“Karalti and the artillery support are the only reasons I didn’t get my ass kicked.” I wearily clapped the dragon on her knee as she reared back up to sit on her tail and rest. “How’d Suri go?”
“Well, first she grabbed a rifle and took out fifty-two zombies.” Vash’s deep, gravelly voice rasped from behind me, making me and Karalti both jump. “Then she loaded in ten crates of cannonballs by herself while you were bouncing around in the mud, THEN single-handedly took out the four Allosaurs advancing out of the mists behind the Brontosaurus with a rocket launcher-”
“And if you don’t think I’m keeping this baby, you’re out of your mind.” Bathed in sweat and streaked with gunpowder, Suri pushed through the crowd of soldiers with a simple musket-like rocket launcher braced over one shoulder. She carried the four-foot long weapon like it was made of feathers instead of iron and hardwood.
I grinned. “Ditching the bigass sword?”
“Nah. My axes broke, and this is better.” She grinned back. “Turns out I like guns.”
Vash pointed at her. “If you don’t marry her, I will.”
“I thought you weren’t talking to me?” I stepped away from Karalti and embraced Suri one-armed, thumping her on the back and kissing her on the cheek.
The monk scratched his stubbly jaw. “Oh... yes. That’s right. Thank you for reminding me, you filthy lying pile of jackal cum.”
“We all saw you out there, Fly-boy and Fly-girl.” Suri let go of me, eyes dancing. “So, how many’d you get?”
I made a show of thinking for a moment. “It was pretty chaotic out there... I don’t exactly know, but I know it was a skele-ton.”
Istvan’s nose wrinkled. Vash laughed, slapping his thighs as Suri turned away in disgust. I cackled and raised my hands to the sky, bathed in the joy of pun-romantic power right up until my Berserker girlfriend decked me across the face with her free fist and knocked my ass to the ground.
“Oof.” I pushed up on one arm, and reset my jaw back into position with a muffled crunch. “Okay. Guess I deserved to get boned for that.”
Suri’s eyes narrowed to smoldering golden slits. “You did not.”
“You do NOT want to rib me any further, young lady. I can do this forever.” I grinned back at her.
She rolled her eyes and sighed. “Okay. Fine. I surrender. What do you want from me?”
“Well... we could go back to our bedroom at the Fort and...” I paused as the grin went from ‘playful’ to ‘shit-eating’.
Suri glared at me. “Do. Not.”
“... have a mature, consensual adult conversation over a bottle of wine,” I finished.
The woman put her hands on both my shoulders. “Good. Because my consent to anything ends when you start in with the puns. Got it?”
“Got it.”
Istvan cleared his throat softly. “If you two are done... we must urgently debrief now that the crisis has passed.”
“Sure.” Suri stepped around me, looking up at Karalti. The exhausted dragon lowered her muzzle to sniff, huffing hot air over Suri’s skin. Hesitantly, she reached up a hand to stroke her. Karalti tensed, but as the woman massaged her sore muscles, the dragon’s crests went from alert to half-mast. “You fought a hell of a fight today, Special-K. You gonna be able to make it home?”
“Of course, I’ll be able to make it home!” The dragon stiffened, then snorted and brushed Suri’s hand off. “Come on, Hector. We got a debrief to go to. And we’ll be the first ones there!”
Chapter 25
At Soma’s request, the debrief was held in the Officer’s Mess. Compared to the War Room, it was clean, warm and dry, with brass candelabras and rich wooden furniture. There was real food here, miles above what the rank and file had to eat. Roast chicken, bread, vegetables, even fruit. The floors were not covered in reeds, but carpet. Everything about it pissed me off.
"The zombies were digging, you say?" Soma sat at the head of the table, where he sawed into an entire chicken and a platter of baked potatoes. The knife and fork looked like kid’s toys in his giant hands, but he was able to separate meat from bone with the precision of a surgeon. "That is concerning. Did you see any sort of sophisticated earthworks nearby? Any reason for what they were doing?"
"No." Rin looked to Suri and me for encouragement. "It was weird to find them out there, actually. We didn't see any other excavation crews."
"I had a thought about that." Suri sat to my right, her hand resting on my thigh, my hand covering hers. "Could they be trying to tunnel under the fort or the wall? They don't have to breathe, but they have to worry about mud and tunnel collapse... those Dredgers looked like they were trying to drain something."
"Most likely, they are trying to drain the bogs into the Sarviz so that they can minimize the amount of water they pass through on their way here. There is no feasible way for them to maintain the kind of underground infrastructure they'd need to build a tunnel underground." Soma shook his head. "The ground is far too soft."
"The rock underneath is not," Istvan said sourly. "And there is a city under the swamp."
"The rock is very far down. My father had the swamp surveyed, looking for oil." Soma shook his head. "And no one has found any evidence of a city under the Endlar. No one has seen it. It’s nothing more than a barbarian fairytale."
"Oh, yes. Everything must be seen by you to be real." Vash was rocked back in his chair, smoking what smelled like a mixture of tobacco and weed in a carved wood and bone pipe. "Taltos cannot be seen from here. Is that also a fairytale?"
Soma glowered at him. "Archaeologists with better tools and more brains than you have explored this mud pit looking for a lost city, Dorha. No evidence of civilization was found. Believe me, I am very interested in the prospect of dragon ruins, but time has taken its toll. There are no cities of the Solonkratsu left here."
"There's definitely a city under the swamps in Ilia," I replied.
"And how do you know that?" Soma asked acidly. "Did you hear about it on your nursemaid's knee?"
"I went there," I replied. "The place is called Cham Garai. It’s a closely guarded secret of the Order of St. Grigori. I had to go through ritual trials there to be able to bond with Karalti."
Karalti looked up from her meal, chewing vigorously. Her polymorphed form was still youthful, but she now looked like a Tuun woman in her early twenties instead of a girl in her late teens. Her cheeks were stuffed with chicken. “Wat?”
Vash rolled his eyes so hard that his lashes fluttered. "It's almost like the native people who lived here for thousands of years might know something you don't, Soma."
"I am far more concerned by the proximity of the Ix’tamo," the lord replied acidly. "The one you four retrieved is the first we’ve ever captured from the Demon. Horrible things… Rin has already reported the extent of the damage it did to a small area of our province. At this rate, the land around Karhad will be ruined for generations, perhaps forever. If the undead somehow manage to undermine the Prezyemi Plateau - geologically, I mean - the wall could collapse."
"What are you planning to do with that Ick… Ikt… thing that they bought back?" Istvan asked warily. “If it ruins the land, why do we have it here?”
Soma beamed. "I had a brief look over it while supervising the defense of the wall, and I’m fairly certain we can reverse-engineer the magitech to turn this one into a shield generator. That would be marvelous - our mages wouldn’t have to stand out there in the open while shells are raining down on us.”
“Assuming a shell doesn’t hit it and the whole Fortress is driven mad with mana poisoning.” Istvan grunted, reaching for the wine jug. Vash shot him a piercing side-long look. The Captain cleared his throat and sat back, then jumped as Soma slammed his utensils down on the table.
"Are you compelled to shit on every tiny victory we have, Arshak?" He demanded. "Really? You have been nagging me for months that we have won nothing, and the day that we secure not one, not two, but three significant victories for the defense,
you harp on me?"
Istvan tensed like a bird of prey about to launch itself forward. "Victories? For the problems that YOU caused! Who sent Vash out into the swamp alone? Who left the Western Wall undermanned, despite my orders to the garrison!? Who insults and demoralizes the Yanik scouts we need to discover Ik-tankos or whatever the fuck those devil machines are? Who, Soma?"
A tic started by Soma's eye. "And who is drinking himself to death, bad-mouthing my every word, sowing dissent and demoralizing the men? Did it occur to you that the staff on the Wall might have coped if they weren't made miserable by your backbiting gossip? Or by the way you overlooked the way those Meewfolk mercenaries undermined the discipline and health of the force? Their fleas spread disease, they gamble, they were all weak for drink-"
"But you did send me out to die in the swamp." Vash motioned to him with the end of his pipe. No one seemed to hear him.
"The Orphans are soldiers, not automatons! Of course they gamble and drink! They were also brave, and willing to die for Myszno despite the contempt we humans show for them, and they deserted because of YOU!" Istvan nearly shouted. "By Solnetsi’s platinum tits, have you ever accepted responsibility for anything in your entire life?"
"Guys!" I held up my hands. "Fucking cool it off!"
Istvan sunk down, his face a mask of loathing. Soma glared back at him. Karalti continued to shovel food in her face, watching the argument with the curious impartiality of an apex predator.
"Seriously. The Wall was nearly breached today. Put it behind you and focus on the present." Suri added. "Or you and everyone you care about are dead."
"I managed a university faculty. A workshop. I have personally overseen the testing of every airship ever sent out of Litvy with my family's craftmark on it." Soma's blue eyes hardened as he eased back down. "Every engine I ever built, every spell I wove, I tested myself. Those ships, the ones that saved your life and the lives of thousands of other people in Karhad, were built by my House. And before all of that, I vest my life into the research and magic and math that goes into those ‘automatons’. So the answer is yes, I can and do accept responsibility for my decisions. But a craftsman can only work with the materials he has, and if the materials are of poor quality, even the best blueprints will produce a bad product. Shit in, shit out."
Istvan threw his hands up. "And there you have it. Right there. Exactly what I was talking about. Going ahead and insulting-"
"Did I mention you?" The lord leaned forward in his seat, which groaned under his weight. "Did I say it was the people here? No. I did not. I mean materials. We need better weapons and magic, Arshak. Weapons capable of arming ten thousand against fifty thousand shambling corpses. We know they’re weak against fire and water. The cannons and mortars we have are all that’s standing between us and the dead, and we could be doing so much better if we had the blasted caravans from Boros. But where are those?"
The Captain sunk back down, exasperated. "I put the Starborn onto it."
I nodded. "The caravan issue is next on our bucket list, Soma. We're supposed to get the details from you."
"I am busy. My Weaponeer, Viktor, shall furnish you the details. You can find him in the munitions warehouse tonight and tomorrow morning," he replied crisply. "May I offer the lady some more to eat?"
Karalti perked up. She had finished her plate and had been eyeing Istvan's, which was almost untouched. "Yeah! Uhh... I mean, thank you."
Soma glanced at me, then delicately picked up and placed the other half of the chicken he'd been eating onto Karalti's dish. I shifted, suddenly restless, but Suri squeezed my hand and I forced myself to ease back down.
“We need to conscript,” Istvan spoke while the Lord was occupied. “Word is spreading beyond the Fort that we have a dragon, three Starborn, and the Iron Monk on our side. I ordered the singers to go to villages to the north-west and start telling the stories. Soon, every young man and half the women will be primed to fight. We need every one of them.”
“And how do you propose we feed them all?” Soma retorted after sitting back. “Swamp-weed stew?”
Istvan glared at him. “If we must. You need living bodies to fire those witch-fire weapons you place so much faith in.”
“Good gods, man. My House is ready to ride forth from Litvy with weapons, soldiers, the caravans and airships... as soon as we know we’re not going to be blown out of the sky over the bloody Pass!” Soma finally raised his voice.
“Look, guys, you can have both,” I said. “You need the militia, if for nothing else than logistics. But the bigger problem is that there is no fucking strategy here. None. Nada. The Demon’s main force is, what, seven hundred miles away? Assuming they’re working around the clock, we have ten to fourteen days to prepare. Where are the earthworks? Why aren’t we skirmishing them out in the swamp, reducing their numbers? Digging out Ix’tamos and cutting off their supply train? What the fuck is going on?”
The Count and the Captain glared at each other. Then they glared at me.
[Leadership check failed. You have insufficient Renown.]
“Desperation is what’s going on,” Vash said. “Desperation and fear. I can help with the fear, if you would let me minister-”
“Absolutely out of the question,” Soma snapped. “Not only would you be pressing your pagan religion on the men, but we saw what became of you and your last batch of disciples on what was supposed to be a very straightforward scouting mission.”
The temperature in the room dropped several degrees. Karalti looked between the pair of men like a fan at a tennis match.
Vash drew on his pipe. “Straightforward indeed. Your coordinates were very precise, my lord. Almost like you knew we would arrive there to find a small army of the dead and the Grand Old Cunt Swamphag.”
Soma’s broad shoulders lifted in a brief shrug. “I knew no such thing. I suspected you would find an Ix’tamo. I researched them back at the college, many years ago, and the degradation of the land jogged my memory. That was the goal all along, for reasons I have already explained.”
“You know, if this was about anything else, I’d actually believe you. You can barely organize your robes on the privy without taking a shit on them, and it’s exactly the kind of ridiculous coincidence that only a true idiot could engineer.” Vash exhaled a plume of smoke. “But this is your ego we’re talking about. You’re always clever when that’s at stake.”
The lord’s tone soured. “By the gods, Dorha – you’re as thick as a rock. You don’t have a choice in your position here, do you understand? I gave you that mission as a way for you and your rabble to make an honorable exit.”
“So you sent him out to die?” Istvan’s face turned a dark purplish color as he boiled up from his seat. “Are you mad? And so brazen that you’d state this before witnesses?”
“Hold your tongue. I’ve had a gutful of you too, you insubordinate dog.” Soma also stood. He had at least a foot of height and a hundred pounds of muscle on every other man at the table. “As for you, Dorha. Next time, I’ll send you straight to the gallows for inciting mutiny. Does that suit you better?”
The tall, wiry monk held Soma’s cold blue gaze with his own intense gray one. “Go ahead, you self-stroking peacock. The noose will reject my neck, and every soldier in this fort will turn on you. Maybe you will remember your humanity as they lynch you on the gallows. You may not know the names of the men you sent to die, but they do.”
Even Suri’s eyebrows arched.
The lord flashed Vash a barely concealed look of disgust. “They were pagans who worshiped the Black God, like you do. If you got your cultists killed, that is your fault. Now you will be dismissed in front of the general assembly tomorrow and made to leave in disgrace.”
“Look. No. Just no.” I stepped up now. “No one is being sent out in disgrace, not unless you want a mass desertion.”
“Do not speak for me, Oathbreaker.” Vash rounded on me like a cobra, complete with spit.
“Oathbreaker?” Istva
n and Soma said at the same time.
I shot Vash a dark look.
“Did I address you? No, I did not. This is a Tuun matter." Vash snapped at Soma.
"I am the Commander of this garrison, and anything that affects the cohesion of the defense is a matter I am entitled to know about." Soma's eyes narrowed to thin blue slits. "Dragozin will furnish me with the details. Get out of my sight."
"My absolute pleasure. I will see you later tonight, Istvan." Vash rose, swept into an exaggerated bow, then stepped back into the shadow cast by the flickering candles and disappeared.
Slowly, I got to my feet. Rin, Suri and Karalti followed suit.
"Where do you think you're going?" Soma demanded. "I order you to tell me what this 'oathbreaker' business about?"
"It is a Tuun matter. From one peer to another, that matter is none of your fucking business." Something black and hard rose in me and bled out in my voice, turning every word into a cutting stroke that lay on the room like a whip. "We have quests to do. You two can go right ahead and keep jerking each other off."
The women rose from their seats and headed for the door as I did.
“You do not get to lecture me, you savage,” Soma called. “I’m to address the men tomorrow morning, and I will not-”
I turned back to look at him, and whatever he saw in my eyes caused the smug smile to freeze on his lips.
“Go right the fuck ahead.” I said. “We’re going out there to help the people of the garrison, and if you don’t like it, you can blow me.”
Chapter 26
The four of us split outside the door to the Officer’s Mess. Rin went off to the Hangar and the Gunsmith, Suri had to go to her training. Karalti lingered as I kissed Suri goodbye, glowering quietly from the side.
“Want to come to the hospital with me?” I asked her once Suri had left.
“No.” Her violet eyes were the sullen, dark purple of an approaching stormfront. “I need to fly and think. I don’t wanna talk to you for a while.”
Kingdom Come Page 26