by P. K. Lentz
“Captain, where are we?” Memnon asked. His voice was edged with fear. “Tell us, I beg of you!”
“She said she would tell us,” Ivar declared on Arixa’s behalf, “and she will. When it’s time.”
“It’s Hades, brother,” Andromache whispered to Memnon.
“Shh! Don’t even speak that name! Are you crazy?”
“We are alive,” Arixa assured them. “Come.”
With scant grace and frequent difficulty, she propelled herself along using evenly spaced handholds which had gone all but unnoticed until now when their purpose became clear. She led the party to an iris bearing another marking the meaning of which Zhi had taught her. Beyond it was a small, spherical chamber which was in fact a conveyance.
Due to the strange functioning of the ships artificial gravity, all levels of the Jirmaken god-ship could be reached by walking, without the need for elevators such as those in the polar base. However, the vastness of the Draugan made walking impractical. Hence the orb ferries, as Arixa had decided to name them.
Lining the sphere’s inner surface were twelve Jir-sized nooks with harnesses. After stashing their weapons in mesh pouches affixed to the wall, the party buckled in. Arixa didn’t know how to control the orb ferries yet, but intended to learn. For now, she commed their readiness to Zhi, who set the conveyance into motion from afar.
So many things these star-folk could do from afar. It was a useful ability, if a disquieting one.
A gentle hissing sound ensued, and the passengers felt mild pressure shove their bodies into the nooks as the orb ferry sped through conduits within the god-ship. It was barely a minute before they reached their destination, signaled by the ceasing of the hiss and renewed weightlessness.
They retrieved their weapons and exited to find Zhi hovering in the station gripping a handhold.
Relative to most of those exiting, Zhi hung sideways.
“Curse this world!” Memnon said. “No color! No up or down! No soil underfo—”
“Quiet, twig-dick!” Ivar reprimanded. He gave the Hellene a shove which had nothing like its intended effect, instead sending both men tumbling through open space, their eight limbs flailing until they encountered a solid surface. Memnon quickly found a handhold while Ivar landed on his feet on the ceiling and sprang floorward, cartwheeling to avoid landing on his head. After a final bounce, he found a grip and stabilized.
The Norther looked terrified for a moment, then joined several others in laughing, albeit dryly.
“Fine,” Ivar said. “Maybe twig-dick has a point. But we’ll have soil under us again soon enough, right, Arixa?”
As much as it pained her to do so, Arixa ignored her fiercest defender yet again.
“Come,” she said to all.
As they got underway, with Zhi in the lead, Dr. Fizzbik commed Arixa and said in a low voice, “I could tell them if you’d like.”
“Do it and I’ll make myself that blanket.”
“I thought you needed me.”
“I don’t need your fur. I’ll shave you.”
Her seemingly one-sided mutterings to the dog-man earned Arixa a strange look or two, but no one asked her to repeat herself.
* * *
Zhi guided them a short way to a gate-like door, which parted. The party sailed through the opening into the vastest space they had yet seen aboard the god-ship, so vast that its far wall could not be seen. Nor were a floor or ceiling visible, for that matter.
Yet the space was not empty. What presented itself to the small humans hovering atop a metal ledge was akin to an immense canyon within which were suspended row upon row of identical metal pods shaped something like acorns.
Had these been acorns, the oak from which they’d fallen would have to be the height of a mountain.
And of course, they were not acorns. That was only an idea in the mind of a simple nomad struggling to make sense of sights otherwise incomprehensible.
Zhi pushed off and traversed a short open space before grabbing a handhold and coming to rest near one of the nearest pods. With her hovering near it, its size became more evident. It was about as wide as Zhi was tall.
Arixa copied Zhi’s path. The rest followed with varying degrees of hesitation.
“Move carefully,” Zhi said. “You could drift quite far in here. It would be a pain to retrieve you.”
Controls glowed dimly on the tops of the acorn-pods. At least, it struck Arixa as the top. As Memnon had lamented, up and down had obscure meanings in this environment.
Zhi touched the controls of the pod she clung to, causing some lit symbols to change. The pod made a whirring sound. A large iris opened.
Down inside the pod, suspended in a transparent liquid, curled in fetal positions within four separate compartments, were four naked humans, three male and one female. They were clean and lacked hair.
“Are these...?” Andromache began but failed to finish.
Unlike the other Earth-born present, Arixa had known what to expect. Even that did not prepare her. Scythians stared dumbstruck, then gasped and whispered words of disbelief upon grasping the full implication of the sight before them.
“Is every container full?” It was Brother Phoris who asked this in terror and awe.
“No,” Zhi answered solemnly. “Many are. But not all contain humans. According to its manifest, the Draugan visited five cities before Luoyang, and before that, the homeworlds of three other Lesser Races.”
“Hello!” Ivar called into the container. He asked Zhi, “Can they be woken?”
Arixa said, “Once other matters are tended to and we have a plan for it, we will wake them all.”
“How many?” This question from Andromache.
“Just over eighty-three thousand sentient individuals,” Zhi answered with information gleaned from her access to some nebulous thing called the god-ship’s ‘systems.’ “Including sixteen thousand humans.”
Ivar whistled, a tiny sound in the vast space. “I’m not good with numbers, but I think that means we’re outnumbered.”
“No,” Arixa swiftly corrected. “We four so-called Lesser Races are one, victims of the same oppression.” She gazed out at the endless ranks of containers, seeing them as ranks of another nature. “We won a victory today, but it’s small compared to what remains.”
She shut eyes that stung against the enormity of this new place, this universe. Its weight crushed the breath from her body. Even in this cavernous chamber, the metal walls of the god-ship closed in and imprisoned her. In her mind’s eye, she sat astride Turagetes as he galloped over waves of steppe-grass, the biting wind of Scythia chilling face and arms.
Would she ever feel that freedom again? Would any of them?
“Arixa,” Ivar called from behind her. “What do you mean, small victory? One more like this and there’s none of us left.”
She had made sure her back was to them, lest they see what they could not be allowed to. Weakness. Tears.
She swallowed with difficulty and made her voice strong. “Zhi, please take them to where they’re needed. Am I able to address the whole ship from here?”
Zhi caused the iris of the pod to reseal over its human contents. “Just tell me when.”
“Arixa, you’re worrying me,” Ivar said. “You can—”
“I need a moment to collect my thoughts,” she said sternly without facing him. “That’s all. Please go. I’ll speak to you very soon.”
Pushing evenly against the metal acorn, Arixa propelled herself down the line of identical pods away from the Dawn. After a while, she glanced back to find the others had gone and halted her forward motion.
She hung suspended, alone and infinitesimal in a still and dark nightmare-ocean bounded by metal shores. Her choices had driven her to this unhappy place, but there had been no choice. Vax had put it better than she could. Had it been any other human that day to encounter Fizzbik, everything would have been different.
But it had been Arixa, and she could be no one but herself
. No matter the cost—and the cost had been dear—she could only be Arixa. The choices which had led her here were inscribed on her very flesh and bone and had been all her life.
Very soon, she would have to explain her choices to those who had willingly placed their lives and fates in her hands, tell them that it could be no other way. Fate and Arixa had demanded of the Dawn the deaths of many, and from the survivors: suffering, misery, loneliness. A new Bleak Sea awaited, so much vaster and bleaker than the one the Dawn knew.
We would follow you off the edge of the earth, Tomiris had said not long ago.
Drifting weightless in the dark sea, the passage of time forgotten as visions of steppes filled the backs of shut eyes, Arixa crafted the words she must speak to those who yet lived and whose fate was bleak.
After some time, she told Zhi she was ready. It was a lie, really. She would never be ready to speak these words. But she did, in the Scythian tongue, of course, except for those terms which had no Earthly meaning.
“My Dawn,” she began, and her voice traveled through every vein and sinew of the god-ship. “My brave, beautiful Dawn. We’ve paid a dear price this day. More than two hundred of us died on this ship. I grieve with you. Every one one of them was precious to me. I would give my own life two hundred times over to spare theirs. But that isn’t what the gods had in store for me. Or for you. We were set on a different path.
“Someone told me of late that the duty in life of a man or woman is to choose good over evil. Today we did good. We saved not just one city, but six others that this ship would have devastated. Before that, we saved Scythia itself. Those two hundred lives, and the blood we all shed, paid for the lives of many thousands.
“Most of those we saved are not our kin as we understand it. Yet we share a bond with them. You who ride with the Dawn are of different tribes and different skins, yet you would never call one another stranger. Not even cousin. Even if one man’s skin and hair are sun-bright while yours are like the night, he is your brother.
“Look upon the creatures we battled today and then look upon the Han—or the Goths or Khazars or Hellenes. Who is your brother? Who is your sister?
“The monsters in this ship came to our homes, as they have come many times in the past, to deal death and steal freedom. They do it for the same reason that we would cage a bear or clip the falcon’s wings. They do it out of fear. They fear we might become their equals. Or their betters. The toll that the Jir have taken on our world is beyond measure. The toll they would continue to take is worse. Today we have proven that they can be beaten. They can be stopped.
“Sadly, we have not stopped them. Our victory here, as much as it cost us, is not nearly enough. I know not how many cruisers like this the Jir possess. I know not the size of their armies. But I know that what we have seen today represents only a fraction of their strength. The Jir don’t even consider the duty of devastating cities to be a task fit for their finest warriors. They possess better fighters than the ones we faced, and better ones will come. For us to declare victory today and return home is to sit and await death.
“You are no fools. You already know what it is I ask of you. More sacrifice, more hardship, more pain. But how can I even ask this after the losses we’ve endured? More of us are dead than alive, and if this was but a small victory, what will be the cost of a great one? I don’t know the answer to that. I have much to learn.
“I do know that the Dawn, as we knew it, is no more. It grieves me to say that, but it’s true. Yet I chose the name of my war band well all those years ago. With the passing of one day’s dawn, a new one follows, and such will it be with us. The Dawn of Scythia was a war band a few hundred strong. The new Dawn shall be a rebellion of such size and power as to dwarf any horde ever assembled on Earth. This very ship carries its first recruits, sleeping, waiting to be awakened and shown the way. Not all will join. Not all men and women are warriors by birth or inclination. But we will find and recruit those who do wish to fight, and the rest we will do our best to deliver to some place of safety.
“Many of their faces will not look like yours. They will belong to humans born of different lands. Others will be born of different worlds. Some might look as monsters to us. But so long as they do us no harm and count the Jir as enemies, they will be our brothers and sisters.
“But you... you few, my darlings who can hear me now speaking in the divine tongue of my homeland... you will forever be my first and dearest family. You are my limbs and my soul. I would not trade a thousand warriors of other worlds for the ninety of you. Though I may count any who wish to stand with me as an ally, even brother or sister, the heart that the Jir will seek to rip from my chest shall forever be Scythian.
“And try they will. I’ll make sure of it. There can be no nobler cause, in my view, than to punish the Jir for the harm they have done not just to Earth but to countless worlds. Perhaps the only cause nobler is to end their rule entirely. With you at my side, an avenging horde at our backs and our golden banner above, we will do both. The Jir will be made to pay, and pay, and pay, until the day that Devastation finally rains down on their homeworld. This I swear by my Scythian blood.”
Following this pronouncement, Arixa had to pause to unclench her jaw.
Now. It was time. The time for truth.
“My beloved Dawn,” she began anew. “You began this day by boarding a metal ship in the sky. The world changed, and you conquered it, as I knew you could. Then, a short time ago, your world transformed again into something even stranger. Suddenly up is down, shadows move on their own, and all colors are blue. The truth is that we have entered another realm. Star-folk call it the subverse, or for clear reasons, simply the Blue. I don’t understand its nature myself, but I know it is a realm of transition. You may think of it as a sea which one can cross between two points on a shore, trading a winding overland journey for a more direct one.”
Drawing nervous breath, Arixa confessed to those she loved the momentous secret which they may rightly consider a betrayal.
“Yes,” she said, “we have begun a journey. Already Earth is far behind us. I did not offer you a choice to leave or stay. I took this decision not only because I needed you by my side but also because haste is essential. Our present destination is a Jir base called a Tether. It is one of many which are to the subverse what lighthouses are to a sea, I’m told, but more than that. These Tethers make the subverse navigable. If one is destroyed, the travel times required in its region of space drastically increase. Instead of moons or seasons, the duration of a journey might be measured in years.
“If we succeed in destroying this particular Tether, the time required for the Jir Pentarchy’s ships to reach Earth would increase to more than four years. Earth would be safe from retaliation for that long.
“But that safety comes with a price. When I spoke to you of sacrifice to come, I didn’t only mean unpleasant conditions and the risk of death in battle. You’re used to those. There is another sacrifice required of us in this venture. When this Tether is destroyed, Earth will not only become a four-year journey for our enemy. It will be four years away for us, too. A minimum of four, since I will not lie: I don’t intend to begin the return journey immediately.
“I am truly sorry for taking you from your homes, from Scythia, from all you have known. It makes my heart wither to think of all the things I will miss. I know it’s the same for every one of you. I regret the necessity of this choice, but it could be no other way. In truth, it was the gods who chose. It is simply our fate to soar across this new Bleak Sea without knowing what awaits us on its far shore.
“The Jir name for this ship was Draugan, but since it may be our home for quite some time, I now give it a new name: the Sagaris, for the cavalry ax that is a symbol of Scythia.
“If any among you cannot forgive me, I understand. It will crush me, but I will understand. I...”
She stopped, pressed her eyes shut tight and muted her comm lest a sob slip out and be heard by all.
/> She could only be Arixa, and Arixa must always be strong, never weak.
After a deep breath, she finished, “I believe in you, my Dawn. I love you. I am nothing without you. Arixa out.”
* * *
At the conclusion of her speech, Arixa felt spent. The augmentation made her tire less easily, yet she felt as though she could sleep for days.
She managed not to shed tears. She was too tired to cry.
More words came to her, things she should have said, but she resisted the urge to add them. She had done well, she thought. If they could not forgive her, it would not be because of what she had or hadn’t said. It would be because she had taken from her warriors far more than any Captain had the right to take.
For a long while, Arixa floated among the metal pods, collecting herself and longing to rest her head on a mat under a tent of felt under the skies of Scythia and sleep the sleep of the weary nomad.
But that was not to be, perhaps never to be again.
Eventually she propelled herself to the exit and down the empty, silent, blue-tinged corridors. She commed Zhi to have an orb ferry carry her to the bridge.
Droplets of dark blood and many Jir corpses gently drifted in the corridors near the bridge. The bodies of the Dawn’s dead had mostly been collected.
What would be done with them, Arixa had put off deciding. They could hardly have a proper burial, not anytime soon.
She found guards posted outside the bridge door. Ivar was one. When catching sight of Arixa, it was rare that the Norther didn’t smile. This time, he did not. Nor did any of the three Scythians around him. They gave no greetings. Their looks were grave.
The coldness, especially from Ivar, froze Arixa’s heart more deeply than the snowfields of Svialand.
The Norther held Arixa’s gaze through the blue-tinged air as she neared. Close to the bridge iris, she arrested her motion on a handhold. The once green, now blue-rimmed doorway opened. Arixa took her eyes from Ivar’s and pushed herself through the opening.