Knight Awoken

by Tammy Salyer

  Stave, perhaps that’s enough, Sym sent him sharply, her eyes still on Mallich’s features, which had hardened further. She caught Stave shooting her a confused glance and gave him a tiny shake of the head. She knew the truth and suspected Safran did as well, though it didn’t surprise her that Stave had never intuited it, being less concerned with affairs of the heart. His belonged to Safran, and that was the extent of his bother about the subject.

  Mallich had found someone he loved, ages ago. Eisa Nazaria. And though his love for her had and ever would be hopeless, he felt it no less strongly. Symvalline could not pity him, because she wasn’t convinced his devotion to Eisa through so many turns wasn’t at least some part of what had made him such a stalwart, loyal, and formidable Knight. But she had always wished there was some antidote to the pain he felt, something to ease his hopeless, unrequited yearning.

  He had somehow managed his feelings all these turns, and she didn’t feel it was her place to press him about them, now especially. Mallich was dedicated to his role as Knight Corporealis and would not appreciate being diverted from it through hers or anyone’s unsought sympathy. He proved this the next moment.

  “Look, there. Are you all seeing it?” He pointed toward the fleet’s main ship. The Gildr, the Knights called it.

  A thin trail of white smoke that barely marred the blue sky rose from the ship’s deck, then without warning there came an explosion that rocked the calm day. The sudden blast and concurrent concussive force was loud enough to make Symvalline’s ears pop. Bright red and yellow flames shot from the Gildr over the water, many of them whipping into nearby ships, and the water beneath the Gildr itself was churned into a froth. From somewhere deep in the center of the ship’s hull, a ball of fire shot toward the sky and belched out dense black smoke. The char-colored cloud bled out and up, dark and thick enough that the Knights observing from their post couldn’t see through it until it was dispersed by the sea breeze shortly afterward. After the initial blast, smaller secondary explosions rattled out for several more minutes until everything that could had combusted. The seaborne inferno raged, the fire spitting and sputtering in its fight against the ocean. Yet even as it lost its fight against the seawater, it emerged the true victor nonetheless, for the Gildr was utterly destroyed. The ship’s broken hull sank so quickly that it was as if it had never been.

  The Knights looked on speechlessly.

  It was Safran who broke the stillness. There, from the smoke. Is that a Dyrrak fighter?

  They had all nearly missed it, but it grew clearer quickly. Approaching with great haste was the Dyrrak version of the Dragør Wing Fighter ships of Ivoryss.

  “It’s just one ship,” Stave said, puzzled. “They must be suicidal, coming at us like that.”

  Mallich strode to the nearest watchtower, calling to the sentries posted there, “Alert the rest of the Watch and Commander Nennus. A Dyrrak fighter approaches. Do not—I say again—do not open fire. It appears to be a messenger.”

  One of the sentries acknowledged Mallich’s command and began chiming the alert horn as the other sped from her perch to the nearest stairway into the walled city.

  “You think that’s the case?” Symvalline asked as Mallich returned. Her heart galloped. Was this the opening salvo to the battle she’d hoped to avoid? Or, as her instinct told her, was the destruction of the Dyrrak warship the portent of something far direr than battle?

  “We’ll know soon enough.”

  They followed the fast-approaching fighter with their eyes. But they all realized at once it would not make it to the city wall. The craft had sustained some kind of damage, either before or during the blast, and was losing altitude rapidly.

  Mallich turned and shouted toward the sentry still at his post. “Soldier, what’s the fastest route down there?” The soldier seemed not to understand why the Knights would wish to run toward the enemy and dithered. “Now!” Mallich spat archly. His volume seemed not to have risen, but none on the wall missed his command. The Knight spoke little, but each word he uttered still carried the force of all those he held back.

  The sentry didn’t need to be told twice and outlined a route that took them to the closest of the wall’s sally ports. The Dyrrak craft crashed through the heavy tree canopy outside the wall’s southern expanse just as the Knights took to their heels toward it. Each of them knew that whatever was to happen next, the Dyrrak flying the fighter could give them enough information to potentially tip the hand in their favor. If they weren’t dead by the time the Knights reached them, that was.

  The stoic guards at the base of the wall were harder to persuade to let the Knights through, until Stave used the power of his klinkí stones to persuade them. The heavy iron bars on the single-wide, barely head-height door were thrown across it to bar any outside intruders before the Knights had barely stepped foot into the Weald outside. The acrid smell of smoke immediately drew them in the direction of the crashed fighter. None had high hopes they’d find the pilot still alive.

  They underestimated the pilot.

  She was obviously wounded, but all but Symvalline immediately recognized the woman hanging halfway through the broken cockpit covering. It was Chancellor Seldeg Aoggvír. And she was undoubtedly dying.

  Mallich approached her first, stepping cautiously amid the smoking bits of ruined airship dotting the charred forest floor. The woman was twisted halfway around so that her back was positioned against the craft’s hull, her eyes staring into the sky above. Blood poured from her shoulder and neck. Too much of it. But it was the unnatural arch of her back that spoke more blatantly of her imminent death.

  “Chancellor,” he said, stopping beside the craft. It had lost its landing struts, and the fighter’s cockpit was barely a head higher than Mallich. He now stared straight into her slack face.

  At his words, though, the Chancellor blinked. Her lips moved, but nothing issued from her broken body. She didn’t stop trying though, and Symvalline, observing from a few feet away, felt a tug of deepest pity for the dying woman. Whether friend or foe, her death was going hard.

  A slight convulsion shook the woman, sending a small gout of blood sputtering from her lips. This seemed, by some twisted marvel, to aid her voice. “… held them, held them off as long as I could, Knight Roibeard. But they are coming. The Raveners have taken control of… the… fle… ee—” A blood-choked gurgle ended her words, but the woman continued trying to speak. The taut muscles in her throat clenched over and over as she spat and coughed, trying to say something more. To warn them? That part was done. What else could she say?

  There was only one more thing that Symvalline wanted to know, had to know, that this warrior could tell them. She paced forward to look into the woman’s face. “Have you seen Ulfric Aldinhuus? Do you know what’s become of him?”

  Even as she choked, the woman’s eyes rolled toward Symvalline. As a heavy breath left her, the words “… gone to Dyrrakium” sighed out with it. And those were her last.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Jaemus pulled his head and torso from the Glistering Horizon’s engine housing and stood up straight, stretching his lower back and emitting a long, not-altogether-relieved groan. The work was done, the Glisternaut fleet—at least the sixty-eight ships they could assemble—ready to go to Vinnr. He’d tightened the last bolts on Cote’s command ship himself, and though Jaemus was reasonably pleased with the work, he was nearly ecstatic it was over. Mystae or Knight or whatever he was, he was still just a warm body with tired muscles and a nerve center that was telling him there would be a hefty price to pay for all he’d just put them through.

  The now-familiar pinpricking of claws running up his leg and torso told him Scintilla was back. “Gah! I wish you wouldn’t do that,” he proclaimed, uselessly, he’d learned. The flittercat, which had arrived with one or another of the loads of supplies the Magdastervians had delivered, had a mind of its own, and being nearly invisible and faster than a fleech rendered it in undeniable charge of its own fate.
The fate it seemed to have decided to claim was to scare the Cosmos dust out of him at every unsuspecting opportunity. He couldn’t very well shoo the cat away, not knowing whether that would result in his disembowelment or, given Scintilla’s unfathomable proclivities, something worse. Jaemus had concluded it was not just his imagination that the creature was slyly amused at his discomfort and impotent fear of it.

  Under duress, he had learned there were three things the beast loved, which he was obliged to provide anytime he was ambushed by it: Himmingazian food (perhaps due to it being mostly derived from aquatic life); hardy scritches along its spine and rump, which Jaemus had found was the only thing that stilled the creature long enough for him to get a good look at it; and, oddest of all, his lifemate.

  Case in point: “That’s the last one?” Cote said, approaching from the ship’s upper hatch. Immediately, Scintilla was gone, bounding in one leap to Cote’s chest, where it latched on with its uncannily long, sharp claws. Cote, rather than reacting with the horror Jaemus originally had, smiled. Smiled! And reached into a pocket he’d begun stowing dried veeshock morsels in. Immediately, Scintilla began making a deep-in-the-throat rumbling sound that Jaemus had only lately learned was an expression of pleasure instead of the growl of imminent violence he’d originally assumed it to be. Cote began feeding the cat the veeshock, a look of contentment on his face different from any Jaemus had previously seen.

  Presently, he muttered, “I can’t believe you’ve befriended that stabby beast, despite all the warnings I’ve passed on from the Magdastervians.”

  Cote merely gave him an indulgent chuckle. “Has it occurred to you that they might have been, you know, having a little fun at your expense?”

  “Do those talons look like fun?”

  Choosing to ignore his misgivings—again—Cote brought the subject back to the fleet. “So we’re done?”

  They stood atop the Glistering Horizon’s hull, looking out over the assembled fleet that bobbed around Isle Stonering in the Never Sea’s mild waves.

  “The very last,” Jaemus said and, to his surprise, beamed. It felt good, what they’d accomplished as a team of Glisternauts, and he was magnificently proud of them all.

  Cote tossed a few veeshock crumbles aside, and Scintilla jumped free to finish its shameless gobbling of the morsels. Cote stepped up to Jaemus and grabbed him around the waist, pulling him in for a kiss. It landed on Jaemus’s half-open mouth, which was in the process of groaning yet again, the strained and overworked muscles in his back reminding him how much torture he’d just put them through.

  Jaemus reached back and pressed his hands against the sore spots, and Cote let him go, smiling in understanding. “I thought you were invincible now, being a hero,” he quipped.

  “Hero, sure. But apparently being invincible doesn’t make me impervious to the rigors, I mean, miseries of hard work. I thought once I made glint engineer I could delegate this stuff out for good.”

  “And miss out on all the satisfaction of knowing your own hands are responsible for constructing the best of the best? That’s not the Jae I know.”

  “It’s true I like knowing the job is done and done well.” He frowned theatrically. “But I’ve had toothaches that were more pleasant.” Despite his grumbling, he was already feeling better, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to milk the moment for all the attention he could get.

  Twenty-four Glister cycles had passed—about five Vinnric days, he calculated—and the Himmingazians were ready to go. Whether by some supernatural miracle or wystic phenomenon that not a man or woman in Himmingaze would have believed in a few cycles ago, or by sheer Himmingazian competence and grit, they had achieved the impossible. He would have to remind himself to take most of the credit for it sometime later.

  Cote picked up one of the wrenches scattered nearby, giving the housing panel bolts a few last tugs. Jaemus merely stood and watched his lifemate for a moment, enjoying the stolen instant of time before things grew serious again. Cote’s shoulders were broader than his, though he was just a smidge shorter than Jae. His darker hair contrasted with his light eyes, and he bore himself with such command that he was practically majestic. In truth, Jaemus had never known what Cote saw in him, but he’d never doubted the love and affection between them. Even when they argued, the verbal sparring was only the thinnest and least important layer of a relationship whose foundations seemed rooted in the very core of eternity.

  Cote began gathering the tools and placing them in their case, the clanks and clinks pulling Jaemus from his musing. He regretted bringing focus back to the task at hand, though it had to be done. “It should be you, you know,” he said seriously.

  Cote stood and turned to look at him. “Me what?”

  “This hero business. You’re much better suited to it than I am. When this is all over, what do you think of the idea of asking the Creatress for a Mystae spark of your own?”

  The fact that Cote didn’t respond immediately assured Jaemus that he wasn’t the first to have had the thought, and this both elated and terrified him. He’d already considered what life would be like if he never aged and Cote did. If he never died and Cote did. That was not what Jaemus wanted and never would be, and he’d had to ponder the possibility that it might not be his choice. Just like being ordained as a member of a warrior class, twice, had not been.

  As his lifemate so often did, he sidestepped the subject. “Let’s consider that more after this is done.” His green eyes sparkled in the misty morning light, and Jae’s breath, like it always did when Cote looked at him that way, caught briefly.

  “Whatever you say, love.”

  “I think it’s time for me to gather the crews,” Cote said after a pause, and Jaemus nodded.

  Not long later, a total of fifteen Glisternauts were assembled on the bridge of the Glistering Horizon: four pilots, eight copilots, and three mechanics. Jaemus himself served both as copilot and “mechanic” (though the word was naturally a bit too simplistic for his true role) for the Glistering Horizon, the other copilot being Heleina Gibbaden, recently promoted from navigator. The painful memory of Heleina beaning him with a heavy piece of Dyrrakium crockery not so long ago easily replaced the ache in his back.

  As he looked over the crew, Jaemus’s lips curled up in a mischievous (and possibly slightly smug) grin. How surprised his fellow Knights and their Magdastervian allies would be when the Himmingaze armada arrived. He knew they’d had their unspoken doubts he could assemble and modify the ships in time to be of any use, but they’d openly questioned where he would get enough pilots who were willing to put everything on the line to help other-worlders that, until just recently, they’d never even known existed. Why should Himmingazians fight for Vinnr—even if the fight was in reality over the fate of the entire Cosmos? He’d merely reassured them it was as easily said as done, and with time as limited as it was, they’d chosen to drop the matter, either trusting him or giving in to his whims.

  And that was where his secret advantage lay, the one that made his lips curl in unsuppressed joy.

  As was proved by the assembled crew, he had no need to persuade that many Himmingazians to fight for Vinnr at all. He only needed those who now stood before him and Cote, because Jaemus’s specially collected fleet of sixty-eight ships were to be, by and large, unoccupied. Among Jae’s many contributions to the Glisternaut tool chest was the invention of remote pilotry. (And wouldn’t Ulfric Aldinhuus positively bubble with envy if he knew this technology existed? Jaemus could hardly wait to bask in the stubborn old man’s admiration.)

  Hence, their sixty-eight ships only needed a crew of twelve, aided by the backup mechanics. The fleet would be divided into four squadrons, each commanded from a cosmocruiser, which would carry the pilots and copilots who flew them all from the cosmocruisers’ bridges. The Himmingaze population itself would hardly know they were missing before they’d return.

  He hoped.

  Luckily, and as Jaemus had expected, of the thirteen assembl
ed with him and Cote, ten came from the Bounding Skate and needed no persuasion at all to go to Vinnr’s aid. They knew what was at stake. Most felt they’d already been part of the fight since the beginning and had no desire to abandon it now. Again, his heart filled with pride at being a member of such an inventive and, yes, noble people.

  He was glad to see that Spark Engineer Saxton and Flight Leader Drustim had joined the crew as well. Saxton had needed no nudge at all to join the crew. Apparently, witnessing the appearance of a man from amid a beam of incandescent blue light and then witnessing that same man be aided—and not eaten—by a slangarook were all it took to spark an appetite for greater adventures in the young man, once he’d subdued his understandable terror. Jaemus instantly felt a kindred spirit with the spark engineer and his ambition. As it turned out, Saxton was equally convincing on his own in enticing Drustim onto the crew, and Jaemus had barely needed to say much at all to lock in their final member.

  Cote took two deliberate steps forward, letting his eyes roam the crew now standing in complete silence. With one hand, he stroked the velvety fur of the flittercat, who clung to his chest and had nuzzled its head under his chin, emitting that ghastly deep-throated churr. The moment to join the fight was at hand, and Jaemus suspected everyone there, even the two who’d never seen the imposing and imperious (and frightening) Dyrraks up close, understood the gravity. Jaemus wasn’t going to ruin the mood by suggesting that the miniature monster clinging to Cote somewhat diminished his commanding presence. And did it really, after all?