Dragon Road

by Joseph Brassey

  The next flurry of cuts nearly knocked him off his feet. Instead he rolled backwards and came up in a crouch, now separated from his friends. The dead came at him, repeating their begging pleas. He parried one, thrust in response. It was turned aside. Another counter came. Another. His arms ached and the force of the blows made his spine shake. He went down to one knee. Barely parried the next.

  An indistinct, armored figure appeared behind his two assailants. Ragged-cloaked and translucent. An arrogant, bemused smile on the lower half of its face. A knight of the order. Behind it, the crew of Elysium and Belit fought for their lives.

  As if you could be anything at all, the apparition said. Without us.

  Something in Elias snapped. The blades came down again. His mind narrowed to a pinprick. A single thought filled his mind. Speed.

  The steel rang against Oath of Aurum. Elias surged upwards, the world moving slowly as the spell suffused his limbs, made him just quick enough. He hammered the next counter aside, pressed his attack. They retreated, now. His blows came with grunts at first, then screams. The armored figure was gone, but the fear of it filled his mind. He hammered back in. The wind of his passing sword was a chorus of light-streaking whispers in the dark, until a blow turned aside the sword of one even as the second cut at his back. Elias dropped into a low crouch, caught the second strike high overhead in a hanging parry, whipped it away, and brought the glowing sword about in a perfect circle straight into the first’s center of mass. The smell of burning flesh filled the air. The white sword blazed. Its light poured out of the animated corpse’s eyes, and sheared through the dead man’s flesh, leaving a severed, inert body in its wake.

  Elias pivoted as the second assassin brought its sword back around, and offset its cut with a thrust down the centerline that put his point straight through its mouth. Light blazed from its eyes, and the dead thing fell silent and still.

  Two of the dead remained. Clutch charged one, caught its cut on the haft of her axe. The twins rushed in underneath, and drove the points of their enchanted shock-sticks repeatedly into its middle, until the crackling charges ripped its mass apart. Even as it fell, it still screamed. Still tried to fight. Clutch had to hit it three times with her axe before it stopped moving.

  A heartbeat later, and Aimee stood over the immobile form of their last foe, wisps of blue flames from a powerful spell dissipating about her slender fingers. “That,” she breathed, “was a lot harder than it should’ve been.”

  “What the hell,” Belit said, shaking in the sudden quiet, “were those things? I’ve heard stories about the walking dead. In none of them were they adept with swords, nor were they spewing nonsense at the people they attacked.”

  “It wasn’t nonsense,” Aimee said, and terror filled her voice. “It was the–” she gulped “–the cessation echo.”

  Elias closed his eyes. Of course. He knew the term. What he hadn’t known was that the sword he bore would kill them so quickly.

  Nor did he know why.

  “Translation?” Belit asked, her voice settling.

  The answer came from an unexpected place. Bjorn picked still-wiggling bits of gore from the large mace he’d brought as he spoke. “It means,” he said, “their last thoughts. Newly animated dead sometimes carry the echo of the folk they were. These ones–” he gestured at the aftermath filling the room “–sound like they were just repeating their last thoughts before they died, over and over and over.”

  “Gods,” Vant breathed. “What the fuck…”

  Elias crossed the distance to reach the rest of the group just as Aimee turned to the three new arrivals, her tone somewhere between thankful and angry. “I told you,” she said, “not to come with me. What are you doing here?”

  “Hey, don’t thank us or anything,” Clutch said with a shrug. “Not like we saved your ass.”

  “That’s not it,” Aimee started.

  “Then what is it?” Vlana demanded.

  “Who is watching Elysium?” Aimee’s eyes blazed, her expression fierce.

  “We need to get out of here,” Belit said.

  Before any of their rescuers could answer that, the small room was suddenly sliced through with the beams of hooded lanterns and glow-globes contained in focused cylinders. Enforcers followed – near twenty of them, carrying heavy clubs. Behind them came breastplate-clad guards from the upper levels carrying spears and wearing short stabbing swords at their hips. And at the rear of them, armored head to foot in gold-gilded steel, a white-haired officer aristocrat who swept his eyes across the lot of them before drawing an ornate sword and fixing his gaze on Elias as he addressed the lot of them.

  “Guardsmen, escort the foreigners back to the upper levels,” Yaresh said, before gesturing at the enforcers. “Clean up this refuse and convey my orders to the commandant of this sublevel: the dead are aboard Iseult. This entire level must be punished and purged.”

  Chapter Eight

  The Belligerent Apprentice

  It would have been wise for Aimee to keep her temper in check until they were in private with the lord of the muster. Instead, her anger boiled up out of her as soon as the armored guardsmen finished escorting the group of them to the streets of the upper levels.

  “Lord Yaresh,” she said. The lord of the muster continued walking.

  “Lord Yaresh!” she repeated.

  “I will speak to your master, apprentice,” Yaresh answered. In his voice was every lecturer that had ever blown aside her criticisms, every senior theorist ever to dismiss the magic of a silly upper ring girl, and more. She forgot her fear. She forgot position, status, or whatever absurd place this insufferable old bastard wanted her to keep to. Her vision tunneled and flashed red, and before anyone could stop her she had seized the officer aristocrat by the arm and spun him around. Perhaps from sheer surprise, he wheeled about, momentarily unsteady on his feet.

  Aimee stepped directly into the old man’s personal space and jabbed her finger into the center of his armored chest. “No, Lord Yaresh. I am Aimee de Laurent of Havensreach. You will speak to me.”

  Yaresh’s eyes widened in a flash of anger, then his gaze narrowed, slit-like, and he stared her down, with that look she had seen so many powerful men wear: that expected anyone deemed lesser to simply cower. “Have a care, girl,” he began. “You forget your position, and moreover, mine.”

  Aimee’s blood pounded in her ears. She didn’t move her hand. “No valid position exists that grants one man the right to massacre an entire level of people. I don’t give a damn who you aspire to be. You’re not purging anyone.”

  “Is that a threat?” Yaresh whispered. A guardsman reflexively moved towards her at this. Elias was suddenly beside her. The guard caught the look on his face and stopped like he’d hit a brick wall.

  “Smart,” she heard the green-eyed young man say.

  “I’m not threatening you,” Aimee said, deadpan. “I’m informing you. Every man has limits, Yaresh. Yours are staring you in the face. You have no right, and if you try, I’ll snap that aristocratic pride over my knee and teach you why they call me sky-splitter.”

  Yaresh’s face flashed red murder, but Aimee saw fear there as well. He took a step back, realized what he’d done, and fixed her with a hateful, water-boiling stare. “You arrogant, disrespectful cunt.”

  “She’s right,” Belit said, standing now at Aimee’s other side. The warrior woman was slightly taller than the lord of the muster, and though her face was calmer, there was something burning in her golden eyes. Weary. Caged. “The Lord of the Muster may execute a purge, but only the captain may order one. You don’t have that authority.”

  “When I require legal advice,” Yaresh snapped, “I will consult the functionaries, not a glorified failure of a door sentry.”

  Belit looked as though the lord of the muster had struck her across the face – but rather than cowed, she seemed suddenly furious.

  “What in the Maelstrom’s Heart is going on here?” Rachim jogged down the stre
ets towards them, a cadre of his own armed guards at his back. Despite his limp and his missing eye, their host projected a presence of fierce authority. Jogging beside him, wearing a hastily buckled sword, was Viltas’s son, Vallus.

  Yaresh turned. His lip curled. “Your guests have gone to the deeper levels without sanction, for the gods-only-know what reason. There they encountered a number of the walking dead, from which my men’s arrival saved them. Now this uppity hellion has threatened me in the course of executing my duties.”

  The laugh – quick and caustic – ripped out of Aimee. “Hardly! We dealt with those walking corpses ourselves. Your trained guard dogs showed up after the fact, then you lost your mind and started talking about purges and genocides.”

  “Something that doesn’t fall within his purview,” Belit affirmed. “Not without express permission from the Officers’ Council.”

  “Without an active captain,” Yaresh protested, “threats to the welfare of the ship must be dealt with by those in the position to take action. I will not wait for permission from a committee before taking action to defend my people, my kin, my home, from the excesses of the rabble below.” Now he stared at Belit, fury naked in his gaze. “And I will not accept judgment from an up-jumped, glorified sentry who failed her one job, simply because of her lingering empathy for the people that produced her whore mother.”

  Aimee was momentarily robbed of further comment, her mouth hanging open. Belit’s gold eyes had gone some strange combination of burning, frigid calm. Instead of backing down cowed, the commander of the Red Guard stepped directly into Yaresh’s space and looked down into his eyes. “What happened to you, Lord Yaresh?” she said, her voice a cold whisper. “You were a hero, once. What horrible thing shriveled your heart and left this trembling, reactive, frightened man, afraid of those who have nothing? What turned you into such a coward?”

  Yaresh’s hand swept out automatically at the taller woman’s face. Belit caught it in her grasp. “NO!” she shouted, and the sound was like thunder. “You may hold a position higher than mine, your purview may be broader, and heaven help me I may one day be responsible for your personal safety, but you will not strike me! Not now, not ever!”

  Spears raised. Swords swept from scabbards. Out of the corner of Aimee’s eye, Elias shifted his posture. She saw the glimmering blade of his enchanted steel slip one inch free of its scabbard. Behind her, her crewmates raised shock-sticks, axe, and mace. Rachim was shouting something, holding out his hands for calm even as nobody listened. Aimee felt the magic pulling at her fingers, itching to be let free, even as her mind grasped for the right words.

  Then, thunder. A concussive bang erupted in the midst of them, physically pushing apart every man and woman standing in the upper-level street. The release of mystic power made Aimee dizzy, and for a moment she nearly lost her balance.

  Harkon Bright caught her. He stood in the middle of the group, now, white hair like moonlight, gray eyes twin stars in his dark face. “That,” he said quietly, “is enough.”

  “Belit,” Aimee heard Vallus saying as the group walked towards the officers’ hall. “Belit, please.”

  The commander of the Red Guard kept walking, her face fixed forward.

  Violence in the street had been averted, but in a fit of rage, Yaresh had summoned the council of the officer aristocracy to call for a vote on the purge he wished to conduct. Now within the compound, the group followed Harkon and Rachim towards the still-closed doors. Every member present in the conflict below had been brought, in case there was need to testify.

  As they stopped before the doors, Vallus caught up with Belit, and reached out, touching her arm. “Bel,” he said, with jarring familiarity, “please.”

  Belit turned, and her face was a mask of white rage. “What in the name of Iseult’s beating heart were you doing in the middle of that?”

  Vallus paused as if he’d been struck across the face. In his thoughtful eyes, Aimee caught a glimpse of real hurt. “Rachim needed the assistance of my father’s men–”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about,” Belit continued, and there was something else in her voice, unlike what Aimee had seen thus far: a uniquely potent anger, as if she’d been personally, painfully hurt. “What in the name of the gods possessed you to wear a sword? Yaresh would’ve cut you to ribbons before you even got it free. You’re not a killer, Val. How could you be so rash?”

  “Children,” Rachim said over his shoulder. “Another time. Val, where’s your father?”

  “Deep in the records until first light,” Vallus answered. “For the past two days. He’s taken ill. I’ll stand in his stead.”

  Rachim looked as though he’d just been told his guard dog had been replaced by a squitten. “Fine,” he said. “Everyone follow my lead and for the love of the thousand gods, don’t talk unless you’re asked to. Understand?”

  A seam of light split the great doors, and the group strode through as they opened. The daylight spilled through the high arched windows to coat the blue table with an iridescent glow. All around it, officers had gathered – in greater numbers than before – and the angry murmurings of hundreds filled the vast room with a storm of anger and malcontent.

  Aimee watched innumerable eyes fix upon their small group as they walked, and a surprised functionary turned with alarm to regard them. “…And it seems his excellency Rachim will be here.”

  Aimee felt her jaw tighten and the red rage rise within her: the meeting had already begun.

  “Yes,” Rachim declared, striding into the room with Harkon by his side. “He will be, as will this council’s moderator, Harkon Bright.”

  The functionary’s eyes narrowed to slits. His hand raised to forestall objection, but Aimee couldn’t help but notice that the gesture had the intensity of a religious rebuke directed at her teacher. “This meeting does not concern the debates of the candidates for captaincy. Harkon Bright’s input is not needed.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Yaresh said, standing from his place at the blue table. “He may be needed to account for his use of sorcery to threaten senior members of the officer aristocracy. Let the foreign troublemaker stay.”

  Aimee felt her fists clench into knots of fury at her sides as the group was ushered in, stared at by faces that had a mere day or so earlier seemed at least receptive to their presence. Now the eyes were suspicious. Judgmental. Aimee kept her face carefully neutral, her posture proud. Social pressure was something she was an old hand at dealing with. It was amazing what being a contentious young woman at the academy had prepared her for.

  Harkon, for his part, seemed as calm as she’d ever seen him. Her teacher waited, patiently, his arms folded across his chest and his eyes amused.

  “The council is in session,” the functionary declared. Those who were still standing took their seats, and a hush settled over the room.

  “Yaresh, Lord of the Muster, has requested the floor,” the functionary continued.

  “Brothers and sisters,” Yaresh began, and Aimee was immediately struck by how the cadence of his voice had changed. It was familial, now. Protective. Pained. “I bring news most dire: a wretched civil unrest has gripped the lower levels of Iseult. Our fair guests, themselves, were assaulted by some sort of revenant assassins–” here he paused, and Aimee wondered how he would couch the truth, “–created, doubtless, by some imitator necromancer lurking amongst the enlisted, or perhaps snuck aboard in Ishtier. It is my sworn duty to defend this vessel from such threats, but without Amut I must turn to you for authorization.”

  Sitting up until then, the lord of the muster rose from his chair, placing scarred hands upon the table. “I speak to you now not as a candidate for captaincy, nor as a master of men, but merely as a soldier who would protect his home: I call for a council vote. The entirety of sublevel 337 must be purged. The levels immediately above and below must receive full censure.”

  “Oh, that bastard,” Vallus muttered to Aimee’s left.

  Belit was
quiet, her hands balled into fists, jaw tight.

  Loud muttering rippled around the edge of the blue table, loud enough to cover a breath of quick conversation amongst Aimee and those immediately near her.

  “I didn’t like anything I heard,” she quickly said to Viltas’s son, “but that sounded like it was about something very specific.”

  “I expected demands,” Vallus said, bitter. “Not humility. I expected the entitled warrior, not the humble war-hero.”

  “Easier to refuse,” Rachim agreed. “Harder to justify refusing.”

  “Only,” Harkon mused, “if you were looking for a reason to meet rage with rage.” And at this, Aimee’s teacher held up a hand. The room quieted when officer aristocrats caught sight of the brown palm. The functionary glared at him, but nodded.

  “I do not presume,” Harkon said, “to gainsay the Lord of the Muster’s understanding of his own home’s strife. Yet I caution this council: to call for a vote when so few voices have been heard is an error, one Lord Yaresh doubtless makes in his passion to see Iseult defended.”

  Silence hung for a moment. Aimee glimpsed a twitch at the corner of Lord Yaresh’s eye. Then someone – a midlevel officer – yelled “Purge!” And another slammed his fist on the table. “Vote!”

  Aimee felt her heart sink, thinking of the numerous faces she’d passed below: diverse, harried, and hurried. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Belit’s jaw clenched to the point of pain.

  “Magister Bright has the right of it,” came another interruption, soft but strong. Diara had broken her silence at the opposite end of the table. The Countess of Astronomers had lost none of her cold demeanor, yet the stare with which she fixed Yaresh made him hesitate. “These accusations are severe, and if true, a purge is the last course of action this council should authorize.”