by P. K. Lentz
Surrendering her blade, Arixa accompanied the Shath’s Guard toward the palace complex. En route the column separated, and the yellow-robes were taken elsewhere. Arixa herself did not enter the palace, where presumably the feast in her honor was underway. Instead she was ushered into a cell in the basement of a guardhouse.
“I’ll return soon, sister,’ Skulis said in the cell’s open doorway.
“Back to your meal?”
He didn’t answer that. “I want you to know that I love and admire you, Arixa,” he said instead with a look of exasperation. “I always have. I never asked to be Captain. The position was promised to you, and you would have executed it better than I have. But what was I to do? Refuse? Father would only have given the post to someone else. It still would not have gone to you.”
“I know,” Arixa said. “And I know why. How many women are there in the Shath’s Guard anyway, Skulis? Ten? None? There are eighty in the Dawn. City life turns women into shadows.”
“You’ve always been a throwback, Arixa. You know that. And to his credit, Father never tried to force you into a marriage or anything else. His crime was to stop short of giving you all you wanted.”
“All I was promised,” Arixa corrected him.
“Blame him if you need to, Arixa. Blame the gods. But don’t blame me.” He shut the creaking door and slid its iron bolt, then said through its small, square port, “I’m sure you could break this door down if you wished. But I hope you’ll stay and carefully consider what you’ll say to Father when he comes. Goodbye, Arixa.”
His face vanished from the opening.
“Skulis!” she called through teeth that refused to part.
His face reappeared.
Sighing angrily, Arixa grated, “You’re not my favorite, but I... love you, too. I suppose.”
Her brother smiled warmly before disappearing, his steady footfalls echoing off stone.
* * *
It was more than an hour before her father came. Skulis opened the cell door for him and retreated, but not before offering Arixa a look of support, or at least good luck.
Shath Orik filled the small cell with his vast presence. Like Skulis, he was dressed for a feast. His embroidered tunic bore the scars of having just endured one.
His look was one of intense disappointment which, despite herself, Arixa could not meet directly. Suddenly she was twelve again.
“I will have to ban you from my city,” he said heavily, dispelling suspense. “Do you know how disappointing that is? Do you know how badly it reflects on me? You have publicly challenged me, your own father. There’s no good way out of the position in which that places me.”
“Will you act to save Roxinaki?” Arixa asked, still averting her gaze.
“Rotten girl!” Orik exploded. “You tell me of a dream you had, demand that I act on it, and give me not even a day to consider? You think that because you bend a piece of iron, I will drive my own people from their homes?”
“No, you will not,” Arixa spoke over her father. “That is why I went around you.”
“That is why you humiliated me!” Orik roared. “Detained during a feast in your own honor! Joining the Ishpakians! When you returned yesterday, I greeted you as a hero of our people. Someone I am proud to call daughter. But in the space of a day you have become a disgrace to me, Arixa! A disgrace!”
Arixa tried hard not to let the words pierce her, but they did. The rims of her eyes, still aimed at the wall, moistened. Shutting them, she inhaled deeply to stem the flow of tears.
Orik paced the small cell. Arixa could see well enough at the edge of her vision to know that his face was red with fury.
“I don’t pretend to understand the changes in you,” he said. “But it does not follow that I must believe some cannabis-induced imaginings that happen to resemble what the Ishpakians prattle about. Whatever credibility you had yesterday, Arixa, you threw it away by enlisting their aid. You’ve destroyed your own cause! No, I will not cast anyone out of this city—except for you! Tomorrow you will leave, permanently. I am not heartless enough to execute my own child, but there will be consequences if you return. That Norther of yours, or others from your band. Someone’s head will roll, be certain of it.”
Stalking to the door, Orik growled, “Goodbye, Arixa. You left six years ago because you were a petulant child. And that is still what you are. The next time we meet, I will not lay eyes on you because it will be my funeral. You may return for that. I won’t deny you that pleasure.”
He spun on his heel and left. In a moment of rage, Arixa sped after him, shoving Skulis aside to burst out of the cell and shout at Orik’s back.
“You will not have a funeral!” she screamed. “You will be ash and dust like your precious palace! And have no qualms about executing me, for I am no longer your child!”
Orik kept on walking, mounting the stairs. Inserting himself in front of Arixa, Skulis urged, “Sister, you sh—”
“Do you hear me!” Arixa persisted, yelling at Orik over her half-brother’s shoulder. “I am no longer your child! I am not Agathyr! I am Katiars!”
As her father fully disappeared, she stormed back into the cell and sank to the floor in a corner.
Skulis followed her in. “Arixa,” he said, “You shouldn’t say such things.”
“Leave, Skulis!” Arixa demanded, choking back tears she could not long hope to hold in.
“He’s your father.”
“Leave!”
Finally he did, leaving Arixa alone to weep.
Thirteen
Hours later, Arixa’s mother came to her cell. By then Arixa’s tears had run dry, and so it was only Patia who wept. She insisted on having the cell swept and bedding brought in. Arixa gave up fighting her on that, as well as on Patia’s insistence on staying the night.
Leimya visited, too, but Arixa couldn’t speak freely to her on account of Patia’s presence.
“Remember what I told you,” Arixa said to her instead.
When her uncle Matas came, Arixa instructed him that the Dawn should be readied to leave Roxinaki by morning.
Darkness fell. Patia slept. Arixa wished for nothing more than to do the same, but she could not. In six years, she had not slept with stone surrounding her. She was no longer able to. It felt like being inside one’s own funeral mound. She possessed the strength to break down the door and race into the night, and it took all of her will not to do just that.
Instead, she faced her fear and distracted herself by trying to devise a better plan than the terrible one she had chosen.
She thought of none.
After much too long, the bolt slid back and Skulis opened the cell door. With him, Arixa climbed the stairs from the guardhouse basement and stepped outside into open air, breathing deeply of the early morn. She bid her sobbing mother farewell, keeping her own eyes dry, and accompanied her half-brother and escorts from the Shath’s Guard to the campground where Ivar and the Dawn waited ready to ride.
The Dawn’s departure was not announced or anticipated, but it was noticed. Small crowds gathered along the main avenue to watch the war band ride out. The Shath’s Guard rode with them as far as the edges of the grassland north of the city. There, Skulis halted his warriors and rode up to Arixa.
“Goodbye, sister,” he said. “I truly hope we meet again.”
“I’m not done,” Arixa said. “I have no love for Orik’s city, but I will save it. You can help me or you can die. Should you stand in my way, I will trade your life for thousands.”
Skulis had no reply. Giving him no chance to devise one, Arixa kicked her horse to speed and left Roxinaki behind. For today.
“We might as well dispense with this charade that I’m Captain,” Ivar said a short while later, riding beside her. “I know you have something planned. Care to inform me?”
“It’s not a good plan,” Arixa confided.
“Let’s hear it and judge.”
“Roxinaki will be emptied,” Arixa said. “The simplest
way is for Orik to order it. That was never likely, but it had to be tried. Since he won’t, it will have to be done in spite of him. That means going directly to the people, a task I have set to the Ishpakians. They might save some small number who are willing to listen. But there is one even surer way.”
“Wait, I’ve started to question whether I want to hear.”
“We depose Orik,” Arixa declared.
Ivar groaned. “I knew it! Arixa, that would take an army. A large one.”
“What if one war band could be the match of an army?”
“Except it’s not,” Ivar objected.
“What if every warrior of that band was as I am now? What then?”
“Arixa, you can’t possibly intend—”
“I do,” she declared. “I will find Fizzbik again and convince him to augment us all. Then we shall have our army.”
* * *
The plan, of course, was not as simple as Arixa made it sound for Ivar’s sake. Vax had been explicit in telling her that their parting had been final and that she would not be able to contact him or Fizzbik ever again.
Still, she could see no other way. Even if it proved futile, it had to be tried, just as she had had to speak with her father knowing that was futile. With the future of Scythia itself at stake, no possibility could be discounted lest it later become a regret.
A disgrace she might be to Orik, but she would leave no path untrammeled in the effort to save her people.
The only way she could think of by which to restore contact with Vax was to return to where she had first seen Fizzbik and fallen to her near-death. He had only gone there to breathe the air and stretch his dog-legs, but perhaps it was a favorite spot. Perhaps he would come again. It was the only hope. She could scarcely attempt to lead the Dawn into the icy north where no humans could survive, a journey which would take much more time than they had, even if the path were known.
“We’ve been followed,” Matas rode up and reported to Arixa late on the day of their departure.
He was laughing as he said it. Arixa was about to ask him to explain when he edged his horse aside and revealed the rider in question.
Leimya was dressed in her fine riding gear of boots, trousers and a long coat. Her horse bore overstuffed saddlebags. She looked nervously at Arixa.
When Arixa broke into laughter, Leimya cracked a relieved smile.
“I told you to stay!” Arixa said with no conviction at all.
“You didn’t mean it. Who there will listen to me? No one. And you look pleased enough to see me.”
“You have no idea.” Truly, Arixa’s joy at seeing Leimya wiped away all foul taste of the visit to Roxinaki. “If I only save one person from that fucking city, I’m glad it’s you. Now, come on. We’d better get over the isthmus before Skulis comes to fetch you back. Try to keep up!”
* * *
They rode hard, crossing to the mainland without anyone the wiser to the Dawn’s having absconded with a young princess. Just in case, beyond the isthmus, the war band took measures to make itself harder to track, splintering into smaller groups which rode in divergent paths. By nightfall, they reunited and camped near the coast of the Bleak Sea. Arixa looked forward to sleeping directly beneath the stars. After a night spent entombed, she would not even let a felt tent separate her from the open sky.
Strangely, she did not feel as tired as she should have after two full days without sleep. Vax had told her she would require less sleep now.
For twenty year-old Leimya, apart from a night or two in the orchards with siblings as a girl, sleeping outside of stone walls was a first. She looked forward to the prospect. When the stars were out, and after the band had dined on leftovers from the prior day’s feasting, a grinning Leimya laid her head beside Arixa’s on a felt mat set over wadded grass. After a short while spent looking at the stars, which Arixa now understood were the dwelling places of kidnapped humans as well as other, stranger beings, Leimya fell asleep.
But Arixa found she could not close her eyes.
Had she closed them, she wouldn’t have seen the green light flash on the horizon.
The first time she spied it, she sat up and watched more closely, thinking her eyes might have played tricks. Then she saw it again and stood. By the time it flashed a third time, she was running across the plain in its direction, dodging the lumps of warriors lying asleep in the grass.
“Ivar!” she whispered sharply, and again, “Ivar!” hoping that he was near and awake. If not, she wouldn’t stop to find him.
Eventually she turned to see Ivar following, moonlight glinting on his shirtless torso and the ax in his hand. He could scarcely keep up with Arixa’s augmented speed.
“What is it?” he hissed.
“Just come!”
When the light didn’t appear again. Arixa slowed, hunting desperately for it.
Ivar caught up. “What did you see?”
“It was...” She didn’t wish to say and seem like a fool.
A voice came from the night. “Hello, Arixa.”
She knew the voice. Squinting into the darkness in its direction, she spied a dark figure moving toward them through the tall grass. By the time the Persian’s pointed beard was visible, she had fallen onto her knees in the grip of hysterical, open-mouthed laughter of astonishment.
Matas, Dak, Tomiris, and several others drew up, having trailed Ivar. They looked warily at the night visitor, who was alone and apparently unarmed.
“Who is this?” Ivar asked. “You know him?”
Still on the ground, Arixa reined in her laughter.
“Yes!” she said. “Yes, I know him! He is Vaxsuvarda. He gave me my vision! He took me into the heavens!” She pointed into the night sky. “He is the one we seek!”
* * *
Picking herself up, Arixa crossed the remaining distance to Vax and threw her arms around his form to ensure herself he was real.
He was, but he didn’t mirror her enthusiasm. His look was stern.
“We must talk, Arixa.” He spoke in the tongue of star-folk, Nexus-G.
“Of course. I was hoping to find you!” she replied in kind.
“I know.”
“What’s he saying?” Ivar asked. “You understand him?”
Ignoring him, she asked Vax, “You knew? How? You said we could not communicate. But then, I suppose you must have many powers unknown to me.”
“I’ll be honest, Arixa,” Vax said. “I planted a device in your armor which allowed me to track your whereabouts and... to listen.”
“Listen? To what?”
“Blah-blah-blah!” Ivar mocked. “Arixa, what’s going on?”
She signaled to him for patience, which was not the Norther’s strong suit.
“I listened to the words you have spoken since leaving us,” Vax explained. “And the words of those around you. While you were in or near your armor, anyway. I chose your armor so as to avoid intruding on more intimate moments.”
“I’m a nomad,” Arixa said, mildly bothered by the thought that Vax had been privy to her every private conversation. “My armor is intimate. I don’t know what your purpose was, but... since it brought you to me, I’m glad you did it.”
For the sake of keeping no secrets from the Dawn, Arixa switched to Scythian to say to Vax, “You know my reason for seeking you.”
“I do,” Vax replied in the same tongue. “I regret that I must reject it.”
All of the joy, all the relief, all of the hope which had filled Arixa fled her body in an instant.
“Let me convince you,” she begged. “Where is Dr. Fizzbik? Let me put the idea to him.”
“That cannot be, Arixa,” he said. Moonlight revealed a sad expression.
“But why! And why would you come here just to say that! You could have left me to wander the steppe looking for you in vain. There must be part of you that wants to agree. There must be a part of you that wants to fight!”
“It hurts that you would think I have such little regard
for you, Arixa,” Vax said. “You at least deserved an answer.”
“I deserve more than that!” Arixa roared back. “Scythia deserves more! All humans deserve more! We deserve the chance to save ourselves or die trying! If you would sit back and watch cities be annihilated when they might be saved, I share nothing in common with you. We are not of the same breed, you and I. Let me speak to Fizzbik. Maybe a man with a snout and fur is more like me. If you deny me that, Vax, then you are not even a man! You are... you’re a disgrace.”
Vax stood, calmly absorbing her insults. When she finished, he said with a look of pity, “I heard what your father said to you, Arixa.” He sighed and nodded. “It must have been quite painful. Very well. You may speak to Fizzbik.”
Abruptly he turned and began to wade off through the tall grass.
“Come!” Arixa whispered sharply to Ivar and her other six or eight warriors. They walked at an easy pace in a straight line across the grassland. After a minute, Ivar quickened his pace to fall in just behind Vax.
“Hey!” Ivar called. “You’re from the sky?”
“In a manner of speaking,” the Persian humored him.
“You fixed Arixa? Made her strong?”
“My colleague did.”
“He can do it to me?”
“That is Arixa’s misguided intention.”
“Ah,” Ivar said. After what for Ivar constituted a pause for thought, he asked, “Have you met Thorr or Wuotan?”
Vax’s pause was surely one of contempt. He answered at length, “No.”
“Ivar, leave him alone,” Arixa urged. “You’re not helping our cause.”
“And you’re helping by questioning his manhood?” Ivar countered. Then, to Vax again, “I know what it’s like, my friend. Arixa kicks hard and drives your balls right back up inside you. That’s her way.”
“I see,” Vax said.
“Funny thing is, I’d do anything for that bitch. All of us would. If you need an army, we’re it. There’s no better.”
“Ivar... shut up,” Arixa ordered half-heartedly.
Whatever Vax thought of Ivar and his remarks, he kept it to himself.
Minutes later, Vax stopped. Green lights flared, and appearing suddenly from the night, as if a god had waved his great hand, was the spherical skyboat in which Arixa had flown days ago, or one identical to it.
