A Game of Horns: A Red Unicorn Anthology

by Gregory D. Little

  I stepped back. “Zupho, listen to me. I know you’re trying to protect your leader’s baby. That’s noble of you, but these people have made an oath to defend our own people—our own children—by any means necessary too. Don’t you get it? We’re more alike than you think!”

  You manipulate with words, but I believe in the value of actions. We watched you from afar, and your deeds proved useless. You had your chance.

  “You know what?” Pashkov said. “Miles forgot to mention one other thing about us: We’re sore losers. If this is where it ends for us, fine, but you won’t get what you want either, uni.”

  I knew what she would do next in an instant. I leaped in front of the colt as Pashkov aimed and fired.

  The blast struck my stomach like an icicle launched from a tiny catapult. The impact spun me around. The heat was so spectacular, it felt cold. I couldn’t move. And then, the pain was gone—along with the sensation in my legs.

  “Miles!” I heard Khalaf cry.

  I watched Zupho take his hoof off Yukimura and back away. The two stared at one another, as if sharing momentary mental exchange of some sort before the sergeant sat up.

  “Everybody stand down,” Yukimura ordered as he placed a hand over his wound.

  Zupho moved away even more, and the other unicorns did the same.

  Pashkov slid to my side and rested my head in her lap. She spoke what sounded like Russian, repeating the same words over and over. I assumed she was apologizing.

  Zupho trotted over to me. His black eyes were as sharp as ever, though hints of confusion shone through.

  You leaped in front of our young when he is not your own. Explain.

  I chuckled through my cough; I sounded like Amy. “Blame it on stupid muscle memory.”

  The unicorn examined me. He didn’t seem to understand what the shot had done to me as he nudged my body with his horn.

  The colt, freed of the sergeant’s grip, hurried over to Zupho’s side. The two nuzzled each other momentarily before Zupho nudged the colt to the rest of his group. One of them escorted him away while the other three returned. The remaining four stood together. The tips of their horns sparked and glowed as they charged up.

  “Zupho,” I managed to beg.

  He glanced at me, and then lifted his head. The glow from his horn dimmed away, and the others followed his lead.

  Fine. Your actions are the only reason these “good soldiers” will be spared. He turned to Yukimura, glaring. Tell your people this: You face us with aggression, and we respond with aggression. We witness compassion, and we respond with compassion. Whatever our next course will be is up to you.

  Zupho walked away, and the others followed.

  Mellis raised his weapon; he had a clear shot. Khalaf, however, placed his hand on the barrel and lowered the weapon.

  The Alpha will remember your agreement, Timothy Miles, Zupho whispered into our heads. Your people can make preparations for your sister’s retrieval at this location. And, sergeant, do not bother telling anyone where we are. We will be gone by the time you arrive.

  They disappeared. Now that the excitement had worn off, I realized the rest of my body had gone numb. I thought I had been paralyzed, but now all my other senses were beginning to fade too.

  “Mellis, call for a medic dispatch, now!” Yukimura said over my limp body. “You’re going to be fine, Miles. Just hold on.”

  A comforting lie.

  I’m so sorry, Amy, I thought, wishing I had the unicorn’s gift of telepathy. I meant to say good-bye. Still, you were worth it. And so was the baby red unicorn. An innocent for an innocent. A good trade. Maybe this will lead to something greater.

  About the Author

  When drawing fanfic graphic novels was no longer fulfilling enough as a teen, Raphyel Jordan ventured to greater adventures in storytelling. Now, when he isn’t busy saving the world through his trusty video games, he spends time writing about exciting worlds untouched by man.

  Jordan writes young adult science fiction and fantasy. For more details on characters and art, visit:

  RaphyelMJordan.com.

  His Most Violent Friend

  Gregory D. Little

  With a groan and a thud, the superweapon broke down. Again.

  “Blood and flame,” Del swore, blowing out his cheeks in a sigh. His father had taught him that artificer work was ninety percent repair and maintenance. Del had naively thought the finest of the Imperial Army’s technology might have been an exception.

  The vast weapon stood before and above him, blocking out the sky with a blood-hued bulk battered and scarred from five years of conquest. The men called the mechanism “the red unicorn,” but despite its crimson armor plate, four-legged locomotion, and the single void-black, hraxite horn protruding from its head, it was far too stocky to truly look like a horse.

  It was also inert as a rock. The trapezoidal fueling pylon connecting the unicorn’s underbelly with the ground offered some stability, but the autumn winds were stiff. A nasty gust had set the unicorn swaying, making it far more dangerous to the army on whose side it fought than to the city it was tasked with conquering.

  Out of foolish hope, Del gave the crank protruding from the pylon one last turn. He told himself it would work this time. The red unicorn would launch itself forward from the pylon, gallop across earth already ruined from its previous passages, and smash its way through the city wall beyond. Holding his breath, Del toggled an activation lever the length of his arm.

  There wasn’t even the groan and thud.

  In the distance, Strathryen’s wall peeked through the great arched hole in the side of the mountain within which the city lay. A short tunnel provided the only exterior access to the mountain’s hollow core, and the latest alabaster section of wall remained stubbornly unblemished. A single pearl set in the mottled oyster-gray of the mountain’s stone.

  Even if the damned thing worked, the twice-damned moles would only rotate a fresh section of wall into position, and we’d be at it again tomorrow. Del quashed his frustration, embarrassed at his mental use of the slur. Your mother taught you better. Remember, you’re here to earn enough to support her and Aubri. Since Father’s death, Del’s mother and sister depended on him. It was easy to forget after five years apart.

  Strathryen was unique. With only one entrance into the mountain, the Thryens had built their city wall atop a massive gear buried beneath the mountain. Whenever the unicorn demolished a section of wall, the masters of the city rotated the gear before the army could pour into the breach, moving the ruined section of wall out of the way and presenting a fresh one through the narrow mountain aperture.

  In the beginning, soldiers had tried to rush the breach the moment it was formed, only to be smashed between debris and mountain as the great gear turned. Wall and unicorn were evenly matched. The horned battering ram took almost as much damage as it gave in each attack. It was all the army could do to drag their wounded superweapon away each time before it was crushed forever as the early soldiers had been.

  There was no way to starve out the city. The Thryens grew fungal food in tunnels too deep to reach. There had always been rumors of secret tunnels leading from city to countryside, but if they existed, no human had ever found them. Smashing Strathryen’s entire wall bit by bit was the only option. And the sole weapon the army possessed capable of such destruction might as well have been a statue.

  Sweating despite the chill, Del resisted the urge to kick the pylon as the scarlet glow of the runes running up its side began to fade, their magic dissipating unspent. He glanced around, sensing the eager tension of the army slipping into disappointment and even anger. Tradition dictated that every on-duty soldier stand in formal ranks to watch each charge of the red unicorn, ready in case this was the day the last of Strathryen’s accursed wall fell and the city was opened to the army’s assault.

  Waiting to go home, in other words.

  Sighing again, Del replaced the red flag in the pylon’s receptacle with
a black one. No attack today. Please let there be one tomorrow.

  O O O

  While the winch teams worked to lower the unicorn back to the ground, Del moved off to prep the service area. Even a month ago, he’d have had several helpers, but casualties of all kinds struck the men and women who worked the unicorn at a far greater rate than they did the soldiery. Del was all that remained, his fellows whittled away until the unicorn, his last, most violent friend, was all he had left.

  Two men Del had never seen before approached from the edge of the wide ring of stones designating the servicing area. One was haughty, his black, flinty eyes scowling above the perfect circle of mustache and beard which ringed his mouth as if drawn in by charcoal pencil. He wore his black hair close-cropped, a style that imitated that of military officers, but even the most arrogant of officers would never dress as this man did, in silks and brushed velvets.

  As he drew close, the overwhelming smell of roses wafted from him. It was a scent Del associated with his mother and her garden, but it was layered on so thick it threatened to curdle the memory and make Del gag. Despite the scent’s strength, the perfumed man carried himself like the entire world emitted a distinctly unpleasant odor.

  His companion wore plate armor that protruded at odd angles and was covered in cracked enamel. It clinked as he drew to a halt, his face covered by a strange helm of many faceted angles. A wide, scarred leather belt encircled his waist, and a ribbon of segmented steel links wound around the belt.

  The steel ribbon, edged on two sides and sporting hooked barbs at intervals along the flats, was connected to a hilt and cross guard carried in the man’s right hand. A whipsword. Supremely difficult to master, too few people could manage the weapon to make it worth employing in massed combat.

  It was a weapon for sadists and torturers. Del felt his stomach drop and splash into something oily and icy by turns.

  “Such a pity,” the haughty man said by way of greeting. “I’d so hoped to see the mechanism in action.”

  Del had to suppress a grunt at the term. It was tough to send the unicorn into battle day after day and not think of it as a living thing.

  “I understand there have been more and more problems with the mechanism of late,” the haughty man continued. “That it’s even begun to slow the war effort.”

  His words carried an air of authority that Del didn’t like. He’d mistakenly assumed the man was some visiting dignitary from the capital, there to acquire a plausible basis for the various war stories he would tell to impress his friends later.

  “I am Inquisitor Imris,” the haughty man said, and the oily, icy sensation in Del’s stomach shot outward along all his nerves. “I have been sent by His Most Gloried Radiance to root out the cause of the war’s stalled progress and guide it back to the path of expediency. Our emperor suspects foul play may be at work.”

  “I can assure you that’s not the case, Inquisitor.” Del forced himself to stand upright. Conspiracies of spies and saboteurs were easy fodder for suspicious minds. “The truth is far more mundane.” He hesitated, not wanting to make excuses, but having begun, he had to continue. “We’ve been out here a long time. Even great works such as the … the mechanism wear out.”

  After five years of constant war and thrice as many cities captured, the siege had become a race to see which side’s technological marvel would permanently fail first. All to sate an emperor whose lust for conquest and expansion Del now saw was insatiable. It had not felt so at first. It had seemed a good living, something that could keep Del’s family fed after his father’s death.

  “Come with me, Artisan Lieutenant,” Imris said.

  A slight shuffle of the armored whipswordsman’s feet put Del’s thoughts of disobedience to rest.

  “We are going to have a chat in the general’s tent.”

  O O O

  The general’s gloomy pavilion seemed to eat the daylight, doubling down on the pall the inquisitor’s presence cast. Del stood before General Ober, his commanding officer as ashen as the tent walls, and flanked by Imris and the whipswordsman.

  What happened? What news did this inquisitor bring that could age the general another five years in a day?

  Del had trouble meeting the general’s eyes even as the man weakly dressed him down, parroting Imris’s words about how important the unicorn was to the war effort. Never mind that Ober had only yesterday reminded Del that equipment—or men—left in the field for five years could never be expected to do what he was now ordering Del to do.

  The whipswordsman fiddled with the coils around his waist with one gauntleted fist, loosening them slightly before pulling them taut again with a tug of the hilt. The paired actions shifted the coils over time, and Del found himself following the stop-and-start path of one particular barb, damaged in some previous use, as it wended its way along the man’s leather-clad waist.

  “I do hope you are paying attention,” Imris said to Del. “And, General Ober, I would think a man with so much at stake could muster more conviction when demanding a higher quality of performance from his men.” He clucked his tongue. “I find overt displays of leverage distasteful, but they are sometimes warranted. Need I remind you of the state I left your family in upon my departure from the capital?”

  The hairs on Del’s arms and neck rose at the same rate as the remaining blood drained from Ober’s bearded face.

  “No need to remind,” the general said, his voice as faint as if it came from his deathbed. “‘Unharmed for the nonce,’ you said, ‘but unharmed is far from comfortable.’”

  “Yes, indeed,” Imris responded, his words emphasized by the slinking sound of the whipswordsman toying with his coils. Imris’s lips twisted as he spoke, as though he did indeed find the words distasteful. “The emperor grows impatient and will press on any levers available to him. And do not think,” Imris said, turning slithery eyes back to Del, “that his levers stop at the capital. I had long leagues to study your records, Artificer Lieutenant Del Trayvin. General Ober’s family is in our grasp, yet perhaps their distance removes some of the impact. But you grew up very near here, didn’t you?”

  The last of the inquisitor’s words reached Del as though through a long tunnel, fuzzy with distance. His body went numb.

  “I suggest,” Imris said, “that you get the mechanism operational with all haste.”

  O O O

  Strathryen’s pristine wall silently mocked Del from its crevice in the mountain. Beneath the bright autumn sky, he directed the winch teams to lay the unicorn on its side. He emptied it of parts as quickly as he dared, carefully documenting each action so he might reverse it once he’d found the problem.

  Imris and his pet torturer were seldom far.

  “Have you found the time to visit your dear mother and sister?” the inquisitor asked once, almost casually. “How nice it must be to find yourself so close to home after so long away. I confess to some concern when I learned this fact.” He turned his gaze back toward the general’s pavilion, eyes disappointed. “How could our good general allow sole control of our greatest strategic asset to fall to a man who may very well harbor sympathies for the enemy? It positively reeks of conspiracy.”

  Anger flashed in Del, only partly from the guilt of not having visited his family, but he quashed it. “I assure you I’m a loyal soldier of the Imperium, Inquisitor Imris,” he said. What more do you want me to say? There’s no one else qualified to work on the unicorn. “I’m loyal because of my family. It’s my wartime salary that supports them.”

  The Imperium’s wars had begun shortly after Del’s father had died. Without those wars, Del could have done as his father had done, supporting the family by plying his trade as an artificer on well pumps and mills in his own village, a half-day’s ride from the army’s current camp. But wars brought price spikes, forcing Del to search for more lucrative use of his skills.

  Imris fixed him with an unreadable expression before blessedly moving on, giving the unicorn’s hraxite horn a wi
de berth where it came nearest to touching the ground. Del’s thoughts slipped crazily. He imagined himself running up behind Imris and shoving the man into the horn. But with the unicorn’s magic drained away, save for the last dregs pooling in its heart, the horn of black crystal would do no more than render a man unconscious at a touch.

  Anger made work difficult, and Del lost another hour before regaining his concentration.

  At midafternoon on the second day, in the midst of a delightfully Imris-free stretch of time, Del dug out a gear stripped of half its teeth, probably during the last attack. It took him two hours to replace it and the rest of the evening to reassemble everything. His hands throbbed and ached, and all he could smell or taste was the sweet tang of oil, but it was done.

  Relief washed through him, dragging exhaustion in its wake, but he sent a runner bearing news of his success before allowing himself to sit. His limbs shook with weariness and hunger, but the former won out. He passed out beneath the rising moons.

  O O O

  Del had worked with machinery for too long not to recognize the feeling of cold steel against his skin, though he had never woken to the sensation against his throat.

  Moving nothing else, he opened his eyes.

  His first thought was he had slept away the rest of the month, seeing five moons in the sky where there should have been only two. Then he realized his mistake.

  Three pale, round faces stared down at him with large, blank eyes that were all pupil. The sight would have unnerved anyone who hadn’t grown up near the area. The Thryens had risked much, coming on a night with the two largest moons bright and waxing.

  Their black-shrouded bodies were oddly lanky for subterranean dwelling, and they carried a cold, earthy smell from the depths with them on the rare occasions when they ventured beyond their walls. To outsiders, Thryens were indistinguishable from one another, so it was entirely possible that Del had known one or all of these individuals growing up.

  “Speak not!” the one holding the knife commanded, and the choppy syntax and clipped accent awoke an unexpected wash of nostalgia and homesickness in Del, despite the threat of death. “You are the device’s last master. We have seen to that. Yet still you send it against us without hesitation.”