Guns of the Temple (The Polaris Chronicles Book 1)

by Choi, Bryan

  “That’s not possible!” Taki blurted out. A hero doesn’t do that! A hero punishes justly!

  “Comport yourself,” Lotte snapped, and clapped a hand on Taki’s shoulder.

  Taki nodded, feeling chastened. If he was to impress his captain, he needed to be more coolheaded than this. “In that case,” he asked, “should we retreat now and warn the duke?”

  Lotte shook her head. “We still don’t know whether the accusation is true or not. I will not slander our fellows without cause.”

  “You seem like you know something,” Draco said to Karma. His eyelids narrowed.

  “I can’t say. I don’t mix with the grunts,” Karma huffed, and turned away.

  Lotte bit her bottom lip in thought, and turned back to the prisoner. “Marko, was it? Do you have any proof?”

  “If...if I show you, will you let me go?”

  “No. But as long as you are bound, you fall under our protection,” Lotte replied.

  “Do you promise? Do you promise you won’t hand me over?”

  “We serve the exarch Constantin Choniates. You will have to trust in that.”

  “How can I trust in a man I’ve never met?”

  Hadassah punched Marko lightly on the arm. “Don’t be so stubborn, you little bastard. We’ll protect you. The captain’s a hardass but she’s a just person. We’re not the bad guys, you know.”

  Marko hung his head, before shaking it hopelessly.

  “I’ll take you there. It’s going on right now,” he said glumly.

  “Very well,” Lotte said. “I’m warning you though, if you try to escape, or if you’re lying to set some plan into action, you will die first. Do you understand?”

  Marko nodded.

  “Emreis and Mikkelsen, stay behind on guard. Myself, Gillette, and Natalis will go with the prisoner. If we’re not back in a half-bell, flee to the Cloud Temple. Do not wait for us, but make sure the exarch knows that we perished.”

  Taki swallowed hard. Being chosen to accompany the captain like that was a sign of her favor, and yet anxiety welled in his chest all the same. Draco’s words from earlier had called to mind a drily-written passage about the wars that ravaged the region before the Fall, and about something called “ethnic cleansing.” It sounded like a wholesome pursuit on its surface, for reducing mutation was always commendable. But to cleanse could also mean to destroy. He looked at Marko. Is it possible to destroy an entire people?

  When he passed through the town square, Taki could not contain the increasing dread lapping at his mind as he gazed on the utter desolation mixed with fresh signs of life. Overturned carts had spilled vegetables onto the street that had been crushed by hobnailed boots. Half-eaten food cooled on metal plates on tables near an eatery. More perceptive eyes saw fresh bullet holes studding stucco walls and bloodstains spattered on cobblestones. Something is wrong. Something is terribly wrong.

  “Where are the bodies?” Taki asked, frowning at a pool of crimson that slowly spread along mortared crevices.

  “If I were trying to purge a place and yet remain discreet, I’d simply have bodies carried away and dumped somewhere,” Karma said. “And I’d use the people who were still alive to do the work.”

  “Why not just set it all alight if you wanted to drive everyone away?” Taki asked.

  “Because the people have little value, whereas the buildings and farmlands are the important stuff. That way, you can quickly resettle a place with the people you want, and offer your supporters and friends a nice bunch of houses in the process.”

  “Where did everyone go?” Lotte asked the prisoner. Marko pointed his bound wrists ahead to the rear gates. Splintered posts hung from wooden hinges and swayed pathetically in silence. The ground below was well-worn, but the dust and dark stains were fresh at the precipice. Further on, the grassy fields were trampled and broken, as if dozens of people had trudged their way along the path to the woods nearby. Karma’s gaze flicked over streaks of blood dappling the leaves, but he kept quiet. After the acrid stink of smoke and lingering sweat, the piney smell of the woods was a relief.

  Gunshots rang out in violent overture, causing them to dive to the ground with weapons drawn and curses flung. After a few minutes, however, it was apparent that there was no more danger to be had. Taki briefly indulged in the fantasy that perhaps Lotte would permit them all to lay low in the grass for a time. Nothing good would come of advancing. Here, under cover, it was safe and secure. They could simply remain there for a good long time before slowly retreating from harm. It’s not our fight. This has little to do with the Imperium. I don’t want to go on. Taki shoved his words back down his throat before they could erupt and unman him. Lotte was signaling for them to rise and advance.

  They penetrated the treeline, quickly following the trail of trampled shrubs and torn branches. No special skill or training was needed now but following one’s nose. The humid, acrid air bit like burning gunpowder shoved up a nostril and left to smolder. Finally, as Taki crested a low ridge, he saw the killing field.

  A twenty-meter-long trench was crudely dug in the loamy topsoil of a clearing, within which were bodies wreathed by settling gunsmoke. The sight spurred a regression into calculation. Numbers were safe. Numbers did not cause him to feel overcome with terror and nausea. How many bodies were there? If he went with five corpses per meter, that meant at least a hundred; some large and developed, some small, some hunchbacked with old age. Some still writhed, whether out of pain or as the last reflexes of a dying brain. How many were women? How many had died clutching their children? Taki bit the webbing between his thumb and index finger to stifle further speculation.

  Standing over the corpses near the trench were the Khazari Hekmatyar legion, kalash rifles still smoking from the barrels. A few men dressed in village clothes still knelt in front of the pit, hands tied and blindfolded. They bobbed their heads in confusion, as if indignant to not receive a bullet like the rest. Their would-be executioners had probably used reloaded rounds with bad powder or just the wrong caliber altogether, Taki realized. One of the bound men tried to flee, only to have his head caved in by a mace. The rest of the survivors were quickly set upon with axes before being pushed into the trench. Another detail spread quicklime over the bodies. It was a common belief that the white, caustic powder would dissolve flesh faster and dissuade scavengers from spreading the remains. The footmen looked up now, muttering to each other and pointing at the new arrivals.

  “I told you we should’ve just let the kid go,” Karma muttered.

  One of the Khazari, with an ensign’s stripes, charged up to Lotte.

  “Didn’t we tell you to stay at the entrance?” he shouted at her, his rifle sweeping her face.

  “Watch where you point that,” she growled, gesturing at his muzzle.

  He swept you with it, Captain, Taki thought with oddly fierce anger. He could have shot you. Kill him, now! He gasped softly when he realized what had passed through his mind. To think like this was unlike him, but something within was starting to scream louder and louder as the seconds passed. Fortunately, the ensign lowered his rifle a small bit.

  Lotte continued. “My men stand guard as we speak, and if we do not return, you may expect a legion of our Black Cross to come wipe you off the map!”

  That’s not true, but the man doesn’t know any better, Taki realized. The bluff seemed to work, as the ensign’s eyes went wide and he finally lowered his gun all the way.

  “Explain this!” Lotte demanded.

  The Khazari was silent for a moment before he let out a contemptuous laugh. White mist rose from the trench as shovelfuls of lime landed on bloody backs. Small, dusty mushroom clouds sprouted to mark the end of individual lives. A thousand deaths would probably make a much larger cloud, Taki figured. The other paramilitaries turned their attention back to smoking and taking sips of local moonshine from their flasks. From within the trench, someone’s moans were smothered by a shovel smashed into brain.

  “You witches ar
e good fighters but you’re kind of stupid. What the fuck does this look like to you? It’s a purge, plain and simple. We had the scum dig their own graves and then we plugged them in the heads.”

  “My squad took care of all the resistance at the gates. None of these people were the ones shooting at you!”

  “Look, wench, these are subhuman scum and rebels. They’re all plotting to kill us anyway.”

  “That’s ‘captain’ to you. You could have arrested or exiled them. To execute the entire village is boorish excess, and no honorable man could recommend this,” she snarled, glancing at the boy prisoner. Strangely, he did not weep or flail or attempt to run. He simply stood there with a look of resignation on his face.

  “Do you think you can talk to me about honor, witch?” The ensign scoffed.

  Lotte leaned in to stare the man in the face. “Who ordered this?”

  The ensign let out a quizzical frown. “Do you have the pox? This is a mandate of the greatest hero in the lands. He gives us law. He gives us justice. Who the hell are you? Just a grunt like us. Forget it and go back before you end up dead.”

  “This isn’t justice. This is just murder, whether willed by a hero or not.”

  “Whatever you want to call it, I really don’t give a shit. It’s either them or us.”

  “I will be sending a full report to the exarch of the Temple. This will not go unnoticed. Your lord will be censured and it will be your fault.”

  “Go ahead. Also, hand over that prisoner of yours. Then fuck off. Captain.”

  “By the Hoplite’s Code, this prisoner is ours,” Taki blurted out. Shit. Again I’ve spoken out of turn, and to an officer, no less. But even this thought seemed tiny in comparison to the increasing indignation he felt. There was no possible way the Hero of the Dominion was really ordering these men. The only logical explanation was that the squad had been duped. Yes, these men were the actual Imperial agents, sent to discredit the Hero by committing dishonorable acts in his name. Taki could not help the people in the trench, but if he saved Marko’s life, the boy’s testimony would help inform the Hero of pervasive treason among the rank-and-file.

  “Fine, keep him.” The ensign raised his kalash and shot Marko in the chest. The boy’s eyes widened in shock before he crumpled to the ground and bled out.

  Taki felt his own insides twist hard enough to wring out his lungs and let out a soundless scream. It was all wrong. Everything about this was wrong. He had to make it right. It was time to listen to what raged inside. He thrust his arm forward, braced the elbow with his free hand, and opened the gates to call forth raging fire. These traitors would burn. For killing Marko, for discrediting the Hero, for… for…

  A hand clamped around Taki’s wrist before the swirling energy within achieved fiery coalescence and Taki felt the prana charge leave his body as Karma siphoned it away. Taki’s face contorted in anguish: it felt as if his insides had been ripped out through his chest and then replaced with dry cotton. He wheeled on Karma. What the hell are you doing? he wanted to scream at the man, but before he could open his mouth, he felt a gauntleted fist smash into his cheek. His wound opened back up and sprayed blood on his eyes. The world went into a maddening spin. Angry shouts and curses in Khazari pinpricked the edges of his perception.

  “Stay your hand, maggot,” Lotte snarled, and righted him. She grabbed Taki roughly by the hair and forced him to one knee with her dagger pressed against his throat. He blinked at looked back at her. Her eyes flashed with anger, but to his horror, also smoldered with disappointment. The truth of his actions now hit him with merciless clarity. Oh God, no. What have I done? Taki hung his head and tried not to cry. That would be the ultimate dishonor on top of disgrace.

  Karma seemed to have defused the tension in the meantime. Slowly the rest of the men dispersed, followed by their commander. Before he stepped away the ensign spat brown-streaked phlegm on Lotte’s boots. Such a slight would have merited a duel under any other circumstance, but she had little to back her position. Disregarding the insult, she instead helped Taki to his feet and perfunctorily pressed a kerchief to his bleeding wound. He opened his mouth to speak. To explain himself, or at least to apologize.

  “We’ll talk about this later,” she said.

  Taki wanted to claw his wound open till his face peeled from his head. He had always, always, hated those words.

  7

  The evening air around the fortress of Sevastopol smelled like fish suffocating in a latrine—like almost any other coastline in the world—but for Aslatiel, it had a homey quality that he missed while on assignment. The cool stone of the parapets soothed his palms, which burned for reasons unknown to him as he stared over the illuminated skyline of the city below. The avenues bustled with the activity of twilight and the smoke of cooking fires bathed the half-lit streets in a dusky haze. Periodically, the cries of the water merchants filtered up to his level. Fresh and clean! No gutrot here! and other familiar sales pitches. Most of the groundwater was either rotten with pestilence or tainted with deuterium, and so became a commodity just like everything else. The fortress had not only its own purification system but also working pumping, which he sorely missed while on assignment.

  As Alfa Gruppe commander, Aslatiel was afforded his own expansive private chambers with a balcony view of the city. Even higher ranking officers got the views of the Black Sea, where the pink auroras of beta decay danced above the waters at night. Most importantly, he had space and silence to collect his thoughts. Once, he had been one of the dozens of shaved-headed children cloistered in cells many floors below. Barely human, and incredibly dangerous. If left alone, the children typically went insane under the burden of their own uncontrollable abilities, and after they killed their own parents the entire town was typically next to go. Thankfully, prana manifestation was ordinarily unsubtle, and only by virtue of this fact did the Imperium avoid being overrun by predatory gangs of feral bush mages. Through the wisdom of individuals like Ba’gshnar, they instead became a precious resource to be molded into the fine warriors for the Imperium’s defense. It had been individuals like him who had apparently caused the Gotterdammerung, so this was a just penance, Aslatiel reasoned.

  “Luca,” he said as he sensed her approach from behind, though her footfalls were typically muffled out of habit. Their master had always impressed upon them the value of silence in all things.

  “Aslatych.”

  She sidled up next to him, inhaling deeply as she beheld the cityscape, as if she had missed the smell of the coastline too. Her hair was slick with water from a drawn bath, and she smelled ever so slightly of roses. Thin white terrycloth was wrapped tightly under her arms, and ended just above her thighs. He disliked it when she did this. There was no reason she couldn’t have changed into something else before approaching him. It was hard to tell if she was being deliberately provocative or whether she was simply oblivious. But he was the one who suffered for it. It was hard to avert his gaze, as mortified as his enjoyment of seeing her curves made him.

  Lucatiel was truly in the prime of her youth and turned heads wherever she went. He remembered how in the southern desert outskirts, an amir had once demanded to buy her in exchange for a working chaingun and a thousand rounds of explosive ammunition. Only his sister’s gentle humor had prevented Aslatiel from stabbing the corpulent old man in the throat. Such things never happened in the civilized, central parts near the capital. In the Imperium, women were equal to men, and individuals were judged on their merit, not their skin color or the shapes of their noses. He again noticed his gaze tracing the enticing concavity of her lower back and he felt dirty for it, like a lecherous old tribesman in sweaty silks. His eyes focused on a jagged white line on her back which went from under her shoulder to just below the base of her neck. He had a similar mark from a sparring accident as a basang, and he always wondered if she had permitted herself to be struck in the same way so she could mimic him more closely.

  “How are you holding up?” he asked
, finally forcing himself to look away. Perhaps there was some merit in getting promoted, after all. Then he would at least have the radioactive sea to occupy his vision.

  She slammed a fist down on the stone railing. “My body is fine. But I let those damned buffoons surprise us, and I should’ve seen it coming. The novice was nothing more than bait, and I nearly let you be hurt! I still have much to learn, it seems.”

  Aslatiel shushed her with a finger to her lips. “But we survived and triumphed all the same. You didn’t endanger me, but rather saved me.”

  Lucatiel turned her face away from him and unclenched her fist. Where it had landed, the granite bore a new crack. “I am grateful to you, Aslatych, though I do not completely believe you.”

  Aslatiel chuckled. “I inquired about who those polaris were. A poorly-manned company, really only half of a squad, that calls themselves ‘Tirefire the Lesser,’ of all things.”

  “Why would they insult their own lords so flagrantly?”

  “I don’t know, but I am most fascinated with that older woman who appeared to control them. I think she may be a contemporary of our master. They both spoke the same tongue, and she seemed abnormally powerful. Similar to Ba’gshnar. Although in a very different way.”

  “Have you asked him more about her?”

  “I dare not. You know how secretive he is about his past. We two probably know the most about him out of all citizens.”

  “Then you should avoid prying. He has never betrayed us.”

  “Of course, Luca. I trust the man with my life and also with yours. Still, I would like to know more about this new threat to our nation. She almost bested us. That must never happen again.”

  “You can rely on me, Aslatych. And also on Elsa and Mikhail. We’re all here for you.”

  For me, and not the Imperium or even our master. He knew her too well by this point. Knew that this what she would have actually said had she less restraint. Such passions, however, quickly gave way to treason. It was a possibility he could not permit.