A Time of Blood (Of Blood and Bone #2) - John Gwynne Page 0,72

all of the time. Riv had never liked him much, even less after she’d seen him lead a dozen of his comrades into giving Bleda a beating.

“You don’t belong here,” Sorch said. His cheeks were red, fists clenched and knuckles white.

Don’t lose your temper.

“Get out of my way, arsewipe,” Riv said.

She could feel the tendrils of her anger creeping through her blood, twisting through her body, making her heart beat faster, her muscles tense.

“You’re an abomination,” Sorch said. “You deserve to die, should be executed.” Voices behind him added their agreement. Others were gathering in his wake, some of his own hundred, plus older White-Wings, men and women whom Riv didn’t recognize. Ten, twelve others joining them.

“You disgust me,” Sorch sneered.

Breathe. Calm. Jost is always saying I need a sense of humour.

“Now you know how I feel every time I see you eat in the feast-hall,” Riv said. She wasn’t lying. Sorch seemed to lack the ability to eat without half the contents of his mouth spilling out and sounding like someone was slurping on offal.

By the look on Sorch’s face, her attempt at humour to defuse the tension hadn’t worked, though one of Sorch’s companions chuckled.

Sorch didn’t seem to like that, either.

He spat in Riv’s face.

She felt the dam on her anger crack, begin to leak.

Very slowly, Riv wiped spittle from her eye. She flicked it away. Then, just as slowly, she reached up and took hold of Tam, lifted him gently from her shoulders and set him on the ground.

“Move away, Tam,” she said.

Then she punched Sorch in the face.

Riv had always been strong. A lifetime spent in the weapons-field, living in a barracks with a White-Wing hundred or out on campaign and attending to the myriad duties that entailed had honed her musculature and sharpened her reflexes, but since she had come into her wings, that strength, speed and fitness had seemed to increase immeasurably.

Her punch lifted Sorch from the ground and hurled him back into his comrades, scattering them like chaff.

A moment’s shock and silence, like an indrawn breath, as Riv saw Sorch sprawled atop half a dozen others, those still standing behind him dumbfounded. As if in slow motion she saw their expressions change, from shock, to outrage, to action. Fists were clenched, sparring weapons raised as they came at her. Distantly, Riv was aware of shouting, figures moving in her peripheral vision, running, of Tam’s eyes wide in something that wasn’t fear, more resembling… awe.

A shadow on the ground cast from high above moving, growing larger.

Riv knew that all of them would be too late.

She bent her legs and leaped at the onrushing crowd, pulsed her wings and gave her leap added speed and power. She hit them like a battering ram, sent bodies hurtling in all directions, landed with feet spread and a fierce smile on her face. It felt so good to just give in, to allow so much suppressed rage finally to run free.

A White-Wing from her left, a veteran, practice sword-swinging in a diagonal arc for her head. She swayed, felt the air of its passing across her face, grabbed his wrist, twisted, smiled at the crack and scream that followed, cast him to the ground, kicked him in the head as he tried to rise. He didn’t try to get up again.

A blow across her back, a pain in her shoulder-blade and the arch of her wing, and she spun around, backhanded a female White-Wing across the jaw, dropped her to the floor, unconscious before she hit the ground.

And then all was constant motion, Riv ducking, swaying, punching, kicking, using her wings to give bursts of speed, to turn tighter and faster than was humanly possible, and all who came against her fell away in bloody heaps. Dimly she became aware that she was not the only one with wings in the melee, glimpsed Hadran her guard dragging a White-Wing off her, casting him aside, and behind him other figures came into focus, Vald and Jost, Ert the sword master, all of them locked in combat against other White-Wings, fighting for her, trying to defend her.

Then a crack across her head, exploding like a drum inside her skull, and she was dropping to her knees. She punched a knee, heard a scream, kicked out at an ankle, saw someone fall, but more blows were raining down upon her.

A rumbling thunder, growing rapidly louder, the ground shaking, and suddenly she was being grabbed by the neck of her leather jerkin,