dead. The larger forces are still on their way. I’ll leave a contingent in the mountain pass to take care of them and escort you to a safe place to wait until we’re sure the danger is over.”
“Which direction is this safe place?” The tugging in my gut was getting stronger by the hour and felt like a hook attached an inch or so over my belly button, pulling me…
“North.” Goran turned his head to Dustin. “You know what you’ve done.”
The boy reached for his knife, his hand trembling, and set the blade beside his own neck.
“Wait!” I shouted, knowing I couldn’t stop him if he was planning to slit his own throat.
But all he did was pull a braid forward from his long, greasy hair, and slice it off, letting it land in the mud at his feet.
I flinched as it fell. The dragon’s head-shaped bead he’d cut was the one that showed which of the fighting companies he belonged to, and who he served. Or had served until today.
Goran nodded once, not even glancing down at the fallen braid.
“Stay far away from me, Dustin, once of Warrior’s Ridge.
If you come within reach of my sword, I will finish what you started.
” He shouted to the crowd. “Wolf and bear companies? Prepare to defend the Eastern pass. Dragon company, follow me to the Omega’s Keep. ”
Then he was gone, and I was left blinking. “The Omega’s Keep? What is that?”
“It’s what the troops call his new home, Warqueen,” Dustin replied softly. “Where he lives with the Omega’s family, when he’s not off fighting.”
“He really lives with another Omega?”
Dustin’s gulped affirmation had my cheeks burning. I wished I hadn’t asked. A part of me wanted to run in the other direction, but the searing pain in my belly when I even thought about running away reminded me that I had promises to keep.
And I didn’t have time for jealousy, or obsessive thoughts about what the Omega at the end of this ride must look like. Smell like.
Feel like, in the quiet hours of the night, buried in the center of a pile of soft pillows and plush blankets.
Alexios cleared his throat, and I realized I was holding knives in both hands. I put them away and reached for the reins of the saddled horse Dustin brought over.
No, I had no time to think of her. But the three days it took to get to the coast gave me more than enough opportunity to dream up a hundred ways to geld a Starlakian warlord.