It took a few minutes before the results appeared on another box similar to the head. Vinnie looked expectantly over the shoulder of the technician recording the numbers that ticked by on the dials.
He could not hide his disappointment. “These numbers make no sense,” he lamented. His belly felt hollow but not for lack of food.
Elise joined him with her own ledger and began double-checking. She checked the head unit.
“No,” Elise breathed with wide eyes. “The numbers are correct. There is more than one source of the portal energy. It’s getting closer.”
Chapter Twenty
Never a Dull Moment
Astrid ran the usual gauntlet on her way to the top of the Fortress where the War Room waited for her with a renewed sense of urgency. She collected the first set of trials in the form of Tarkon, who she had tasked with overseeing overall Fortress security.
The Forge Monk also performed double duty as a teacher of his metal magic to those in the workshop who showed aptitude. His students were growing in number.
“Astrid, we need to talk,” Tarkon announced, ever direct.
“I’m listening,” Astrid answered in a neutral tone as she strode across the main entryway crowded with commissioners, administrators, and lower-ranking functionaries.
Every head turned toward her, and a few broke off from little huddles to get a question answered. She had meted out a dozen terse answers before she reached the main stairwell and Tarkon had a chance to speak.
“OK,” Astrid allowed as she mounted the stairs. “Sorry. Now I’m listening.”
Tarkon displayed a rare smile. “I understand,” he replied. Astrid was confident he knew her well enough to give that statement plenty of weight. He continued. “The grounds are well-organized to defend against any attack we can foresee.”
Astrid replied immediately to the unspoken question in that statement. “And that leaves open the attacks we can’t foresee from an enemy we barely understand.”
Tarkon displayed another of his functions by addressing the topic of strategy. “We could also say that our enemy has limited resources of its own. Its first attack was much greater than the second. The first attack was designed to overwhelm. When that failed, the second attack was designed to incite.”
They reached the top of the spire and headed down the hallway to the war room. Tarkon gave her time to think.
“Unless it’s a softening move, but even then, why would that be necessary?” Astrid shook her head. “Until we have more information, we’ll just keep thinking in circles like that.”
She pushed open the door and found Hanif hunched over fresh stacks of papers—the daily reports. He scribbled some notes into a journal. All the maps and plans from the previous conflict had finally been cleared by the fortress scribes and placed in an archive somewhere.
“Astrid,” Hanif said with a curt nod.
“Looks like you found something in the reports. What’s going on?” she asked.
“The spring planting is going well. Commerce between the Petran Protectorate and…” Hanif hesitated, “this protectorate—”
“We still don’t know what to call it since I took over,” Astrid interjected. “All your lands are named after families, and since I killed the last heir to Protector Lungu—”
“And Lungu was a vicious bastard who made sure he had no true rivals until you came along…”
“Not much of a long-term thinker,” Astrid interjected.
“It turns out the village elders and the Keep commissioners were,” Hanif stated proudly. “Since you killed Lungu, they’ve been working together in new ways. They even have a voting system to decide certain issues. It’s going so well that nobody objects.”
Hanif waved his hand. “But that’s beside the point. What to call the Protectorate was the bigger problem before some unknown force demonstrated it had the power to drop hordes of hostile remnant on our doorstep at will. Things are running smoothly otherwise.”
“So where is the problem?” Astrid asked. “I mean, besides the thing about portals and remnant popping up.”
“Why isn’t it attacking random villages? It could burn fields, kill whole villages before we could react.”
“This thing is from another world,” Astrid replied. “Maybe it doesn’t understand the importance of the villages and commerce.”
“But it knows our language. It knows how to manipulate us. It should understand how our economy works,” Hanif argued.
“This makes sense,” Tarkon added. “Why didn’t I see this before?”
“Because we were too busy focusing on the most immediate problem,” Astrid replied.
“Either it wants this protectorate intact, or it doesn’t have the resources to wage a scorched earth campaign against our civilians,” Tarkon noted.
“So far, we’ve been reacting to it. Now that we have done everything we can for our security, it’s time to start coming up with a plan of attack.”
As Astrid let the words sink in, she noted the new framework around the tall, arched windows that secured the rappelling cables running down the outside of the tower. She had ordered the rig built to give them a quick way to the ground in an emergency. A rack of Sacred Steel gloves and harnesses was bolted to the wall beside the frame.
She hadn’t rappelled in years, but something told her that she’d better brush up on those skills.
When the horns blared, Astrid wondered if she had suddenly developed the gift of premonition. No, she thought. That’s just the way things are now. The signal indicated an incoming threat.
“Oh, well,” Astrid shrugged. “So much for rest.”
Without a second thought, Astrid kicked open the window, grabbed the silksteel cable and jumped.
She slid down the line nearly a hundred feet before she clamped her hands harder onto the cable. She drew from the Well for the strength to slow herself and heal the friction burns on her palms from the searing heat of the silksteel glove portion of her gauntlets.
She used the freefall to clear her head. On the way down, she had a good look at the Wards surrounding Lake Bicaz below.
Astrid let go of the rope and jumped the last thirty feet, landing in a lunge. She hopped up with her eyes glowing a bright, electric blue and sprinted toward the gates.
The fortress was bristling with guards. By emergency protocol, every soldier fit for duty was required to arm and station themselves at their duty posts.
She grabbed the first soldier she saw along the way. “What’s going on?” She knew that those on the ground levels would know the general nature of the threat. That was also by protocol.
“We have an inbound and unknown threat coming up the main road. A scout was dispatched. Waiting on word,” the soldier recited.
Astrid grinned when she noticed his sword. It was clearly produced by the woods people. He was one of the recent recruits from that previously ostracized population.
“Excellent job. Stay alert and thank you,” Astrid added as she left for the workshop. The soldier straightened his shoulders in pride.
She made a beeline for the shop. Her instincts told her Vinnie would have some answers.
She found both the inner and outer doors of the workshop wide open. The first thing Astrid noticed was that the thing Vinnie had called the ‘collector mast’ was producing showers of sparks and spikes of jagged lightning from a metal sphere at its peak.
She slowed despite herself to gawk at it before running deeper into the building to find Vinnie. The scientist mage found her first.
“It’s just a precaution,” Vinnie shouted behind her. He carried long sheets of paper—covered in tightly-packed figures—draped over his bent arm that nearly touched the ground.
“Tell me,” Astrid demanded.
“Our device has detected two significant sources of portal energy. One is in the arboretum, and the other is coming this way. I’ve sent a significant force to investigate.”
“Where are the rest of the dregs?”
“Gormer, Moxy, Tracker and Jiri are still on—”
A scout skidded to a halt on a lathered horse. “A wagon is five minutes away—coming up the switchback road.”
“Elise!” Vinnie shouted.
“What!” Elise yelled. The poor girl had nearly jumped out of her boots.
“Latest calculations!”
Elise flicked her abacus and worked the slides on her strange ruler. “Whatever it is, it’s about six minutes away at its current rate of travel.”
Vinnie looked confused for a moment. “Either it’s following them, or it’s with them.”
Astrid didn’t hesitate. “Go back to them now. Tell them to stop the wagon where they are and get away from it.” The scout looked confused for a moment. “Go! Now!”
The scout turned his horse around.
“Horses?” Astrid asked.
“No time,” Vinnie answered.
They both activated their respective magic, Astrid for the strength to run and Vinnie for the ability to modify his mass. Her eyes shone bright blue while his glowed with swirling orange clouds.
They met the wagon just after the scout passed the message. Gormer had positioned it against the cliff face so it wouldn’t roll back down the mountain. He was just unhitching the horses to get them back to safety.
“I know what it is,” Jiri announced. He held up the dull, red object. “It must be this. We think it made the portal open. It looks alive.”
“Throw it to me now,” Astrid ordered. Jiri tossed it to her, and she drew magical energy deeply from the Well to protect herself in case the thing attacked.
“Ideas, Vinnie?” Astrid requested nervously. “Quickly.”
As always, Vinnie was ready with the answer. “Run it back to the outer courtyard. Surround it with soldiers holding magitech rifles. If it does anything, we vaporize it.”
They took off for the Fortress. Astrid dropped the thing in an isolated area and backed away. Vinnie shouted orders for forty soldiers to muster. They assembled in under a minute and formed a line in front of the object, or creature—whatever it was.
They stood there staring at it for a moment, but it didn’t move. It just sat there.
“Where did you find this thing?” Astrid asked.
“It was by the meat suit,” Gormer answered. “It started glowing when we were dragging the slop back to the wagon.”
“Three controlled remnant appeared,” Tracker added.
“Just three…” Vinnie remarked, stroking his pointed beard.
“You think that wasn’t enough?” Gormer snarked back.
Astrid ignored him. She kept her magic energy flowing and carefully picked the thing up with one hand. With the other hand, she pointed to four soldiers. “Come with me,” she ordered, then marched off toward the workshop. “Everyone else stays here.”
The back section in the rear of the workshop was cordoned off by guards. Turning to the four behind her, she stated, “I will trust you to keep what you see behind these doors absolutely secret. I will reveal everything in good time, but I am trusting you to keep silent.”
The soldiers looked surprised but nodded their assent with determined faces. The guards let them pass as she walked to the dim stall where the Skrim was kept.
She couldn’t see it. “Come forward,” she commanded.
A rustling behind the heavy wood and steel bars of the door made the soldiers step back. When the Skrim curled its sharp, red pincer-claws between the bars and brought his face into view, someone behind Astrid squeaked.
“What is this?” Astrid held the red, oblong object.
The Skrim shoved its pointed face between the bars as far as it could go. Its black eyes poked out. One of the soldiers screamed.
“You found the—” it made a screeching, clicking sound that ended in a whistle. “Master will come for it.”
“Who is your master?” Astrid demanded. “Say his name.”
“I cannot say his name unless he commands me. It is forbidden,” the Skrim lamented, pushing back from the door. It stood there with all four of its hands clasped together and its shoulders slouched in submission to a master who wasn’t there.
“Say his name now, or I give you back to him. I have no time for this.” Given the reaction to this very threat before, Astrid cringed. The threat clearly was a form of torture for it.
But this time, the Skrim didn’t fall. It knelt and clasped one set of arms to its wolf-shaped face.
“I must not say it,” the Skrim cried. “Pain will follow.”
“I have news for you, whatever you are,” Astrid snarled. “Whatever your master is, I plan to bring it all the pain in this world and then some. You tell me his name now.”
“General Varkos!” the Skrim exclaimed. It raised all its arms over its head then bowed down low. “His name is General Varkos! Don’t let him take me, please.”
“I will if you don’t tell me what this thing is.”
“It calls the portal. Master created it. He created it to open portals from place to place in your world.”
“How does it work?”
“Work?” the Skrim asked in confusion.
“How do I make it work?”
“Master doesn’t tell me these things. It is for me to follow. The portal opens, and I go through. That is all I know.”
“What does Varkos want with us?”
“He wants your everything. He wants the Arbori first.”
“Why,” Astrid demanded, pressing her face to the bars. “Tell me why. Now. Do it, or I’ll find him and give you to him, and maybe he will spare us.”
The Skrim shrieked and trembled. Astrid’s stomach churned, but she kept up the pressure.
“You said his name. He will be angry. What does he want with us? Tell me more.”
“We can’t get home! His Lord is dead. We are stuck here. He wants to complete the mission for which he was created. Nothing else matters to him. Not you, not your hatchlings, not anything. He wants all you have, including your minds.”
“Where is he?” Astrid demanded.
“I don’t know,” the Skrim answered. It rocked back and forth on its knees and scraped its claws along the hard shell of its head. “Please kill me now.”
“You must know where he is, but I can find him by giving you to him,” Astrid threatened again.
“He does not tell me these things. The master has many plans. He has many servants. I only know the trees are different there. Much bigger. The humans have red eyes there, and they make strong workers for my master. The mountains are higher. Fewer humans more red-eye humans.”
Astrid stood there for a few more moments until she could no longer stand letting it stew in its own fear.
“I won’t hand you over to him,” Astrid promised. She walked away.
Chapter Twenty-One
At Last, a Pause
Astrid called off the high alert and handed the portal creature over to Vinnie. The scientist mage handed it over to Oscar, who had inadvertently qualified himself as an expert on the Skrim beasties.
They still didn’t know if the portal maker was alive and able to create portals but what they could potentially learn from it outweighed the high risk. For safety, Astrid ordered thirty magitech soldiers to stand by. She had another fifty ready to go at a moment’s notice. But that meant Oscar had to work on it at a table outside surrounded by soldiers nervously holding deadly weapons.
Satisfied she could finally take a break, Astrid headed back to the war room with only the thoughts of passing through to the adjacent bivouac and going to sleep dancing in her head.
Astrid flat-out dismissed with a wave of her hand anyone who tried to approach her. By the time she got to the war room, she was so exhausted that she could hardly stand.
She guessed that she’d had less than two hours of sleep in as many days.
In the bunk room, she made her way to the corner where the wash basins were located. As comfortable as her armor was, it was a great relief to rem
ove it and the sheer, form-fitting silk undergarments beneath it.
She filled two basins with water and began washing. She lingered as she washed her face, the water felt cool and soothing. She hadn’t realized how much stress she carried until she felt it with her own fingers.
When the door opened, she turned casually to see who it was.
Astrid had been raised to be a soldier since the age of thirteen. She was only the second woman from her order ever to become a Knight.
She had no problem with nudity. The Knight’s body was a weapon, and by tradition, all weapons were treated with respect and honor. She had been accustomed to bathing and suiting up around males her entire life. Strict adherence to the Code meant she encountered no problems.
But when she saw Jiri Petran standing in the doorway with his eyes wide and his lips slightly parted, she felt something she couldn’t identify. Their eyes locked, and she took in a sharp spike of breath.
She moved to cover herself with her armor but paused when his eyes swept over the hard lines of her arms and shoulders, and the soft curves of her breasts and hips.
“I-I’m sorry,” he stammered, and his hand fell to the pommel of his sword.
“Don’t be,” Astrid murmured softly, embracing her armor to cover herself.
“I should leave,” Jiri whispered.
“Yet here you are,” Astrid replied, her voice rising a full octave. Her trembling hands let the armor slip from her chest.
Jiri swallowed hard. He closed the door behind him unable to take his eyes from her as she let her silksteel armor clatter to the floor.
His chest rose and fell faster with each step she took closer to him. He shook his head and blinked back the dew in his gray eyes. At arm’s length, he reached out to cup her cheek in his calloused hand. His warm strength made her skin tingle.
Astrid pressed herself against his polished chest plate and shoved him against the door as their lips met. She pulled the sword from its scabbard and threw it across the room where it shattered…something. That kiss assailed them with a shocking hunger that made Astrid feel suddenly small.
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