Page 1 of What Fury Brings (Wrath and Fury #1)

Given the extreme size of the king’s sword, Olerra felt certain the man was compensating for something.

This was the fourth time General Olerra Corasene had met King Atalius’s troops in half as many years. Always, the man would hide behind his fighters, shouting orders from the back, the coward.

Today he dared to appear on the front lines, massive sword cleaving the air like an ax. The king himself was equally massive—by far the largest man she’d ever laid eyes on—yet that didn’t necessitate the size of the greatsword. Just who was he showing off for?

Furthermore, Atalius wore a tabard over his breastplate that bore a single black crown on a bloodred background: the royal crest of Brutus.

He might as well have painted a sign on himself.

I’m the king. Attack me!

It was hard for Olerra not to laugh at the thought of a king on the throne. Men were unfit to rule. They were easy to provoke, and they always thought with their cocks instead of their heads, which was why they were better suited to the bedroom.

Olerra was distracted from her assessment by three new Brutes, who all charged her at once.

They tried to swipe at the legs of the horse she rode, but Olerra used her left hand and calf to direct the horse in a perfect sidestep, avoiding two of them.

Simultaneously, she plunged her sword point into the third man’s helmet, sliding right into the gap meant for his eyes.

As she tugged her sword free, red streaked across her thigh and the white coat of the equine beneath her.

The gelding was unnamed, as most warhorses were, though it helped little when they fell during the heat of battle.

Olerra was determined to ensure they both made it.

No sooner had the first soldier fallen than Olerra spun her horse around.

In an incredibly fast arc that Enadra would have been proud of, Olerra brought her sword down precisely in the middle of the second Brute’s helmet, cleaving both it and his skull in two.

Her momentum stopped somewhere in the vicinity of the dead man’s nose, and Olerra had to place her foot on his chest to wrench her sword free.

The third man fled.

Olerra returned her attention to the king—hoping he was finally in position—just in time to see him fell one of her soldiers.

Countless battles into her career, and Olerra still felt a sharp sting whenever she lost a brave fighter. She was too far to help. She had to maintain this position atop the small hill, where she could see both the front lines and the rear of the Brutish forces.

Come on. Just a few more yards. She needed the king and his troops to clear the forest.

Atalius was quick to engage another Amarran. He ducked under her strike and cut her legs out from under her, leaving her crawling in the dirt. When he faced his next opponent, he broke through her guard in two moves before driving his sword through her heart.

He never stopped. He never slowed.

Anger burned through Olerra. Atalius had to be nearing sixty years of age, yet he fought like a lion.

Everywhere else on the battlefield, men were succumbing to the superior strength of her soldiers.

One woman locked swords with a Brute, only to quickly overpower him and shove his own blade into his neck.

Another rode her horse alongside a Brutish rider and kicked him clean off his steed.

A third Amarran picked a man off the ground and threw him into another.

Yet the king held his own. A well-timed strike from one of her soldiers broke through Atalius’s defenses and imbedded into his left arm. Atalius growled, pulled the spear from his flesh, and severed the woman’s head from her shoulders.

Olerra despaired at the loss of another soldier, but Atalius was finally where she wanted him, where her fighters on the front had lured him.

She bent to retrieve the gonfalon from where she’d stuck it in the dirt before the start of the battle, hoisting it high and waving it back and forth.

Her hidden forces in the woods joined the battle, flanking Atalius’s soldiers from behind.

Now she could finally face the king.

Olerra dug her heels into her horse’s sides, urging him down the hill.

She struck downward against the foot soldiers who came between her and her target.

Her sword sliced the gaps between helmet and breastplate, her horse jumped over fallen bodies, and the wails of the injured lowered to a dull roar as Olerra honed in on her target.

The Brutes at Atalius’s back had turned to meet Olerra’s reinforcements, but despite the shouts of pain and fear, the king pressed on. Rage fueled him past the point of common sense. Made him blind to the reinforcements joining the fray. Another woman fell to his blade.

“ Faster!” Olerra urged the gelding.

“Who’s next, eh?” the king shouted. He spun in a circle, having picked up a fallen spear in his free hand, keeping everyone at bay. His helmet had been knocked off in his latest scuffle. “I see your goddess doesn’t have enough power to protect you all!”

Without slowing her horse, Olerra slid sideways in the saddle to scoop a rock as big as her fist from the ground.

“To me!” Atalius shouted to his retreating soldiers. “Give them no quarter. They—”

Olerra threw, hitting her mark, which was the king’s rather large head. Atalius fell in a heap of bent armor and unjustified male ego.

“Let his troops scurry back to their homes,” she said, addressing the soldiers nearest her. “Bring the king to my tent. I think it’s time he and I had a chat.”

The general’s word was law, and her soldiers chased their enemy back across the border.

Meanwhile, Olerra helped carry her wounded to the healers and gave a swift death to any Brutes left injured on the battlefield.

She placed her dead in carts so they could be returned to their families.

She surveyed the damage to the outskirts of the city, assigning soldiers and townspeople to help with cleanup and repair any damage.

She paid off families who lost livestock and businesses that lost income during the hour-long battle.

She was in the running to be queen one day. Olerra would do right by her people. Make them see that she should be the one to sit on the throne.

Not her insufferable cousin.

When all was as it should be, Olerra returned to her tent, one last chore before her.

Atalius was strapped to a chair, bound and gagged.

His wounds had been tended to, he’d been cleaned, given fresh clothing, and offered a hot meal.

Not that he deserved it. Olerra, still filthy with dried blood and dirt, grabbed a chair from the war table, flipped it around, and straddled the seat with her arms resting along the back.

She flicked her wrist at the king, and one of her captains stepped forward to remove Atalius’s gag.

He coughed once it was gone but said nothing.

For two years they had fought over this border city. Shamire was rich in resources, with golden fields of wheat and the Fren River running through it. The neighboring kingdoms of Kalundir and Ephenna often brought their merchants here to exchange goods. It was a boon to whomever held the city.

Queen Lemya, Olerra’s aunt, had won the city decades ago from the Brutes, and it was Olerra’s job to maintain that control. When Vorika, the head of Olerra’s spy network, had told her of Atalius’s plans to attack, Olerra had rallied her forces to meet him with the might of Amarra.

The king and general were finally meeting face-to-face, yet the man had nothing to say.

Oh, she would get him to speak.

“Normally you take the coward’s way, Atalius,” she said, meeting his gaze head-on, “fleeing before we can be properly introduced. I didn’t know you had it in you to stay and suffer the consequences of defeat. Did you grow tired of running?”

When that didn’t get a rise out of him, she tried a different approach.

“My name is Olerra Corasene, queen potential of Amarra, and I have beaten you four times now in your attempts to reclaim Shamire. I think it’s time you admitted you can’t take it back.”

Atalius clenched his teeth, trying to prevent himself from speaking.

“Nothing to say? Perhaps this topic will interest you. Your fate. What should I do with you?” She tapped her chin thoughtfully.

“I could simply kill you, but I worry one of your many sons will take your place and declare a foolhardy campaign against my country to seek revenge. As much as I love our little border spats, I don’t think either of us wants a full-scale war.

You especially. I hear you’ve already got your hands full with the Ephennans on your southern border.

Do you really want your forces divided to take on a second country? ”

It took a moment, but the bound man finally said, “I do not wish for war between us.”

At least he wasn’t a complete idiot.

“I could ransom you,” Olerra mused, “but we really don’t need the money. Shamire provides a steady income on top of all our other assets. Perhaps I should demand it anyway. Bankrupt your country so it’ll take you longer to attack again.”

Atalius didn’t look away as she thought aloud about his future.

“Or perhaps a trade,” she said. “One of your sons for your life.”

The king glared at her with such heat she might have thought it capable of melting his bonds.

“He’d be well treated, for the most part,” she continued. “A prisoner to stop a war from happening. Besides, you have plenty of sons. Isn’t that the whole thing with you Brutes? Your god blessed you with virility? More children than you could possibly know what to do with?”

Rumors also suggested that the god Brutus blessed the men born in his country with large cocks, but wasn’t it just like men to claim such a thing? Besides, that greatsword was evidence to the contrary.