by Bailey Dark
Skarde glanced my direction, nodded thanks, then he was crossing his blade with Kala’s mace and I was returning to my own crossed blade with Dinera and Vesom. Vessom preferred a staff and he kept stabbing at me from a distance while I tried to tuck in close to Dinera. Now that telekinesis was on the table, the tides were turning. One reason we had been practicing without the mental arts was because my troop knew they fared better when they didn’t battle me mentally; I was quite superior.
I swung low at Dinera, forcing her to slide backward and slash down, as if I were exposed, which I was, without my shield, but I surprised her by throwing myself into a telekinetic sweep, gliding myself between her legs so quickly that she couldn’t react and I took one out, wrapping a rope I had around them both as I swept by, then lashing her arms together as I came out on the other side as she cried out, disabling her and putting her between myself and Vesom.
Dinera down.
Skarde had somehow taken Kala’s weapon and she was stranded in the corner of the ring, hands up, prepared to take him on with her fists, but knowing she would fail as he towered over her and she sank to her knees, shaking her head.
He turned to Modifi, who flung his mace out in front of him like a trident, lasered toward Skarde. The Berserker leapt into the air like a lion and swept the weapon aside like a fly from a flower and held the point of his blade at Modifi’s throat, howling like a wolf.
Silence reigned as the scream subsided.
Muttering grew from the watching Harthen crowd.
My heart beat rapidly in my chest. I watched the muscles ripple in Skarde’s shoulders as he held his sword at Modifi’s gulping throat. Modifi held his hands up at his sides, beaten.
The only one of the Bristolans with a weapon still was Vesom with his spear.
Skarde released Modifi and turned to Vesom, knocking aside the spear. His face was so fierce, so fearless… Tendrils of his long hair had tumbled from the bun and hung about his ears and I wanted to tuck my fingers into it… I wanted to run my fingers over his jawline…
A whisper of desire grew in my chest as I watched this man triumph over all my soldiers… I could feel the heat rising in my temples and my mouth and lips were dry, and not just from the expended energy of the sparring. What was wrong with me? This man was beneath me!
But… clearly not… Without the skills of the mental arts… Facing down all my best… Such skill.. Such tactical and raw, brute talent… And, goodness, his body… Rippling athletic muscle finesse…
“Lord Skarde!”
A runner came dashing up to the side of the mat. Skarde and I turned to face the young messenger.
“Yes?”
“Some of Fenvitz’s men have broken into the armory. They have killed some of the guards and are trying to ransack the castle’s supplies!”
Skarde looked at me quickly.
“Let’s go!”
I flashed my hand toward our real weapons, piled in a corner near the training ring. My Bristolans were immediately moved to action to do the same thing. Our weapons rose and came to our hands easily, flying through the air at our call. Then we were hopping out of the training ring and following Skarde, our new charge, and running out of the training arena up the halls toward the armory.
This was our mission and we would protect him, regardless of what planet he was from. We were Spec Ops soldiers, but right now, we were soldiers of this realm, protectors of the Berserker of Vailstor, Lord of Harthen.
Five
Skarde
They had killed two of the guards, but it was clear one of the attackers had had a key. The door to the armory had been opened without any type of force. The inside was a wreck; they had swept through and cleaned it out as quickly as possible, grabbing all they could, as quickly as they could. There must have been four or five of them. They had managed to take a goodly amount of our weaponry. They were gone by the time we got there, which was a good thing, because I was ready to have their heads… And I would have someone’s…
I needed to make a statement.
I needed to find someone culpable. I needed to send a message. It was a concern that there was clearly such dissent from Fenvitz’s side, and a well organized rebellion fomenting in support of his disenfranchised reign. Especially since Kajo was supposed to be an all-powerful, unquestionable King… I wondered what type of battle I might be facing with Fenvitz and his rising army… I licked my lips and clenched my fists. The knives at my waists and the sword I had grabbed from the training ring felt more heavy against my skin... It had been awhile since the last war on Vailstor…
“Where are they now?” I turned to Ilisa. I pointed to my temple. Surely, they had some way of mental tracking. “Can’t you tap into one of them and tell what they are seeing or thinking?”
The Bravo shook her gorgeous, round face and studied the wreckage of the vast room. She brought her sparking eyes back to mine. “Not without knowing who one of them is. We would need to enlist one of our mental trackers, too. I don’t have that skill. We need to alert King Kajo that Fenvitz has moved against you, assuming that’s who this is from, of course, we can’t leap to conclusions--”
I pointed my finger at a fresh paint mark on the wall, the brand of the former Duke’s military. She looked from it to me and shrugged.
“All right, then. Let’s tell the King before the feast tonight. We are having the meeting tomorrow morning to address the pending threat and a strategy for dealing with Fenvitz in the morning. I am surprised he moved against you so aggressively this soon, especially with King Kajo in the castle…”
I rubbed my chin and heaved a sigh, the fire burning within my chest threatening to explode as a fist against one of the walls. I flexed my fist to deny its explosion and took another deep breath. I hadn’t wanted to come here in the first place… Truloy was trusting me. Well, if Fenvitz wanted to play a game… Then a game I would play. And I would win. I was good at games. I would crush him.
“How soon can a mental tracker arrive? And how soon can my mental training start? I want to learn how to track them myself.”
I was confused by the look on Ilisa’s face. Her brow furrowed, seemed frustrated, daunted, dismissive, all at the same time. As if facing a trial that was exhaustive without even knowing the full mission, yet.
“What?” I demanded. I wanted to roar at her, smash the wall apart, because I could tell from that look that she had been reading my mind. How dare she invade me! How dare any of them! Just because I wasn’t born with this charzbos, this barbarian craftiness of violating someone’s innermost space… They had no right!
“It isn’t that easy. It isn’t just learning two plus two. You don’t have the skill. You weren’t born with the mental talent. Your species, your people… You don’t have tele arts. We can’t just magically gift them to you.”
“How does Zaya have them? How does the Queen?” I glared at her. Get out of my mind! “Surely you’re not saying I can’t also learn.”
Ilisa sighed.
“It means I have to mentally control you. I have to have control over your mind. You have to be entirely vulnerable to me. You chose me. That’s what that means. But I will control you.”
I stared at her. My fists flexed at my side. I gulped. I looked at the weapons on the wall, haphazardly strewn about on the floor, those that hadn’t been carried off by the men who had raided my castle, my dukedom, my reign. The symbols of things that were mine… Within my control… My jaw set hard and I stepped in close to her.
“You mean, you will enter my mind, with your charzbos arts, and take control of me? I won’t be able to have any say over what I am doing, saying, thinking?”
“That’s right.” She stared up at me, unflinching, a head shorter than me, blue flecks in her brown eyes steady, unshaking. I breathed in and out, harsh, my heart racing. No, that couldn’t be true. There was no way I could let this woman who looked so down on me control my mind. Granted, I wanted to control her and conquer her, I wanted to see her match me
in every way possible, there was no doubt I had been attracted to her, seeing her fighting in that training ring… and I desired to feel her body against mine… But… the thought of having her in my mind… Prowling around and controlling it… Without my say…
I huffed, turned my head, and spit on the ground.
That was a price I couldn’t pay.
Even if it meant I couldn’t track the Duke myself.
I would just have to trust the Farians to track him.
There had to be another way.
I moved away from her and began picking up the weapons, rearranging the armory. I sensed her eyes on me. I sensed the other Bristolans watching us as they also picked up the fallen weapons. I tried to keep my mind blank, knowing they had to be reading my mind, my raging, infuriated mind…
“There has to be another way for me to learn.”
“There isn’t. Not that we know of, anyway.” She sounded truly regretful, which I appreciated, but was too angry to acknowledge.
“They will attack you. Fenvitz might try to control you. I’m sure King Kajo will talk to you about that. They will try to take advantage of that weakness--”
I threw a knife into the far wall and it stuck straight out. “I am not weak!” I roared out the words and then picked up five more knives and threw them in a tight pattern around the first one. I glared at Ilisa as I finished. Her chest was heaving, fists tightly clenched. Good, she was angry at me, too.
I pointed at the blades sticking out from the wall.
“I can defend myself, Bravo Ilisa. And you can stand beside me, as you have been commanded, and you can defend me, too. And you can teach me how to defend my mind. But… You cannot control me.”
I stepped in close to her, closing the distance so rapidly that her eyes grew wide and she reached for her knife, as if sensing I might strike her, but then she calmed and stood up straighter. I stopped just next to her, my cheek close to hers, my breath on her skin, looking deep into her eyes, loving that spark, and then, I smiled. She flushed furiously, her chest heaving even deeper. I knew the effect my smile had, because I knew how rarely I gave it…
I reached, slowly, and held onto her arms. I held her tightly and looked deep into her eyes.
“You will have to find a way to teach me mental blocks that isn’t controlling my mind, Ilisa…”
“Lord Skarde…” Her words were tight, like she was biting them, her jaw clenching hard between deep breaths. “It is the only way I can protect you, and I have been commanded to protect you. Now, please let me go…”
I squeezed her a little as her muscles tensed and then I let her go.
“Come for a sail with me.”
She looked at me sharply, then nodded.
I looked at the other Bristolans.
“Have the guards clean this up. Modifi, alert Kajo we are going for a sail and tell him about the infiltration. We shall be back for the feast.”
Ilisa followed me out the door after nodding a second acknowledgement of my command to Modifi. I could sense her trepidation as I led her toward the docks. Trepidation and curiosity… I didn’t need to be able to read minds to be able to tell that she was at war with herself over me. I just needed to give her a little push… A little push into her pull toward me…
Nothing better than showing her what a master at the sails I was.
Besides… I needed to think…
Far away from anyone else who could read my mind…
Six
Ilisa
The uncertainty I felt about going out onto the seas with Lord Skarde alone was part of what intrigued me. Modifi’s mental message as I was leaving was that he would send out a boat to search for us if we weren’t back within an hour, and I appreciated it, but that also worried me: even my closest confidantes, my Bristolan Spec Ops soldiers under my command, weren’t trusting the man who was supposed to be our Duke, the Duke placed in command of Harthen by our King, the King whom we would all lay our down our lives for.
But, it was true that I wouldn’t yet die for Skarde.
Maybe this sail would be what would convince me otherwise…
Skarde chose a twelve foot sailboat, a nice little skiff that would be a fun sail, swift and sure. He climbed aboard after untying her, leaving just the guideline looped around the cleat. I was studying the gathering storm out in the open ocean. He followed my gaze.
“You scared?”
I raised my eyebrows and looked at him.
“I would not take this little thing out with the gust that is gathering.”
Even as I spoke a gale tore through the harbor and pushed me backwards so that I had to gather myself again to approach the side for boarding by a few steps.
Skarde shrugged and loosened the lines around the mainsail.
“Come with me, Ilisa. We will not be out long.”
I bit my lip and nodded, stepping into the bow. As long as we weren’t out long, we would be fine. And, as long as he didn’t lift the jib. And, as long as he was a good sailor which, I assumed he was. Besides, I could always take over. Plus, I could use telekinesis to steady us and bring us home, fighting the storm with those powers to aid the science of sailing against the storm.
“I’ll sail out, you sail in.” As he spoke, he flipped the line off the cleat, then shoved off the side of the dock a bit, loosened the main sail and pulled on the lines so that the wind luffed up into the sheet and the little boat skillfully swung away from the dock, headed out of the harbor and into a steadily darkening sea.
The clouds were gruesome ahead of us, lightning rippling through them. There were many of our larger ships moored throughout the marina, their masts swaying back and forth with the gales rushing through. Skarde artfully maneuvered through them and we were out in open waters.
The waves were getting larger, some of the cresting and crashing over the side. Sea spray was wetting my lips, my face, droplets chill down my cheeks. I brushed aside a large splash from my eyelashes and peered at the man navigating the lines.
“So, Duke Skarde. What is your intention here? Why this sail into the storm that is sure to sink us if we aren’t careful?”
“I need to be far from anyone who will read my mind, so, please, Bravo Ilisa, grant me that courtesy and keep your arts to yourself unless I request it.”
I nodded. I could give him that.
He was sitting astride the back of the boat, his muscles rippling as he easily pulled on the lines, guiding the small sail back and forth with the heavy wind effortlessly. His hair had ripped free from the tether and was flowing in the salt spray air. For the first time, there was peace on his face…
“I need you to trust me, Bravo. I need your chosen four to trust me. We have a war coming, it appears. Fenvitz and his men are not going to go easy.”
I gripped the side as we crashed up over a huge wave. It came down hard on us and soaked the boat. The wind was rushing at us now and it was getting hard to hear his words.
“I am no stranger to taking out dissidents and rivals, but, I have always faced them with loyal soldiers.”
The sky had blackened around us, yet still Skarde persisted to sail forward. I grit my teeth. This was getting ridiculous. We were testing the bounds of what this little boat could take.
He swerved the boat skillfully to the side to avoid two waves crashing against each other, taking the right course, but it made me fall against the mast, nearly at his feet. I looked up at him as lightning flashed, illuminating that wild, crazed look in his eyes and I saw the Berzerker there, not for the first time.
“Turn us around, Skarde!”
“It’s your turn, now!”
“What?”
“I sailed us with science and skill to this point. Prove to me your arts, your mental arts, the ones I need to trust to control me so that I can beat Fenvitz, and sail us home using those!”
I stared at him as I moved back to my seat in the bow. He was pulling the sail in so that it hung limp. His eyes were locked to mine, goading, t
aunting, a slight smile on his lips. He couldn’t be serious… Skarde stood up and held the sail to the mast as best he could. It flapped lamely in the wind, beating against his skin. The boat swayed ungainly, tossed, thrown, a toy in the swells of the storm.
Rain broke and crashed down on us as lightning flashed just overhead and thunder roared.
I stood up, braced myself in the bow, took a deep breath, held my hands out to my sides, and pulsed out a telekinetic shield. The rain around us quivered and broke away, a bubble forming.
We were in a vacuum for a moment, while I tested out my telekinetics. It was a disarming sensation and there was a suction on my skin. The sound of the storm raged, but there was no sensation of it. No more spray hitting us, no more waves rocking, no wind in our hair. Even Skarde’s eyes grew wide. He knelt down beside the bow and released the sail. Slowly, I pulled up its sheet, letting it move to catch the wind, but I didn’t let the wind in, yet.
There were a few inches of water in the bottom of the sailboat, cast in by the waves that we had suffered just from fighting the storm to get out into the depths of it, a ploy Skarde had been daring just to get to this point, to test me, to try and prove to me and to himself that the tele arts were worth submitting to.
I closed my eyes, breathed in deeply, then opened them slowly, as I let the wind in…
The wind caught the sail and jerked us around, the sailboat taking off swiftly toward home.
We could look up and see the rain crashing down above us, but hitting a shield and breaking away, droplets drenching down and streaking away, pillowing to the sea like drizzling down a window. Lighting rippled through the dark clouds above and thunder raged, lighting up Skarde’s stark face as he watched me, crouched against the mast. I held my hands up and directed the sail as we streaked across the ocean, battling the swelling waves, fighting their crest and crash.
My heart was racing, my temples thudding as the surge of the biggest battle of telekinesis I had ever commanded rushed through me. This was a tactic I had never commanded before, demanding nature obey me. It was like I was under a spell, it was completely mesmerizing, so all-consuming, a life-and-death situation that was close to the in-the-zone sensation of a battlefield, but also so different...