In Thunder Forged

by Ari Marmell

  His hand clasped hers: an anchor, a reminder of everything she fought for. His smile was no longer sad.

  Sergeant Benwynne Bracewell hefted her carbine, called out her final orders, and opened fire.

  “. . . delighted you made it back safely . . .”

  Dignity stood at attention, focused on the Golden Cygnus hanging behind the commander adept’s shoulder. She scarcely saw him at all, or the desk at which he sat.

  “. . . remarkable service for your nation, and possibly saved the entire war effort . . .”

  She didn’t want to be here. She was exhausted, utterly wiped out from the frenzied and often terrifying race for home.

  “. . . owes you a great debt . . .”

  She’d already made her report to the CRS via Colonel Mathis, who’d been waiting on Corvis’s docks when she stepped off the boat, limp and battered. She’d told him everything, leaving out not one detail. She’d turned over the documents without delay or preamble. (The genuine ones, at any rate. The fakes . . . One never knew when something like that might come in handy, did one?) Everything since then had been repetition or ceremony, even when Commander Nemo himself had arrived to congratulate her.

  (Well, to take possession of the formula, no doubt; congratulating her was, at best, a secondary priority.)

  Now, all she wanted was the chance to sleep for about three weeks, a hot meal that rivaled her own body in weight, and—just maybe—a few last answers.

  The officer and inventor seemed, finally, to recognize that his speechifying was falling on deaf, or at least unappreciative, ears. “What’s on your mind, Lieutenant?”

  Dignity finally forced herself to pay attention. “Sir, nobody’s told me how anything worked out.” Then, at the befuddlement that tweaked his moustache, “I don’t mean the documents. I mean the others.”

  “Ah.”

  “Baron Halcourt? Lieutenant Laddermore? Did they make it out?”

  Nemo nodded. “Indeed they did. Our Ordic friend was as good as his word. Laddermore is, in fact, on her way to Corvis as we speak. And it’s actually Captain Laddermore now. Or it will be, once she arrives and we can make it formal.”

  That, at least, was some of the load off her shoulders. “Glad to hear it, sir. She’s more than earned it.” Any relief she felt, however, didn’t last long. “And Bracewell’s squad, sir? Any word at all?”

  “Most of our lines of communication to the region were severed when Riversmet fell. No, we haven’t heard anything.

  “But, Underhurst . . . I think you know as well as I do that we’d have heard nothing anyway.”

  Dignity felt a sudden, powerful need to study the threadbare carpet at the foot of the desk.

  “You’re here because of their bravery,” he reminded her. “Khador didn’t acquire the formula—our greatest weapons haven’t been rendered useless—because of their sacrifice.”

  “Somehow, it doesn’t feel like enough, sir.”

  When Nemo answered, the formal, iron-spined, overbearing officer spoke as gently as she’d ever heard him. “It never does, Underhurst. It truly never does.”

  “Is this necessary?”

  “Not at all,” the stooped, thickly bearded physician replied. “If you wish for the pain to return, that is entirely your prerogative.”

  Vorona’s snarl would have crowned her the alpha of any wolf pack, but she took the mug of bitter muck and choked it down. All her protestations aside, she eagerly awaited the concoction’s numbing effects. Some days, it was all that made her leg or her ribs bearable.

  The journey from Llael to Khador had passed in a fever dream of agony and infection—the most horrific experience in her life, made marginally more tolerable by the fact that she could remember only a fraction of it.

  The first few days, once she’d finally reached a surgery with the necessary physicians and equipment to tend her injuries, were almost as bad. Not only was survival a hit-or-miss proposition, but it might well have been the less attractive option.

  It was weeks, now, since her leg had been sewn up, the many pellets of shot dug from her flesh. The surgeons told her, again and again, how astonishing her progress had been. Vorona, herself, felt no surprise at all; of course she was stronger than this. She had a ways to go, yet, but she knew—she knew—she would manage it, and more.

  She had to. For Khador, too much was at stake for her to fail.

  Only when she’d awakened and proved so resilient, when her recovery had progressed a good ways, had anyone bothered to inform her of all that had transpired. Garland’s recovery of the documents was a canker on her soul, but that wasn’t the worst of it.

  No, her ever burning, searing hatred was reserved for one Oswinne Muir, and the nation of Ord.

  Everyone believed that the Cygnaran baron had somehow escaped Leryn almost a week after Vorona was injured, a week after the playwright had led his “cultural delegation” across the fields of battle and back home. But Vorona, Vorona knew better. She’d been in Leryn; had eyes throughout the city; spent long days watching Surros Manor.

  And there was no. Godsdamn. Way! that Halcourt and his household of imbeciles had come up with a viable escape plan and snuck from the city unaided. Nor was it remotely likely that Cygnar had succeeded in inserting yet another team of operatives into Leryn so soon.

  Which meant the baron and his sycophants had departed earlier than the evidence suggested. And so far as Vorona could see, that allowed for only a single possibility.

  The pain held at bay by her fury as much as by the elixir, she forced herself up, stepped carefully across the room to stand beside a hardwood table. Atop it, a basin of water, a bowl of fruit, and various toiletries. She leaned on the wood, and fumed.

  So, Ord conspired with the enemy while hiding behind their neutrality? That worthless, rodent of a nation, crouched—as it should be—at Khador’s feet? Oh, they would learn the price of deception, would come to envy the fate of Llael!

  Not yet, no. Vorona knew the ways of politics, of diplomacy. Her theories alone wouldn’t convince the high command to move, nor was she prepared to risk an international incident on a hunch, no matter how certain.

  But she could turn Section Three—and perhaps the Prizak Chancellery, if she spoke convincingly enough—to uncovering the truth. And then, when she had her proof . . .

  “Doctor Dvoynev, kindly fetch my coat. I believe I’m up to paying Kommandant Kosorokov a visit. We have much to speak of.”

  “Oh, certainly.”

  The voice was far too close behind her, and very definitely not the doctor’s.

  Even wounded, slowed by the drug, Vorona lashed back with a high elbow that should have crushed cartilage, cracked bone. Instead, she felt a hand slap against her arm, deflecting the attack—at the same instant a lance of fire pierced her side.

  She felt herself spasm, the air flood from her lungs in a silent scream, her bladder release. Her head rebounded from the table’s edge as she fell, and she recognized a peculiar sensation—a strange pressure in the midst of the pain—as a length of steel sliding out of her right kidney.

  Flopping very much like a trout smacked from its upstream leap by a hungry grizzly, she flipped herself over to stare into the face of her murderer.

  “That . . .” She could no longer tell if she was actually speaking, or if her lips moved in silence. “That’s not . . .”

  “Not possible?” The man placed the knife that had killed her beside the corpse that had once been Doctor Dvoynev. She recognized the blade that had slain the doctor as one of her own.

  Probably hid a pouch of Cygnaran gold swans somewhere on the body, just for good measure. It’s what she’d have done . . .

  Her assassin carefully wiped the blood from his hand and then stroked his neatly trimmed goatee. “I shouldn’t be here? This place is too secure?” He tsked his tongue a few times. “Did you imagine his Majesty recruited me solely for my intricate storytelling and witty dialogue? Getting in wasn’t that difficult. Getting out
ought to be child’s play.

  “Oof. ‘Child’s play’? Such a cliché. I really need to come up with a more original line when I file the report on all this.”

  “Why are . . . in Khador . . . ?”

  He knelt, inches out of reach—just in case she had one last strike left in her. “We’re not at war, remember? One of my troupes is performing An Orgoth Goes a’Courting over in Volningrad. I figured I’d make a brief detour to scenic Rorschik. Should be back before anyone knows I’m not just snoring off a wild night in a private room somewhere.”

  Now he did hunch inward, his face so near her own. “Sounds like I almost waited too long to come calling. Did you really think we wouldn’t suspect your suspicions? That we could afford to let you live with them?”

  “You . . . You can’t hide . . . hide what you’ve done from us . . . forever.”

  “My dear Vorona . . .” said Oswinne Muir, “I think you’ll find that we can. Or rather, I suppose, you won’t. Dead, and all that.”

  Something wet gurgled in her throat as she tried to retort, and then, blessedly, the pain began to fade.

  Alas, the heat of her rage, and the light of the world around her, went with it.

  Mold clung to the walls in sheets, accumulated in rivulets between the bricks. The room itself was sick, the mucus ever-flowing. The straw that was the chamber’s carpet sagged in spots, drenched by those horrific droplets; poked and stabbed in others, dried and stiffened by the perpetual cold.

  He wore rags, and they did nothing to keep the chill from his skin. His only illumination was a single lamp burning beyond the tiny window in the iron-banded door, and it was never enough for his light-starved vision. Filth, the room’s and his own both, coated him in layers. The grime actually kept him warmer than the rags did.

  How long had he been here? Where was here? He’d no way of knowing, and he doubted the guards would tell him even if he were to give them the satisfaction of asking. Weeks might have passed in his pain-drenched fugue; more weeks, perhaps even months, since he came out of it. And in all that time, he had seen nothing but the walls of the cell, no one but the guards who occasionally brought him murky water and gristly gruel. They hadn’t even bothered to interrogate him yet.

  And why should they rush? What was the hurry? He looked to his left wrist, chafing beneath the manacle that bound him to the wall. He looked to his right wrist—or rather, where it should have been. Old, encrusted bandages marked off the length of his arm, sheered away midpoint between wrist and elbow by the roaring chain-sword of a Khadoran Man-O-War. His hip throbbed, where he had caught the edge of a brutal battle-axe. Clearly, he was going nowhere. Clearly, he was no threat.

  They were right, of course. He was no threat. Not today. Not now.

  But maybe, just maybe, tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the next.

  They had taken his freedom. They had taken his hand.

  They hadn’t taken away who he was.

  The guards carried guns. And one day, he would remind them that where he commanded, guns obeyed.

  Through the pain, through the hunger, through the filth, through the despair, Atherton Gaust stared at the door to his cell, and grinned.

  The Kingdom of Cygnar has no lack of gold, iron, timber, food, gems, rock quarries, or any other resource coveted by a modern nation. It is a state boasting many great minds, which have pushed advances in alchemy and mechanika to new heights, giving the nation a technological edge over its neighbors. Its warjacks boast inventive armaments that harness the power of electricity, and they bow to the will of their warcasters, who are trained at one of the two finest military academies in all the Iron Kingdoms.

  From the time of the Corvis Treaties, Cygnar has bordered each of the kingdoms those treaties created: Ord to the northwest, Khador on the far side of the Thornwood Forest, and Llael to the northeast. The Bloodstone Marches made up its eastern border until the Cygnaran Civil War, which gave rise to the Protectorate of Menoth. Khador’s invasion of Llael has put Cygnar on the offensive, as it struggles to help its northern ally stave off the Khadoran juggernaut. The loss of the Thornwood and the Black River would separate Llael from Cygnar and diminish hopes for the smaller kingdom to regain its autonomy.

  Cygnar endured political upheaval in recent times when Leto Raelthorne, “the Younger,” ousted his tyrannical brother King Vinter IV, “the Elder.” The deposed king managed to escape before being put on trial for his crimes. Nearly a decade later, he reappeared from the Bloodstone Marches with strange allies from the far reaches of eastern Immoren. Since his return, the former king has created constant peril on Cygnar’s eastern border, even attempting to seize Corvis in 603 AR. While it has never been easy to wear the Cygnaran crown, King Leto has borne more burdens than most sovereigns have to bear, yet there persists a growing divide within the nation between those who support their king and those who are discontented by the privations of interminable warfare…and beginning to conspire to arrange for a different sovereign to occupy the throne.

  The people of Khador are tough, irascible, weathered, and proud. They learned well from the ancient days, when man endured through strength of mind and body, and see no reason to court folly and weakness now. The north keeps deep and ancient customs derived from a time when tribal horselords roamed its vast forests and mountains and ruled the Khardic Empire supported by priests of the ancient god Menoth.

  To better understand these hard-hearted northerners, consider that much of Khador is frozen five months out of the year. Strong winds snap trees in half, and sudden snows sweep in so fast that entire wagon trains can vanish in mere seconds. Only a harsh people could hope to survive in such harsh environs. Khador’s military personifies this strength, with huge warjacks thundering along next to indomitable men and women armed to the teeth with axes and guns. Over the last century enlightened leaders have done much to modernize the Khadoran military, and while its mechaniks prefer simplicity and rugged design over needless complication, their engineering and mechanika have nonetheless become very nearly the equal of Cygnar’s, and the soldiers themselves are often superior.

  Morrowans form the majority in Khador, as they do in Cygnar, Llael, and Ord, but not an overwhelming one, as the Menite faith is stronger in the north than anywhere outside the Protectorate. Regardless of personal faith, Khadorans love their sovereign above all. They are a patriotic people who have always chafed at the compromises made in the Corvis Treaties, for they lionize the days of the old Khardic Empire and seek every opportunity to restore its glory. Every so often, as is currently the case, a new sovereign ascends the throne and declares the time ripe to reclaim lands that are rightfully Khadoran. Even the Kossite and Skirov tribes no longer care to remember that they once stood as independent kingdoms. Now all Khadorans long for the rebirth of their empire and are willing to put aside personal comforts—or even sacrifice their lives, if necessary—to achieve this goal.

  For years historians and politicians both have pretended the Protectorate of Menoth was not a nation of its own because the agreements that ended the Cygnaran Civil War left it beholden to Cygnar’s crown. Over time those obligations proved to be a farce, however, and while the Protectorate remains technically vassal to Cygnar at the outbreak of war in Llael, what is clear to all is that it now stands as the youngest of the Iron Kingdoms.

  Caspia was divided in the aftermath of the Cygnaran Civil War. The larger, western portion of the city remained part of Cygnar, while the eastern portion across the Black River became Sul, capital of the Protectorate. This placed bitter enemies in close proximity, with only towering walls and a rushing river between their heavily armed garrisons. The rest of the Protectorate stretches east and southeast into an arid and resource-poor region adjacent to the dangerous Bloodstone Marches.

  Sul-Menites practice a strict form of worship and believe their only chance of evading endless torment in the afterlife is obedience to the True Law. Priests and scrutators instill a terror of the clergy in the population, teaching
the people to obey without question and to expect the lash for expressing the slightest doubt. Perhaps because of these harsh measures, the Menite faith has been in slow decline for many centuries, steadily losing ground to the (moderately) more benevolent message of the Church of Morrow.

  The recent appearance of the so-called “Harbinger of Menoth” has provided the spark the Menites have long sought to revitalize their faith. This young woman emerged from an obscure town on the fringes of the Protectorate and displayed clear signs of miraculous contact with the divine, including the fact that her feet refuse to touch the unclean earth. It is said she sometimes communes directly with Menoth, and can even speak his words. Witnessing her visage has prompted thousands of foreigner Menites to immediately convert to her cause, pull up their roots, and relocate to the Protectorate.

  The Scharde Islands lurk in the pirate-infested waters past the Broken Coast of western Cygnar. The largest isle hosts the capital of the nightmare empire of Cryx. The island’s jagged, foreboding coastline hints at the realm’s true nature—a land even more grim and treacherous than it appears. Its vicious forests and mountains are home to blighted trollkin, twisted men, and various warped half-breeds. These peoples may resemble races of the mainland, but the cruel culture of the island and the necromantic energies pervading the kingdom have transformed them into something malicious and vile.

  The inhabitants of this land live under the shadow of their ruler, Lord Toruk the Dragonfather—the first dragon. Those who obey his governing lich lords and the priests of his cult deem him a god. Toruk is the source of the malignance that radiates from this island as a palpable energy, the blight that affects every plant and animal in his kingdom. A master of undeath, he has gifted his chosen vassals with unnatural immortality as the undead, which walk alongside the living in the bleak cities of his empire.