Raider

by Justine Davis

  Brander returned to the floor and took a place next to Kye as the low murmuring, the wondering, began again.

  “Nice work,” he said to her quietly.

  She gave him a brief smile of thanks; she had worked hard on it, but right now, her mind was focused on what was to come.

  The door to his quarters opened and heads swiveled. The murmuring got louder when a tall, slender woman with flaming red hair rippling down her back stepped into the room. The woman known to them for a decade, sight unseen, simply as the Spirit was in her flowing robe, but beneath it, she wore the rugged outfit and dark planium armor of a Sentinel, complete with a blaster at her hip. Over her shoulder was the pack marked with the symbol of the healer. She could not have made it more clear that she was prepared to both fight and heal alongside them.

  The scars that marked her—forehead, cheek, throat, and the twist of her arm—only added to the impact. She came with a steady, youthful stride, and Kye was reminded yet again she was but eighteen years older than she herself. It was unsettling to think this woman had had a son nearly ten and a daughter on the way when she was Kye’s age now.

  She paused beside them as she passed. Kye looked at the woman who was the mother of her mate. “Tell me,” she whispered, “does your vision happen to show if we win?”

  Their gazes locked. Iolana seemed to find what she sought in Kye’s expression. “Nothing so useful as that,” she said wryly. “There never is.”

  “Annoying.”

  “Very.”

  They exchanged the briefest of smiles, and Kye thought they just might, someday, have a relationship of sorts.

  Iolana came to a halt in front of the map. Turned, and the gathering fell silent. Most stared at her with a sort of awe, still not quite used to the presence of this woman who had been a mystical creature, almost of myth. Kye supposed for some of them, that she was the Davorin matriarch come back to life was just as mystical.

  For a moment, Iolana simply looked at them all. When she spoke, her voice was quiet, yet somehow seemed to carry to the farthest reaches of the room. As it had when she had pledged Kye to her son. “For many years now, I have been apart. It took time to mend my wounds, my heart, and to accept that the future I had seen was inevitable. But now, it is time for me to stand, and stand I will. No longer as the Spirit, but again as a Davorin, I will stand. With the people of Ziem.” The door to his quarters opened again. She smiled. “With my son.”

  The quiet was absolute as he came into the room. Kye’s pulse always picked up when she saw him, even after just minutes apart. But now it kicked into a race as he passed, his fingers briefly brushing over her hand as he walked, upright and strong once again. He crossed over to stand beside his mother. There was little resemblance, he took so after his father, but it did not matter; they were together, the Spirit down from her mountain and the Raider out from behind the mask he had been forced to wear for so long.

  Iolana’s voice rang out this time. “I give you, not the Raider, but Drake Davorin.”

  The cheer that went up echoed off the walls of the ruin until it was a physical thing, a vibration Kye could feel in the room. It continued, never ebbing, only growing. She understood, for just three weeks ago, they’d been gathered in this very room, waiting for word that he had finally died. And she had been huddled helplessly at his bedside, torn between hanging on with every last ounce of her being, and letting him go because his pain was so great.

  Yet now he stood before them, strong, tall, whole. And her pledged mate.

  Their ranks had swelled since word had gotten around that the Raider was indeed Drake Davorin. Including the man who now stood in the front row, looking at Drake steadily, determinedly. He had arrived offering his service as an experienced mechanician, something they were in sore need of; Brander couldn’t do it all. He owed them, he had said, or rather, Drake. It was only then that she learned of the incident in the alley behind the taproom, when Drake, with only a stained bar apron as a weapon, had saved a little girl from the ugly predation of a Coalition monster. The mechanician’s daughter.

  She was not surprised. She suspected there were others here now for similar reasons; for all his blatantly displayed cowardice, Drake had still managed to help more than one resident of Zelos during his exhausting double life. The masquerade, the awful double life that was over at last. Jakel had seen to that, and in a way, even his mother. By bringing him back from the very edge of death, she’d made it impossible for him to go back; it would draw far too much attention and curiosity. But even if he dared risk it, the Coalition had taken the decision out of his hands by destroying the life he had worked so hard to build for his family; the taproom was now only two standing walls and a pile of rubble, payback for the impudence of escaping Coalition custody.

  Not to mention the death sentence now on his head.

  “You’ve got a price on both your heads now.”

  Brander’s words, half joke, half serious, echoed in her mind. Along with her own response.

  “They’ll regret this. They’ve unleashed you now.”

  And they had. Unleashed him to be fully, not the Raider but something even more dangerous to them. The son of now two legends, one of whom stood beside him now, and one who was forever enshrined in the memories and hearts of all Ziemites.

  And after tonight, all of Ziem would know.

  “I am honored,” he said, his voice tight with emotion. “But we must begin, for time is crucial now.”

  The atmosphere changed in an instant. They became the Sentinels once more.

  “Time,” he said, “and timing. For on this day, two things have conjoined. The Coalition post commander is traveling to Legion Command to give a status report.”

  “He left on schedule,” called out a lanky man in the front rank. “Saw him board and the transport take off myself.”

  And the moment the transport was gone, the images Kye had done, somewhat hurriedly, had gone up. Despite the rush, the image of the Raider and the Spirit side by side, this one to be stenciled in color to show the fire of Iolana Davorin’s hair, and the gleaming silver of the Raider’s helm, was powerful. She knew he’d thought the words Brander had come up with, Back from the dead and down from the Edge, to fight for Ziem, a bit too dramatic, but he was outvoted. And even he had had to admit he’d been wrong when he saw how it had caught on in Zelos already.

  Drake nodded and continued. “Second, today is the day they will move the fusion cannon from the ridge back to the valley.”

  A ripple of excited sound went through the gathering. They all knew the fusion cannon was the ultimate weapon the Coalition held over Zelos. And Kye knew Drake had ever walked that hair-thin line, always trying to judge how far he could push without driving them to use it.

  “The crash,” Brander whispered beside her in sudden understanding. “That’s what he found in that freighter, the schedule for the airlift.”

  Kye nodded.

  “I figured out this is why he wouldn’t kill Paledan when he could have, but how did he know when he would be gone?”

  She whispered back. “I’ll tell you later about a little midnight visit we made to the barkhound’s office.”

  Drake went on. “We all know what it means if they get that weapon back in position in the valley. So today . . . we stop them. Today, together, we destroy it.”

  A roar went up this time. He let it go for a moment, but quickly brought them back under control.

  “Each team will have an assignment. A position. A job. And each one is crucial, whether it seems so or not.” He looked over at Brander. “Brander Kalon has the first, and possibly most critical task. To take out their communications.”

  A murmur went around this time, speculation on just how he was going to manage that. He’d been reluctant, did not want to be away from the main fight so long, but he was the only
one of them who knew that particular terrain well.

  “All of their communications,” Drake added. “So they not only will not be able to talk to each other, but they will not be able to call for aid.”

  A stir among the Sentinels. “You mean block them even from Legion Command?” The voice that called out sounded incredulous.

  “I do. We now know where they’ve hidden the main communications array.”

  Kye remembered the moment in his quarters when the subject had come up as Drake, still testing his strength, had paused to look at her map once more. The room, as was often the case lately, held five, she and Drake, his mother, Brander, and back in a corner the ever-present—and silent—Grimbald.

  Drake and Brander had been speculating on the likely places for that array to be hidden when Grim had spoken without prompting. One of the few times he ever had; he would answer if spoken to, but rarely initiated any conversation except with Iolana.

  “Maybe Halfhead?” Brander had just suggested. It was a mark of progress that neither Drake nor his mother winced at the mention of the place where she had tried to leave this world.

  “It is above Halfhead,” Grim said.

  Drake had spun around—no wobble with the quick move, as there had been the first couple of days he’d regained his feet—to stare at the big man.

  “On the peak of the Brother,” Grim said, referring to the taller mountain that had matched Halfhead before the crack that had created the sheer face that was now a dominant landmark above Zelos.

  It made sense. It was the tallest mountain in the east range, and a signal sent from there would encounter no obstacles to dilute its strength. The Coalition had had their system in place before Zelos—and all of Ziem—had even realized what was happening, when they were still under attack and in shock at the invasion of their peaceful world. And once the Coalition had confiscated all vehicles and weapons, there would have been no way to get up there anyway. But now, they had the air rovers. . . .

  “You know this for certain?” Drake asked sharply.

  “Now, yes.” Grim’s expression never changed. “I did not realize at the time what it was I had seen them building.”

  Drake had peppered him with questions, and then Brander, the only one of them who had been to the top of the Brother. And the last, vital piece was theirs.

  “Mara,” Drake called out now, snapping her back to the present.

  “Here!” the woman called out.

  “Your people are here.”

  He took up a marker and put an X on each side of the landing zone, sparing a split second for a glance at Kye, as if to apologize for marking up her work. She grinned at him; this was what she had been waiting for from the moment she’d discovered his secret, to see both men she loved as one, no longer hiding.

  “You will send a bird when the airlifter arrives.” The woman nodded.

  “Dek,” he said to the young man, who stood beside Tuari, who was his aunt and only surviving relative. “You will be at the bell tower, and when the bird arrives with the message, you will climb the tower and turn your scope on the landing zone. And when the ship lifts off for the move, send up the flare.”

  They had decided to use Brander’s push flares, that dragged the glowmist along with them, making it visible for miles to those with the vision. They had few of them, but there would never be a more important mission than this.

  “You remember the code?” Drake asked.

  The boy nodded. “One for go, two if there’s a problem.”

  Drake smiled at him, and the boy practically bloomed before Kye’s eyes.

  “Harkins,” he called out then.

  “Here!” rang out again from Galeth.

  “You will place your lookouts here.”

  He called out and marked a half-dozen places on the map, all with clear views of the high valley leading from the mountains to Zelos. Galeth turned to the group clustered around him and snapped out a name for each position as quickly as Drake had named the spots.

  “Teal, the lowland lookouts will be here.”

  He repeated the marking of another half-dozen ground spots, this time placed near the only paths for ground troops to move toward the Brother, the Ruin, and the mines. Kye saw nods of understanding in the room as they realized now why Brander, at Drake’s order, had been going among them testing for who had the best mist vision; it was those Sentinels who had been given this mission, since they would be in the thickest mist.

  The briefing went on, a small group armed with every explosive they had left assigned to damage the emplacement in the low valley near Zelos, so that at the very least they would delay the Coalition’s ability to use the thing against the city. Squads of fighters were assigned to each possible path to reach the mines, their only task to stop Coalition passage however they could.

  “Destroy what you must to cut them off, but with care,” Drake said. “We can rebuild, but only if we are left something to do it with.”

  He went on, each remaining Sentinel given a task. And each task was accepted without question. Even though some would likely die in the effort.

  She noticed that none of them asked who would actually be trying to take out the cannon when it was at its most vulnerable, in that hour when it would be unfastened from the base on the mountain and rigged to be lifted off. That hour when there would be only as many guards as could fit in the airlifter, but they would all be fully armed and on alert.

  Because they all knew that this, the most dangerous of tasks, would be the Raider’s. And she wondered how many of them still thought of him that way, how many were still wrestling with the fact that the man who had risen to fight and the man they had expected it of had turned out to be one and the same. She had the feeling the combination had resulted in a bigger, more fierce loyalty and urge to fight than either one alone would have.

  “If they do get it airborne,” Galeth asked, “how will we destroy it?”

  For the first time, Drake hesitated. He looked at her, and she saw in his eyes the echo of the pain of his decision. Since she was the best shot of them all, it was the only logical, the only possible one to make, but that had made it no easier on him. Neither had her own insistence that she be allowed to play the part only she could play.

  And in the end, he had made the decision a leader must make.

  When he had taken her in his arms last night, it had been with a sort of desperation she understood. And she had clung to him in turn, each of them knowing without saying that this could well be the last time.

  She spoke to them all for the first time. “I will shoot it out of the sky,” she declared. “Over the high valley.”

  She could almost see the progression of their thoughts, from now understanding yesterday’s orders to evacuate any remaining people from the area to the relative safety of the mines, to the final realization, the one that had nearly torn Drake apart. That if it came to that, if she had to destroy the cannon from her air rover, even with a long gun, she would have to be close enough that the resultant explosion would destroy her along with it.

  The room had gone utterly silent. Many looked from Drake to her, then back. They drew in a deep breath almost as one. Straightened spines in the same way. As if the last bit of strength they needed had just been given to them by this further demonstration that their leader, who had already nearly died in this cause, and his pledged mate, were still willing to sacrifice as much as they.

  Finding his voice once more, and seizing the moment, Drake spoke one last time.

  “We don’t have their weapons, or their numbers, but we have our mountains, our mist, and our knowledge and love of this place. Use them.”

  And with that, the Sentinels—and the Raider—went out to fight.

  Chapter 52

  EIRLYS TRIED TO not start pacing again. It chafed at her beyo
nd belief to stay here, in the safety of the ruin. With the exception of a small detachment Drake had left to guard this stronghold—and her and the twins, no doubt—they were alone. But the more she paced, the more restless the twins got, and that was never a good sign. Drake had extracted a blood oath from them that, for just this fight, they would stay put. She supposed it was in part because they realized how close they had all come to losing him that they had complied readily.

  Well, readily for them, she thought ruefully. It had only taken ten minutes of bargaining, and the promise of a ride in an air rover when it was done, to get it.

  At the moment, they were trying to lure Slake into a game of chaser to pass the time while Mahko prepared a meal.

  “Us—”

  “Against you because—”

  “We’re only children—”

  “After all. And—”

  “Not for money—”

  “But for fun. And maybe—”

  “That shiny pouch.”

  The man responded with a doubtful glance at her as he fingered the silver pouch he wore on a strand around his neck.

  Eirlys laughed in spite of her nerves. “If you’re as bothered by being stuck here as I am, it might help,” she said. “But I warn you, they were taught by Brander.”

  The man’s eyes widened. He looked at the two, who had put on their most innocent faces, warily. As well he should. He wouldn’t be the first the twins had surprised. They had even surprised Brander once or twice. The last time, he’d laughed aloud at how they’d fleeced him, and said proudly there was no more he could teach them.

  That moment played through her mind, as it so often did, bringing back the odd, swelling feeling that tightened her chest as he took his unexpected defeat at the hands of two then ten-year-olds so delightedly. Which in turn brought back all the emotions she’d been swamped with when she’d realized Brander had been fighting side by side with the Raider—her brother—all along. Not the least of which was self-recrimination for not realizing it before now.