by P. K. Lentz
Bowyn smiled. None of the Scythians did, nor Bowyn’s companions.
“I treasure the sight of you, Airgetlam,” Bowyn said, giving the formalized greeting in Nexus-G.
“And I’m beyond pleased to see you,” Arixa answered. She resisted the strong urge to follow the greeting with a demand that he surrender his ship. “You’ve been searching for me. Why?”
“Direct, as ever,” Bowyn said. “Before I answer, in case you’re considering wrapping your silver lash around my neck, you should know our ship is armed and my crewmate is inside. The new Branch’s weapons aren’t heavy, but trust me, they’re enough to turn you into a black spot on the sand.”
“I don’t trust you at all,” Arixa answered. “But I am indebted to you. You saved us. Please, tell me why you’re here. But first, tell me it isn’t a trap.”
He smiled. “No trap, Airgetlam. We have information. And I believe you have two of my crew.”
“Morgana and Dearg are safe, and free to leave. What information?” Arixa’s heart skipped in the hope its subject would be the one she wished.
“I’ll let Cinnea tell you.”
He looked over at the red-haired woman, whose serious manner and expression were the opposite of Bowyn’s overly blithe air. Arixa looked, too, eagerly.
“I escaped from Nemoora with Ivar’s party,” Cinnea said.
“They escaped?” Arixa’s hands trembled. She could not recall the last time they had done that. “How many?
“Twenty of us made it to the Moon of Sorrows. Ivar included.”
“Leimya?”
“Yes.”
“Tomiris?”
“Yes. Shall I tell you what happened, or would you prefer names first?”
“Go on,” Arixa urged. She had clenched her fingers into fists to control their visible shaking, but the relief of knowing that her dear ones lived was a more effective remedy.
“A Senek Baron by the name of S’tanovik gave us shelter. He treated us well. But to avoid suspicion and appease the Pentarchy, he insisted on handing five to the Jir.”
Arixa’s spirits, freshly buoyed by hope, took a sudden plunge. “Which five?”
“The Baron allowed us to choose. Ivar proved himself an admirable leader. He ruled out Leimya, Tomiris, and my brother and I. He offered himself up and had the rest of your Scythians keen to do the same.”
“Did he—?”
“Yes and no,” Cinnea answered. “He planned a suicide attack during the transfer. I didn’t witness it, but the Baron told me afterward that four of the five were killed. Ivar survived and was taken.”
Arixa silently absorbed the news. Ivar was a prisoner of the Jir.
Cinnea continued, “The Baron said the attack killed three Jir. You’ll be proud to hear that your sister wanted to be one of the five. Before that, she was ready to fight our hosts rather than agree to the trade.”
“What became of her—and the rest?”
“The Baron moved them into hiding. My brother and I were covertly returned to Nemoora. That’s where we located Bowyn. Or rather, we found one of our crewmates, Oisinn, who Bowyn had also found.”
“Don’t you want to hear how I survived, Airgetlam?” Bowyn asked.
“Later. How did you obtain this ship?”
Bowyn glanced back at the thing and smiled proudly. “Liquidated our assets on Nemoora to buy her. Old Gaboon exploration craft.”
“How many can it carry?”
“Twenty comfortably. Double that in a pinch.” Bowyn’s grin expanded. “Why? You have plans?”
“You know. Name your price for passage to Br’niss.”
Bowyn put on a show of surprise. “Price? If I recall, I was promised a reward if I lived through saving your ship. Shall we start there? What have you got?”
Arixa took a deep breath and reminded herself of the need to win Bowyn over by means other than threats.
“Nothing but the Sagaris and what’s on it,” she said. “And the goods we obtained in your trade. You may take most of that back, if you wish.”
“No thanks. How about a few thousand aliens in stasis? I could undercut Jir prices in the slave trade. But no, I’d need too big a box to carry them all in, wouldn’t I?”
“You didn’t come all this way to play games,” Arixa said. “I need use of this ship. Like you must have known I would.”
Bowyn’s smile vanished. “I had an inkling. I have to admit, I’m surprised. I expected you to sound a lot less reasonable. Are Morgana and Dearg really free to go? They’re not hostages?”
“Your price, Bowyn. I need to depart as soon as possible.”
“I’m willing. But the price is a high one—for someone like you.” He smiled with his eyes, but not otherwise. “I want you to apologize for killing Eoghan. And then I want you to ask for my help. Nicely.”
Arixa stared derisively at him. “That’s all? You don’t know me well.”
“Go ahead, then.”
“I’m sorry. I should not have killed the man who helped you try to steal my ship. Is that satisfactory?”
“Less satisfying than I had hoped. The next part?”
With a sneer, Arixa began, “Bowyn, may—”
“Captain Bowyn,” he corrected.
“Captain Bowyn, may I please have use of your ship, the Red Branch III?”
“To?”
Arixa sighed. “To return to Br’niss and rescue my people.”
When she’d finished, Bowyn looked pensive. “That sounds like a huge risk. Why would I want to do that?”
“Don’t test me, fortune-hunter.”
“She’s right,” Cinnea interjected. “Enough games, Bowyn.” Then to Arixa: “We intend to take you there. He just thought it would go differently than this. He said you were a...”
“Cinnea...” Bowyn said, “there’s really no need—”
“Bhitseach,” she finished, talking over him.
“There’s one last important detail of our arrangement,” Bowyn inserted loudly, with obvious eagerness to change the topic. “Our objective is to claim the people in the Baron’s custody only. Then it’s straight back here. I won’t be—”
“Arixa, look!”
The sudden outburst came from Dak, who stood to Arixa’s left. She turned to see Dak pointing, followed his arm and saw shadows move in the distance. Seconds later, the exterior lights of the Red Branch III swung in the same direction.
Plainly illuminated on a low ridge of sand in the distance were several figures which immediately folded into flatter, rounded forms before scattering to race for the horizon on four double-jointed legs.
“Tabitans!” Dak cried happily, as though spotting them here could vindicate him half a world away at camp. Maybe it could.
“Let’s not stay much longer,” Arixa said. “I’d as soon not have any contact with them. Bowyn, I don’t care what you think of me. If you want me to grovel in the sand, I will. If you prefer we trade threats, we can do that, too. Whatever it takes to put me and a few others in the Blue, on your ship, on a heading for Br’niss.”
Bowyn threw up his hands. “I honestly don’t know what’s wrong with me. I tried to steal your ship, and now I’m letting you borrow mine to go back where we started and rescue people I don’t know.” He scoffed. “We Shift as soon as you’re ready.”
Thirteen
Arixa wished to waste no time in departing on the Red Branch III, but she could hardly leave events at Tabit-1 to be directed by the gods and Zhi. For that reason, when the meeting with Bowyn concluded, she sent Dak and Baako ahead with him on the Red Branch to join Vaspa in readying the needed supplies for the Shift to Nemoora.
Meanwhile, Arixa returned to the Dawn camp alone in the Panther. The moment the ship touched down, she leaped out and shouted the announcement to her waiting war band: some of the missing were alive, and she would soon bring them back.
Who? they clamored to know. Cinnea had given her the names of those who’d died in Ivar’s berserker assault and of those she�
�d last seen alive in the Baron’s bunker. Arixa spared the time now to call out all the names, for the Dawn deserved to know.
Their reactions, necessarily, were ones of joy tempered by mourning. Every man and woman volunteered to join the rescue party, of course, but Arixa had to turn them down. Bowyn had instructed that their numbers be kept low. The Branch was a small ship in need of spare capacity to transport those they planned to rescue. And if it came to battle, it wasn’t likely to be the kind where it mattered if they had a few more fighters with them.
But she had not only come to camp to share news. Before leaving the system, she needed to talk to Phoris. Walking with the preacher away from camp, she explained that when Fizzbik revived the human Sleepers and imprinted them to speak Nexus-G, they would get additional imprinting to facilitate recruitment into the Dawn.
“It will make them more inclined to believe in me,” she said.
“Inclined? Why not just make them believe? Is that not possible?”
“It is. But Fizzbik would never agree to do it, and he’d be right. It would make me a monster. Anyway, I’d rather have one man follow me of his own free will than a hundred... mind-slaves.”
Phoris pondered. “A fair point,” he concluded. “This way, we merely give their free will... a nudge in the proper direction.”
“You could say that. Fizzbik will use Trisma as the pattern for his imprint.”
Surprise widened the preacher’s eyes. “Pardon my saying, but didn’t Trisma join the mutiny against you?”
“Her devotion is strong now. She thinks for herself and makes her own choices, just as I wish for the Sleepers to choose.”
“Admirable,” Phoris remarked. “Still, if a pattern is needed, wouldn’t one whose loyalty hasn’t wavered serve better than a reformed traitor? Dak, for example. Or even...”
“You? No, it’s Trisma,” Arixa declared. “I don’t make wrong choices. While I’m gone, the revivals will begin. I’ve recorded a message to be shown to each human Sleeper who awakens. It explains that we rescued them from a terrible fate at the hands of false gods, that their cities have been destroyed and that we lack the ability to return them to their homelands. That if they are warriors, in their hearts if not by training, then they may choose to join the Dawn and claim revenge on those who wronged them. I would like you to be present as each is revived. You will act as my voice, my emissary.”
Phoris fingered the jagged white scar that traversed the length of his face from temple to chin. “Are you sure this is the first face you wish for strangers to see?”
“If their last memories are of the Devastation, anything will be an improvement. And it’s fitting that they be greeted someone who clearly has suffered, as they have.”
He acknowledged the point with a nod.
“Our intent is to persuade and recruit,” Arixa warned. “I trust you not to press them too hard. We must win them over, and that’s best done gently.”
“I shall be as gentle as antler velvet,” Phoris promised with a sly smile. “I’ve spent quite a few years learning how to persuade. In the past, my aim was to convince people to give up their homes and all they knew. I expect that folk who have already lost everything will prove less difficult to convince. But let me ask you this. In Roxinaki, I preached on behalf of a prophet. Am I once more?”
Phoris had first raised this idea that she present herself as a divine messenger on the voyage from Earth. Since then, Arixa had given it much thought. She didn’t believe that she enacted the will of Tabiti or any other gods. Not directly, in the way a prophet was meant to. Tabiti certainly didn’t speak to her. She wasn’t entirely sure what role the gods of Scythia even played in this wider universe in which the Dawn found itself.
Yet what she believed and what was best for her cause were not the same question. As a practical measure, an expedient, a means to a justified end, she couldn’t summarily dismiss the notion of becoming that which Phoris wished to make her.
Retributioner Divine. The Sword of Tabiti. Higher than Captain, loftier even than King and Shath, such titles were not unattractive.
“Lift me up however you will,” Arixa concluded. “But don’t forget yourself, Phoris. I don’t need a high priest. You’re recruiting for a war band, not a cult. Trisma will be watching you.”
“Of course, Captain.” Phoris’s chosen term of address surely wasn’t accidental.
“One last thing. Do your best to awaken Sleepers from different cities, so that no single group outnumbers another. Or more importantly, us.”
“A wise precaution,” Phoris concurred. “Fear not. I have this task well in hand. When you return with our lost comrades, a thousand recruits will await your command.”
“Don’t rush it, Phoris,” Arixa cautioned. “Start with a hundred and pray that I return at all.”
* * *
On her return to camp, Memnon ran to meet Arixa and immediately fell to his knees before her.
“Captain, I beg you to let me accompany you,” he said. “My own sister, like yours, is among the living on that moon. Let me aid in her rescue.”
Arixa answered, “Even if you weren’t a traitor, you’re hardly one of my finest.”
“You said yourself that this wasn’t the sort of expedition that called for more or better warriors. As for my loyalty, you need not question it. Less still with Andromache’s life in the balance.”
“Bah,” Phoris said. “He’d trade his sister’s life for yours, if he got the chance.”
“I know,” Arixa said. Then she instructed the prostrate Hellene, “Get up. Board the ship.”
He scrambled to his feet. “You mean, I may—”
“Board the ship!”
Memnon raced off to do so.
“Is that wise?” Phoris questioned.
“It’s his sister. Plus, he’s right. Having the best warriors along might not matter. But you never know when you’ll need someone disposable.”
The preacher chuckled.
After brief well-wishes at camp, Arixa boarded her Panther and returned to the Sagaris along with Memnon, Phoris and four volunteers who would trade camp life for another stint in the ship’s cold metal halls. While aboard, they were to be imprinted by Fizzbik as pilots, so that once Arixa and Vaspa had left, the Dawn remaining at Tabit-1 wouldn’t lack one.
Not unexpectedly, Trisma awaited the incoming Panther outside the hangar.
“Arixa, is this true?” she demanded. “Am I not to accompany you to Nemoora?”
“Only a small number can come, and what transpires here will be of no less import. I need someone I can trust to act in my best interest.”
“Of course, but—”
“Trisma,” Arixa cut her off. “I know it’s a disappointment. I’ve had more than my share of them. All must shoulder duties they’d prefer not to. Yours is to see to the Sleepers, along with Phoris.”
“Aye.” Trisma frowned and sighed. “My pleasure to serve, Captain.”
Arixa thumbed the woman’s cheek. “Don’t let me come back to find out we’re at war with the natives. Or worse—” She flashed a look at Phoris as she finished. “—that I’ve become a god.”
Within an hour, the Red Branch III stood ready for boarding in the Sagaris’s largest hangar. Its passengers and crew were to number eight, four of the Dawn—Arixa, Vaspa, Baako and Memnon—and four Eraínn.
Four Eraínn, not five. While Morgana and Dearg, who’d been living at Tabit-1, were eager to join Bowyn and Cinnea for the return to Br’niss, Cernach had elected to stay behind on the Sagaris.
Arixa overheard him telling his sister he’d had enough of that moon and of being shot at.
“You should stay, too,” he urged Cinnea.
“You dragged me into this!” Cinnea’s reply was explosive enough to send Cernach back a step. “What happened to all your cac about adventure and recapturing our old selves?”
“I guess I had my fill of nostalgia.”
“So you’ll stay here with the battle bun
ch? What if we don’t come back?”
“Cinnea, I’ve thought about it. I’ve weighed the risks, including losing you. My mind’s made up. You could be pleased that I’m staying out of danger.”
“Out of danger, right. Do you plan to live on this ship? Or in a tent?”
He chuckled. “We’ll see. If you insist on going, can we just say ‘safe passage’?”
“Safe passage,” Cinnea said with a sigh,“...dumb cac-for-brains.” She hugged him tightly. “I look forward to seeing your tattoos when I come back.”
“If you come back,” Cernach said gravely.
“Thanks for that.”
“Your own words.”
“If you weren’t my fecking brother, I swear.”
With a last embrace, the siblings parted.
The sight of them made Arixa’s heart ache for Leimya. She boarded the Branch III without looking back.
* * *
Ivar trudged from the jetty over hard, frozen mud. He could barely feel his legs below the knees, for he’d soaked his boots while wrestling that huge pike from the river.
At least it wasn’t for nothing. The fish weighed down the sack over his shoulder as he headed back to the village. His step-father would be impressed.
Almost everything Ivar did these days was to impress Torvald and live down the mistake he’d made a year ago.
Really all he’d done was set down a lamp in the wrong place and forget about it.
One day, Torvald would stop calling him Ivar Shedburner.
He halted mid-step and dropped the sack.
This was wrong. This was a memory from long ago. He’d left his village and made a name for himself elsewhere now, among foreigners. He was Shieldbreaker.
This could not be real.
A dream? Then what was reality?
Scythia. The Dawn. Arixa. The Sagaris. Nemoora.
The Moon. The Baron.
A deal with the Jir.
Death.
The frozen trail fell from under his boots. Dream-eyes evaporated. Ivar found his real ones and blinked them open.
He was elsewhere. Nowhere. Laying down.
A dull moan, his own, echoed in his skull. He found his true limbs, but they refused to move.