Shattered Shields - eARC

by Jennifer Brozek

  The location and size of the burn amused Manfred, as he didn’t think that it had been that large a burn. And it had been his wing tip.

  The other two looked as morose as he felt. Voss, who sported a sling on his right arm said it was just a sprain, but looked pensive. “Is it right,” he asked, when the medic had left, “that we should kill our own kind, just to serve our homeland?”

  “Why not?” Boelcke asked. “Didn’t we always do it?” And to Voss’s surprised look. “We killed other men. How is the fact they’re also shifters any different?”

  Manfred frowned, putting his shirt on, and then his tunic over it. “It would be different, if we were dragons attacking humans,” he said. “After a while, it would be hard not to think of all men as food. But the others are dragons also.”

  “Speaking of food, I understand they are to serve us dinner. And the two of you are to go to flier school.”

  “What? Dragon flier school?” Voss asked.

  “No, to learn to fly airplanes. That way we’ll be able to form our own squadron, supposing we find some more of us, and then we can keep things secret more easily.”

  “I always wanted to go to flight school,” Manfred said. “I did not enlist to deliver eggs and butter.” He finished buttoning his tunic. “But it occurs to me we should paint some wilder patterns on our wings to make recognition easier. You know, stripes and dots and such. In vivid colors.”

  Boelcke looked at him and tilted his head doubtfully. “We shall look like a flying circus.”

  A Cup of Wisdom

  Joseph Zieja

  The flaps of the tent bled the silvery-gray light of the moon. The boy sat in the center, thin wisps of smoke rising from the sticks of incense buried into the soft dirt of the Calchaka Plains. It smelled like sandalwood and rosemary, smells that reminded the boy of his mother’s kitchen and her soft cheeks.

  The boy banished the memory; this was not the time for childish daydreams. This was the time for war.

  His father, standing with his back turned, twisted the pestle into the mortar with smooth, rhythmic motions, the hardened muscles on the back of his arm writhing hypnotically. The light vest he wore over his sweat-slicked back was more than many others in the camp wore that night; the summer heat of another military campaign made clothing unbearable for most.

  The sound of the guard changing outside told the boy that it was nearly midnight. He wished he were out there, sweating with the men, instead of in here, sweating in fear.

  You are not afraid, he told himself. You are ready to fight, to lead men, to kill.

  “Father,” the boy asked, “why do I have to do this? There will be fighting tomorrow.”

  His father did not look back. “Are you ready to face the Ferendi?”

  “I will crush them,” the boy said, his jaw hardening. The Ferendi, those twisted invaders from the north with their curved swords and dark magic, had been a plague, a disease that needed cleansing, for half a century now. Finally he’d have his chance.

  His father turned around, his expression grim. The sharp lines and angles of his face were softened by the large black beard that hid no few scars. In that face lived the boy’s motivation; just looking at it made his hands itch for his sword. The boy would make his father proud on the battlefield, earn his right to command.

  His father transferred the substance in the mortar to another bowl, this one a blackened wooden thing with small holes in the bottom. This he placed over a small pit in the center of the tent, where smoldering coals added their dying heat to that of a sweltering summer night. The boy shifted in his seat.

  Silently, his father raised his hand and held it over the bowl. The talisman of knotted iron hanging from a cord on his father’s neck began to glow with a pale blue light. The source of ancient magic joined itself with his father’s spirit and unlocked the power with a sound like crackling fire; his father was doing something to the substance in the bowl. Nervous, the boy grasped his own talisman, imagining calling on the old magic to cut down Ferendi soldiers and help free his people from their fear. His time would come, and soon.

  The change in smell was instantaneous; the scent of his mother’s kitchen was replaced by the stench of war. Sweat. Blood. Burning. The acrid odor of decomposing bodies. He willed his face to remain still, not wanting to let his father see him flinch. Suddenly, the distance between him and home was very tangible.

  “I am one of the highest ranking generals in this army,” his father said. “You will rise to replace me someday.” A thin smile that was anything but warm spread across his face. “Consider this my first lesson.”

  “But Father,” the boy said, still stroking his talisman. “You have given me many lessons.”

  His father said nothing. He took a small copper cup and pushed it into the top of the wooden bowl over the coals. A thick, oily liquid seeped up out of the iron-black porridge and crept down the side of the cup. Stepping forward, he offered the cup into the boy’s hands.

  “Drink,” he said.

  Hiding his revulsion and refusing to dishonor himself with more unanswered questions, the boy threw the liquid back and swallowed. It tasted like hell.

  The world vanished.

  * * *

  Hadran took two arrows to the chest, and that made me the commander.

  “Archers!” I screamed, grabbing the talisman that hung from Hadran’s neck. It was slick with dark blood and a slimy green-black liquid that I was careful not to touch. Ferendi poison. “Concentrate your fire on this location!”

  I tapped into the power of the talisman and sent out a brilliant beacon of blue light. It soared across the open field and toward the Ferendi and settled just on the left flank of the charging horses, where they hadn’t formed a solid line yet. Their cavalry had finally overtaken their own archers, and this was the moment where they were the most vulnerable. I’d been here before. They wouldn’t launch another salvo for fear of hitting their own men, but that left me plenty of time to pepper them with arrows and magic until they ran us through.

  “Captain!” someone called to my left as a cloud of arrows rose from our ranks and headed toward my marker. “Look!”

  I spun, sending a wave of flame billowing outward toward the weak link in the cavalry line before pulling my attention away. I didn’t wait to see if it hit. It wouldn’t matter anyway.

  Even before I turned, I knew what was coming. The cavalry had been a distraction; the real threat was coming from the west. An entire brigade of Ferendi Spin-Devils sped toward us, kicking up so much dust and dirt that it turned the Calchaka Plains into a giant bowl of green and brown stew. Those battlemages were destruction incarnate, and they were advancing unopposed.

  “Stand fast!” I called. “Aldan, Chari, Tumeni, with me!”

  I didn’t look to see if the men I called had followed me. They always came.

  The archers were still firing on the cavalry, and a brief glance told me that our position would be overrun in just a few minutes. That wasn’t my concern; I was worried about the Spin-Devils. If they broke through us, they were only minutes from the main camp. Women and children were there. I thanked the gods I had never taken a wife. Knowing she was back there would have broken me. I was a man with nothing to lose, and that made me dangerous.

  Power coursed through me as I drew upon the talisman, sheathing my sword. I wouldn’t need it anymore.

  “You know what we have to do,” I said quietly. The sounds of dying, screaming, fighting were all around me. But it all seemed too quiet. War, to me, always seemed too damn quiet.

  I heard grunts from the men behind me. Ten years of friendship and sharing pain and loss had come to this moment. I felt our magic joining, the burning sensation that came with using too much at once, and the peace of knowing that it didn’t matter.

  One deep breath was all I had time for. Then the Spin-Devils were upon us. I know, before they ripped my body apart, that I killed at least one of them. I pray to the gods that I killed at least one of
them.

  * * *

  The boy’s eyes snapped to alertness, his lungs heaving with heavy, ragged gasps. He could feel the cold steel of the Ferendi Spin-Devils’ spears digging into his skin, feel their magic tearing away at his mind and body and reducing him to dust.

  “Father,” he said. “That…that was Captain Gannis the Fearless, wasn’t it?”

  Gannis had been a hero, a thing of legends. His stand against the Spin-Devils had been told in every tavern, sung by every bard. But this didn’t feel like a story; it felt like a desperate grasp for a small advantage by a captain staring defeat in the face. And he’d only been in charge because someone else had died. That didn’t seem very grandiose at all.

  “You must be ready to sacrifice,” his father said. “Are you ready to face the Ferendi?”

  “I will be as Gannis was,” the boy said, though it didn’t feel quite right even as the words left his mouth. His father was just trying to discourage him, to keep him safe and coddle him. It was no way to treat a warrior. He would fight tomorrow, and he would bring his family’s name honor.

  “Drink,” his father said, refilling the cup and extending it to the boy.

  The boy looked his father straight in the eye and drank.

  * * *

  I fingered the rank on my shoulder that marked me as the High Commander. Surrounded by my staff, in the safety of a command tent miles away from the front, I didn’t feel like I was in command of much.

  The thick parchment that showed a drawing of the battlefield, crudely replicated by one of our Bandala fliers, was filled to the edges with small figurines representing my field commands. Ferendi troops, black stones, were quickly beginning to outnumber mine.

  “We need to pull back, Commander Shen,” Karn, my deputy, said. Always cautious, but I was always reckless. We had balanced each other for decades.

  “Pull back to what? The city? There’s nowhere else to go.”

  The rest of my staff was arguing over where to place troops and when to tap into our reserves for magic. Talismans were in short supply, and the power that the mages could draw from them was getting weaker by the second. Soon we’d be a primitive band of pikemen and archers, trying to contend against a swarming tide of darkness from the north. I didn’t even know how to negotiate a surrender if I wanted to save my men. Nobody spoke their language.

  I stopped listening to them. I’d learned long ago when to probe for advice and when to act on my instincts, and right now my instincts were telling me that I was missing something.

  Looking at the western edge of the map, I noticed a small hole in the terrain that I hadn’t seen before. The Ferendi mass was strangely shaped, like it was defending itself from an attack that wasn’t there. They’d been spread out to avoid concentrated archer fire, but now, according to the Bandala scouts, they were bunching together. Like they were making room for something.

  “There,” I said, breaking through the chatter. I pointed to where I saw the hole in the enemy lines. “That space is too big. Not by much, but too big. It’s exposing their army’s left flank, and we have Hadran’s brigade helping to pave the way for a cavalry strike there.”

  “So?” Karn said. “That’s a good thing, Commander.”

  “It would be,” I said, “but the Ferendi aren’t that stupid.”

  Karn, his face tired and worn, swallowed.

  “Spin-Devils,” I said, tapping my finger on the parchment. “Battlemages. That’s why they’ve been holding back. We need to get—”

  Cold steel pierced my armor and sheathed itself in the center of my ribcage. I didn’t know what had happened at first, but as my body pitched backward and I grappled with my lungs for air, I finally tore my eyes off the map. Everyone else around me was already dead. Everyone but Karn. Dear, dear Karn. He withdrew his bloody hand, and I saw the thin glaze of magic that had been hiding his face evaporate, revealing that near-black skin, those watery, yellow eyes. Ferendi. How long ago had the Spin-Devil taken my deputy, my friend? How long had I been inadvertently feeding the enemy information through him? Worse, did they speak our language now? So many questions unanswered.

  The world blackened like tree bark in a forest fire, and I reached up to grab the High Commander rank on my shoulders. I tried tearing it off, but my fingers would not close.

  * * *

  The boy clutched his chest, and sweat dropped from his forehead onto the thirsty dirt below him. A single sharp intake of breath told him that his lungs were not filling with blood, that the steel in his heart was not real. Dreams. Illusions. The lingering love for Karn was so great, the sadness at his death so enormous, that he could not stop the sob that escaped his tightened lips. Panic threatened to overtake him until he realized that the Spin-Devils weren’t actually about to crest the hill and destroy Hadran’s brigade and Captain Gannis with it.

  “No,” he said, though he didn’t know whom he was talking to. It felt like a great void was opening up inside of him.

  “You must be ready to command,” his father said. “Are you ready to face the Ferendi?”

  “Yes,” the boy said, feeling some of the fire return to him. He was ready. Of course he could command. He understood war. Why was his father showing him these things? Was he trying to make him run home? There was no honor in that.

  A familiar copper cup snuck through the darkened edges of his vision.

  “Drink,” his father said.

  Trembling, the boy took the cup.

  * * *

  The Bandala’s wings beat feverishly underneath me, sending me undulating up and down with nauseating rapidity. Two years as a Bandala flier and scout, hundreds of times flying over the Ferendi, and it all boiled down to this one moment, this one piece of information.

  Shina had four arrows sticking out of her hide, and she was losing altitude with every second. Her panicked cries had started out as screeches that split the sky, sounds that would have made any other animal run in terror. Now the beast was barely making a whisper. Screams had turned to wheezes. Gray-blue foam appeared at the corners of her mouth and flew backward in the wind as we rushed toward friendly lines.

  “Come on, girl,” I said in time with the beating of her enormous, powerful wings. “Come on, girl. We have to tell them.”

  The Spin-Devils had been like a dark storm cloud that had lost its place in the sky and landed on the earth instead. I saw the bodies of our scouts and patrols littered across the fields like the discarded toys of children, watched the Bandalas of my comrades turn into ash in the air as the Ferendi battlemages lit them on fire like dry straw. Scouts fell from their backs, arms flailing. Their screams were almost louder than the creatures on which they flew.

  I was the last. And if I didn’t get back to High Commander Shen’s tent with this report, they were all dead.

  Shina’s head lilted to the side, and her wings stopped beating. We pitched sideways.

  “No!” I cried. I pulled the reins hard as we began to spin. “Shina! Wake up!”

  I had hoped at least she could get me to the ground safely. If I could get ahead of their charge, I might be able to get back in time to warn them. Now I didn’t know what I hoped.

  The long, dark croon of one of the Ferendi’s flying beasts called out behind me. They’d followed. I couldn’t tell what direction they were coming from. I couldn’t tell what direction anything was coming from. We were spinning out of control, the world becoming a dizzying, rotating mess. My stomach crept up to my throat. Another arrow, fired from the back of the Ferendi’s beast, lodged itself in Shina’s back. She didn’t make a sound.

  I pulled the reins. I slapped Shira’s side. I screamed my message out as we began to plummet, hoping that someone, anyone would hear me.

  “The Spin-Devils are coming!”

  The ground. The ground!

  * * *

  The boy was looking up at the top of the tent, his head spinning. He’d felt his own bones crumble like old parchment as he’d hit the ground, felt his stomach
rise into his throat with the rapid descent. Had that just been the impact of him falling off the stool he’d been sitting on?

  Groaning, he sat up, the vision of the injured and dying Bandala still fresh in his head. Dizziness overwhelmed him and he pitched sideways wildly, knocking into a table full of arrows. They scattered to the ground.

  “He never made it,” the boy said, his throat tight.

  “You must be ready to fail,” his father said. “Are you ready to face the Ferendi?”

  “Fail?” the boy said, looking up at his father’s cold face. “Why do I have to be ready to fail? I will not fail.” His voice hardened as he repeated himself. “I will not fail. I am ready.”

  His father extended the cup. “Drink.”

  With the slightest of hesitations, the boy reached out and took the cup.

  * * *

  I ran into battle only because there was an army running behind me and stopping would have meant being trampled. Death behind, death ahead. The open field throbbed with the beating rhythm of tens of thousands of footsteps, hoofbeats, the sound of falling bodies. The Ferendi host charged forward, their black armor sucking in the light. We ran, screaming to hide our own terror, weapons raised.

  Somehow, I was in the first rank of soldiers. The lines clashed. Someone hit me from behind; I felt it all the way through my armor. A friendly soldier stepped on my ankle. I thought I could hear the bone break even over all the noise.

  I looked up. A rearing horse, its rider holding a barbed spear high in the air. Time froze for a brief moment before he brought it down.

  Oh, gods.

  * * *

  “That’s it?” the boy shouted, incredulous, furious. The feeling of emptiness, of pointlessness, was so great inside of him that it threatened to swallow him whole. He nearly forgot the incredible pain that still lingered from where he’d been stabbed in the stomach by the Ferendi cavalryman. “What is the purpose of this? What am I learning?”

  He wasn’t sure whom he was asking the question to. Was he wondering at the purpose of these visions, clearly intended to frighten him? Or was he wondering what the purpose of such a short, futile life was? The simple soldier had barely even lifted his sword. Instead of charging forward into glory, cutting down enemies, valiantly sacrificing himself for the greater good, he’d simply…died.