Page 8 of Firebird
A feminine cry reached me through the trees.
“Fucking whore!” growled Silvanus in his garbled half-skin speech.
More laughter.
“She got you good that time,” said one of his comrades. Sounded like Zeno.
I stepped into a small clearing where three tents burned off to the left, lighting the scene. Silvanus towered above everyone, rippling with gray scales over his bulging form.
Perhaps his fate as one of the Griseo line, his dissatisfaction as the lowest caste of dragon, propelled his cruelty. As if he could pound and fight his way up the ladder of nobility. Seeing this display only verifiedthat the fates had it right. He belonged beneath the rest of us. Not because of his birth, but because of his own brutality.
He gripped his cock and stroked it, stalking closer to the disheveled woman holding a dagger where she crouched in front of a wide tree, the trunk shielding her back.
Zeno and two others watched with feverish glee. They were now in human form, naked and hard, the adrenaline of battle pumping their bodies into a frenzy. Violating a helpless woman with their large, formidable bodies as men wouldn’t harm her nearly as much as Silvanus planned to. She might survive the men, but not a dragon in half-skin.
Silvanus stepped closer. “You’ve never had the likes of me, witch.”
The woman tensed, readying to defend herself. The knife cut on his thigh proved her a warrior. Or at the very least, a woman ready to die fighting rather than submit to the monster coming for her.
I could smell his blood. Or maybe it was hers. Her dark hair was wild and mussed, covering most of her face, her handspun tunic soiled and torn at the neck. She hadn’t seen me, her head turned toward the predator stalking closer.
None of them had seen me where I stood in the shadows. It wasn’t until Trajan stepped forward, partially into the light, taking his place at my side, that Zeno’s gaze found us. Then the other two looked my way.
My entire focus was on Silvanus terrifying this Celtic witch. Whatever her offenses, they were mine to judge and punish. Not his.
“I’m gonna stuff you till you bleed,” growled Silvanus.
“No. You will not.”
Immediate silence fell following my curt reply. Others outside our circle froze where they were and watched the scene. Good. Let them all watch and see.
Silvanus stiffened in place, his muscles bunching. The three others stood to attention, saluting me with fists over hearts that raced faster when I took three long, even steps into the firelight. Silvanus swiveled, still holding his cockstand with vulgar display.
“Legatus,” he drawled in greeting, not saluting me, his maddened eyes full of the beast, little sign of the man.
For a long moment, all I heard was the crackling fire of the tents and the birdlike, fluttering pulse of the woman cowering behind Silvanus. Finally, I spoke.
“What was my command regarding the prisoners?”
He held my gaze defiantly. He seemed to be calculating if he could attack and kill me before I shifted. I narrowed my gaze, willing him to try.
He grunted and let go of his cock, which bobbed perversely between his legs. “She isn’t a regular prisoner, Legatus,” he said with mock obedience. “She’s the fucking witch who helped the Celts.”
I waited and said nothing, the snapping fires and stillness stretching the tension.
“Whatwas my command regarding the prisoners?” I repeated, letting my dragon dip into my voice.
Silvanus huffed, opening his wings in a dominant display before replying, “You commanded that all prisoners were to be handed over to the slave trader.”
“And?” I prompted in an icy tone.
“Unspoiled,” he added begrudgingly.
“That is correct.” I lifted my voice for all to hear. “As I have informed you all before, you have had your fun under Bastius. It is not your fault that you were misguided by your former, undisciplined general. He was weak. Because of his failures, his head rots on the Wall of Traitors.”
The number of skulls on pikes along the Wall of Traitors was double that along the Wall of Victory. Every soldier here knew it.
“If you think that I would let you become the ignoble degenerates that you were under Bastius, you are soundly mistaken.”
