Queen of the Struggle

by Nik Korpon

  We’re an arm’s length from the dome. If I reached out and touched it, my fingertips would probably sizzle.

  But I don’t reach out. I drop to my knees.

  The sudden change of balance throws her off, and she tumbles forward, skittering across the metal of the central dome. I scramble to my feet and grab the door, feeling my fingerprints melting smooth, then slam it closed and yank down the lever and lock it from the outside.

  In the small porthole window in the door, I can see her spin around, her eyes wide with surprise before shifting to anger, then fear. She slams her hands on the door impotently, her mouth screaming terrible things, but I can’t hear anything other than the fire spreading, the land being razed.

  She won’t burn alive in there – she’ll cook.

  “You made me believe you,” I scream at her. “You made me believe you were my friend, but you don’t care about any of us. We’re just kindling to you.” I doubt she can hear anything I’m saying, but I can’t stop screaming that over and over at her, until I start coughing and choking on smoke.

  Her palm slams against the window, fingers extended, like she’s trying to touch me. Tears roll down her cheeks, and I start to feel bad for her. I’m the monster for doing this.

  Then I remember what the dome that will be her tomb is meant for, and I don’t feel so bad. I turn around and hobble toward my truck. The air is cooler as I move away from the fire, my skin prickling with sweat.

  Still, under the crackling flames and rushing sound of wheat catching on, I swear I can hear her calling my name.

  27.

  HENRAEK

  I wake to the sound of my alarm, already prepared to take the boys to the freighter in the harbor, though I still don’t know what to tell them. Then I hear a second noise and realize it wasn’t my alarm: it was the sound of shattering glass.

  I scramble out of bed and into the living room. Outside the windows, shouts echo through the streets, followed by gunshots and screaming. A Ragjarøn soldier doubles over, pushing his hands against his stomach to staunch the bleeding, but it’s all for nothing as one of the villagers jumps toward him, bringing down a long lance through his back. The soldier coughs a splatter of blood then hits the street, face first. The man jams his foot against the soldier’s back and yanks on the lance. A spurt of blood shoots out, and he unleashes a war whoop and sprints after another soldier.

  It’s Nyväg. Members from other towns, ones who live here quietly. They’ve come to take out the Ragjarøn troops, to show Ødven that they won’t be cowed and they won’t bow before him, that they’ll die on their feet, not live on their knees.

  Watching that gets my blood flowing, my adrenaline spiking with that feeling of do-or-die, knowing that history will look kindly on those who would rather be forgotten than remembered for giving up and giving in.

  It also makes me think that I need to get the boys and get the hell out of here.

  A noise behind startles me. I spin around, hand cocked and ready to break someone’s nose, but there’s no one there. Another noise, and I realize it’s the clap of boards against skulls in the field beside our lodging, not a rebel who has discovered my duplicity. It surprises me that the noise hasn’t woken the boys.

  “Donael?” I call out. “Cobb?”

  No response.

  I call out to them again, heading toward their room. Each gunshot outside makes my heart beat faster.

  “Donael,” I yell as I slam into his door. “Boys.”

  The room is empty, his bed made, as if he’d never slept in it. I look in the closet, in Cobb’s room, in the bathroom, in the living room, in my room, knowing somehow that each place will be empty but needing to prove it to myself. And each time, I’m proven correct.

  I run outside, into the fray. It’s not a large battle, but more than I want to be in unarmed. A Ragjarøn soldier rushes toward me and I take two steps back. He continues on, readying himself to tackle a Nyväg fighter. By instinct, I yell, “Watch out!” just in time for the fighter to spin around, barbed-wire-wrapped board in hand, and unleash an uppercut swing against the soldier’s jaw. The soldier crumples on the street. The fighter looks at me, but I can’t get a read on his expression and hurry away before he has the chance to out me as a traitor or conscript me into fighting with him.

  I need to find my boys.

  I sprint up the street to the park where they played football and find only a few bodies lying speared or shot.

  I run to the docks and find only sand slowly giving way to the sea.

  I check three more places they play, then Magnus’s and Dyvik’s houses, but there’s nothing. Not my boys, not their boys, not even Lyxzä wielding a shotgun.

  Someone screams behind me, and I turn just in time to see the top of a Nyväg fighter’s head explode in a burst of red. I sprint back to the house, slamming the door behind me and locking it. I head back to Donael’s room and stand in the middle of all the order, everything in its right place. I know I yelled at them for not cleaning up, but they’ve never listened to me before so why would they start now?

  But Donael’s room, it doesn’t look cleaned up like it does when I threaten them during normal chores. It looks arranged, as if for a specific reason. Like someone would do when they don’t plan on returning.

  Slowly, as if I can will it into not being true if I take long enough to do it, I turn to look at the back of the door. Donael’s jacket is no longer there, nor is Cobb’s. The shelf beside it is empty as well. Their gloves, their hats, their boots, the goggles and balaclavas I got them from the general store to protect from the wind and snow and cold – everything’s gone.

  My knees give way and slam against the floor, weighed down by my heart and by knowing that this is all my fault.

  No.

  I slap myself in the face once, twice, three times.

  You stand up. You did not make it this far to give up. You did not find your boy by taking the easy way or stopping when things became hard. You fought for what you love, because that is what you are. A fighter.

  I grab my jacket and cold-weather gear, then shove my hunting knife in my waist band.

  I know where they are.

  I throw open the door and make a beeline down the street, walking through gunshots and bayonets and brandished knives. They won’t touch me. Anyone who comes near will meet a quick and violent end. The door to our house yawns open, but I don’t give a shit. I’m never coming back here again.

  I’m going to Skaö to get my boys back from Nyväg. With or without Ødven’s help, we’re going home. Where we belong.

  28.

  EMERÍANN

  Speeding back into the city, the scene is eerily familiar. It looks like the three bombings from Lachlan and his people have energized the citizens again. People fighting in the streets. Platoons of fatigued soldiers – Ragjarøn grey this time instead of Tathadann brown – swarming in to subdue crowds, dragging away those who resist. Part of me wonders if this is all Eitan’s future holds, if people here are only happy when they’re rioting and at war. If peace would actually be the worst thing for the city.

  But I think just as quickly that the citizens deserve to have that choice. To not be pawns in Brighid’s game.

  I ditch the truck on the side of the street. I’m never going to use it again, and it’s easier to navigate Amergin on foot. I keep my head low as I pass along the sidewalks, littered with trash and debris beneath a dull, grey sky. It’s a stark contrast to the open fields and muddy skies of the power system site, where you could pretend that the air was fresh and clean instead of heavy with the cloying scent of rotting garbage.

  At the openly advertised lagonael den on the corner, I turn right, a few blocks down from the bar where Lachlan practically lives. Though I hadn’t expected him to be able to help with the bombings, I’m all but dead if he doesn’t come through now. Once Ragjarøn hears about Brighid, they will search every alleyway and avenue of the city until they find me. And what’s left of the rebels are
already salivating at the thought of my head on a pike. The only people who don’t want to kill me are ordinary citizens, but they also wouldn’t kill someone to protect me.

  Which leaves me one choice: run.

  When I get to the bar, I glance around the street, checking for soldiers or insurgents. All I see is degenerates, Brigus, Amergi, and lagons. So, pretty much the usual. I open the door and duck inside.

  The bar looks the same as last time. I nod to the bartender, who pours a small drink and slides it to me.

  “For good luck,” he says.

  I snatch it and drink it down.

  He nods at the man sitting at the bar.

  “You’re Emeríann?” the man says.

  “I am. You’re with Lachlan?” He says he is. “I thought he was supposed to be here.”

  “It’s busy out there. He got caught up.” The man throws back the rest of his drink then nods toward a back door. “Ready?”

  I hook my thumb behind me, toward the street. “Aren’t we going that way?”

  “Only if you want someone to see you. Which means they track my car. Which leads them right to my colleagues. Which gets half the smugglers in Eitan marked for death.” He holds out his hands. “I’d suggest the alley where no eyes are prying.”

  My skin tingles. Something feels off about this. It could be that gasoline bourbon the bartender brews. It could be the whole vibe this neighborhood gives off. It could be that I’m about to smuggle myself into a foreign country thousands of miles away in a vain attempt to find my love who has no idea I’m coming and who might not still be alive. Or it could be that this man wants to kill me.

  But given how many people out on the street are actively hunting me, I don’t know that I have a choice.

  I nod to the man, follow him out the back.

  And as the door closes, I hear the bartender say Hořte v pekel. My skin prickles.

  The insurgent who planned the ambush. The one who blew off the back of his head in front of me. That’s who the bartender looks like. Now that I hear him say it, I realize they could be brothers.

  I’m about to say something when a man steps from the side of the alley with a metal pipe in his hand.

  Oh shit.

  I scan the alley quickly, looking for anything I can use against them. Then the man shoves me from behind just as the other rears back his pipe, ready to split my head open. I drop to the alley floor when he swings, the pipe whishing so hard and close to my head I can hear it pass through the air. But it misses me, and instead plants inside the face of the man who shoved me.

  He falls down like someone pulled the plug, his forehead clipping the back of my leg.

  The other man, shocked at missing, stands idle for a second. I come up on my knees, feeling the searing pain from the woman’s kick, the electric burn of Brighid wrenching my arms back, and punch as hard as I can. It’s not my best, but it connects square in the man’s crotch. He doubles over, sucking in wind, and the pipe clatters to the ground.

  I snatch the pipe and use it to push myself to my feet. The man is still writhing on the concrete, his face smeared with offal.

  I swing the pipe three times and his writhing stops. My pipe gets wedged against the underside of his skull, inside the collapsed pieces of bone, and when I yank it out there’s a sucking sound that almost makes me puke. The blood that pours from his head mixes with the runoff that makes the concrete slick and slimy. I wipe his rotten blood from my face but only feel it smear.

  There’s no place to go. If I go inside, the bartender will kill me. If the insurgents catch me, they will kill me. If Ragjarøn catches me, they will kill me. I have to run. And run and run and run.

  I take off out of the alleyway, knee exploding with every step, pipe still in hand because I have no idea who will cross my path, whose head I will have to cave in to save my own skin.

  And as I turn the next corner, someone grabs me. I scream No! and ready myself to spin and swing when I hear Lachlan’s voice.

  “What happened?”

  He’s here. Only him. Only Lachlan.

  “The bartender. He tried to have me killed.”

  “What.” His voice drops a full octave.

  “That insurgent I told you about, that was his brother. They said they were with you, that they were supposed to take me out.” I swallow hard, blink away the image of the man’s head. “Lachlan, I just caved in a man’s skull with a piece of pipe.”

  “I guess it’s Thursday, then. Which means I’m about to go kill the shit out of that other cocksucker.” He starts to turn back toward the bar but I grab his arm and yank him.

  “I need to go. You need to get me the hell out of this city. Please,” I say. “You can take care of him later. But I need to leave. Now.”

  He shakes away whatever he was thinking, squeezes my hands. “Right, right, of course.” He hurries over to the car idling in the middle of the street and opens the trunk. “Climb in, sweetheart. Your chariot’s arrived.”

  “In the middle of the street?” I gesture all around us. “What if someone sees?”

  “You think anyone here gives two shits what anyone else does?” He nods inside the trunk. “I’ve got two bottles of water and some jerky in there. Made it special, just for you.”

  Before I climb in, I wrap my arms around him, squeezing hard, then lock myself in the trunk.

  An hour later, with the rapid turns long behind us, the road seemingly straight and smooth, I open the trunk a little. Fresh air rushes in through the crack and it’s like being born again. I nudge it a little wider, enough that I can see the outside and try to get a bead on where we are. It’s all fields, with the mountains still looming in the background. We could be anywhere or we could be nowhere. But as I bite off a hunk of jerky, I see something far in the distance. Twisting black threads rising from the mountains. It’s not the other side of the mountains, though: it’s Eitan, burning again. Burning as it always has. And maybe, burning as it always will.

  Then a dark shape rushes past me, startling me enough to swallow the chunk of jerky. I pound my chest as I try to work it down. As the tears dry, I can see that the shape was a foerge, one of the birds of prey out here, carrying some small rodent in its claws. The name makes me think of Forgall, my fallen friend.

  The foerge glides to the top of a skeletal tree, flapping its wings to hover above a bunch of sticks. Small black blobs jut out of the sticks, babies pecking at the rodent in their mother’s claws. The mother finally drops the food down, then flaps away to find more.

  I lower the trunk, settling back into the darkness, but a small stream of light still bleeds through.

  29.

  HENRAEK

  It is cold out here in the Jötun Mountains, cold enough to make a man consider becoming religious, because this is clearly some sort of punishment for a life ill-led.

  The hours spent traveling here were the longest of my life, constantly replaying every conceivable thing that could have happened to the boys in my absence. I know Dyvik said the reason their center was built out here was because it was the safest location in the country, but none of that means shit when my boys might be in jeopardy.

  I push open the doors to the train before it’s even fully stopped, my feet slipping on the slick platform. There are piles of snow here, waist high. I can’t imagine what it’s like once winter proper comes. I hurry out of the station, headed toward the small outcropping of buildings in the distance.

  Then I hear an echo that chills more than any icy blast cascading down from the mountaintops.

  It’s the echo of gunfire.

  I start running, doing my best to avoid the icy patches in the road, only falling twice.

  When I come to the edge of the buildings, I feel a swirl of disorientation, as if I’d traveled in a gigantic circle and ended up back in Rën. The buildings are the same style, though taller, and the arrangement is slightly different. But what terrifies me is that the sounds are the same.

  The streets ring out
with rifle shots and shotgun blasts, with pained screams and shouted directions of attack, with the injured groaning and the scared crying.

  Groaning, because some of the bodies lying in the streets wear the grey fatigues of Ragjarøn.

  But crying, because some of them wear regular clothes. Because they are not soldiers, or even civilians.

  They are children. They are Donael’s age, and younger.

  Ragjarøn is hunting and fighting and killing children.

  The side of a building shatters not two feet from my head, ripping me out of my horrified stupor. I throw myself down behind a pile of snow, which will do nothing to protect me from a bullet but keeps me out of the line of fire.

  What am I supposed to do? How will I save my boys?

  I hear someone yell, then heavy footsteps coming in my direction. I huddle down farther, trying to make myself as small and inconspicuous as possible because I have absolutely no play in this.

  Then a shadow passes over me, and a body hits the ground beside me, his back rounding and absorbing the blow as he rolls to his feet.

  It’s one of Magnus’s boys. Axel. He has a rifle tucked against his shoulder, then pops up to standing, takes aim, and fires off a round of shots before ducking back below the snow drift.

  “Henraek,” he says, almost as if he’d expected to see me here. “Where’s your weapon?”

  “I- I-” I sputter. “I don’t have one.”

  Axel reaches inside his jacket and pulls out a handgun, checks the magazine, then hands it to me. “Won’t help much against their rifles, but it’s something.”

  “I’m not here to fight.” As soon as I say it, bullets rake the building above us. I jump up by instinct and pop off a few shots to push them back, only realizing what I’ve done once I crouch back down and see Axel smiling at me. “I came here to get my boys.”

  He nods gravely and I feel my hands disappear.