Choice

by Gary Stringer

  All around, people were running and screaming in terror and panic. But not Michael. As he jumped to his feet, he looked strong, determined, resolute. He smiled at her and held out a hand. She accepted it and allowed him to help her to her feet. Then, suddenly, they were running. Not in fear and panic, but with strength of purpose. She led Michael through a maze of side streets, avoiding the fighting and the stampeding masses. Together they ran until they were out beyond the city and never once did she let go of his hand. She trusted him. All of her experience of life and of people taught her that it made sense to help Michael. It wasn't faith. It was a shared rational understanding that they had to get out of the city. Keothara was lost and to stay there would be to embrace death. Instead, Suzanne chose to join with Michael and get away, take a chance in the Wilderness. It was rational to take that chance. Her life was the most precious thing Suzanne would ever own and from that moment on she knew her life was with Michael. It wasn't destiny; it wasn't fate; it wasn't the will of the gods. It was her will. It was so because Suzanne chose it.

  Michael paused in their flight for a moment, to get his bearings and consider the best direction to take, to get back to his team. He turned to look at Suzanne and she saw in his eyes, in his smile, in every aspect of his body language, that he felt the same. All the experiences of his life so far had prepared him to recognise in her everything he valued in a woman and he chose her. Their feelings went unspoken then - the words came later - but that was when it began...

  * * * * * ...And their choices had brought them to this moment in the Iciconia Mountains. His hand took hers and together they ran, just as they had a year ago. Only this time, they weren't running away from something, but towards something. Their goal. Their treasure. Oh what treasure!

  They stood there for the eternity of a single moment, hand in hand, gazing in wonder at the immensity of what lay before them. This was why they had run - run so far, so high - to find their treasure. By following the breadcrumbs of torn pages and folk lore, Michael and Suzanne had pieced together the clues to find this place and its treasure within, lost and forgotten two hundred years ago at the end of the Tech Wars.

  The treasure here in this cave was the greatest store of Techmagic weapons anywhere in Mythallen, and together with the help of their team, Michael and Suzanne intended to use these weapons to wipe the chaos creatures from the face of Majaos.

  * * * * *

  “Brrr! It's a bit chilly out here!” Tanya remarked, as she stepped out of her tent into the snowbound landscape at the foot of the Iciconia Mountains. “Cold enough to freeze the blood!” The other two Knights looked at her as if she'd dribbled down the front of her armour. Of course, Knights weren't supposed to complain about physical hardship and in truth Knights of Balance were no different in that regard. But Tanya wasn't really complaining, just commenting. Knights of Balance were somewhat less formal than their Light and Dark counterparts, believing that a certain amount of banter and free conversation enhanced camaraderie and ultimately led to an even more unified fighting force. Tanya supposed that kind of thinking was a bit progressive for her companions.

  Hannah and Quentin seemed to get a small static shock at her use of modern language and - heaven forbid - contractions. They had their idiosyncrasies, but diversity was strength and it would be highly dishonourable to make fun.

  Tanya really wanted to find a way to fit in with them, because this was a unique opportunity: the first joint operation between the three orders of Knights. Tanya didn't want to be the one to spoil things - that would not go down well with her superior officers. As a Knight Scout Leader, she was used to operating with a wide latitude of interpretation of her orders, but this level of autonomy, this detached duty, was totally unprecedented. Supreme Knight Commander Sir Marcus Braithwaite had demonstrated a huge amount of trust in her and she was desperate not to let him or herself down. If that meant she had to use tight discipline to school her usual bright and bubbly personality, then that was what she would do.

  “So,” she began again, trying to pretend her previous remark never happened. “Which way do think we ought to go now?” It had taken a few days of hiking to reach the mountains around which they were now scouting, from where they had exited the Corridor network. The area Rochelle had highlighted on the map covered quite a sizable area, and the conditions made progress slow and difficult, but at last they were in a position to begin searching for the Life Eddy that would constitute the Techmagic node.

  “Mayhap we shouldst strive to attain the higher ground?” suggested Dark Knight Officer Sir Quentin Marr.

  “Indeed,” concurred Lady Hannah. “From a higher vantage point, we shalt in all likelihood be able to see one of these great light shows if one doth truly exist here.” Hannah was a newly promoted Knight Warrior of the Fourth Merlyon Infantry, if Tanya's memory served her correctly. But of course, Merlyon was now gone along with, presumably, her entire garrison. She was the last. Tanya couldn't imagine the burden that Hannah must be carrying underneath that proud and noble Knightly discipline. Tanya had nothing but the highest respect for her golden-armoured companion. Lady Hannah was nothing short of the Knight heroes of the stories Tanya's father had read to her as a child the kind of characters that had inspired Tanya to train hard throughout her childhood years, so that she could become a Knight herself. It hadn't quite worked out the way she had planned, though.

  * * * * * Growing up, Tanya had always envisioned herself in golden plate like Hannah beside her, but then one day a man came to her village dressed in silver armour. Nobody spared him a second glance, accepting him merely as another freelance warrior or a mercenary, but he wasn't. He came to her house and spoke with her parents for a moment so that they wouldn't be alarmed at a strange man talking to their daughter. He finally introduced himself to young Tanya as Sir Robert Clarkson, and presented his credentials as a Knight Scout Leader with the Knights of Balance. Sir Robert explained that he and other Knight Scouts of his order had passed through their village over the years. Through simple observation and conversation with the local people, he knew of young Tanya’s desire to become a Knight. She had been marked out as a girl with great potential. Now they felt the time was right to offer her a place in their Knighthood as a squire and Initiate-intraining. He explained some of the philosophies of the Knights of Balance and the major similarities and differences from the other two orders. He did so in a way that greatly impressed the adolescent Tanya. He was completely without prejudice, not seeking to promote Light over Dark or Balance over the others. He said that an individual's freedom of choice was greatly valued as a balance to the desire of the Knighthood to recruit and nurture individual potential, not allowing it to go to waste.

  The Knights of Paladinia saw no need for recruitment drives. They believed that every young warrior wanted to be a Knight and indeed they got thousands of sponsorship request letters every year, from which they picked only the best, even if that meant hundreds of disappointed warriors to a single acceptance. Most of their recruitment came from within - sons and daughters of Knights were almost expected to become Knights themselves unless they had the Life Gift. There was a cap on recruitment each year - a limit on the total number of new Initiates, which depended largely upon promotion through the ranks creating gaps at the bottom. Internal recruits were then given priority and that number was subtracted from the total available places, leaving a small remaining gap to be filled with external hopefuls. In this system, the Knights of Balance saw stagnation and a sad waste of potential.

  By contrast, the Dark Knights of Zhentilon were obsessive about recruitment. They aimed to identify potential at a very young age and take that potential for themselves. Taking in children as young as seven or eight was common. Indeed, that was considered to be the optimum period - the age where early potential was beginning to take shape. However, older children and adolescents were also sought and adult volunteers were always considered. The families of these potentials were encouraged to agree, through
a combination of generous incentives and applied pressures, but in the end `no` was still `no`. Anything else would not be honourable. In Dark Knight controlled towns and villages, however, conscription was compulsory. Internal recruitment proceeded along similar lines to the Paladinian order, upon which the Dark Knighthood had been modelled.

  The recruits were indoctrinated in the worship of Divine Mortress, Mistress of Death, through the Dark Clerics with whom the Knighthood enjoyed close ties. In this, they mirrored the Paladinian mandatory faith in Patreleaux. Recruits who failed to make the grade at any stage of assessment would either remain as squires, or be handed over to the Favoured Servants of Mortress, which helped to swell the clerics' ranks, too. Leaving the order was not an option. All Dark Knights-in-training were taught to forget about their old lives, and instead view the Knighthood as their true family. This served to forge strong and powerful bonds of loyalty, whilst also preserving the secrets of the Order.

  While Knights of Balance did not practise either conscription or coercion, they did learn some valuable lessons from the Dark Knights: spotting talent early, continual assessment and secrecy. Thus, all Knight Scouts had standing orders to look out for potential young recruits, discretely learn as much as possible about them and their family, and report this information to Command as soon as possible. Those children would then be monitored as they grew up. Some might call this spying, but in reality it was merely benevolent talent spotting. Additionally, Knights of Balance were always on the lookout for any `overzealous` Dark Knight recruiters that might decide to use force, and in such cases would attempt to intervene wherever possible. However, if a settlement were under Dark Knight control, or if individuals volunteered for the Dark Knighthood of their own volition - which happened more often than one might expect - the Neutrality Directive applied, dictating non-interference.

  Due to their need for secrecy, the silver knights had never sought any ties with the Honoured Priests of Egali-Te, leading them instead to create their own order of Knight Clerics within their organisation. The thirteen year-old Tanya had very much liked the sound of this third, secret Knighthood and couldn't wait to get started. And so, in the time it took her to stuff a few things into a small travel bag, she was off with Sir Robert to start her new life. She'd never looked back. Her parents could not be more proud, she knew. Sadly, the current war situation had prevented her from seeing them for such a long time, but at least she had managed to get a message to them so they knew she was well.

  She was now as Sir Robert had been then – she had facilitated the initiation of a number of new potentials who she hoped would come through this current conflict and grow as young Knights and as individuals. In fact, as soon as the war was over, she was going to request permission to visit the training centre to personally check up on her recruits, just as Sir Robert had taken the time to specifically ask after her when she was an Initiate-in-training. She remembered what a boost that had been to her - the knowledge that she as an individual mattered, that every individual was highly valued by these Knights.

  * * * * * Tanya was snapped out of her reverie by a group of chaos creatures, bursting out from behind a snowdrift so large it probably officially qualified as a hill. Two score there were, at least, maybe fifty. She and her two comrades-in-arms immediately sprang into action and cut into the monsters that looked a bit like a cross between a polar bear and large two-legged dogs with thick white shaggy fur that made them look twice as big as their bodies really were. What made them really disturbing was the way parts of their bodies would randomly drift out of place. An eye would glide slowly down a face like a tear rolling down a cheek, or a tooth would gradually move from its vertical position in the lower jaw to stick out at an angle heading towards the horizontal. Then the same body parts would suddenly snap back into place as if the creature suddenly remembered where it was supposed to be, like a bag slowly slipping from a shoulder and quickly grabbed and put back before it fell. They were ferocious creatures, spinning around to create a vortex of snow around themselves until they looked like advancing clouds - clouds that fought with tooth and claw.

  Fortunately, the Knights' heavy armour and shields were ideally suited to deflecting the blows that came their way, leaving the trio free to hack away. There was no subtlety or finesse about this battle - it felt more like slaughtering a herd of vicious cows - but it didn't have to be pretty. The whole point of battle was to kill the enemy. Style mattered not. The enemy would not be any more dead if slain by a fancy move.

  When they had cut the enemy down by half, Tanya spoke up. “If you two can handle the rest of this lot without me, I volunteer to scoo-- er-scout up these mountains.” She caught herself just in time. She didn't suppose `scoot` was a very Knightish word. “There might be more of these chaos monsters around and the next lot might be more of a challenge.”

  “Agreed,” Hannah said as she sliced the head off the nearest bear -dog-cloud thing - not that this necessarily stopped them. The bodies would often continue to move around for a while after decapitation, but they usually dropped to the ground of their own accord eventually, like an actor suddenly remembering he was supposed to `die` in this scene and had just missed his cue. “Tactical observations would indeed be a wise course at this time.”

  “This skirmish doth pose no danger,” Quentin said. “‘Tis scarcely enough exercise to warm the blood!” He added with a smile, in response to Tanya’s earlier remark.

  If I can get a Dark Knight to lighten up, Tanya considered as she quickly scaled the nearest peak, this should prove to be a very interesting little quest.

  Chapter 16

  Drizdar's mood was as dark as his tower. He rubbed his right leg - the living stone gave a dull, phantom ache that troubled him when he was worried. The war was not going well. Being Supreme War Master was only enjoyable when one was winning. Oh, the Council of Magic had won battles - many battles, many comprehensive battles, in fact - but no matter how many chaos creatures they killed, there seemed to be an endless supply of replacements.

  The casualty rate was also remarkably low for a war on this scale. They were losing. They were just losing slowly. Drizdar was certain this was deliberate strategy on Niltsiar's part. If she was intending to rule in the end, killing them all would be counter-productive. The Supreme War Master hated falling into her trap but what choice did they have? Stop fighting and lose faster?

  Even the destruction of Merlyon, while devastating to the general populace, had claimed the lives of relatively few professional mages. While the Higher Council had not anticipated the attack, Drizdar himself had laid plans. That Niltsiar possessed the power to level a city was to be expected, and so he had ensured that those mages that did not possess the innate ability to teleport themselves, had been issued Techmagic devices that worked as emergency teleporters. The Supreme War Master during the Tech Wars had kept them as trophies from every Techmage killed by his witches and warlocks. There was quite a stash, which Drizdar inherited when he assumed the post. They were designed for use by Techmages and Catalysts, but experiments had shown that those with the Life Gift in other Secrets could make it work, if rather crudely. It had to be the Life Gift, which was why all Life Calling mages had been reassigned away from the city by his order. Those Life Gifted mages who used the devices would have no way of controlling their destination and the device would burn out after that single use so it could not be used again. Still, when the City of Magic was crashing and burning around you, intent on killing virtually the entire general population, just about anywhere else would be preferable.

  So, by Drizdar's reckoning, he had personally saved the lives of a good two thirds to three quarters of the mages formerly stationed in Merlyon. Questions of Alignment had faded considerably since Gamaliel's declaration of unity, so even White mages - a large number of them, in fact - viewed Drizdar as some kind of personal saviour. That could prove very useful in the long term. Ah yes, no matter how badly the war was going, he was certainly winning the polit
ics.

  He was interrupted from his brooding by the chiming of another Techmagic creation. A personal communications device, small enough to fit unobtrusively into a pocket. It was an ingenious concept, especially given the way it was activated. It was keyed to respond not to any of the Nine Secrets, but the unique magic of a bard. The bard had to sing a tune, just a short, simple melody and the device would then open the channel to a Life Gifted receiver. The beauty of it was that even if Drizdar got careless and allowed someone else to see it - which he wouldn't - it would appear to be nothing more than an oddity, a Techmagic trinket, nothing important. When Drizdar’s agent was trying to reach him, the bard's song was played at the War Master’s end in a bell-like tone. That's what it was doing now - it was ringing.

  His agent had news.

  He fished out the communications device, charged it with the power of his Life Gift and spoke.

  “Report, my agent.”

  “Master,” came the agent’s voice. “I've managed to slip away from the others without arousing suspicion, but I don't have long.”

  “Then make your report concise,” commanded the elven archmage.

  “Yes, Master. We're close to something big. We're out searching now for the last piece of the puzzle