Victory's Price

Wolf (Part Twenty-Seven)

A.N. Dedicated to Kurone for their unwaivering support and help. This chapter is chosen specifically because of all my readers, only Kurone is attached primarily to Wolf. So this one's for you :) 

Chapter 27

There was something about her, something he couldn’t describe.

Both Wolf and Phoenix had lost their mounts. He fought on foot but it didn’t matter. He knew what to look for in a good horse and neither had bolted. Phoenix seemed a lot more comfortable on firm ground anyway.

His arm jarred as he blocked, just a little too late. Wolf cursed, rebuking himself for concentrating on Phoenix’s deadly dance more than his own.

She was just too mesmerising.

He watched her as she pulled a man from his mount and efficiently ran him through. Two seconds was all it took for her to eliminate one fifth of the enemy force.

Wolf temporarily lost sight of his companion as his own battle rotated, placing the hulking form of his adversary between them. It was a good thing too, he realised as his distraction earned him a line of fire across his wrist. A second slower and he would have lost the hand.

Wolf grunted. He was in good shape but the man in front of him was bigger, stronger, and he was giving ground.

Phoenix whirled temporarily into view, moving so fast she was almost indistinguishable. She had that expression on her face, the one that terrified him. Phoenix was fearsome. There were few words that described her so well. Chilling was another in his repertoire. She was fearsome and chilling and she dealt out death like she was the very reaper himself.

Wolf shuddered as he stepped back and his foot met loose ground. For a second the rubble held but he leant away from another stinging blow and it gave out. Suddenly his left foot gripped nothing but air. Wolf lurched but managed to keep standing, shock tightening his throat.

“I will kill you.” He growled as another forceful blow sent his leg flailing over empty ground again.

“I’d like to see you try.”

He fought a hard man, the words held no boast, only assurance.

Below him the fangs of slate and the waves’ crests came together and drew apart. The shock of impact as two of the greatest elements continued their eternal battle was almost deafening from up here. He swallowed nervously and threw a quick glance over his shoulder. The sea drew back but the rock made no concessions. He hung over the giant maw at the end of the world.

He had gods and he prayed, then, but they had never saved him before now and he had no delusions.

The swords clanged discordantly as they met again but there was no longer a rhythm to his movement. Rubble skittered down sheer rock face and Wolf would be next.

He couldn’t attack. He was barely able to defend. Every ounce of his concentration had focused itself on his balance, on just staying still, clinging onto the cliff, clinging onto life.

Metal darted towards his throat and in his final second of clarity Wolf realised he was going to die.

He closed his eyes. He couldn’t see his own end.

“You need to get a lot better.”

He wasn’t dead.

Wolf opened an eye.

He wasn’t falling.

He wasn’t bleeding.

“Phoenix?”

As his vision focused on the tip of blade, he realised it had stopped short of impaling him, though it was a close run thing. Slowly, he ran his gaze back along the fuller to where it protruded from his would-be murderer’s neck and not his grasp.

“Yes?” She moved slightly and suddenly a familiar face peered at him over the shoulder of his dead assailant.

She was smiling but her hands and her brow were sticky with blood.

He was alive. She had saved him.

As the breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding escaped him, Wolf remembered the words he’d spoken to the girl when they’d first met.

‘We are gods.’

And she’d answered his prayers.

“You killed all five?” He couldn’t keep the awe from his voice.

“And you killed none.”

Phoenix tugged her blade free of the lax victim, manipulating him away from the edge and allowing Wolf to step oh-so-gratefully onto firm ground. She went to wipe her hands on her top but as she realised what she wore she seemed to change her mind, smearing blood on the wet grass instead.

Wolf didn’t care. The road was a state: muddy, bloody and torn but solid, unyielding and right now he needed nothing more.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you.” He whispered, throwing himself prostrate, clutching handfuls of anything he could get a hold of.

“Ow!” He exclaimed as Phoenix used the flat of her sword to deal him a stinging blow to the side of his head.

“Get up.”

Her blade was in more of a state than she but for once her first reaction was not to clean it. She crouched down, seeming to scrape something into the damp earth.

Wolf left her to it, scrambling to his feet. Whatever she was doing she would not appreciate his intervention.

Phoenix ignored him as he clambered into the next field. He had planned to retrieve only their mounts but there were three horses happily grazing together. It made sense, he figured, although he had no idea where the other four could have gone. Not knowing what else to do Wolf gathered his newly acquisitioned herd and gently coaxed them back to the scene of Phoenix’s massacre.

She was still intent on her business as he returned. Wolf leant over her shoulder, reading the words she was carving into the soil.

“He howls in the moonlight and bites with steel.”

Continuing to ignore him, Phoenix sheathed her sword and pulled herself onto the gelding.

“Aren’t you going to say something about yourself?”

She laughed darkly.

“A girl walks into a bar. Less than twenty four hours later it is early evening and the bar is broken. You purchased a unique gaming tunic, the type with the burning phoenix, and now five of the lord’s men lie dead on the coastal road. I don’t need words to make my own omens. They will know who’s back.”

Her words struck him as only the beginning. Not for the first time, Wolf wondered what he had released into his world.