by JMD Reid
“Yeah,” she lied.
“He’ll be fine. They both will.”
“Of course they will. We’re gonna kill every last one of them and keep our men safe.” The lies helped. If she said it enough, Chaylene hoped she’d believe it.
“I can see them,” her friend whispered. “Riasruo defend us. I can see them in the Cyclone.”
Chaylene looked at the raging wall ahead of them, black clouds whipping around from left to right. With Minor Mist, she peered through the impenetrable clouds. Lightning danced in the storm’s interior, yellow-blue light strobing off the Stormriders’ metal armor. Hundreds of them galloped, tiny stars riding amid the chaos of the Cyclone.
A fresh chill pumped through her veins.
“We’re the Stormwall,” Chaylene whispered.
“Stormwall,” Zori echoed. “We are the Stormwall. We’re gonna swat them out of the skies like the bugs they are!”
Zori’s confidence infected Chaylene. Her back straightened. They could do this. They were the best trained scouts ever—Breston said so. They could hit the tip of a shark’s fin at two hundred ropes. They could, no, would swat the Stormriders out of the sky. She set her pressure rifle against her shoulder and aimed, her Pressure forming a bullet of compacted air in the weapon’s chamber.
“STORMWALL!”
With a mighty thwunk, the forward ballistae fired. Chaylene charted the path of the starboard shot, Ailsuimnae’s engine. It streaked towards the Cyclone’s wall of black rage covering the horizon. The clay shot punched into the maelstrom then detonated with orange fire, spraying gravel shrapnel in a deadly cloud, ripping Stormriders’ bodies into bloody mist.
But more came. The Cyclone rushed forward, a hungry shark darting in for the kill. Chaylene sighted at the closest rider through her scope, a metal clad figure atop a wingless pegasus—Estan called them horses—made of dark storm clouds. The beast’s eyes glowed like crackling lightning, its mane streaks of white-blue electricity. Sparks flared every time its hooves beat upon empty sky.
Thwunk.
The second ballistae volley fired and exploded with a mighty clap. The lead Stormrider dissolved in a spray of red, his mount disintegrating as the Cyclone’s violent winds tossed the Rider’s twisted remains to the right.
She took a deep breath and focused on her target, aiming for the shiny center of a Rider’s breastplate. It was no different than focusing on a target dummy, the Rider just something in the vague shape of a man. All glinting metal. The scales of some hoary monster risen out of Theisseg’s darkness to reave and pillage the world. She was a Stormwall. Three months of training, of drilling, of deprivation and stress had prepared her for this moment.
A slow exhale.
She fired.
Chapter Forty
The bow ballistae fired a third time, the explosions barely audible over the screams of the Cyclone. Ary tensed, his palms sweaty against his thunderbuss’s wooden stock. The maelstrom hurtled closer and closer, every heartbeat drawing the Dauntless and the storm nearer. He picked out individual clouds streaking across the edge of the tempest. Every time lightning flashed inside, he glimpsed the Stormriders.
“You will hold the railing!” bellowed the Sergeant-Major, striding the center of the deck. “Let’s show these bastards what a pack of hungry sharks you are!”
“STORMWALL!”
Thwunk!
The ballistae explosions boomed now, bursting off the bow of the ship. Shrapnel thudded against the Dauntless’s knifing prow. Ary’s breath quickened, his heart beating like the frantic wings of a hummingbird. Twilight crept upon the ship, the blue sky growing hazy.
A sailor screamed as more thuds struck the ship. A flight of arrows streaked out of the Cyclone’s front and cut into the sails and rigging. A woman fell from the rigging, an arrow buried in her knee, her body breaking upon the deck. Xoshia lay limp, mouth gaping. Dead.
“Ready!” Ary bellowed, crouching closer to the gunwale, the fortified railing that ran along the edge of the ship. “Aim!”
Darkness fell upon the Dauntless. The ship penetrated the Cyclone.
The Stormriders fell upon them like a frenzy of hungry sharks circling their prey. Metal armor, made of plates segmented, covered them from head to foot. Black hair streamed from beneath shining helmets. Fire burned around the hooves of their mounts, sparking every time they beat upon empty sky. They galloped upon a bed of coals visible only when their hooves pounded air. As a child, Ary had thought the Stormriders were oddly beautiful in their reflective armor, the lightning glinting off the metal as they rode on their ethereal mounts of raging clouds. But up close they were anything but. Their pale faces and amber, angular eyes—visible through gaps of their helms—burned with wild hatred.
“Fire!” He could barely hear his own shout over the rage of the Cyclone.
He discharged his lightning through his thunderbuss. It arced out towards the nearest Rider who drew back a bow, about to shoot his arrow at the Dauntless. Ary’s attack struck his enemy in the chest; sparks sizzled as the Rider flew backward, his mount dissolving into streaking clouds whipped away by the swirling winds. The body was lost as it tumbled through dark clouds.
But more Stormriders fired, their arrows streaking like darting fish straight at the starboard gunwale. One embedded into the wood before Ary’s face, shaft made of silvery metal, the fletching made of a pale leather. Bruth, the sailor on Ary’s left, screamed, a missile buried in his eye. He fell backward and twitched on the ground, his crossbow sliding across the deck.
Repetitive training kept Ary building his charge and firing his lightning. He couldn’t let up his attacks. Crossbow and lightning bolts fired from the ship, cutting into the circling Stormriders. Arrows hissed as they streaked past Ary’s head. He didn’t have time to be scared. He had to find a new target. To keep killing them before they could kill Chaylene.
White-blue lightning erupted from the end of his thunderbuss, arcing to strike the shoulder of a Stormrider. Another dead. It hardly made a difference as another flight of arrows sped towards him.
~ * * ~
Aim. Exhale. Fire.
Chaylene’s pressure bullet clipped a circling Stormrider in the shoulder, punching through the metal of his armor. The Rider’s arm fell useless, and the violent winds ripped his bow from his hand. She gathered her Pressure, compressing the air in the rifle’s chamber.
Aim. Exhale. Fire.
The bullet crumpled the next Rider’s breastplate. The demon swayed in his saddle, then his terrifying mount disintegrated into storm clouds. The winds caught the armored figure, hurling him away from the Dauntless. The Rider would keep falling until he crashed onto the ground far below. She tried not to think about that. She couldn’t care about the fates of these bestial men. They had to be stopped. She would protect her husband.
Aim. Exhale. Fire.
She didn’t even think. The moment her bullet cleared her rifle, she formed the next shot, found her next target, exhaled to reduce the trembles in her hand, and killed another Stormrider. But more kept coming, circling like a frenzy of sharks, their armor flashing like silver scales. But sharks didn’t send flights of deadly arrows sheeting through the rigging of the Dauntless, striking her crewmates. The wounded cried. Winds screamed. Arrows hissed.
Aim. Exhale. Fire.
A blur whizzed past her face, tugging at her left sleeve. Wood thudded. Chaylene didn’t care. She had to keep fighting. She aimed. Red stained her coat. She exhaled. A ragged tear marred her left sleeve, her blood soaking into the fabric. She fired. She didn’t even feel the wound. It didn’t matter. If her arm still worked, it couldn’t be serious.
“Chaylene!” Zori called out. “Left!”
“My arm’s fine.” Chaylene aimed down at the Stormrider about to pass in front of Ary. His thunderbuss’s discharge struck that Rider, felling the demon in an explosion of sparks.
“No, watch out!”
Chaylene looked to her left. A Stormrider rode at their alt
itude, almost in the rigging, his bow aimed right at her. She swiveled to bring her rifle to bear. But her body moved too slow, like she sloshed through brackish water. The Rider’s arrow drew back. I’m dead, flashed through her thoughts. She couldn’t get her rifle up in time.
I’m sorry, Ary.
The Rider crumpled into a ball of bloody metal, his flesh squeezed out of the cracks of his armor like orange pressed into pulp. Chaylene gasped in surprise. Zori stared at the ruined flesh, her eyes wide, face pale. With Major Pressure, Zori crushed the Rider with compressed air, mangling him beyond any recognition. Then the wind hurtled the ball of once living flesh like a shot from a ballistae.
“Riasruo Above,” Zori gasped, her voice shaking. “Riasruo defend your children from the demons of your foul sister. What did I do?”
Chaylene felt sick. She ignored that. She didn’t have time to vomit. She had to keep shooting. Keep killing. “You had to do it, Zori. Keep fighting. They’re Theisseg’s demons! They deserve it.”
“Demons,” Zori muttered. “Right. Nothing but demons.”
~ * * ~
The line holding the starboard side grew weaker. Four sailors were dead or wounded. Grech lay on his side, moaning in pain, an arrow embedded in his upper arm. But they held. They were the Stormwall. Ary discharged his lightning, felling another, while a shot from the crow’s nest—Ary hoped it was Chaylene’s—struck a Rider’s chest.
“Stormwall!” he kept shouting, trying to keep his sailors and marines fighting as wave after wave of arrows peppered the deck. The forest of projectiles, embedded in the gunwale, splintered the fortification. Metal arrowheads poked through the wood, snagging Ary’s coat with sharp points.
The enemy archers still circled, their numbers thinning. Beyond them, through the racing clouds, Ary glimpsed a mass of Stormriders forming up to charge. Standard Rider tactics used mounted archers to weaken the ship’s defenders before their marauders would charge, vaulting off their mounts to board the ship. Their metal swords made them deadly in close quarters.
“Prepare to repel boarders!” shouted the Sergeant-Major. “Detachment One, you do not let a single one of those bastards on this ship.”
“Yes, Sergeant-Major,” Ary roared. “Pour all your fire into breaking the charge! Estan, ignore the storming archers and fire at the boarders.”
“We’ll stop ‘em,” Ahneil yelled back.
Guts flashed a grin, his shout lost to the roar of the storm.
The Riders charged. A wall of metal stampeding on storm clouds rushed towards them. They raised wicked swords. The blades appeared as long as a bone sabre, but curved more and possessed edges that glinted.
“Ready!” Ary bellowed, knowing a massive volley was the best way to break a charge. “Aim!” The Riders thundered closer, fiery sparks exploding as their mounts’ hooves touched the sky. “Fire!”
Six crossbow bolts and four lightning bolts streaked across the sky. Sparks exploded and crossbow bolts punched through armor, toppling the front ranks like a farmer scything his barley field. Ary immediately built his charge. The Cyclone produced so much static electricity his reserves never dropped. He let fly another bolt. Sailors worked the porcelain cranks of their crossbows to reload. Riders fell dead, but more kept charging.
“Kill the bastards!” roared the Sergeant-Major. He aimed his thunderbuss, a bolt of lightning discharging over Ary’s head; his hair stood up as the air sizzled.
“Stormwall!” Ary roared and followed with his own discharge.
The sailors fired their next volley, crossbow bolts punching into the ranks of charging Stormriders. More died, but the demons did not break. Ten vaulted from their mounts—the beasts dissolving into clouds—and soared over the starboard railing and the heads of the defenders. Ary ducked a slicing blade. The Riders crashed onto the deck, the wood protesting their weight. Inabron’s head landed at Ary’s feet, his skinny body slumping in a fountain of arterial red.
“Repel boarders!” Ary’s stomach roiled with anger. “Show no quarter!”
He dropped his thunderbuss then ripped his bone sabre from its sheath. The milky-white blade dully reflected the Cyclone’s flashing lightning. A hulking Stormrider faced him, metal clinking as he moved. The scent of dirty oil filled Ary’s nose. Fierce, muddy eyes stared at him through the visor. The Rider bellowed in a harsh language.
Ary attacked by instinct. He’d trained with his bone sabre for hours and hours a day, week after week, learning how to kill. His blade whipped out faster than the Stormrider’s, his sword hissing through the air at the Rider’s breastplate. In Ary’s mind, he already saw the cut landing on the Stormrider’s side, slicing through the ribs to damage lungs and heart. A disabling, if not fatal, cut.
Ary’s bone blade shattered on the Rider’s armor.
He groaned at his mistake. He hadn’t thought. Attack the joints of a Rider’s armor, downyheaded idiot!
The Rider’s metal sword flashed at Ary.
~ * * ~
Chaylene fired at the charging Stormriders as lightning and crossbow bolts felled their front ranks. The Riders raced for the widest part of the ship—the starboard well deck where her husband defended. Her heart thudded. She had to protect Ary. She fired again. Another Rider fell. They screamed closer. She formed her bullet as fast as she could, but there were too many of them. All she could do was thin their numbers.
The Riders vaulted over the gunwale. A sailor was killed.
Chaylene formed her bullet.
Ary turned to face a Rider, his bone sabre streaking out to take the demon in the belly.
“No, Ary!” She tried to will her husband not to make that mistake.
He couldn’t hear her over the Cyclone.
His blade shattered on the Rider’s armor.
Her heart leaped into her throat.
Ary ducked the Riders riposte, and the metal blade whistled over her husband’s head. She finished forming her next bullet and leaned out over the crow’s nest to shoot down at the deck, disobeying orders. Autonomy Naval tactics dictated that scouts direct their fire at the Riders in the sky around the ship, not to shoot at the deck where they risked hitting a crewmate. She didn’t care. She would not let Ary die.
Her bullet took the Rider in the back. He stumbled forward and crashed into Ary. The weight pressed her husband against the gunwale. He fought against the bulk of the dead Rider to keep from tumbling over the railing and plummeting into the Cyclone.
Her gray eyes widened in horror. “Please, please, no!”
Ary tottered, grabbing the gunwale with one hand. His other arm flailed. He leaned out farther, dark clouds storming beneath him. Her heart clenched. He balanced for a moment, hanging between life and death.
And then he stopped leaning backward and pulled himself from the precipice. He planted his free hand on the Rider’s corpse and heaved. With great effort, he pushed the armored form, the dead body clattering to the deck.
An explosive breath burst from Chaylene. A lassitude washed through her flesh. She wanted to slump down into the crow’s nest. But she couldn’t. She had to keep fighting. Another group of Riders massed to charge the starboard railing.
“I am the Stormwall!” she screamed and fired at the new wave of Riders.
~ * * ~
Ary heaved the dead Stormrider off of him. He didn’t understand how the Rider had died, but he wasn’t complaining. He scanned the deck, and found chaos. Sailors rushed to meet the boarders with their bone sabres, the armored Stormriders’ swords hacking, severing limbs, splitting skulls. The carnage sickened him. The Zzuk Auxiliaries’ clubs battered as they protected the fore and aft Windwardens.
A Rider fought, his back to Ary. He rushed at the monster, gathering his charge in his left hand. He didn’t need a weapon. He possessed Riasruo’s Blessing of Lightning. He was a weapon. The Stormrider raised his blade to cut down a sailor.
You’re not going to kill another one of us!
Ary’s boot slipped on Inabron’s blood. He
fell forward, the pale-yellow deck rushing up towards his face. He stretched out his hand at the Rider, striving to just touch the monster and discharge his lightning before he crashed onto the deck. His fingers twitched, outstretched, crackling with electricity.
Ary’s fingers missed.
He crashed into the deck.
The Stormrider cut down the sailor.
Ignoring the pain in his chest, Ary shoved himself forward the last arm’s length as the Rider turned, armor clinking above the Cyclone’s roar. Ary’s fingers touched the metal boot—cool, slick, harder than wood or bone—and discharged. Sparks erupted, yellow light flaring, staining his vision with a blue blur.
The Stormrider fell with a painful, Human shriek. Metal crashed and crumpled on the deck, and the Rider’s sword impaled point first into the wood near Ary’s side, the blade flexing and torquing. Ary’s face reflected in the metal clearer than looking into a still pool or a mirror of polished alabaster.
How could these monsters make something so beautiful and so deadly?
“Ary!” Ahneil shouted. “Get up!”
He blinked. A new Stormrider clattered towards him. Ary grabbed the hilt of the sword stuck in the deck, using the weapon to haul his aching body back to his feet. The Rider closed faster. He rose halfway when the sword came free of the wooden plank. Losing his leverage, he crashed onto his back, and his head smacked the deck hard.
His vision fuzzed.
I have to get up.
The Rider clanked nearer.
Move!
The Rider stood over Ary, sword raised, exposing a gap in his armor over the armpit. Ahneil darted in—the tails of her unbuttoned coat flapping behind her—and stabbed her bone sword into the Rider’s armpit. Blood stained her off-white blade as she jerked it free, her pale face twisted in fury.
She shouted in a harsh language as the Rider stumbled back.
“Dheisseth!” the Stormrider bellowed. He swung a brutal swipe with his metal sword at Ahneil. She raised her sabre to parry, her face flinching in understanding of his word. The Rider’s sword carved through her bone weapon and cut half her chest open. Dark blood stained her coat as she toppled back in a heap, twitching and coughing.
