Grudgebearer

by J. F. Lewis

  The young female Aern who wielded the strange weapon released her grip in shock at the sight of the male Aern’s flaming body crashing down onto the table, breaking it to pieces.

  “Dad!” She shouted. “What—?”

  “Long Arm,” he croaked through charred splitting lips. “Crystal twister.” The flesh of his face peeled away as he spoke, corded muscle the pale white of bone exposed in the process. “Leave her to me.”

  Why isn’t it red? Cadence stared, momentarily mesmerized by the sight of white muscle attached to pearlescent bone metal.

  “Get the other one.” He rolled to his feet and hurled the warpick slung across his back to the female. “Take Grudge.”

  A question died on Cadence’s lips as the female Aern caught the weapon and leapt back out through the window.

  “You’ve thrown away your weapon,” Cadence snarled, hurling the male Aern against the wall with her mind, taking care to pin him to the wall beams.

  He gave a choking laugh and she frowned.

  “Something funny?”

  “Common mistake.” He reached for the two leather bags strapped to his belt, and she tore them away from him with a flare of the Long Arm. Doing so lessened the pressure she exerted, but instead of trying to force his way toward her, he rolled, giving her his back. She pressed harder, trying to flatten him, only to find him shifting his weight, feet beneath him, ready to launch. “I am a weapon.”

  “Was,” she laughed and released him, expecting the Aern to fall to the floor, which he did, but in a controlled roll. Snatching up the three-legged stool upon which Tul had been sitting, the Aern hurled it at Cadence’s head, a blow she easily deflected, only find herself having to shunt aside sections of table, a second stool, and further improvised projectiles. Each missile shoved aside allowed the Aern to advance on her incrementally.

  “If I were unArmored,” the Aern croaked, “you’d have me.”

  UnArmored? As she thought the question, her mind caught the image of a cold suit of metal with a horned lion’s head. He is not unArmored, Long Fire, its voice echoed in her mind. I was merely unprepared. Were you a Ghaiattri, the maker would be in significantly greater danger.

  “Hells,” she spat. In the room behind her, young Caius began to truly wail.

  *

  Rae’en circled the farmhouse, gripping Grudge in both hands. It weighed more than Testament, her own warpick. Grudge was made to be wielded two-handed by arms with muscles stronger than hers. She looked back over her shoulder at the smoke rising from the thatched roof and tried to shake the image of her father’s head engulfed in flame from her mind, but it stuck. A sick anxiety filled her belly. How could he withstand that? Could she?

  No, Kholster’s voice filled her head, you couldn’t. Or . . . it’s unlikely. Have you found the other one yet?

  Da—Kholster? She thought back. Wha—how?

  Whose warpick is in your grip, soldier? Now focus and answer me.

  Not yet. Grudge was linked to her father, as much a part of him as Hunger, so she guessed it made sense, but why hadn’t anyone ever—

  When your Overwatches are in range there’s—

  His thoughts broke off and a flash of pain bled over from his mind into hers. A simultaneous crash from the house made her flinch, but then his sentence resumed,

  —no need for it. Check the barn. This one has a touch of long sight. When she touched my mind, Bloodmane saw something about a barn before she broke off. There may be another bandit and possibly a hostage. Yell if you need me, but I’m a little busy.

  A little busy. She smirked at that, the pain in her gut vanishing, her senses coming back into focus. He’s fine. Barn. Barn. Barn.

  Weeds choked a small herb garden in the corner of the overgrown yard. Grass gone to seed stood as high as her waist. This is wrong.

  Past the forest line, the stench of bodies, dead and buried shallow, drew her attention and irritation because the odor covered up the scent of sweat she was sniffing after. Still, the other man couldn’t have gone too far. She saw the barn a little farther along a narrow rock-paved path. On this side of the slope from the stacked stone bridge, Rae’en could see terraced patches of wheat, barley, and something else with yellow flowers she couldn’t readily identify.

  No sign of him up there, Rae’en thought, which meant he was either circling the farmhouse, headed for the bridge, or he’d run to the barn, just like Kholster’d said.

  “Get out of here, you idiot,” hissed a voice from the barn.

  “Aern, Darbin!” the other voice shouted. “Two Aern!”

  “Bird squirt,” the other man cursed. “Let me see these ‘so-called’ Aern.”

  The barn door slammed open, and out stepped a verminous-looking human with a heavy beard and hair which looked like it had been cut with a large bowl as the barber’s only guide. He had the muscled look of a blacksmith’s striker, wielding a sledgehammer so much more comfortably than Rae’en wielded Grudge that she would have wagered naming rights the man had been long apprenticed to a smith.

  He wore raw denim coveralls of the type Rae’en had heard about but never seen outside of shared memories. Kholster didn’t like the way the straps tugged at his shoulders, so there was no market for them in the Dwarven-Aernese Collective.

  The stink of human fear hit her as he moved closer, but it came from behind him along with the smell of unwashed bodies, exertion, and blood.

  “Looks like I have a new playmate.” Darbin spat on the ground then smiled at her through a mouth of rotten teeth.

  Staring at those teeth distracted her from the crossbow bolt until it struck her in the chest. A sternum hit, the shaft breaking in back of the field point. As if an arrow could punch through my sternum even without armor. Stupid human.

  Kill him; don’t critique him, Kholster thought at her, before he goes for the eyes or the throat.

  Yes, Kholster. Rae’en charged the man with the sledgehammer, catching his blow with Grudge’s haft. She slid her foot between his legs, hooking it behind his ankle and sweeping it out from under him. Grabbing the front of her chain-mail shirt as he fell, the human lost his weapon but brought her down on top of him.

  Snarling, she snapped at him, fangs bared.

  “Oh-ho! A biter, eh?” He laughed. “I’ll—”

  You’ll what? Rae’en wondered as she bit through the web between the thumb and forefinger of the hand he’d held up to push her away. A bloody mouthful of skin came free as she bit, chewed, swallowed. Darbin screamed, transforming from a man drawing obvious pleasure from the idea of a struggling female to a scared, panicked creature wanting nothing more than to get away.

  Mouth open wide, she went for Darbin’s throat, reeling back in shock when a crossbow bolt fired from the doorway of the barn went in through her open mouth, passing through her tongue, the tip jutting out through the bottom of her jaw.

  All thought fell away. Pain washed over her. The blacks vanished from Rae’en’s eyes as amber pupils and jade irises expanded. If it hurt when Rae’en, in the grips of the Arvash’ae, tore the crossbow bolt from her mouth, she never remembered. A third bolt shot her through the stomach as she bit off Darbin’s nose and crushed his throat with a hammer blow from both fists. Then she was up and charging the barn door.

  Merrol did not get a fourth shot.

  *

  Cadence heard Merrol’s dying scream but couldn’t process it. Lower lip dripping with blood, she panted from the effort of blocking the barrage of thrown objects with her Long Arm talent. Sweat stained her cotton top and made it cling to breasts overlarge from nursing. She’d tried hurling the Aern’s projectiles back at him, and in fact, he was festooned with fragments of wood and metal. A hundred little wounds which did not bleed. Why wouldn’t he bleed? Cadence had killed Aern before. Not many, but a few. None of them had been this hard to kill. None of them had had metal suits of armor keeping watch over their minds.

  “What are you?” she spat, backpedaling toward the bedroom. Maybe I s
hould just grab Caius and run, she thought.

  “I am Kholster, the First of One Hundred.” The Aern moved slowly up the stairs, resisting the full force of her Long Arm, feet planted, moving slowly but steadily, like a man advancing against the winds of a mighty storm. “And I have not killed you because you are a slave.”

  “Kholster Bloodmane wants me as a slave,” she panted. “I should be flattered.”

  “Bloodmane is my warsuit,” he corrected, still advancing, the bloodstained glass-like warpick the other Aern had used peeking over his shoulder. “An Aern has no last name in the manner of humans, just name, number, rank, and lineage. And I will never have slaves.”

  “You want me as a slave for the female then?” She backed into the bedroom and dropped her mind push, throwing all she had into one tremendous burst of Far Fire, but the Aern who called himself Kholster. . . . Could he truly be the legendary leader of the Aern? Does such a being actually exist? He did not burn any longer. How, faced with him, could she deny. . . . She felt the power, but . . .

  “I am Armored,” Kholster said as if that should explain everything. “And no, I don’t want you to be a slave at all. If you had no will to be free, I would kill you. Yet, I see fight in your eyes. So, instead, I’ll free you, if you’re brave enough. Where are the others?”

  “Others?”

  “The other bandits. Two more who aren’t here now. I could smell them before you started burning everything in sight.” As he spoke, his flesh began to smooth out and heal, his charred lips bubbling back to normal.

  “How?”

  “I told you I am Armored. Bloodmane is ready for you now, Far Flame. He feels your heat, but it would take a dragon’s fire to melt his surface. I doubt you can burn that hot even with a mouth full of Dienoxin. How much of the war god’s essence do you still have inside you? Enough to pull the house down atop us?”

  Fire spread along the splintered rail behind him. Off to her left, baby Caius wailed in true terror, a cry very different from hungry or tired. For the first time in their fight, Cadence noticed the smoke. It flowed along the ceiling, a river of suffocation, moving downward.

  Could he tell? Could the warsuit somehow know how little she had left? She felt the last meager measure of Dienox’s essence trickling away as she pushed the Far Fire—she stopped.

  Burn him, you useless wench!

  “I could.”

  Not without the crystal, you worthless cow! Hap’s voice rang in her mind. A string of hate-filled expletives filled her mind. It was always worse on the other side of a twist. Phantom images of Hap’s screaming face surrounded Cadence in her mind’s eye, blocking out the real.

  “Shut up!” Cadence grabbed her head. “I’m sorry, Hap! If I had more crystal—”

  “You don’t need it.” Kholster folded his arms as the fire and smoke flowed around him. “But whoever this Hap is . . . were I you, I’d kill him. I’d save the baby first, but it’s up to you.” Kholster shrugged. “If not, it’s all worthless. We can speak more outside . . . if you make it. I suggest jumping out the window.”

  Kholster turned and walked into the rising smoke, vanishing amidst the flames.

  CHAPTER 19

  SHORE LEAVE

  Muscles still burning at the end of a long day, Kazan’d had just enough time to let the coolness of his stone berth begin to seep in and work its primal magic on his muscles, when he felt Malmung’s mental tap like someone knocking on the door of his mind.

  You, guys, too? he sent to his fellow Overwatches.

  Three replies hit him in rapid succession: Yes, Of course, and I hope Malmung dies screaming.

  That the third reply came from M’jynn was no surprise.

  A second mental nudge came shortly after the first, this one like a mailed fist knocking on a wrought iron gate. Kazan smirked, opening his eyes, doubled canines bared if only to the darkness. Malmung always knocked twice before sending a message on a down cycle. Kazan found the practice weirdly formal but guessed it was that same level of rigidity which kept Malmung from ever sending unintended thoughts to the Overwatches he kholstered.

  Most kholsters with whom Kazan, M’jynn, Joose, and Arbokk had trained thought in words like Rae’en. Kholster Malmung used words when he had to, but they came unnaturally to him and were often displayed as actual letters rather than spoken in his own voice. Malmung was just as likely to convey orders by altering the mental map the Overwatches displayed for him, drawing lines indicating where he wanted troops to move or making one of their tokens flash when he wanted an opinion from a specific Overwatch. Kazan suspected Malmung’s method of communication was exactly why he and the others had been sent to train with the strange kholster during Rae’en’s absence: to get practice working with another, very different, approach to kholstering.

  Kazan liked to think he’d be kholstered by Rae’en again, along with the other Elevens who’d been kholstered by her on their first mission and in the thirteen years since, but there was no guarantee, particularly with the way she’d been taken off on Kholster’s current trip to Oot and to the front of the approaching war. Every Freeborn Aern wanted to participate, yet, as far as Kazan or his fellow Overwatches knew, Rae’en was the only Freeborn being given a chance.

  And here comes the message, Joose thought to the group.

  An eye opened in Kazan’s mind and in the minds of his fellows. Malmung’s version of “Wake up.”

  A mouth opened and closed as if it were speaking, but there was no sound. Malmung wanted to talk to them in person.

  Why doesn’t he just think what he wants us to hear? Arbokk whined amongst the four of them.

  Obviously, Joose sent, he wants to gauge our reactions or interact physically in some way.

  Makes sense, Kazan thought back. Anyone else barely awake?

  I haven’t even gotten back to the barracks yet, M’jynn growled.

  Did our interim kholster interrupt something vital? Joose teased.

  Leave him be, Kazan thought. Just because you want to live vicariously through M’jynn’s exploits . . .

  Now. The word appeared in dull bronze letters in their minds.

  If not death, I hope he loses a limb, an important one . . . M’jynn grumbled.

  Maj, Kazan chided.

  . . . and I hope it grows back slowly. There was a pause. And green.

  Half a candlemark later, the four Overwatches, clad in mail shirts, denim leggings, and boots, with their soul-bonded weapons on their backs and saddlebags packed as if they intended to head out on extended patrol, arrived just as kholster Malmung always insisted.

  Bare chested and wearing only a pair of loose-fitting white cotton pants, Malmung studied the Overwatches with a look of apparent disinterest, his insanely long hair braided into one fifteen-hand-length of cord draped about his shoulders, beads and rings of bone-steel adorning it at intervals which seemed decorative. Malmung flared his nostrils, ears flat against his head, and gazed past the young Aern.

  Kazan had long since learned that just because Malmung appeared to be looking elsewhere didn’t mean that he missed anything. The Aern’s peripheral vision and attention to detail were uncanny. Malmung held his main weapon (Kazan still didn’t know its name), an axe-bladed polearm, by the shaft, blade in the air, butt on the stone of the training ground floor. If there were ever an attacker expecting to catch Malmung off guard . . . well, it would be harsh.

  Cold touched the back of Kazan’s eyes, the overcast sky blocking out the stars and forcing him to use thermal vision as he marveled at the weapon. The polearm was a full kholster in length with two spikes on the poll, one on the eye, and a curved hook curling from the top of the blade with which Kazan knew from personal experience Malmung could snag any piece of loose clothing or equipment and pull an attacker off balance and to the ground, where the top spearhead-like spike of the weapon would come into play. Engraved likenesses of snarling wolves with exaggerated fangs glared at the watcher from the polearm’s cheeks. It was almost enough to make
Kazan wish he’d forged such a weapon for himself instead of a warpick.

  Warpicks are traditional, a true and a safe choice, but—

  You still worrying over whether you should have made a bolder choice of implement? Joose thought. In twenty-six more years you can make another soul-bonded implement and—

  It gives me the yarps, Arbokk sent.

  That mace of yours give me the yarps, M’jynn sent back.

  I still don’t see why it doesn’t leave you bloody every time you move too fast. Kazan glanced down at the spiked mace hanging from a sheath frog (a removable leather assembly) attached by two rings to Arbokk’s belt.

  Charming would never do that to me, Arbokk snapped back.

  Unless you lose your concentration, you mean, Joose threw in.

  That only happened once!

  Only takes once, Joose and M’jynn thought in unison.

  Sharp and hard, the crack of bone-steel on stone echoed in their ears and minds as Malmung raised his polearm a few fingers off the ground then brought the butt down on the stone. Resisting the urge to cover their ears because they knew it wouldn’t help block the sound Malmung was sending directly into their minds, the Overwatches gritted their teeth and bore it.

  Kazan stood at attention, his warpick in both hands held at waist level roughly parallel with his shoulders. Joose followed suit with his own warpick.

  M’jynn drew his sword from the sheath frog on his belt and held it the same way, gripping the blade lightly with his left hand, the hilt firmly with his right. Arbokk’s mace, unsuited even more so than M’jynn’s blade for such a position, wound up gripped one-handed in a close approximation of the stance, his empty right hand curled into a tight fist.

  Malmung repeated the gesture three more times. There was no more idle chatter.

  “She passed.” Raising his polearm as he spoke, he brought it up and laid it comfortably across his shoulders, hands gripping the shaft as if it were a yoke for hauling water. “Rae’en. She can think the way he wants. Apart.”