The Riders of Thunder Realm

by Steven Lochran

  Needing a distraction and with hours until the ceremony was to take place, Joss decided to take advantage of the spare time and explore the rest of the tower. Starting at the bottom, he visited the stables to check on Azof. The raptor was being kept in a pressed metal pen half the size of his stall back home. He looked miserable.

  ‘Sorry, boy,’ Joss said, ruffling the thunder lizard’s feathers. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll be on the road again soon.’

  Azof grunted as if that made for small comfort. Joss fed him a snack of freeze-dried mice and then left him be.

  According to the mek running the elevators, the next few floors were all off-limits, housing as they did the guards’ residences, the prison facilities and the processing centre for new entrants. It wasn’t until the twentieth floor that Joss discovered anything of real interest, when he came across a weapons dealer specialising in antique song swords. The shop was as cramped as the rest of the floor, with everyone pressed in together amid metal panelling and corroded pipes.

  ‘Ten per cent discount for all paladero folk!’ the dealer offered as Joss held aloft a thin and nimble blade to inspect. He was a fleshy man with a braided beard and a gold tooth that twinkled when he spoke. ‘After all, we have to stick together here in Thunder Realm, don’t we?’

  ‘I’m not actually a paladero yet,’ said Joss, handing the sword back.

  The dealer took it and wiped the blade down with the rag he kept stuffed in his apron. ‘Oh, you’re here for the binding, eh? I thought I recognised ye. Yer a brave lad, I’ll tell ye that much. Many a hopeful prentice I’ve known has come back missing an arm or a leg or an eye or two. Or they’ve just not come back at all.’ Placing the song sword back in its display cabinet, the dealer clapped Joss on the back. His hand felt like a club between Joss’s shoulderblades. ‘But good luck to ye all the same. Fer whatever it’s worth.’

  Joss thanked him for the kind words, such as they were, and left. Making his way back to the bank of elevators, his thoughts became mired in the dangers that lay ahead. Perhaps it had been naive to think up till now that the Way would be a simple endeavour, an adventure that would prove his worth to all those who had doubted him. After all, he’d heard plenty of stories about the risks that the open road posed – the thieves that would ambush unsuspecting travellers, the wild beasts that made prey of any living thing they encountered.

  And in those stories, the difference between life and death always came down to the character of one’s travelling companions. An aspiring paladero didn’t want to count a coward or a lackwit or a glory seeker as one of their Bladebound brethren. You wanted someone you could rely on. Someone you could trust. Bound to a blade, bound for life as the old saying went. What kind of life lay ahead, Joss wondered, now that the ceremony was fast approaching?

  Joss was so lost in thought that he didn’t register the ringing of the clock tower until it had almost stopped chiming. Fashioned from chrome and clanking cogs, the clock had been built around the central column in the middle of the twentieth floor, and it was yelling at Joss that he was late.

  ‘Muck!’ he swore as he ran for the elevators, avoiding the plumes of steam that hissed from the grates underfoot. With windows few and far between, the light in Tower Town came mostly from the lamps that hung from the ceiling like swollen fruit. They emitted only a dim, sallow glow that left everything in a twilight shade. Joss found it difficult to keep track of time without having the sun to guide him.

  Thankfully the bank of elevators wasn’t crowded when he found them, and he was able to hop an express carriage straight to the top floor. The doors had barely opened before he was sprinting out, blinded by the sudden shift in light. Blinking madly, he smacked into a stranger who’d been strolling down the hallway. The hat she was wearing went flying as she stumbled.

  ‘Sorry!’ he said, snagging the hat from the floor and offering it back to her. ‘I didn’t see you.’

  ‘Then you weren’t looking, were you?’ the woman growled through the prison bars of her teeth, her lips wrapping around every word. In properly seeing her for the first time, Joss realised that she was actually a girl, tall and knock-kneed, with a mess of tangled black hair that hid half her face. The rest was concealed by a pair of polarised goggles and the wide-brimmed hat, which she snatched out of Joss’s hand and pulled back down over her head.

  ‘And I suppose you weren’t hearing when I said I was sorry,’ Joss shot back, and he could see her scowling at him beneath that hat. Her lips twisted again as if she were about to spit a reply – or maybe just plain spit – but then she spun on her heel and stalked away. Joss watched her as she went, looking like a shadow that had slipped free of its owner to haunt the bright corridor.

  Made of shining steel and soaring windows, the corridor stood in stark contrast to the rest of Tower Town’s cramped industrial surrounds. And if this was what the walkways were like, Joss could only imagine what luxury awaited on the rooftop terrace.

  ‘You’re late.’ He heard Sur Verity’s voice from behind him. She was dressed in her finest leathers with the emblem of Round Shield Ranch stitched onto the sleeves and proudly polished.

  ‘Sorry, I got lost. It’s a big place …’ Joss said, making sure to look her in the eye. ‘Shall we head out there?’

  Joss started walking towards the terrace, but Sur Verity remained still. ‘Forgetting something?’ she asked, and Joss looked at her in confusion. She sighed, and pointed at the scabbard by his side. ‘The blade.’

  ‘Oh!’ Joss said, and quickly detached the Champion’s Blade to hand it over. He watched as Sur Verity, so accustomed to the sword’s particulars, strapped it to her belt without even looking. And though his time with the blade had been limited, he could already keenly feel the weight of its absence. Distracting himself from the pangs he was experiencing, he decided to voice the question that had been whirling around in his head ever since his encounter with Thrall.

  ‘What do you know about the Stitched Witch?’ he asked.

  Sur Verity glanced at him with surprise as she settled the Champion’s Blade onto her hip. ‘Why do you ask?’ she said.

  ‘I … had a strange dream last night,’ Joss replied as they set off down the corridor together. ‘I think it had something to do with the stories I used to overhear at the fireside. But I can’t quite recall …’

  Sur Verity considered him a moment before she began to speak. ‘The way the legends tell it, she was meant to be the widow of a nobleman in Vaal, long before its abandonment. It was said she practised black magic, that she had power over the dead, that she even resurrected her own husband after his passing and bound him to her will. The citizens came to fear and despise her, so she was driven from the city to live in exile among the mountainous peaks of the Spires. Little was seen of her in the years that followed, and the people of Vaal forgot her almost entirely … until the dead began to wake from their graves and march up into the mountains.’

  ‘What happened then?’ Joss asked, forgetting himself and the fact that Sur Verity had spent two days determinedly trying to ignore him.

  ‘A force of Vaalish warriors was sent to the Spires to capture the witch and reclaim the dead. Only one warrior returned. She spoke of a black castle, half-built and hidden among the peaks, where she and her fellow warriors battled the undead as t
he witch watched on. Though the Vaalish fought bravely, they were soon overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of the witch’s forces. A stray arrow from the battle caught the witch in the chest, which gave the warriors their only chance at escape.’

  ‘Did she survive?’ Joss asked.

  ‘As I said, it was only the one warrior who made it back to the city. The others perished from their wounds and exposure to the elements.’

  ‘No, I meant the Stitched Witch. What about her? Do you think she could still be alive today?’

  Sur Verity stared at Joss as if he’d asked if it was possible to speak the language of thunder lizards in order to invite them over for tea and biscuits. ‘Josiah, it’s just a story. The myth of a dead civilisation. They may call Vaal “the Ghost City” but that doesn’t make it so.’

  ‘And you never experienced anything odd when you went there on the Way?’ he asked. It seemed every paladero who ever told a tale had something to say about the Ghost City and the mysterious occurrences that took place there. The question alone was enough to send a shudder through Sur Verity, so small that Joss wondered if he was imagining it. She quickly shrugged it off, the blinding light of the terrace hitting her face.

  ‘We’re here,’ she said, and stepped outside.

  Tarps were stretched across the rooftop to billow like sails, shading the crowds from the hot midday sun. It looked to Joss as if everyone of note in Thunder Realm had assembled to watch the binding ceremony, from officials in stately garb to courtesans dressed in flowing silk to small children carrying wooden replica song swords. Service mechanoids wheeled between them all, serving drinks from silver trays, while an illumigram recording of Irena Honeylush belted out a medley of her most famous tunes.

  The music was of little interest to all the sky pyrates who had banded together on one side of the terrace to glare at the aeronauts on the other side, each faction seemingly waiting for the other to be the first to break the covenant of Tower Town. Further back from them, at the very edge of the crowd, Joss could see a small group of what appeared to be paladeros, though they wore no emblems. They were watching everyone warily, as if on guard for some sudden attack.

  ‘Nameless,’ Sur Verity said by way of explanation, and Joss suddenly understood. Though he’d never met one of the Nameless before, he of course knew all about them. They were paladeros who’d forsaken their vows, obeying no lord and serving no order, choosing instead to hire themselves out as bodyguards and bounty hunters. For this they were shunned by those who would have once called them brethren, and were exiled to the edges of Thunder Realm.

  ‘Why would the Nameless be interested in watching a binding ceremony?’ Joss asked.

  ‘Hard to say. Nostalgia, mayhaps, or simple curiosity? Though they may forsake their oaths, and though we may turn our backs on them, it’s nevertheless hard to completely abandon all you’ve ever known. And Bovis deals with them enough that it would be in his best interests to permit them an audience …’

  Sur Verity nodded at a figure looming atop a stage of glass and steel at the far side of the rooftop. He was wearing an ill-fitting frock coat with a ruffled collar, his torso threatening to burst the stitches. He looked like a mammoth trussed up in a straightjacket, though if he was uncomfortable it was impossible to tell given the manic grin plastered on his ruddy, bearded face.

  ‘I’ve heard of him,’ Joss said. ‘He’s the mayor of Tower Town, right?’

  ‘Indeed. And lord and master of all Thunder Realm, if only in his own mind. Making his acquaintance is one of the more unpleasant things I’ve ever had to do, and I’m including all the bog trotting that was involved in the Dead Lands Gauntlet …’ replied Sur Verity. Then, with a glint of malice in her eye, she added, ‘Come. I’ll introduce you.’

  As they made their way through the crowd, Joss felt a presence following him, like a storm cloud in the corner of his vision. Looking across, he swore he saw Thrall staring back at him from behind his stone mask, but then he blinked and the hooded man was gone. It left Joss feeling deeply unsettled, just as Sur Verity approached Mayor Bovis.

  ‘Wolfsbane! What a pleasure to see you again. I heard rumours that you’d be gracing us with your presence!’ The mayor grinned, though something in the way he spoke made Joss doubt his sincerity.

  ‘The pleasure is all mine, Your Honour,’ replied Sur Verity with a humble bow of her head. If she too detected the sourness in the mayor’s words, she didn’t acknowledge it. ‘May I introduce Prentice Josiah Sarif, Round Shield Ranch’s candidate for the Way this year.’

  Sur Verity gestured to Joss, and he stepped forward.

  ‘It’s an honour to meet you, Your, uh … Your Honour,’ Joss said. Maybe if he jumped over the edge of the tower, he could grab hold of a pterosaur and fly far, far away from the embarrassment that was burning him up like a bonfire.

  ‘Sarif. Of course. Quite the audacious stunt you pulled at the Tournament,’ Mayor Bovis said as he reached out and grabbed Joss’s wrist in an iron-fisted shake. Joss wondered if the pain was evident on his face. ‘Can’t say I agree with Grandmaster Eno’s ruling on the matter. We don’t want to encourage such defiance, after all.’

  ‘Uhh …’ Joss paused, unsure how to reply.

  ‘On the contrary, Mr Mayor, I’d say it was the exact kind of boldness that we need more of in Thunder Realm,’ someone said from the other end of the stage, and Joss looked up to see the blond-haired prentice from the Gauntlet. He was wearing a shirt of royal purple cotton beneath a knee-length coat of black leather, and his smile was as blinding in its brightness as the salt flats that stretched across the horizon.

  ‘I can always count on you for an opinion, Zadkille,’ the mayor said, his tone even spikier than before. ‘Tell me, Zeke, have you met our friend Josiah?’

  ‘I’ve had the honour, yes, though only in passing,’ Zeke Zadkille replied, offering Joss his hand. ‘And I’m afraid I may have been a little short with you at the time, what with my brother having been injured and all.’

  ‘I hope he’s better,’ Joss said as they took each other by the wrist and shook.

  ‘That would depend on your definition of “better”.’ Zeke’s smile dimmed, but only for a moment. ‘It really is a pleasure to properly meet you, though. You showed real gumption in the Gauntlet.’

  ‘I was just lucky,’ Joss shrugged. Kings Sleep, Regents Rule and Princes Charm, as people would say. Joss had always been unsure of the meaning of those words, but he had the distinct impression that Zeke was more than familiar with them.

  ‘I disagree,’ Zeke said, steering Joss to the side of the stage as Mayor Bovis searched out a higher grade of guest to schmooze. ‘Luck only takes you so far. It’s skill that delivers you. And it takes real skill to bring down a hungry, charging tyrannosaur. I’ve seen enough unwary fieldservs half-devoured at Zadkille Station to know that.’

  Zeke glanced at something past Joss’s head, and his smile receded to a thin line. ‘But that’s probably talk for another time. For now, allow me the pleasure of introducing those who’ll be our Bladebound brethren. This here is Hero of Blade’s Edge Acres …’

  Zeke took Joss by the shoulder and turned him around. Waiting there was the girl from earlier, her hair whipping around in the wind but her hat oddly still. Joss co
uld see his bewilderment reflected in her goggles.

  ‘Oh. It’s you,’ she said, her tone just as unfriendly as before. ‘I should have known.’

  ‘Your name is “Hero”?’ Joss asked.

  ‘That’s right,’ the girl replied.

  ‘No family name?’ Only now did he notice the order emblem stitched to her canvas duster coat, as well as the assortment of throwing weapons she had in the bandolier she wore across her chest. She looked to have everything from stun grenades to a number of zamaraqs, the razor-edged throwing weapons of skyborne paladeros.

  ‘Just Hero,’ she said.

  ‘Or “Miss Blade’s Edge”, perhaps?’ Zeke suggested with a smirk.

  ‘Just. Hero.’

  Without another look at either of them, she turned back to the other Blade’s Edge Acres order members with whom she’d been speaking. Zeke didn’t miss a beat as he ushered Joss onto the next prentice they would be calling their brethren.

  ‘And this is Ganymede Drake of Starlight Fields in the Northern Tundra,’ he said, presenting a tall young man with hazel hair, bright green eyes and a face as pale as the moon in winter. He was dressed in furs and skins that had been laced with piping, his gloves fitted with small switches and glowing buttons, and he had a silver spear fastened to a leather shoulder strap. Despite all the heavy layers he was wearing, he looked untouched by the heat that bounced off the metal rooftop in sizzling waves.

  ‘You can just call me Drake,’ he said, offering Joss a gloved hand to shake.

  ‘Good to meet you,’ replied Joss as they took each other by the wrist.

  ‘And you,’ Drake said. ‘You know, it’s a rare opportunity to count the Blade Keeper as one of your brethren. I can’t help but feel that the Sleeping King is showing us his favour in sending you along with us.’