Page 27 of Blood Fist

“Sehleh, give him something to sleep and take him back to the nest. Kick the troublemaker if he’s still awake. “

The beta smiled wetly, collecting the omega and smoothing a hand across his back as she took him into another room.

Chief Restrina kept her back to them, taking deep breaths before turning to face the two soldiers. She eyed them critically.

“You are brave to go against your master.”

“He’s not our master,” Brune denied. “And I…wasn’t brave. It was Niklas who hit him.”

The beta squeaked beside him.

Brune dropped his head, shame so potent he could taste it. He was going to let Corric turn himself in. He was going to stand by and do nothing. The difference between him and the alpha in front of him was so vast it was laughable.

Chief Restrina took a step towards him, getting close enough she was nearly toe to toe with Brune. She was smaller this close, her head barely scraping his shoulder. Her face softened slightly.

“You have a warrior’s heart,” she said with a chuckle before flicking him in the forehead. “But a coward's mind.”

With that, she left. Moving to follow Corric and the beta through the flap into a secondary room. Before she stepped through, she looked over her shoulder and caught Brune’s eye.

“Luckily, minds are easier to change than hearts.” She nodded at Osmond. “Take them back to their camp.”

Brune stared after the alpha, his brows furrowed.Did she just…let us go?And for a moment, she even looked amused.

He didn’t have long to think about it. Osmond grabbed his arm and dragged him from the tent. The alpha seemed to be in a better mood, his scent sweeter.

Brune couldn’t really smell himself, not like someone else could. Niklas once said his scent was earthy, whatever that meant. He never had the courage to ask for more information, but he wondered how it compared to Osmond’s lemon scent or Chief Restrina’s pepper.

When the lights of camp flickered in the distance, Osmond stopped, too cautious to go closer. The alpha smiled at them, his teeth flashing in the dark.

“Good luck! Hope I don’t see you on the battlefield,” he said conversationally, as if he hadn’t just put them both in the dirt less than an hour ago. “Oh!” he turned to Niklas, his smile brightening. “Watch that left knee. You’re unsteady on it.”

Niklas stared long after Osmond had slipped back into the dark.

The first blade struck after dawn.

Some would say the Clansmen drew first blood, but there was no way to know. It was a cacophony of screaming—war cries, dying, steel on steel, the breaking of bones, and the incomprehensible wailing of fear. If you’d asked Brune what a battle would be like—he wouldn’t have said this.

The Stone Blade showed up at the incline just as the first amber rays of the sun sluggishly climbed the horizon. They said nothing. There were no battle drums, no posturing. There was no need. They would speak with the strength of their arms and the fire in their hearts.

Painted for battle, he hardly recognized ChiefRestrina. If she wasn’t standing front and center, her lips curled around distended fangs and eyes bright, he might have lost her in the mass of people. Dark stripes of dried paint cut through her sharp cheekbones, dancing across her skin in a pattern only the Clansmen knew.

Dressed in leather with two bands across her breasts, she wore no armor save for the bracers on her arms and knees. Made of bone, she’d chiseled them to be sharp and he had no doubt it was for a practical function.

General Bargrave assembled his men by battalion and rank. There was an order, allegedly, though Brune couldn’t see it. They’d barely made eye contact across the field—Chief Restrina in front and General Bargrave in the middle of his most trusted fighters—when it started.

Like there was some sort of unspoken agreement, the armies moved as one.

The sound of human bodies crashing into each other is one Brune would never forget. It made his stomach roil in nausea, and he found his hands trembling where he had them fisted around his sword.

Earlier in the morning, he’d been assigned to the archers. Niklas and the other bowmen were situated on top of a small incline, given the perfect vantage point to let loose their deadly volley. They huddled behind downed carts, crouched among the tools engineers had hastily left behind when they’d disassembled the wooden cart. The bowmen popped up only long enough to aim and fire.

His job was to protect them from a ground attack. At first, he’d been grateful to be out of the melee—he was not foolish enough to think his slow footwork with a sword would be anything but a death sentence in a battle. Now he wasn’t so sure.

From his position, he could see it all. He made the mistake of picking out individual people—a soldier from his barracks was decapitated with a swing of a battle ax, a Clansmen woman bit the shoulder of a soldier even as she pulled a sword from her abdomen, another Clansmen was pulling a wounded comrade out of the fray only to be shot in the neck with an arrow.

Mindless carnage flowed as easily as water down a hill. There was no reason to be found. Just when he believed one side was conquering the other, the opposite happened.

It was then that Brune realized there would be only one winner today—death.