Knight of Stars

by Tom Lloyd

  Maybe that last nerve-steadier wasn’t the best idea, Sitain reflected. But at least I don’t feel sick with fear now. That’s probably an improvement.

  She walked unsteadily on, rounding the corner to find the Siym Holding’s perimeter wall up ahead. There was no one in sight this late at night. The district wasn’t quite silent even at this hour, but honest folk were at home and the dishonest tended to keep well away from any kabat’s domain.

  Well, ’cept us of course.

  She couldn’t see any guards on the wall or in the tower, but she was careful not to look hard. If they had spotted her they didn’t seem to care. One young foreign woman walking drunkenly home was hardly a threat and if they suspected a distraction, they should be looking elsewhere anyway.

  Surprise is our chief weapon, she reminded herself. Surprise and overwhelming firepower.

  There were no windows within reach, of course. The locals weren’t total idiots even if most of their fighters were Mastrunners. Teshen had tried to explain Masts to them but it made little sense to Sitain; halfway between a gang raid and a codified sport. All that mattered was the guards here were good in close combat and worked well as a team. It also meant they had a set way of thinking about fighting.

  We mostly just want to kill the other lot as quick as we can, she remembered Teshen saying. That gives us the early advantage because that’s not their first instinct, but any drawn-out fight might bring the other crews of Nquet Dam and then we’re shafted.

  She stopped at a bulge in the line of the wall and looked up. The lower half of the tower was blank, just a curved section of stone that ran for two storeys until a pair of cross-slit windows broke the uniformity. There was a platform above that, sheltered by a stone roof with only a narrow gap between. If you were really good you might be able to throw a grenade inside, but you needed to get it right first time.

  So here’s me, Sitain thought tipsily. A gods-damned human bloody grenade. She grinned. But Lastani says I’m one o’ the most powerful ones in the Riven Kingdom, so at least there’s that.

  She checked around. There was no one in sight, not even the Cards who were meant to be following.

  If they ain’t and this is all one big joke on me, I’ll probably walk away without being shot. Which is nice.

  Sitain placed her hands on the wall and summoned her magic. The power wasn’t bursting out of her these days, not like those first hours in Jarrazir, but the more she learned to control it the more she realised how much stronger she was. It came easily now, a cool sensation that washed through her veins and sharpened her eyesight even more. She breathed out, luxuriating in the sensation, while the lines of tattoos on her hand traced a white outline of willow leaves. In moments that became a blazing light and she looked up, summoning a wave of power before sending it up through the tower.

  There was no result. Possibly something that sounded like the scuff of a shoe, but the stone walls were thick. A horrible thought occurred to Sitain. This could all be for nothing if there was no one in the tower, if they’d decided to ignore the rain and patrol the wall elsewhere for a while.

  I really might get shot then, oh gods.

  She looked around, feeling a moment of panic as she stood exposed on the street, but aware running away would only be more dangerous. Caught in a moment of indecision, Sitain did nothing. She was still trying to work out what came next when the sound of trotting feet reached her. Out of the shadows of an alley facing the guard tower came Estal, serving as the company’s grenadier on the basis that Anatin trusted her not to be so much of an idiot as the rest.

  ‘All done, girly?’ Estal called.

  ‘I … I think so.’

  Estal cocked her head at Sitain. ‘How’s that work then? You did it or you didn’t.’

  ‘I did it. Dunno what happened though.’

  ‘Don’t worry, we were watching. They were inside it all right. If you’ve done your thing, it’s over.’

  Without waiting for a reply Estal went to the stretch of wall to one side of the tower. From a bag at her hip she withdrew a wrapped pouch of clay and slapped it against the wall. With a little prodding she nodded then gave Sitain a look.

  ‘Might want to step back a bit now, in case I drop something.’

  ‘What?’ Sitain scrabbled backwards even as Estal snickered.

  The woman didn’t respond as she focused on pulling a grenade from her bag. She didn’t bother inserting a pin to prime the bomb, they were going to break the magic-charged core a different way. This she pressed into the clay and worked at the edges until she was satisfied. She removed her hands gingerly and Sitain held her breath, but the grenade held.

  ‘Come on,’ Estal said, retracing her path. Sitain didn’t wait a second longer and had overtaken the woman by the time they’d gone ten paces. She rounded the nearest corner and almost slammed into Safir. He caught her arm just in time and pivoted her away. Estal slipped around the corner and snatched up the mage-gun she’d left propped against a wall.

  The bulk of Snow and Tempest were huddled in a hexagonal piece of ground, ten yards across with wooden beams strung between the buildings that occupied three sides. Those beams supported a healthy spray of vines that gave a fair amount of cover from prying eyes.

  Sitain blinked as she looked around the assembled troops. Clearly the vines didn’t just provide cover for them. Lynx was busily popping grapes into his mouth even as he loaded his mage-gun one-handed.

  ‘Seriously? You’re eating now?’

  He shrugged and crunched one last grape before discarding the rest. ‘Was hungry.’

  ‘Get ready,’ Safir hissed. ‘Sitain, you bring up the rear. Estal – do it.’

  ‘Said yer prayers?’ she asked with a smile.

  ‘A short word, yes.’

  Someone snorted in the shadows, Braqe by the sounds of it. ‘Quite a few short words, aye. Just as well Lastani ain’t here, she shocks easy.’

  ‘I’ll come up with some more if we’re standing here much longer,’ Safir growled.

  ‘Aye, sir.’ Estal levelled her mage-gun. ‘Time to see which grenade I ended up pulling out of the bag,’ she muttered as she took careful aim.

  There wasn’t time for anyone to object. Estal pulled the trigger and Sitain saw her jolted back by the force of an earther, staggering under the recoil. The deafening sound made Sitain flinch, but was swallowed a moment later as the entire world seemed to shudder around her.

  ‘Now.’

  Teshen’s whisper came before the great rolling boom had ended, but it was all that was needed. Kas was first around the corner, fletching already drawn back to her ear. Suth stepped around her, leaving the first shot to Kas, Teshen ready behind. The cloud cover left little for them to see by, but all three had been changed by the magic in Jarrazir’s labyrinth. There were a few worrying implications there, but right now everyone bearing the light-tattoos were glad of their unnatural night vision. Even in the dark the heads of two sentries on the wall were clear against the clouds behind.

  An arrow slammed into the first while he was still looking back towards the flames and noise of Estal’s grenade. He pitched down off the wall without a sound. Kas had a line on the second before he’d even worked out what was happening. But the arrow skipped off the stone wall and all she got for her trouble was a yelp of alarm.

  ‘Go,’ Suth ordered those behind her, one eye closed.

  The whipcrack of her icer split the night. A faint cloud appeared around the guard’s head as it burst open. Teshen was already moving, hauling forward the pair of ladders they’d brought. The wood clattered against the wall and then he was scrambling up – one hand on the ladder, the other levelling a gun.

  The years seemed to fall away, though the curses and grunts of the Cards behind would never have been tolerated in his old Masts crew. The rush was still the same, that sprint and leap over mage-carved stone. He’d been bigger than most Mastrunners, but great slabs of muscle weren’t so useful when you needed to sprint and
climb from level to level.

  Age would catch up with him soon enough, Teshen knew that, but for now there was only the hunt. It prompted a faint ache in what passed for his soul. A remembrance for times past. One last game before he never returned to this place. One last victory to remind the city of his name.

  Best I send the city a note though, Teshen thought, chuckling inwardly. Make sure I’m bloody miles away first, just in case.

  All was still up on the wall. One guard was dead on the walkway, the other on the dirt floor between the wall and houses. There were a few voices coming from the houses, but most would be employees of the Holdings – few fighters among them.

  ‘Go, that way,’ Teshen hissed as his troops followed him up. His directions would take them straight down an alley behind the waterfront, a near-direct route to the palace. But this was Caldaire and the houses were packed close together even inside a kabat’s domain. The path of a rooftop run lay invitingly before him. Teshen patted his long knives in their sheaths, hefted his mage-gun and grinned in the dark.

  One last run for the Bloody Pauper. Let’s make it a good one.

  Lynx ran, his heart quickening with every step. Safir was ahead of him, Layir leading the way across the rubble of the explosion. The wall was breached and pieces lay all around. There was barely space for two people to enter abreast, but Layir thumped one jutting chunk with the stock of his gun. It fell inside with a crash to open the way for those behind him.

  Ahead of them was a tall skeleton of a half-finished building, the Mastrunners’ training ground. Beams and ropes crisscrossed the thing, four storeys of scarred stone that jutted like ribs in the dark. The barracks formed three sides of a square behind the training ground and great lumpen warehouses sat beyond.

  There was a shout and the flash of movement off to the left. Lynx ignored it as Safir peeled off, driving on towards the barracks with a familiar growl in his belly. He’d missed this. Right now, in this dark moment, he let himself admit that. Not the killing, not the fear or fatigue, but that rush of onward movement. The precarious line between success and death, the unthinking, unrelenting charge that had been So Han’s success.

  It was part of him, his heritage perhaps. Lynx had turned his back on his homeland, but some piece of it lived on inside him. He honestly didn’t know if it was some savage part he’d adopted to stay alive in To Lort prison, or whether this was within all Hanese.

  Sitain doesn’t have it, a treacherous voice at the back of his head reminded him. She’s tough, but she doesn’t have this killer instinct. This is just you, this is what you were long before the prison broke you. They made you a commando because they saw what you really were.

  The first Mastrunner emerged from the barracks, a tall woman carrying some sort of a long hooked axe. Lynx shot her before she’d even cleared the door. The familiar kick against his shoulder prompted his feet to stop, his knees to bend as he reloaded and others overtook. An arrow flashed out from a first floor window and sliced Braqe’s shoulder as the woman stepped ahead of Lynx. She hissed and snarled as she returned fire with an earther. The shot blew out the window and a foot of wall beside it, roaring up through the roof behind in an explosion of splinters.

  ‘Hanese bastard,’ she muttered as she knelt to reload and Lynx advanced.

  ‘Thanks,’ he whispered, firing again at movement by the doorway.

  Braqe didn’t answer as his return shot produced a scream. The cry was immediately drowned out by another earther being fired into the building. It smashed through a beam and brought down part of the ceiling. More shouts, more cries as icers snapped out all around them.

  More arrows were returned, mage-tipped this time. Safir got hit by something in the side of the head and he quietly folded up, limp on the ground. Another Card caught a second – a flare of fire bursting around her arm as she shrieked in pain and fear. The Card’s return burst was devastating and the Mastrunners hunkered down. Sitain ran forward with Layir close beside as Lynx reached the doorway and fired a sparker inside.

  The explosion of jagged light threw stark shadows across the hallway and room beyond, bringing cut-short screams from the silhouette of contorted figures. He dropped his long gun and drew his sword, his orders being to defend the doorway. It was a nasty place to stand for any length of time, within the killing ground of this courtyard, but it wouldn’t last that long.

  Under Layir’s guard Sitain drew again on her magic. Again Lynx felt his own tattoos warm in response, the power singing through his bones built and then snapped away. In one burst she hurled the magic up and out, as though she stood at the base of a funnel. Lynx saw the magic go, a darkly glittering wave that surged up while he reeled from the force employed.

  ‘In!’ Layir roared, kicking open a door on the other side.

  Lynx pulled his pistol and led the way, falchion-tip leading though it was a chopping weapon. Any sort of a point with his strength behind it would be enough here. The confines of the barracks were too close for any clever sword play. He barged straight into a man coming the other way and somehow failed to stab him. They slammed together, faces meeting with a stinging slap. The smaller man staggered while Lynx blinked, still half-stunned from the impact, then Llaith shot the man.

  Together they pressed on, stepping over bodies as they went. Through a doorway Lynx found himself in the mess hall. Long empty tables and benches provided cover in the near-pitch black. The clunk of crossbows greeted them, two icers crashed back in response but the other Cards couldn’t see as well. Lynx shot one Mastrunner who was still aiming her crossbow then threw himself across a table at the ones who’d fired.

  They barely saw him coming in the gloom. Lynx slashed one down the shoulder and bore the other to the ground. He slammed that one against the floor, grabbing him by the neck to smash his head against the tiles. The other pulled a knife, but froze as Llaith fired on someone else, the icer flash illuminating the room.

  The hesitation gave Lynx time to dodge the slash that followed. Long-haired with dark tattoos down each arm, the Mastrunner looked like a veteran fighter, but the icer had ruined his night-sight. Lynx thrust his sword into the man’s throat to finish him as fast as he could while more gunshots rang out.

  ‘Anyone awake up here,’ he heard Braqe yell from the corridor, ‘stay down or I fire a burner and you all die nasty!’

  Lynx picked himself up and wiped the blood from his sword. ‘Hope they speak Parthish,’ he commented to Llaith.

  The ageing mercenary shrugged. ‘Fucking dead if they don’t.’

  Lynx went to fetch his mage-gun from outside. Safir was still down, Layir crouched over his adoptive father.

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘No,’ Layir replied. He took hold of Safir’s collar and dragged him over to the Mastrunners’ barracks. ‘Just out cold. Must’ve been a night-arrow.’

  ‘Lucky, that.’

  ‘Lucky for us the easiest way to win at Masts is to put the enemy to sleep.’

  Lynx loaded another sparker and pointed to the barracks. ‘Does that mean I’m in charge? Shit. Right – lock this down and set a guard. I’ll take a look around then meet you on the other side.’

  ‘Thought you didn’t like being in charge?’

  ‘I like getting shot even less.’

  ‘Mewling Hanese wimps!’

  ‘Yeah? Well you’re … ah shit. I got nothing.’

  Layir grinned and headed into the barracks. ‘Old people are funny,’ he called over his shoulder.

  Leaving the ready wit of the young behind, Lynx let the shadows swallow him up and old habits took over. Layir’s laughter vanished, replaced with the commando’s instinct. There was gunfire not far away, the heavy boom of earthers and crackle of sparkers. It had to be Toil’s group.

  There won’t be any other company in the Riven Kingdom who can use a Tempest mage in battle. Wonder if Anatin’s realised that and jacked his prices up a bit?

  With a rattle-cage attached to the back of the gate, an earther couldn�
�t breach it effectively. The rattle-cage was an interlocking set of chains and bars that would mostly warp and tangle under the impact. But with Atieno making the hinges and chains crumble to rust, the gate could be pulled down. Most likely.

  Lynx flinched back into the shadows as a door jerked open in front of him. A pair of Holding guards peered out. Neither looked keen for a fight despite the mage-guns they carried, twitching at the continued bursts of gunfire.

  ‘Hands in the air!’ Lynx called from the cover of darkness.

  The guards flinched and looked around, trying to see the speaker. When neither of their guns were pointing at him Lynx stepped forward. On instinct one of them jerked back, bringing his gun up. He never had the chance to realise his mistake.

  Lynx fired and an explosion of lightning and gore burst around the guard’s head, lashing his comrade in the process. That one managed a cut-off scream then all was silent. Not wanting to leave mage-guns lying around for the Holding’s youths to make a fatal mistake with, Lynx made his way cautiously to the dead men.

  There seemed to be no one else watching so he pulled their cartridge belts and emptied the guns, using one to load his own. It didn’t take him long to skirt the area, but there weren’t any more guards on the narrow streets. He doubted they were getting much in the way of pay if the Siym finances were on the brink of collapse. Loyalty only went so far when you had a family to feed.

  He worked around to the rear of the barracks, careful to announce his presence and avoid an icer from his own side. There he found Layir surveying their path alongside Llaith and Estal. Sitain was kneeling beside the burned Card, whose name was Aspegrin. She’d put her out, the burn bad enough she wasn’t going anywhere. Braqe emerged from the barracks a moment later, wincing at the cut she’d taken on Lynx’s behalf. Safir was also stretched out with another man of Snow, Ylor, beside him. He’d taken an arrow in the leg.

  ‘Braqe, you good?’

  ‘Fuck you.’