His blood was boiling, and his cock was as hard as the Roaring Axe’s great mast. The drums were pounding their cry against the porcelain-clear sky and the shimmering glass of the water.

Da-DAM. Da-DAM. Da-DAM.

They were singing the heartbeat of the slaughter, it pumped liquid courage through the veins of the Free Men of the Isles. Not that the iron-gutted bastards of Elio needed it, but the drums kept the rowers’ rhythm true as the ship’s prow sliced through the crystalline blue of the Azanian Sea like a razor through silk.

They were sharks. These waters were their hunting grounds, and right ahead, the tuna was served, belly up and inviting the first bite.

The smaller Azanian vessel had attempted a desperate turn, but the panic in their stroke had made a botch of it. By the time Blake had caught the scent of their fear, the Roaring Axe had already found the wood it was meant to chop and took an hefty bite. This ship was his resurrection.

His first love had perished at the bottom of the Khairo harbor, dragged down by the weight of a port-chain and the desperation of a dying city, but in her honor, this new beauty had been raised, harder, faster, and twice as hungry.

Now, it was time for her to pop the cherry.

Snake banners streamed from the enemy’s masts, one of the few lords with stones big enough to think he could stand against the Free-Fleet and the Red Angel. Blake had assumed the spirit of the land would break when he smashed the Khairo gates and painted the palace halls with the brain-matter of the child-sultan.

Instead, a dozen different pretenders had sprouted from the sand like weeds.

"More like they were all hiding under the dunes, waiting for the smoke to clear," Harrick Stormcaller had grunted when Blake complained about the sudden surplus of ’Sultans.’

Apparently, every petty lord with a claim to a royal whore’s third-cousin was suddenly fitting a crown to his head.

It mattered little to Blake. He had bashed the skull of the true Sultan against his own marble walls; he wouldn’t mind getting his axes red with the blood of the mimics. The Sultan-Slayer, they’d call him by the turn of the tide.

The Bloody Spear of the Sultan s danced on the wind, surrounded by the colorful rags of lesser lords from the north of Kahiro who thought coordination could replace courage.

It was pathetic.

When Khairo fell, the great Azanian navy had fractured like dropped glass, scattering into petty lordlings of the sea. Three of them had scuttled back to their ancestral homes to regroup, and this desperate, wobbling line of ships, was the best they could muster.

The Roaring Axe slammed into the flank of the Azanian vessel with a bone-jarring groan of protest. On both sides, the oars met in a frantic, splintering mess of wood and shattered bone. They weren’t in a position to ram, so they would feast.

Planks were heaved, iron chains rattled through the air, and heavy hooks bit deep into the enemy’s gunwale, pinning the two ships together in a lethal embrace. Blake didn’t wait for the bridge to be secure for the slaughter could never be safe.

He vaulted over the rail, a dark silhouette against the sun, landing on the enemy deck with a heavy, solid thud. The wood swayed beneath his boots, was the only ground he had ever known.

The Azanian defenders drew back, their eyes darting from Blake’s ornate, salt-crusted armor to the terrifying visage of his helmet, Azanian in manufacture , Confederate in spirit.

Recognition dawned in their stares, a cold, sickening realization of exactly who had just boarded their world.

His name had rode far and wide on the sands of this new world.

Blake gave them the final proof. He raised his two heavy axes high, which had drank deep from their compatriots belly and guts.

The steel caught the midday glare as he brought them together with a deafening, ringing crash.

CLANG—CLANG.

Sparks erupted from the meeting of the blades, dancing briefly in the salt air before falling harmlessly to the wood. And as the last spark flickered out, the screaming began, and men started to die.

"Amsakuu bihi! ’iinah wahidu!" one of the defenders shrieked, his eyes bulging. His white teeth flashed like pearls against the deep, coal-like hue of his skin as he barked orders to his terrified kin.

Blake didn’t speak the desert tongue, but the music of the battlefield required no translator.

"Come and get me then, if you’ve got the stones for the dare!" Blake roared back.

When they hesitated, Blake brought the dare to them.

He waded into the press, his eyes dancing over a chaotic array of steel he’d never seen in Romelia or the fragmented Principalities of the South. These men carried curved blades that looked like silver crescent moons, scimitars, he knew for a fact, some of his own men took them for their own for a laugh, but some were twisted further still, wicked, heavy scythe-swords that looked designed to hook a man’s guts out through his ribs.

He noted above all the lack of proper iron on their backs. They wore silks, hardened leathers, and the occasional shirt of fine-linked chain, but none wore the heavy plate he had seen in the field outside Khairo. They were creatures of the desert and the sun; they feared the weight of steel in the water. They feared the long, cold plunge into the dark.

Blake held no such fear.For he was of the water, as much as he was of the Fire.

The Sea-God was his patron, his father, and his final destination. If he was meant to spend eternity in that wet, crushing embrace, then so be it, the seabed was a far more honest grave than a hole in the dirt or to become ash under a fire. But he wasn’t going down today. And he wasn’t giving his God any of these men alive. The Sea-God could have the scraps; Blake would take the souls.

He lunged toward a warrior swinging one of those oversized scythe-swords, a man whose courage seemed to be held together by a thin string of desperation. The queer blade came biting down . Blake met it with his left axe, the impact shivering up his arm, while his right axe whistled through the air.

The first spray of hot, copper-tasting blood hit the deck. It was the starting trumpet.

As the first body fell, the shout went up, rippling through the Azanians like a plague-wind.

"Al-Malak al-Ahmar!"

Blake’s lips pulled back over his teeth in a crimson-stained grin. That was one of the few phrases he’d bothered to learn.

Red Angel.

He decided to make the title a bit truer. He threw himself into the thickest cluster of spears, a whirlwind of salt-crusted steel and savage intent. He bathed in the spray of the man who had screamed the name, turning his hair into a matted, bloody mess.

Soldiers converged on him from all sides, a forest of steel bared ahead of them, but Blake could see the trembling in their grip.

He could never get his fill of it, that raw dread he imprinted on the hearts of men. He lived on it, breathed it, and thrived on it as much as any loaf of bread or flagon of ale.

He was a monster of their own God’s making, a red tide come to wash away their desert dreams, and as the circle of steel closed in, Blake felt more alive than he had in years.

Truth be told, Blake hadn’t intended for any of this to last. His initial plan had been simple, pirate’s work: sack the city, gut the treasuries, and vanish into the blue before the sands settled. It was Cain, bless that silver-tongued devil, who had argued for staying. And thank the Sea-God he’d listened.

This land was a sun-drenched gem, a kingdom of silk and spice. The people were a dream to rule; they’d pay their taxes and bow their heads without a murmur, so long as you didn’t press the steel too hard against their throats. Of course, a few lords had taken exception to a but Blake was currently resolving that misunderstanding, one severed limb at a time.

A scimitar whistled through the salt air, aiming to bury itself in his shoulder, while a spear jabbed at the small of his back.

The impacts felt like little more than a lover’s slap.

To the Azanians, the response was a death sentence. The Red Angel spun with the raw, centrifugal fury of an island storm, his axes tracing a lethal, gleaming circle. The swordsman’s neck was opened in a crimson spray before he could even blink. The spearman fared worse, Blake’s second axe crunched into his ribcage, shattering bone like dry kindling.

As the man stumbled, Blake freed the blade with a sickening squelch and brought it down again, straight through the center of the soldier’s helmet. The heavy steel bit deep, slicing through the reinforced iron, then the air, and finally the skull.

He had never felt so invincible.

What cost were a few virgins he never had the opportunity to fuck nor meet for this sort of power?Flesh was after all spent easier than gold.

It was a bargain.

His muscles bulged against the inner padding of his plate, his mind thrummed with a beautiful, crimson thirst, and his loins felt the phantom ache of a final, ecstatic release. He would give that crone a quarter of the kingdom he was carving if she could make him feel just a fraction more like the god he was becoming.

But as much as he savored the solitary storm he called, the deck was getting crowded.

The Roaring Axe had finally ground the Azanian ship into submission, its hooks holding the prey steady, since with a chorus of guttural roars and the rhythmic clatter of boots on wood, his crew finally found the stones to join their Admiral.

As he said. One severed limb at the time.