Captive Of The Warg, (Wargs of the Outland #2)

Ruinik's Hek

All at once, the warg laughter halted, discordance rippling outward like a crash of glass. It was strange the way they all looked like dogs of the same breed. Their hair was alike, beards and locks in similar shades of ash and snow and their eyes all glowing ember yellow. One after the other those eyes swerved toward her. Hundreds of amber glares fixing her in place, daring her forward, the weight of them battering every inch of her.

She forced her spine straight as a stave and swallowed the rising panic that swarmed up from her belly.

"A friend of yours, little mongrel?" said the nearest warg, a stout creature with a grisled beard, chortling into his drinking horn. Short as he was, by their standards, he towered above Saska.

Saska bristled and nudged Reia onward. "Evening Bolrus," she muttered, pushing past him.

Reia kept her face tight and controlled. From left and right, the wargs jeered, their comments laden with innuendo, their laughter shredding her eardrums. But she feigned indifference. Let them think she couldn't understand them. Most humans couldn't. Few in the Iron Girdle spoke wargish, useless as it was to them, but for Reia there'd been no choice. "To conquer an enemy," her father had said, "you must first conquer his tongue." Rusty though she was, she could feel that long-lost receptacle in her mind shifting open from its hidden place of disuse and neglect.

"You brought us dinner," said another warg, licking his beefy chops. "Delicious." The way his hungry eyes crawled over Reia left her in little doubt of his meaning, language barrier aside. She didn't have to speak wargish to understand the ruttish meaning behind his eager looks. Disgusting! What woman in her right mind would fuck a warg?

She tried not to react as he opened his mouth and his fangs grew longer.

A woman—a vicious old warga—growled as she and Saska passed by. For a moment Reia thought the bitch might bite her. Her fingers tangled in her skirts, hands fisting in heavy fabric where once the weight of her sword had lain. But she forced her feet to continue their sedate pace beside Saska. The wargs closed in behind her, a sea of muscle and mutters and growls whelming the space at her back like a rising tide. She fought against the feeling of claustrophobia that coiled around her chest.

And she braced herself as she entered the hall, knowing it would only get worse.

The hall was massive and ran deep, the braziers set up near the entrance where the smoke barreled out. Like a temple with soaring, ribbed vaulting, trusses of hardwood braced the mighty rock ceiling. All etched with runes and curlicues. It was broad and long, fires pumping smoke and heat. Trestle tables and benches lined the center in two rows, laden with meat. Whole roasted boars, skin dark and glistening. Some carcasses she recognized but others she couldn't name. One looked to be a half-eaten aurog, its wings reduced to bone and gristle. She'd never seen one alive let alone dead. Giant beasts that looked like leather-clad ravens, their wings webbed with delicate skin. And one row of trestle tables was taken up entirely by...by a godsdamned...what could only be a blood worm! It was monstrously long, the scales singed black, split open down the length of its serpentine body, ribs like claws, the meat juicy blue, dripping fat and wafting with steam. Though the smells were tantalizing, nausea roiled in her gut.

Everywhere she looked she was met with uncanny glares, their low voices rumbling in the air. But the sensation of all those pressing looks was nothing to the gaze tracking her from the far side of the hall. It was there the weight of the mountain was concentrated and the air felt heavier. Colder. Darker.

The light from the fires stretched thin toward that end, but Reia saw him clear as day. The wargrex presiding over all from his throne of antlers and bone upon a dais carpeted with thick pelts. The lamplights caught in the eerie mirrors of his eyes, his skin gilded by fire glow. He didn't blink. He didn't move. A living statue with burning eyes.