by Jason Letts
“You made one faulty calculation though,” came another voice from the dark room. His eyes widening, Ptock jerked his head to glance over his shoulder as an arm reached around his neck. The tip of a steel blade emerged from his chest, the moonlight reflecting against the sopping blood, as a burly man in a black uniform edged into the light. “You confessed to your crimes before you had their protection.”
Ptock’s mouth made some faint, soundless motions before all voluntary movements stopped and his body slid onto the floor in front of them. Sierra’s eyes went from the body to the man now standing in front of them, decked out in a trim Guard uniform adorned with accolades. Sierra glanced over to Taylor, whose lips were pursed. He seemed to convey a begrudging approval.
“This is how we punish treason in Cumeria,” the man said. “Does anyone have any objections?”
Nobody spoke up and the officer stepped out onto the sloping walkway to survey the encroaching invaders.
“What do you think we should do, Captain Keran?” Taylor asked. Keran looked over Sierra and some of the other people present before turning his attention back to Taylor. Sierra knew what he was going to say and felt charged for it, even if the prospect of following through would be horrifying. Cumeria’s troubles were no longer limited to bloody infighting. A foreign power with overwhelming numbers now threatened the sovereignty of the country.
“In the vein of those who’ve given their lives defending Cumeria over the centuries, we fight until we’ve sent them all to liquid hell,” he said.
CHAPTER 12
Taylor had been in a number of situations where the possibility of death existed, but each of those tiny lights streaming in from the distance was another chance of it, and he didn’t believe he could escape them all.
“To the square!” the large bearded fellow called, urging everyone to turn about face and start down the walkway. Before Taylor could move, he felt a hand on his shoulder holding him back.
“Not you, Taylor. There’s something else you need to do,” Captain Keran said.
“But we don’t have long until they’ll be here.”
“That makes this all the more important,” Keran pressed, looking into Taylor’s eyes. Their fight hadn’t been that long ago, but any sense of animosity was gone. Taylor submitted. “You have to get those buffoons to stop killing each other and prepare for the Lu assault.”
Taylor glanced over his shoulder at the fighting Wozniaks and Illiams. They would be needed if the Cumerians were to stand even the slightest chance, but each passing moment saw their numbers dwindle.
“What am I supposed to do, run down there waving my arms and yelling that everyone should stop?” Taylor asked. Keran’s pinched face evinced his displeasure.
“No, you need to go up there to the very top of the Spiral, higher even than the chancellor’s suite, and ring an emergency siren that will draw them from their fighting. The siren’s not been rung for more than a century, but if it works it’ll alert the entire world to Cumeria’s peril.”
It seemed a better plan than tapping on shoulders during a bloody conflict, Taylor had to admit.
“I’ll do it,” he said, anxious to continue up the slope and find the siren. Every breath was imbued with a sense of foreboding that burned inside of him. He had to get moving, but Keran didn’t yet let go.
“Taylor, this is your moment and you can’t hold anything back. You need to lead this battle, drawing upon more than your muscles and your affliction. It’s your inner mettle that’ll allow you to do things no one believed could ever be done again and rally people to your cause.”
When Keran let go, his words stayed with Taylor while he trotted up the ramp. Had he been holding back? He remembered the captain discussing the reaction Aggart had that sapped his strength, even that of his bacteria-fueled energy. But Aggart had still wiped the floor with Taylor during their duels.
Ascending to the balcony and the presidential suite where the long twisting walkway came to an end, Taylor scanned the top of the Spiral, which seemed inaccessible and bereft of a siren. He scanned the doorway for any way over the top that would allow him to get to the dome’s peak. Putting his hand on the exterior, he found it hard and smooth, impossible to get a grip on. Even if he made it up, odds were good he’d slide off in any direction and fall hundreds of feet.
Sure he was over thinking the situation, he took another look at the closed wooden door and kicked it in without much thought. A ladder or rope inside would allow him to reach a hatch in the roof that would give him access, but as he passed room after room, he found nothing. The lobby, the chancellor’s personal office, the museum room with Triton Kniviscent’s cudgel, the sparring room, none of them had any way up.
Frustration began to set in as he felt the time wasted alone at the top of the spiral when he could’ve been below standing side by side with his siblings. Surely Tris wouldn’t be fighting, but with those gas balls they were carrying, who knows.
Leaving the suite and returning to the balcony, he went from side to side searching for a way up. The darkness didn’t make it easy, and he resorted to blindly running his hands along the side when he discovered a metal rung fixed to the exterior. The lack of light made it impossible to see anything, but he had to trust this was the way up.
Putting his feet onto the top of the railing, he took a firm grip of the rung and found it moist and rusty—not a good combination. There was no telling if it would hold, but with the fate of Cumeria on the line, he pushed off from the railing and found it held his weight. Pulling up, he reached higher and found another rung, followed by more. Soon he was climbing the bolted rungs as one would a ladder, quickly ascending higher on the Spiral than even the chancellor ever had.
The light was still so dim, and some of the rungs were noticeably loose. As he pushed on, he saw a small platform and shapes at the top that turned out to be a horn and a crank. How this would alert the entire world was beyond Taylor’s reasoning, but he fought through the wind to get there and reached out for the crank while still holding the uppermost rung.
The cranked clicked with each segmented rotation of a gear, but the sound coming from the horn wasn’t even loud enough for Taylor to hear. It needed more of an effort, and Taylor left the rungs behind and stepped on the slick platform so he could rotate the crank. Holding its bare metal handle, he pulled it around faster and faster. The sound of the siren, like the wail of a saurus, rose in the air until the noise became crushing in its intensity.
Taylor glanced over his shoulder for a moment to see if the fighters had heard and ceased fighting, but from where he was he couldn’t tell. Looking back must’ve disrupted his circular rotation, because the crank tore off of the siren’s gear, sending Taylor sprawling back and sliding on the surface of the dome. He dropped the crank and fell on his stomach as the momentum pulled him down the side.
Reaching out as far as he could, his fingers grazed the end of a rung just enough to catch it. Gasping for breath and apoplectic, he huddled closer to the railing and shifted his feet onto the steps below him.
Getting back onto the balcony and walkway required no more special effort, but by the time he set his weight down on the sturdy surface his knees buckled and he dropped onto his hands. Promising himself his climbing days were over, he turned his mind to the satisfaction of completing Captain Keran’s task. Now all that was left was to get back onto the ground before it was time to make their stand.
He looked on from the balcony and saw that the Illiams and Wozniaks had indeed ceased fighting and were migrating toward the Spiral, where they’d doubtlessly find Sierra and Randall in the square, who would inform them of their dire predicament. Taylor felt more than ever that the belief they could win and their inner mettle, as Keran had put it, would be crucial to any chance of victory.
But how could such a thing be called upon and shown? Taylor leaned against the railing as he looked out on the incoming forces. His eyes drifted closed to Triton Kniviscent square and the statue tha
t stood as a stark reminder of Cumeria’s movement for independence.
It seemed a laughable idea, but the thought of carrying Triton’s cudgel into battle lodged itself in his mind. On the way into the suite’s museum room, he let his eyes linger on Cumeria’s national charter before turning to the legendary weapon. Both artifacts were relics of the past, but at this moment they seemed more relevant than ever. The charter radiated the idea that Cumeria should be a nation free from subjugation, while the sword encased in a thick glut of pure steel was the instrument Triton had used to cast off the shackles of the Southern Lords.
Iron City and the Lus in particular were a formidable international force, as Taylor had seen himself, but they were wrong if they thought they could dazzle Cumeria with their toys and make a swift grab for power in the most prosperous nation on Iyne.
Taylor stepped closer to the cudgel, which from end to end was as tall as he was and must’ve weighed several times more than he did. Chains fixed to the ceiling and a platform of stone held the weapon in place at an angle. It appeared immovable, even for Taylor’s prodigious strength, which some might’ve called unnatural.
The sword had been dipped into steel all the way to the cross guard, leaving the handle largely intact. Lifting the handle from the platform seemed impossible, let alone the bulbous, rounded end that was too big for him to put his arms around. Wrapping his fingers around the handle as he found his grip, Taylor gave in to the irresistible thoughts of the coming battle that bombarded his mind.
Thoughts of how Cumeria’s fate rested on each swing, each life, each breath stoked the energy inside him, which ran through his veins and imbued them with an otherworldly feeling. His hands and forearms took on a shade of blue as he struggled between the impulses of controlling and unleashing the force within him.
Tensing his muscles, he pulled on the cudgel’s handle and found it unyielding to his touch.
“Come on. I can do this,” he said to himself. The urge to expel the buildup of aggression inside him grew. Sierra was waiting, Randall depended on him, and Tris believed in him. Failure was not an option.
Straining as he pulled again, Taylor released a sharp cry as he jerked the handle from the stone. It felt like the energy was entrenched in his skin and holding him together. His body seemed to grow stronger from the sheer necessity of the task at hand.
After taking another breath, his fingers wrapped so tight around the handle they threatened to meld with it, Taylor pulled again and watched the end of the cudgel pull loose from the stone and the chains. It was too wondrous to believe. He couldn’t tell where he ended and where the cudgel began.
Lifting it over his shoulder, his knees almost buckled until they got used to the weight as well. A moment of instability on the way out left a section of the doorframe smashed and scattered on the floor. For Taylor, each breath was full of anticipation for the battle at hand.
As he emerged on the balcony in the blustery night, he looked out at the swarming lights that had already crept into the city. They would reach the square soon, their ultimate prize so close at hand.
Letting the cudgel roll off his shoulder, Taylor imagined himself swinging it to fell the entire army of Iron City invaders all in one blow. He spun in place, keeping a tight grip on the handle as the weapon whipped faster and faster. Finally he let it go and watched as it soared over the balcony and through the air. Leaning over the edge, he watched it drop like a meteor to the street below, where it slammed into the concrete and made a crater for itself.
Though he was far above his compatriots in the square, he faintly made out their motions of shock as they felt the ground shake and heard the impact. He knew Triton’s name was on everyone’s lips.
But the best part was that he didn’t have to carry that heavy thing all the way down the spiral. Taylor raced down the twisting ramp as fast as his legs could carry him. By the time he reached the bottom, dozens of fighters had gathered around the cudgel. Everyone laughed when one tried to lift it and fell back on his ass.
Suddenly they all parted as Taylor, virtually a blue glow, approached. They gasped when he yanked the cudgel out of its crater and rested it on his shoulder. It defied everything they thought was reasonable, but it inspired them too to have something utterly miraculous on their side.
“We can hold them off,” Taylor said simply. His mind was somewhere else, leaking out of his head and filling the muscles in his arms and back. To cheers they approached the front line. Sierra was there, as well as Randall. Both of them full-blooded Brackens, they were woefully unprepared for a fight such as this, but they had as much right to protect their country as anyone else. Taylor had a fleeting curiosity where Velo Wozniak, Keize, or his mother were at the moment.
“I’ve never been more proud of you,” Randall said, reluctantly touching the cudgel with his fingertips. Randall had managed to procure a Guard baton and knife to defend himself.
“Let’s do this together,” Taylor said through heavy breaths.
“Razi and Maglum have the gas balls up on the roof nearest the square on the far side,” Sierra said. “They’ll try to blunt their numbers as much as possible.”
It was as sound a plan as any, though even just a few more hours of preparation would’ve put them in much better stead. Except for a few broken Guard vehicles, the square was completely open. They had no projectile cover at all, not even a few archers
“Whatever they did to the Illiams guns disabled their own as well,” Randall said.
“They thought they’d leave us defenseless and have the edge in hand-to-hand combat,” Captain Keran said as the crowd around them thickened and formed a long line across the square.
Already lights began to appear in the streets ahead. Swaying back and forth slightly, they did appear to be lanterns. Even without guns, there was no telling what other weaponry the Lus brought with them, keeping everyone on high alert.
More of the opposing force streamed into the streets until there was far too many of them to count. Taylor’s side had a fraction of their numbers, maybe as many as five hundred, and a fair percentage of them were already suffering from wounds or fatigue. But as long as he was standing tall, Taylor gave them all the belief that winning was the expected outcome.
Razi and Maglum, perched on a roof ahead, kept a close eye on the ranks approaching their two-story building. The gas balls had a subtle amber hue that Taylor could make out when they lifted them up. Just as large clumps of the Lus’ advance forces pushed toward the square on each side of the building, the two Madorans dropped a handful of balls each, which shattered and exploded against the streets.
A temporary inferno erupted that immolated the fighters on the ground, but the blast was enough to destabilize the walls of the building, which seemed to partially collapse into a cloud of dust. Even louder than the sudden crash was a roar from every one of the invaders, who must’ve taken the attack as their cue to charge.
Razi and Maglum burst through the cloud of dust first, hightailing it as hundreds of bloodthirsty enemies followed. The way they pumped their arms and kicked to get back to the other Cumerians for protection was amusing, but Taylor kept his eye on a few chasing them closely as he adjusted the cudgel on his shoulder.
“Never give up! Never, never, never stop!” Sierra screamed somewhere to Taylor’s left. He knew she had it in her to be a resilient fighter, a survivor even, but with Randall he wasn’t so sure. He’d need luck and a lot of protection from his drinking buddies to make it through under the best of circumstances.
The rushing assault was getting so close Taylor could almost smell them. Instinctively he took a few steps forward from the line, teeing up at one soldier directly behind Razi in what looked like chain mail armor adorned with Iron City’s colors of purple and orange. The timing had to be just right. He locked eyes with Razi. The need to expel his energy was overwhelming.
Breaking into action, Taylor cocked his swing back deeper before lugging the cudgel around his side and swinging it
forward. Razi, an undeniably large woman, slid on the ground and cleared the bottom edge of the steel bulb by inches. It connected with the man hot on her heels, immediately halting his progress and blowing him back against his comrades in a bloody pulp. The impact barely slowed Taylor’s swing, which continued around and barely missed Maglum coming in on Taylor’s left.
By the time his swing had ended, the two forces had met and the battle was engaged. There were people everywhere, an incessant clanging of steel, and shouts and cries from all directions. When Taylor looked back toward the west, all he could see across the square and down the streets were countless Lu soldiers pouring in for the fight.
While Taylor got a thrill from wielding the most feared weapon in the battle—even those from Iron City were familiar with Triton Kniviscent—using it efficiently took time for Taylor to figure out. Though he could swing it swiftly enough that foes were unlikely to dodge it, he had to realize that committing to a swing would nevertheless occupy him entirely for the better part of a minute. The timing was crucial, as was making sure that someone didn’t come up behind him and slice him down the back.
Taylor leveled another broad swing at a couple of soldiers, catching them from their waist to head and leaving them both flattened against the ground. His heavy breathing began to get the best of him, and he wondered whether or not he’d really be able to wield Triton’s cudgel for the entire battle.
In the distance, another gas ball had somehow gone off, sending a handful of fighters into the air. Taylor glanced back to see that though their line was holding with surprising success, their numbers were still dwindling slowly.
With Taylor’s next swing, he bowled over a poor soul who feebly erected his sword to block, but immediately afterward someone behind rushed in to catch Taylor during his backswing. Barely leaning back in time to avoid catching the tip of a spear, Taylor got his footing underneath him and knocked the man down with his shoulder.
