Beyond the Hell Cliffs (36 page)

Raegith paused and clenched his jaw.  He looked back to
Hitomi, who still sat on the ground, motionless and voiceless.  “Get up.”

Hitomi
stood up as directed, a bit shaky on her feet.

“Your clothes… take them off,” Raegith commanded.  When she looked to Helkree for guidance, Raegith lost his temper.  “Don’t fucking look at her!  She serves me, just as you do!  Now get those fucking clothes off now!  All of them!”

Others among the refugees looked in their direction, but with Beretta sitting among the group, no one dared bother them.  An incident earlier in the day had cleared up who they were.  Raegith was accused of being an enemy spy by a deserting guard and Beretta had burned him to a husk.  After that, no one spoke to him, the Infernal or any of the Helcats.

Hitomi
quickly pulled her ragged shirt over her head, her dark breasts bouncing with her frantic movement.  After she pushed her pants down and stepped out of them, she just stood there in the midst of the entire refugee camp, scared and vulnerable.

“Come over here,” Raegith said.

“Grass-hair, I’m sorry.  I said something stupid…”

“Get over here!”

Hitomi jumped forward, sliding to her knees in front of him.  Raegith reached out and grabbed her by her hair and pulled her forward to him.  Turquoise hair was rare among Lokai and it made the girl a target in the Pit, even more so than her sarcastic mouth.  If Helkree would not have taken her in among the Helcats, she probably would probably have died messy among the easily enraged males. 

“I don’t like this color.  I want you to get rid of it tonight… with a knife.  What do you think about that?”

“Whatever you want, Grass-hair, please…” she begged.

“Oh, you really want to impress me, don’t you?” Raegith laughed menacingly.  He began loosening his pants with his other hand.  “You want to be a duchess,
Hitomi?  Maybe you want to be the next Empress?  Is that why you’re trying so hard to impress me?  Well then, let’s see how impressive you really are!”

“Raegith,” Helkree said.

Raegith turned on her, his teeth bared.  “Wait your fucking turn!”

“What the hell are you doing?”  Her voice was calm and she did not move to stop him.

“What the fuck does it look like?  Do you suddenly have a problem with this, now that we’re not in the Pit anymore?  Can I not do with your Helcats what I wish?  Isn’t this the point of them?”

“The point of
them?
” Helkree asked.  “Do you mean your Helcats, or women in general?”

Raegith did not respond.  With his hand in
Hitomi’s hair, holding her face over his partially exposed crotch, he just stared her down, simmering in rage and frustration.

“You’re certainly Greimere no
w.  Well, I guess you’ve earned it, haven’t you?”  Helkree looked down at the frightened girl in Raegith’s grip.  “If that’s what he wants…”

“Shut up!” Raegith screamed, shoving
Hitomi away from him.  He stood up, tying his pants back around his waist.  “All of you… I can’t even fucking look at any of you right now.  I need to be alone.”

Beretta started to follow him as he left the group, but a look from him made her stop.  He would have fought her in that instant and she must have seen it.  He wanted to fight something; anything at that moment.  A part of him had wished that Helkree was about to attack him, then he could fight her.

As he walked away, he looked around at the others in the refugee camp.  His eyes dared any of them to challenge him.  The things he felt were burning him inside, making his body hurt as if he were being physically beaten.  He wanted to scream at the night; to tear at something until it stopped breathing.  Something inside him felt as if it might rip right through his skin and run crazy through the camp, wrecking and destroying until he was put down.  That would at least give him some release, but he knew it would not happen.  They were emotions, not some parasitic demon lying beneath his flesh.  All the turmoil was in his mind; it just felt as if his entire body was filled with it.

And there was nothing he could do with it, but let it pass.  The anger had swelled so quickly that he could not handle it.  With no enemy nearby to pound with his fist, he had
tried for another kind of relief.  He would have taken out his anger on Hitomi had Helkree not stopped him.  He could still see the images that boiled up in his mind as he vented on the poor girl; of pushing her face into the dirt and forcing himself in her.  He would have hurt her, made her scream in that instant and he would have made the rest of them watch.  They would know that at any moment it could be them taking his wrathful sex.

“What am I doing?” he whispered to the empty night around him.  “W
hat the hell is wrong with me?”

Raegith was hitting the ground, pulverizing the lifeless grit below him fruitlessly.  His eyes were wet and his face hurt, but there were no sobs.  He growled and grunted, filling his bloody fists with as much pain as he could, anything to bleed
out the pressure inside him.

Then he felt someone beside him.  It was Helkree.  She was the only one who would come to him while he was in such a state.  Beretta might have come to make sure
he was not abducted by some night beast, but she would not have knelt close to him, as Helkree did.

“You done with your little tantrum?”

Raegith almost pounced on her, but the thought came and went.  She was not his enemy.  She was his closest friend and the one who forced him to become strong inside the Pit.

He sighed, long and uneasily, gaining a hold over the weakness in his voice.  “Yeah… I think so.”

“The dumb twat doesn’t know when to shut her mouth sometimes and probably needed to be put in check.  She’ll think a bit more before speaking next time.”

“No, that’s not it, Hel.  That would have broken her and that’s not what I want. 
Fates, the thoughts I had… I’m one sick fuck.”

“You’re young, Raegith,” Helkree replied.  “And you’ve got a lot of darkness in you.  It’s good, you need that shit here.”

“Would you have let me do it?” Raegith asked, looking over at her.  “If I would have ignored you and tried to rape her, what would you have done?”

“Watched,” she replied, dryly.

Raegith laughed.  “Okay, you’re more fucked up than I am, at least.  I didn’t even go through with it and I feel like a monster.”

“Because you’re not used to this place.
  You found me tied to a rock, remember?  A thousand bad things like this happen every day somewhere in the Greimere.  I don’t have time to feel bad for all of them; I don’t have time to feel bad for any of them.”  She paused for a moment, deciding on what to say next.  “And Hitomi is tougher than you think.  You wouldn’t have broken her… but she wouldn’t have been the same around you.”

“I’m not that morbid, yet, Hel.  But I’m glad I’ve got you to keep things in perspective for me.  I’m also glad you stopped me earlier.”  Raegith paused for a bit and stared out at the night.  A dim speck of orange was the only sign of the
Citadel.  They could not even hear anything from the battle anymore, if it still raged.

“Head back to the Helcats and get them turned in.  I’ll keep first watch.  But send
Hitomi to me when you get back.”

“You want me to put some clothes on
her first, or as she is?”

“Are you kidding me?  She hasn’t put her clothes back on, yet?  Fates, Hel!”

Helkree just shrugged her shoulders as she got up and turned back to the camp.  A few minutes later Raegith saw Hitomi wandering among the refugees.  When she saw him, she paused and then weaved through the fires and prone figures to get to him.  Her pale hair bobbed oddly and as she got close to him he could see that she had already started trying to get rid of it.  So far she had only shortened it, but there looked to be a patch missing near the right side of her scalp.  She had only recently taken pride in her unusual hair after gaining the protection of the Helcats.

“Oh no,
Hitomi,” he sighed as she got closer.

“I just haven’t had enough time to get the rest,” she babbled frantically.  “It hurts to do too much at a time, but I’ll stay up all night…”

“Stop!  Just… just come over here with me.”

Hitomi
took up a seat on the ground near him, but her gaze remained furtive and she tried not to look him in the eyes.

“
Hitomi, I’m sorry about earlier.”

“It was my fault!  I shouldn’t have hesitated.  Look, I won’t hesitate now at all!”

Raegith grabbed her by the shoulders before she could disrobe again.

“You’re a Helcat,
Hitomi, not a slave girl.  Do you understand me?  Helcats don’t go to their back on command; they go whenever they damn-well feel like it.”

Raegith let go of her, but kept his eyes locked with hers.  “What happened tonight… what almost happened, was my weakness, not yours.”

“You’re not weak!  You defeated all kinds of challengers in the Pit, Grass-hair.  You protected all of us in there.  You’re not weak!”

“There are different kinds of weaknesses,
Hitomi.  Where I come from, doing what I did; letting my anger rule me like that… that’s weakness.  You deserve a strong leader; one that’s not going to lose his mind and attack you on a whim.”

“But I’m yours, Grass-hair. 
You scared me, is all, but you can have me if you want me.  Without you, I would have gotten much worse from the Rathgar.”

“I didn’t protect you from those deranged fuckers just to become one myself.”

“You’re not like them, Grass-hair.  You got a little crazy, but you’re different from anyone here.  I figured that out in the Pit, sweating and bleeding on command for Helkree.  I fought with everything in me to be one of your Helcats.  I know some day I’ll end up just like Makat, but I won’t follow anyone else for the rest of my life.”

“
You’re a good soldier, Hitomi.  I won’t fail you, again.”

Hitomi
crawled over to Raegith and slid on top of him, curling her hand in the strip of his hair.  She leaned down and purred into his ear.  “I can be really good, Grass-hair… if that’s what you want.”

She kissed him passionately, but after a moment he gently pushed her away.

“No, it’s okay.  I want this, too!”

“
Hitomi, please.” Raegith said, resisting her persistent efforts.  “After everything that’s happened today and tonight… I don’t think I have this in me just now.”

“Do you… do you need me to help you out?” she asked, pointing downward.

“What?  No, that’s not it.  I just… I’ve got a lot on my mind right now.  I wasn’t ready for all of this to happen.  The Empress… there’s just a lot of things fighting in my head.  I’m just not in the mood for anything right now.”

“You’re worried about the Empress?”
Hitomi asked.

“She tricked me into escaping the Citadel
because she knew I wouldn’t leave her otherwise.”

“Well, if we’re not going to
fuck, can you just tell me what’s got you so upset that your snake won’t work?”

“Hey, it works; that’s not the issue,” Raegith replied, scowling at her.  “
And you don’t really want to sit here and listen to me grieve the woman who put you in the Pit to begin with.”

“If there’s a chance to know more about Grass-hair than the other Helcats, then I’m going to take it,” she smiled.  “Anyways, you don’t tell boring stories.”

Chapter 31

Tiberius stood outside the entrance to the palace and surveyed the damage.  Night had fallen but the city was bright with the flames of its destruction.  The smoke smelled of final victory and the general smiled, looking out on a sight no other Saban before him had ever seen.

The Greimere’s fortress lay in ruin, its people dead or captive.  He and a few of his men stood on the steps of the central palace of their greatest enemy and all around the men of the Rellizbix Army cheered.  They had done it.  They had eradicated the threat to their kingdom, once and for all and he had led them to it.

It was a more difficult fight than he had first imagined.  They had gotten lost in the wastelands and were running low on water, but the Faeir had managed to find it.  Even in that place, the elements called to them.  The Twileen scouts had captured a few furry, black creatures that quickly gave up all kinds of information with a little prodding.  Every night they spent there saw the loss of more men.  It was as if the night itself just swallowed them up.  Some were picked off by nocturnal creatures that danced around the fringes of the camp, while others simply dropped their gear and walked off into the darkness for no reason.

Halfway into the Greimere, a shadow crossed over the group and a dragon swept down, snatching men up with its claws and burning the center of the formation with green fire.  On its next approach, they were able to turn one of the Witzer cannons on it, winging it and sending it spiraling over the horizon.  Scouts found black blood, but no body.  Footprints in the blood looked like that of a person.

When they finally hit an outpost, the men were ready to fight something tangible.  The inhabitants did not stand a chance and the few prisoners taken were forced to give up the route to the capitol of the empire.  They called it the Citadel.  That made Tiberius laugh.  Their Citadel was nothing compared to the majesty of Thromdale and he smashed their walls with the mighty blasts of the Witzer cannons for their hubris.

The Witzers were magnificent.  Three cannons, each powered by half a dozen Mages, all channeling their destructive magic into one funnel that turned it all into a giant blast of pure energy.  It obliterated the front gate and laid waste to the walls, creating several openings for his men to pour through.  The disorganized resistance inside the walls was pathetic.  His troops sustained minimal losses.  Tiberius had to ride hard just to reach the front of the assault once it had started, his men pushed onward so unimpeded.

Now he stood at the center of the city, on the steps of its palace, with the few they had found inside kneeling behind him.  Tiberius turned and looked at the grey-haired Rathgar in the sinister armor.  Six Saban Shield-bearers in full armor were cut down by the warrior’s massive axe in an instant.  Even Tiberius had taken caution when confronted by the beast of a man.

In a heavily defended room inside the palace is where he lost
the bulk of his men.  The guards there, in their purple and black armor, were much nastier than the brown-garbed ones in the street.  It took three pushes just to breach the door.  Tiberius was considering rolling one of the Witzer cannons up to it and just blasting through all of them.  He wanted the Emperor alive, though.  He wanted to look in the cretin’s eyes and see what kind of villain would execute defenseless ambassadors on an official errand.

Tiberius himself had disarmed the grey-haired warrior, facing off against him in single combat.  He had a new scar on his face and a few broken ribs to show for it, but in the end he had overcome the Rathgar without killing him. 

He turned to Vi-Sage Malthus.  “Have you figured out which one of them is the Emperor, yet?  Don’t tell me it’s the Beast.  I don’t believe that their monarch is that skilled.”

“Ours certainly is,” Malthus replied.

“I’m going to pretend that I did not just hear you compare a Rathgar puke to our king, Malthus.  Now point him out to me.”

“There is no Emperor, from what I can surmise.” The Faeir pointed to the crest on the lone female warrior’s armor.  “This one here is wearing the Imperial crest.  I’ve seen it in my studies… an illustration of it, of course.”

“You’re telling me that you think this girl is the ruler of the Greimere Empire?  It must be a ruse.”

“No, I don’t think it is.  You see, the Rathgar have not used females in combat for centuries.
  At the College, there have been several studies based off of evidence provided by artifacts and interrogations of war prisoners that point towards a forbidding of females in war roles.  As we saw earlier, there are many, many more females inside these walls than males and none of them had conventional weapons, armor or any form of organization.”

“Vi-Sage, I’m looking right at a damned female in armor who swung a sword at us not an hour earlier.  What are you getting at with this?”

“If such a rule was in place, the only exception would be for a ruler.  We have studies that show the Rathgar revere a good death.  It’s why they rarely flee in combat, even when we outnumber them heartily.”

“Yes, they’re a worthy opponent in that respect, at least.”

“Well it would make sense that they would want a good death for their ruler, as well.  Only at this point, the ruler happens to be female, so…”

“So they break the rule and fit her with armor, even though she’s but a girl
.”

Tiberius
rubbed his chin thoughtfully.  “This place is completely barren, Malthus.  The entire time we’ve been here, have you even seen a patch of green?”

“Sir?”
Malthus asked.

“Grass… where is he?  What is he?  Something has been troubling me for some time about this figure that we have yet to run into.”

“Sir, I’m sure it was either a legend or…” Malthus began.

“They don’t have grass here, Malthus!  Why would they call someone that?  It doesn’t make any sense, unl
ess they were insulting him; they weren’t.”

“They’re Rathgar, General.  They’re not intelligent.”

“Exactly my point, Vi-Sage.  They lack creativity, so any moniker they give is going to be blunt.”  Tiberius turned to the prisoners.  “Ask them who this Grass fellow is, Malthus.  Why has he not shown himself?”

Malthus spoke to the Empress and then to the large warrior.  Neither of them spoke.  Tiberius immediately drew his sword and put it at the girl’s neck.

“Tell this fool that his Empress will die a humiliating and dishonorable death, full of screams, if he does not answer me,” he said, looking at the warrior.

Malthus translated the general’s request and the warrior looked at his Empress and dropped his head.  When he began to speak, the girl yelled in protest, but Tiberius backhanded her, nearly knocking her unconscious.

“Continue!” he yelled at the warrior.

The warrior did not speak much, but what he said made Malthus turn pale.  When the warrior had finished, Malthus just stood there.

“Well?” Tiberius asked.

“Sir, I’m not sure if this is supposed to be some kind of joke on their part… maybe a form of resistance…”

“What the hell did he say?” Tiberius roared.

“The one they refer to as Grass… he says he is a boy from the north
.  The warrior refers to him as a foreigner with hair like grass.  He says that we sent him here and asked the Empress to kill him, but the Empress showed him mercy.”

Tiberius froze.  No battle scene in his life sent the kind of chills through him as those words did.

“How long ago was this, Malthus?  Ask him?”

“A year ago.
  He has already said.” Malthus was growing suspicious.  “Sir, do you know what he is talking about?”

Tiberius stood without speaking. 
He knew exactly what the warrior was talking about.  There was only one plausible reason anyone from the north would be in the Greimere and among the envoy was a boy whose hair was as green as springtime grass.

He and two others among the men he brought with him were the only ones who knew of the Treaty and of the king’s bastard son.
  His army had destroyed the invasion, marched on the Citadel and ruined the Treaty that had sustained the Caelum rule all to avenge the death of Raegith Caelum and now there was a chance that the boy was alive.  Not just alive, though, but infamous among the enemy.  The prisoners he had captured in the Wilderness revered him; claimed he would seek vengeance against Rellizbix.

The boy had Caelum blood in him and despite being half
Twileen, he was the first-born son of Helfrick Caelum.  If the Fates guarded anyone in such a harsh land, it would be the boy.  Leadership through power, the heritage of Throm Caelum, had shown itself in the bastard just as it had in Helfrick and all the kings before him; only it was not the people of Rellizbix that the boy inspired.  Raegith’s possible survival was not a relief to the general, though.  In his mind, two scenarios unfolded.

In one, Tiberius scoured the Greimere, sending scouts and squadrons to every known corner and using up all the resources they had trying to track the boy down.  Then, when he was found, half of the Rellizbix Army would know the truth about their king.  Even if he tried to keep it a secret, the men would not be so stupid as to think he would risk all of their lives in such a place just to find a single, insignificant boy.  There would be endless questions and speculation and eventually it would be discovered.  Helfrick would have his son back, but his reputation would be ruined and the Faeir would be more hostile than ever before.  Then there would be the inevitable inquiries over what the boy
was doing in the Greimere to begin with.  The entire Treaty could be uncovered and exposed.

In the other scenario, Tiberius left the Greimere victorious over the Empire.
  The boy, if still alive, would remain in enemy territory, his fate unknown to anyone but Tiberius.  Tiberius would lie to his king, the first time he had ever done so, but Helfrick would know that his son was avenged and could move on from his grief.  Without the Treaty and wars, Rellizbix would struggle; the Sabans would struggle.  Helfrick was a strong leader, though.  He would see them through and his true heir would be recognized without question.  Deep in the Greimere, no one would ever know about the boy or the king’s indiscretion with the Twileen whore.  All he had to do was lie to his king.

“Sir, do you know what the Rathgar is speaking of?
” Malthus asked impatiently.

“No,” Tiberius said, making his decision.  “As you said, Vi-Sage… these savages are ignorant and defiant.  He’s makin
g fun of us.”

“Would you like me to conduct a more thorough interrogation of the prisoners?” Malthus asked.

“No.  We’re done here.”  Tiberius paused and gazed at the warrior.  “The men need an undisputed victory; something to show them that we’ve finally won against these brutes and heathens.  Let’s get this place cleared and all of the men assembled.  I want them all to see this.

“And see if we can find anything around this Fate-forsaken place to make a pole out of.”