Ironshield

by Edward Nile

  “By the power entrusted to me by the good people of this nation, I, Nathaniel Davids, charge Samuel Mutton with the defense of Arkenia,” he lifted the saber over Samuel’s head. “To safeguard our homeland in trying times to come, until peace is restored, and democracy may return.” He lowered the saber onto Samuel’s right shoulder. “Do you accept?”

  Samuel opened his mouth to give the response when he caught sight of a face in the crowd.

  Edmund Paulson tipped a ridiculously large hat to him from between a pair of taller men. He had a scruff of beard now and looked as though he’d lost weight.

  The former secretary gave him a wink.

  Samuel’s lip twitched toward a smile. He looked up at Davids. “I do.”

  “Then, with these citizens as witness, I hereby pass my authority to you.” Davids brought the saber back to Samuel’s left shoulder, completing the ritual. “Rise, Commander in Chief, President of Arkenia.”

  Samuel nearly grimaced as his knees barked in pain but controlled his features as he stood and accepted his weapon back. The cheering started before he was fully on his feet, men and women clapping and waving flags, children flailing arms from atop their fathers’ shoulders, brought here for their chance to witness history.

  The soldiers cheered loudest of all.

  Except for those in the gray and black.

  Epilogue

  All but floating in the softness of his bed, the Emperor opened his eyes.

  “You grace this day, Excellency.” One of his handmaidens dropped to her knees. Her transparent robes draped to the thickly carpeted floor. A blonde, today.

  The Emperor was always watched over as he slept, a vigil kept to make certain none of his needs went unattended, not even for the seconds it would take to reach a service bell.

  He pressed a button affixed to the side of his bed, and the top half of it lifted with a mechanical whir to bring him to a seated position. The Emperor opened his mouth to speak.

  The coughing came on before he could get a word out, and the old man doubled over, his frail body wracked with hacking coughs. Red specks sprayed out over his white linens.

  His handmaiden was tending to him in an instant, lifting a cup of stinking dark liquid to his lips. The Emperor forced himself to swallow the vile concoction. It burned its way down his throat, but in its wake left a numbing sensation that was more pleasant than the tearing pain of his coughs, if only slightly.

  Wheezing, the Emperor gestured to an air tank next to his bed. His handmaiden brought a thin tube to his nose, affixing its end to his nostrils. The Emperor breathed deep, remaining still as the oxygen did its job. When his breaths started to sound something approaching normal, he nodded for the handmaiden to remove the tube.

  “Would His Excellency like his chair?” She asked, still kneeling before him. The Emperor looked to the massive gilded throne against the far wall, its large wheels chased in silver scrollwork.

  He shook his head. “Today, I think I shall walk,” he rasped.

  She affixed soft-soled sandals to his feet and helped him from his bed, her crystal-blue eyes awash with adoration. The maidens, more than anyone else in the Empire, were raised to look at him as something close to a god. And why should they not? As far as they were concerned, the Emperor was as immortal as the lands he ruled. He had no name, no moniker by which he could be known the way common men were known. He was the Emperor, the continuation of his father’s legacy and his father’s before him. As his successor would become, upon his death.

  The Emperor felt that day approaching as the cancerous growth overtook more and more of his lungs, bringing him ever closer to suffocation and slow, agonizing death. When he was a young man, the Emperor had looked at old age with revulsion. He had imagined the slow failure of his body, the wrinkling decay of time as it wore the human frame down to a shrivelled husk. Now, compared to the horror of flesh that was not flesh closing its inexorable grasp over his insides, he wished it were only the qualms of advancing decrepitude he had to face. Soon, unbeknownst to his subjects, the Emperor’s body would perish, and he would be born anew in the form of his son.

  Except, for all his trying, he didn’t have a son.

  Trailed by his handmaiden and a squad of armored guards armed with bayonetted rifles plated in chrome silver and gold, the Emperor made his way down the polished hallways of his palace, slippers a soft hiss on gleaming floors next to the hard clack of steel boots.

  The Emperor stopped long enough to glance through the stained crystal window lining the right-hand wall.

  Beyond, stretching for miles beneath his elevated palace, sat the Lytan capital, the Falcon's Heart. The center of Imperial power.

  Spidery towers fell just short of challenging the palace's height, delicate-looking bridges of pale marble stretching between them. Glass glittered from the domed atriums of hundreds of large buildings. Places of law, learning, medicine. All of it centered by an immense statue of incongruously dark iron, out of place in its dull, unaesthetic hue. A two-headed falcon, the symbol of the swift and brutal force which waited beneath the artful veneer of Lytan society.

  A symbol which would mean nothing, if one upstart colony was allowed to remain belligerent. Less than nothing if that same colony maintained its defiance when the Emperor met his end, leaving Lytan not only disgraced but leaderless. Already other territories, spurred by Arkenia's continued independence, were letting forth snarling of their own. Some even dared to take up arms against the nobles who cared for them.

  Now, Arkenia had shrugged off the Emperor's puppet. That Xang acted under Imperial guidance was hardly a secret here. To his people, the small continent was earning his Excellency's favor, a chance to be brought beneath the Falcon's protective wing.

  Only the Emperor and his innermost circle of advisors knew what a farce that was. Xang would never bow beneath foreign rule. They'd fight to a man and die off before allowing that. But a country full of corpses was of no use to the Empire, so the Emperor allowed their insouciance, so long as they lent their efforts when required. Xang had done so and failed.

  No choice, now. The Emperor turned from the city and resumed his walk. His entourage, which had halted the moment he did, continued to march in lockstep with him.

  The Emperor did not know where he was headed at first, but soon found himself going toward a recently familiar location. Taking short right and left turns he traversed smaller, though no less resplendent halls.

  The Emperor's personal infirmary saw little use, normally. If the Emperor needed to be administered to, he preferred it to take place in his own bedchamber. But nonetheless the medical facility of the Imperial Palace was the most advanced in the world, keeping the Empire's most brilliant and accomplished physicians on call.

  "Your Excellency!" A masked physician in white robes dropped to his knees, bowing deep only to lift himself at the Emperor's gesture.

  "The patient," the Emperor inquired. "Has he awoken?"

  "Yes, Your Excellency!" The physician rushed over to a curtained section of the room and drew the partition aside with a low bow.

  The Emperor strolled forward, already hearing the pump and hiss of the mechanical breathing apparatus. One day soon, he would have to be hooked to a machine quite like it. The reminder did nothing to improve his mood.

  "Lord Raith," The Emperor said. "You have failed me."

  Above the bandaged mess of his neck, Harkan Raith's eyes dropped from the Emperor's gaze.

  "Can he speak?"

  "Not yet, Your Excellency," said the physician, still bowing. "We're working on it."

  "Work harder." The emperor turned on his heel. "I want Lord Raith’s explanation from his own lips, before I decide his fate.”

  A scream resonated from beyond a steel door at the end of the infirmary hall.

  "My apologies, Your Excellency," the physician said. "I can have our... our other patient silenced if it pleases you."

  "That won't be required," the Emperor replied. "I will see him
, now."

  His guards opened the door and bowed the Emperor into the sparsely lit chamber. He wrinkled his nose. This room reeked of bile, antiseptic, and blood.

  A whimper escaped the Emperor's handmaiden, whom he'd forgotten about. He dismissed the girl with a flick of his hand. She gratefully backed out of the room.

  The Emperor, by necessity, had been reared to not balk at such sights.

  Two men in black robes bent the knee upon his arrival, the bladed instruments of their particular occupation still in hand.

  The Emperor ignored them, instead taking a few more steps into the room and looking their patient up and down. He was shackled to a round, vertical steel table, his wrinkled, naked body dripping crimson from dozens of small wounds, the twisted scars of cauterizations diverting his blood into interesting patterns as it ran down his pale form.

  "Good morning, Mr. Kaizer," said the Emperor. "Let us talk."

  Made it this far? Great!

  Thank you for taking this journey with me. If you enjoy what you’ve read, the biggest favor you can do is talk about this book. Spread the word, be it in conversation with your fellow readers, or through an online review. Even a simple rating on Amazon or goodreads helps immensely. I can’t stress enough how important this is. Word of mouth is essential in the success of any novel. That goes triple for indie publications such as this one.

  IRONSHIELD is volume one of the Ironshield Saga. The sequel, IRON WRATH, is coming soon.

  Cheers!

  -Edward Nile

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