Thirdborn 2, p.1
Thirdborn 2, page 1
Thirdborn 2
By G.S. D’Moore
Copyright © 2022 by G.S. D’Moore
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. For permission, contact gsdmore@outlook.com.
Cover art by Mykel Ferguson
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
ISBN 13: 978-1-7377036-4-8
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue
About the Author
Chapter 1
The hard wooden plank was a literal pain in my ass. It reminded me of when I was a child, and father would find me sneaking around Allen Manor late at night. Usually, Justine and I would be raiding the pantry for cookies, or the icebox for frozen cream. Mother flavored them with the kitchen staff so they were delicious. Every summer they were a hit with the lords and ladies of the Kingdom of Penn.
When father caught me – because he never caught us – he brought out the paddle. At six, my older, twin sister was able to cast a veil that could hide from father if he didn’t look hard enough; which he never did. So, from the shadows, she watched as I took a wooden paddle to the ass for stealing sweets. Was it worth it? Probably not, but I’d never been one to completely go with the flow. I liked to play by my own rules.
Still, without fail, Justine would emerge from the shadows after father went back to bed and offer me the last cookie, or bite of frozen cream. She’d always been exceedingly kind, and gentle like that. Of course, six-year-old me resented her. At three minutes older, she was the Allen family secondborn.
I was a thirdborn. In a world where magic was will made reality, I was at the bottom of the enchanted heap. For reasons even a four-year university degree, that decreed me a wizard of the realm, couldn’t explain, I was an order of magnitude less powerful than my firstborn brother. John Allen Jr., or J.J., could make the earth tremble, call down fire from the heavens, and fight an entire army of mundane humans to a standstill. I wasn’t fit to carry the jockstrap of a wizard of my brother’s caliber. Not that I would ever volunteer to carry my self-righteous kin’s dick holder. My zealous brother was best handled in small doses, and I’m sure he felt the same way about me.
Even kind-hearted Justine was way out of my league. I’d once seen her wrap a spell of pure kinetic force around a lightning bolt, and deep fry an assassin who would have killed me. I couldn’t dream of wielding that kind of power.
Sue me, I’m jealous. I’d grown up in the rarified atmosphere of the lords and ladies of Penn. I’d gone to the finest university in all the land, and I would never be anything more than a thirdborn in the eyes of so many. It made me bitter, the black sheep of the family, and willing to go and do what others would never have dreamed of.
That wasn’t always a good thing; as I’d found out over the last few months when Justine was set to be married off. We’d barely graduated university when father accepted a proposal from the next Grand Duke of Oldenburg. It was all done in the name of politics. For the good of the realm. Being a good sister, and a fine person; she agreed. I didn’t.
Since her acceptance, I’d suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in the form of a bride and groom assassin combo, a bisexual incubus; and worst of all, a wedding request from my sister. You’d think nearly getting enslaved by the mind of an Unseelie creature was the worst thing that happened to me that month; you’d be wrong.
For my entire life, I’d had nothing but the best. Father paid for premium instruments of wizardly doom for me to wield. I’d had the best swordsmen train me in the deadly arts. I’d gone to the best university, and never wanted for anything. I’d even started a successful business. I wouldn’t be tooting my horn, or doing my job as the guild’s chief salesmen, if I didn’t say it was already wildly successful. Still, in all that time, because of how the other wizards and witches of the world had always seen me, I’d thought of myself as less than. I’d thought of myself as a thirdborn first, and everything else second. I was wrong. In reality, I was extremely blessed.
I didn’t pray to the White God. The extra-planar entity that most of the Old and New World worshipped, so I wasn’t going to sing his praises. Not after what I’d witnessed. Despite my less than north-pointing moral compass, I’d never encountered anything even remotely close to what I’d witnessed at the Battle of Dresden.
The shiver that worked its way through me had nothing to do with the chill in the air. It was late summer now, but it was like the proximity to all that death and destruction was affecting the natural order of the seasons. For all I knew, that was true. High-level magic was something way outside my expertise.
I didn’t want to close my eyes and think about what I’d seen. Men met men with sword and shield. They slashed. They screamed, and they died. The roar of opposing shield walls as they ground against each other, locked in mortal combat, was like thunder in my ears; and that was just what happened with the living.
I’d seen men discarded like trash; littering the battlefield. I’d seen dead bodies stacked like firewood for the winter. I’d seen body parts rain from the sky when firstborn lords of the Old World did battle with one another. I’d seen that mere, mundane humans were nothing more than pawns to be maneuvered on a chessboard of death. As I sat in the rear of the formation with the other knights and officers of Oldenburg, I finally realized how lucky I was not to be some kid in a shield wall who just hoped the wizard protecting his company from magical attack didn’t lose a duel with the enemy. I might be a thirdborn, but that was a shit-ton better than one of those poor farm boys from Saxony; or the rest of the allied forces that dared to stand against the Prince of Thuringia.
The shiver worked its way down to my very bones when I remembered we weren’t the only forces on the battlefield that day. There was also the undead.
In an affront to the tenants of the White God, and decency itself, the Thuringian prince had called forth the undead to turn the tide of the battle. At the beginning, the allied forces of the lords of the Holy Roman Empire had outnumbered the prince. Then the zombies came. Even walking corpses could be deadly when tens of thousands of them took to the field. We never stood a chance.
One by one, the defenders of Dresden were overwhelmed, overrun, and butchered like cattle. I’d watched as the prince had single-handedly dispatched a commander of the Inquisition; the White God’s sword on earth. That would not go unpunished when the Vatican heard of the slain officer, and neither would the death of the Grand Duke of Oldenburg. His head had been placed at my feet by the prince himself to show his resolve.
I didn’t understand how the prince had done what he’d done until his patron stood before me. I still didn’t know who, or what, she was; but he had called her a queen. The only thing I was sure about was that she wasn’t human. She was a bottomless pit of power. Being in her presence was completely and utterly overwhelming. Her gifts to the prince had helped sack the capitol city of Saxony. Hundreds of thousands of people were at her, and the prince’s, mercy. She savored the carnage, and I don’t think the entire world in chaos would sate her hunger. Anything that involved Queen Morrigan wouldn’t end well. The prince had made a deal with the devil.
He wasn’t the only one.
I’d been defeated in battle. A big, bald fucker had cut me down like I was nothing. I was proud that I’d held my own for a while. I lived through a pair of cavalry charges, hacked apart the undead hordes, and stood side-by-side with a few survivors of the shield wall as we tried to escape the madness.
We’d failed. I’d failed to keep my word to my sister. I’d promised to protect her new husband. Now the Grand Duke. I didn’t know if he was alive or dead, and I wasn’t sure if I ever would.
My deal with the devil had come at a high price. For the release of myself, and my bodyguard turned lover, Greta, I’d sworn on my power as a wizard to arm the prince and his army with guns. I might be a weak thirdborn, but I was at the forefront of a revolution in modern warfare.
The world didn’t know it yet. Only my own king and the Thuringian prince were ahead of the curve, but soon what I’d developed would change how battles were fought. Tactics that had remained unchanged for thousands of years were about to be turned on their head. Not since the Roma Senatus de Magnus developed the concept of the legion had warfare been so radically altered.
“And I’m giving guns to the enemy,” I thought for the hundredth time since I’d climbed up on this slab of wood. It was like the universe’s way of giving me the paddle for reaching in the cosmic cookie jar where I didn’t belong.
I couldn’t help it. Self-preservation was a hell of a drug, as was the life of a woman I cared about. I didn’t want to die in a ditch, in the Old World, thousands of miles from home. I wanted to live damnit. I did what I had to do.
***
I ignored the pain in my ass. There were worse things in this world than a splinter up the keister. I still shifted uncomfortably and looked to my right. Greta’s bright blue eyes drilled into, and through, me.
“We need to talk,” the German soldier stated, in her typical no-nonsense tone.
“Not now,” I hissed. She’d been pestering me since we left the prince’s army encampment. “We aren’t alone.
We wouldn’t be for another hour at this rate. Part of the deal I’d struck with the Thuringian prince was an armed escort. The clatter of dozens of hoofs all around me was a constant reminder that while I might be free, I was still a prisoner; and would be for a while.
“How do I tell her that?” I didn’t break the staredown that Greta was determined to engage in.
The woman sitting next to me was the definition of strength, and not just physically. She was as tall as me with the athleticism of a career soldier. Her white-blonde hair was kept short out of necessity. Battle was a bitch. I knew that firsthand now. The last thing a woman wanted was for some swordsman to grab her by the ponytail, yank her to the ground, and put a sword between her breasts. In Greta’s case, that would be a terrible shame. She had amazing breasts.
It wasn’t just that I’d seen her cut down a dozen men with a sword and spell that was slightly intimidating. It was that she was a soldier. She was mentally tough. She thought and acted like a warrior. Even when she’d chased my stupid ass around the streets of Oldenburg, there was always a purpose to her; a mission.
“What is that mission now?” I wondered.
She was sworn to her liege, the Grand Duke of Oldenburg; who’d recently lost his head. To me, that was horrifying; but to her, it was part of the job. Soldiers had to make tough calls like that. They had to lay down their lives for the betterment of the civilians they were supposed to protect. There was a reason chivalry was part of a knight of the realm’s oath to king and country.
I don’t think most knights and lords of the Old World had a chivalrous bone in their body, but Greta did. She would gladly lay down her life for those she was sworn to protect. She had nearly done that outside Dresden, but I saved her.
“Did she want to be saved?” the crux of my fear finally came to the surface. “Will she hate me for what I did?”
I’d be the first to admit I’d gone from girl to girl at university. It was just what guys, and girls, of my station did. I didn’t take advantage of anyone. Hell, there was more than one girl who fucked me to get back at their boyfriend. There weren’t many ways to piss off some future firstborn lord than to blow a lowly thirdborn. Aside from going full mundane human, I was as low as you could go.
What Greta and I had wasn’t like that. I mean, technically we’d boned like two rabbits in heat right before the battle; but we’d developed something after all the time we’d spent together that summer. I trusted her. That might not be a big deal for some people, but it was for me. Outside my immediate family, some of whom I didn’t trust as far as I could throw them, I could count the people I could rely upon on one hand.
I’d come clean to Greta that I was trying to get my business off the ground in the Old World. That was something the Inquisition could literally hang me for. She didn’t turn me in. Together, we’d saved Mouse from the clutches of some criminal asshole. She’d cut a henchman in two, and I’d shot the ringleader. Again, she’d had my back, and helped me carry a bleeding Mouse to my palace chambers to be healed.
If Justine hadn’t smoothed things over in Oldenburg, we might both be wanted when we returned. Even if the city guard did want us in shackles, I just knew she wouldn’t turn me in. She wasn’t a woman who tried to save herself.
When the undead broke through the shield wall beneath the walls of Dresden, and I was dragged to the ground; she pulled me back to my feet and fought side-by-side with me until the end. She didn’t turn and run even though that would have been the smart thing to do. No. Greta Miller was an honorable woman. A woman who was far too good for me.
“I can’t lose her,” I told myself as her icy blues tried to drill into my skull. “I love her.”
She must have seen something in my eyes because her expression softened. “Soon,” she compromised.
“Soon,” I nodded, and knew I wouldn’t be able to keep something like this from her.
“That conversation is going to suck,” I exhaled. My attention would have returned to the wood trying to rub my ass raw, but a commotion behind us caught my attention.
An armored horsemen galloped to the front of the column and reined in his warhorse next to the big man riding in front of us. It was mildly irritating that the guy leading us to safety was the guy who’d bashed my face in. I didn’t know the big fucker’s name, rank, or anything about him. I had seen him at the tip of the spear as the forces of Thuringia smashed into the allied shield wall. I’d seen him kill dozens, maybe even hundreds of men and wizards alike. Now, he was giving us a ride out of town; and it was clear he didn’t like it.
The horseman and big fucker spoke in rapid-fire German. I’d been getting better with the language since I arrived in the Old World, but I still relied heavily on a potion my sister and I had concocted. A drop on my lips and in my ear let me understand German like it was my native tongue. Needless-to-say, I didn’t have access to any of it since my defeat.
Whatever the horseman told the big fucker, it brought a smile to his face. He wheeled around to face us and his great mustache bristled with anticipation. “We go,” he said in heavily accented English.
“Wait. What the fuck do you mean ‘we go’?” I asked.
Greta took over at that point, but unlike me, he treated her with some respect. He’d kicked her ass too, but she was a warrior of some renown. I couldn’t believe it when I heard it, but she’d fought with crusaders in the Holy Lands. She couldn’t be more than a few years older than me, and she’d lived through some of the largest battles in recent history. Even more than that, she’d killed a well-known Saracen warrior. There was even a ballad about her making the rounds in the taverns and pubs of the Holy Roman Empire. It was clear the big fucker had heard the song.
I didn’t like the look in his eye when he talked to her, but there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. I hated that. I really fucking did. I knew I was better off than most, but that wasn’t much comfort in a situation like this. Thankfully, Greta was a big girl, and she handled her interactions with the big fucker like a professional.
“There is a report of Saxon holdouts fighting not far from here. They’re going to assist,” she informed me, as calls when up and down the line of our cavalry escort. The heavily armored soldiers were already peeling away and galloping back the way we’d come.
“This wasn’t the deal,” I called as the big fucker cantered past us to follow his men.
“Deal not with me,” he called over his shoulder as he dug his heels into the warhorse and sprinted away from us.
The sound of the beating hoofs gradually faded away until we were all alone. Greta. Me. And the gross domestic product of an entire city sitting in the back of a wagon. I’d be lying if I said my dick didn’t shrivel up a little as our escort disappeared.
“I guess we can talk now,” I let out a nervous laugh as I gripped the horse’s reins tight.
They were skittish. We weren’t more than a few miles from the battlefield, and I could still see the dark plumes from the fires on the horizon. It had been days since the city had been sacked, and it still burned. A great vortex of birds still endlessly swirled above the battlefield. They’d be feasting for weeks.
“Not yet,” Greta flicked her set of reins and the horse grunted into action.
We didn’t move forward. Instead, she pulled us off to the side of the road and into a thicket of trees. Once we were out of sight of the road, she dismounted and unsheathed her sword.
“Get down,” she commanded, and I instantly obeyed. You didn’t say no to Greta and her sword.
“What are you . . .?” I began. As she raised her sword and brought it down in a vertical chop.
At first, I thought she was going for the thick, wrought-iron padlock on the back of the wagon. The prince had spelled it so only I could open it, but that wasn’t as great a security measure as it seemed. Someone could force me to open it. Someone could hack their way into the wagon. It was still regular wood. I wasn’t positive, but I was pretty sure if I was killed the spell would be broken, and then anyone could get at the treasure. Needless-to-say, there were a lot of ways around the magical security.
