Steel Sirens

by Maxx Whittaker

  I kick what’s left of the butt, launching wood ribs and ale at the bakery. A sheet of paper flutters out from beneath. Only its wax seal keeps the breeze from stealing it.

  To the Portreeve,

  Governor MacTallum regrets he will not be able to attend your festivities. Sudden disruption in the Midlands prevents his…

  The paper falls from my numb fingers.

  No one is coming. No one is bringing men or summoning help.

  My face heats as rage, murderous, fills me. I make a list in my head and at the top I place Jorgan Roaldsson.

  Jorgan wasn’t a merchant, the goat fucker.

  He was a scout.

  I run one lap around the village for whatever clues remain. Footprints fill the ruts of every road leading away from Braemar. From the east wall remains, I can see paths divide in the pastureland. Ten groups of fifty? Manageable if more slavers waited in the hills. They’re going to a lot of trouble to avoid being followed, but I have a gut feeling they’re taking my villagers to the same place.

  Talos whistles just as the sun breaks the horizon.

  I raise my arm. “I thought you left me.”

  He gives an outraged peep. His head bobs, neck feathers raised in agitation as he points out the different tracks.

  “Ah. You were following them. Briet or Keldan?”

  He hops foot to foot, talons nicking my bicep.

  I give Talos a lift. “All right, you giant bit of fletching. Lead the way.”

  He nuzzles my jaw and soars on a screech.

  There’s nothing left for me here.

  I watch sun pour from the east, turning bronze autumn hills to gold.

  If I sit here and wait there won’t be anything left for me out there either.

  Briet was right. I have to find her so she can rub it in.

  The tracks run like a highway through the forest. Guess they weren’t too concerned with being followed. To be fair, it’s hard to hide the footprints of even fifty villagers, ten slavers, their carts, our horses…

  My eyes are everywhere, at first, and my ears strain for any noise not made by trees that sway gently in the breeze. I hear nothing, see nothing but the signs of their passage, and over time, my heightened awareness is exhausting.

  They’ve stayed mostly on the road. This makes tracking easier. It also lulls me, and my vigilance slips. This drives home what I’ve tried to deny since leaving Braemar: I need help.

  Militia, mercenaries or Governor MacTallum’s soldiers. We’re travelling in the rough direction of Graysmere. And beyond it Minster Lowe. It’s ruled by a duke. Thom knew every place and who ruled it. Half soldier, half bureaucrat. Gods rest you, Thom.

  How many soldiers does a duke command, five hundred? Men at arms, archers...a small army at his disposal. Minster Lowe is a guild city, silversmiths and bridgebuilders. Wealthy.

  Our taxes wind up in his coffers eventually. Doesn’t that earn us some protection? Time to ask him.

  Maybe he likes swords.

  I’ve reached the Lower Swell ferry at an abandoned settlement once called Hawkshead. Now it’s the sod remains of the ferry master’s hut and a lamp stands. Beyond flows the glittering band of the Shale river.

  Here I stop. Talos lands and questions me from a tree over the river.

  This is the crossroads for my journey. To Minster Lowe, or to the bandits?

  “I have no idea, friend.” I need aid, but leaving them, going even a foot further from my brother and sister than I am now…

  I grab the ferry pole and hop onto a skiff that immediately takes on water.

  Row faster, Ewan. Put those bowman’s arms to use.

  Tracks on the far shore surprise me. There’s standing water in the muddy boot prints. My prey is still a ways ahead but getting closer.

  Closing on the slavers and heading in the direction of help? It feels like the gods are finally on my side.

  I hope they’re with Briet and Keldan, too. Slaves are a commodity; it’d be stupid to kill or injure one. And expensive. But that doesn’t stay a striking hand, doesn’t put more than a spoonful of gruel in a hungry belly or ease blisters on road-worn feet.

  Thom’s body, tortured and violated, rests heavy in my mind.

  Bri will take care of Keldan, if she can. An image flashes in my mind, Keldan standing at our table, almost more man than boy. Maybe they’re taking care of each other.

  Bald shore turns to shrubs, the forest’s hem. I don’t know the name of this wood. I don’t think I’ve ever been so far south, not west of the Hye. My trail turns east now. In the clearing my legs tense. They beg to turn back. To run.

  I panic. Braemar pulls at me physically. The thread connecting us unravels. I’m so far from home, and I’m lost. Not in body but in purpose, in hope.

  What will happen, once I’m adrift?

  A voice whispers to me. I can’t hear the words.

  Where does it come from? I don’t care. Any comfort is welcome.

  Tell me, encourage me...

  It comes again. From the sword.

  Loud, clear, it punches in my chest: Trap.

  4

  The Clever Mercenary

  This card depicts a willowy raven-haired woman. She is associated with death, resilience, and light. Inverted, this card represents learning, grounding, a relationship beginning, anger, a promise, and a mystery. The card smells strongly of funeral incense. Its reverse is ink black with a gibbous moon

  Bow unslung, I skim the tree line, ears straining for a rustle, a breath.

  I don’t have to work so hard. Their hoofbeats are no secret.

  There’s nowhere to go, no way I can outrun a horse. Climb a tree?

  No time. And they know I’m here.

  They emerge in a thunder of horseflesh, churning up dirt and grass as they halt, only a few hundred yards away. A man and a half each, they almost dwarf their mounts. Black and gold armor; it reminds me of the glove, the sword. Is that what they came for?

  They could want anything or nothing. A flaming fist, gripping a human heart is etched onto their breastplates, reinforcing my thought.

  The front rider, his helmet painted like a raven skull, levels his sword at me. He points silently as the others come on, one by one.

  I’m naive; I know that now. I thought I could charge across the world, find my family, spirit them away somehow. And now, I’ll probably die where I stand.

  But I won’t make it easy. I don’t care how impossibly huge they are.

  Cailleach, watch over my family. I’m done with Valin and Ora; when I’m gone, I want Briet and Keldan protected by storms, their enemies across a frozen waste.

  I nock an arrow I don’t remember drawing. My eyes train the slavers as they devour ground. One shot, two?

  The frontmost slaver changes, becomes the boar in the crag. I sight his throat and let fly.

  It sticks.

  Choke on it till you like it, bastard.

  He loses his reins. A hoofbeat throws him. He grips my arrow, flailing in the leaf litter. His companions trample him.

  Draw. My pull is smooth, hands steady. When I loose, we’re almost hoof to toe.

  The boar...the boar. A huge beast with a penny weakness. A hare’s flank, a turkey’s throat.

  My arrow slides into the visor of a helm. His body stiffens. There’s hardly a sound when he tumbles backward off his horse.

  I pull another arrow, try to draw, but it’s too late. The others are on me in an avalanche of armor and horseflesh.

  Crowskull bats me with the flat of his blade, an effortless strike that folds my legs. I fall to my knees, gasping at the pain.

  He wheels his mount and slides to the ground with seismic force.

  I can’t see his eyes, but I keep my gaze on his helmet. I won’t quail.

  “Where are the others?”

  His voice is smooth, almost feminine soft, and horribly even.

  He knows where the others are. “Fuck your mother.”

  I brace for a blow. He ste
ps closer and crouches. I still can’t see his eyes.

  “Who set you on us?”

  “You? I guess you did, when you took my village.”

  “Ahh.” He stands up. “You.”

  Me?

  He stares eyeless into the horizon for a breath. “You’re strong, boy. But this is beyond mortal strength.”

  What does that mean? What is ‘this’?

  His last man dismounts and bends over my first kill. A handful of nightcrawlers erupt from the dirt beneath the soldier’s boot. They try and skitter away, and die. Brown grass clutches their desiccated bits. The sight of dead insects strikes more terror in me than the dead men.

  “Lord Tarin –”

  “Leave Yoshan’s corpse. Leave both corpses,” orders Tarin, waving his companion away from the bodies. “A man who can’t fight doesn’t deserve release.”

  Release?

  Lord Tarin skims the clearing.

  What is he looking for?

  “The same holds true for Myranda; a mercenary with holes in her net will find holes in her pockets. And her chest,” he finishes.

  I’ve made a mistake. These men are not mercenaries. They kill mercenaries.

  And here I was worried about how to handle slavers. Almost laughable now.

  “What about him?” asks the soldier, nodding at me.

  “A villager,” Tarin answers, staring down at me. “Just a villager.”

  Is that doubt I hear? His words are dull like a half-hearted church bell inside that great black helm.

  His man-at-arms draws a blade and starts toward me.

  “No.”

  “Lord Tarin –”

  My companion raises a fist. “Hold, Captain Legan.”

  “Commander! He’ll be trouble for us, villager or not.”

  “I don’t think he will.” Tarin brings his helm two fingers from my nose. No breath escapes to warm my face. The air between us is still and stale. It holds an acrid note of patina and an earthy sweetness of ancient bone.

  I can feel his eyes, but even so close I still can’t see them.

  Tarin clasps my face in the cold steel of his gauntlet. Its metal bites like dry, deep winter. “The boy has something of your bravado. The girl looks nothing like you. She’s quite fair-faced.” Tarin releases me with a caress of my chin. “You knowing I’ve noted this...I think you will behave.”

  He means he knows about Bri and Kel. He knows I have family among the prisoners.

  My mind clouds red. I surge to my knees.

  Legan swings. His pommel catches my jaw. Flesh crushes to pulp between silver and teeth. My left eye dims, eclipsed by a small eruption in my brain. Paralyzed, I fold; packed earth catches me without compassion.

  I moan into the grass, fingers clawing to right me.

  My vision fills with sparks and a glint of smoky light from a black boot.

  Tarin’s leg draws back.

  I brace.

  He cuts the back of Legan’s knees, folding him. Tarin’s blow to Legan’s face is matter of fact. The crunch of a nasal bone is almost perfunctory.

  “You will obey your commander.” Tarin’s voice holds real feeling for the first time. An energy. He fills the clearing with a sensation that comes before rainstorms; a pressure on the body and the lungs that steals breath and strength. Even through my pain this registers.

  Sleeve to my cheek, I struggle up. I search for a weapon, anything. I’ve resisted. Tarin’s probably lost his faith in my willingness to behave.

  My bow sits at his boot heel. I can’t reach my quiver.

  But there, a few feet away, lies my black blade.

  Tarin follows my gaze. “Take it up. I won’t stop a warrior from being a warrior.” His voice is quiet now, lulling. “You are a warrior, aren’t you boy?”

  What does this mean? I don’t understand half of what he says.

  Tarin is menace and calm. Smooth sinister corners of his armor hang like a windchime awaiting a breeze. “Take up your blade.”

  His offer is ridiculous. He can take the sword from me at any point, bat it from my hand. This knowledge almost steals my courage. Maybe he means it to.

  Pick me up.

  I freeze.

  Tarin doesn’t say this.

  The blade says this.

  I swallow disbelief, stagger to it, and claim the grip.

  It’s hot. I feel something, that same aura from yesterday. And now, I know it’s not my imagination. Frustration. Eagerness.

  Tarin looms behind but I can’t tear my eyes from the black metal.

  “Where did you get it?” His voice is soft, curious. Awed?

  I feel the same. And hopeless. I don’t have an ounce of skill to wield a weapon like this.

  Its silver line glows. Its light hums inside me.

  “Myranda will want that,” says Legan, still crouched.

  “It’s no matter to me what the mortals want,” says Tarin.

  “Who’s Myranda?” I murmur. The blade holds all my attention. I caress its searing face with trembling fingers.

  “You found the portreeve?” asks Tarin, still fixated. “That is Myranda.”

  Thom’s mutilated face jumps before my eyes.

  Cry fueled by anger, I swing, aiming for Tarin’s neck. The blade is light as paper. It zips the air in a swift arc. My blow is sudden, so much faster than I’d anticipated. For a moment I believe it will land.

  Underbalanced, overreaching, I trip into him.

  Tarin’s sword answers mine with a bare whisper. He bats my strike aside, reverses his swing, and the flat of his blade takes me in the head.

  I fall, limp, and bury a moan in the soft loam. The sword clatters away.

  “Pick it up.” Tarin’s voice is calm as before. This terrifies me more than any war cry.

  I roll over, coughing on dirt and blood.

  Captain Legan hovers behind Tarin. “Your sister might fight harder.”

  Rage finds my feet. I bring the sword up with me, a blow I hope cuts the smirk from his voice.

  I find only air. Legan dances back, nimble for a man clad in half a tonne of iron. “Fair, for a villager,” he says.

  I don’t answer. This exchange is pointless – physical and verbal. But I can’t give up. I rush Legan. He flows aside, quicksilver. He doesn’t draw, doesn’t have to. His armored fist buries in my gut, flattening my lungs into two burning creases up my chest.

  I’m down.

  Again.

  Tarin’s armor grates like raking fingernails as he kneels. He’s my father, crouching and gently chastising me after a clumsy draw. “Do you recall my words about a man who won’t fight?”

  Why? Why are we talking about this? He’s baiting me like a pit bear.

  I nod.

  “You can do better.” Tarin stares out to the horizon again. He exhales in a way that deflates his armor. What does he see? What does he know?

  My head pounds with it all.

  Take up the blade.

  This invitation hums in hollow spaces through my body.

  I’m not beaten yet.

  I find my knees, then my feet. Fingers rake for the haft, my body shivering. I try to hide this from Tarin. My hand slips in the effort.

  A dark edge parts flesh with a sharp kiss.

  The blade shimmers like a mirage. My blood sizzles against silver. The whole sword ignites. I drop it, clenching searing fingers.

  Tarin swears in a tongue I can’t place.

  Legan claws forward to grab the sword, now ringed in a bullseye of smoldering grass.

  The weapon vibrates, radiating like a furnace. I back away, fall to my knees, and shield my face.

  My blood pools on the sword’s surface.

  The blade absorbs it.

  Legan scrambles away, whispering what sounds like a prayer.

  Tarin takes a long step back.

  We all swear when the sword levitates.

  It holds above us.

  Will it explode? Decapitate us? I don’t expect anything good
after the last two days.

  Sunlight dims. I see the world through a curved glass. Air, sound: the blade sucks them away. Even my limbs distort. Tarin is a formless shadow.

  Reality surges in on a tide of force. It knocks Tarin from his feet and throws me across the clearing.

  A tree trunk takes what little breath I have. Spots explode behind my eyes. I lie for long moments as the world spins.

  “Get up, Ewan.”

  I know that voice.

  Trap.

  Take up the blade.

  “Up now.”

  I crack an eye. I laugh against aching ribs.

  “You are not real.”

  “Oh, I am.”

  She’s not. Look at her! Not that I really can look; I’m still not back inside myself.

  For an impression, a hallucination, she’s exactly what my mind would invent.

  Black hair tumbles to her shoulders. Sun catches a silver streak. Full lips bow, expressing their frustration with me.

  Her armor is...black? It’s hard to see. Black and silver like the blade. It’s metal but looks supple like leather.

  Like the blade.

  She’s a lot like the blade. Which she caresses with strong slender fingers. It’s balanced like it’s part of her arm.

  Her silver eyes narrow. “Ewan, if you don’t get up, I’ll have to poke you.”

  Her words carry everything I sensed from the blade. It’s stronger now.

  That thread I felt tearing as I left Braemar...She and I have that bond. I can feel her exultation.

  I can almost hear the word in my mind: Freedom.

  “Hah! If I wasn’t real, I couldn’t do this–” She grabs my shirt front and hauls me up.

  “That’s fair. Fair point. You have a name?”

  “I do. It’s...”

  Steel sings across the clearing.

  Tarin is on his feet, and he’s drawn his sword.

  Her silverlight eyes hold mine. Her expression isn’t a smile. It’s more...satisfaction. “This – wait here for me.”

  “Name?”

  “Hmm…” I don’t like how stumped she looks.

  “Hold a moment.” She turns, spins her blade, and levels it at Tarin.

  Legan stands at his back, in battle stance.

  Neither projects the amount of fear I feel they should.