by Unknown
His tone indicated that he did not expect there to be a “next time,” and if there was I would regret it.
“Sorry, sarge. It won’t happen again.”
“Be sure it doesn’t.”
Relieved that I wasn’t getting nailed to the wall for my stupidity, I rested my head against the shuddering cabin wall and closed my eyes.
Surprisingly, I actually dozed off in the helicopter, awaking only when we landed and someone smacked my helmet. I followed everyone off, and headed to the showers to clean up. I hadn’t realised how much I had been sweating - from nerves, from heat, from exertion - until I peeled off my combat jacket and found my t-shirt sticking to my chest. I pulled that off too, got undressed, wrapped a towel around myself and got into the shower.
As the water washed over me, I closed my eyes and thought back over the short skirmish we’d had. It must have lasted for all of ten minutes, but felt like hours. My hands were numb from where I’d been holding my rifle grip so tightly, the muscles across my back were aching, and my knees were sore from my slide across the ground. Plus it had been the first time I had openly fought against people I would have been allied with before. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but it was unnerving to say the least.
I spent a few minutes washing off the sweat and the stink of gunfire, then got out to get dressed again. As I was dressing however, I had the strangest experience.
I had just pulled my trousers on when I heard a cry of “holy shit!” from behind me, and someone came up and grabbed my shoulder. Something about my mark had got someone’s attention, it seemed.
“Fuck me, someone’s got the Crow’s attention already!” It was Sergeant Colwin, who generally only swore when really annoyed or really surprised.
“Sorry sarge, something up?” I asked, somewhat concerned now.
“What the hell have you been doing, boy?” he asked with a laugh. “I’ve seen that mark once in my time here, and last time it was some lass the Crow wanted as her personal aide.”
“The Cr- Corvi? What’s going on, sergeant?” Now he had me really worried. Colwin came around in front of me at last, looking confused.
“You mean you don’t know?” I shook my head. “You’ve been given Corvina’s mark. Your hers now. I kind of thought you would have known that, since...”
He trailed off as he realised my expression had turned...less than pleased. Sure I was mad about the woman, but to be ‘claimed’ by her, without my knowledge? I was pissed.
“I suggest you talk to her,” Colwin said at last, his tone sympathetic, “and then get some rest. I need you on the patrol tonight, MacElroy seems to have had a...thing with Levaertes.” He grimaced, but didn’t offer any further details. I could imagine, however, and then quickly realised that I really didn’t want to know.
I finished getting dressed, then I headed towards Corvi’s office. I needed answers.
I was so pissed off that I was blind to almost everyone in my path. As I stormed down the corridors, I didn’t even notice the diminutive young woman coming towards me until we practically collided.
“Oh! I am sorry, I-” she started, then paused momentarily. “Mr. Black?” A moment after asking me, she noticed the name tag on my fatigues, and nodded. “Sorry, Mr. Black, Lady Delacore wishes a word with you, if you could follow me?”
Since I had already been on my way there, I saw no point in arguing, so I followed her as she requested. The woman was all of 5’ 3” in heels, with shoulder-length, curly blonde hair that bounced every time she moved. Since she had been wearing a plain black dress, I had seen quite clearly the mark on the back of her shoulder. A crow, with wings outstretched, a crown above its head. I supposed mine looked much the same, although hers appeared to have been tattooed over branded skin. Just how old was she? She looked about twenty-two or so, but to have been branded first...
My thoughts had kept me occupied in silence until we reached Corvi’s office, at which point the woman I assumed to be her aide gestured for me to enter.
As I walked through the door, Corvi raised a hand in the ‘be with you in a moment’ gesture, her other hand keeping her phone in place against her ear. I waited patiently in the ‘At ease’ position - hands behind my back, feet shoulder-width apart - until she had finished.
“Yes, My lady, everything is progressing well...of course, if there any issues I will contact you, but I don’t...really? When?...bloody hell! And will you need-...oh, okay. Very well, My lady, I shall speak to you again soon. Farewell.”
She ended the call and sighed heavily, shaking her head.
“Problems?” I asked.
“One of our bases was almost destroyed two weeks ago, apparently. We lost a lot of good men and women.”
“Shit, Corvi, I’m sorry,” I told her, and I meant it. My anger was irrelevant in the face of loss of life. “Did you lose anyone...close to you?” I had hesitated there, unsure why I feared the answer.
“No, I didn’t really know many people from that base.” She ran a hand through her raven hair, kept neatly behind her head with a pewter hair clip in the shape of a crow. I guess she liked that imagery more than she let on. In that moment she seemed more vulnerable than I had seen her before, and I figured that she was more worried that the attack meant our enemies were growing bolder...and getting closer to our bases.
She sat upright again and sobered quickly, banishing the melancholy from her mind and becoming the base commander once more.
“Anyway, that isn’t why I summoned you.” She seemed more stern than usual...annoyed. “Let’s talk about your actions in Oxford.”
Shit.
“Ah. You saw that, did you?”
“Mister Black, we have spent a ridiculous amount of money building up the satellite coverage that allows us to watch all of our teams out in the field, wherever they are. Of course I saw that.” She really was not happy. I swallowed hard, and tried not to shift nervously. “My one question is simply...what the hell were you thinking?”
I spent a moment choosing the right way to phrase my response, in a way that sounded favourable. Eventually I gave up, and just decided to give her the honest version.
“My team was under attack, and I was attempting to buy them the time needed to get our agent away...ma’am.”
“You are aware there are other means to do that? Ways that don’t put your own life at risk?”
“I...yes, ma’am. I felt I needed to keep them all occupied, and getting among them seemed the best way to do that.”
She sat there silently for a few moments, toying with a pen in thought while gazing at me with those intense silvery eyes of hers.
“These are not the actions of a team player, Deimos,” she said at last, the use of my given name making it sound like a punishment from a parent. “These are the actions of a lone wolf, a person who considers his own life less important than that of the people around him. Lone wolves have a place too, even here - perhaps especially here. Any idea what that might be?”
I was still nervous as hell about what fate she planned for me, but I could swear there was a ghost of a smile playing about her lips at that moment.
“Um...no, ma’am, I don’t.”
“Have you heard of the Sentinel programme?”
Holy crap. It couldn’t be true. She couldn’t be serious.
“Uh, only in passing, but I don’t think-”
“What I will and what you think are radically different things, Deimos.” There was definitely a smile there now, and my heart melted a little more. Damn, she was beautiful when she smiled. Or any other time, really. “It will require more training - there is a lot more to being a Sentinel than just a soldier. And it would be a lot more dangerous, since the
y get the hardest missions, but you would get a pay that reflects that.”
I was utterly speechless. I had only heard a little of the mysterious Sentinels, but they were often one-person armies, and they were not people you messed with lightly.
“Uh...” was about all I managed.
“Great, that’s settled then,” Corvi announced, slapping the desk in front of her and grinning broadly. “I’ll draw up the paperwork and get things rolling. Now, while we’re here, is there anything you wanted?”
It took me a few seconds to get over my surprise and recall exactly why I had wanted to come here in the first place.
“Uh...yes, actually there was. I just found out that...my mark. It’s not the standard mark of The Order, it’s yours. I’ve been told that you’ve basically claimed me, and I wanted to know why.”
Corvi laughed, a soft laugh that suggested I was in error somehow.
“Who said that?”
“Sergeant Colwin, but then I noticed your aide had one which seemed to go back...a while.”
“First of all, Colwin doesn’t know a damn thing about us, or at least not as much as he likes to think. Secondly, yes, Maria has my mark and yes she is a lot older than she looks...but she asked to be turned. She has served me faithfully for nearly two hundred years, and she will most likely be taking her first hibernation soon. I had her marked early on in her service to me to indicate she was under my protection. In your case, I wanted to warn others that I am personally responsible for you and your continued training - and that you too were under my protection.”
“So...I kind of got my information wrong there.”
“Just a tad,” she told me, smiling again. She obviously hadn’t taken any offence. Thank god.
“Seriously Deimos, in future if you have any concerns about anything, come and see me. I’m here to look after everyone in this base.”
I smiled sheepishly, and hung my head in embarrassment.
“I’m sorry, Corvi, I didn’t think it through. If that’s all, ma’am, I’ll take my leave.”
“Actually, one more thing.” I paused, raising an eyebrow to invite her to carry on. “I think we should talk - informally, instead of in this stuffy office. I haven’t seen you much since you completed your training, I thought it would be nice to catch up. Are you free for lunch?”
A hundred things darted through my mind at that time, mostly is she asking me on a date?! However I reasoned that couldn’t possibly be the case. I also wanted to shout my acceptance, but I remembered I had guard duty.
“Sorry, I need to get some rest, I’m on a late guard shift tonight. How about breakfast instead?”
I swear, there was a hint of a cheeky grin there, or a spark in her eyes, but it passed quickly and she gave me a beautiful, beaming smile.
“Breakfast would be great, Deimos. I’ll see you in the morning.”
I came to attention, bowed curtly and left the office, feeling happier than I had in a long time. Whether it was or not, it felt like a date, and I was riding that high all the way back to my quarters.
After I had rested, I got dressed and reported for duty at the guard post, on the perimeter of the base. We were surrounded entirely by fields for a pretty fair distance, so that we could get easy visual contact on anything coming towards the base. It was early September, so it was quite a chilly evening (if you’ve ever been to England, you know we only get about 3 days of any actual summer,) but ultimately uneventful. Well, unless you count the badger that broke perimeter. We decided it probably wasn’t a spy, so we didn’t need to bring it in for interrogation, instead just chasing it off.
Shame. It might have made quite a tasty meal.
After my uneventful twelve hours of guarding a fence, I was glad to get inside where it was warm and get some breakfast.
And for once, I was glad for more than just the food. I was going to have company.
I must have been grinning like an idiot all the way to the mess hall, where I got myself a fried breakfast and a nice fresh roll (I don’t know where we got them from. I think they were made on site, but I can’t be sure, even now.)
So that I wasn’t checking the door every five seconds and making myself seem desperate, I also picked up a newspaper - yes, we get newspapers too - found a seat and began eating. I was unsurprised to find that reports of the gunfight in the city had made the headlines, so I quickly scanned the article. Thankfully no civilians had been hurt, and it also stated that no one had any idea who we were. Fantastic.
My thoughts were interrupted when a shadow fell over my reading, and I looked up expectantly-
And saw Lance-Corporal Stevens,
“Hey, fancy some company mate?” Since I had become a member of Omega Company, Stevens had been able to not be so formal around me and be himself, and we had found a lot of common interests. That still didn’t change the fact that I was waiting for someone else.
“Actually, um-”
“Very sorry, Corporal,” a familiar melodic voice said from behind him, “Mister Black and I have some business to discuss.”
He turned to Corvi, nodded politely with a short bow then turned again and walked off, giving me a wink as he passed me. He clearly thought there was more going on than there was.
Or at least, more than I thought there was. It was hard to tell with Corvi.
“Good morning, Deimos,” she said with her usual smile, sitting down with her own paper and nothing more than a cup. I didn’t ask what was in it, but every time she took a sip from it I could see the crimson droplets clinging to her lips before she wiped them away with a delicate hand.
Yes, I was watching very closely. So sue me.
She looked stunning again, wearing plain black trousers, a slate-grey silk blouse that shimmered in the light, and a black waistcoat with some intricate designs embroidered into it in silver thread. A pair of slender black heels and a light touch of crimson eye-shadow completed her look, with her hair held back with the familiar pewter crow clasp.
“Good morning, My Lady,” I replied pleasantly, mostly to gauge her reaction. And it surprised me - she blushed.
“Seriously, don’t,” she asked, her tone tinted by her shy smile. “To you - to anyone - I’m just Corvi, okay? Unless it’s a situation that really requires the formality.”
“Alright, I’ll stop,” I promised, still surprised at the reaction I had caused. That was...not like her. She was never shy, and I had never known her to blush.
“Gods, I wish you’d never been told about my title. I never use it, it’s just one more thing that sets me apart from those I lead.”
“But that has to be a good thing, right? You can’t be seen to be overly familiar with the people around you, you need to be respected but not treated like...like a best mate to everyone.” I hadn’t considered how the current situation looked.
“Deimos, I’m having breakfast with a new recruit. How is that not overly familiar?”
I thought about it for a moment before answering. “Well, you just told Stevens that we had business to discuss, and to that extent I guess we do - the Sentinel programme.”
“Oh shut up, I saw the wink he gave you. I’m not an idiot. He thinks there’s something going on here, and we both know that story will get around your barracks in less than a week.”
“Is that a problem?”
“Hell no,” she said, grinning again. “If they cause problems I can just have them reassigned.”
Funny how she didn’t say anything about refuting such rumours. Neither did I, for that matter, a fact I’m sure was not lost on either of us.
For a while we just chatted. She asked about my family, so I told her of my sister and mother, my aunts and uncle
s, cousins...I wasn’t interested in discussing my brother or father. They were part of a life that no longer existed for me.
She asked about my name, and the family tradition of using names from mythology, and I told her as far as I knew it went back a couple of generations. I asked her about her family, and she spoke of her three sisters, all of whom had served The Order in some fashion or another, and two of which were sadly no longer with us. Apparently hunters had caught up with them while Corvi had been away on a mission, but her third sister - older than Corvi by a year - survived, injured but alive. That night she had sought out her patron and asked to be turned, and since then Corvi had only seen her a handful of times.
We then talked about interests, and I was surprised to learn that someone born and raised in the Eleventh Century had such a keen interest in modern music - to be specific, she was into a lot of the same music as me, a type known as “symphonic metal” and similar styles, that used a blend of heavy metal music and more classical elements such as piano and string arrangements.
We continued to talk, long after I had finished my breakfast and other people had left, and eventually she mentioned something interesting.
“I have to say Deimos,” she had said, attempting to hide a smirk behind her cup, “your mental discipline has improved significantly.”
“I should hope so, it’s a significant portion of our training.”
She nodded. Her smirk didn’t disappear.
“Mm. With good reason. I mean, before you joined, you were broadcasting thoughts all over the place.”
She fixed me with a stare I could only describe as sultry. Head lowered slightly, her silver eyes boring into my soul again, still hiding a smile behind her cup, and she waited for the penny to drop.
And when it did, it must have been written plain across my face, because there was a slight raising of one eyebrow, a tiny motion which seemed to say Yes, that is what I mean.