All the while, Lieutenant Uriost looked like she was losing her mind, forced to stand aside and watch her commander commence in a fight that could very well end with his death.
Regina shuddered.
No more violence. I can’t just stand here and watch this madness!
A distant pony bray sounded her attention. She looked towards the livery in the distance where the handful of Alliance steeds grazed alongside the pair she and the heretic had brought, paying no mind to the fight at hand. She nodded – and without a moment’s hesitation, slipped unnoticed between the soldiers around her and fled towards the livery.
In the heat of combat, Tetra found an opening in the heretic’s defence, wasted no time in striking him down with the flat of his discus. The heretic struggled to a stand, wiped his muzzle on the back of his gauntlet.
“Come on,” he growled.
Tetra sighed, lifted his left arm. The discus hung from it like a massive shield, magnetized to the armour. He detached the discus, took it into his other paw and bent at the knees, turning the weapon horizontal and bringing it in tight against his torso – ready to strike. “Forgive me. This is the only way.”
He turned at the hip. Then, with all his might, Tetra Blacktail launched the discus into the air. It soared above the heretic’s head with an audible wub-wub-wub-wub, causing the air to rustle through his headfur. The heretic turned away from Tetra and watched the discus fly off above Warminister’s distant rooftops.
He snorted. “You missed.”
“Did I?” Tetra twisted his left arm into an upright position.
Doing so, the discus shifted into a vertical position, like a spinning saw blade. It arced through the air and curved back towards the compound.
The heretic braced himself. “Droppings.”
Wub-wub-wub-wub-wub. Time slowed as the discus collided into his torso. The heretic felt himself double over under a crippling vacuum as his plate mail imploded from the impact, encasing his ribs and organs in chain and steel, fused together.
Tetra’s discus climbed up over his armour and finished its return route, back to its master. The heretic fell to one knee, grunted as the saddlebag weighed heavily across his weary shoulders. “Nngf—!”
Nimbus clattered to the cobblestones.
Tetra caught the discus in a single gauntleted paw. He reattached the weapon to his left arm before taking slow steps forward, his heels clacking audibly against the cobblestone. “You’re fine.” He stopped before heretic, crouched, and silently picked Nimbus up off the ground.
“Master—” Lieutenant Uriost’s voice carried across the silent skies. “—Striking a high Commander of the Ministry of Peace with intent is – is not only treason. It’s grounds for execution.”
Tetra turned to look at her. She glared flames into the heretic’s very being. The heretic stared right back at her, grimacing in unspeakable agony. His gaze flicked up to Tetra, who now regarded him with grave hopelessness in his emerald-coloured eyes. He tilted Nimbus in his grasp, speculatively.
“Do it,” the heretic dared him.
Tetra furrowed his brow at the heretic. He looked up at the bowmammals that guarded the compound’s parapets, rigid, ready to strike at a moment’s order. His gaze dropped, studied the mixture of faces that surrounded him and the heretic – mammals of all different shapes and sizes. Each one standing rigid with their weapon-paws hovering over their hilts, ready to strike at a moment’s order. He then looked behind him, at the line of canine warriors he cherished so much. They secured the entry to the embassy with weapons already drawn, ready to strike down one of their own at a moment’s order.
“Stand down,” Tetra said in a firm, yet quiet tone that carried upon the wind. “Heretic. By order of the Ministry of Peace. I, Tetra Blacktail – Commander of the Company of the Phoenix, and High Commander of the Vidian Civil Alliance – charge you with treason to the highest degree. I charge you with deserting your position and breaking your sacred Oath as an Alliance peace officer. I charge you with kidnapping, as and with several counts of murder. I charge you with conspiracy against the Zuut.”
“Just do it, already,” the heretic growled. He barely noticed the faint scent of skunk smell petering into his nostrils.
Tetra continued. “Under sacred order as Justice of the Peace, I find you guilty of all these charges and hereby sentence you to—”
An equestrian odour overpowered the Warminister skies – The rumble of hoofs sounded like a coming tidal wave, and before Tetra could announce the fate of the heretic’s future, the compound became a sea of storming hoofs and pony screeches, wild with terror.
They trampled through the Alliance army, seemingly blind to those who were crushed underneath or fruitlessly attempted to wrangle control over their escape. With the gates barricaded and nowhere else to go, the Warminister-Doblah embassy became a typhoon of self-contained devastation.
The heretic struggled to a stand and wasted no time to throw a shoulder into Tetra’s mid-section. He wrangled free Nimbus, and in an instant, made his escape when a stream of screaming steeds separated him from The Company of the Phoenix. Rocked with agony from the discus’ attack, he stumbled towards the embassy, slashing his way through whoever was stupid or brave enough to get in his way.
Arrows whistled overhead. Felled ponies reared on their hind legs to counter attack anyone around them, while others collapsed lifeless to the cobblestones. The heretic pushed on, panting from pain and exertion, wild and eager to leave Warminister and Galheist itself, once and for all.
Tetra’s voice echoed from somewhere in the distance: “For Zuut’s sake, all bowmammals hold your fire!!” But his voice went drowned and unheard in a commotion that became too much to contain. Whether it was the strength of the fleeing ponies or the cowardice of a few soldiers, the compound’s gates opened unto torrents of chaos. Those who fought to arrest the heretic and those who fled for their very lives from him intermingled in Warminister’s streets in clouds of steel and commoner garb that scrambled and crawled over each other in every direction, with screaming steeds flooding overtop them.
Regina peeked out from the safety of the livery’s overhang. All around her, whistling arrow bolts glanced off the cobblestones in fruitless attempts to halt the distraction she’d single-pawedly caused.
Regina spotted the heretic heading towards the embassy, leaving cut down Alliance soldiers to be trampled under hoof. Relief filled her heart for his safety. It had only been a couple dozen ponies she’d cut loose and sprayed – but it was enough. Enough to set due course back on track.
And that’s when she realized Lieutenant Uriost was on the heretic’s tail at a distance. Regina sucked in harsh air. Droppings! She ducked between a group of soldiers and bounded headlong, after them.
A lone Alliance helmet appeared lopsided in the street. Regina didn’t know whether it was hers, or belonged to someone else – but she scooped the helmet into her little paws and screwed her head into its loose collar piece to protect herself from the rain of arrow flints above.
The over-sized helmet bounced on her shoulders as she ran along the streets. She panted hard, trying desperately to keep up at a safe distance. There could be only one reason the heretic was headed for the embassy.
That’s where the airships were kept.
46. Steam-Powered Vengeance
Injured and able-bodied Alliance workers spilled past Uriost as she shouldered her way inside the embassy. To her horror, the lobby had become a post-mortem testament to those who vowed allegiance to world peace. The dead and dying lay at every pace – soldiers and civil servants, alike. Whether they had tried to fight, or were struck down in mid-retreat, the felled mammals left a trail of unrequited devastation that led straight to the heretic. Those whom Uriost was forced to step over or pass by, their mortality clawed at her soul. She felt the weight of every single death. She swore a vow of vengeance for each mammal lost.
Shouts and cries for help drew Uriost’s attention to a handful of
civil servants stumbling down the stairs that led up to the administration offices, where they would have seen the carnage from the balcony that oversaw the lobby. The commotion brought forth a few surviving mammals out of hiding from the safety of other offices on the main floor.
“Everybody, get outside where it’s safe!” she ordered them. “Evacuation of Warminister is underway!”
The sound of combat alerted Uriost down a corridor at the end of the lobby. She followed through a set of open double doors that led to a stairwell down to the embassy’s sub-levels. A cacophony of battle echoed in her ears as she bounded the stairs with Kortho drawn and clanging against the rails.
When she reached the bottom, a headless Alliance bowmammal floundered out from a distant corner and fell into a heap with two other corpses. The soldier’s still-occupied helmet rolled across the bloodied carpet and came to a stop against a slab of baseboard.
Uriost darted down the corridor just as a fox-shaped shadow, burdened with both grave injury and the weight of a stolen saddlebag, spanned across the far wall for a moment, only to slink back down and across the floor, fleeing on rapid footfalls.
She swore, broke into a haste to catch up.
Is this the horror Doblah witnessed, also?
“Heretic – Stop!!” Uriost ripped around the corner with Kortho brandished in both paws. Another set of larger double doors faced her like giants. Alliance corpses filled the hallway. Her hateful eyes found the heretic, half turned and hunched over with agony from the wound Master Tetra had given him. His paw was upon the crease of the doors. His narrow metal eye slits turned in her direction. Nimbus’s blood-stained edge dipped to the carpet.
“Sara,” he croaked.
The sound of shallow breathing brought Uriost’s attention to a felled lancer splayed against the wall, nursing a fatal belly slash through her torso armour. She was a beaver, looked no older than a recently-graduated novice. The lancer raked trembling blood-stained digits across Uriost’s field boot, began to utter prayers in her native dialect.
Uriost crouched to meet her, eyes glued to the heretic. “I’m here, soldier. Try not to move.”
She took the beaver’s claw and stayed with her until the quick embrace of the afterworld came. Uriost whispered an Aznain prayer and bestowed the beaver a blessing of the Zuut.
“Get away from here, Sara.”
Uriost glared up at the heretic. She slowly rose to a stand. “Who are you to wear the symbol of peace in these lands? Traitorous bile. Stop this madness or face me with your blade pointed.”
“If you think I’ll raise Nimbus against you, you’re mistaken,” said the heretic. “Leave.”
Uriost squinted at him, and replied like she hadn’t even heard a thing he said. “The sight of you – the sight of that armour on you … you’re going to make me vomit. You miserable traitor, how dare you. What are you even trying to prove?”
The heretic didn’t reply right away. He sighed, faced her on a full turn, and grimaced as he cradled his torso injury. “I only wish to make things right again.”
“And to do that, you’ll rend through the entire Alliance from outside, in.”
The heretic motioned at the corpses around him. “If I’m forced to.”
Uriost took a few slow paces towards him with Kortho ready to strike.
“Sara, stop. Don’t be ridiculous, you can’t arrest me.”
“I can’t let you leave Warminster, either.” Her gaze shifted to the battered leather saddlebag slung across the heretic’s shoulders. Its hide stitch work strained against the large, angular relic kept safe inside. “Hand over the Crystal of the Wind, rowst’lya. You’re trapped.”
The heretic forced back a smirk. “You see me standing with my paw against the door into this embassy’s hangar bay. You sure about that, kiddo? Anyway, the Crystal’s far safer here with me in this saddlebag than anywhere else – with anyone else.”
“Words bred from conceit.” Uriost bared enraged teeth. “You’re a total stranger to me now. Never have I met anyone so consumed by his own musk. Such sense of entitlement.”
“No. That’s where you’re wrong. Again.” With a single gauntlet, the heretic pulled off his helmet and let it clatter to the floor, so that he could gaze upon Lieutenant Sara Uriost with honest eyes. “This is about all of us.”
Uriost’s ears perked to the sound of rapid footfalls coming down the stairwell, behind her. The smell of skunk was faint on the copper air. The moment Uriost became distracted by the scent of a new mammal coming towards them, the heretic bolted through the double doors without hesitation.
“Wait, no—” Uriost charged after him.
They entered the embassy’s airship hangar, where shouts and sounds of steam-powered maintenance echoed from unwitting engineers too busy at work to realize the immediate danger they were all in. A blast of engine coolant spewed past Uriost, covering the heretic’s flight for but a brief moment. He stopped, throwing searching glances around until a docking bay near the back of the hangar caught his attention.
Uriost followed, completely consumed by his presence until a great black airship drew forward, cradled by two hefty straps across the underbelly from a chain-operated crane that stretched from shadows above the rafters. Pale runes garnered its starboard bow, reading Ajax. Four engineers worked together to guide the ship down towards the bay, oblivious of the terrorist that bounded right for them.
“Stop him!” Uriost’s voice was drowned out by the cacophony of mechanical work all around her. She galloped as fast as the weight of her armour allowed. Bewildered glances, baffled slack jaws, and annoyed glares appeared at every pace. “Don’t let the heretic leave this hangar!!”
With a loud clank, the crane stopped with such force that Ajax swung against its harnesses. Steam hissed from the joints of the crane as it lowered the Alliance transport into the docking bay, where awaiting mechanics proceeded to unhitch the harnesses and attach fuel pumps.
The foreman finally turned just in time to be thrown broadside into one of his fellow engineers as the heretic barrelled through. He launched at a nearby wheeled ladder and used it to rocket past oncoming crowds of engineers who finally realized what was happening.
But it was too late. Steel and wood collided in a near-deafening crash as the ladder struck Ajax’s starboard. Mammals scattered in every direction. The crane operator kicked open the door to his controls cab and began a hasty retreat across the rafter gangway, where he lost his footing and vanished, swallowed up by the debris-peppered steam, below. Uriost raced towards the troupe of engineers who now gaped like idiots at what just happened. She grabbed the foreman by the shoulders.
“Round up everyone you can and get out of here! Evacuation of Warminister is underway!”
Before the foreman could even register the command, Uriost pushed him out of her way and charged towards the Ajax. She found the ladder imbedded in its flank and saw that the heretic was already halfway over the ship’s rail. She ascended after him, two rungs at a time, and swore a solemn vow: the heretic would die before his tail left the bay.
Alarms overhead sounded. Emergency lights flooded the hangar in deep scarlet.
Once Uriost climbed aboard, the heretic was nowhere to be found. Her visor rose to reveal hard-set wolfen yellows. Nostrils flexed. A whiff of humid air brought dense scents of rich oak, metals, oils, paint, and panic, fear, confusion… There was blood, too. It was strong. All around her. Nearby – and with it…
Rowst’lya musk.
…We were made to be humiliated today …
… Our test is not yet complete …
… So long as our silent war persists …
She drew around a mizzen mast on slow, soundless steps. Kortho’s edge gleamed against the splash of all-encompassing scarlet. Dutiful wolfen eyes darted across the ship from one end to the other. Nostrils flexed over and over, on the hunt for dishonour.
“It’s too late, Sara.”
The heretic’s voice was a glass shard in Urio
st’s ear. Two orbs flashed out the corner of her eye. She turned before a fox-shaped silhouette. Uriost steeled herself.
“Leave,” said the heretic. He was leaned up against a second mizzen mast with one arm hugging around the deep dented wound Master Tetra’s discus had given him. He tilted Nimbus to one side, away from Uriost. Its blade gleamed crimson in the emergency lights.
“You’ve fallen so far,” she said. “Everything the Zuut has put in place, the solace he’s given to us, those whom no other would love or accept…”
“I’ve told you, this has nothing to do with us – nothing to do with breach of canine loyalty. Open your eyes. If even a smattering of the Crystals’ power is used, doing so could tear a hole right through the planes of our very existence. Do you want that?”
Uriost hesitated to answer. There was no way any of it was true. “Give up the Wind Crystal and the Blade of the Unicorn—”
The heretic scoffed. “Not a chance. Do you actually hear anything I’m saying?”
“—Reinforcements are on their way. You’re injured, and there’s nowhere else for you to run.”
“Clearly, not.” The heretic sighed. “I’m Injured – but not for long. I’ve still got Nimbus – and I’ll kill every last Alliance affiliate until somebody decides they want to listen to me – what I’ve been trying to say from the start!”
“The only one you’ve managed to convince is General Yaschire, and we both know why that is.” The words dripped from Uriost’s tongue like thick venom.
The heretic snarled. “You leave him out of this, naïve little wolf. If that’s why you’re so vigilant for vengeance, I suggest you take a look at the far bigger picture. Sara, what we have – the gift of life we’ve been given … you believe it is for the honour of a simple peace treaty, an alliance? We keep the peace by maintaining control. We are tools to be used to silence those who would dare to speak out. You were there when Rudolph Aruto slaughtered all those Retainers at the Stone Zephyr.”
The Book of Wind: (The Quest for the Crystals #1) Page 34