“They’ve named you, by the way.”
Tom paused. He could feel night air trickling through the tent flap, cool where it licked his skin. Turning, he saw that her back was to him still. She looked very small just now, crouched in the gloom like a solitary candle’s fitful, futile flame—this woman the world called Bloody Rose.
“Named me what?” Tom asked.
She sighed, a sound like the cold breeze whispering in his ear. “Oh, I expect you’ll find out soon enough.”
introducing
If you enjoyed
KINGS OF THE WYLD,
look out for
THE DRAGON LORDS: FOOL’S GOLD
by Jon Hollins
It’s not easy to live in a world ruled by dragons. The taxes are high and their control is complete. But for one group of bold misfits, it’s time to band together and steal back some of that wealth.
No one said they were smart.
Will stood, momentarily paralyzed by the vision of a cave full of goblins.
Run! screamed a small and eminently sensible part of his mind, but for some reason his legs weren’t paying attention. They, it seemed, were more fatalistic. They would only carry him from so many attempts on his life in one day before simply giving up and accepting the fate as inevitable.
“Sorry,” he heard himself. “Wrong cave. My one’s a few entrances down.”
He went to take a step away from the goblins but his cowardly legs were still not on the same page as the rest of him.
A low growl seemed to rise from every small mouth in the room, a whisper brought to the volume of a roar by the sheer density of the bodies packed into the space before him.
“I’ll be off then,” he said, more to his own anatomy than to the crowd. His knees shivered in response, but he thought the movement boded collapse more than any sort of horizontal traction.
Suddenly a bloodcurdling howl rose through the night. It hollowed out all of Will’s resolve, left him a quivering shell.
He found himself thinking of the Pantheon. Of Lawl, father of the gods. Of Lawl’s wife, Betra, mother to all. Of their children, Klink, Toil, and Knole—gods and goddesses of money, labor, and wisdom. Of Lawl’s daughter-wife Cois, goddess of lust and desire. Of Betra’s husband-son Barph, god of revelry. Who could he pray to? Who might, against all the odds, send him aid?
Fuck it, he thought. I’ll slaughter a whole damn army of pigs to the first one of you lot who helps me out here.
Apparently the Pantheon had about as much faith in him as he had in them.
His arms, more cooperative than his legs, rose up over his head. His spirits almost rallied as he felt movement in his petrified legs, but it was only him sinking to his knees.
Wait, said the small voice inside him, the one that had advised retreat, that howl came from behind you …
Shut up! yelled the panicking component of his mind. I don’t have time for your shit. I’m busy dying, gods curse it.
Something massive bowled past Will. He felt the wind of it as it passed him, the bass growl of its roar in his chest, the pounding of its feet through the rock beneath him.
Then silence. A moment of absolute silence.
Then wind. A violent swishing noise.
And then the sound of death.
Will had grown up on a farm. He had raised enough livestock to know that sound. The sound of flesh tearing, bones breaking.
But it wasn’t coming from him.
He dared to open one eye.
Divine intervention. At first, that was the only explanation that came to his mind. That somehow his prayers had worked. That Lawl had really stepped down from the heavens and come to intercede on his part. That a divinity had finally come back to Kondorra. Just for him.
And then he got a look at the creature, and while there were stories of Lawl, and Betra, and Barph, and the rest of the Pantheon taking on some odd forms over the years, nothing he’d ever read was quite like this.
It was a creature perhaps eight feet tall, made entirely out of vast slabs of muscle, and spackled with cobblestone-size scales that glistened bronze in the firelight. It wielded a massive war hammer, the head of which scythed through the pressed ranks like a blade through wheat. Small bodies flew, anatomy distorted, fluids flying in great spraying arcs. The scent of blood and shit filled the air.
The goblins screamed, panicked, tried to flee back into the dull dead end of the cavern. A few brave souls leaked around the edge of the creature’s arc of death, fled toward the entrance. They raced past Will, and he tracked them as they hurtled toward the night.
And that was when he saw her. The angel to pair with the demon deeper in the cave. She was etched in moonlight, sweat-slick hair pulled back into a haphazard ponytail, mouth set in a grimace of rage. She held a sword in one hand, a dagger in the other. She slit the throat of the first goblin that tried to get past her, cut the legs out from beneath the next. It collapsed on severed knees, screamed so hard it retched.
The vast lizard demon waded into the cave, splashing death upon the walls and floor, and the woman followed, ending the lives of those initial survivors one by one with sharp, careful precision. Like a surgeon following in a butcher’s wake.
Could they be demigods? When the gods manifested, they usually had just one thing on their mind. Anyone unfortunate enough to fall under their glamour and be impregnated was rarely allowed to go full-term, though. The Pantheon’s offspring—demigods—simply sowed too much chaos in the world. They were too powerful, too unpredictable. The balance of nations could be knocked askew.
This butchery, though. Its scale. Its efficiency. It still felt almost divine to Will. The pair were quiet in their work. After the initial howl of the charge, there were no more battle cries, no more declarations of righteousness. All around them the goblins screamed, but the pair worked with a grim set to their jaws.
But as he watched, Will decided, no. Not divine. While the scale and the proficiency of this slaughter was a new vista for him, this was still quotidian butchery. There were no lightning bolts, no quakes of telekinetic power. Just blade, and blood, and bone.
So who in the Hallows were they?
Eventually the slaughter was done. All about them were the dead and dying. The pair stood, panting, looked at each other, sighed, and shrugged.
“See,” said the lizard monster in a voice that sounded like rocks grinding together, “that is being more fun than baking.”
“Shut up and start looking for the purse,” said the woman. She wheeled round suddenly, stabbed a finger out at Will. “You,” she said. “Have you seen a purse?”
Will stared at her. His life did not make sense to him anymore. He remembered a metaphor his father’s old lost farmhand Firkin had said to him, in one of his increasingly rare sober moments. He said it was as if the narrator of his fate had needed to step away for a moment and handed the reins to an angry toddler—a god’s hand sweeping through the bricks of his life and knocking everything to the floor.
“Me?” Will said, to the woman pointing to his chest.
“No,” said the woman, shaking her head, “the other helpful bystander standing just behind you.”
Caught off guard, Will looked over his shoulder. There was no one there. Then his mind processed. He looked back to the woman, embarrassed.
He could see her better now. The goblins’ torches littered the floor. Her face was angular, hard, flat planes coming to abrupt angles at her cheekbones and jaw. She was dressed in boiled leathers studded with steel. A hodgepodge of plate mail was strapped to her shoulders, arms, and shins. The sharpness of her features carried through to her eyes, bright and alive in this field of death.