The Ranger of Marzanna (The Goddess War #1) - Jon Skovron Page 0,5

back to her belt. “I’ll figure out the rest, just as you taught me.”

“I want to tell you…” He lifted his blood-soaked fist from the wound in his stomach so that it began to flow freely. “I tried to stop them.”

She took his sticky red fist in her gloved hands and forced a smile. “Old man, you shouldn’t have done that.”

He grinned up at her, his mouth now full of blood. “A Strannik is free…” Blood ran down the side of his mouth. “Free to do as they choose.”

Sonya’s attempt at stoic resolve failed. Sorrow welled up in her chest and tears coursed down her cheeks before she’d even realized they’d left her eyes. She wiped fiercely at them as she took in a shuddering breath.

“Sofyushka.” Mikhail’s eyes locked on to hers. “I return.”

And then the life left him, and the man known as Mikhail Popov Lukyanenko was nothing more than food for the earth.

“Uchitel.” She gently closed his eyes, then intoned the prayer Rangers spoke when a soul went to the cold embrace of Lady Marzanna. “One day I will return as you now return. Until then, I will travel light.”

She stood and gazed down at the man who had taught her so much. Who had believed in her when no one else had. As a Ranger of Marzanna, she knew that death was not loss. It was a blessing to return to the Lady. But Sonya could not help feeling a yawning emptiness in her gut, as if his departure had left a gap in her soul.

When she emerged from the barn, she stopped for a moment to stroke Peppercorn’s velvety nose. He nickered and swished his black tail.

“It’s okay, Perchinka,” she murmured, her voice quavering more than she would have liked. “I’ll be okay.”

She forced herself to focus on what was before her. Her childhood home, seemingly broken and abandoned. She had not been wrong before when she’d said that her father would never allow the imperials to take her brother. The only explanations were that he was incapacitated, or dead. And imperial soldiers were not generally inclined to spare someone. Not even a decorated war hero like her father, Commander Giovanni Portinari, known to comrades and enemies alike during the Winter War as Giovanni the Wolf.

Her father had been born to a wealthy merchant family in Aureum, the country that lay to the south and was the seat of the Aureumian Empire. He had enlisted in the imperial army as an officer and quickly distinguished himself by both his intelligence and ferocity. When the empire came to conquer Izmoroz, he was made general in the army, and later promoted to commander. He distinguished himself in the war to such a degree that once he achieved victory, the empress granted him a title and property in the newly annexed land. After such a violent, blood-drenched youth, he was content to marry a beautiful young Izmorozian noblewoman and settle down on his farm to raise his family in rural domesticity.

As Sonya stepped through the door and into the kitchen, she observed the overturned table and shattered remains of the door. The violence and bloodshed her father tried to walk away from all those years ago had finally caught up with him.

She made her way through the house, and the gentle memories of her childhood clashed strangely with the evidence of chaos that was now all around her. Furniture lay askew, and all the windows had been broken inward, suggesting that the soldiers had surrounded the house and attacked simultaneously from all sides. Some might have seen that as excessive in dealing with an elderly couple and their sixteen-year-old son, but only those who didn’t know her father. Even at his age, and retired from making war for over twenty years, he remained fearsome in his skill with the sword. Throughout her life she had seen him practice every day in the yard. So many of those days Sonya had begged him to teach her what he knew, but…

Sonya stopped and closed her eyes. The past was a ghost that sought to strangle the present. Mikhail had taught her that. Now that he was dead, she was more determined than ever to honor his Ranger teachings. It didn’t matter that her father had refused to teach her the sword. She had found her own way—a better way, as a Ranger of Marzanna.

When Sonya entered her parents’ bedroom, she saw that the great war hero Commander Giovanni Portinari had done

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