Knight of Stars

by Tom Lloyd

  Felt more than seen, a great burst of night magic flew up from the courtyard floor. The tysarn simply folded up and dropped, shaking the ground with the impact. As Lynx stared in astonishment, more tysarn began to fall, the small insect-hunters pattering down like hailstones from the sky. A few larger beasts fell too, one ripping a section of the canopy away, others bouncing or slithering off those remaining.

  One hand over his head to protect against the falling reptiles, Lynx looked around. The screams were mostly coming from outside, the shouts from inside the perimeter. It seemed the Mastrunners were having the harder time of whatever this was.

  ‘Didn’t Teshen say they were no threat?’

  ‘Look at the size of it!’ Toil exclaimed, pointing. ‘We’re all lunch to something that big. Shattered gods, how does it even fly?’

  She had a point, Lynx realised. The tysarn was far bigger than the ones they’d seen in the sky before, more than double their length. This one’s body was five yards long, its neck adding a few more. Claws the size of daggers tipped the end of each winged limb, the larger fore pair spanning fifteen yards he guessed.

  ‘Teshen!’ Toil yelled. ‘You there?’

  The shaven-headed man turned, crouching behind the wall like the rest of his command. ‘Yeah!’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Fucked if I know!’ was his reply. ‘Never seen one this big fly. Mostly they swim, take you off the shore but this … fuck!’

  Lynx checked his arm. The bleeding didn’t seem bad, the wound more of a discomfort than anything. That done, he scrabbled for his mage-gun and reloaded it. The Mastrunners seemed to have broken off, but there was a greater threat now.

  ‘This may not be the time,’ Lynx started, ‘but when weird shit happens, it’s usually our fault.’

  Toil looked round. ‘You think we caused this?’

  ‘It’s the sort o’ thing we do.’

  ‘Stick to making sure—’ she broke off as a mid-sized tysarn, a couple of yards across, swooped and Toil was forced to duck. Lynx snapped off a shot but missed and the tysarn swept off into the night.

  ‘Shit!’ Toil yelled. ‘They’ve gone mad!’

  ‘Time to hide?’ Lynx suggested.

  ‘And leave the wall open?’

  Lynx gestured above them. Dark shapes streamed through the sky, coiling above the lodging house or breaking off to dart away across the district. There was gunfire and voices coming from all parts, Lynx realised. He didn’t bother poking his head above the parapet. The sound was enough to tell him this wasn’t restricted to the lodging house – even if some of the tysarn seemed to be circling it like vultures.

  ‘Is anyone coming through this?’

  ‘Dunno – want to take that risk?’

  Lynx crawled to the outer wall and sat with his back against it. He was well below the parapet and had his gun pointing across the open space to the walkway beyond, where other Cards were doing something similar.

  ‘Pretty exposed out here,’ he commented, aiming his mage-gun.

  A big tysarn appeared in the gap between towers, but then broke off and wheeled in the direction of the Shard’s Rest. Lynx thought for a moment that he’d somehow scared it off, then a booming detonation erupted from the opposite side. There sat Reft, white skin faintly glowing in the light of the skyriver. The dark path of an earther roared over Lynx’s head and struck something with a terrific impact. Lynx felt the hammer blow shudder through the air then a large body slammed into the stone on the other side of the parapet.

  The whole building trembled, jolting Suth so hard she half-slipped between support posts. She only just grabbed one in time to stop herself falling into the courtyard. Toil hauled her back while Lynx checked around to see whether they’d lost anyone.

  ‘Smoke did us a favour,’ he said. ‘We were all on our bloody knees when the tysarn came!’

  ‘Yeah, when there was magic all around this place,’ Toil said. By the tone of her voice Lynx could tell she was thinking furiously, but he left her to it and resumed his watch for monsters.

  ‘So what now? We just sit here?’

  Toil crawled over to him with Suth not far behind and the two women took similar positions, backs to the low wall and legs outstretched.

  ‘I … Deepest black, damned if I know.’

  ‘You’re the one comfortable around swarms of monsters.’

  ‘Fuckers don’t fly underground.’

  ‘How’s it different?’

  Toil shrugged. ‘Something stirred this lot up,’ she reasoned. ‘This ain’t normal or no one would live here. A pack of maspids won’t stop hunting you till they’re all dead, that’s how Lady Dark plays.’

  ‘Maspids aren’t drawn by magic, are they?’

  ‘No,’ she admitted. Toil flopped on to her belly and crawled to the edge of the walkway. ‘Hey, Sitain, you dead?’

  There was a long pause before an irate voice replied, ‘No, she ain’t. Nor am I.’

  ‘That you, Anatin?’

  ‘Yup. Anyone else notice a fucking great dragon fall on me or did Varain spike my drink?’

  ‘We saw it. Ah, Sitain, is it just sleeping then?’

  Anatin growled. ‘She says yes. Hit her head so she’s a bit wobbly. As for the dragon, gimme a minute.’

  Lynx and the others joined Toil in time to see Anatin start to clamber over the scarred rubbery membrane of the tysarn’s wing. He drew his mage-pistol and aimed it at the creature’s head before giving it an experimental kick. Nothing happened so Anatin got a bit closer. The head was a yard and a half long, wedge-shaped with a long mouth of jagged teeth.

  Eye slits longer than a hand span curved around its head – whitish protective ridges above and below – allowing the tysarn to see forward like a raptor or both sides like a prey animal. Anatin put his foot on the beast’s head and fired an icer right into the open eye. The eyeball exploded in a gout of dark liquid, spattering up Anatin’s tunic. The tysarn spasmed momentarily then fell still.

  ‘Dead now,’ he announced, giving the tysarn a last kick for good measure. Before he could say anything more, gunshots rang out behind him.

  They all looked over to the high terrace at the far end where Lynx had been eating breakfast not so long ago. Payl and the rest of Sun had been defending that. The outside ground was more open there, providing a clear view of the Callais Sea and a killing ground for any attackers. He doubted if anyone had done more than take pot shots to keep the defenders spread thin, but now the terrace served as a space big enough for a tysarn to land.

  Its wings were half-furled, clawing at the mercenaries that scrambled under tables and hacked at anything within reach. Lynx put an icer into the tysarn’s flank, as did someone else from the far side. It screeched in pain, but didn’t let up its assault. The tysarn snatched up one man who couldn’t scramble clear in time and bit down. He howled as he was lifted high before Teshen got it with an earther.

  The shot broke its shoulder and half-tore the fore wing away, spraying gore across the terrace. A few more shots came from the beleaguered group, icers bursting wildly up as the tysarn flailed. The movement made it harder to aim at and a second earther flashed wide. The near miss made the creature thrash even more furiously and the injured man’s shrieks went up a notch. The rest of the suit were pressed up against the side walls, trying to keep clear, while the tysarn went berserk amid the wreckage of tables, chairs and the clusters of stepped troughs.

  Lynx tried to take aim, but the tysarn never stopped moving. He was about to give up and take a gamble when Toil put her hand on his shoulder and shouted. Lynx looked up and saw a pale shape streak in from the side, a hatchet in each hand. His mouth fell open at the sight of anyone charging the huge creature. It was double Reft’s height, but the Knight of Blood didn’t hesitate.

  With one hatchet he hooked on to the tysarn’s wing and pulled himself bodily up into the air, chopping down as the beast turned his way. As it snapped at him, he scored a long slash down its neck a
nd the hatchet taking his weight ripped down through its wing. Reft ducked and wrenched himself free, cutting at the tysarn’s leg as he rolled away. As it made to follow, Teshen appeared from the other side. He took the same approach, stabbing at whatever he could reach before running clear.

  Pulled both ways, the tysarn left itself open to Reft chopping a hatchet – in any other man’s hand a decent-sized axe – into its rear wing. The hatchet lodged and he abandoned it, scoring a hit on the ruined fore wing with his second. This time he planted his feet and hauled at the beast with all his incredible strength. Somehow Reft managed to pull the wounded tysarn slightly off balance, enough to give Teshen time to vault up the other side and stab one long knife into its other shoulder.

  The tysarn flailed with its remaining strength and knocked Teshen flying. The bald man was agile enough to roll with the blow but still he landed heavily and slammed into the inner railing, while Reft was hauled off his feet. Wounded on both sides the tysarn momentarily sat back on its haunches and Lynx took aim.

  Before he could fire, a trio of arrows slammed into the tysarn, right where he’d expect its heart to be, and at least one of them hurt it badly. It raised its head and gave a long ragged roar, weaker than earlier but Lynx ignored that. He let out a puff of breath and steadied himself before firing.

  The sparker caught it in the throat and enveloped its head in a crackling ball of sparks. For one long moment the tysarn juddered in the throes of agony then two icers tore in from Lynx’s right. Both struck home and punched its head back – catching the brain and leaving it to flop backwards over the terrace railing, dead at last.

  ‘Knights!’ roared Anatin from down in the courtyard. ‘Count your Cards and get everyone down here – fuck this fight. Only dead men’ll come over these walls tonight.’

  The Mercenary Deck didn’t need to be told twice. They grabbed their wounded and raced down to the safety of below.

  Chapter 30

  The night passed not exactly in peace, but in the close confines of those weathering a storm. The Cards kept watch for another attack throughout, even though such a thing would have been lunacy. The deep stuttered calls of the tysarn continued all night, the occasional shriek of their victims dwindling as the hours passed. Mercenaries occupied every one of the ground-floor rooms surrounding the courtyard. Much of these were stores and workrooms so it was little imposition, but they also barged into the private quarters of the extended Jathan family.

  The youngest Jathans had been both fascinated and terrified by the stranger foreigners from the outset, while the elders were all entirely incensed by the imposition. Lynx kept to the long, open-sided hall that occupied one flank of the lodging. It meant he had to watch a flock of smaller tysarn feast on the flesh of their larger kin, but small stone rooms filled with unwashed and bloodied bodies brought back unwelcome memories.

  The older Jathan ladies had hissed and grumbled at the feasting tysarn, clearly wanting to harvest some parts of the corpses for their own purposes. It was only when a larger one dropped down that they gave up. This tysarn was a yard in length, no great threat and oblivious of the levelled mage-guns as it ripped open some sort of egg-sack to feast on the contents. Seeing that, the old ladies gave up their efforts and sulkily retreated to their own rooms.

  The strangeness of the night meant that none of the Cards were even drunk by the time the sky started to lighten, despite a few mugs of beer emerging to slake the thirst of some. Only a handful managed to catch any sleep either. When the first glow of dawn began to illuminate the district, two dozen faces crammed at the narrow windows to get a proper look at the streets beyond.

  Lynx and Toil chose to venture up on to the walkway instead, Kas and Teshen close behind. Auferno was deserted and at last the cries of the tysarn faded. It looked almost peaceful after the violence of the night, strangely so to Lynx’s mind. With such violence normally came scattered, smashed bodies and a mass of scars from mage-cartridges, but not so in this city of few guns.

  ‘The young roost during the day,’ Teshen commented, pointing to the mountainous hellmouths at the heart of the lagoon. There were no majestic spiralling flocks now, just a smear of shadow against the lightening sky, pouring back inside. ‘Most of the rest will do the same after that I’m guessing.’

  ‘Where are the bodies?’ Lynx wondered as he looked out over the rail. ‘Have they all been eaten?’

  ‘The people? Yeah,’ Teshen confirmed. ‘The biggest ones will take a person whole, but three or four of the juveniles will make short work of a body too. Given how many tysarn were out there, I doubt there’ll be much to return to the sea.’

  ‘Movement,’ Kas said, reaching for her bow.

  She didn’t nock an arrow, however, as the group heading towards them were walking with a total disregard to their safety. Lynx had only been in the city a few days, but he recognised the bearing of a group of mages by now. As they came closer, Lynx picked out two figures within their number and let out a puff of relief. One small, pale and white-blond, the other tall dark and limping.

  ‘That’s a piece of good news,’ Toil commented, seeing the pair too. ‘The face on that women leading them, however …’

  Lynx had to agree. A sturdy black woman in a multi-coloured robe marched at the head of the group, fifteen in all he counted. The woman had the bearing of an empress, but not the sort who ruled with a gentle, benevolent touch. She wore the fixed expression of someone who was profoundly angry with the world in general or the Cards in particular, but wasn’t going to waste time indulging in yelling or abuse.

  ‘This’ll be fun for you,’ he muttered as Toil started back down the stair. ‘Good luck.’

  She cast him a baleful look and headed down while Lynx, Kas and Teshen sat on the walkway with their feet dangling over the edge, ready to watch. By the time the delegation had arrived at the barricaded front door, half of the Mercenary Deck had joined them. Llaith had already rolled a half-dozen smokes to greet the morning. He and Lynx puffed merrily away as the mages emerged into the courtyard.

  The sight of the tysarn’s corpse greeted them. Lynx could see the woman – the Shard he guessed, given her fancy colours and escort of taciturn mages – briefly consider the beast before dismissing it. Behind her, Lastani and Atieno lingered like chastised schoolchildren, but clearly no worse for the previous night’s drama.

  ‘What a mess,’ the Shard declared. ‘Foolishness and savagery for no good reason.’ She turned to Anatin and Toil. ‘Now, which of you is in charge here?’

  The pair exchanged looks and Anatin shrugged. ‘Angry people are your department,’ he said. ‘I just deal with the paying customers.’

  ‘To be fair, I’m often the one making them angry,’ Toil countered.

  Anatin nodded, forced to agree with her. Just before the Shard lost her patience entirely he stepped forward and offered an ostentatious bow.

  ‘Commander Anatin at your service, Mistress. Might I assume I am addressing her magnificence, the Shard? Chosen of Mages, Arbiter of Caldaire and voice of all wizardly wisdom?’

  She rolled her eyes, but Lynx could see the idiotic display of toadying certainly hadn’t hurt matters. ‘You missed a few titles,’ the Shard said at last. ‘But at least you realise my time isn’t to be wasted by a rabble of unwashed gunslingers.’

  ‘Certainly not, your magnificence. How may we be of service to you this day?’

  ‘By doing exactly what I say, when I say. This idiocy has gone far enough, it ends now. Assuming you do want to live to see another sunset?’

  Anatin bowed again. ‘Indeed, your munificence. Big game hunting’s something of a hobby and last night was so much fun, I want to try and beat my tally.’

  ‘Listen and obey then,’ the Shard said. ‘Tomorrow morning you will be leaving Caldaire. You may send a group out to gather what supplies you need and find a barge. They will be unarmed and escorted by one of my mages at all times. If anyone wanders off or misbehaves, they’ll die and five more of your n
umber will see the same fate.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ Toil asked.

  ‘You have work to do today – and tonight too. Mistress Ufre here has informed me about the work you performed for Guildmaster Tanimbor. I have allowed myself to be persuaded that you are sufficiently stupid and blithely ignorant enough to have meant none of this. That you took a job from a man without understanding the implications is just one thing you will receive the benefit of the doubt on.’

  ‘That’s us,’ Anatin piped up, jabbing a thumb up at the mercenaries watching from the walkway. ‘Look at the bastards. The ones grinning at you are the blithely ignorant, the ones still drinking are the sufficiently stupid.’

  The Shard did just that. Deern waved back, a wide grin on his face, and raised a mug of beer to claim both titles. Her expression soured.

  ‘For the sake of ending this conflict without further bloodshed,’ she continued after a pause, ‘I have taken much on faith and will not scrutinise matters further. However, that is contingent on you rectifying the balance in the city.’

  ‘Balance?’ Toil said. ‘Oh, I think I see where you’re going here. Fancy a few new tattoos do you?’

  The Shard shook her head. ‘Not I – I am an earth mage and Lastani tells me that seal is still closed.’

  ‘Does it really matter at this point?’

  She gave Toil a level look. ‘I’m the ruler of mages facing a new age of magic – and I’ve just said no to a huge increase in my own power. What do you think?’

  ‘Fair point. A few of your trusted comrades then?’

  ‘Just so. Today – tonight you may be too busy. Tysarn don’t feed off magic, but they are attracted to it. Normally this is no great problem, but the Riven Kingdom has been flooded with enough power to leave them drunk on the stuff. Then some towering fool decided to rile them up by turning on an ancient mechanism.’

  ‘Ah yes, about that. What did we do, exactly?’

  ‘You don’t even know?’ the Shard asked, eyebrows raised. ‘Have you at least worked out that you’re to blame for last night?’