Chapter 62
Golden Opportunity
A pillar of rock crashed into one of the wagons, completely crushing the mercenary who'd been driving it into red paste. The baboon swung its massive arms, sending blades of compressed air that cut through the trail and blasted the dragoon into the cliff face.
Its flaming head turned toward the Golden Rose wagon and sent a stream of fire thicker than my body, punching through the air and hitting the ground in front of the wagon, splashing in all directions and coating the trail in a pool of liquid flame.
The whole damn wagon went up; its treated canvas couldn’t withstand the magma's heat.
Heat slammed into my face as the skin began to sting and blister, my eyes watering through the superheated air as I watched the Golden Rose wagon split apart from the inside.
Boards blew outward, golden thread curling into black tendrils, and a girl with green hair was tossed out of the opening, her hair whipping across her face.
One of the Golden Rose guards was already moving to catch her.
He pulled her into his arms and turned his back to the fire.
A second gob of liquid flame hit him between the shoulder blades.
His armor split the stream down both sides of his body.
The armor gave out, and the fire ate through his exposed skin.
As the fire consumed the armor on his back and the flesh beneath it blackened and cracked, he held the green-haired girl against his chest and staggered forward, one step at a time, putting as much distance between her and the burning wreck of the wagon as he could.
The second Golden Rose guard charged the alpha, drawing a short, curved blade and sprinting straight at the fifteen-foot baboon.
The alpha's stone head swiveled toward him, and a spike of rock the size of a fence post launched from its mouth and punched through the guard's chest. Blood sprayed out of his back as the spike went through in an instant.
The guard grunted and pushed forward. He ducked under the alpha's swipe and slashed at the thing's ankle with his curved blade. Dark blood sprayed across the stone trail. The alpha screamed.
The wind head inhaled, and I threw myself flat.
"ZO! GET DOWN!"
She dropped behind the overturned wagon. The air blast cut over our heads, taking the top half of a mercenary who'd been trying to run. His legs stood there motionless for a second before falling to the ground in a bloody heap.
The guard with the burned back finally collapsed onto his face. The girl rolled free of his arms, her fine clothes singed and her green hair matted with the man's blood. For a second, she just stared at the dead man on the ground in front of her.
The second guard was still fighting the alpha. He'd scored two more cuts along its leg; the wind head was pulling air between its fangs for another blast. He rushed in swinging; the alpha caught his blade arm in one enormous hand and squeezed, breaking his bones.
He screamed and started punching the alpha's stone head in the eye with his free hand.
The alpha flinched, then ripped the guard's arm off at the shoulder.
Blood sprayed in a wide arc. The guard fell, clutching the stump.
The alpha didn't wait for him to regain his composure and brought its massive foot down, stomping on him.
The guard's body crumpled and burst open, sending gristle and gore splattering up its white fur.
The green-haired girl still hadn't moved.
Monkeys were pouring down the cliffside above us now.
We were down to about twelve fighting men and women.
The dragoon was pulling himself out of the cliff face where the alpha had thrown him, blood running from his nose and one arm hanging at his side.
Three wagons were fully ablaze. Two more overturned, blocking the trail.
The Golden Rose guards were dead. Both of them. Which meant the merchant princess—if the rumors from the merchant I'd haggled with were right—was sitting in the middle of an active killing field with zero protection.
This was the opportunity I'd been waiting for, gift wrapped in blood and fire and dead men. A merchant princess of the Golden Rose, alone and vulnerable, with no one left between her and a very messy death. If I save her life right now, in front of everyone—
All I had to do was keep one girl alive while a fifteen-foot three-headed baboon destroyed everything around her.
"Zo." I crawled to the overturned wagon where she was crouching. "I need you on the monkeys."
"What?"
"The little ones on the cliff. Take them out before they finish the mercenaries."
She looked at me like I'd lost my mind. "The big one's right bloody there, Fish."
"I know."
"It just ripped a man's arm off."
"I know. I want you to clear the cliffs so the dragoon can focus on the alpha without getting pelted from above… trust me. I'll get the girl."
She looked at me for a minute. Her veins flared brighter, and she launched herself at the cliff face with that terrifying acceleration her Origin gave her, each step harder and faster than the last, momentum building, body a blur of teal that tore into the pack of grey monkeys.
I turned back toward the merchant princess.
She was sitting exactly where she'd been, maybe thirty feet from me across an open trail, surrounded by fire, broken wood, and dead animals, and she was looking at the baboon. Sitting with her legs folded under her on the blood-slicked stone.
The alpha had moved away from the crushed guard and was rampaging through the middle of the caravan, its stone head smashing wagon after wagon while the fire head sprayed arcs of liquid flame at anything that moved.
◆◆◆
The girl was pretty, maybe around twenty years old. Her silk robes had been burned and now hung off her shoulders.
"Get up.”
She looked at me like I was a dog.
"And who… are you?"
A chunk of burning wagon crashed a dozen feet from us.
"The guy who's going to keep you alive if you'd kindly stand the hell up."
"Ah… a commoner… how quaint." She brushed ash from her sleeve.
The three-headed alpha roared from behind us. I grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet. She was lighter than I expected.
"Unhand me."
"When we're behind cover."
I pulled her toward the overturned wagon Zo had been using. A rock the size of my fist whipped past my head. I ducked, kept moving, and shoved the girl behind the wagon.
"You've soiled my hand."
"You're welcome."
The alpha was closing. It had finished with the wagon it was destroying, and its fire head was sweeping the trail in search.
The dragoon hit it from behind—a clean slash across its lower back that opened a wound a foot long—and the alpha spun and backhanded him thirty feet down the mountain.
The dragoon bounced twice and was slow getting back to his feet.
Mercenaries rushed in while the alpha had its back turned. Driving a spear into its side, while the other swung a heavy sword at its leg. Its stone head looked down at them, and a fist of rock erupted from the ground and took the man's head off. The other mercenary pulled his spear free and ran.
The alpha's wind head locked onto the runner, inhaled, and sent a wave of wind at the man. His body popped into a fountain of bloody mist.
"Your guards are dead," I said.
"I am aware."
"Both of them."
"You repeat the obvious with great commitment.
" She turned those tarnished-gold eyes on me, and I felt something tighten across the back of my neck.
Some instinct. Some animal warning that the thing sitting next to me behind a smashed wagon was more dangerous than the fifteen-foot baboon rampaging through the caravan.
"They gave their lives fulfilling their duty. "
Cold. That was so goddamn cold.
"My name is Fish, I'm going to get you out of this."
"Fish. What a common name for a common creature. But you moved quickly, and you aided me rather than running away." Her head tilted. "You want something?"
A rock smashed into the wagon above our heads, showering us both in wood chips.
"Let’s focus on not dying first… anything else can come later," I said.
"A reasonable ordering of priorities." She stood up and brushed the splinters from her ruined silks. "Very well, Fish. You may serve as my escort until a more suitable detail can be made. Do try to keep up."
She walked out from behind the wagon.
Toward the alpha.
I stared at her exposed back, my brain trying to process what was happening, and then I scrambled after her. I wasn’t going to watch a merchant princess walk into the jaws of a three-headed baboon. That would defeat the whole damn point of saving her in the first place.
"What are you—" The ground shook, and I grabbed her shoulder and pulled her behind a burning ox carcass just as the alpha's stone head launched another rock spike down the trail.
It punched through the air where she'd been standing and buried itself in the cliff face behind us. "Are you trying to die?"
"What a ridiculous concern." She looked at my hand on her shoulder. I removed it. "The beast will not harm me. I have decided it so."
From somewhere on the cliffs above, Zo screamed a war cry, and a green-furred monkey fell past us, slamming into the ground dead. I looked up. Zo was three-quarters of the way up the cliff face, covered in monkey blood, grinning like a maniac with her axe buried in a howler's skull.
At least one of us was having a good time.