The Ranger of Marzanna (The Goddess War #1) - Jon Skovron Page 0,16
me. You saw them this morning as you were leaving your home in Gogoleth. Obviously they’ll be at the garrison by now.” She watched his face fall, then grinned. “I’m just messing with you. Since we’re both going to the same place, I might as well give you a ride.”
“R-really?”
“We aren’t all bandits out here in the wilds of Izmoroz.”
“Of course. I’m sorry if I offended. I had begun to lose hope that there was any courtesy to be found in these lands.”
He was such an earnest person, Sonya couldn’t help liking the guy. She held out her hand and pulled him up behind her. “I’m Sonya Turgenev Portinari.”
“Jorge Elhuyar.”
“Well, Jorge Elhuyar, you don’t seem all that comfortable on horseback, so you better hold tight. Peppercorn is about as fast a horse as you’ll ever find.”
“Oh, uh…” He held up his mitten-covered hands. “Where should I…”
She drew his hands around her waist. “Just like this. But go too low or too high, and you’ll lose those hands. Just a friendly warning.”
“Y-yes, Sonya Turgenev.”
“I don’t go in for all that formal stuff. You can just call me Sonya.”
“Oh, well, in that case, please call me Jorge.”
“You got it, Jorge.”
She tapped Peppercorn’s sides with her heels and soon they were headed down the road toward the great city of Gogoleth, which held the largest imperial garrison in Izmoroz. And apparently, the surviving members of Sonya’s family.
“May I ask why you are pursuing a detachment of imperial soldiers?” Jorge had to shout over the thunder of Peppercorn’s hooves to be heard as he clung to Sonya’s waist.
“Because they abducted my mother and little brother,” she said over her shoulder.
He was silent for a moment, then said, “Why would imperial soldiers want to abduct a woman and a boy?”
“My brother’s an elemental magic user.”
“Really? So few are born in Raíz that I’ve never actually seen one.”
“It’s rare everywhere,” she said. Then added, “Thankfully. Could you imagine the chaos if there were a bunch of people running around with that kind of power?”
“Still, why would imperial soldiers wish to abduct him because of that?”
“So they can turn him into a weapon for the empire.”
“That sounds like a worthy cause, doesn’t it?” asked Jorge tentatively. “Defense of the Aureumian Empire?”
“Defense.” She let out a snort. “More like subjugation of yet another group of people to add to the empire’s strength.”
“Surely that is an… oversimplification?” She couldn’t see his expression, but he didn’t sound particularly sure. “Regardless, I take it your brother does not wish to lend his abilities to the empire.”
“My father forbade it, actually.”
“He is a pacifist, perhaps?”
“He was a highly decorated veteran of the Aureumian Army who served in the Winter War. You know, the war that forced Izmoroz to join the empire.”
“Surely a war hero would want his son to follow in his footsteps, then.”
“I take it you’ve never talked to a veteran of that war,” she said.
“I have not,” he admitted.
“Every night of his postwar life, my father woke up screaming from the nightmares that he’d either witnessed or perpetrated. He loved my mother very much, but that didn’t stop him from almost choking her to death several times in his sleep. Personally, I would have started sleeping in a different bed after the first time. Instead, she broke his thumb.”
After a pause, Jorge said, “I take it from the way you speak of your father that he is dead.”
“He was killed last night by the same group of soldiers I’m pursuing.”
“Perhaps you also seek revenge, then?”
“Of course not. A Ranger of Marzanna doesn’t believe in vengeance. It’s rotten meat. It may fill you up, but it’s foul and poisonous, and I will have no part of it.”
“I see…” He didn’t sound convinced.
“Anyway, death is a natural part of life. If anything, we should rejoice that our loved ones have returned to Lady Marzanna’s embrace.” Did she sound defensive? She worried she might, and stopped talking. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe what she was saying, but… sometimes it was still hard for her to reconcile her beliefs with her emotions.
After a long silence, Jorge said, “I confess I’d never heard of these Rangers before today.”
“They are the guardians of Izmoroz. They protect the innocent and keep the natural balance.”
“Those bandits seemed to think they had all died in the war.”
“When Izmoroz was invaded, it was the Rangers who rallied the people against the invaders. So naturally when the empire won, the first thing they did was exterminate every Ranger they could