Remedy Maker (47 page)

Sweat trickled an itchy path down the back of Rhy’s neck. He worked to control his breathing, to get a handle on the surge of adrenaline pumping through his body with the power of a steam geyser.

Frustration tore through him. While he sat cooling his heels, thinking about what weapons they didn’t have, a military trained Centaur in true form birddogged closer to his prey.

Now would be a good time for a PTSD attack.

Dryas moved the crossbow in a sweeping motion, keeping the point forward and level. He was now less than four Centaur lengths away from Aleksander. Rhycious couldn’t see whether Alek had moved from his position, and he wasn’t willing to wait and find out.

Rhy took a deep breath. He stuck his head out to glimpse down the trail the way they’d come, saw the coast was clear, then focused on Dryas and took off—arms pumping, legs pounding.

By the time Dryas sensed his presence, it was too late. Before the soldier could react defensively, Rhycious leaped up on his sorrel back and twisted his arms around the other man’s shoulders, placing him in a full Nelson.

He wrapped his legs around Dryas’s thick torso as the traitor struggled with the heavy load on his back. A compression packed arrow shot out with a quiet release and flew harmlessly into trees limbs on the ridge above.

“Motherfucker. I’ll kill you,” Dryas yelled. “I’ll gut you with pleasure.”

The Sergeant flailed his arms uselessly, making it easy for Rhycious to knock the crossbow out of Dryas’s grip with a kick of his foot. He grunted with satisfaction at the sound of the composite stock crunching under the Centaur’s weighty hooves.

Dryas threw himself to the left, and Rhy was unprepared for the impact of sharp granite jutting from the hillside. Rocks scraped skin off his shoulder, shooting ripples of pain across his torso, and ripping his favorite Raiders t-shirt.

No way in hell would he let go now.

Out of the corner of his eye, Rhy glimpsed Aleksander’s black and brown hide dart from under the tree cover. Sword drawn, he rushed to help bring the Centaur insurgent down.

Loud pops of gunfire reverberated from nearby, interspersed with Rhy’s grunts and Dryas’s shouts. Twangs of ricocheting bullets hung in the air, a musical note of deadly consequence.

“I swear I won’t miss next time.” Sweat glistened on the balding head of the human climbing down the steep embankment. The rifle’s butt held firm against his shoulder, head bent with his aim.

Fat waddled under Tom’s chin, reminding Rhycious of a quaking aspen. The human took short, uneven steps as he approached the melee, dirt clods and loose stones tumbling behind him. His furtive glances darted between Rhy and Dryas. The rifle leveled in a shaky grip, aimed at the center of Aleksander’s back.

Rhycious eyed the hunter, anger building every second that ticked slowly by. “I should have hunted you down and killed you.” He tightened his hold on Dryas’s neck. “I’d hoped you’d grown smarter since then.”

“That little girl was sweet, all right,” Tom snorted, and his voice cracked. “Worth havin’ those morons killed over. I just regret not stickin’ it to her when I had the chance.” He motioned with his rifle. “Get off him.”

Rhycious loosened his hold on Dryas. At this close range, Tom would have to be an idiot to miss. He shifted his hips off center to slip to the ground. Dryas took advantage of his off balance state and heaved to the side, pounding him against the rocks. Rhy’s head cracked against a solid wall of dirt covered granite and pain exploded behind his eyes.

“I should just break your legs and let the crows have you,” Dryas snarled.

Instead of fighting gravity, Rhycious followed the pull of it and slid off the guard’s wide back to a heap on the ground. Sharp hooves with fifteen hundred pounds of vertical pressure stomped the ground near his head in a macabre dance of death. Each violent trample scarcely missed as he rolled free to his feet.

Rhy came up with his Bowie drawn. “Be thankful you didn’t get that far, human. I’d have made you choke on yourself if you had.” he said with a bite, staring at the disgusting male. “I’ve never wanted to kill someone as badly as I want to kill you.”

Disembowel and decapitate. He gripped the knife’s handle and visualized the slice and dice.

In the forest surrounding them, the woods picked up a light breeze and set the leaves to toss. Rhy blinked several times. The knock to his head hadn’t been hard enough to cause him hallucinations. A visible shudder travelled through the trees in a whisper of movement, as if an invisible hand had run its fingers across them like the strings of a harp.

Movement flurried from one tree trunk to another, Nymph warriors moving in. One fighter stood in Rhycious’s line of vision, slowly shaking his head. A small spot of blue light, a burst no louder than a bubblegum pop, and he was gone.

The Nymphs were in position, retaining both human and tree forms, but would offer no assistance. Rhy understood. They were ready to help, and eager, but there was no way to do so. Not without breaking the fragile nature of the Cessation of Enmity, signed by Queen Savella and the Wood Nymph king.

Fucking politics.

Aleksander flicked a glance above him, abruptly aware of reaching branches that stopped short of grasping their enemy in claw-like boughs. Understanding set his mouth in a hard, straight line.

Pointing at Tom with the tip of his sword, Alek growled, “Sergeant, you had a stellar career and you threw it away for this piece of shit. Are you
kidding
me?”

Dryas said nothing, only returned the glare to the man he had served with in the Royal Centaur Forces.

Aleksander took a step back, adjusting his position to suit. “As your Commanding Officer, I am responsible for your actions. I’m also in charge of your disciplinary punishment. Lay down your weapons, remove that of your human’s, and surrender with an absence of hostility.”

Tom laughed, revealing his blackened teeth and gums in an open-mouthed guffaw. “Nice speech, Mr. Ed. But I ain’t lettin’ go of ol’ Betsy here.” He gathered his hunting rifle closer. One hand wrapped the wooden forestock, the other rested near the trigger.

“Alek, watch out!”

Five points, silver and shiny, flew toward Aleksander—all razor sharp. Dryas unleashed them in a blur of motion. One
shuriken
hit Alek’s body armor, embedding itself a hair’s breadth from his throat.

Rhycious had a knife—a
fucking
knife. The human had a rifle.

Dryas reached in the slot of his vest for another stainless steel
shuriken
. Before he released the deadly star, Alek gathered the power in his hind quarters and leaped forward in a rush. Their equine bodies crashed together in a thud of heavy muscle and whipping tails.

Tom raised the rifle to his cheek, getting a bead on the Centaur with a dark goatee who gained the upper hand in a fight to the death.

When you bring a knife to a gunfight . . .

Rhycious didn’t think twice. Dryas threw Alek down to grapple in the dirt, and Rhy let his blade fly the friendly skies.

All the training he'd cursed, the hours of practice he'd hated, and he had never been more grateful to his academy drill instructors than he had this past week. First year cadets were drilled mercilessly in the art of knife throwing.

His aim sailed true. Knowledge of the body’s physiology worked to his advantage. The Bowie hit and sunk to the hilt. Carotid artery severed.

Tom dropped his rifle. It clattered useless on the broken rocks, bouncing just out of reach. Clutching both hands to his neck, his reddened eyes widened in shock, and his mouth opened in a soundless scream. The human staggered weakly, his back hitting the base of a large tree. And then his legs crumpled. He fell forward, knees striking the ground.

The second Tom’s face hit terra firma, root burst forth from out of the soil, spraying dirt and dust into the air. Unbreakable bands coiled themselves around the man, steadily pulling him and his rifle underground. Tom clawed at the dirt, his mouth moving but unable to make a sound, not with the knife cutting off his voice.

In the end, the human hunter’s eyes were fixed and staring as the Wood Nymph soldiers carried him beneath the Earth’s crust.

Rhycious watched the last of Tom disappear. Nymphs settled themselves into the root systems and arranged the soil as if nothing had been disturbed. Satisfaction on Patience’s behalf flooded him. Justice served.

A loud curse and the pounding of flesh brought Rhy’s head around. Aleksander clearly dominated, his short knife held to Dryas’s throat. The Sergeant gripped Alek’s thick wrist in both hands, his knuckles turning white as he held the blade off his neck.

Aleksander hardly needed his help, but Rhycious figured he’d better drag his ass over there and see what he could do. The grunting pair lay in the dirt, kicking their hairy legs and cussing each other out.

Dryas breathed hard, his sides heaving. “Savella will never win. You’ll never stop the Protectorates.” Sweat ran down his face and arms, and he stilled his thrashing body.

Ice-cold alarm replaced every ounce of anger in Rhy’s veins. His inner voice divined the future, even before the sergeant continued through his clenched teeth.

“There’s more of us out there,” Dryas spat. “Multi-national rebels only too anxious to step into my place.”

Multi-national?
Rhycious moved around the prone bodies to face the downed sergeant. “What you say makes no sense. Why would the other mythics want any part of your uprising? What’s in it for them?”

Great mythical gods . . . who the hell were they fighting?

“Guess you’ll have to wait and see.” Dark promise encompassed the smile crossing Dryas’s face. His words ground out bitter. “It’s too late to try and stop us. Infiltration into Savella’s leadership ranks is nearly complete. The outcome is inevitable. If I die today, I die a martyr for my people. Death to Savella.”

Aleksander’s face became a blank mask, his voice lost all expression. “We are your people, asshole. When you die—” Aleksander leaned back, applying more pressure to his knife. “You die a traitor.”

  Kempor Aleksander, Head Centaur Palace Guard, charged with security of the Boronda Forest, did his duty. Without malice or personal inflection, he stabbed the razor edge of his Daggart 2, ComboEdge SOG military blade deep into Sergeant Dryas’s exposed throat and drew it cleanly through.

Dryas sputtered, his eyes widening. Frothy red foam dripped from his mouth. As his blood pressure lowered and lack of oxygenated fluid flowed to his brain, the betrayer slid unconscious to the ground.

Rhycious stared at Dryas’s dead body and blinked hard. He'd gone to bed drunk, woken up to a hangover and banging good sex, and watched another Centaur die. Alek’s logic was unassailable, and the Kempor hadn’t hesitated to slit a throat. But when Rhycious sat witness in the jury box to Dryas’s execution, it opened up a door he hadn’t known existed in the hallway of his mind.
Regrettable satisfaction.

He lifted his gaze to Aleksander and met eyes as ancient and tired as his own. A Centaur, willing to lose his life over an ideal, had tossed down the gauntlet.

When had the insurrection started? He hadn’t known it was happening.

Another thought slipped into the space occupied by dread. He hardly noticed the itch of the crimson spray droplets that tracked down his face, or the roots creeping toward the dead Centaur.

“Alek.” Rhy’s heart plummeted into the pit of his stomach. Ruefully, he voiced his churning nightmare. “The uprising has only begun.”

Thirty-Six

At the outdoor amphitheatre, Rhycious stood off to the side waiting for Patience, and gazed at the hundreds of mythic people gathered. Located near the Centaur palace, the natural bowl hummed with excitement, churning the open air with light-hearted anticipation.

Below, where Queen Savella would make her appearance, the dais awaited her. A flat rock the size of a tennis court, carved from ice flows millions of years ago, formed the stage where attendees on all spectator levels had unobstructed views. On each side of the platform, hidden by long panels of tapestry emblazoned with Savella’s royal crest, were access corridors leading to various chambers behind the cliff wall.

Banners snapped in the mild afternoon breeze proclaiming that the spring equinox was upon them. Balanced between light and dark, days and nights were an almost equal length. The point at which the ecliptic intersects the celestial equator, brought the first day of
seedtide
to the woods.

A time of great fertility.

A time for change.

Centaurs socialized with Trolls while waiting for the celebration to begin. In other areas, Satyrs and Minotaurs shared moments of humor. Other races mixed and mingled, strolling about to find seats.
As it was in the old days.

Savella had the right of it. The sacred holiday stood as a perfect symbolic moment to begin healing the unity in the Boronda Forest species.

Rhycious nodded to a small group of mares who wandered by, fluttering their lashes and giving saucy sways to their decorated tails. Their flirtation was lost if they were teasing for him—though it noticed by the copse of bachelor Nymphs who followed closely behind. The young men grinned, and the chase was on.

At the auditorium’s main entrance, Rhycious waited near the gate that funneled attendees toward a large aisle leading to seats in the center section. From this vantage point, he kept a watchful eye on the far gate as well, excitement building as the minutes ticked past.

Aleksander wandered up, having extracted himself from somewhere within the bowels of the throng. “Is she here yet?” He took stock of their surroundings, his gaze sticking on one female after another.

“Patience better have Serenity with her to tame that wandering eye of yours.”

Alek stroked his goatee, grinning broadly, the twinkle in his mischievous eyes turning several feminine heads. “Nothing wrong with working up an appetite.”

“As long as you eat at home.” Rhy nudged Alek and indicated with a nod of his chin. “There they are now.”