Stories from the War: Military Dystopian Thriller

by Autumn M. Birt

Chapter 1

  April 2068

  THE LADY GREY

  KESMERE

  Arinna could not see if she held her sword or gun, the black smoke was so thick. The blast that had sent her off her feet to land hard on her left shoulder numbed her arm down to her fingertips. Not that she would tell Jared that.

  She flexed her wrist, which happily still responded. There was weight and resistance to the movement of the object she held. Sword then. That meant she must be out of bullets. Shit.

  Her right hand trembled when she held it to her temple. The blast must have been worse than she remembered. Or maybe she had hit her head? Her memory was blank, and it frightened her. She sucked in air only to choke on smoke. A bullet struck the wall beside her close enough to spray grit. It pelted the grey jacket she wore over quicksilver body armor.

  Everything felt immediate and threatening. She was caught blind and overwhelmed, claustrophobic with only this one moment between herself and a fight she couldn’t recall.

  Captain Jared Vries looked over at her, blood and dirt smeared across his forehead and along a cheek. Even in the dimness, she could see the concern in his green eyes as his brows pulled together.

  “My lady, are you okay?”

  She opened her mouth to answer as a jolt lanced through her. Arinna gasped and opened her eyes, uncertain when she’d fallen asleep. The carriage bounced again, slamming her against its wooden walls and into her sore shoulder. She hissed from pain as well as irritation as she struggled to sit up.

  “Tomas, what is it?”

  “It’s this sodden rain, my lady. The streams are swollen and the road’s mud. It looks like the Brinny is over the bridge ahead.”

  Arinna, sighed, weary beyond weary. She pushed open the carriage door before Tomas could react and jump from the driver’s seat. Rain pounded the earth into mire and promised her a cold bath if she stepped out. But there was no hope for it. If she wished to get to Rhiol this night, it was not going to be by carriage. Not if the Brinny was over the road.

  “My lady you don’t have to ...”

  Arinna waved away the rest of what Tomas would tell her.

  “It’s okay, Tomas,” she said as her boots sank ankle deep in the muck and rain flattened her short hair to her scalp.

  It was at least one consolation that she was not on the way home from some silly social event that duty led her to. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to struggle home in the rain wearing a dress. Though the thought of what that feat would have done to such a garment brought a feral smile to her lips.

  Rain struck her cheek, scattering spray with a feeling too much like her memories of dust blown by bullets. She sucked in cool, wet English air and tilted her head up towards her driver.

  “When hasn’t it been raining of late? Just like the storm grounded my shadowcraft, you can’t reach it with the carriage. I’ll walk through Alder’s field and make it to Rhiol in a couple of hours.”

  “Are you sure, my lady? Captain Vries will have me head if he knew.”

  “I’m his commander, Tomas. I can assure you, I’ll manage just fine.”

  It took some pressuring, and then downright ordering, to get Tomas to turn the carriage and head back to the closest inn. In the end, he gave her his woolen coat to cover the T-shirt she wore. Her coat hadn’t been worth keeping the last she had seen of it.

  The rain was barely a bother. As a soldier, it would not have slowed her anyway, but after her dreamed recollection, she felt untethered. The open countryside of early evening, soggy or not, was a welcome refuge from burning smoke and the hissing retort of gunfire, flashback or no. It was the past now. It had been reality half a day ago. Her memory had swept back moments after Jared had asked her if she were well. The fight had pressed on, and they had won.

  Arinna trudged into the field of thick grass, searching for a crossing. Within a few minutes, she was cold and soaked to the skin. The Brinny was swollen more than she had imagined, more than she had seen it in the few months she’d referred to the estate of Rhiol as home. There was no way across as she worked her way upstream, cursing herself for a fool until she had to laugh. After all these years, she was either going to die by drowning or from pneumonia. That would be ironic. Jared would be apoplectic to hear of it.

  The distant lightning flashing across the sky cast the peaked roof of Kesmere Manor into black relief. Arinna stopped and stared, undecided. If it were any other estate, she would have walked to the front door and asked for a horse. The entrance lights flickered with torchlight, but those in the front hall held steady, so were assuredly electric. That display could only mean the earl was home and expecting company. With any other lord, she would have thought herself lucky. With the Earl of Kesmere, it seemed bad luck followed on the heels of a foul few days.

  But there were other doors than the front hall, and she knew the house steward by name, even if the earl had never given her a civil word. Arinna stayed in the rain drenched darkness until she made it around to the kitchen door. The heated smells of bread and roast reached out to her before Betsy’s round silhouette filled the door.

  “What’chu be at? Be off w’ya,” Betsy paused as she squinted out into the darkness. She stumbled back a step when she recognized who stood on her doorstep. “My lady, what ‘ave you been doing? You’re soaked through.”

  Like some storm sprite, Arinna brought the damp earth in with her. Shutting the door only dimmed the sound of the pounding rain while she stood spreading puddles in the stilled chaos of the kitchen. A pot boiled over, rekindling action as Betsy scolded the apprentice cook before turning to her.

  “The Brinny is over the road, and my carriage couldn’t get through. I sent Tom with the horses back to the inn and told him I’d walk the rest of the way, but I haven’t found a crossing yet,” Arinna said. As wet as she was, Arinna was beginning to wonder why she hadn’t chanced swimming the stream.

  “Lord, it’s been raining buckets for nigh two weeks. Where have you been, my lady, to think you’d cross that water? I can’t believe you thought you’d walk. More than like what you need is a boat to reach Rhiol.” Betsy waived for hot water while she handed Arinna a small handful of kitchen towels.

  “No, Betsy, I won’t stay,” Arinna replied, refusing the towels. The small bundle would hardly make a difference. “I saw the light ... and wasn’t going to stop. It must be a party tonight? I thought I would ask to borrow a better coat or if there were a spare horse that wouldn’t be missed? But if it is as bad as you say, I should just continue and hope for the best.”

  Betsy frowned, her eyes shifting around the hectic kitchen. Arinna knew the look and the thought behind it. She cursed herself for being fool enough to put Betsy into such a situation. The rain must have fogged her mind, that or exhaustion.

  “It isn’t fit out for no one, my lady. It isn’t my place to ask you ta stay,” Betsy began.

  “No, it is mine.”

  The voice was well bred and laced with coldness much sharper than the English rain. Derrick Eldridge, the Earl of Kesmere’s entrance into the kitchen came with the sound of a pot lid falling as the two apprentice cooks made themselves scarce. Only Betsy and the wizened head chef remained amid the boiling pots and half peeled carrots, he with a glare on his face for both Derrick and Arinna.

  Arinna wondered how much worse the night could become as she pivoted to face one of her strongest adversaries, placing herself between him and Betsy. Though it would easily take two of her to block Betsy’s wide frame from harm.

  Derrick was dressed ready for his guests, making her feel all the more in the weaker position, having snuck in his house like a half-drowned kitten. In formal attire of a soft black wool jacket that rested on his upper thigh, a cream linen shirt with a stiff flat collar, and a maroon silk scarf tied over it, he cut a very organized and thought-out figure. Arinna hid her sigh with the slightest bow.

  “My lord earl.”

  A flash of irritation crossed his face. He nodded cu
rtly at her highjacked civilities.

  “Do you make it a habit, my lady, of sneaking into manors’ side doors?”

  His voice was brusque and distant. Not that she expected anything less, but it got her hackles up. She had to struggle against a retort that would not improve her situation. Drowning was sounding better than word getting out that she had been thrown out of Kesmere. She needed a polite exit.

  “No. Only when I do not want to trouble the lord of the house.”

  They paused there, locked eye to eye. His left brow lifted a fraction, and Arinna would have sworn she saw the faintest hint of amusement touch the navy blue of his eyes.

  “Well, perhaps you misjudged the need. It is too wet and dangerous out for you to continue on tonight. Please stay over, and perhaps you would be so kind to join my guests and I for dinner?”

  The invitation, as unexpected as it was, threw her off kilter. She rocked back on her heel, a habit she had picked up from Jared. It refocused her tactical side.

  “I would love to, assuming the dress is rather informal and wet,” she said with a lift of her sodden cuffs.

  This time she was sure that the flash replacing the resigned civilities held humor when Derrick’s lips twitched before his expression reorganized itself into boredom again. Arinna was frightfully pleased with herself.

  Derrick motioned for her to walk with him. There was little more to be done than to agree. Arinna had all but given up hope of civility from this paramount of County Cumbria years ago. She would not risk offending him again so quickly by demanding a horse instead of dinner.

  “You are about my fiancée’s size, and she has left many of her things from the last time she visited. Her rooms are empty, and you can borrow whatever you require. I will have a housemaid show you up.”

  They walked to the front foyer down a long hallway barely lit by dimmed oil lamps. Emerging from under the second-floor balcony, Derrick gestured for her to wait by the stairs. Mindful of her dampness and the wooden floors, Arinna walked instead to the rug spread over stone tile by the front door. Plus, it offered a quick escape should the earl change his mind.

  The entrance hall was dark, lit only by two oil lamps, one on each side of the door. In contrast, the front salon and formal dining room where Derrick headed blazed with light. It spilled from the wide doors, casting an illuminated square halfway across the front foyer. Her guess had been right. Though there were well-spaced candles, electric lights scattered the darkness to the far corners. It was a sign of Derrick’s standing to have managed that, especially this far north amid the lakes. Recovery from the long war had been slower here. It was almost three years since the official end to the fighting, but electricity remained a luxury only enjoyed by the rich or the inventive. It seemed some days that the mid twenty-first century was mired in aspects of the nineteenth, if not earlier.

  Tired beyond thought, soaked to the bone, and caught in a tangle of formalities, Arinna’s instincts were slow to notice the shift in shadows within the music room opposite the bright front salon. A prickling at the base of her neck made her turn her head to focus from the corner of her eye, so as not to give her awareness away. The breath went out of her as the figure shifted further into the light.

  “Byran!”

  It burst from her before she could collect herself. He was across the hall in paces, sweeping her up into a familiar embrace. For a moment, she let herself be held, welcoming the warmth of his body and arms. Her heart, jolted by the surprise, beat too quickly, flushing her cheeks. In the back of her mind, she was aware that Derrick had stopped mid-sentence. He regarded them in complete shock, too astonished to mask the unfiltered emotion on his face.

  Arinna pulled away first, chastising, “You’ll be soaked.”

  But the fine wool of Byran’s jacket and trousers did not show any ill effect from their embrace. Watchful, Derrick walked towards them in silence.

  “I did not know you were friends with Baron Vasquez,” Arinna said to Derrick while she looked accusingly at Byran.

  Byran grinned.

  “Nor I he with you,” Derrick replied flatly.

  From his tone and look, Arinna couldn’t tell if he was surprised or disappointed at the realization of Byran’s friendship with her.

  “Hah, with such love lost between you, I hardly wanted to advertise,” Byran said casually. “Though I did tell you once, Arinna. Still let me introduce you properly now since you are finally standing under the same roof and within hearing distance of each other.

  “Derrick, I would like you to meet my long time friend Arinna, otherwise known as the Lady Grey and commander of the Grey Guard. Arinna, I would like you to meet my even more long time friend Derrick, the Earl of Kesmere.”

  Arinna played along, as Byran always managed. She’d learned long ago she was no match for his charm. She bobbed slightly to Derrick despite her dripping garments. “How do you do?”

  Derrick bowed stiffly in reply, forced by surprise into Byran’s game. One maple brown lock fell across his forehead as a look of understanding touched his dark blue eyes.

  Arinna swallowed hard. Looking away, her gaze returned to Byran. Real warmth filled her despite the cold of her wet coat.

  “If you will excuse me, I think I should put on something dry.”

  Derrick nodded distractedly as Arinna walked past him to join the servant girl now waiting at the bottom of the stairs, unable to keep her heart from a double beat or mind from memories.