Bloodlust (29 page)

"What good comes from the barbarians still living?" she countered. "They are a savage race—"

"As are the trolls. As are we goliaths." He bared his teeth, daring her to say differently.

"The elves are helping the trolls. It is a fight the barbarians cannot win, even with our help. Let us return home to Ordisium, where we belong. We can mend our divisions—"

"We?" Did she mean the goliath race, or him and her?

Her gleaming smile answered his unspoken question.

Lukor ran a hand over his face. "We all need rest this evening. Get some sleep."

He wasn't about to talk to any of the goliaths and goliathas about Ivy. Not during the unlit hours. Not when he wouldn't be able to see an attack should one come.

Loving Ivy was dangerous in and of itself. But announcing it to an unforgiving world would be disastrous.

The elf and dwarf who had managed to fall in love despite their races hating each other had hid away from the world, knowing both races would hunt down their children and slay them all if they were discovered. With how long the races lived, they produced numerous children. With the elf's magic, the children were able to interbreed without any complication. By the time the rest of the world learned of the new race, over four hundred trolls had already been born across three generations, with many more on the way. A good deal had been killed, including the dwarf patriarch, but the elf managed to cloak the survivors until her death. By then, trolls numbered well over a thousand.

Who knew if a union between a goliath and a barbarian could even produce children? The thought had Lukor punching into the rough bark of a burnt tree. He had never given the notion of fatherhood a thought until this moment, and now, all he wanted to do was have a son, or a daughter, children to nurture and raise and love. One day relatively soon, he would have to add a name to the list of goliath successors, and nothing would make him prouder than to adjoin the name of his son or daughter.

His mind turned to Karrina's speculation that the elves were aiding the trolls. So many questions. No answers.

His gaze focused on Barbadia Fortress. Where within the stone walls was Ivy? He knew his place was here, by his people's side, but all he wanted to do was find her, talk to her, make certain she was all right.

Once her men realized she was spoken for, he would not put it past them to kill her out of spite.

Ivy could handle herself, he knew, but the idea that she might soon be in danger's path again made him beyond irritable and anxious.

A floating candle in a high up window caught his gaze. It bobbled for a moment before stilling. For a long while, Lukor stared at the flames, imagining Ivy was the one holding the candle.

Hushed tones drew his attention away from the fortress, and he bypassed sleeping goliaths toward the voices.

"He's a fool," a goliath whispered. The voice sounded familiar.

"He'll see reason." Karrina.

"And if he doesn't?"

"He'll see my blade."

Ah, yes. Varo. The goliath, who had not wished Balog to be golock, had seemed to want Karrina to be ruler.

"There is no need for your blade to be soiled." The faint but unmistakable sound of a blade being drawn drifted toward Lukor.

"I'm rather partial to my blood," Lukor said dryly, stepping forward out of the shadows.

Varo jumped to his feet while Karrina slowly shifted upward from her slouched position on top of a rock to stare at him.

"You wish me dead?" Having shed his armor shortly after the battle, Lukor ripped his tunic down toward his torso to reveal his bare chest. "Go ahead. I await your blow."

Varo actually took a step forward.

Karrina stood. "Halt," she commanded, her voice carrying on the gentle breeze blowing through their camp.

Varo lowered his sword.

"Put it away," Lukor demanded. If she thought she could undermine his authority, she thought wrong.

The goliath bared his teeth and grunted before complying.

Lukor returned his focus to Karrina, but the goliatha had fled. His long arm snaked out and grabbed Varo's shoulder. "If you dare speak about assassinating me again..."

"Just know who the true enemy is." Varo looked uncharacteristically somber, his features lacking their normal belligerence.

Lukor nodded. After circling through the camp one last time, he found a perch high up in a nearby tree and slept on a branch, one eye open the entire time.

When dawn came, Ivy and her men set about collecting the dead barbarian bodies. Once their blood was drained, the barbarians dug up a massive grave and dumped the bodies within it. At midday, they shared a meal of meat and drank the blood. A barbarian ritual. Some swore they could see the memories of the barbarian whose blood they drank. Ivy thought it foolish nonsense.

That is, until she took a sip from her wooden goblet. The sight of her mother, looking rather young and quite happy, came unbidden to her mind. Another sip and the scene dissolved away, melting into one of her father and mother talking and laughing. 'Twas the first time Ivy heard her father laugh.

Not that he was her father.

More sips and more memories: her father collecting rare flowers for her mother, them exploring the land. Her mother's mother must have still been on the throne then, as Mother seemed to have no responsibilities, nor Thunhall for that matter.

Their wedding Ivy shoved away, not wishing to see it. Next came Angar addressing Thunhall, revealing Mother's betrayal.

Ivy pushed the goblet aside. Next would be her mother's death, she knew, and she would rather not finish her drink than endure that.

But curious glances from the barbarians sitting at the long bench with her had Ivy reaching for the goblet again. After a deep breath, she swallowed the last of it in a large gulp.

A saber. He had used a saber to kill Mother, slicing and hacking, cutting off each finger and toe before chopping off limbs and finally her head. Such violence, and yet she didn't feel rage on Thunhall's part. Nor anger. Only disappointment and hurt. Evidently, his love of Bloodlust had started sometime after Mother's death.

She had not uttered one word to her men thus far that day, although the men cast her many questioning looks. Ivy had no answers for them. She knew not what to do, but she did realize she needed her men to be on her side wholly and completely before she could dare bring up Lukor.

Her cheeks grew warm at the thought of him, her hands recalling the feel of his soft hair, the firmness of his chest, the passion of his kisses. Every part of her body had come alive, burning alive. Such an experience she had never felt before. She had been willing to die if that was what had been required to save his life.

And she would do the same for each of the barbarians here gathered around only three of the benches in the mess hall, as their new barbaroness.

'Twas customary for new royal clothes to be fashioned upon the changing of their ruler. Ivy had little time to think and breathe, let alone time for hammering armor and sewing a skirt, so she'd dressed in her mother's garb: a royal armored dress, the skirt long and flowing, smooth against her legs, with long slits that extended more than halfway up her thigh for ease of movement. Dust had covered the indentations within the armor of the barbarian emblem, and she had wiped them away before dressing.

She stood, smoothing said skirt. "All of the weapons from the field must be brought inside and inventoried."

"Even those from the trolls?" Helm asked, his dark eyes shrew.

"Yes. We have a few pairs of dragonhide gloves that will provide protection." She had no problem using weapons against their owners.

In every barbarians' eyes, she could see their questions, their doubts. But no fear. A true barbarian never felt fear.

Another reason to believe her father had not been Thunhall as fear gripped her now. When she finally told them all that their barbaron would not be one of their members, but a goliath, they might well rise up against her and killed them both, their race be damned.

"The barbaroness before me, my mother, oft said we need more defenses. Thunhall disagreed. Now, with our numbers so precious and few, with our enemies possessing enchanted weapons, we have no other course of action but to ensure our safety and future."

All night long, she had not slept. After gazing upon the flickering firelight of the goliaths, she had ransacked her mother's belongings until she had discovered all of her defensive plans for the fortress and the entire kingdom.

She laid the plans for the fortress on the closest table. "We shall begin with a moat."

"And fill it with?" Katar asked, his fingers inching the map closer to him.

"Leave that to me." Ivy straightened and placed more scrolls upon the table. "This work needs to be done before the sun sets."

"But..." Steel protested.

"You have the muscles and the strength." She would not hear any protests, although she was indeed asking them to do a week's worth of work in a single day. "You have little time to waste."

In small groups of fours and fives, the barbarians trickled out of the room until only Glaive remained. A capable barbarian, with more muscles than most, even Thunhall, Glaive had tried to befriend her on many occasions. She had never given him time before. Had been too wrapped up in her own foolish view of the world and her refusal to accept her role as barbarian-princess and choose a mate to ensure the kingdom would have an heir and never have to face the turmoil the humans did on a daily basis.

How different life would have been if she had never been so selfish and settled for Glaive as her mate. She might have already given birth to several barbarians by now and been a mother. Now that the prospect that she never would hear "Momma" out of a young barbarian's mouth directed toward her had sunk in, she grieved what she had lost. The picture of those compassionate children she had clung to her heart had kept her moving forward toward the goal of saving her people. Instead she had condemned them.

Even Mother, in the Spirit Realm, had named Glaive as a possibility.

"We shall get through this with you leading us." Glaive picked up the sole scroll remaining on the table and handed it to her.

"Your faith may be misguided," she murmured, unable to look at him for fear tears might be in her eyes. Such weakness she had never felt before, and it terrified her.

"Never."

The unease in his expression combined with the light of hope in her eyes tore at her heart. They had never had a chance, yet Glaive thought they still might.

He stepped closer to her. "The others might need time to adjust to a new ruler."

Time and change always wrought destruction and pain. Adjustment was an understatement.

"But they will come around," he added.

His conviction struck a chord within her, a song she had to either sing along to or jar into a new rhythm.

"I will see to it that we survive the trolls," she promised.

Go on. Tell him.

But she couldn't and made no promises concerning a barbaron or the future beyond the trolls. For she knew in her heart the trolls were only one obstacle the barbarians had to face. The road before them led to death, whether it be today or tomorrow or next week.

The sun would soon set on the barbarian race, and there was only so much Ivy could do about it. Still, she would struggle to find a way until her dying breath.

If she could save them, she would. That elf, that nameless elf, be damned.