by Various
From orbit, Rahnelo looked pristine. While the planet had a thin equatorial band of deep greens and golden browns, it cooled rapidly as it arced toward its poles, and its caps were icy blue. Bathed in the light of its star, the frozen Sangheili colony world sparkled as it spun about its axis. The effect was breathtakingly beautiful, and staring down at Rahnelo from a distance of a few hundred kilometers, it was easy to get distracted. But distraction was exactly what the Half-Jaw wanted.
Since his Phantom dropship had begun its descent, the Half-Jaw, Rtas ‘Vadum, had done everything he could to keep his mind occupied. He double-checked his pilot’s glide path toward a line of craggy peaks on the wintry edge of the northern hemisphere. He ordered scans of the storm that was brewing there, even though he knew the Phantom was rated to withstand far worse hazards. Having exhausted these by-the-book operations, and not wanting to become a nuisance to his crew, the Half-Jaw busied himself by watching the storm grow larger in the Phantom’s viewscreens.
For a handful of heartbeats, as the craft nosed into the bright tops of the stratus clouds, the Half-Jaw felt a surge of confidence. You are Sangheili! Born and bred for war. This is what you live for! But then the Phantom broke into the dull gray light beneath the clouds, and his false bravado shattered.
The first evidence of the assault was Rahnelo’s ruined spaceport. Through the snow whipping past the Phantom’s swept-back nose, the Half-Jaw saw launchpads raked by plasma cannons and a hulking orbital transport burst open from the inside, its fuel tanks boiled by sustained laser fire. The port’s smaller craft were slagged inside their hangars, likely before their pilots even had their engines spinning. It was a precise, thorough attack, clearly the work of an experienced foe. But the Half-Jaw knew this was just the beginning.
The broad road from the spaceport to Rahnelo’s largest settlement was cratered by heavy plasma bombardment. Deep pits walked up the frozen flagstones, and near misses had vaporized the ice fields on either side, creating holes of blackened tundra. The craters continued into the settlement, where direct hits had destroyed many of the high-walled family compounds, littering the ground with slate roof tiles, iron structural spars, and foundation stones that had stood for generations.
For the Half-Jaw, it felt as though he was trapped with his eye against some sort of macabre microscope. As the Phantom descended, layers of magnification clicked into place, each one revealing horrific new details. The final lens belonged to the corpses; stark, dark lumps scattered in the snowy streets leading up to the settlement’s keep.
Having been a warrior most of his life, Rtas ‘Vadum thought he had seen the aftermath of war in all its grim variations. During the Covenant’s long campaign against the humans, he had witnessed the destruction of many of their cities. On rare occasions, he had seen Covenant fleets unleash their might on entire human worlds, bathing their planets in plasma fire until they shone like glass. And most recently, Rtas had witnessed High Charity itself fall to the devastating parasite known as the Flood.
But until this moment, the Half-Jaw had never seen the annihilation of a Sangheili world. He had always feared the humans might someday deal a blow like this. But he never imagined he would see one of his species’ settlements savaged by creatures who used to call themselves Covenant.
As his Phantom flared for landing, the Half-Jaw felt unusually heavy inside the silver armor that covered him from head to toe. Rahnelo’s gravity was slightly less than that of the Sangheili homeworld, Sanghelios. But the Half-Jaw’s legs were leaden as he marched down the Phantom’s ramp and into the icy intersection of two wide cobblestone streets. He forced himself to strike a confident pose, his flanged, white-striped helmet held high and his shoulders set against the frigid wind. He hoped the dozen Sangheili warriors forming a perimeter around him wouldn’t see any difference in his demeanor—wouldn’t guess the truth that the Half-Jaw had known for some time but didn’t dare admit to anyone, least of all himself:
I am tired. And I don’t want to fight anymore.
“Cowardice!” The word momentarily stunned the Half-Jaw. But then he realized the Blademaster wasn’t speaking to him. The gold-armored Sangheili stood in the middle of the intersection near an overturned sledge, his fists balled on his hips beside his two inactive energy blades. Years of shouting orders had accustomed Vul ‘Soran to speaking at maximum volume regardless of the situation. And now, even though the elderly warrior’s voice was hoarse and cracked, his words easily carried over the Phantom’s idling hum: “Only the accursed Jiralhanae would attack a world with no defenses!”
The Half-Jaw strode to the Blademaster, snow squealing beneath his armored feet, and appraised the scene around the sledge. A du’nak lay dead, tangled in its lines. The woolly, two-trunked draft animal had pulled the slat-wood sledge into a sharp turn that bent its bronze runners and left it balanced precariously on one side. Spilled baskets of mustard-colored grain lay in a jumbled pile beside the sledge. Nearby were two Jiralhanae corpses: one facedown, the other on its back. The latter figure was headless, and the missing part lay a few meters away, upright in the snow, staring back at its body with a tight-lipped grimace of profound disappointment.
“Not entirely defenseless . . .” the Half-Jaw said, staring at the bodies. He knelt beside the facedown corpse. “Help me move this mess.”
The Jiralhanae were both clad in dark-blue heavy-plate armor. Their shaggy limbs were blood-stiff, frozen at awkward angles. When, after considerable effort, the Half-Jaw and Blademaster finally rolled the corpse onto its back, they discovered the body of a male Sangheili who had been crushed beneath it in the snow.
The dead Sangheili was even older than the Blademaster, probably in his ninth decade. His open eyes were clouded, and his deeply tanned skin was stretched tight across his cheeks. The elder wore no armor, just a long, thick cloak spun from du’nak wool, mottled gray and white, likely shorn from the same animal lying dead beside him. The wool had done little to stop what the Half-Jaw recognized were wounds from Jiralhanae plasma rifles; deep, charred pits in the elder’s chest. But the old Sangheili still held the hilt of an energy blade in one fist. And although the weapon’s patina indicated it was even older than its owner, the blade, expertly wielded, had been more than enough to stop his much larger foes.
“He tangled his du’nak. Flipped his sledge,” the Blademaster said.
The Half-Jaw nodded in agreement. “Made himself some cover, then fought a last stand.”
Now that the second Jiralhanae was on its back, the Half-Jaw could see the wounds from the elder’s energy blade: two crosscut slashes in the armor that wrapped the Jiralhanae’s belly. The metal around the cuts was heated to a rainbow sheen, but there was no blood or spill of viscera such as the Half-Jaw had seen when human soldiers had gotten lucky with their primitive combat knives. The elder’s energy blade had instantly cauterized the flesh it cut. The wounds it made were so clean that they almost looked painless . . . but the Half-Jaw knew from personal experience that this was not true.
As with all Sangheili, the Half-Jaw’s mouth was split vertically and horizontally into four separate mandibles. But the hinged jawbones on the left side of his face were cut almost clean away, the result of his own close call with the energy blade of another Sangheili whose mind had been possessed by the Flood. This was before the parasite’s infestation of High Charity, and even though the wound was almost a year old, it still stung, especially when the Half-Jaw spoke. To avoid the pain, he moved his mouth as little as possible, and as a result his voice was a near-constant growl.
“They came right for him,” the Half-Jaw said. “Bunched up and eager for the kill.”
The Blademaster huffed dismissively at the Jiralhanae. “Fools should have taken their time. Split up, circled ’round.” Then he gave the dead elder a respectful nod. “I hope I’m still that good when I’m that old.”
You are that old, the Half-Jaw almost said. But the jest was as tired as he was, and he let the Blademaster build to his blus
ter.
“When I find the Jiralhanae chieftain who led this attack,” Vul ‘Soran shouted, his breath steaming in the cold, “by the blood of my father, by the blood of my sons, I swear he will learn what my blades can do!”
The Blademaster was Sangheili-ai, a master swordsman. He had been a fleet champion in his prime, and even as he made the slow slide through middle age, he still humbled younger opponents looking to burnish their reputations with his defeat. But the Blademaster was already in his sixties when the Covenant started fighting the humans, and that long campaign had sapped his strength. Now Vul ‘Soran’s deep-blue skin was splotched gray, and even the gilded armor that denoted his master rank had lost its luster. Indeed, the armor was covered with so many dents and abrasions that the Half-Jaw frequently worried about its integrity and had even considered ordering Vul ‘Soran to commission a new set.
But a Sangheili’s armor was his honor, a public record of glorious victories and narrow escapes. Every battle-born imperfection was a mark in the tally of his esteem. And few things short of death could pry him out of it.
The Half-Jaw knew from their recent sparring matches that Vul ‘Soran’s technique with dual energy blades remained flawless. But his second-in-command wasn’t as quick as he used to be and he tired easily. Would the Blademaster have slaughtered these two Jiralhanae? Yes. But could he defeat one of their mighty chieftains in single combat? The Half-Jaw’s ruined jaws twitched with sudden pain. Forgive me, old friend. But those days are long behind you. . . .
“Shipmaster, movement to the north.” The voice crackled in the Half-Jaw’s helmet. He glanced at a second Phantom orbiting overhead, its purple hull easy to spot, even in the whirling snow. “Scans read friendly,” the Phantom’s pilot clarified, and the Blademaster shouted for the perimeter guards to make way. Soon another sledge glided into view, pulled by a single du’nak with yellowed horns that spiraled backward in an illusion of speed, mocking the animal’s deliberate pace.
A Sangheili youth sat on the sledge’s elevated seat, bundled in a glossy black du’nak cloak many sizes too big for its frame. A second Sangheili in a similarly colored cloak and hood strode beside the sledge, holding the du’nak’s bridle in one hand and a double-bladed energy lance in the other. One of the lance’s elongated, diamond-shaped blades glowed cyan hot, lighting a path for the draft animal through the snow. As the sledge neared the Half-Jaw, the Sangheili with the lance gave the bridle a gentle tug and the du’nak lumbered to a stop, venting clouds of steam through its trunks. The animal was exhausted; spit hung in icicles from its whiskered jowls, and its muscular back legs trembled.
“I am the shipmaster of the carrier Shadow of Intent,” the Half-Jaw said. “We received a call for help and—” But before he could finish, the Sangheili with the lance strode between him and the Blademaster, heading straight for the overturned sledge. The newcomer knelt beside the dead elder, lance planted in the snow. For a long time, the only sound was the crackle of the lance’s blade, flash-vaporizing any flakes that blew too close.
“The attack on us was days ago,” the Sangheili finally said. The voice was muffled by the hood—but it was unmistakably female. The Half-Jaw saw her shoulders slump inside her cloak. The weariness he recognized. The anger he didn’t see until she stood, wheeled on him, and snapped in the sharp, clipped cadence of Rahnelo’s Sangheili dialect: “Now what help can you give?”
The Blademaster bristled. “That is no way to address a shipmaster—”
But the Half-Jaw silenced the Blademaster with an upraised hand. “I am truly sorry,” he said. “We came as quickly as we could.”
The female Sangheili threw back her hood. She wore a round-nosed, backswept battle helmet, deep red with delicate gold scrollwork that flashed as bright as her amber eyes. She started to speak, then clenched her jaws tight, which said everything the Half-Jaw needed to know about how fast she thought he should have come.
The young Sangheili meanwhile leaped from the sledge and trudged through the snow to the elder’s corpse, dragging the tails of his coat behind him. “Who is it, sister?”
“The miller, Gol ‘Rham-ee.” The female Sangheili emphasized the honorific at the end of the elder’s name, making sure the Half-Jaw and Blademaster knew that he had once been a Covenant warrior, not just a grinder of grain.
“They killed his du’nak too?” The boy’s voice cracked between a snarl and a sob. He gave the nearest Jiralhanae a ferocious kick. “I hate them all!” The Jiralhanae’s body barely moved.
“What’s done is done and cannot be undone,” the female said. Then, softening her tone: “Come, let’s take the miller to the keep.”
The sister and brother reached for the elder’s body, and when the Half-Jaw and Blademaster realized what the siblings were doing, they helped them heft it onto the sledge, where more Sangheili corpses had been placed under layers of wool blankets. It was hard to tell how many bodies there were. All were horribly blistered and burned; some were fused together, locked in a final, protective embrace.
“We found them near the craters, on the road to the port,” the youth explained. “They were running for the keep. But the Jiralhanae ship cut them down.”
“What kind of ship?” The Blademaster took an impatient step toward the youth. “Are you certain there was only one?”
The young Sangheili stood his ground, but his eyes went wide with fear. The female put a protective hand across her brother’s chest and shot the Blademaster a withering glance. “All questions come to me,” she said.
This rebuff set the Blademaster’s blood boiling. But it was clear to the Half-Jaw that both brother and sister were still raw from the attack, and the last thing they needed was more demands, however well intentioned, on their already frayed nerves.
“Blademaster, rally the squad,” the Half-Jaw said. Then to the female Sangheili: “We would like to accompany you to the keep and speak with your kaidon.”
The female Sangheili said neither yes nor no. Instead, without a word, she helped her brother climb back aboard the sledge, tugged the du’nak around by its bridle, and then fell into step beside the animal as it plodded back the way it had come, pulling the sledge through its own deep ruts. The Half-Jaw, Blademaster, and their dozen warriors followed, and soon all were tramping through the deepening snow up a gently sloping road past more ruined compounds, the Blademaster barking reminders to check every Jiralhanae corpse they passed. The Half-Jaw and female Sangheili walked together on either side of the du’nak, heads bowed against an icy wind.
After many silent steps, the Half-Jaw said, “You wear the armor of a warrior.”
“Does that surprise you?”
“No. What else would the daughter of a kaidon be?”
The female flicked her eyes at the Half-Jaw; a glance of respect for an educated guess. On Sanghelios, tradition held that children grew up without knowing their fathers. Instead, they were raised by their uncles and aunts—a system designed to emphasize clan rather than parental loyalty. On colonies such as Rahnelo, where populations were smaller and families tighter knit, the Half-Jaw knew the rules were different.
“I am Tul ‘Juran,” the female said, “first and only daughter of Kaidon Tulum ‘Juranai, captain of his guard and scion of his keep.”
“Rtas ‘Vadum.” The Half-Jaw fumbled the V at the beginning of his surname, which was especially hard to say with missing jaws. Embarrassed, he continued in a deeper growl: “I would speak with your father—ask the kaidon all he knows about the attack, so I can punish those responsible.”
“You can speak to the kaidon,” the Scion said, “but not to my father.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The kaidon . . . rides behind you.”
Had the Half-Jaw been less fatigued, his mind less focused on maintaining the outward appearance of calm authority, he would have immediately understood. But it took him a few more steps, crunching through the snow, to work out the answer. One of the corpses on the sledge . . . ? No
. . . the kaidon is her brother. Which was, at first, difficult to believe.
Kaidons were mature masters of their keeps, rulers of entire provinces. The youth on the sledge was less than a decade old. Pale, protective scales still hung from his neck, an evolutionary holdover from the days when Sangheili parents used to carry their offspring in their toothy jaws to keep them safe from predators as they hunted and gathered across Sanghelios’s coastal plains.
“Most of my brothers died in the war,” Tul ‘Juran continued. Rahnelo, like most Sangheili colony worlds, had seen heavy recruitment during the Covenant’s long fight against humanity. “The two who remained joined my father in his final charge against the Jiralhanae. That was three days ago. We haven’t seen any of them since.”
Which meant the youth on the sledge was the last of the kaidon’s sons. Although the Scion was older, well into her second decade, she was female. And according to Sangheili tradition, no female could ever be kaidon. Mistress of her keep, ruler of her kaidon husband, yes. But never owner and heir to her father’s lands and other possessions.
If the Scion’s youngest brother had also died or gone missing in the Jiralhanae assault, Rahnelo’s lesser kaidons would soon be vying for the Scion’s inheritance, attempting to secure her hand in marriage, either to themselves or to one of their own sons. If the Scion refused, she could fight, and the annals of Sangheili history were filled with brave and steadfast kaidon daughters who did exactly that. Some held out for years. A few, such as the Gray Maiden of Konar, had lived out their lives in perpetual siege, fortified in their keeps, aided by loyal vassals and the foolishness of rival kaidon suitors who wasted decades fighting among themselves.
As the Scion strode through the snow, the Half-Jaw caught glimpses of her armored torso and legs as they split her cloak. The red metal bands were spattered with Jiralhanae blood, and the Half-Jaw knew in an instant that she would defend her honor and her keep just as fiercely against any male Sangheili challengers.