by Tiger Gray
The man's natural ability to lead came through in his sharp eyes and the deliberate way he planted his feet. He had bearing such that Mal almost forgot they were standing in the ramshackle remains of a civilian home and not in a barracks. So maybe Ashrinn wasn't totally crazy, thinking this guy had something to him.
"Sir," he said with the crisp military etiquette he'd never quite been able to shake, even in the Unit where they almost never stood on ceremony, "I'm told you are in command here."
"That's the rumor. Relax. You'll give me a heart attack if you're that tightly wound all the time."
Mal ruffled up like a wet bird, even though he knew without looking that Ashrinn was trying not to laugh at him. Ashrinn always got on him for being too strait-laced. "With all due respect, you're asking me to do a damn serious job."
For the millionth time that day, he wondered what the fuck he thought he was playing at, letting Ashrinn drag him along to join up with an organization he hardly knew thing one about. Offering to do a serious job without knowing what it is past some guy's pipe dream. And without very many resources, if this place is anything to go by.
Someone had tried to approximate a respectable command center but had ended up with something that looked more like an absent-minded professor's office. Ragged carpet and mismatched chairs didn't help Mal's opinion, not to mention bookshelves overflowing with stacks of paper. He narrowed his eyes; he hoped there wasn't any sensitive information in that mess.
"Point taken."
Mal had to give Randolph his due for the mild tone. The man took a challenge well. Didn't feel the need to step all over his subordinates.
Randolph waved them over to the chairs in front of the desk, reclaiming his own now that introductions were done.
Mal hesitated and glanced at Ashrinn before he could help it. It felt like if he took that chair, he would be in this for good. Ashrinn had been team leader for a long time, and Mal still looked for his leadership when it came to the unknown. Ashrinn smiled that lopsided half-smile, white in his swarthy face, that always convinced Mal things would work out.
"Come on, Mal," Ashrinn murmured, leaning in close and answering like he could read thoughts, "me being the leader was just dumb luck anyway. Should have been you."
Ashrinn moved to take one of the chairs, and Mal went with him. He found he had a hard time relaxing out of parade rest as he sat down. Something about Randolph knocked him right back to Basic, despite the stab at teasing the man had opened with. Mal didn't miss Ashrinn's wince as he bent his knee to sit, but before Mal could think about it anymore, Randolph spoke.
"Why didn't they promote you, Mal?" he asked, folding his hands on the polished desktop. Randolph wasn't teasing him now. The man seemed honestly curious, so Malkai kept his hackles right where they were this time.
"He's not mad enough, sir." Ashrinn interjected, and Mal knew he meant crazy instead of angry. No wonder Randolph had opened up with something flippant. He'd gotten too used to Ashrinn being well, himself.
Randolph peered at Ashrinn. "Weren't they going to discharge you for that?"
Mal could tell how bad that one stung, having his try at humor rebound on him. Randolph didn't show any signs of noticing.
"Yes, well. It's a fine balance. Too much of a good thing."
"Well." Randolph echoed, and Mal got the idea he'd sensed the need for a change of subject. "No need for much preamble, I suppose." Randolph said, flattening his palms on top of a pile of file folders. Mal's eyebrows tried to creep up his forehead and into his hair. This day and age, and him still stuck on paper? Yeah, there'd been stuff on the shelves, but it looked like he was using these. Mal added that to their list of problems.
He'd got Randolph wrong, though. Randolph had caught Ashrinn's wounded tone after all, so maybe he did know he'd taken one step too many with that comment. Good. Mal reckoned he needed that kind of emotional ear, if he planned on rousing folk and swaying them to his cause.
"Maybe a little preamble." Randolph corrected himself. "Because I want you to know that I deeply value your help here, both of you." Mal straightened up again under that clear gaze, not sure what to do about being complimented. Ashrinn didn't show any signs of being awkward. Mal envied his ability to relax when authority figures were around.
"I ought to explain some things to you, Malkai," Randolph continued. "Bringing you in with no introduction and no training certainly isn't the most beneficial way of doing things, but --- " He swept his hand in front of him to indicate the room and its inadequacies.
Mal tried to keep his annoyance from showing when he answered. "You don't think spending most of my life in the Unit is enough training?"
"To put not too fine a point upon it, no. You have some of the best military training in the world. I am not so foolish as to dispute that. But Ashrinn tells me you aren't particularly versed with magic."
Randolph had him there. "The wife's a Fae. The kids are Changelings. That's about all I know, and Raietha is close mouthed about her kind."
"I'm surprised a Fae is here at all," Randolph said, "She must be quite skilled to hide herself so well."
Mal felt his heart do a couple of practice jumps. What the hell didn't he know about his wife? Everything, that's what.
"In short, I want the Order of the White Eagle to lead the magical community here. And I want to do it right, so that people want us to be in power, so that people want to help. Right now we're the only people policing, save for the Native American reservations, who handle their own."
"You don't want to win them over?"
Ashrinn scoffed. "What? You think you're going to waltz on to the Native reservation, offer your help, and they're going to fall all over you to take you up on it? Remember the last time some white people did that?"
Mal shot him a hateful look.
"We have an uneasy alliance," Randolph said. "Their spirits and shamans have their own laws, and as long as neither of us start actively harming the other we mostly leave one another alone. I'd like to have more than just an uneasy truce, but it's going to take much effort, if it's even possible."
Mal let it go. He had plenty of more immediate things to deal with, and he didn't need Ashrinn getting on him for being a honky. "Look, maybe if you gave me the basics," he said, trying to steer things back to something useful.
"I want us to be a force capable of keeping order. But I don't want to be the kind of people who lead by intimidation. I want every one of us to be a scholar as well as a fighter. It's community I want. I want people to participate in this, and if we're going to do that properly we have to know what and who we're dealing with." Randolph twitched like he wanted to get up and pace. Mal could see it now, how he and Ashrinn had gotten thick as thieves. They were both crazy, and as idealistic as little kids.
"The central tenets here are integrity, compassion, forthrightness." Randolph said, confirming Mal's suspicions that he was on some kind of hippie crusade. "I expect you to act in that spirit."
"Sir," Mal said, having to make an effort to keep from growling, "I respect that, but you wouldn't have tapped me or Ashrinn here if you didn't need some killing done, not to mention all the other stuff we both happen to be great at. What are you up against? Terrorists? Granted, we're only two men, no matter how highly trained, but if you were just dealing with, I don't know, some uppity gnomes or something you wouldn't need guys from the Unit to help you."
"Absolutely correct. As much as I dearly wish things would never come to that, it's a fool's dream. Has Ashrinn told you about the attack?"
Mal looked at Ashrinn and glared. He held on to that anger. If he kept it smoldering he wouldn't give in to the rush of adrenaline and fear the implications called up. He turned back to Randolph. "No, I can't say he has."
He could damn near feel Ashrinn's chagrined look, as guilty as a kid caught opening his Christmas presents ahead of time. He didn't let himself return it, because Ashrinn making big eyes had taken the piss and vinegar out of him one too many times.<
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"You asked what our enemy is. They call themselves the Cult of the Suffering God."
"When even they call themselves a Cult, you know they're all barking," Ashrinn said, "though I suppose I respect them for their honesty."
"What, like a bunch of wackos in the woods? Jesus. What the hell kind of name is that?" Mal tried to hang on to his respectful tone, but this whole thing had him spinning in circles. Randolph studied him, but he didn't say anything about his word choice. Mal withered some. It was like your dad telling you he wasn't mad, just disappointed.
"They're a touch more sophisticated than that. Ashrinn and Lizbet were run off the road by a group of them, a group with stun batons and fully automatic weapons."
"They have an arms dealer?" Now that was interesting.
"Some redneck in a wheelchair and his brother," Ashrinn said, "They got arrested a couple of weeks ago. Damage is done, though; the Cult is as outfitted as any terrorist militia."
"An arms dealer in a wheelchair? That's a new one."
"They're not our problem."
Mal glanced at Randolph. It could be worth talking to them.
Randolph shook his head and said, "They're from Arkansas. No Order presence there. I can't infringe on the magical community to get them unless you both believe they'd have something crucial to tell us."
Mal exchanged a look with Ashrinn, and by Ashrinn's expression Mal knew they were thinking the same thing. He let Ashrinn say it, though.
"Arms dealers are just in it for the money. They don't care who buys their weapons as long as they've got cash. I'd be truly surprised if they were worth the amount of trouble we'd have to get in."
Mal was starting to understand that this wouldn't be as simple as taking out a few religious idiots in their beds. For one thing he and Ashrinn didn't have any military backing. When they'd been in the Unit they'd had help, even if sometimes it had seemed so ass backwards that calling it help would have been damn generous. Here they were just two guys. Skilled, yeah, but a real team of operators they were not.
"Any reason they haven't just stormed in here and taken over, then?" It didn't seem like the Order could put up a fight in that case.
"I wish I knew. But the relative peace won't last." Randolph said. "What little we have managed to get makes me think that the Cult believes in summoning forth some kind of physical representation of this god figure of theirs. I think it's obvious that whatever they think they're worshipping, it's not divine. Depending on what it actually is, they might be trying to acquire the things necessary to summon it and that's keeping them from trying to pull the rest of the Pacific Northwest under their sway. For now."
"That's another thing," Mal said, "Washington is a hell of a weird place to set up something like this. Sure, it's got its share of insular religious groups, but this sounds like more than that. Why here?"
"Terrain," Ashrinn mused. "Can't beat the place for hiding things. That's one possibility."
"It could very well be that there's no obviously logical reason," Randolph said. "They would come anywhere, if they thought there was a spiritual benefit to doing so. Serpent handlers aren't known for their rational behavior. Twist that belief, and it's even more true."
"Serpent handling?" Mal asked.
"Yes. My only spy mentioned something about the Cultists keeping snakes"
"That's Pentecostal. My Mamma grew up in one of those churches."
"Which means this woman isn't likely from around here." Ashrinn said. "She calls herself the Host, by the way, as long as we're talking about outlandish names."
"That's something. Narrows down where she came from. That kind of stuff only held out in a couple of areas." Mal let his mind work on that one for a couple of minutes. "You said they've twisted the belief?"
"They've got some fascination with self-flagellation," Ashrinn said, "An idea that pain opens a person's eyes to the greater world."
"And more than that," Randolph added. "They think that bringing chaos and suffering to the world at large is the path to redeeming it. They kept that spy I mentioned alive for two weeks."
Mal saw Ashrinn go pale. That was weird. Ashrinn had always been a sensitive guy, but he wasn't soft. He knew just as well as Mal himself that torture was more of a reality than the news ever let on, but there he was, trembling.
"All he managed to send back to us is that the leader is female," Randolph said, "and that they're putting together their own teams. Revelators. But our one advantage is that they've yet to attract anyone with the kind of training you two have."
Teams of people armed to the teeth, all of them convinced they were chosen by God? Great.
"What are our numbers like?" Mal wanted to know, though he had a sinking feeling that he knew the answer.
"Dismal, as far as magicals go."
Mal felt his face tighten as he clenched his jaw, frustration welling up in the back of his throat. "What, are we the only paladins in the country? Why won't anyone else come help you neutralize this before it gets out of hand?"
"In short, they have enough to deal with where they are and they claim they don't have the resources. Sheela and Ragavan are the most powerful paladins in the country, on the East Coast and in the Midwest respectively. Whether to let normal humans in on the fact that magic exists is a hot issue in the magical community, and I know Sheela at the least doesn't approve my pro-human stance. She will most likely put me off until she absolutely can't anymore."
"So, we have a limited time frame," Ashrinn said. "Because sooner rather than later these zealous wankers are going to outmatch us in terms of resources, and they'll pull the veil off of everyone's eyes. I've got a team going, but it's going to take time. Some of them have never even held a weapon." He turned to Randolph and kept talking. "It took Mal and I years to really do the Unit credit, and we were exemplary soldiers before we were chosen. I don't know how realistic it is to turn these people into anything approximating that in less than a couple of years."
"You must do the best you can, Ashrinn." Mal winced at the desperate note in Randolph's voice. "You're all I have to counter their Revelators."
"How's the team going?" Mal asked.
"It's hardly a team yet, but... the woman Randolph mentioned? Lizbet? She's one of them, assuming she doesn't wash out on the first day. She's a dryad."
"Dryads now?" Mal said, resisting the urge to take the Lord's name in vain again.
"Yes, and if she fails I don't really have the luxury of finding someone to replace her." Ashrinn rubbed the bridge of his nose. Mal got a dull headache just watching him.
"So what? You want me to join?"
"Not quite." Randolph said. "I need someone who can be in the public eye. As public as the magical community gets, anyway."
"No. No way. I don't do public eye."
"It makes sense, Mal." Ashrinn said, quiet. "It can't really be me that leads the community. Someone has to deal with the day to day policing, be the face of the Order. You were a fantastic MP before you got into Rangers, and let's face it, you're all-American enough to appeal to more people than I would."
Mal gave him a harsh look. From anyone else it would sound like ass kissing, but he didn't see any of that in Ashrinn's demeanor. Ashrinn meant it.
"Besides. You're not crazy enough, remember?" Ash teased. Mal forgot most of the protests he'd been bent on saying a second ago.
"Got to admit, I don't relish trying to drag a bunch of green as hell kids around by their noses. Some kind of masochist, that's what you are."
Ashrinn's expression took on a secretive edge, and the gleam in his eyes became a thing Mal couldn't quite read. "You don't know the half."
"Pinecroft has his specialist squad, and we desperately need something like that." Randolph told him, fixing him with a steady gaze. "Especially right now. Not only is this Cult gearing up to assault us, not to mention forcing suffering and magic on normals in the name of spiritual growth, but we have all the usual problems you might expect. My less specialized pal
adins need a leader, and if we need to muster an army, they have to be ready to perform in that capacity. I'm told you have a brilliant tactical mind, and that the men under you respect you.
The both of you can take on cover roles as well. I think Ashrinn should be in charge of our gardens and help organize what dryads we can attract. We're going to need as much food as we can possibly grow once magic is no longer hidden. And you could be a true asset on the police force. Work your way up and sway the humans there."
Mal pretended to think it over, but he'd never intended on saying no, not really. Not with Ashrinn pleading with him so hard. He had to say he liked the idea of being a cop, too. "I can do that," he conceded. Ashrinn's look of delight made him look about eighteen years old.
"Good," Randolph said. "I'm overjoyed to have you. Start training him, Ashrinn. I need you ready as soon as possible, Malkai."
"How about tonight, Mal? No time like the present, right?"
"Sure, why not. I've always wanted to turn water into wine."
"Good luck," Randolph said.
* * *
It felt good to work with Mal again, even if the rest of their day was spent on so much paper and delegation. The Order had some infrastructure already, but it needed quite a bit more if it wanted to be a real power. People to grow community gardens, to cleanse and preserve what water sources they could lay claim to. People to expand the Underground catacombs hidden below Seattle's streets, not to mention people to keep normals out of those same tunnels, and what seemed like a million other things.
On top of that, minutia like uniform design and badges might seem nitpicky to a civilian, but they meant everything to a soldier. Ashrinn wanted to get it right, in light of the fact that all of this could become crucial in an instant; magic wouldn't be in the shadows much longer and if the Order wanted to win the race and triumph over the Cult's efforts they needed every detail perfect.
Ashrinn took a break long enough to introduce himself to Raietha, revealing himself as a paladin. She'd known him for decades, but he'd changed, transformed, and it felt like the right thing to do. During their talk Liucy poked her ash-blonde head out from her bedroom door, but when he looked at her she disappeared like a startled fox.
