J.R. Ward the Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8 - J. R. Ward [29]
Like the others, V was sharpened to an edge from starvation. But he didn’t stand with his fellow young. He waited in the faraway darkness, eyes locked on his prey.
The soldier he tracked was fat as a hog, with folds of flesh falling over his leathers and facial features indistinct for the puffy padding. The glutton went without a tunic most of the time, his bulbous chest and distended belly jiggling while he paraded around kicking the stray dogs that lived in camp or going after the whores. For all his sloth, however, he was a vicious killer, what he lacked in speed being made up for in brute strength. With hands as big as a grown male’s head, he was rumored to snap the limbs off lessers and eat them.
At every meal he was among the first to get to the meat, and he ate with speed, though he was hampered by a lack of accuracy. He didn’t pay a lot of attention to what actually made it into his mouth: Pieces of deer flesh and streams of blood and segments of bone would coat his stomach and chest, a gory tunic knit of his sloppy ministrations.
This night the male finished early and eased back onto his haunches, a deer flank in his fist. Though he was through, he lingered next to the carcass he’d been working on, pushing other soldiers away for amusement.
When it was time for the sparring punishments to be dealt out, the fighters moved from the fire pit to the Bloodletter’s platform. In the light of torches, soldiers who had lost during practice were bent over at the foot of the Bloodletter and violated by those who’d bested them, to the sneers and slaps of the others. Meanwhile, the pretrans fell on what was left of the deer while the females of the camp watched with hard eyes, waiting their turn.
V’s prey wasn’t much interested in the humiliations. The fat soldier watched for a little while, then lumbered off, the deer leg hanging from his hand. His filthy pallet was all the way at the far edges of where the soldiers slept, because even to their noses, his stench offended.
Stretched out, he looked like an undulating field, his body a series of hills and valleys. The deer leg lying across his belly was the prize at the top of the mountain.
V stayed back until the soldier’s beady eyes were covered by fleshy lids and his hefty chest went up and down with a slowing rhythm. Soon fish lips fell open, and one snore escaped, followed by another. It was then that V closed in on his bare feet, making no sound over the dirt floor.
The foul smell of the male didn’t deter V, and he cared not about the grime on the deer’s fresh muscle. He reached forward, small hand splayed, inching toward the bone joint.
Just as he ripped it free, a black dagger streaked down next to the soldier’s ear and its penetration into the packed cave floor snapped open the male’s eyes.
V’s father loomed like a chain-mail fist about to fall, legs planted, dark eyes leveled. He was the biggest of all in the camp, rumored to be largest male born into the species, and his presence inspired fear for two reasons: his size and his unpredictability. His mood was ever-changing, his whims violent and capricious, but V knew the truth behind the variable temper: There was nothing that was not calibrated for effect. His father’s malicious cunning ran as deep as his muscle was thick.
“Awake,” the Bloodletter snapped. “You laze whilst you are feloned by a weakling.”
V cringed away from his father, but started to eat, sinking his teeth into the meat and chewing as fast as he could. He would be beaten for this, likely by the both of them, so he had to consume as much as possible before the blows landed upon him.
The fat one made excuses until the Bloodletter kicked him in the sole of the foot with a spiked boot. The male went gray in the face but knew better than to cry out.
“The whys of this happenstance bore me.” The Bloodletter stared at the soldier. “What shall you do about it, is my inquiry.”
Without taking a breath the soldier