Page 51 of The Omega Thief

Attiker paused. He was attaching his knife and the gloves Gerry had supplied to his belt. Grabbing a water pouch and some dried meat, he looked over at Ash. “He offered to give up his kingdom for me.”

Ash’s eyes widened in shock, and for a moment, Attiker struggled to get any more words past the lump in his throat. “I-I don’t know what I ever did to deserve him, Ash. But meeting me got him into this mess. So I reckon it has to be me that gets him out of it.”

“You know,” Ash said in a contemplative tone. “I was thinking about this people’s champion job and how you might need someone to keep you out of trouble.”

Attiker fastened everything securely and looked over at Ash when he remained silent. “Think you might know someone like that?” he asked casually.

Ash nodded. “You need someone that understands the people, yeah, but also someone that understands taking orders is easier when you believe in them.”

“Taking orders?” Attiker repeated.

“Well, just as an example. What job has the largest number of ordinary folk that work for your new family?”

Attiker thought about the huge number of servants that worked at the palace, opened his mouth, closed it immediately, and chuckled. “Being a soldier.”

Ash tipped his head. “Soldiers are used to taking orders, even blindly. That’s what we signed up for. But if we’re lucky, we get to believe in those orders. And I’m not meaning telling state secrets. I’m talking trust. I’m talking knowing that you’re not just going to get thrown at a problem because you don’t matter. That another will step over your dead body and carry on. His Highness already has a start in the popularity stakes because he believes in standing with his men. Someone with a bit of experience, someone that knows soldiering, can tweak that a little and make that even better, while not doing anything daft that will get his royal head blown off.”

“So, might you know this paragon of virtue and experience?” Attiker tossed the reins to Ash, and Ash caught them.

Ash grinned, then nodded to the mountain. “You have to be back here this time tomorrow, or we won’t make the deadline. But the important thing is that you do come back.” He grinned. “The people’s champion can always start a revolution.”

Attiker turned, but Ash called out. “Attiker?” He glanced back. “I know you’ve done this before, but he may think stopping you from being able to compete in the first place might be easier than trying to race you back.”

“I know,” Attiker agreed and headed for the outcrop. Markell might have a good seven hours on them, and his wolf would find it easier to climb these rocks, but there were only so many places an ambush could happen, and Ash knew every one of them.

The first was way too predictable. Just before the track narrowed, there was a grouping of boulders and a natural hand sequence to get past them. Attiker avoided them, and when he passed, he saw the stakes driven into the earth behind them to ensure anyone trying to use them for purchase would create a landslide designed to kill.

So now he was stuck. If he avoided it, there was a chance an inexperienced traveler would die. If Ash saw the slide, he might either come and attempt a rescue or leave thinking he was dead.

He cleared the rocks and then tipped them. Markell didn’t know him. Ash did.

The heat got to him, eventually. Even though he was expecting it. Even though he knew it would get harder the further he climbed. He reached the summit after nearly three hours of effort. The heat was stifling, taking his breath and burning his lungs with each inhale. His legs were wobbly, and the urge to sit and rest was overwhelming, but he couldn’t.

He bent over, clutching his knees, and tried to inhale breaths that didn’t hurt, didn’t feel like each inhale was stripping the lining of his lungs. He knew time wasn’t on his side. He knew he needed to start searching for a crystal. Seven hells, as far as he knew, Markell had gotten one, worked how to keep it warm, and was on his way home.

How did he intend to get it home? Maybe he didn’t know? Attiker straightened up and pushed on. No, Markell knew. What worried Attiker was that he knew something he didn’t.

The next trap wasn’t necessarily Markell’s. The descent started with a drop that would kill him. He couldn’t physically get from one outcrop to the next one. A wolf might be able to. A human certainly couldn’t. Attiker gazed at the fallen rocks. It had once been a bridge, of which he was certain. His hands, even covered, stung as he grasped the very hot rock. But this gap was too far to jump. He looked down at the cavernous space. No one would survive the fall, least of all someone with two legs and not four.

He remembered having a wolf. That one second in time when Raz had changed him. But he hadn’t felt power. He hadn’t felt triumph. He’d felt rightness. He knew, in that moment, his wolf didn’t want him to take over the world.

Just to exist. Just to help.

And in everything that had followed, that had been lost. Attiker dragged himself over the crater by his fingernails and leaped like his life depended on it.

Which it did.

He flew through the air and reached desperately for the ledge. His fingers might have glanced at it, but a second later, he was falling. He had a second of panic, then another of acceptance, of sorrow. He knew he wouldn’t survive the fall and wished he’d had more time with Raz.

Then he jerked as something grabbed him. Hard, sharp points stabbed his gut, and he hissed in a breath as the sudden stop emptied his lungs. Then he felt a beat of hot air so stifling he practically felt his skin melt, and he rose. Before he’d wrapped his brain around what was happening, if he was dead, the sharp razored points digging into his back released him, and he landed on hard rock. He gasped in a breath of hot, but not stifling air, then another. He still had his eyes closed. In fact, when his ears picked up a scraping sound of something heavy and felt hot breath wafting over his face, he wasn’t sure he ever wanted to open them ever again.

But he was alive. Taking another breath, the pain in his side and back still stabbing at him, he slowly cracked both his eyelids open. He saw the flat rock he was lying on, the dim red light of the fire below, and lifted his head.

And stared.

Stared because he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He shook his head. Impossible, but then the huge animal in front of him opened its mouth, and he saw every one of about forty teeth and knew he wasn’t.

Attiker didn’t move. He barely dared breathe. He’d heard the legends, the stories of Fire Mountain, but always thought they were just that. Stories. But unless he really was dead, he was staring at a legendary Fire Mountain dragon. The problem was, he had a feeling that he’d been saved from falling to his death because he was about to join it for lunch, and unfortunately, it was going to be him on the menu.

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