‘Trouble,’ someone says. ‘We’re spotted.’
Here come the Hinyans. Jin urges Spill to hurry. Spill urges the crafters to hurry. Then the Hinyans are on them again, and this time it takes everything Jin possesses to keep them at bay. She feels the exhaustion.
‘Fire!’ shouts Spill.
Nothing happens. Jin glances over her shoulder. There is a tableau, moving as if part of a dream. Spill tumbles, pierced from the fortress. The crafters duck away from the cannon. And the cannon itself tilts backwards as Spill’s body falls across it. The muzzle lifts, pointing up instead of down.
Oh shit…
Kareem launches into the sky. The cannonball soars—up, and up, higher than the towers of Asalantir. And then higher still. Kareem hasn’t reached the top of his arc yet, and he’s left Asalantir far behind. And now the mission is dead, and there’s only Jin left.
She turns back and stares at the Hinyans downslope. They stare back, and the bravest amongst them start to shuffle forward, clawblades at the ready.
Jin lifts her gaze, looks across the front one last time. As more of the Hinyans advance on her, she sees a great fireball lobbed from the rear positions towards Asalantir. It looks like it’s coming her way. And quickly, too.
Well, it could have been worse, Jin decides, as the heat and the Hinyans hit her at the same time.
Silence rushes in.
For a moment, Jin is certain she has died. She exhales raggedly, feels her heart hammering hard in her chest. She stares at the opposite side of the trench, then up at the muddy sky. The air is thick, flecks of earth, stone, flesh, bone, iron and grit on her tongue.
She ducks back down. The assembled Pride stares at her. Peng, mismatched gauntlets, shoulders braced to carry the mining cannon. Kareem, the cannonball. Sails, and his lances. Who the hell brings lances to a trench fight anyway? Pash and Harp. Spill. A random, nameless squire to a knight who didn't duck in time, now running with the Pride because she has nowhere else to go. Others Jin has picked up along the way. Even a crafter or two, which'll be helpful if they ever get close enough to Asalantir to use the cannon.
‘God's sainted shit, we're still here,’ she grins at Peng.
Peng grins back. ‘Never thought we wouldn't be.’
Tower of the Last
Steven Kelliher
Madrek Matteo wasn’t an overly large man, but he cut an imposing-enough figure. He moved with a heavy sway, flashing a black cloak as he came up to the hewn marble of the southernmost gate of the citadel.
With a touch, the polished section eased its way forward, slipping through the humid air in a thick silence and easing Madrek’s passage into a deserted courtyard.
Recently deserted, no signs of a struggle because there hadn’t been one. Still, there were plenty of dead.
Madrek’s boots breezed over the hem of a cloak dyed a darker purple than twilight. The royal purple of the tower’s lord, known for his penchant for finery and plenty else besides. He passed several more of the former sentries before reaching a short staircase that spilled onto the patched yard.
“Such workmanship,” Denali grinned by the doorway. He gazed admiringly up at the twin columns framing the stair and holding aloft a dazzling plaster tapestry framing some or another massacre. But whether he meant the plaster or the bodies he had made, Madrek couldn’t be sure.
Madrek nodded curtly but didn’t laugh or smile. He wasn’t as mirthless as Kano, but the sun had dipped below the horizon, and his blade was still sharp. His mood was a hair trigger in all the best ways.
Just the way he liked it before a fight.
“Luck,” Madrek said, clasping Denali around the wrist. The spearman didn’t rise but it was no insult. He’d need every bit of his strength and wiles to make sure Madrek was the only one passing through the arch that night. His gleaming white teeth lingered in Madrek’s mind as he made his way down a dimly lit hall.
Black porcelain masks inlaid with gold accents leered at his periphery, but his direction was forward. Forward, and up, up, up, as it always went in all the best and worst tales of yore and youth.
The long tunnel opened into an impossibly wide chamber whose ceiling Madrek could not see from the depths. Only the barest hint of upside-down spires hung from the darkness, like stalactites. Ahead, the oval yawning narrowed cleverly to form another short tunnel, which opened to the main entryway, Madrek knew.
In the center would be a wide spiral stair formed of polished ivory. This was the most direct route to the upper levels, and Madrek could just now make it out, gleaming in the artificial glow of mirrored candles. He wondered how many of Denali’s gray beasts had died to make such an awesome, awful thing.
Although the most direct route should have been the most heavily guarded, the captain had learned long ago that daring had its place, and complacency its cost. In truth, Madrek felt bullish tonight. Whatever guardsmen, horrors or dark designs in store for him, nothing more than sharpening tools at the borders of his concern. They would be his whetstone before a true test appeared, and he meant to bear a razor’s edge by the time that happened.
He met the first pair at the second level. No shouted warnings or bare steel, only the whiz and hiss of bolts darting toward him. One skipped harmlessly off his breastplate, the other off his drawn sword. His blade was wet and the two guards dead before another bolt sailed. Madrek was already past them before they fell, turning around a corner on the landing with little more than a swish of his blood red cloak and the errant squeak his boots made on the marble.
No longer dull and not quite sharp.
Before he rounded the next bend in the stair, he felt a familiar tug, like a slack rope drawn taut at his temple. He slowed, recognizing Chen’s mental prodding. She’d gained the balcony at the height of the north tower faster than he could have hoped.
Madrek hissed out a low, steady breath, emptying his lungs and letting his eyelids drift closed. In an instant, he was around and up, racing to the third landing and drawing his blade. He tore out the flank of the man on the right in a crouch, felt the blade catch on the spine and stayed low for another blink, then shouldered the falling sentry into the one charging from the left. They went down in a tangled confusion of glinting metal and animal sounds, one choking, the other gasping.
He hadn’t the time to finish them off, however, as he aimed his attention up and ahead. Another bolt streaked past, and he felt the wet burn on his cheek. He reached for his belt, drew and threw, and the sentry in the archway fell, clutching her throat and gurgling some curse Madrek wouldn’t have paid any mind even if he could understand it. Behind her, a long chamber stretched away into the glow of candled chandeliers. A grand dining room of sorts, and soldiers—some armored and most not—pushed away their chairs in startled confusion at the sight of him standing and her falling.
Upward was the only way forward, and so he went.
Madrek darted to the left and turned again, taking the stairs three steps at a time as the clang of wall-mounted spears—now free of their catches—accented the dull thuds of leather boots on tile. He hadn’t time to worry at the pursuit before he heard a loud pop, followed by a familiar sizzle, like steak turning on a spit.
And the first screams of the night echoed through the vast, decadent halls. Kano had made his entrance, and he was not known for subtlety. No pursuit but for the sounds of the dying would follow from the center stair. Of that, Madrek could be sure.
But he didn’t allow his spirits to soar quite yet. Denali and Kano had done what was expected of them. They drew attention, and they drew it loudly. The undoubted scores who would fall to their blades were close to meaningless in the scheme of things, and the buzzing in Madrek’s head redoubled as he climbed.
Chen was preparing to enter the spire. Her prodding intensified, forming into a needlepoint before disappearing entirely. She must be inside. At the top of the tower. In the Dragon’s nest.
Not yet old and no longer young, Madrek was panting when he reached the f
inal stretch of stair. He slowed enough to catch his breath, then crossed the threshold onto the landing. There was a conspicuous absence of resistance during the latter part of his ascent. Then again, it was said the black spire was the haunt of one of the king’s most deadly servants. A war captain of great and terrible renown, known to friend and foe alike as ‘The Last.’
A man didn’t take that sort of name without earning it.
Kano had been sent on reconnaissance several times in the past month, eyes keen for signs of his passing. It seemed this warlord kept to his own, when he wasn’t running the Dragon’s bloody errands. Whatever the reason for his hermitage, Madrek intended to oblige him permanently.
When up ceased, Madrek found himself in a hallway that curved to either side, encasing a cylindrical chamber. The walls seemed carved of one massive block of obsidian, and the hints of screaming faces leered out at him like specters.
He reached over each shoulder and unbuckled his cloak, a useful thing to deter an aiming scout, but more harm than good in a duel.
He stood before stone doors dyed in deep poison lavender and steadied his breath.
Chen’s mental rope hadn’t gone slack—it was still drawn tight as razor wire—but she had stopped tugging him along, and Madrek wondered why, but he had paid for forward thinking in the past. Chen was the thinker, he the doer.
Denali would have shouldered the door to the right and tucked into a roll on the left, spear in hand, lips drawn back in a toothy snarl. Kano would have foregone a corporeal approach and snapped himself right into the chamber, sword drawn from a chandelier or some other perch on high.
For his part, Madrek strode forward, checked the handle, and eased himself into the room. To say the scene he encountered caught him by surprise would make a mockery of understatement.
Coming from the gray gloom of the entryway, his senses were assaulted by colors on the opposite end of the spectrum. Rose, coral and emerald stung him on the back of a warm blue-white glow. The room was tiled in swirling patterns. Small, spectacled pieces coalesced in the center of the floor around a dazzling star shape, while longer shards of polished stone speared up before curving around and in.
The whole room was a mosaic shaped like a flower. Like a tulip, to be precise.
Chen stood in the center of the chamber with another female. Unlike him, they both seemed the image of ease.
“Chen.”
She regarded him almost absently, the ghost of her attention still focused on the curious girl beside her. And she was a girl, young as could be.
“That’s a sharp name,” the girl said, drawing them out of their mutual shock.
Madrek felt strange, but the feeling was passing. His initial shock at entering the chamber had given way to a dizzy sort of haze, and now that, too, was dissipating.
Chen gave a slight nod to put Madrek more at ease—it didn’t work—then took a step toward him. “Madrek, meet Phenia.”
The girl swept into a low bow, one string falling loose from her slight shoulder. “It seems I’ve found my prince,” she said, smiling. “Too bad I’ve drawn the eyes of another.”
Madrek gave her the barest hint of acknowledgement and kept his eyes fixed on hers as he addressed Chen.
“Is this a trick?”
“In the cosmic or literal sense?”
He looked at Chen. She shrugged. “I haven’t put all the pieces together yet, but this little damsel might be just what we were looking for.” She paused, “Rather, what we should have been looking for the whole time.”
Madrek turned to regard Phenia, who stared back, aloof and unflinching. This time, he marked her hair, which shimmered between honey-light and deep amber. Her eyes were dark green, but the shards around the center reflected like gilded facets, mimicking the play of green and blue on the walls of the sun-lit chamber. She was undoubtedly young and undoubtedly clever, and she held herself with an amateurish confidence.
“Where is the lord of your keep?” Madrek intoned. “Where is your dark master? The one they call ‘Last.’”
Her smile had faded, but she seemed unperturbed.
“Just where he’s always been.”
“And where might that be?”
“Not at home,” Chen cut in. “’The Last’ is a story. We never found him because he never existed.”
Madrek’s mind raced through the events of the past months. The men he’d released in exchange for information. Rather, the men he’d forced Kano to release. Bad men. Sick men. Alive men.
“Phenia Draeyna.” Realization dawned.
He looked from one to the other. Chen’s expressions were as easy to read as shallow tracks in a hurricane. But he saw it. A faint glimmer buried beneath shifting tensions. And he knew.
“The Daughter of the Dragon.”
Phenia positively beamed. “Did my father send you?” she asked. If her sincerity was a mask, she wore it well.
Chen looked as if she were about to speak, but her eyes lost focus. It was a look Madrek had seen too many times before to ignore. She brought a finger up to her temple and squeezed her eyes shut while he waited on pins and needles.
“Kano is in retreat,” she said. “He’s drawn a sizeable pursuit through the north gate and intends to lose them in the marsh.”
“How many did he kill?”
“Many.”
“What of Denali?”
“He waits nearby, on the southern border of the grounds.”
Madrek regarded the young girl—maybe not so young as her aloof demeanor suggested—and considered his options. Trouble was, most situations only left him with two.
To kill or not.
Chen looked at him earnestly, searching his eyes. That glimmer was still there, but it wasn’t pity nor misplaced compassion that guided hers. That was Denali’s bent. If the girl needed to die, Chen would be the first to swing the blade, the better to get it over with. This was something else. She believed the decision he made in this room would change the course of the war.
Right before their eyes stood a long rumored, rarely glimpsed, and never substantiated key to turning the tide, one way or the other.
The Daughter of the Dragon. Princess Phenia. Like a fabled maiden from the Tales of Longkeeping. And here she stood.
Here she stands.
If she was aware that her life tilted on the scales of his conscience, she gave no indication. Just continued to stare, curious and with a touch of naïve excitement.
Long ago, Madrek had been given a choice: a choice between a chain and a noose.
“Chain.”
Chen’s momentary disappointment gave way to the barest crook of a smile. She knew him well enough.
“No harm will come to you, child,” she said calmly, extending her slender hand toward the girl. “But you will come with us.”
Phenia seemed fit to burst. “We’re going outside!”
“I take it you don’t get out much,” Madrek replied. He was already at the far window, searching the grounds for any guards Kano and Denali hadn’t already dispatched. He sighed as he looked back at the girl and the woman who shadowed her, at the ceramic and jewel-encrusted chamber she would never see again.
“I have to admit, I was in the mood for a fight,” Madrek said. “You sure ‘The Last’ is a story? Nothing more?” Phenia shrugged as if nothing had ever bored her more.
“You’re always looking for a fight,” Chen said. “Kano’s just better at finding them.”
She was right. “Hence, worthy being the operative word.” She rolled her eyes at him, and he didn’t blame her.
In truth, there were harder things than dueling legendary lords in fabled keeps. Madrek was the best there was with a sword in his hand. Now, as he reached out to take Phenia’s thin wrist, he knew he held something much more delicate. Much deadlier.
He held the future and all its turnings.
“Right, then,” Madrek said. “Let’s move.”
The Waving of the Flag
Thomas R. Gask
in
“You see his knife?” said Toris to Famastil as they looked upon their friend Peralis, lying on the ground with a crossbow bolt protruding from his neck. He also had a wound to his gut, partially exposing his intestines.
“Remember how he kept saying he couldn’t wait to draw it, showing us over and over how clean and quick it pulled from its sheath, then began slashing away at thin air.” Toris let out a slight laugh at the memory. “In fact, he showed us that with every weapon he had, remember? And now look at him, he didn’t even use them. All that effort, all that skill and time that went into making him invincible. What was the point? May as well sent him into battle naked for all the good it did him.”
4 years, 3 months and 14 days earlier…
“We’ve got our war!” cried a young man as he ran through the village waving a poster in his hand. He bristled with enthusiasm, making heads turn.
“You hear? We’ve got our war. Pick up your arms, we’re going to fight those filthy southern rekons!”
Toris stood high upon a cart as he helped his father unload sacks.
He didn’t notice his father’s expression, but it was like other fathers in that moment: sombre, regretful that they knew their sons would go off to fight in something they couldn’t possibly understand.
But Toris smiled, he had dreamt of battle. Sitting high upon a field of bodies with his country’s banner waving in the breeze.
Jumping down, he pushed through the throng of young lads surrounding the boy.
With his chin raised, the boy smiled as he read.
“Under the heathen oppression of the southern invaders, our mighty and noble King Gelmont II has declared war upon the nations of Asmog, Belliphia, and Zefrin, and their allies. All men ages of nineteen and above are ordered to go to their local mayor’s office, where they will enlist into the military. Failure to do so will result in death. The crippled and elderly are exempt.”
There was a moment of silence before the boy looked up at their eager faces.
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