Free An Oath of Brothers by Morgan Rice Page A

turn around to know what he was looking at: her two hundred thousand Maltolisian soldiers, had rounded the hill upon her signal and stretched across the entire horizon. Now the Dansk leader knew the threat facing his city.
    His entire envoy bristled, looking terrified and anxious to run back to the safety of their city.
    “The Maltolisian army,” their leader said, his voice fearful for the first time. “What are they doing here, with you?”
    Volusia smiled back.
    “I am a goddess,” she said. “Why wouldn’t they be serving me?”
    He looked back at her now with a look of awe and surprise.
    “Yet still, you wouldn’t dare attack Dansk,” he said, his voice quivering. “We are under the direct protection of the capital. The Empire army numbers in the millions. If you took our city, they would be obliged to retaliate. You would all be slaughtered in due course. You could not win. Are you that reckless? Or that stupid?”
    She held her smile, enjoying his discomfort.
    “Maybe a little bit of both,” she said. “Or maybe I’m just itching to test my newfound army and sharpen their skills on you. It is your great misfortune that you lie in the way, between my men and the capital. And nothing, nothing, will lie in my way.”
    He glared her, his face turning into a sneer. Yet now, for the first time, she could see real panic in his eyes.
    “We came to discuss terms, and we do not accept them. We will prepare for war, if that is what you wish. Just remember: you brought this upon yourself.”
    He suddenly kicked his zerta with a shout, and he turned, with the others, and galloped away, their convoy stirring up a cloud of dust.
    Volusia casually dismounted from her zerta, reached over and grabbed a short, golden spear as her commander, Soku, reached over and handed it to her.
    She held up one hand to the wind, felt the breeze, narrowed one eye, and took aim.
    Then she leaned forward and threw it.
    Volusia watched as the spear went flying in a high arc through the air, a good fifty yards, then finally she heard a great cry, and the satisfying thump of spear hitting flesh. She watched in delight as it lodged in the leader’s back. He cried out, falling from his zerta, and landed on the desert floor, tumbling.
    His entourage stopped and looked down, horrified. They sat there on their zertas, as if debating whether to stop and get him. They looked back and saw all of Volusia’s men on the horizon, marching now, and clearly they thought better of it. They turned and galloped away, heading to the city gates, abandoning their leader on the desert floor.
    Volusia rode with her entourage until she reached the dying leader, and dismounted by his side. In the distance she heard iron slam, and she noticed his entourage entering Dansk, a huge iron portcullis slamming down behind them, and the enormous iron double doors of the city sealed shut after them, creating an iron fortress.
    Volusia looked down at the dying leader, who turned on his back and looked up at her in anguish and shock.
    “You cannot wound a man who comes to talk terms,” he said, outraged. “It goes against every law of the Empire! Never has such a thing been done before!”
    “I did not intend to wound you,” she said, kneeling down beside him, reaching out and touching the shaft of the spear. She shoved the spear deep into his heart, not letting go until finally he stopped squirming and breathed his last breath.
    She smiled wide.
    “I intended to kill you.”
     
     

CHAPTER TEN
     
     
    Thor stood at the bow of the small sailing vessel, his brothers standing behind him, his heart pounding with anticipation as the current carried them straight toward the small island before them. Thor looked up, studied its cliffs in wonder; he’d never seen anything like it. The walls were perfectly smooth, a white, solid granite, sparkling beneath the two suns, and they rose straight up, hundreds of feet high. The island itself was shaped in a circle, its base