The Ranger of Marzanna (The Goddess War #1) - Jon Skovron Page 0,172
Jorge’s teachers were all quite eager to learn more about it, and Sonya was glad he was getting recognition after all his hard work.
Of course, Sonya and Jorge had returned from Uaine with more than just plants. They had traveled across the tundra to enlist the aid of the Uaine people, fearsome warriors who commanded an even more frightening army of walking dead. The Uaine had helped Sonya drive out the Aureumian Empire so that Izmoroz could once again be an independent nation where its people were free to openly worship the Lady Marzanna, and honor her servants, the Rangers of Marzanna.
During the occupation, the empire had sought to exterminate the Rangers, and it had almost succeeded. When Sonya’s mentor had been killed, she thought she was the only Ranger left. But during their journey across the tundra, she and Jorge had encountered three older Rangers who had survived the imperial purge by hiding in the tundra for the last two decades.
Those older Rangers—Andre, Tatiana, and Anatoly—were the reason Sonya now returned to the tundra. She wanted to tell them that she had succeeded in driving out the empire, and that they no longer had to hide. They could return to Izmoroz and its people. If she was being honest, she also wanted to gloat a little, since they had doubted she would succeed.
Sonya was not making the journey alone, however. This time she had brought her Uaine friend and lover, Blaine Ruairc. The two of them had been trekking northwest across the slushy, mud-slick meadows in the direction of the Rangers’ cave for several days now. She estimated they should reach the cave later that day or early the next.
“These other Rangers be Bhuidseach as well?” asked Blaine in his guttural, rolling Uaine accent.
“Like me, you mean?” Sonya asked. “They have similar markings, although each of us looks different, depending on what animal the Lady Marzanna has chosen for us.”
Beneath Sonya’s long black hair, her ears tapered into delicate tips. Her teeth were as sharp as any carnivore’s, and she gazed out at the land before them with the golden eyes of a fox. Such beast marks were called favors of the Lady, and were an indication that she had blessed them with a boon of some kind. Each piece of humanity the Ranger sacrificed made them more powerful. But the more they resembled a beast, the more likely they were to act as one.
Sonya had not truly understood what that meant until a month ago, when they had driven out the empire. She had succumbed so deeply to animal instinct in the heat of battle that she had momentarily blacked out. When she came to shortly after, she found that she had torn a man’s throat out with her teeth and possibly swallowed his flesh. Her memory was hazy on that point. Or maybe she didn’t want to remember.
The memory haunted her, and she was glad of that. It served as a constant reminder that she must avoid asking any more boons of the Lady unless it was absolutely necessary. There were stories of Rangers who had lost so much of their humanity that they forgot who they were. She worried she might already be nearing that point.
Not that Sonya didn’t appreciate the favors that the Lady had bestowed on her. Her speed, strength, reflexes, and stamina were now much greater than a human’s. Her senses were also enhanced, and on the tundra that could mean the difference between life and death.
“Did you notice we’re being tracked by a pack of wolves?” she asked Blaine as they tromped through the mud.
He jerked to a halt, his expression unexpectedly alarmed.
“Since when?”
“Since this morning,” she said.
He scanned the rolling meadow that surrounded them, his hand on the massive broadsword at his waist. “I don’t see anything.”
“They’re keeping their distance for now,” said Sonya. “But I can definitely smell them.”
He still looked far more alarmed than she would have expected for such a seasoned Uaine warrior. “What should we do?”
She shrugged. “Nothing. If they were desperate, they’d have already attacked by now. Soon we’ll be in the Rangers’ hunting territory, and I doubt they’ll follow us there.”
“If you say so.”
They began walking again, but Sonya could tell Blaine remained uneasy. He kept running his hands through his long blond hair and glancing uneasily over his shoulder. He rarely showed fear in battle, so she wondered what was bothering him.