Strife & Valor: Book II of The Rorke Burningsoul Saga Read online

  Contents

  Strife & Valor

  Title Page

  Copyright Info

  Epigraph

  1

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  7

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  13

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  Next Book

  Other Works From Regina Watts

  Other Works From Painted Blind Publishing

  Author Bio

  A DARK FANTASY HAREM ADVENTURE

  BY

  REGINA WATTS

  PUBLISHED BY PAINTED BLIND PUBLISHING

  PO BOX 35, ASHLAND, OR 97520

  Burningsoul Book II: Strife & Valor

  © 2021 Regina Watts

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written consent of Regina Watts.

  Text: Regina Watts

  Cover & Typesetting: M. F. Sullivan

  http://www.hrhdegenetrix.com

  http://www.paintedblindpublishing.com

  [email protected]

  This novel is a work of fiction, along with its characters, locations, and events, and all fictional persons depicted within it are of the real American age of consent. Any resemblance to known persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  WELTYR: Now bridle your steed,

  Valiant warrior maiden!

  A frenzied fight

  Is about to be unleashed.

  Let Brynhildr storm to battle;

  Let her secure victory for the Wotsung!

  Let Hunding lie

  Where he falls;

  He’s no good to me in the Valor Hall.

  So get ready for war,

  Ride fast into battle!

  BRYNHILDR: Hojotoho! Hojotoho! Heiaha! Heiaha!

  —A common tongue translation of an ancient song of Weltyr,

  interpreted in the time of Rorke Burningsoul

  BRANWEN’S HERO

  BRANWEN’S RESCUE CAME second-nature to me. It would have been that way for anyone I found in peril, but from the first second I glimpsed those familiar gold curls framing her bright green eyes, my body launched into motion. The misshapen bandits around us hissed and drew arms, but Strife was already hot in my hand. I dove into the fray, my as heart gladdened by the sound of Indra’s crossbow as by the clinking of Odile’s dagger.

  And what of Valeria? I wondered about her battle prowess as I ducked a swinging flail. This new angle permitted me to drive the point of my broadsword up into the diabolical centaur’s spider abdomen. Just as the ichor of its insides splattered upon the cavern floor, my limbs chilled with the strange kiss of a cool breeze that made no sense in the subterranean Nightlands.

  A quick inspection revealed phantom armor had enrobed my body. It appeared as though tendrils of smoke had furled around me to produce a set of plate mail. This armor, despite its semi-transparent appearance, did a better job of protecting me from the dart shot by a nearby bandit than would have my tunic alone. Before I dealt with the shooter, I followed the magical fog that unfurled from my back like the spectral threads of an invisible loom.

  The spools from which they unwound were the fingertip of Valeria. The elegant Materna of the durrow people emitted this magical energy from her hands even without the ring she had sacrificed to save my life.

  The sight of her naked fingertip irked me. I turned, hefting Strife just in time to parry the scimitar of a scurrying coward who had hoped to overtake me while my gaze was diverted. The fools did not know I had only just done battle with a spirit-thief, the sorcerer Al-listux, and that I was in no mood to trifle with feral thieves of the Nightlands. While the force of Strife’s parry snapped the scimitar in twain, the misshapen’s eyes widened in horror. The continued force of my blade introduced him to Oppenhir as the greenish vital fluid of the spider-centaur splattered out across the floor. This ichor reminded me, for a flash, of the acidic spirit-thief blood that got me into all this mess. Those squid-headed demons were owed my thanks, in a way, yet I loved them no more for it, I confess.

  It was true I had not spent very long in slavery, and that I had consented to it: I had honored the word sworn to Odile and Indra when they revived me from that first battle in the den of the spirit-thieves. But Weltyr—Praise the One True Light!—was the one who guided me to and saw me through those shadows, and brought me out on the other side not just to freedom, but rewards. I had Valeria’s love, and Odile and Indra’s affection, too.

  And now, I had the opportunity to forgive Branwen.

  “Rorke,” cried the most agonizing of those three party members who betrayed me in the spirit-thief den. The beautiful high elf struggled against the spider webbing in which she’d been encased, going on with a gasp, “Thank Anroa! Oh, I’m so relieved to see you still alive—”

  That forgiveness my god challenged me to produce was going to be a tall order. I looked at her somewhat coldly in spite of just how mutual that relief was, then turned to catch the arm of a bandit with Strife’s steel edge.

  “After the way you left things between us last time,” I told Branwen without looking at her, “I never thought I’d hear you say a thing like that.”

  While the howling bandit stumbled back from the blow and I jerked Strife out of his arm, the elf’s great blue eyes filled with tears. Still wiggling in her bonds, she cried out when Odile first hurried to her with the dagger; then, as the dark elf rogue made short work of tearing open the spider-webbing around the captive druid, Branwen’s expression of fear faded to one of surprise.

  “I’m sorry for what I did to you back in the spirit-thief den,” cried Branwen.

  By then, I was too busy to respond. I raised my arm and caught a sword’s blow against the hard fog of Valeria’s spirit armor. As the phantom gauntlet rattled with the energy, I thrust Strife forward and pierced the bandit’s humanoid gut. He howled in pain to be disemboweled, falling back upon the earth while Indra at last took down the misshapen who had been blowing cruelly-tipped poison darts to little avail. At the impact of her bolts, the shooter screamed and gripped his wounded arm. His eyes, though lacking pupils as were these eyes of all dark elves, nonetheless still said he finally realized what I had been doing so efficiently to his friends.

  By the time Odile finished pulling open the webbing around Branwen, the misshapen had thrown down his blow gun and made a dash to the door. Valeria moved to block his exit. While he skidded to a stop to figure out how to get around her, his spider legs scrambling and skidding across the stones, Indra launched one more projectile of her own and managed to nail the bandit right between his eyes. These now unseeing orbs rolled up into the back of his head and his eight legs collapsed beneath him. The last of the misshapen bandits died upon the floor, leaving myself and the durrow all the more convinced of our ability to work as a team.

  Branwen, however, still looked with fear between my companions—as if they were, in any sense, equivalent to those captors who had just held her for ransom or worse.

  While Valeria’s phantom armor unwound from my shoulders, innocent Indra to the freed captive. “Are you hurt?”

  Her delay clearly indicating she belatedly realized the durrow addressed her, Branwen stuttered out, “I—well, yes, a little.”

  The Materna of t
he durrow passed me by, saying, “Permit me lay hands on you…you’ll feel a bit of heat.”

  While the other durrow stood aside, Valeria’s fine lips moved in a soft healing prayer to her goddess, Roserpine. The dark elf set her glowing hands upon Branwen’s unready ones. The high elf gasped softly, her pale face flushing with a sweet pink tinge of astonishment to be healed by a durrow—by a member of the notoriously cruel race of slave-traders. By then, I was less surprised. I may not have worshiped Roserpine or respected her particular teachings, but even I was forced to admit that prayers in the durrow goddess’s name had as much tangible effect as any prayer to Weltyr. Before my very eyes, the scratches and bruises across the high elf’s pale arms faded to reveal perfect, unbroken flesh.

  My hands itched to touch her. Instead, I busied them by wiping clean Strife’s enchanted blade and sliding it back home to its sheath.

  “How marvelous,” commented Branwen, her eyes now tearless but still quite wide while she observed her own healing. “Durrow magic can mend wounds just as well as one of Anroa’s healers!”

  “Because I’m one of Roserpine’s healers,” answered the Materna simply, lifting her hands away from Branwen’s. As the high elf turned her arms this way and that to investigate how complete the healing process had been, my former mistress stared on. “And you are Branwen. One of the party members who betrayed Rorke in the den of the spirit-thieves.”

  With no other injury to nurse but a pair of rope-burns, Branwen rubbed her wrists and affected a sullen pout. “I suppose he went about telling the whole city of El’ryh,” commented the high elf, her downcast eyes flickering twice toward me. Picking webbing from her hair as she soon was, the high elf was unprepared for Valeria’s next comment.

  “No,” said the woman who was mistress of my heart only, now that my body and mind were once more fully free for Weltyr’s command. “He related the story of your betrayal to me once we had made love and his mood grew more gently inclined. Burningsoul is somewhat stoic, otherwise.”

  Thunder sweeping across her face, Branwen looked between the two of us and said to me in shock, “You and this—durrow, Rorke?”

  “These durrow,” I amended, glancing between the other ladies with a mild clearing of my throat. While, grinning, Indra and Odile waved, I gestured between them. “Branwen, ah—this is Odile Darkstar and Indra of the Nocturna Clan.”

  “Ho there,” said bold Odile, offering her hand for a shake. “No wonder you were so broken-hearted over this wench’s betrayal…if only we were permitted to return to El’ryh! She’d make a fine attendant for your baths, Madame.”

  With a wry chuckle, Valeria explained to the high elf, “I’m afraid you will have to excuse them…Odile is quite forward, and Indra lets herself be pushed around. My name is Valeria of El’ryh, Materna of the City and the representative of Roserpine before the people—and the people before Roserpine.”

  “When you left me for dead,” I said, trying to keep my tone as level as possible, “Odile and Indra here found me. They made me swear that, in exchange for healing, I would come peaceably with them to the city of El’ryh and serve as a slave. Only by virtue Weltyr’s grace and Valeria’s ill fortune was I able to escape, and now she has freed me…and I should think to find you here as I do now, Branwen, that this has all been timed to the ticking of the All-Father’s cosmic clock. I never thought I would see you again, let alone rescue you from brigands like this. How is it you find yourself back down here?”

  As if reminded of the increasingly late hour and the need for shelter by the mention of our dispatched foes, Indra and Odile exchanged murmurs. Experienced adventurers that they were, they then set about dragging the vanquished mishappen from the places where they had fallen, patting down the bodies for loot, and organizing them into a semi-tidy row that was easily avoidable. While watching this from the corner of her eye, Branwen found she was out of webbing to pick from her golden hair. Now she simply began worrying a few locks that hung free over her shoulder.

  “Anroa haunted me fiercely on our way out of the Nightlands, and once we emerged again at the surface…I don’t know how I let Grimalkin talk me into anything like this!”

  “So, it was Grimalkin behind the scheme?” The dwarf and I had endured more than one argument between the two of us in our time journeying together. It somehow struck me as wholly unsurprising that he would be responsible, in greater or smaller part, for the treachery that could have easily ended with my death. Unsurprising, and perhaps a bit convenient. I went on, “Clearly those feelings you confessed to me in all the nights of our journey were just part of some greater ploy—”

  “No, Rorke!”

  One fist clasping at her heart, the druid listed toward me and cried, “Anroa strike me down where I stand if that be true. Each word I said to you, Rorke, I meant.”

  “Just as you meant that crossbow bolt you would have struck me with.” While her delicate jaw clenched in frustration, I scanned the room. “Do you still have the bow?”

  “They destroyed it before my very eyes when I was ambushed—I returned here alone, leaving Grimalkin and Hildolfr to do as they pleased with the blasted Scepter of Weltyr and all the reward money. I wanted to find you, Rorke. I couldn’t sleep through the night for thinking I’d abandoned you that way.”

  “For knowing Valeria as I am now blessed to, I sometimes think it was a good thing that you made such a mistake…and, of course, all our mistakes are guided by the Wanderer.”

  I withheld my sigh through some miracle of self-control, assessing, as I did, meek Branwen. She had often barely tolerated my spiritual pontification and now seemed no more pleased than usual with such a lecture, but more patient—perhaps knowing its conclusion would be in her favor. I went on, sliding a hand around Valeria’s waist to earn a surprised glance from both elf women, dark and light.

  “I forgive you, Branwen; in the end, none of us can truly help what we do. Even within the realms of free will, our actions are paradoxically precisely as Weltyr has allotted for.”

  Her lips briefly pursing, as they would when she was set to accuse me of patronizing her during our religious discussions wherein I would posit to her the teaching that all deities were simply lesser emanations of Weltyr. Valeria, being herself a holy woman, had not taken offense to such a notion when I brought it up; but I have noticed that the less someone understands their own religion, the more inclined they are to take offense when it is challenged. Branwen was a creature of nature, and her goddess, Anroa, was the goddess of Love—that one and only ruler of those who threw themselves into the bosom of life without sparing much thought for what came after. The high elf lived for pleasure…a trait she had in common with her Nightland-dwelling sisters, even if she was not quite as open about it as they were.

  But Branwen was not open about many things—not with the average individual. Still on the defense, she assured me, “If it’s true that Weltyr gains any reward from the wills of men, then it is a very mysterious reward, indeed. After all, Hildolfr and Grimalkin have still made off with that Scepter.”

  My ears perked along with my heart. There was hope! The Holy Order of the Wanderer had sent me on a quest to liberate the relic from the slimy grasp of the spirit-thieves—a task for which I had recruited the one-eyed ranger Hildolfr, the brutish but cunning dwarf Grimalkin, and, of course, sensual and astute Branwen. With my companions having taken the scepter from my grasp, I was unable to be fully confirmed to the Order…and, out of my own personal sense of shame, unable to return to Skythorn, the location of the temple that raised me.

  And from the start of my ordeal among the durrow, that had been the most painful thought of all: the possibility that I was doomed to remain in slavery, unable to ever again see Skythorn.

  Carefully nursing the potential of completing my quest after all, I asked, “Where have they gone?”

  “Grimalkin’s plan was to take the Scepter back across the sea and sell it in Rhineland for a hefty reward.” While she named the country
of the dwarves, I ran my free hand over my jaw. We would stick out like sore thumbs there…and dwarfs were not known for their happy dealings with humans. The high elf went on, “The money didn’t tempt me near so much as the thought of your well-being.”

  Seared as I still was by her betrayal, I wasn’t sure I could trust these sweet words to any extent. All the same, the possibility of reclaiming the Scepter enthralled me. Studying Valeria’s dark and thoughtful face as though it might hint at the clarity I needed, I swept a few strands of white hair behind the curve of her long ear, then made the Materna a suggestion.

  “There are many in the Temple of Weltyr devoted to scrying the locations of lost artifacts. Usually such feats are performed only for Weltyr, but surely the prayers would be equally adept at locating the relics of any god. What say you? We could retrieve the Scepter of Weltyr and, upon its delivery, request the Temple’s assistance in locating your ring.”

  The Materna studied Branwen as though for hints of deception, but had there been any, the elf would have expertly concealed them. Thus, without the ring by which she read the intentions in the hearts of men, Valeria was forced to divine these things from the same body language as the rest of us. Obliged to trust fair Branwen, if only due to my willingness to commit to the same for now, Valeria rested her hand upon my heart.

  “If you, Burningsoul, believe such a task will expedite the discovery of Roserpine’s ring, I will do it gladly…and, after all I put you through while you were in the Nightlands, perhaps it is the least I could do.”

  My hand fit to the warm, soft curve of her cheek on instinct. “It was no hardship to serve you, neither as guard nor as lover.”

  With only the slightest thrill for the thought of jealous Branwen watching us, I bent my head and pressed my kiss to Valeria’s sighing lips. The sweetness of her mouth was a nectar on my tongue, and I sighed with pleasure to taste it in the aftermath of that battle. I only lifted my head when Odile dusted off her hands and assessed her work with a sigh. As my gaze lifted toward her, I happened to note Branwen’s unbroken stare of astonishment—and the slightest hint of an embarrassed but fascinated scowl.