by P. K. Lentz
Ivar grumbled an affirmative. “You should sleep in a cannabis lodge tonight.”
“No.”
“You’re in pain. You don’t have to be a hero every minute.”
“It’s not that...” She sighed and confessed to him: “It doesn’t work. Fizzbik’s process makes our bodies resistant to disease and poisons. And cannabis.”
Ivar rode a few strides in open-mouthed silence. “When were you planning on telling us?”
“Around now,” Arixa joked.
Ivar was not amused. “Had that sacrifice been known, you might have had fewer volunteers.” He snorted. “It’s beer, too, isn’t it? I had a few last night that the city-folk brought out to us. I thought it was just bad brew, but it worked well enough on Memnon.”
“I’m sorry, Ivar,” Arixa said. “I couldn’t tell you. It was too important. If it helps, I believe you all would have made the right choice. It just would have been harder.”
“So you helped us, did you? Arixa, you may be right about our choices, but—”
“I know, I know. I must let you make them. I will.”
“Trust is not something you earn just once,” Ivar said. “An uncle of mine used to say that.”
“He sounds wise...” Arixa observed, “for a Norther. Once other matters are resolved, we’ll solve this problem, too. I promise.”
“Shame Orik didn’t try poison on you instead of fire,” Ivar muttered. “Since we’re promising things, I’ll make you one. Now that Orik has done what he’s done, I’ll never call you princess again.”
Slumped in the saddle in front of him, Arixa patted Ivar’s thigh that was nestled just behind hers. “You’re a kind man... Doomaxe Skullcrusher,” she said. “That will be our secret.”
* * *
In her tent back at camp, Arixa bit on a rawhide strap while the arrow was removed from her flesh. Then she shed her armor and ironglove for treatment of her various wounds. Skin that was curled and opaque like parchment was peeled away from her leg and left arm. She was glad to see that her tattoos were still visible. Scythian body artists were without peer, and their needles drove the ink deep. Her cuts were cleaned and ointment applied, then Leimya and Tomiris oversaw the covering of her large swaths of burned skin with bandages soaked in salve.
As soon as Arixa was decent, dressed in loose linens and reclining on a cushioned pallet, her uncle entered her tent with news.
“Folk are leaving Roxinaki by hundreds,” Matas reported with subdued pleasure. “Whole families with whatever they can carry. Many are stopping here, saying they were told that the Dawn would provide for them.”
“We will,” Arixa pledged, elated. “See to it, Matas. But let all know that they must journey farther from the city than this in order to be safe.”
A bow indicated Matas’s acceptance. “A man came with them who wishes to see you,” he said. “A yellow-robe who goes by Phoris.”
“Send him in.”
Minutes later, the preacher entered the tent and sank to his knees alongside Arixa with a look of concern on his battle-scarred face.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Orik tried to have me burned alive. And more.”
“Your own father? That’s abominable.”
“I’ll heal.”
“The wounds from such an attack are not only physical.”
Arixa scoffed gently. “Enough about me. What’s the situation in Roxinaki?”
Brother Phoris grinned. “The sign you promised was a clear one. I can’t help but think you arranged it.”
Arixa didn’t answer that. “They believe?”
The preacher’s eyes lit. “Oh, how they believe! The exodus has begun. I expect it shall accelerate.”
“Has the Shath spoken?”
“Only to urge calm.”
“While you and other Ishpakians urge the opposite.”
“Indeed. I rather think he would like to assassinate us. But we are cautious, and since your conversion we have enough of the city on our side that there’s no shortage of sanctuary.”
“Good,” Arixa said. “Tell the people that the vessel they saw was merely a scout, an outrider for the horde to follow on Devastation Day. And now I know when it will come,” she added. “Twenty days. If its streets are not empty, Roxinaki will be destroyed.”
“Another vision?” Brother Phoris asked with fascination.
“Not quite. For now, I only ask that you believe and convince others to do the same. When this task is finished, Brother...” She set a hand on his. “I invite you to join the Dawn. With or without the robe.”
He smiled. His scar could not hide the goodness in his eyes. It wasn’t the battle-scar that made Arixa wish to recruit Phoris— even if that was what proved he had the skills needed for life in a war band—it was his eyes. He could be trusted.
“An honor, but I’ll withhold my answer until the task is done,” he said. “Twenty days, you say?” He nodded with resolve. “Last night I would have called it impossible. Most are unwilling to leave their lives behind just because a man in a robe tells them to. But after today, our words are not just words.” He frowned. “The greatest obstacle may be the tribal chiefs. They have the most property to abandon, as well as the power to order others to remain.”
“Leave them to me,” Arixa said. “On the bright side, if they stay and are killed, then twenty-one days from now, new chiefs will be chosen. And perhaps a new Shath.”
Brother Phoris lifted Arixa’s right hand to his lips and kissed its knuckles. If he noticed that that hand and arm appeared strangely unscathed compared to the other, he didn’t ask why.
“I thank Tabiti for your survival, Arixa,” he said. “In caring for you, she cares for all of Scythia.”
Arixa smiled humbly. Phoris stood and bowed.
“I return to Roxinaki to do the goddess’s bidding. May our paths cross again soon.”
“They will,” Arixa assured as the yellow-robed preacher left her tent.
* * *
A full day passed, and most of another. The flow of Scythians leaving Roxinaki swelled, and the number seeking aid from the Dawn passed a thousand. Matas assigned small detachments of riders to escort family groups north over the isthmus in search of villages and encampments which could accommodate them, if temporarily. He rode to the city’s Bleak Sea port, skirting Roxinaki proper, and paid boat captains to carry evacuees along the coast.
As he did in most things, Matas took a careful, methodical approach. Speed was of the essence, of course, but it was still worth some effort to avoid the chaos that might come from simply flooding the country with thousands of refuge-seekers.
Arixa’s wounds no longer pained her. Looking at her, one would think the attempt on her life had taken place half a moon ago or longer.
No message reached her from Agathyr Palace, and evacuees brought no word to camp of any decree made by the Shath. Arixa had publicly demanded that he give an order to evacuate, and her deadline was shortly due to expire. In order that her word be seen to have weight, whether she wanted to or not—and she did not—tomorrow she would have to begin at least to make noise about intending to claim the throne.
Deposing Orik probably meant killing him, a task which her nominal father had obligingly made far less repugnant to Arixa by trying to do the same to her first.
At least, she was reasonably sure it had been Orik. The longer she failed to hear from Skulis, the more she wondered about his complicity. Had he fooled her so thoroughly?
On the eve of the expiration of her deadline to Orik, answers came in the form of three visitors to the camp.
One was Skulis. The others were Arixa’s eldest brothers, Usan and Uzya, first and second in line to inherit the Shathdom from Orik.
Eighteen
“You know...” Ivar observed with a smirk when he came to alert Arixa to the embassy from Roxinaki, “it’s a sign of power when everyone comes to visit you instead of the other way around.”
“I know,” Arixa said. “Send them
in.”
Minutes after, her three half-brothers entered her tent and stopped several paces from Arixa, who awaited them in full armor. The two heirs apparent, Usan and Uzya, Orik’s first- and second-born sons, stood in front with heads high while Skulis hung behind with gaze fixed on the floor mats.
Usan looked fondly at Arixa and smiled. “Would my dear sister consent to an embrace?”
Arixa gave her consent by striding up and exchanging cheek-kisses, first with the elder Usan and then Uzya.
“We returned only yesterday by ship from Turkia,” Usan said. “Father seeks to establish a second capital on the Southern Sea.”
“More capitals?” Arixa scoffed. “Atop the bones of empires that have built them before?”
The first two brothers having been greeted, she turned to the younger Skulis, who promptly threw himself to the floor at her feet.
“Forgive me, Arixa,” he said. “I had no warning. Father had me bolted into the North Tower. I only learned after my release—”
Arixa stooped and took his arm, aiding him to rise. “I never doubted,” she said. It was a harmless half-truth. She had no doubt now, and that was what counted.
“I pledged your safety, and I failed.”
“You’re not to blame, Skulis. Stand.”
Kissing his cheek, Arixa resumed a more formal position facing her siblings across the floor mats.
“Orik has sent you.” She stated rather than asked.
“Aye, sister,” Usan said. “He seeks your forgiveness.”
“And he sends his sons to obtain it?”
Usan hesitated, as if he were indeed ashamed of this fact. “I carry a proposal from the Shath,” he said, thereby making of himself a mere messenger. He continued in formal tones: “In exchange for your forgiveness and a pledge to forswear vengeance and make no attempt to overthrow him, holding your followers to the same pledge, Shath Orik will remove the population of Roxinaki to the countryside for a maximum duration of one moon.”
By the time he finished, Arixa was laughing aloud. “If I promise not to kill him,” she mocked, “then Orik will agree to protect his people?”
Usan smiled humorlessly. “If that is how you must state it.”
Scoffing, she threw her arms wide. “Then my answer is clear: I forgive him! I will never to seek vengeance or attempt to usurp him. It is so pledged. Inform your Shath that he may make his decree.”
Two of the envoys stood in confused silence. Only Skulis didn’t appear skeptical.
“You’re surprised?” Arixa said. “You expected I would rage against your father because he tried to burn me alive? I might have. My anger is vast and deep. But my desire to see Scythia through the coming Devastation is greater. If I must set aside my feelings to ensure it, then that is what I’ll do. He might have come to me in person and got the same reply, but what else is he except a coward, to have attacked me in such a way? I would expect no better.” She smiled. “You need not convey all of that. Merely tell Orik that I accept his terms and he is forgiven. I expect the decree to be made public by day’s end. Is that all?”
Usan shrugged. “That is all, sister. I applaud your magnanimity.”
“Call it what you will,” Arixa said. “Stay and dine with the Dawn, if you like, my brothers.”
“Not today, sister. We’ll waste no time in delivering your reply.”
“Skulis?” Arixa inquired separately of the half-brother who lately had become her favorite.
“Your forgiveness is sustenance enough,” he answered in polite and predictable refusal. It would be impolitic for him to accept when his elders had declined.
She gave them all cordial farewells. In the case of Skulis, she set a firm hand on his cheek and met his eyes with an intense stare meant to convey that she trusted him more than the other two.
The look was also an invitation to join the Dawn if he fell out with Orik. There was no way to know whether Skulis understood it thus, but she couldn’t say such things aloud in front of his brothers.
Smiling in a way that hinted he might have understood, Skulis exited behind Usan and Uzya. The three mounted their horses and rode back to town.
Watching them leave, Arixa told Ivar, “I just promised we wouldn’t kill Orik.”
“Fuck!” the Norther said. “Can we at least hurt him bad?”
“I don’t think so. But it’s done. Roxinaki should be safe. If Orik keeps his word.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
“Then we can fucking kill him.”
* * *
Deep in the night, a new visitor arrived. This one came unannounced except by a tone in Arixa’s ear that roused her from sleep. By the time she sat up, she saw Zhi enter her tent.
Arixa slept in her armor these days against the possibility of Orik sending more assassins. Thankfully, Zhi was not an assassin, although her undetected passage to the center of the Dawn’s camp was potentially worrying.
The tinkle of bronze scales on Arixa’s armor caused Tomiris, sleeping nearby, to shoot upright with sword in hand. At Arixa’s signal, she relaxed and came to join the other two. Leimya, also asleep in the tent, stirred but didn’t awaken.
“Gather your six, and we’ll leave,” Zhi whispered.
“To where?” Arixa asked.
“I’ll explain in the shuttle.”
Arixa had chosen her six warriors, of course. Tomiris was one. Arixa dispatched her now to gather the rest.
“How long will we be gone?”
“Less than a day.”
Within minutes, the chosen six and Arixa were gathered at the camp’s edge. Since Ivar was among the six, Arixa stopped to awaken Matas and inform him of the departure, leaving him in command.
Then they embarked swiftly on foot across the plains to a gully near the Bleak Sea where Zhi’s shuttle was nestled. Boarding, they stowed their weapons and buckled into seats set along the gently curved walls of the main chamber. A portion of the wall yielded to a view of the moonlit Bleak Sea. Then the image shrank away and faded to dark sky. It was nearly the only indication of movement as the sphere ascended.
“Where are we going?” Arixa asked.
Zhi drew a breath as if to commence a lengthy explanation. “Technically, Goros is off-limits to all but the Jirmaken. In reality, enforcement is lax and visitors come somewhat regularly. Some come for academic or scientific interest. They observe, study, experiment. Some come for recreation. In particular, sport.”
“Memnon’s legends,” Ivar observed.
Ignoring him, Zhi continued, “I have been tracking the vessel of a Kephis hunter. We are headed now for her latest landing point, where we will ambush her and steal her weapons and ship.”
“What’s a Kephis?”
Zhi moved her hands and an image flared into existence in the air above her control symbols. Only Arixa did not give a vocal reaction, since this was the second time she had looked upon the image of a being not native to Earth. All but one of the warriors present had not even seen Fizzbik.
“That is a Kephis,” Zhi said.
This alien figure did not resemble a dog or a lizard but rather an insect, a black-skinned praying mantis if Arixa had to choose an Earth equivalent. It was by far the least human-like of the races she had seen thus far. Apart from the thick, bent legs on which it stood mostly upright, it possessed four others which were thin and multiply-jointed like a bug’s. The two lower limbs on either side ended in sharp, barbed points while the upper pair each had two spindly fingers and a hook-like thumb.
“We’re supposed to kill one of these?” Ivar asked.
“More likely two,” Zhi said. “A mistress and her thrall. The Kephis exoskeleton—”
“Its what?”
“Hard outer shell,” Zhi rephrased. “Think of a beetle or a crab. An unaugmented human could not produce enough force to pierce it. But you have been augmented, and the hand weapons which apply the greatest force to the smallest points of impact are your long-handled axes and picks. If you must us
e a sword, use it only to stab. Even then, the point is likely to glance off of a curved surface.”
“I can’t believe I’m getting advice on fighting giant bugs!” Ivar said.
“Scared, Ivar?” Tomiris gently taunted.
“No! Just... Life is strange. That’s all.”
“Kephis cannot breathe the air on Earth,” Zhi went on. “They wear respirators.” Two silver boxes on either side of the mantis’s head lit red in the ghostly image. “Damaging these will distract them and decrease their endurance. But be aware that even after losing both, they will retain the ability to kill you.”
“What about arrows?” Arixa asked. All Scythians were proficient with bows, but naturally some were better than others. Arixa had brought two warriors who were arguably the Dawn’s best archers.
“Arrows may pierce if they hit squarely on the weakest points of the exoskeleton,” Zhi said. New spots flared red on the image. But killing blows will most likely need to be delivered by hand.”
“Apologies for asking, Zhi,” Arixa said, “since you have done so much already... but don’t you have better weapons than picks and axes?”
“I have one personal beam weapon,” Zhi said. “As do Vax and Dr. Fizzbik. For various reasons, we do not store armaments at our base. It is not a military installation.”
“Could your weapon not kill a Kephis?”
“Likely not with a single shot. And one shot is all it would take to warn them they are not dealing with natives. They would likely flee immediately to their ship, covering the retreat with their own armaments set to maximum power. But if you face them with bow and ax, they might welcome the challenge. Their purpose in visiting Goros-3 is to do combat with warriors such as you on close to even terms.”
“Might?” Ivar inquired.
“They might also incinerate you with the very weapons we aim to steal,” Zhi answered worryingly. “But I think it unlikely.”
“We’ll kill them,” Arixa promised, displaying the confidence that a Captain must. It didn’t matter whether or not it was genuine, so long as it seemed so.
“Why do we want their weapons?” Tomiris asked.
Zhi’s lips remained tight, leaving Arixa to answer.
