Squire Derel

by Rachel Ford

  The room – what was left of it – was illuminated now in a reddish glow. Stone. That’s what had landed on top of me. That’s what had been compressing my lungs: a large slab of stone, from one of the pillars. Fuck. It’s a miracle I survived that.

  I felt for my arms and legs, my hands and feet. They were all there, and though aching and sore, intact. It was a miracle, I thought, that I’d not fared worse.

  Now, though, I turned my attention to my surroundings. And here, I saw, my luck ran out. The smoke, I’d already discovered, and rediscovered with every breath of acrid air. This was linked to the reason I could now see, where before the entire room was cast in darkness: fire.

  Flames billowed out everywhere I looked, casting the room in an eerie red glow. Together with the smoke, it was at once illuminated but almost impossible to see anything beyond the immediate surroundings.

  I peered into the landscape of rubble and flame. Here and there, I perceived human figures, black against the wreckage, some twisted into shapes that defied natural human bodily configurations, others slumped or battered but otherwise not visibly injured. “Phillip? Commander?”

  They had been nearest me when KP Nadia triggered the explosion. Now, I did not see them.

  I pushed from a crouching position to a kneeling one, and then began a survey of my immediate surroundings. There was more stone here, and I realized it must have come from the ceiling overhead, not the pillar. There was too much of it to be the pillar, and that had stood too far away – back when it was standing at all. I found plaster too, and wood paneling.

  I felt my stomach lurch. If the ceiling had come down, that meant a partial collapse of the building. Maybe worse. Fuck. I glanced upward, trying to make out the sky overhead. If the roof had collapsed, the sky would be visible. But the smoke was too thick to make certain, one way or the other. Maybe I was peering into a dark, smoky night sky. Maybe I was staring at the underside of the roof. I didn’t know, and it didn’t particularly matter.

  What mattered was finding Phillip and Lidek, and getting the hell out of here, away from the flames.

  I crawled forward and froze as my hand planted in something wet. Something that squashed under my fingers, giving here, easing there.

  I drew the hand back instinctively and glanced down.

  Then, wiping my hand with a kind of franticness against my tunic, I puked, long and hard. I kept puking until I’d probably upchucked every ounce of fish and fowl, meat and bread, every sip of coffee and taste of sweets I’d eaten.

  My hand had landed in a puddle of human flesh. I say puddle, because that’s what it was. There wasn’t enough shape preserved to define what body part or parts it had been. It was just a raw, red, unrecognizable pulp of what had once been a man or woman.

  I prayed with all the fervency of a child that it wasn’t Phillip. In a sense, that meant praying that it was someone else, praying that some other poor soul had been ripped into bloody pieces and strewn in fragments around the room. Maybe that made me a piece of shit.

  But the idea of Aaronsen dying like that damn near left me insensible. As soon as I stopped vomiting, I turned back to the rubble, searching now with a kind of manic franticness. I had to find him. Dead or alive, I had to know what had happened.

  “Phillip? Aaronsen, can you hear me?”

  No answer came, and I kept digging through the rubble, shifting beams and lifting broken furniture. He had to be here. Where else could he be?

  I shifted forward, and nearly yelped as something moved under my knee. “Phil,” I realized as my senses ebbed back.

  In a moment, I’d unburied the squirming form. But it wasn’t the squire. “Lidek.”

  In my scramble to find Aaronsen, I’d forgotten the commander. Now, I threw my arms around him. “You’re alive.”

  “Not for long, if you suffocate me,” he wheezed.

  “I can’t find Phillip. Help me.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nadia: she must have had a bomb strapped to herself. That’s what the fight was about. It’s why they drugged Phillip, so they could get out of the way of the blast.”

  “My gods. We need to get outside, Lilia. We need to stop them.”

  “I need to find Phillip.”

  He hesitated, but then joined the search. In a minute, we found him. The boy was partially buried, with a great gash running down his forehead, and blood and dust plastered to his face.

  I shook him, calling his name as I did so. But he didn’t stir.

  “He’s breathing,” Lidek said. “So he’s alive. Looks like he took a bad hit to the side of the head, though. We need to get him out of here.”

  I nodded. “Right.” The first challenge was getting to my feet. And, good gods, was it ever a challenge. Every joint, every muscle, every tendon and every nerve in my body screamed in protest.

  I gritted my teeth and pushed and strained and ignored the white light behind my eyes. And then I was standing, and the pain receded. I could see again.

  Lidek was a moment behind me, still grunting as he straightened out his back. Then, though, he blew out a wheezing breath. “Let’s go.”

  We did, hoisting Phillip over our shoulders. Now, I regretted all those good meals Claxton had prepared for him. Aaronsen wasn’t overweight. It was just that his regular weight was more than enough. He was probably pushing two-twenty, with more growing left to do. He was going to be a tank. If we live through tonight, anyway.

  Over the rubble and through the smoke we went. Once or twice, my foot caught, or Lidek’s did, and we almost went down. But we managed to remain upright, skirting flaming piles of debris and bypassing the larger heaps until we reached the end of the reception hall.

  The doorframe was partially collapsed, the heavy wooden doors reduced to splinters under the crushing weight of the stone that bore down on it. I didn’t let my mind linger on that, or how precarious our situation was – how, at any moment, that entry might come down.

  With us under it, or not.

  “Come on,” I said.

  The commander grunted his acquiescence, and we ducked under the rubble and into the hall beyond.

  The flame and wreckage reached here as well. Little pockets of fire raged in patches, consuming the wood paneling along the walk, and making short work of the furnishings and paintings nearby. Loose stone and plaster speckled the hall, sometimes as solitary pieces rocked free by the explosion, and others in great piles of fallen debris. The air was heavy with thick, black smoke, and we ducked low as we went, trying to stay as near to the ground, and as far away from the choking smoke, as possible.

  Even running low as we were, it was difficult to see what lay in our way until we were upon it. The fires illuminated the way, but the haze was too thick to see more than a meter or two ahead at any given time.

  We followed the halls by memory, winding our way out of the building, wheezing and sweating all the while.

  We’d neared the main doors when we both, of one mind, pulled up. The way out was too far to see clearly. But we didn’t need to see clearly to understand the reddish orange glow ahead.

  Fire. And not a little fire, to judge by the brightness. Even through a heavy curtain of smoke, the flames ahead blazed brightly, all along the great hall. All along our way out.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven – Derel

  It had taken a few minutes, but I’d cleared the vicinity of Southern knights. At least, I was praying I had, as I ducked out from behind my sheltering tree and raced for the next point of cover.

  It was an outbuilding, one of the few structures not yet in flames. I waited for the sound of shots, for the sensation of an energy beam to cut into me.

  To my relief, neither came. Not that the field was quiet. The roar of fire, the screams of the burning and injured, and the screeching of dragons overhead filled the smoky night with dread and terror.

  But I was focused on the centermost building. From a distance, all I saw was red – great spires of red and orange. As I drew cl
oser, the image got clearer. Flames had engulfed the entire thing, from top to bottom. The roof blazed, flames licked up the sides, and fire leaked out of the windows. Oh gods. Lil.

  I went first for the main entrance, and my heart sank as I neared it. The roof had collapsed here, and the doors were long gone. In their place lay a blazing barrier of wood and stone and gods knew what else. There was no way in – not from here.

  I stood there for half a moment, considering my options. I could try the side and rear exits. They were further from the reception hall, though. And I didn’t know what other damage had been done, and how many other collapses might have occurred.

  There were rooms off the main hall, though, and in those rooms, windows. I scouted the face of the building, bypassing the windows directly by the collapse. It would do me no good to enter there. I needed to be further away from the damage, and the conflagration.

  Fire streamed out of some of the windows, greedily sucking in oxygen from outside. In others, the glass was intact, but the glow of red beyond told me that this was no safer an entry than those flaming apertures.

  I glanced down the row, searching for a good point of ingress. My eyes lit on figures, dark and black and small against the red, falling out of a window half a dozen rooms down. There were four or perhaps five of them, and a few more still tumbling out.

  I raced for them. Whoever they were, maybe they’d seen Lil. Maybe they could tell me where she was, or if she’d escaped already. And even if they couldn’t, I could get in the same way they’d gotten out.

  They were KP’s and squires, some of them badly burned by the look of it, and others soot covered and dazed. They clustered together, lending hands to those who needed it, catching the others as they dropped. The window, though on the first floor, still stood a good four or five feet off the ground. And a few of these knights looked to be in no condition to make that drop.

  “KP Angelo?” I asked. I recognized one of the faces as a knight I knew – not well, but at least I knew him.

  He glanced back from offering a hand to someone – a civilian, by the looks of it – who had just made the jump. “Derel. You survived.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. The hows and whys would wait. “Angelo, have you seen Lil? Callaghan, I mean?”

  He nodded. “Yes. She –”

  A voice interrupted. “Ana?”

  It was Phillip, jutting his broad head out the window. “Phil.”

  He retracted his head, then pushed himself through the window frame feet first, and landed with a heavy thud. Then, as soon as he regained his feet, he stepped over and scooped me into a bear hug. “Ana: you’re alright.”

  I tapped him urgently, to signal for him to release me. His bear hug was a little too tight. If you wanted to go on breathing, anyway. He complied, and I gasped in a lungful of air. I was too happy to be annoyed, though. “Oh my gods, you made it, Phil.”

  He nodded. “That Nadia: she had some kind of bomb. Under her clothes. Blew the place up.”

  I’d guessed as much, though I hadn’t figured the bomb had been strapped to a person. “And the KP?” I asked, my voice not much more than a whisper.

  “I’m here, Ana.”

  My heart seemed to standstill in the half a second it took to turn toward her. She was there, alright: covered in soot and grime, a few gashes on her face and hands, but otherwise whole. I waited until she made the drop too, then I wrapped her in a hug as fierce as Phillip’s.

  She hugged me to her too. “You were right, Ana. I’m sorry. I should have listened.”

  I had no recriminations for her, though. I understood why she didn’t believe me, but even if I hadn’t, it wouldn’t have mattered. I was so thankful, so relieved and happy, to see her alive that I could have forgiven just about anything.

  Behind us, from the window, a throat cleared. “Callaghan, it’s getting hot in here…”

  It was Commander Lidek, perched in the windowsill. We were directly in his way.

  I didn’t want to let her go. On the other hand, I didn’t want the commander to burn to death either. So I moved, and so did she; and my hands slipped from her, and hers from me.

  “Sorry, Commander.”

  He grunted as he landed, and then straightened back up. “I thought you were gone, Derel?”

  “I was. I came back.”

  He nodded. “Those bastards: you run into any of them?”

  “I shot three.”

  He nodded again, his eyes gleaming with satisfaction. “Good.”

  “The rest – I think – are in the sky.”

  “Shit,” Lil said. “The town.”

  “Claxton’s on that.”

  “Claxton?”

  Her eyebrows arched as she said it, but I nodded. “That’s right. She’s bringing the town back to the keep. Wants us to keep these sons-of-bitches busy.”

  “We need to get our dragons in the air,” Lidek decided.

  I glanced around, realizing suddenly that I hadn’t seen our dragon riders. Or, for that matter, our dragons. “Where are they?”

  “I sent them off base. When Valarian’s men stabled theirs here. I didn’t want them having access to our wyvern.”

  I blinked. “You mean…you knew something was going to happen, Commander?”

  “No. Of course not. It was just a precaution.”

  “Damned good thing,” Lil nodded. “Otherwise, they’d probably be dead now.”

  He nodded too. “It’s probably why they’re still here, and not in Shire’s End. Trying to figure out where we stashed them.”

  “That, and killing survivors,” I said. “They’ve been hunting down people as they escape from the buildings. And burning down the rest of the base.”

  “Speaking of: we need to move out,” Angelo put in. “Before they catch sight of us.”

  “Are there more survivors?”

  “We got who we could. We need to put the fire out. The place is going to collapse, if we don’t. But we can’t do that –”

  “Until the dragons are dead,” I nodded. “Where are our dragon riders?”

  “I’m here. So’s Ragarsen,” a voice piped up.

  “Me too.”

  “I don’t know where the rest are. Dead, maybe. Or dispersed.”

  “Shit. Three riders? That’s not going to do much. Not against a dozen.”

  “Maybe not. But we’ve got to try.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight – Callaghan

  I’d never been so happy – or terrified – to see anyone as I had when I looked out of that window, the heat of fire and death at my back, and saw Ana. Last I knew, she was safe in the keep. And now, here she was: alive, well, but definitely not safe.

  Then again, with dragons on the prowl, with the South attacking Cragspoint, nowhere was safe. Not really. So seeing her with my own eyes, knowing she was safe for now, was a relief in its own way.

  But those thoughts were pushed aside by the mission, and the need to save our people. Our wyvern were tethered on Cragspoint soil, in a craggy patch of open land, under camo nets that resembled the grays and golden browns of the rocks and dry autumn grass. They’d been moved in broad daylight, while the Southerners were all occupied. They were just far enough off the main compound to be impossible to spot from the air, especially in the dark, but close enough to reach quickly.

  At least, that had been the plan. Now, we got to test the wisdom of our earlier thinking. With the dragons already overhead, I wasn’t so sure anymore. That’s something we hadn’t anticipated. We’d been protecting our beasts against sabotage – against poison or some other interference in a shared space.

  No one had been worried about bombs. No one had worried about an attack like that inside the reception itself. No one worried that, by time we knew were under attack, they’d be airborne, and we’d just be picking ourselves out of the rubble.

  Here, the ongoing butchery worked to our advantage though. A heavy layer of smoke blanketed the compound. Here and there, patches of clear sky showed us
the clouds overhead, and now and then a passing wyvern. But mostly, the dragons were hidden from us.

  As we were hidden from the dragons.

  It was a quick run, across the courtyard and toward the tree line. I think all of our hearts were in our mouths as we made the last forty meters, where the smoke was sparse and we were in the open.

  But we made it undetected, ducking under the sheltering hardwoods with palpable relief. None of us spoke, though. We kept running, for a minute or two that felt like ten to my smoke and heat seared lungs.

  Then, we darted out of the forest and cut straight into a rocky meadow, keeping to patches of stone and shadowy outcroppings.

  We’d reached the camp inside half a minute. A nervous boy shouted, “Stop,” leveling a laser rifle at KP Angelo’s head.

  Angelo was in the lead, and he froze. We all did. Lidek spoke, “It’s Commander Lidek. Lower your weapon, Tommy.”

  The boy squinted into the darkness, then his eyes went wide. “Yessir. Sorry sir. Only…I thought it must be them.”

  “It’s not.”

  “No sir.”

  The three wyvern riders streamed past us. The larger of the trio, a woman with flame red hair and a quick eye, turned. “Squire, you’re called Tommy, right?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Any of my men come this way, Tommy?”

  “No ma’am, not since earlier. You’re the first people I’ve seen come after the explosion.”

  She nodded. “That means they’re still back there. Or dead.” Now, she threw a glance over us. “Any of you know how to ride one of these things?”

  The commander shifted in place. “It’s been awhile. But, yes.”

  “Good. You’re going up with us. Anyone else?”

  “I’ve flown one a few times,” Angelo put in.

  “Pick a bird, then.”

  I cleared my throat. “Me too. But…it was a long time ago.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You’ll remember how. Choose one.”

  I tried to find my feet. They seemed frozen in place. It had been years since I’d touched a wyvern. Almost ten years.