Raider

by Justine Davis

  She heard a low rustle of some creature moving through the ferns. Then from above, the soft call of a graybird that made her think of Eirlys. Funny how the mist carried some sounds so clearly, but muffled others.

  She drew in a breath of air filled with the familiar damp and the undertones of her world; the slow decay of the dying leaves and plants, and the fresh, clean scent of the greenery that never faded. Even the mist itself had a scent, to native Ziemites anyway, and she would recognize the cool, refreshing tang anywhere.

  “Is he better?” she asked.

  “He is as he is,” said her cousin, who could be taken as her brother, so alike were they in looks, with dark hair and eyes of that turquoise shade that was rare and admired among the blue eyes of Ziem. And he used them, and his strong build and easy grin and manner, to charm and beguile the unwary. And sometimes even the wary.

  “That’s helpful,” she muttered.

  “Even the Raider takes longer than a week to heal from a wound like that.”

  “He has healed from worse.”

  “His scars, you mean?”

  She nodded. The disfigurement of the gallant fighter’s face was part of the legend that had grown up around him. Such grievous wounds would have killed a lesser man. On her first sight of him, she’d been appalled at the wreckage, then admiring that he had survived such a thing.

  “If he survived that to fight again . . .”

  Brander gave her a sideways glance. “He’s not a god, you know. Even though you seem to think so.”

  She snorted inelegantly as she tossed back the dark, heavy braid she’d fastened off to keep her hair out of her way. “He is a man who fights, which seems rare enough on Ziem to be ranked as such.”

  “I fight. What god does that make me?” he asked with a grin.

  She eyed him with exaggerated speculation. “I don’t know. Perhaps you should ask Eirlys.”

  To her amusement, he flushed, but he shook his head. “That girl hates me almost as much as she hates her brother now.”

  She grimaced. “And she loves him as much as she hates him, and that makes for a difficult life.” How well I know that, the pain of loving him for doing what he must, and hating that he cannot fight, cannot be what Ziem needs him to be. I can only imagine what his turmoil must be. “Though not as difficult as his.”

  “The twins,” Brander said dryly, “make for a difficult life under any circumstances.”

  She allowed him the change of subject. “Those two hellions alone are more trouble than a cluster of buzzers.”

  “Truly,” he agreed. “Although buzzers are more productive, providing honey. The twins merely provide chaos.”

  She laughed despite her mood. Brander could do that for her, as few could. “They have the right spirit, though. I must grant them that. They would fight, and fiercely, if they could. Even at their age.”

  “Unlike their brother?”

  “I cannot deny he does not.” She kicked away a stone that lay in her path. “I hate that he welcomes them, serves them in the taproom, mingles with them, as if they were not the scourge of our world!”

  “And so because he accepted the task before him, to be mother and father to his clan, a task some would say is both the most difficult and most important, he has lost your regard?”

  Kye winced. “I did not say I don’t understand his choice. It is one I had to make myself, to take care of my father. But I cannot see why he doesn’t realize it makes no difference. The Coalition will slaughter us no matter what we do. I would rather go down fighting, while he . . . he . . .”

  “It would not hurt so much,” Brander said softly, “had you not loved him so much.”

  She stopped in her tracks. A step or two later he also stopped. He turned to look back at her.

  “For someone so unmindful,” she said with a glare, “sometimes you see too much, my cousin.”

  “You are better at hiding, now. But then you were not. It was there for anyone to see. Even your blind, thick-headed cousin.”

  “You are that, you—”

  Perhaps for the best, her retort was interrupted by the sound of a squawker calling out from a tree some distance away.

  “I’ll leave the signal to you,” Brander said. “You’re much better at it than I .”

  She turned in the direction of the sound, just as it was repeated. She lifted her head and made the soft, hooting call of the wisebird in answer. She gave the combination of long and short calls that would tell the challenger—who was no more a black-feathered bird than she was—who was approaching.

  The answering call, more of a croak, came back quickly. Three short in rapid succession, the permission to pass. That the guard didn’t simply call out to them as himself once they’d given the code was just one of the safeguards the Raider insisted on. And since the Coalition had not yet found them or their stronghold, no one argued with the abundance of caution.

  Twice more they went through the challenge and answer, until at last they were at the ruin. They made their way over the crumbling rock, the endless landslide—and warning system—created by the Coalition’s own bombs, until they reached the huge boulder that appeared to have been thrown clear of the rest of the rubble.

  “This one’s yours,” Kye whispered, and Brander grinned.

  “Fair enough,” he said, and put his shoulder to the big rock. By rights, given its size, even Brander shouldn’t have been able to budge it. Yet, after a moment of strain, it began to inch sideways, courtesy of the hollowed-out center. He kept his considerable strength at it until enough of the concealed entrance beneath it was revealed for them to slip—or in his case, scrape—through. The approaching guard would push it back in place, sealing them inside. Normally a breath-stealing thing, but the place that had once been the basement of the mining headquarters building that now lay in rubble above them was spacious, the ceiling high, and all of it well ventilated, taking any cramped, trapped feeling out of it. It gave them plenty of room, in a place the Coalition had long ago abandoned as useless, too far from the mines themselves to be worth rebuilding after their own bombing had destroyed it.

  Besides, it was hard to crack the whip of slavery from this distance, Kye thought sourly. When the mines had been free, there had been no need to encourage the miners. But the Coalition needed to be closer, to oversee those forced to do their bidding, and so had set up their own headquarters at the very entrance to the main shaft.

  “How is he?” Kye asked Mahko, who acted as their healer.

  “Resting. I’ve given the order not to disturb him.”

  Mahko did that rarely, but when he did, he equaled even Brander, who was second in command, in authority. The rest of the Sentinels never argued the point. In only three years, the Raider had accomplished so much that people began to divide time around him—things that had happened before the Raider or since the Raider. He was already a bigger legend than the Spirit, that fabled healer who supposedly lived above the Edge and who Kye doubted truly existed. To her mind, the tales that had begun to circulate nearly a decade ago were merely wishes, the desperate pleadings of a conquered people.

  Only the Raider had ever risen to actually fight. She had yearned to join him immediately, but needed to care for her father, paralyzed by the same Coalition attack that had killed her mother. When he had died six months ago, she was at last free to become a Sentinel. She had used her pent-up rage well, and quickly risen in the ranks to third in command, gaining the trust of those more seasoned than she.

  Of course, those ranks weren’t exactly vast.

  She remembered now how disheartened she’d been by the smallness of their number; she had hoped for more. But when even the son of Ziem’s most fiery orator for freedom refused to fight—

  She made herself stop thinking of that. Drake had made the choice he’d thought he ha
d to make, and she understood, for she had been where he was. And she had once wholeheartedly agreed with him; living by the Coalition rules had seemed the only way to survive.

  But then she had learned in the hardest way that the Coalition didn’t play by any rules at all. And yet Drake still wouldn’t stand against them.

  He wouldn’t stand with her. And that had hurt more than anything.

  The Raider hadn’t been dismayed by the size of their band. He had merely stated that you must fight with the force that you have, and planned accordingly.

  As he was probably doing now, despite his injury, Kye thought.

  “He will be all right?” she persisted.

  “He is the Raider,” Mahko answered simply. “If anyone could be after such an injury, it would be him.”

  Those who were not on guard were gathered around the small fire. It was enough to keep the belowground room warm, thanks to the thermo-reflective qualities of the surrounding stone, yet small enough that there was no smoke to give them away. No radiant heaters out here, nor any other device that would require them to draw on power the Coalition might trace back to them.

  She could smell something cooking, rockfowl, she guessed. She saw Pryl sharpening his ever-present blade, the Harkin brothers—two of the few who went by their last names here, since they had no family left under Coalition domination to bear the price of their rebellion—sharing a loaf, and Tuari pressing out a dent in her light armor. She was going to have to repaint that spot, Kye thought. The silver of the planium was showing through, too attention-getting amid the dull black of the rest that could blend into the night and the mist.

  Brander, as usual, was already bent over the table to one side, studying the arrayed parts of the Coalition hand weapon they’d captured. They knew little about laser pistols, other than the damage they wreaked. Such as slicing through the Raider’s flesh with a beam of humming light.

  “Still consumed with that thing?” she asked as she neared the table.

  “If I could figure it out, perhaps we could duplicate it.”

  Although she knew Brander was clever enough to do just that, figure out the complex weapon, it would end there. She didn’t bother to point out that they had neither the materials nor the apparatus likely required to produce such a thing. He already knew they didn’t. Knew too well; although no one outside the Sentinels was aware of it, he’d been fighting beside the Raider since the first day. In fact, she had once suspected he was the only one who knew the true man behind the mythical name. Brander dodged any talk of it. And said that it was at the Raider’s command that no one knew who he really was or where he had come from.

  “It is for all of our sakes, Kye. Don’t you see? If we do not know who he is, we cannot be forced to tell them. If no one knows, and it’s widely known that no one knows, then there is no gain for the Coalition to try and torture it out of us, should we be captured. Or go after the families of those who still have them.”

  Kye had never thought of it in that way, but once he’d said it, the simple truth of it put paid to all future questioning.

  She watched now as Brander picked up what appeared to be the trigger mechanism of the weapon to study it yet again. Kye turned away wearily. The irony of it was biting deep tonight; here they sat, hiding less than a squawker’s flight from the thickest layer of planium in all of Ziem, and that prized element was useless to them because, thanks to the Coalition, they now lacked the tools to shape it. She knew the Raider had chosen this place for just that reason. Not because he expected to be able to utilize the precious metal, but because the Coalition also knew it was there—it was, after all, the reason they were here—and would never risk destroying it.

  It had its downside, in particular Coalition guards constantly watching over the Ziem miners. But they seemed focused on their task, and like most of the Coalition, decidedly averse to wandering through the Ziem mist they found so odious, and impossible to see through.

  That planium made the most powerful weapons the Coalition had was just an added bite to it all.

  We’re providing them with the means to destroy us.

  Torstan Davorin’s stark warning had gone unheeded in those early days when the Coalition had seemed no more than the biggest, best customer Ziem would ever have.

  First they will disarm us, then enslave us, then slaughter us. This is their history, their method, and their plan.

  She’d read that speech so often she sometimes thought she’d been there to hear it herself, although she knew she hadn’t. Her parents hadn’t believed him, and hadn’t even listened themselves.

  Less than a year later, Drake’s father and her mother were dead, and her own father broken beyond repair.

  And everything Torstan Davorin warned about had come to pass. The slaughter wasn’t finished yet, but only because they still had need of workers here. When the vein of planium finally ran out, they would probably not just wipe out Ziemites, but Ziem itself.

  And nothing this miniscule little band of fighters could do would stop them.

  Chapter 6

  HER DIVE WAS graceful, as she had ever been, and if one looked only at that, it would be a thing of beauty. Her gown whipping around her slender body, her waist-length hair flowing behind her like a red cape, she looked like an exotic bird who would soar upward at any moment.

  It was only when you added the height of the stark face of Halfhead Scarp, and the icy rapids of the Racelock below, that you realized this was no graceful flight but a death plunge. And trapped, held back by others who were watching in horror, a boy watched his mother die before him just as he had watched his father. Watched her body swept away, never to be found. Leaving him behind, to face the ruin of their world ever alone.

  Drake awoke in a sweat, sitting up so abruptly his leg shot out a sharp, protesting pain all the way to his hip. He would remember this night, he told himself as he tried to calm his rapid breathing. No more of the palliatives, no soothers for him, no matter how tired he was, no matter how much he might be hurting. He would rather have pain than the nighthaunts such potions brought on.

  The finely calibrated sense of time he’d inherited from his father told him it was still a couple of hours before firstlight, and he knew the leg needed the rest. He lay back down, but now his brain was up and running, which meant any chance of true rest was gone. He shifted, trying to ease the strain on muscles still damaged enough to ache at any serious exertion. Like trying to walk without limping, as he had all day yesterday. If this kept up, he was going to have to stage a very public accident to account for it.

  He forced himself to focus on the day’s work to come. He had gotten as far as planning a reorganization of the casks in the storeroom when he heard the whispering from above. He could almost see their impish faces, eyes so like their mother’s, as was their hair. He had never told the twins he could hear them from down here. He preferred them to think he just somehow knew whenever they were plotting something, as their mother once had. It gave him a small edge, and he needed every bit he could get with those two.

  He waited, knowing that as they got more excited about whatever they were planning, their voices would rise just enough. And if he was lucky, he’d be able to pick out a word or sentence that would give it away, and if it were something risky or too troublesome, he would head it off before it got started.

  This time, it seemed nothing worse than sneaking into Enish Eck’s barn to determine if he truly had a green two-headed snake in there, so he decided to let it go. Enish Eck was a gruff old man, but he wasn’t a danger, and if he caught them, he would likely only scare them with threats and bluster. Which wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. They needed the juice scared out of them now and then. In fact, he might just see if he could make sure Eck did discover the little miscreants.

  He tried not to think of how the Coalition had destroyed most of their c
ommunications apparatus, and what was left intact had been seized; his leg would have appreciated the days when he would have only had to go to the linkup and connect to warn the man to keep an eye on his mutant snake, if it indeed existed.

  And if it does, I hope it isn’t venomous.

  He turned onto his side, gauging his condition. The last remnants of the palliative were still in his system; he could feel them trying to lure him back to sleep. He considered fighting it, remembering the nighthaunt he’d had, but realized he needed the rest if he hoped to be able to function, and let it take him.

  This time, the dreams were filled with images of two-headed snakes and a barely penitent set of twins, morphing into the mischievous duo lying swollen and dead from the snake who, with two heads, had been able to strike them both simultaneously. Dying together, as they would wish.

  It wasn’t much of an improvement.

  When he awoke for good, the twins were, in fact, gone. And his leg, thankfully, seemed much better. He contemplated going after them, decided it wasn’t worth betraying that he could hear them for something so paltry. Better to save it for the days when they decided to do something much worse. Like blow up the Coalition command post, which he had little doubt they would try eventually.

  You’d be proud of them, Father. And of Eirlys.

  What his father would think of him, he had no idea. The thought of a Davorin tending a taproom would no doubt make him cringe. But it was the job that put food on the table for them, and even his parents had had to make adjustments after the invasion.

  With a smothered sigh, he rose and dressed, then headed for the taproom to prepare for the day’s business.

  “HE’LL BE ALL RIGHT,” Eirlys assured the child, “but you must keep that injured paw still for at least two days. Can you do that?”