Kings of the Wyld (The Band, #1)

by Nicholas Eames

You’d have guessed from the size of his shadow that Clay Cooper was a bigger man than he was. He was certainly bigger than most, with broad shoulders and a chest like an iron-strapped keg. His hands were so large that most mugs looked like teacups when he held them, and the jaw beneath his shaggy brown beard was wide and sharp as a shovel blade. But his shadow, drawn out by the setting sun, skulked behind him like a dogged reminder of the man he used to be: great and dark and more than a little monstrous.

There was nothing to mark the grave, no headstone upon which Talia Cooper’s single mourner might lay a wreath, or set a candle. There were only the words be kind carved into the birch’s brittle skin, as if whoever did so had been crying, or a child, or both.

Clay could only shake his head in disbelief. Didn’t people know that stories, and the legends that inevitably sprang from them, were the best part? The gods knew that bards weren’t good for much besides getting themselves killed and telling lies, but they were undoubtedly masters of both. Clay had lost count of the times he’d bumbled his way through a messy, bloody, terrifying brawl, only to hear a bard convince a crowded tavern it had been the greatest, most glorious battle ever waged between man and beast. In stories there were marches without weeping foot sores, swordfights without septic wounds that killed heroes in their sleep. In stories, when a giant was slain, it toppled thunderously to the ground. In reality, a giant died much the same way anything else did: screaming and shitting itself.

“Ah, you’ve spotted my pets!” “Pets?” Gabe sounded incredulous. “Moog, they’re spiders.” The wizard waved off his concern. “They’re harmless! Well, mostly harmless. One took a nip of me once and I turned invisible for a week. Remarkable, yes, but it was bloody hard to buy groceries! Anyway, they eat the bats.”

Matrick was found dead the next morning. Two physicians were summoned to the scene. The first declared that the king had drunk himself to death, while the second insisted he’d been poisoned. Shortly after a breakfast prepared by Lilith’s personal chefs, the second physician fell ill and died. The first physician wisely ruled his associate’s death a complete and utter mystery.

“Judge them for what they wished to be,” he begged the Father of Gods, “not what the world made of them.”

Ginny stopped him at the door and gave voice to the question he’d been asking himself ever since returning to Coverdale. Which are you, the monster or the man? It wasn’t the words that had moved him. It was the look in her eyes, green as the sunlit sea. She was offering him absolution, the defining choice of a lifetime balanced on a blade’s edge. The truth, he knew, was that the world needed his kind of monster. It was a brutal place. It was unfair. And Clay Cooper, such as he was, was quite simply the right kind of wrong.

WHEN WE SEEK TO RULE ONLY OURSELVES, WE ARE EACH OF US KINGS.

Clay’s eyes preceded the chimera’s destructive path, and so he saw that both the Duke and Dinantra remained inside the patron’s box. “Please,” he prayed to whichever of Grandual’s gods was in charge of killing people at random with the corpses of chimeras, “grant me this one … fucking … thing.”

Then again, that was the point of being in a band, wasn’t it? A tiger, however fearsome, could be hunted into a corner. It fought alone, so it died alone. But to hunt a wolf was to constantly look over your shoulder, wondering if others were behind you in the dark.

“This is not a choice between life and death, but life and immortality! Remain here and die in obscurity, or follow me now and live forever!”

“I love you guys,” he said, and gods-be-damned if his voice didn’t sell him out at the end and crack like a boy of twelve summers. Moog nearly choked on a sob himself. “I love you guys, too,” he said, unashamed by the tears rolling over his cheeks. “Me too,” Matty croaked. “I love you,” said Gabriel, matching gazes with each of them one by one. “All of you.” Ganelon remained silent, but when the rest of them looked his way he rolled his eyes and loosed a sympathetic growl. “Okay, fine. You’re the last four people I’d ever kill.”

Moog had a wand in either hand, both of which launched bolts of violet light that took erratic routes to their targets but never, ever missed. Matrick plied his knives like a parade drummer, his rhythm so fast his enemies didn’t know he’d murdered them until their god asked them if they took milk in their tea. Ganelon killed with a brutal efficiency that humbled even Gabriel, because Gabriel left wounded in his wake, while Ganelon left the dead in pieces. Clay was amazed at how little his back hurt, or his arm, or the ribs he’d broken fighting Larkspur’s thralls. His face wasn’t throbbing as it had been earlier. He was weary, of course: Every breath was bought with a gasp, and his heart hammered like a blacksmith late for supper, but he felt … good. Really bloody good, all things considered. Strangest of all was the utter absence of fear. He’d been very afraid this morning. Afraid the wizard’s plan wouldn’t work, that the dragon would kill them. Afraid of going through the Threshold and coming back empty-handed. The Heartwyld Horde, in all its abominable might, had been the scariest thing he’d ever seen—aside, perhaps, from the look on Ginny’s face when she hit her head on a cupboard door he’d left open by accident. But now … all Clay felt was a sense of profound certainty, as if things—dire though they seemed—were exactly as they should be. He was among friends, shoulder to shoulder with his bandmates, who just so happened to be the four best men he’d ever had the privile...

Should you wish to learn what became of those who survived the Battle for Castia, I suggest you visit either your local library or your favorite pub. What you find in the library might be closer to the truth, but what you hear in the pub will no doubt be the better story.