Yngve, AR - Darc Ages

by Darc Ages (lit)

  As he limped down the street to find a technician, laser pulses rained down on him; the third knight was positioned on a rooftop, and he wanted revenge. Dohan held up his battered shield above his head, but its cover was no good - the pulses went through and hit the armor, hard. He could feel the suit temperature jump to painful levels.

  Dohan kicked in a door and skipped inside a house for cover.

  Chapter 20

  The fleeing Darc and Shara turned a corner, and ran into a pair of lost enemy soldiers.

  Darc reacted instinctively, and thrust his sword at the first soldier who crossed his way - the blade pierced the infantryman's shoulder, and he fell over with a muffled groan. The other one got the time to react, and raised his rifle - but just as he fired, Darc slammed his shield into the man's chest. The soldier toppled over, and Darc smashed his visor with his gloved fist. The soldier coughed up blood, and lay beaten. Both enemies were still breathing. Panting hard, Darc took the fallen men's rifles and handed one of them to Shara. "Take the shield," he gasped at her. "If someone shoots, just duck behind it and fire back."

  Shara obeyed, too shocked to react to the violence about her. In the next instant, a metal giant thumped down on the cobblestone, right next to them. It was the fourth enemy knight, who had come to relieve his comrades in the air battle. He had not seen the fight from behind the wall he had just crossed - and it surprised him greatly to meet a beautiful armed woman in a torn red dress.

  That moment of surprise was just what Darc needed. He threw himself on his back, and fired four quick pulses up at the knight's backpack. It exploded in a burst of smoke and sparks - the knight was hurled forward on his face, and smashed into the cobblestone. Darc's shield was hit by flak; a laser ricochet blinded him momentarily, in spite of his protective visor. Spots danced in front of Darc's eyes - he tried crawling to his feet, but his legs felt like jelly. His vision cleared, and he saw the huge knight rise up above him.

  "I'll cut you in half, Damon scum!" the knight roared, his visor smashed, and his face a bloody mess. Darc tried to fire again - but his stolen rifle was empty now. The knight grinned maniacally, and raised his long sword over his head. Now it's really, really over, Darc told himself. He shut his eyes as he heard a series of sharp snaps and cracks - then opened them, and discovered that the knight's exposed face was full of black spots. Smoke poured from the spots - they were holes, and the smoke came from the knight's burned-out head. The metal giant tipped over, with his sword-arm stiffly raised, and fell backward with a crash.

  Darc staggered to his feet, and turned around. It was Shara who had fired - she stood frozen, her rifle still aimed, staring at her bloody handiwork. Darc grabbed her by the wrist, and got them both on the move.

  "Thanks for saving me, my lady," he said as they rushed away.

  "I killed him... didn't I?"

  "Yeah."

  "It was the first time I..." She did not cry, but her face was white. It was the first time for me, too, Darc realized. He decided to ponder that problem in another life, should he ever get the chance to be frozen again.

  Dohan stumbled through the house, knocking down furniture and objects like a clumsy armored elephant. Behind him, the pursuing enemy knight ambled inside in a barrage of laser shots. The house was a glazier's workshop - ricochets hit mirrors, bounced recklessly back and forth, shattered fragile glassware, set fire to curtains and carpets. Dohan fired a few desperate shots as he retreated, but only managed to start more fires.

  Dohan was not the cerebral type. He did not know what made him grab a mirror from the wall. Perhaps the influence of Darc's inquisitive, creative mind had finally made its mark on him?

  Suddenly the pursuing enemy glimpsed the blurred outline of a knight, facing him in a smoky doorway from across the chamber. The enemy knight instinctively fired all he could - and the pulses instantly reflected back on him, hitting his gun-arm and facial visor. The figure in the doorway seemed to splinter into a thousand shards - the knight had been firing at his own mirror image. Dohan leaped out of the doorway, and struck down the knight with a single blow of his metal fist, forceful enough to penetrate a brick wall. The enemy knight crashed into a wall of mirrors and slumped to the floor - the imprint of Dohan's fist was stamped into his helmet.

  Dohan caught his breath, disarmed the fallen opponent, and cut off his power supply so that he would not be able to rise up. After having dragged the unconscious opponent out of the burning house, Dohan recalled the air battle. He rushed outside to learn what had happened to his father.

  A courier brought the bad news to Tharlos's camp: all jetfighters were lost; all knights were missing or dead; the troops were being pushed back.

  Finally, Tharlos ordered a fast retreat. The surviving Pasko soldiers scurried into the remaining troop carriers - leaving hundreds of wounded and blind comrades to be taken captives. These abandoned men could look forward to at least being alive - they might get exchanged to Pasko City later, if Lord Migam Pasko considered it worth the expense. Otherwise, crippling eye and nerve injuries made their future look bleak; most of them would become limping, miserable beggars with eye-patches, lining the streets of Damon City.

  The defenders of Damon City cheered; a new victory cry was repeated among them, growing in strength.

  "Roken-rool!"

  In the castle war room, Lord Azuch Fache received the good news. In Lord Damon's absence, he immediately ordered the catacomb shelters to be opened. Citizens were mobilized into working parties, to put out fires and repair the outer walls.

  Azuch's warning was sent out over the city from mouth to mouth: "The wall must be restored, before the Ones Whose Very Name Brings Disease get the opportunity to reach Damon City!"

  That warning would be a powerful driving force during the night ahead - the sun was already low in the sky, and for the first time the outer wall was breached.

  The castle guard opened the inner sanctum and let out Bor's family. Osanna immediately asked to know if her husband was safe. When she heard that not only Bor but also Dohan was safe and sound, she demanded to see them.

  "I told you Darc would not let us down!" little Eveli shouted at the family, running with her mother through the castle. "He is the Incarnation!"

  Awonso and his family, crowding with the other citizenry, milled up from the catacomb shelters and saw the damage battle had done to their fair city.

  The young apprentice librarian assumed that Librian was still in the castle library, and became occupied by the same thought as everyone else: The outer wall must be repaired. He lost sight of his parents as he went with the flow of thousands through the narrow, darkening streets, following the signs of war toward the breach. Awonso stumbled on something, and could barely stop long enough to see that he had stepped on a corpse. He felt a cold shiver, and was pushed along by the crowd. When they reached the breach, he was drenched in sweat.

  Groups of volunteers formed spontaneously from the crowds, and seemed to know what had to be done. Some groups took to gathering the slain and taking care of the injured, before the doctors and priestesses arrived. The corpses of enemy soldiers were stripped of valuables, stacked in piles, and set on fire. Those enemies who were alive but injured, were bound together and led away to imprisonment. Children and old women ran after the silent captives, tossed rocks, spat at and cursed them.

  The fire brigades received the aid of hundreds of men and women, who formed lines at the city wells, pumping buckets full and passing them along to put out the fires. Awonso stole a few gulps of water, then joined the largest groups: the craftsmen, carpenters, masons, and common folk who gathered at the wall breach.

  He witnessed how the respective guilds rounded up craftsmen for the various tasks, shouted orders, and handed out equipment from the workshops. Awonso craned his chubby neck and tried to catch a glimpse of his father's guild, but it was the familiar faces of the Wirers' Guild that caught his attention first. One of them, the neighbor Franco, urged Awonso closer.

 
; "Awonso, have you seen your father and his men?"

  "No, master Franco, they must have gone to see if our workshops are safe from fire. Let me help out. I know a thing or two about wiring."

  "Just this once, boy, I will ignore guild rules. Are you scared of what lies outside the wall?" Awonso paled visibly, but shook his head with emphasis.

  "Then grab a pair of rubber gloves and boots, and follow me. We must gather all the electric wiring that was destroyed when the wall broke, before it is safe for the others to begin rebuilding. The city lord has decided not to shut down the electric traps, which means our work is very dangerous. But it must be done, and with speed, to make sure the wall can be repaired tonight."

  Awonso eagerly followed the wirers, rugged workers whose skin were more tanned by outdoors work than his. They formed lines and carefully made their way across the rubble with electric torches and detectors, until they came to the dreaded Outside. This was why Awonso had joined them: to see the outside from ground level, for the first time in his life.

  The setting sun made a glowing background to the quiet, vast plains and low hills. At the distant horizon, one could just make out the few lights that were not blocked by other city walls. Stray animal noises sounded more clearly here than in town: birds, packs of wolves, insects, the occasional bird. To the citizenry, it all sounded potential menace and had to be kept at bay, as the custom had been for centuries.

  Only the nobility and their armies were supposed to venture outside the cities, and only when absolutely necessary. Awonso thought guiltily that the Goddess and the Singing King, who knew all, sensed his yearning to break the taboo, to walk into the wilderness. He mumbled prayers of forgiveness as he and the others rolled up and carried wires and cables - and Awonso could hear, that he was not the only man who prayed. He found a length of wiring, connected to a trap of barbed wire, and started cutting off the trap with a pair of long pliers. Blueish sparks flew as he cut off the rusty barbed wire, and his beart beat faster... but no accident happened.

  "Thank you, Goddess... King," he whispered.

  It took Awonso and the one hundred men over an hour to finish their task; the other groups hurried in with spades, picks and large cranes to begin the rebuilding. Thousands more formed lines to move debris out of the guildsmen's way, and large pits were dug to mix fresh concrete. Awonso took one last, longing look at the great outside, feeling the cool breeze of open land coming in from the breach. Then, with a sigh, he stepped out of the way of the passing workers and walked back to his home street, to the family house. And for a change, the city streetlights remained lit all night; he didn't have to walk in the dark.

  Among the shouts echoing through the night, he heard an unfamiliar call: "Roken-rool..."

  Two of Lord Damon's castle guards stopped Darc and Shara, when they tried to enter the city cathedral. Both Darc and Shara had taken off their helmets before; now that seemed a mistake, for the guards recognized him.

  "Sir Darc," one of the guards said, "it is Lord Damon's order that you follow us back to the castle."

  Darc's muscles tensed, but he was too tired to fight, and it was pointless to run away in the dark; he would only get lost.

  "Let's go."

  "The woman too," the guard said. She tried to run - the other guard grabbed her by the arm. She gave out a faint scream of protest.

  "I don't know him! I just followed him - let go of me! Do you know who I am?"

  The guards smiled, and pushed the two prisoners before them.

  "I know you , lady," one guard said scornfully. "You spent some time doing hard labor, after you tried to impersonate the wife of the chairman of the Guild of Micromechanics. Shara Rawiman, also known as Shalott Rawiman, also known as 'Long Fingers' Shalott."

  Shara gave Darc a fierce glare - it seemed to her that her present misfortune was all his fault. Darc knew big trouble was ahead, and Shara shouldn't have to be involved.

  "Now listen, friends," he told the guards, "she really has nothing to do with me. She's just a petty burglar I happened to surprise in a house -"

  Shara kicked Darc in the shin; he groaned.

  "Bastard!" she shouted. "I saved your life, and this is how you thank me?"

  The first guard raised his eyebrows: "Oh, you saved his life, did you? We have been told to arrest anyone suspected of being in liaison with Sir Darc. Lord Damon will take great interest in your valiant rescue."

  Both guards laughed viciously; Shara's eyes were filled with fright. Darc's mood darkened a little more, when he saw her eyes. Though he did not yet know this woman, he had seen firsthand her intelligence, street smarts, and resourcefulness - just the type of urban woman that excited him the most.

  This time, Lord Damon knew what to do. After the court physician had examined the city ruler, an electric wagon brought him to the gash in the outer wall. He inspected the repair work and added to the guard force a large troop contingent with laser artillery. A little later his son arrived from the castle, relieved of his battlesuit, and Bor praised Dohan's valor openly so that the troops saw it. The populace cheered them, and no-one mouthed complaints over Dohan's previous desertion of the city.

  Bor's next step was to put Dohan into "protective custody". As soon as the populace could not see Dohan, Bor's elite guards surrounded him and brought him back to the castle. The young man reacted with shocked silence, and made no attempts to resist. More loyal guards were stationed in the cathedral, to report on the activities of high-priestess Inu. When Bor's wagon returned to the central fortress, he received news that Darc had been found and imprisoned - together with a suspect citizen.

  Everything went the way he had hoped it would, and so he steeled himself for the ugly task ahead. In order to secure his son's succession to power, and the future of Damon City, - and in Bor's own eyes, his entire world - he had to eliminate Darc. Bor gave the order not to allow his family, or Azuch Fache and his following, to see neither him nor his son.

  Before dawn, Bor summoned the chief court physician and told him: "Forget the surgery ward for now, doctor. Arrange a tribunal of the elders of the Doctor's Guild - tomorrow night."

  "For what purpose, my lord?"

  "A witchdoctor trial."

  The word soon reached Lady Osanna's ears, that both Darc and Dohan had been arrested. Infuriated, she launched a relentless verbal attack on her weary husband. He responded with stony silence, for he was acting under the call of duty, and duty went before personal feelings.

  So Bor hid his grief deep inside, and instructed the castle staff that all gossip would henceforth be an act of treason; Pasko spies could be anywhere.

  The cell was dim but quite warm, located in the castle catacombs. The warmth came from the underground power plant nearby, which produced heat, streetlight and sparse power rations for the entire city. Darc and Shara sat in their cell, and waited. Several hours passed; they said nothing. Darc rested after the long day, trying to gather his thoughts. He had failed to seek custody in the cathedral.

  Could high-priestess Inu help him nevertheless? Only if she took the risk of opposing Lord Damon and the Doctors' Guild. As for the Guild, Darc knew very little - save for his experience of their practitioners. They seemed reactionary even by the standards of other citizens, shunned all innovation, and based all decisions on old books. It could prove pointless trying to talk sense into them, but he had to try.

  Shara was thinking too. She tried to remember the faces of the noblemen and merchants she had known. Once she had been a mistress of one influential old nobleman; perhaps he could be blackmailed into supporting her. But that was a long time ago, and he had been senile already then. Denial, she concluded, was her only way out. She could always claim Darc had put her under some kind of spell, threatened her life or something.

  "Sir Darc..." she probed.

  "Hmm?"

  "Have you got any powerful friends? You ought to call for them now."

  "I have a hunch that they're doing all they can."

 
Darc guessed correctly. His cause was being actively supported by Inu, Lord Azuch Fache, Sir Dohan, Lady Osanna, and Librian. Some of them were plotting throughout the evening to smuggle Darc out of the city - to no avail. The city cathedral was now surrounded by Bor's troops, under the official cover of "protecting" it. Inu, isolated in her church, could only send out couriers and prayers. But the conspirators could not meet Bor Damon, Darc, or the Guild - Bor had seen to that. The trial of Darc was going to take place at night, at a secret location. And by special agreement between Bor and the Doctor's Guild, Dohan was going to be spared from any serious charges.

  Chapter 21

  A few hours past midnight, Darc and Shara were taken from their cell and blindfolded. Silent guards brought them through winding streets and corridors, to a house somewhere outside the castle gardens.

  Finally, the blindfolds came off. Darc looked at the trial room surrounding them. In a tall, wide room - an emptied warehouse, perhaps - a circle of tables and chairs had been arranged around its center. Darc and Shara were offered two chairs in the middle of the circle. Shortly thereafter, a dozen elderly, bespectacled men in white robes entered and took seats at the tables. Darc recognized the speaker of the court - it was the chief court physician, as stern-faced as the last time they met.

  The speaker tapped on the tabletop with a little hammer, cleared his throat, and spoke up: "I hereby declare this session of the Doctors' Tribunal opened." He consulted his papers with two other bespectacled doctors, and continued: "We are here tonight, as experts in medical matters, to determine whether a witchdoctor has managed to infiltrate Damon City, deceive our beloved Lord Damon, and with evil in mind tried to compromise the ruling family.