Читать книгу The Dragon Who Loved Me - G.A. Aiken - Страница 8

Chapter 2

For five long years the war had raged on. For five long years, Rhona had been dealing with the Lightnings on a daily basis. But not as the enemy she was raised to loathe. Instead they were now the allies of her kind. Strange how everything could change so. Rhona’s mother and her aunts and uncles had made their names and reputations by decimating the Lightnings in battle. Her royal cousins, the Dragon Queen’s three eldest sons, Fearghus, Briec, and Gwenvael, had also faced the Northlanders in war, earning them respect beyond their royal titles. So Rhona had always assumed that one day she’d go talon-to-talon against the Lightnings just as her kin had before her.

Instead, Rhona was forced to endure their presence as allies. Forced to forget how Lightnings used to kidnap Southland She-dragons and force them into being their mates. The more difficult ones losing a wing to keep them trapped in the harsh lands of a foreign country with males they loathed. Yet, as the Northlanders were quick to remind anyone who mentioned their past, that had been a long time ago. Now that the older, more heartless Horde leaders had died off, the new regime didn’t allow this practice anymore. They were a new, kinder Horde that still couldn’t manage to believe a female could protect herself during battle.

And, honestly, on days like today, tolerating the Northlanders’ new and kinder image was nigh-on impossible. Then again, maybe Rhona’s problems weren’t with tolerating the Northlanders as a whole but tolerating one of them. Vigholf the Abhorrent or, as she liked to call him, Commander Pest.

Yet by the time Rhona had made it deep into their mountain stronghold and she knew she was officially off duty for the rest of the day, she pushed all thoughts of annoying, closed-minded Northlanders from her mind and decided she desperately needed a bath. She’d found a lovely little lake with a waterfall deep inside the mountain. Only a few of them knew about it and they kept it secret from all the others.

Yet Rhona found that her plans rarely if ever played out exactly as she saw them because something—or someone—always got in her way.

“Oy, Rhona.”

Rhona stopped, her body tensing at the sound of that voice, rough-hewn thanks to a knife to the throat a few centuries back, and faced one of the commanding officers. “General, sir!”

“Can’t you just call me Mum?”

Gods. When her mother said, “Can’t you just call me Mum?” it was a warning to Rhona. As bright and clear as a battle cry from a mountaintop. The first time Bradana the Mutilator had asked Rhona to call her Mum she’d shoved a freshly hatched Delen the Blue into Rhona’s arms and said, “You’re not too busy to take care of your new sister, are you?” Then Bradana went to war—for nearly four years.

Rhona had been mostly responsible for raising her siblings ever since.

“Mum.”

“Heard you ran into a spot of trouble.”

“Aye, but nothing we couldn’t handle. Had the triplets with me.”

“They’re growing into right little brawlers, my girls, eh?”

Rhona cringed at the description because she didn’t raise brawlers. She raised warriors. Yet her mother saw it as a compliment, so Rhona didn’t argue with her.

“They are. Getting better every day.”

“Your Uncle Bercelak will probably want them to go to Anubail Mountain next year.”

“Great. I can’t wait for them to go.” All right. She was outright lying now. And it wasn’t that she didn’t want her sisters to go and follow the path of the Dragonwarrior as their other siblings had. But of all Bradana’s offspring whom Rhona had raised over the years, she’d become closest to her youngest sisters. Of course she’d actually been there when they’d battled their way out of their egg, head-butting and biting and lashing each other with their tails. Her mother usually stayed around for the hatching, but just before the triplets came along she’d rushed off to raid some traitor dragon’s fortress, thinking she’d be back in time—she wasn’t.

“And,” her mother continued, scratching the vicious scar across her throat with the tip of her tail, “you can go with them. You all can train together. Won’t that be fun?”

Tricky. Her mother was definitely tricky. Bradana knew how much the triplets meant to Rhona and clearly she wasn’t above using that love to get what she wanted. And what she wanted was for Rhona to take the path of the Dragonwarrior. Like all her other offspring and like most of the Cadwaladr Clan. There was just one problem with that plan—Rhona had no desire to become a Dragonwarrior. Much to her mother’s annoyance, Rhona was perfectly satisfied with what she was doing. She was a soldier and a damn good one.

Why did her mother have such an issue with that?

So Rhona said, “I’m sure they’ll be fine. Without me.”

“Your Uncle Bercelak is offering you an opportunity.”

“And I appreciate that. But I don’t need it.”

Rhona turned to go, needing that bath more and more.

“I didn’t dismiss you,” her mother snapped and Rhona rounded on her.

“Which is it, Mum? Are you my mother at this moment or my commanding officer? Because I can walk away from me mum!”

“I’m both!”

“Can’t be! One or the other! Pick!”

“Don’t snarl at me, you viperous little—”

Rhona raised a talon, cutting her mother off, and looked behind her. “You lot,” she snapped at the three soldiers standing behind her, one of which was nursing his right forearm. “What happened?”

“His arm. It got crushed in the tunnels.”

Turning away from her mother, Rhona went to the young soldier. “That’s broken. You.” She pointed at the gold dragon. “Take him to the healer. And you”—she pointed at the Lightning—“back to the tunnels. The commanders need all available troops working there. Now go.”

Rhona faced her mother and asked, “So where were we? Oh. Yes. I’m a viperous little . . . what was the rest of it?”

Slamming down her tail, her mother marched off. Rhona knew this argument wasn’t over, though. Not when it had been going on since the first time Rhona turned down her Uncle Bercelak’s offer to train at Anubail Mountain. As consort of Her Majesty, the Dragon Queen, and commander of the Queen’s armies, Bercelak the Great did not offer the chance to be one of the legendary Dragonwarriors lightly. In fact, Rhona’s mother had actually left mid-battle to seek out her daughter and tell her what an idiot she was being by turning Bercelak down. But Rhona would not let her mother bully her, cajole her, or finesse her into changing her mind. Rhona prided herself on knowing her strengths and weaknesses. Her strength was being as stubborn as her mother. And her weakness was not wanting to be a Dragonwarrior. All right. Perhaps not a true weakness, but her mother seemed to think it was.

“You all right?”

Rhona looked at her younger sister Delen.

“Aye. Just the same damn argument. How can she never get bored with it?”

“The beauty of Mum is that she never gets bored. She can kill and kill for days at a time without ever feeling boredom. I think that’s a foreign word to her. Like rational. Or caring.”

Rhona laughed with her sister, putting her arm around her shoulders. “Excellent point. And how are you doing?”

“Fine. I’ll be working in the tunnels the next couple of days with my troops. I’m hoping to push them along to get the tunnel done. Sooner we can get under those mountains, the sooner we can wipe out the Irons and go home. Unlike our mother, I do get bored. Now”—her sister patted Rhona’s shoulder with her tail—“why don’t you go on and take your break. You’ve been working nonstop for days. You’re no use to any of us if you’re asleep once we hit the other side.”

Rhona chuckled. “Good point.”

“You going for a bath?” her sister whispered.

“Trying to.”

“Take that exit.” She pointed at a narrow tunnel cut through the cave rock. “You’ll have to go outside for a bit, but you’ll avoid Mum.”

“Thanks, luv.”

Rhona slipped away without being noticed and eased through the narrow tunnel until she found herself on the mountain’s summit. She stopped, gazing out over Euphrasia Valley. A stretch of land caught in the middle of the Northland territories, the Western Mountains, and the Southlands. A rough and dangerous valley with thick, almost junglelike forests during the summer and brutally cold winds and ice storms during the winter. It was surrounded by a ring of mountains in varying sizes. They’d made the Hesiod Mountains their stronghold while the Irons were directly opposite from them using the Polycarp Mountains as their protection. Could be worse, though. At least they had access to fresh water and supplies.

“Nice, yeah?”

Rhona’s shoulders slumped, her eyes closing. “I can’t get a break,” she sighed.

“Now what did I do?”

She didn’t bother facing the Lightning. What was the point?

“Nothing.” She started to walk across the ridge of the summit, but the Lightning cut in front of her.

“What if I bought you a long sword?”

“What?” What was he babbling about? Gods! She only wanted a bath!

“A long sword. To replace your spear.”

“I don’t need you to buy me anything. Especially weapons.” She took a step, but he stepped with her.

“I can teach you to use it if that’s your concern.”

Rhona’s front claws curled into fists. “I don’t need you to teach me how to use a sword.”

“You shouldn’t use one unless you know how.”

“I know how.”

“Then why were you still using a spear?”

“Because I like them. Because my father made it for me. And why am I discussing this with you?”

She took another step and he stepped with her.

“What about an ax?” he asked. “A small one. With a weight you can handle.”

And that’s when Rhona became a little cranky.

Gods, she was such a pretty little She-dragon. A bit scarred for his usual tastes but still . . . very pretty. He’d thought so from the beginning, from the first time he’d seen her all those years ago. A brown-scaled She-dragon with shoulder-length brown hair that she kept in simple warrior braids, and dark brown eyes that were bright and lively—when they weren’t glaring at him. Something that had become rare these days. She seemed to always be glaring at him. He could only imagine it was the strain of the war on her. She was a Southlander and a female, after all. Northlanders knew nothing but war, so five years in battle was no real strain for them.

Although she wasn’t just some Southland She-dragon, was she? She was a Cadwaladr. They bred nothing but unstable females from that bloodline. But Rhona wasn’t much like the others. She’d kill, but it didn’t seem as if she enjoyed it too much. Not like Rhona’s mother, who only smiled when she was sawing someone’s head off. No. Rhona the Fearless was different, so Vigholf had taken it upon himself to keep an eye on her. A sweet thing like her could easily fall prey to the more forceful of his brethren, which was why he’d warned them off. Strongly. And it’s not like he followed her around or anything. Just . . . watched out for her.

Although it seemed sometimes that the biggest problem in Rhona’s life was that mother of hers.

Vigholf nearly shuddered at the thought of that particular female—if you could call her that. Yet she had mostly pleasant offspring. Rhona, the triplets, and a few of her other daughters and sons. Then again, Vigholf had heard that Rhona had raised the lot of them, which explained much in his estimation.

“I don’t need an ax,” Rhona snarled between clenched teeth.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of. They’re easy enough weapons to handle.”

“I know how to handle an ax, foreigner. I don’t need lessons from you. Why don’t you just accept the fact that you destroyed a beloved weapon because you have so little control of that warhammer of yours.”

“I have absolute control of my hammer, thank you very much. But once it’s moving, it’s not always easy to stop, my lady.” He grinned, feeling cheeky. “I can say that about all my hammers, in fact.”

“First off, ew. And second, I ain’t a lady. I’m a Cadwaladr and a sergeant of Her Majesty’s Army. You want to deal with a royal, go see my cousin Keita. She couldn’t be more royal.”

She stepped around him and he turned to follow, but her tail suddenly lashed out, aiming for his eye. Vigholf stumbled back and Rhona, glaring over her shoulder at him, snapped, “And stop following me around.”

“I wasn’t. Just . . . keeping an eye on you. These caves can be dangerous.”

“The day a She-dragon can’t move around a cave as she likes is the day she should climb onto the funeral pyre.”

“Or you could just have an escort.”

Her brown eyes nearly rolled to the back of her head, but before she could say another word, they both heard her name.

“What?” she yelled over him.

One of her sisters, he didn’t know which, appeared in the cave exit. “They’re at it again.”

Rhona’s snarl was so vicious that Vigholf briefly thought about moving out of her way. He didn’t, but it crossed his mind.

“By the unholy gods of piss and fire, I’ll kill them both!” she nearly yelled. “And if not them . . . I’ll kill her. Then maybe this centaur shit can end!”

Shoving past him, Rhona marched off in the direction her sister had motioned to, leaving Vigholf simply standing there. Instead of following her, he kept on the way she’d been going. After a few minutes, he came to the underground waterfall. This had been where she’d been going. The female did like her bath times. But, as always, the needs of others had gotten in her way. Unfortunate, really.

Rhona stormed through the chambers and caverns where the lower-ranking dragons resided when they weren’t out on the field.

And, as Rhona’s sister had said, her cousins were “at it again” while the rest of the young recruits stood in a circle around them, passing coin, taking bets, and cheering their favorite.

Seething and absolutely fed up with all of this, Rhona pushed past the troops and grabbed the wings of both males. With strength born of raising her siblings, Rhona yanked the pair apart, then slammed them back together again. Their hard heads collided and they stumbled around in stunned confusion.

“That is enough!” she bellowed, shoving them into the crowd surrounding them. “I am tired of this centaur shit!”

“He started—”

“You started—”

Rhona unleashed her flame, first at one, sending him careering into the wall, and then the other, forcing him to roll across the cave floor.

“I said that is enough! ”

She leveled her gaze at the other recruits. “Out! All of you!”

And the lot scrambled out of there as if the gods of death ran behind them.

Once they were alone, Rhona said, “I don’t believe you two. Five years I’ve put up with this shit. Five years I’ve watched you two go at it like pit dogs!” She shook her head. “That brat’s pussy must be mighty for all this!”

Éibhear the Blue, her royal cousin and youngest of Her Majesty’s offspring, stood to his lofty height. “Rhona! That’s my—”

“If you say niece, I will rip your lips off! Because, you twat, we both know the real problem here is that Izzy the Dangerous is not your niece. She’s merely the whore who’s gotten between cousins!”

Her not even remotely royal cousin Celyn the Black suddenly grew balls, and stood tall before her. “Don’t you dare talk about Izzy that way. If this is anyone’s fault—it’s his!” Celyn pointed an accusing talon at his cousin. “That overreacting harpy!”

“You took advantage!”

“That’s a lie!”

“Shut it!”

Both males snarled and looked away from each other.

All this over a woman. Not a She-dragon but a human female. The adopted daughter of Éibhear’s brother Briec had decided it was a good idea to take Celyn as her lover while the human and dragon troops of Annwyl the Bloody and Dragon Queen Rhiannon fought the Tribesmen of the Western Plains a few years back. And the rest of them had been suffering from that girl’s idiotic decision ever since.

“Perhaps you haven’t noticed,” Rhona pointed out, “that we’re in the middle of a gods-damn war. Perhaps you haven’t noticed that every time you two idiots do this, you put your fellow soldiers at risk. Our troops risk their lives every day and yet you two peck at each other like angry birds! As if you have nothing better to do!”

“Rhona—”

“I don’t want to hear it, Éibhear. Not a word!”

She rested her front claws on her hips. “I should just send both of you back to the Southlands. A few years’ suspension while your kin earn glory or death would certainly get my point across.”

As she expected, Rhona saw the panic in their eyes at the threat. And it was a threat she’d carry through on—if they could afford to lose the brute strength of either idiot. Of course as low-level privates neither idiot would know that.

“Please don’t, Rhona,” Éibhear begged. “It won’t happen again.”

“It won’t,” Celyn pleaded. “Just don’t send us back.”

“I don’t know. . . .” she hedged.

“We won’t fight again.”

“Ever.”

Rhona didn’t bother making them swear to that. What was the point when they didn’t even realize they were lying? But at the very least she was sure she’d put some fear into them.

“All right,” she finally told them, watching their bodies sag in relief. “But if I catch you fighting with each other one more time—”

“You won’t,” Éibhear was quick to promise. “You won’t.”

“I better not,” she warned.

And with that, she headed out of the chamber and to her gods-damn bath.

Éibhear the Blue glared across the chamber at his cousin. “This is your fault.”

“My fault? You started it!”

“I started it? If you’d kept your cock tucked—”

“This again? Really?”

“Yeah! Really!”

“Let me assure you, cousin, that everything I did with Izzy the Dangerous was at her explicit consent!”

They were chest to chest again, Éibhear enjoying the fact he stood quite a bit taller than his cousin since his last few growth spurts.

“I know I don’t hear more arguing. . . .” Rhona’s voice called from outside the chamber. “I know I don’t hear that.”

Austell the Red rushed in and pushed his way between the pair. “No, no,” he yelled out. “You don’t hear anything.” He shoved the pair apart as Rhona had. “Not a thing.”

Austell, a fellow soldier and friend to both Éibhear and Celyn, scowled at each dragon. “What is wrong with you two? This fighting has to stop.”

“It’s this prat’s fault,” Celyn snapped.

“My fault?”

“Go.” Austell pushed Celyn away. “Just go.”

“I’ve got watch anyway,” he said, stomping off.

“Don’t die a tragic death while you’re out there,” Éibhear called after him.

“Fuck you.”

Austell shook his head. “Cousins shouldn’t fight like this.”

“It’s his fault.”

“Over a woman.”

“She’s an innocent.”

Austell shrugged. “Not from what I’ve heard.”

And Éibhear had his friend by the throat and slammed up against the wall before either even realized it.

“At what point,” Austell asked once he’d pried Éibhear’s claw off his throat, “are you going to admit how you feel about—”

“She’s my niece.”

“Not by blood.” He patted Éibhear’s shoulder. “Just be smart, friend. There’s no female in the world worth fighting over.”

“I’m not fighting over anyone. I’m merely protecting one of my own.”

“Do you really believe your own ox shit?”

Éibhear sighed and headed off to get something to eat. “Usually.”

Vateria, eldest daughter in the House of Atia Flominia, walked into the room where her younger sisters prepared for their night out. There was a monthlong worth of games being thrown by the sons of the human ruler of these lands, Laudaricus, and Vateria’s family would be blessing them with their presence on the royal dais. Family members would be going in their human forms as they often did, although they never allowed their human pets to forget who or what they were.

For they were the true rulers of these lands. The ruling Imperium of the Quintilian Sovereigns for the last six hundred years. The Iron dragons.

At one time, the Iron dragons were part of the dragons of the Dark Plains. But Vateria’s grandfather grew bored at being ruled by another, so he and his allies moved their families far past the Western and Aricia Mountains and into what was the Quintilian Province. Unlike the Dark Plains dragons, Grandfather refused to hide his true form from the humans. Instead, he presented the small ruling body of Quintilian humans with a choice: Accept the Iron dragons as your rulers or watch your men burn and your women and children enslaved to the dragon’s will. Weak, like most humans, the rulers quickly agreed. In their minds, they thought they’d let their invaders get comfortable in their underground cave homes and then go about destroying them.

But Vateria’s grandfather had been much too smart for that. From the beginning he worked to make the Quintilian Province his own, without question. He kept actual killing to a minimum—he needed the humans as farmers, herders, and general labor—while using the threat of killing and much worse as the sword he used. When a senator dared question one of his decisions, the senator’s children were taken and turned into slaves, his wife or wives turned into whores, his land burned to embers. The senator in question, however, was kept alive, so that all could see him, day after day, wandering the streets without a home and penniless. His enslaved family sometimes passing him on the way to do their duty, their bodies covered in whip marks, their faces seared with their owner’s brand. Sometimes several brands if they were sold more than once.

By the time Grandfather handed over rule to his eldest son and Vateria’s father, Thracius, the Irons’ rule of Quintilian was without question and without challenge. That’s when Thracius captured the mate of Adienna, the Southland Dragon Queen of that time, during the Great Battle of Aricia and took him back to Quintilian. While the queen sent messengers with offers of treaties and promises of no retribution for the safe return of her mate, Thracius held public games in his father’s honor with the highlight being the crucifixion of the Dragon Queen’s mate.

Once dead, the queen’s mate was cut into pieces, boxed, and returned to Her Majesty. At the time, it was rumored the queen was planning an all-out assault on Quintilian, something Thracius hoped for since they’d be fighting on his territory rather than on hers. But that confrontation was put on hold for the queen had another problem—barbarian dragons from the north, the Lightnings. It had crossed Thracius’s mind to attack Dark Plains then, but he didn’t trust that the barbarians would automatically side with him. For enough gold or females to breed with—both of which the Southlanders had in abundance—the Lightnings could easily be bought. Besides, there was much to the west of the province that held his interest and Thracius had never been one to rush.

Now, centuries later, they were no longer simply the Quintilian Province. That was just the main city of what was known as the Quintilian Sovereigns, and the empire’s territories stretched for thousands and thousands of leagues in all directions.

All directions, but one.

But that would change soon enough for at this moment her father and his vast army fought the current Dragon Queen’s armies and the barbarian Hordes in Euphrasia Valley while Laudaricus’s human armies fought the armies of Annwyl the Bloody, Queen of Garbhán Isle, in the Western Mountains.

The two-prong attack would be quite effective, especially with the enemy armies not having nearly as many troops as the Irons.

Columella, one of Vateria’s four sisters, posed for Vateria in her dark red tunic. “What do you think?”

“You look well enough, I suppose.”

“Don’t overwhelm me with your flattery, sister.”

“I hadn’t planned to.” Vateria studied one of her younger cousins, her eyes narrowing. “That’s my necklace,” she told her.

“Can’t I borrow it?” The young dragoness glanced at Vateria over her shoulder, her tone teasing and playful due to the excitement of the upcoming evening. If Vateria remembered correctly, it would be her cousin’s first event as an adult. “You do have to admit it suits me a bit better than you.”

“It’s true, cousin. It does,” Vateria admitted. Then she caught hold of the dragoness around the neck and unleashed her talons, breaking through the skin, blood pouring across her still-human hand. “That doesn’t mean I gave you leave to take what’s mine.”

Her cousin slapped at Vateria’s arms and chest, unable to scream or breathe. Vateria took her to the floor and waited until a nice pool of blood had formed beneath her cousin’s head before she released her. She snatched the necklace off her cousin’s throat and walked over to one of the cowering human servants.

“Let her bleed out a bit more. When it looks like she’s about to die”—she grabbed a small jar and handed it to the shaking slave—“use this ointment on her. It should stop the bleeding and keep her alive.” Something Vateria had discovered as she’d spent more and more time entertaining herself in her father’s dungeons. For there she kept a great prize. Something so precious that another, more formidable foe was continually kept from the Province gates. Kept away at least until the return of the great Overlord Thracius and his army.

Vateria focused on one of the royal guards, a dragon. “She’ll suffer more as human, so if she shifts to dragon, kill her where she lies.”

He nodded and Vateria motioned to all the females. “Let us go. We need to take our seats so the games may begin.” Because no one would dare start the games without the royal family in attendance.

Vateria headed off down the hall, the females falling in line behind her while a servant ran along beside her, wiping the blood off her hand.

“You could have just taken the necklace back, sister,” Columella reminded her.

“That’s very true. But what would have been the lesson learned if I’d done that?”