Although she’d lived her entire life near Claw territory, Phasma had little knowledge of what lay beyond the boundaries of Balder’s home. What she’d seen during raids or when scouting suggested his land was far superior to the Scyre land, with flat, rocky plateaus, actual soil, and sparse green grasses. Many times, she’d argued with Keldo over the benefits of seizing Claw territory, raiding farther in and planting Scyre flags to claim some of the plateau land and finally give her people what felt like much-needed breathing room. But Keldo refused to even consider a land grab, and the majority of the Scyre voted along with him. Not all the Scyre folk were as skilled and tenacious as Phasma’s warriors, and although their twenty middling fighters could defend the group as a whole, the older, weaker, and wounded members of the clan were happy enough to cling to the Nautilus and the rough but predictable life it provided. They were scared to take what they needed, which infuriated Phasma to no end.
Still, Phasma’s knowledge of the world consisted of the sea on one side and Balder’s plateaus on the other. What might lay in the wastelands beyond Claw territory was entirely conjecture. Keldo reasoned it could only be yet more rock and sea, but Phasma longed to know if there might be different places, different things worth fighting for on the other side. If the Claw were true allies, Phasma once reasoned while speaking privately with her warriors, then Balder’s people should let them traverse the land, if not share it, rather than keeping the territorial lines so carefully drawn and tended.
They set off immediately, thirteen Scyre carrying the supplies that could mean the difference between life and death in a harsh land. Skins of water and dried foods that could travel well, strips of meat jerky and salty sea vegetables shriveled in the sun. Net hammocks and blankets and weapons galore. Climbing spikes and rappelling gear. They traveled with long lines of woven rope strung between each person, the only safety net should someone slip and plummet toward the raging waves below. Considering the danger of cuts and abrasions, they wore thick gloves and boots of leather, tipped with claws to help dig into stone. And they wore their masks, always, both to protect their faces from the elements and to strike fear in the hearts of whoever or whatever saw them approach. Siv had apportioned out her oracle salve beforehand, insuring that the warriors would have their strength. Under their masks, each person wore thick stripes of the dark green salve over their cheeks
The journey took time. Gosta was first in line, thanks to her agility and lightness. She tested the footholds, planted the spikes that held the lines, and moved ahead to make sure the path could support the rest of the group. Phasma followed her and helped her plot the route; Siv and Carr and the rest trailed after. Mighty Torben came last, both the heaviest and the best defense against anything that might surprise the group from behind. It was their first scouting mission outside their territory in years, and Phasma made sure her people were secure as they ventured forth.
When they reached the line of flags delineating the borderlands between the Scyre’s territory and Balder’s, Phasma called a halt and pulled out her quadnocs. The borderlands here seemed endless and were characterized by their harshness and their uselessness as a home base. Tall fingers of broken rock stuck up like spikes, and far below them was not the ocean the Scyre were so accustomed to, but yet more jagged stone littered with bones, trash, and brightly colored fungi.
Scanning the area, Phasma caught sight of one of the Claw sentries standing guard on a wider stone spire. Putting away her quadnocs, she looked at each of her warriors in turn.
“Gosta, take him down,” she said, pointing at the figure on the horizon.
Gosta nodded, unclipped her harness from the group’s rope lines, and took off, leaping athletically from spire to spire.
One of the Scyre who wasn’t in Phasma’s inner circle looked aghast. “But Keldo said we must maintain the alliance at all costs.”
Phasma stepped over to share the spire he stood upon, glaring intently into his eyes through her ferocious mask. “Keldo isn’t here, and he doesn’t know how things work, outside of our territory. Balder won’t allow us to cross the border, especially if he also wants the fallen ship. That guard stands between us and the thing that could save us.”
The man looked as if he wanted to say more, but his boots sent pebbles tumbling down, the stone tower barely big enough to hold them both. Phasma seemed somehow to lean forward without having moved, and the man edged back, lost his footing, and began to fall. At the last moment, Phasma snatched his arm out of the air and caught him, their bodies balanced to keep them both from toppling over the edge.
“Are you with me or against me?” she whispered.
“I’m with the Scyre,” he said quickly.
“When Keldo isn’t here, I am the Scyre.”
Her grip loosened, just enough to make him wobble.
“With you, Phasma. I’m with you.”
She released him, righted him, and leapt to the next rock spire as if she hadn’t nearly killed one of her own people. “Then everyone find a steady perch and ready your weapons. If Gosta does her job well enough, we shouldn’t need them. Yet.”
The twelve Scyre folk squatted in place and drew their clubs, knives, axes, and spears. It was a new situation, a group of them out in an unfamiliar place and aggressing for the first time. They were no longer on safe ground. Phasma held up her quadnocs, and when she laughed a short, brutal laugh, everyone tensed.
“The sentry is down. Gosta is signaling that the way is clear. Let’s hurry.”
No one spoke against her again as they moved silently and swiftly into the borderlands. When they reached Gosta, the girl pointed down to a man’s body wedged far below at an odd angle, blood painting the rocks. Phasma nodded and picked up her quadnocs, scanning the path ahead for the next sentry, but they were either too far off or hidden.
“You.” She pointed to one of the Scyre folk. “Stay here in the sentry’s place.”
“Why?” the woman asked, and it took some bravery.
“So that when the next sentry looks or returns, they’ll find someone where they expect someone to be. If you meet anyone who isn’t Scyre, kill them.”
The woman looked like she wanted to argue, but the body down below convinced her otherwise. She merely nodded and knelt to tie her rope to the dead sentry’s climbing spike. They left her and continued, following Gosta’s slow progress across the rock formations as she found the best route.
Now, the thing about that part of Parnassos is that it was very hard to hide in. When the only way to move was to stand on top of a very tall rock, all without trees or bushes, it was impossible to remain concealed for very long. The upside of this problem was that the enemy was likewise limited. And so it came to be that Phasma and the Scyre folk realized they were approaching an unusual circumstance. Far away on Balder’s plateau, all the Claw people were gathered, and luckily, they were all looking away from the borderlands and the approach of their supposed allies. Balder himself was shouting, and the main thing he kept repeating was, “Hurry up! Bring them! Bring them to me now!”
The Claw land Phasma had so coveted was bigger than she remembered it, or perhaps the Scyre had shrunken so small that Balder’s territory simply seemed large by comparison. The plateau stood tall, with red dirt and greenery here and there. It was big enough for all of the Claw people to stand on, and a few even lounged or sat, especially the very old, who gathered near a fire. No children were in sight—which explained the desperation behind the Claws’ attempt to capture Frey. The plateau ended in a stark cliff on one side, and on the other was a jagged bit of rock big enough to be called a mountain, for our purposes, but it was solid rock and not the sort of thing that a body could simply walk over or through. Some planets feature mountains that are pleasant things to traverse, carved with twisting paths and resplendent with beauty and beasts, but the mountains of Parnassos are more like the claws of some great and unforgiving animal, hungry for blood.
Without a word, Phasma urged her people forward
, motioning for them to be quiet and quick. When they stood on the edge of the plateau, behind the crowd of Claw folk so mesmerized that they hadn’t even noticed the interlopers, Phasma and her people finally saw the miracle occurring.
Five figures were being pulled up onto the plateau from the land below. Edging around the utterly riveted group, the Scyre folk were fascinated to see that on the other side of Balder’s plateau lay not the heaving waters of the dark, churning ocean, but land. And not land made of rock, or not only of rock. It was sand. Sand as far as the eye could see, curving up in wavy dunes, the field of gray broken only by tumbled black rocks. Using her quadnocs, Phasma followed the footprints and drag marks back to where a metal machine waited, half submerged in the sand and beside a huge, crumpled piece of fabric. It was the part of the ship that had popped off and gently floated down. The Scyre had never seen so much fabric in one piece in all their lives, and it was clear why several Claw members were down there, busily cutting the long lines that held the fabric to the machine so that they might claim it for their own. The downed ship was nowhere in sight, but far, far away, across the sands and yet more rocks. Phasma tracked the thin line of white smoke that feathered up into the sky, marking the path to true riches.
A cheer went up as the first strange figure was dragged to standing on top of the plateau, his arm clutched in Balder’s bandaged foot. It was a man, and for Parnassos, he wore very little, just finely woven clothes of a smooth, uniform black and tall, shiny boots speckled with sand. He was the oldest person the Scyre folk had ever seen, with pale-white skin and red hair going gray at the edges. Although his limbs were slender enough, his belly was big, and he had dark circles under his eyes. He smiled blandly at the whoops and whistles of the Claw folk but was clearly not celebrating, personally.
Balder pushed him gently aside and reached for the next figure, a warrior wearing white armor streaked with gray sand over a thin suit of black. A gasp went over the Claw folk, and the Scyre folk, too—such armor would’ve given anyone on Parnassos a huge advantage over the elements, and the solid helmet seemed an improvement over their light leather masks. Two more white-armored soldiers followed, and lastly came a droid. It was shaped vaguely like a human and made of matte-black metal, and it took the longest to haul up, due, most likely, to its weight and its inability to climb. The people of Parnassos had seen the component parts of hundreds of droids and even used droid metal for their weapons, but no one living had seen a droid stand of its own volition and hold up an indignant hand, as this black droid did when Balder attempted to touch it.
Now that all five figures stood on the plateau, Balder turned to his people and motioned them to be quiet. The Scyre folk hunkered down to avoid detection in the crowd. The Dug looked older and tired, the flaps of his skin and ears sagging and dirty bandages swathing his arms and legs. The place where Phasma had sliced off his ear flap looked jagged and ugly, the wound going black around the edges. Phasma elbowed Siv, pointing at her handiwork, and they both shook with silent laughter.
“My people, let us sit so that we may listen to the newcomers,” Balder said.
The Scyre folk sat on the edges of the crowd, grateful to be lost among so many strangers avidly watching the show. There were perhaps fifty Scyre, but there were twice as many Claws, and they were so intent on the travelers that they didn’t think to consider who might be lurking among them. The sun was punishing that day, and many of the Claw folk wore their masks, helping the Scyre warriors blend in.
Balder indicated that the leader of the new group should speak, and the man in black smoothed his red hair in annoyance before joining his hands behind his back, his legs spread as if he were more than accustomed to speaking to large groups and found the whole thing tiresome. The droid stood by his side, listening attentively, while the three soldiers flanked him, the slight twists of their helmets as they monitored the group suggesting they were more than ready for trouble. The soldiers held shiny white and black blasters in their hands and carried smaller blasters on their hips, and Phasma and the Scyre folks elbowed one another eagerly, anxious to find a way to claim some of the new bounty.
The droid spoke to the man in black, and everyone gasped at the mechanized voice. It was hard to hear on the plateau, surrounded by whispering and the sudden gusts of wind, but the language seemed both familiar and different. The man in black spoke back to the droid, and the droid spoke again, this time much louder, its voice projected by some sort of strange machinery.
“My name is Brendol Hux, and I’m afraid my starship was shot down by an automated defense system over your world. My language is a little different from yours, so this droid will translate to your more primitive dialect.”
The crowd gasped and whispered. Hearing their language spoken through the machine, if strangely, was very surprising.
Balder stepped up, shaking his head to make the rings in his ear flaps jingle. “I am Balder, leader of the Claw people. We rule this land, and your ship has fallen within our territory.”
The man in black, Brendol, put on a tight smile and spoke through the droid again. “I am glad for your aid, Balder and the mighty Claw people. My emergency pod has landed very far from my ship. I have lost several of my own people in this horrible tragedy. But if you are willing to help me, I can offer you the kind of technology and supplies that your world has lost. If we can reach my fallen ship, I will give you weapons, food, medicines, and water. I will be able to call down a larger ship to bring even further riches.”
“Why are you here, Brendol Hux?” Balder asked, stroking his chin with his foot.
Phasma would’ve asked the same question. Nothing was free, and the riches Brendol Hux offered would not come cheaply.
The droid translated Balder’s words for Brendol, and Brendol nodded as if this was a wise question and Balder was a great leader. Phasma nudged Siv in the side and said, “This Brendol Hux is a clever man.”
“I’d be clever, too, with three warriors armed to the teeth at my side. With those blasters, they could kill everyone on this plateau in less than a minute, if they wished.”
“Then we must make them wish otherwise.”
Brendol spoke to the droid, and the droid said, “I come from a powerful band called the First Order that brings peace to the galaxy. I am tasked with scouring the stars for the greatest warriors, that they might join our cause. Our people are well cared for and well trained. Ask my soldiers, here. Troopers, is that not so?”
The three soldiers in white nodded and barked, “Yes, sir!”
“Each of these warriors was selected from a distant planet and trained to fight for the First Order. If your people help return us to our ship, I will take whoever wishes to join me back to our fleet. These soldiers will live in glory and wealth, never suffering for want again. Now, who will help me?”
The Claw people stood to cheer, but a new figure appeared beside Brendol Hux, a warrior wearing a fierce red mask.
“I am Phasma, and I am the greatest warrior of Parnassos.” Removing her mask, Phasma faced Brendol and waited for the robot to translate. “I will help you find your ship.”
In a heartbeat Balder had his toes wrapped in Phasma’s jacket, and the warriors of the Scyre and the Claw were on their feet, jockeying for position around her.
“We are at peace, little Scyre,” Balder hissed. “And yet you trespass.”
“Would you have told us about your new wealth, Balder? Have you already sent messengers to the Scyre, urging us to join you in this quest? Would you include your allies in your journey to the fallen star?”
Torben, Siv, Carr, and Gosta had their weapons drawn, and the fighters among Balder’s Claws were likewise ready. Brendol Hux looked from Phasma to Balder, but not as if he was worried. No, it was as if he was merely curious.
Balder growled. “I would have done so, little Scyre, but you have taken away that kindness with your lack of judgment. You have broken the treaty in coming here, and your lands will once again know our fury.�
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“So you will not allow the warriors of the Scyre to accompany the Claws on this journey to the fallen star, where we might all benefit?” Phasma asked, her voice even and her smile deceptively bland.
“I do not reward oathbreakers,” Balder hissed.
“And if I apologize to you on behalf of the Scyre and promise to uphold the treaty?”
Balder considered her, his lips drawn back in a snarl. “Pledge us the Scyre’s child as an apology for this trespass, and I will uphold the treaty.”
Phasma’s smile went thin and brittle, and although Torben put a hand on her shoulder in warning, she said, “Then I agree. Let us work together toward peace for all.”
She took off her climbing glove and held out her hand, and Balder reached with his foot to shake it, as such deals were struck on Parnassos. But when they leaned in to complete the gesture of goodwill, Phasma pulled him in closer and slid a small stone dagger into his chest. Balder shuddered against her and fell. As soon as his body hit the ground, Torben picked him up and flung him off the plateau into the sand far below. Phasma and her warriors barely had time to spread apart and draw their own weapons before the Claw warriors attacked.
“Grab Brendol Hux and get him back to the Scyre!” Phasma shouted to Torben, and the big man picked up Brendol like he was a bag of sand and strapped him on his back, as easily as if the grown man were but a child like Frey.
Phasma (Star Wars) Page 6