The Servants of the Storm

by Jack Campbell

  “What can we do if the chain is raised?” Mari asked.

  “Send someone ashore to try to get it lowered again.”

  Alain nodded. “I will go.”

  “Not alone,” Mari said. “That chain is Mechanic equipment. You’ll need me to tell you how to break it.”

  “Shouldn’t we send Asha and Dav?” Banda asked reluctantly.

  “No,” Mari said. “They haven’t done this kind of thing. Alain and I have.”

  Alain did not think much time had passed when Banda began slowing the ship. Mari went out the aft hatch and climbed forward, staring ahead into the darkness. “It’s getting really foggy out here. I can’t see much ahead of us.”

  Banda had slowed the Terror to a crawl when Alain felt a jar and the ship stopped moving.

  “We hit the chain!” Banda called to Mari. “We can’t get past it.”

  ”Come on, Alain!” Mari had already loosened the boat again. Alain helped her pull it up to the surface, drain the water and set the boat upright.

  Asha came out on deck as well. “What can I do?”

  “Guard the ship,” Alain said. “Captain Banda says there may be more boats patrolling along the chain.”

  “We will deal with them if any appear,” Asha said.

  Mari helped Alain into the boat, then pushed off and began rowing. “Come on, Alain! You’ve seen rowing. I need help with this.”

  Alain did his best. He knew he wasn’t doing too well at it, but he put enough force behind his clumsy strokes to help drive the boat to shore.

  “The current carried us past the chain,” Mari panted as they dragged the boat onto the river bank. “Banda said the fortified winch house is on the other bank. We need to go back up this river bank and find the place where the chain is fastened. It shouldn’t be nearly as heavily guarded as the winch house. Is the mist getting thicker?”

  “Yes,” Alain said. Between the night and the mist he could barely see beyond a couple of arm lengths. “I must be able to see what I place a spell on.”

  “I know. We’ll get you close enough to see it. Let’s go.”

  Mari hurried. Alain hastened to keep up, worried at her pace in the fog. “Mari, if there are guards at the chain—" He stopped speaking as Mari stumbled to a halt. Directly in front of her a legionary carrying a lantern had appeared out of the mist. Alain reached for his long knife as Mari and the legionary stared at each other.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Before Alain could do anything, Mari straightened and beckoned to the legionary, who was just out of her reach. “Come, young one. I hunger,” she said eagerly. The mist curled around her, giving Mari a mysterious and haunting appearance.

  “Wh– what?” the legionary gasped, his hand frozen in the act of drawing his sword. His eyes on Mari widened in fear.

  “I need you,” Mari said. “Do you have friends with you? Other young men? I need them.”

  The legionary stumbled backwards, Mari following and Alain walking cautiously in her wake.

  “Hans, what the blazes are you—“ – Three more legionaries appeared out of the mist behind the first and halted as they saw their friend and Mari.

  “She’s…she’s…” Hans tried to speak but could only gesture wildly.

  “Where is the Emperor?” Mari purred. “You will take me to him, so I can rule alongside him just as I did with Maran when the world was young. But first,” she continued, putting hunger and desire into her voice, “you are young, and I must feed.”

  Mari stepped forward, reaching, and all four legionaries bolted into the mist, almost immediately crashing into a fifth, who did not pause to ask questions but ran with his companions.

  “Alain,” Mari said, breathing deeply, “you are never to tell anyone anything about this. Do you understand?”

  “I understand.”

  Mari took three more steps, stopping before a massive chain that Alain could see stretching into the river. A torch burned nearby, its light absorbed by the mist but reaching far enough to illuminate part of the chain as well as the packs the panicky legionaries had left behind. “The end is anchored somewhere up there,” Mari said, gesturing inland. “We have to break the chain here so it will drop and let the Terror through. Can you do that? We have to act very fast before those legionaries get their courage back or reinforcements show up.”

  Alain nodded, studying the links closely. The metal was as thick as his wrist, formed into loops that were interlocked. “I will remove part of a piece so that the next one slides out. The chain just lies there and is very heavy. Will it slide?”

  “Yeah. It should slide. Do it, Alain!” Mari was staring into the mist, her pistol weapon now in her hand.

  Alain felt more power available to him here on the land, enough to get the job done without tiring him very much. He concentrated, creating the illusion that the lower half of one of the links was not there, gathering the focus and the power he needed.

  Mari gasped, leveling her weapon out toward the water, but Alain redoubled his efforts and completed the spell. The bottom half of the link was gone.

  He had expected the chain to slide slowly away, but instead it whipped toward the river faster than any snake could strike. Alain felt the rush of wind from the massive links that passed just in front of him, then saw the blur of motion as the loose end of the chain snapped up through the mist, sliced completely through a boat that was approaching the shore, and then vanished into the water. The legionaries in the boat, startled by the sight of Mari, had no chance to react as the chain tore apart their boat and hurled those unfortunate enough to be in its path far out into the river.

  Mari grabbed Alain’s hand and rushed back down river toward their own boat. “Alain, I should have realized how much tension that chain was under because of the weight dragging on it! When you released one end it snapped back with enough force to rip through armor plate! I nearly killed you!”

  “It missed me,” Alain said as they reached their boat.

  “Not the point! I should have warned you not to be too close! Stupid! I let myself get distracted and didn’t think things through and it nearly killed you!” They wrestled the boat back into the water as alarmed shouts rose up and down the river bank. Somewhere on the other side of the river one of the brass Imperial trumpets began calling every legionary within earshot to action.

  They rowed out into the river, Mari working with savage anger at herself and Alain with clumsy force. “Captain Banda!” Mari began calling.

  “Here!”

  The big pile of driftwood floated into sight. Banda steered the Terror close and Mari helped Alain onto the wood, then as she climbed onto the ship tipped the boat into the water so that it began filling and sinking. “No time to recover the boat!” she called to Banda. “Get us out of here!”

  As Alain and Mari made their way over the tangled mass of wood toward the aft hatch, the Terror surged forward faster and faster. Asha raised herself from the forward hatch enough to hand Mari one of the Mechanic rifles. “Captain Banda says we must watch for boats,” she said.

  “Alain and I will stay up here,” Mari said. She took up a position near the aft hatch, wedging herself among the branches and pointing the rifle back the way they had come. Alain took up a similar position, looking out into the mist. “I hope Captain Banda knows this part of the river well enough to go this fast in such bad visibility,” Mari said, staring outward.

  Alain concentrated on watching for trouble, but even though he heard shouts on the river banks and from boats on the water, the noises gradually faded behind them.

  “How can you ever forgive me?” Mari said just loudly enough to be heard over the rush of water along the sides of the ship.

  “It was a mistake. It is not the first mistake one of us has made,” Alain said.

  “Alain, if you had been a little bit closer that chain would have taken your head clean off.” Mari’s voice choked on the last words.

  “It was a big mistake,” Alain said, trying to
think of the right thing to say, torn between his own belated reactions to the brush with death and his desire to comfort Mari. “I have made big mistakes as well.”

  “Not like that. Alain, we run enough risks as it is.” Mari closed her eyes for a moment, shaking her head, before opening them again to search for threats. “To almost get you killed because I wasn’t thinking…”

  “I love you,” Alain said. That usually worked to comfort her.

  Not this time. “You love me? The woman who almost got you decapitated?”

  “Yes.” He decided on simple honesty. “If I were going to be decapi̶ have my head taken off, I would want it to be with you.”

  She spared a moment to give him a baffled and appalled look. “What?”

  That obviously had not sounded right, either. “Mari, if I had done such a thing, endangering you, would you forgive me?”

  She paused to think. “Eventually.”

  “And so I forgive you. I know it did not happen by choice and I know you will strive never to repeat such a mistake. That is enough. And you love me. That is enough.”

  Mari shook her head again, smiling and blinking away tears. “My father is such an idiot. I don’t deserve you. I do promise to forgive you as well if something like this happens in reverse, but I really hope it doesn’t.”

  Not long afterwards, Asha raised herself up again through the forward hatch. “Captain Banda says you should come inside and close the hatch.”

  “Thank you, Asha.” Mari let Alain go first, then followed him down, sealing the hatch. She paused to hug him tightly before looking up the ladder leading to the steering room. “What’s the plan, Captain?”

  “We charge ahead as fast as I dare in the fog,” Banda replied. “And we keep going. Mari, Alain, get some sleep,” he ordered. “We’ll call you when it’s time to take over from Asha and Dav, or if we run into any more problems.”

  “Go ahead to the bunks, Alain,” Mari said. “I’m going to check on Dav and fill him in on things. He must be going crazy having to sit tending the boiler while everything is happening outside.”

  “Mari?” Alain said before she left. “You are all right?”

  She gazed back at him. “A short time ago I nearly killed you, and you’re worried about how I feel?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m fine, Alain. As long as you’re with me. Try to get some sleep. I’ll be right there.”

  He went forward to the cramped living area, now lined with sacks of the most precious documents in the world, and lay down on his bunk. In a world that was an illusion, he had no illusions about being able to sleep. The blurred image of the chain whipping past his face kept running through his mind. But he did not feel fear, or anger. Instead there was a sense of wonderment, and a question about whether fate had spared him so that he could continue to help Mari.

  She showed up fairly soon and climbed into the bunk above his. “Too bad we can’t share a bed. I could use your arms around me. Alain, we think the Imperials suspected I got banned technology texts from Marandur the last time we were there. Now they know I’ve gone back there and left again. The Imperials will be sure I’ve got more banned texts, and they will move mountains to stop us before we get to Landfall and out to sea. They want those texts, and they want me.”

  “They will not get you,” Alain said.

  “You will remember never to talk to anyone about what happened on the river bank, right? Not the chain. You can let everyone know what an idiot I was about that. The other stuff.”

  “I was surprised how convincing you were,” Alain said, looking up at the bottom of her bunk. “You manipulated the illusion very well.”

  “Yeah, that’s me. A natural when it comes to convincing people I’m a vain, blood-sucking, undead monster. Stars above, if Alli ever heard about it…just let’s never mention it again, Alain.”

  “As you wish.”

  * * * *

  Alain was surprised to be awoken by Asha. He had not realized that his fatigue had been so great that he could fall asleep despite the desperate nature of their situation. Mari waited a moment at the bottom of the ladder as Alain took his seat once more behind Captain Banda. “How are you doing?”

  “Could be better, could be worse,” Banda replied, not taking his eyes off the view ahead. “The fog has dissipated, so we’ve got a clear view ahead. Mari…”

  “What?”

  “We’re probably an hour away from dawn. Pretty soon after that we’ll be running through Palandur in daylight at high speed, something I never meant to do but which is our only chance of getting through, if that is still possible.” Banda paused. “I can slow down now, bring the ship close to one of the banks, and you and Alain could get ashore. The attention of the Imperials is fixed on the river. Once you got far enough from the river, you’d have a good chance of making your way to the coast without being caught and stealing a boat to take you out to where the Pride will be waiting.”

  Alain, looking down at Mari, saw her feelings change from curiosity to upset as Banda spoke, but she kept her temper from showing in her face or her voice. “Captain, I really thought that by now you knew me better than that.”

  “Mari, Palandur is going to be hard to get through. Landfall…I don’t how we can manage that. If the mission is going to fail, you need to do what is necessary to save yourself. For the greater good.”

  Mari shook her head. “The mission isn’t going to fail. And I am not going to abandon you, and Asha, and Dav. If I do, you wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  “But if it is necessary—" Banda began once more.

  “I don’t do what’s necessary. I do what’s right.”

  Alain had seen something in Banda as he spoke. “You were tasked to tell Mari this.”

  Banda didn’t look back at Alain, but he nodded. “Certain individuals ordered me to do my best to save Mari if it looked like we wouldn’t be able to save the texts. Mage Alain, you understand why I’m urging this course of action, don’t you?”

  “Alain should have a vote,” Mari agreed. “Alain, as an impartial and disinterested party, what is your opinion of what I should do?”

  “I am not impartial in any matter concerning you,” Alain objected, wondering why Mari would have said that.

  “That was a joke,” she said.

  “Ah. I understand.” Alain did not have to think about his answer. “I do not know what Mari should do. I know what she will do. Mari does not leave anyone behind. She will not leave you to save herself.”

  “It would also save you,” Banda pointed out. “Surely that matters a great deal to Mari.”

  “That is a low blow,” Mari said, anger finally entering her voice.

  “I know how much it matters to her,” Alain said. “And I know she will not sacrifice others for a selfish reason.”

  Banda sighed heavily. “I did my best. Mari, I don’t mind admitting that I am glad you’re so stubborn and so insistent on doing the right thing. Tell Dav and Asha we’ll wake them before we get to Palandur. We’ll need everyone awake and ready when we charge through, because the capital is guarded by the best the Imperials have—not like the legionaries we encountered around Marandur and at the chain. Those were less trained and less capable because the Empire assumed they’d never face much in the way of threats. If you pretending to be Mara would have worked with any legionaries, it would have been them.”

  “Too bad we didn’t get a chance,” Mari said, her eyes on Alain.

  He nodded back, watching as Mari went back to take over from Dav at the boiler.

  Alain settled in to watch the sides of the river roll past in the darkness.

  As light grew, he could make out more and more details. A single barge tied up alongside the river bank. A small town whose buildings and landing on the river the Terror passed quickly.

  Captain Banda, watching the landmarks alongside the river, sent Alain down long enough to wake Dav and Asha. Alain found Asha awake, watching over the sleeping Dav, told both the
y were nearing Palandur, then hurried back to his watch post.

  Dav paused at the bottom of the ladder. “Who do you want on the boiler when we go through Palandur?” he asked Banda. “Me or Mari?”

  “You’re both equally good,” Banda said. “The question is, who’s the better shot if we have to fight our way through?”

  Dave grimaced. “Mari. She’s also a whole lot better at coming up with plans if we face a fight. I’ll take over the boiler and send her up here.”

  “Thanks, Dav. Giving us maximum power is just as critical a job as the other.”

  Mari and Asha soon stood together at the bottom of the ladder, Mechanic jacket next to Mage robes. Alain could not recall when that sight had become familiar rather than shocking. Familiar among Mari’s followers, anyway. To the rest of the world, such a pairing would still seem inconceivable.

  “Our plan,” Banda said, “is to keep going as fast as possible until we’re past the city and any Imperial attempts to stop us there.”

  “Where do you think they’ll try to stop us?” Mari asked.

  “At the bridges and when we pass the Imperial military dockyard. As soon as they heard the news out of Marandur they would’ve started trying to string barges and ships between the bridge piers and tie them in place. If they’ve managed to get any such barriers in place, we’ll be stopped.”

  “No, we won’t,” Mari said.

  “You have Mages,” Alain reminded Banda.

  “That we do.” Banda’s voice regained a trace of hope.

  They were already racing past the scattered buildings outside Palandur. The walls of the city were visible ahead.

  “Hang on, everyone,” Banda said. “I’m going to keep moving fast no matter what as long as we can.”