The Book of Wind:

by E. E. Blackwood

  Uriost’s silent glare showed no sign of reaction.

  The heretic continued: “What’s to stop anybody else from doing the same elsewhere? The Crystals give life to our world. That’s a huge load of power – easily corrupted, don’t you think?”

  “The Zuut would never…”

  “Not him I’m worried about,” said the heretic, darkly. “You and I, Sara – we’re no better than the canines who came before us. The only difference is the scope of those whose paws are just as stained as ours. No one’s innocent – not anymore. Something’s about to give, and before anybody realizes it, the walls of the world are going to implode on all of us. I for one am trying to stop that from happening – and if you were humble enough, I’m sure you’d come to realize the truth of the matter, as well.”

  Uriost considered this. Her hardened gaze softened a bit. “There are rumours that I aided the fall of Twigleaf Company.”

  “Not surprising,” said the heretic in a dismissive tone. “Now, can we get a move on—”

  She interrupted him. “Back in the Keeton Woods, you granted mercy to two Twigleaf officers, in exchange for the Crystal of the Wind.”

  The heretic nodded. “Yes, yes, I remember.”

  “Their names were Artemis Yarmouth and Mistral Shemp. After our confrontation in the Keeton Woods, the both of them attempted to arrest me under charges of conspiracy against the Zuut … in partnership with you. They’re dead, now. I was forced to execute them.”

  “What?” This news stunned the heretic. So much so, his grip around Nimbus slacked. “You killed them? But how?”

  Uriost regarded Kortho, its edge gleaming in the scarlet lights that enveloped them. “When you fled Doblah, I made a vow to do anything in my power to bring your wretchedness to justice. And I did. Now, I’m equally guilty of treason.”

  “I don’t understand – No, you’re bluffing.”

  Uriost looked him in the eye. “Let’s find out, shall we?”

  The heretic raised a paw at her in an attempt to keep things calm. “Listen, you donned the vows of a peace officer because you knew the world was reckless without law. See my actions for what they are, but believe me when I say Vida is in danger, Sara.”

  “Yes, and I intend to do something about it.” Uriost readied Kortho. And then without another word, she charged the heretic with her weapon pointed straight for his heart.

  47. The Only Way Peace May Return

  Sparks flew as blades clashed beneath the shrieking spiral of scarlet emergency lights. Uriost came at the heretic with full force, and preyed on him with dark brutality in her eyes. Nothing else mattered. There were no more words. There was only the hunt. There was only vengeance, and humiliation, and rumour, and slander, and the need to reclaim honour from a place of darkness splashed with ever cyclical screaming scarlet.

  The heretic knew this as he effortlessly deflected each and every stinging sword stroke. Her hate-filled eyes flashed amidst a swift thrust aimed at his jugular. He parried it, resumed a defensive stance.

  She wasn’t afraid of him, like the others. Like Tetra. The heretic could see it in her wolfen yellows. Wide with fury. Squinting against the flex of blood-hungry growls.

  They exchanged desperate blows, Uriost pushing forward, with the heretic struggling to keep a safe distance between them. She was just too fast. Too daring. Fuelled by too much anger, blood lust.

  Kortho came at him from below. The heretic, tired and struggling to stay standing amidst the blow he’d taken from Tetra’s weapon, missed his opportunity to parry Uriost’s strike. The broadsword screeched sparks across his dented cuirass. The hit sent the heretic floundering to his paws and knees as bile-laced blood spewed from his lips, splashed across the planks between his paw digits.

  The hum of the strike rang in the heretic’s ears, even louder than the emergency alarm’s wails. He remained on paw-and-knee, panting, wide-eyed, desperate for air that refused to fill his crushed lungs. Trembling paws reached for his torso, searched for blood, but came back unstained. With a cringe of relief, he choked out only a handful of words: “You’ve gotten stronger.”

  “No,” said Uriost. “You’re just encumbered with my saddlebag. Injured, of course, too. Dehydrated, from the looks of it. Hardly a fair fight. Disgraceful.”

  He grunted. “Then do you wish to cease our combat? I’m really in quite a—”

  “Shut up,” she said behind a growl.

  The heretic let his head hang. Slow footsteps sent one ear twitching alert. He sensed Uriost draw near. A shadow seeped across the stained deck boards. The heretic awaited the clink of shackles, but they never came. Instead, a swift jolt to the ribs rolled him backside.

  The heretic cradled his throbbing flank until the agony quickly numbed and dispersed. All the while, his gasps for air were thin wheezes, like wind through an aluminum tunnel. Now that she’d mentioned dehydration, he couldn’t stop thinking about the thick globs of phlegm stuck in his throat, the tightened dryness that caked his black lips. He swallowed hard, but the phlegm stuck so well, a spider could trap flies with it.

  “What a self-righteous mess you’ve become.” Uriost sneered at him.

  The heretic pushed up on his arms.

  “Aruto. Foolish drunkard.” Each word was a struggle to get out. “He cut a chunk out of the Crystal. Used the shard to unleash wind like a weapon.”

  A look of dulled surprise washed over Uriost’s face. “What?”

  “Truth.”

  “You’re lying. Let me see it.”

  “Heh. Different circumstances, sure. Word of honour. Promise.”

  Uriost drew near. The heretic shakily pointed Nimbus at her midsection before she was close enough. She knocked it away effortlessly with her weapon, shoved the heretic back onto the ground with one heel.

  Without hesitation, Uriost plunged Kortho into his side.

  Shrill howls of agony drowned out the hangar’s emergency alarm. The heretic clenched Kortho’s razor edge with both gauntlets, tried to steer the blade back up, but the sword cut too deeply into his gauntlet-clad paws. In his weakened state, Uriost’s strength was unmatched.

  “You were once so great,” she said. “When there was no one else, there was always you. Even from the start.” Resentment flashed across her face. “Never would a fox act in such favour against his own kind. Are you even him? Or have I been deceived this whole time?”

  The heretic stretched out his neck, wincing back shallow gasps for breath. He panted, let out another yelp and tried to claw Uriost’s wrists, without success.

  “I trusted you,” Uriost spat at him.

  She retracted Kortho, and with it seeped an unending flow of blood from the narrow breach in the heretic’s stolen armour. He pawed at it, metal digits sloshed against gushing scarlet rivers. A choked gasp escaped his lips as horrified realization dawned like the father sun over the Doblain mountains.

  “S … Sara…”

  “Rowst’lya scum. This is your fate, now,” she said. “Two-hundred years of exile. Ten years of war against the wheda. Five years of tension-laden peace under a treaty for all mammalkind to abide. And now you – you – have shattered our realm. Our fragile alliance with the wheda has been smashed into further shards of jagged hatred for the canines. This – this – is the only way true peace may return to Vida.”

  She rolled the heretic onto one side, cut away the saddlebag’s straps from round his shoulders. He grabbed for it with both paws. Blood curdled around his pleas for her to listen. “Noo! Noooo – Sara, you don’t understand—” She smacked him in the muzzle and wrangled her prize free from his full-clawed grip, tearing the bag’s leather exterior along the way.

  “You don’t understand! It’s over—” Uriost paused, shook her head, and rose with the saddlebag cradled in her arms. “I don’t even know who you are anymore, what to call you other than what you’ve become.”

  The heretic fell onto his back, paws arched over his body with digits curled like dead spiders’ legs.
He stared up at her, panting hard. Slow-blinking eyes fought to not roll into their sockets from fatigue. “You … know… You know … who I am…”

  As he said this, a cool breeze swept across the ship’s deck. The sound of the emergency alarm faded into deep gasps, low swoops that brought stronger blasts of air. The heretic tilted his head back as the coolness kissed and nestled into his cheek fur. Directly overhead, he saw Ajax’s emerald-black sail billow to life against strong gusts brought on by two spinning propellers mounted atop mast columns at either side of the ship.

  A weak smile bloomed across his lips.

  Uriost pulled heretic up by the front of his collar plate, shook him so hard his head lolled. “What’s happening? What did you do? What have you done?!”

  A croak of a chuckle left him. “Let me know when you find out.”

  Steam spewed over the deck rails from below, like hot ocean fog. A long groan filled their ears, like the hangar itself had somehow come to life, as everything all around them suddenly began to twist and sink as the ship rose on its own accord, towards a cyclical portal at the peak of the hangar’s ceiling. It was lined with triangular metal slats that spiralled similarly to a snail’s shell – it the hangar’s airlock. This would be the heretic’s escape out of Warminister; this would be his escape out of Galheist Province, altogether.

  Make it stop!” Uriost demanded.

  A gangway appeared beyond, just above the distant railing beyond her shoulder. The heretic’s eyes widened with predatory need – and with it, a second wind. His gaze snapped in place with Uriost’s.

  “Time to go,” he said with a weak grunt. “Forgive me.”

  Regret left its mark on few things in the heretic’s more recent scandals, but head butting Sara Uriost so hard in the face that her visor fell into place was something he’d vow never to do again. Stars sparkled across the deck boards as a splitting headache led him to-and-fro away to safety, with the Alliance lieutenant howling pain-filled canine hexes at him from behind.

  A few shakes of the head sloughed off whatever cracks had been produced beneath fur and flesh. Despite this, a fog of wooziness enveloped the heretic’s sense of direction. The searing agony in his side remained. He dared a peek while wobbling towards the gangway that slowly descended to meet the ship. Rivers of blood seeped past his paw digits from the impaired armour plate.

  The heretic swore in canine, withdrew the alchemist’s bloodied angora belt from one of his pouches, and stuffed it into the wound like a balled up plug. He planted a firm gauntleted paw over the makeshift bandage and pushed onward.

  In the flash of the emergency lights, the heretic spotted the crane operation cab, empty with its single door wide open. He climbed over the ship’s rail and leapt down onto the gangway’s metal grating, landing with a hollow tumble and a sharp yelp of pain.

  When he rose, a gust of wind rode up his tailside. He turned and saw that the cradle that earlier carried Ajax from above the rafters, had come to place the Alliance airship down upon a hydraulic platform that had since risen up from the bay. He watched the hydraulic platform slowly carry the Ajax towards the hangar’s airlock. He had to get to the engineering cab – that’s where he’d find the controls to open the access; something he’d seen a thousand times before. He prayed to get to the controls in time, before the hydraulic platform crashed Ajax straight through the ceiling…

  “Heretic!!”

  Uriost appeared like a flash in the dark with Kortho brandished overhead. The heretic had barely enough time to stumble away towards the crane’s engineering cab when she landed upon the gangway. He looked over-shoulder, huffing and grunting, using the gangway’s rails to pull his weakening body forward. Uriost rose tall from a crouched position like a shadow in the sun, the brilliant yellows of her eyes locked dead centre on her foe.

  “It’s time for our silent war to end,” she said.

  Without Nimbus, without a weapon of any kind, all the heretic had left to defend with were prayers for a miracle. He raised a trembling, bloodied, paw at her. “Sara … listen to me.”

  She furrowed her brow at him. “Are you – are you about to beg for your life? A weaponslord once so great? The canine of all canines? How pathetic. I adored you once. Strove to be just like you.”

  He swallowed hard, struggled to take in sharp, shallow breathes, inhibited by the dented chest plate that crushed against his lungs. “It’s true. I – I have betrayed your trust. You’re right about that, and for that I apologize. Leaving you behind in Doblah – I should have come straight to you. Instead, chose an alliance with York Yaschire. Doing so, I betrayed your trust – I betrayed Tetra. I betrayed our Zuut—” The heretic inched further and further away from her as he spoke, slow heels creeping backwards towards the open door into the engineering cab. He grunted with pain. “There has been a grievous cost to what I’ve put you through. Nobody trusts you, because of me. Nobody respects you for the valiant, well-ranked, lieutenant you have come to be. All because of me.”

  “Buttering me up will do you no good.”

  “I’m not – just – damn it, listen to me! Things don’t have to go down this path. Killing me won’t do you any favours with the wheda, and doing so will look like a betrayal among our kin for slaying another canine, regardless of who it was.”

  Uriost hesitated in mid-step towards him.

  “Killing me might grant you favour with the Minister of Peace. Killing me might grant you a promotion – your very own platoon to command, with a General’s rank. But ending my life out of a simple act of vengeance, instead of separating emotion from justice – arresting me in due process – how do you think Tetra would come to look at you?”

  “I don’t care,” snarled Uriost.

  “Don’t guff me, Sara. Of course you care. He’s your Commander. He’s your blood of kin. He’s your—”

  She snarled at him. “Don’t. You. Dare.”

  The heretic took a breath, spoke to her in a more gentler tone. “Corruption is a lava flow, moving through the very tenants of the Civil Alliance. What’s a platoon to you, if the justice you preach falls upon the ears of Zuut-bred weaponslords far more interested in the prospects of immortality as racists, thugs, and murderers?” He backed away furthermore, praying for the cab to appear mere feet behind him. The paw he had raised at Uriost slowly turned at the wrist. His slashed open gauntlet-clad palm faced upwards – an offering. “Sara. Come with me. We can put an end to this evil. Together.”

  Sounds of rally from somewhere below them caused the heretic’s ear to twitch. Uriost looked away from him. He took the opportunity to dare to peek over the gangway rail, with her. About a dozen or so Alliance troops spilled into the hangar. There didn’t seem to be any definite leader, only those brave enough, or stupid enough, to volunteer their crossbows.

  The heretic let a low snarl slip past a quivering sneer. He fixed his attention back on Uriost. Her shoulders rolled with confidence.

  “There’s nowhere left for you to go,” she said. “Hmmph.”

  “You talk like their bolts can stop me.”

  “They’ll slow you down, in any case. You’ve made it perfectly clear you won’t kill me. You can’t, in any case, because the Blade of the Unicorn is nowhere in sight. What else is there? Otherwise, bleeding out has done a nice job so far. A stuck pig hasn’t far to wander, when wolves are on the prowl…”

  A flash of indignation crossed the heretic’s face. “Wolves…? What are you talking about?”

  Voices rang out from below: “Look! There, up above! – There he is! – Lieutenant Uriost is with him!”

  “Time to die, heretic.” Uriost snarled at him.

  “Sara, wait—!”

  But she came at him, arms extended to one side with Kortho’s blade glinting fierce in her hateful grip. The heretic doubled backwards, nearly tripping over his heels, and hobbled for the crane’s operation cab as quickly as his burdened body could carry him.

  Sharp whistles cut through the wail of the emergency a
larm. A fireworks of sparks illuminated the gangway as Alliance bolts sought justice from below, dashing only the metal frameworks that kept the heretic safe from their assault.

  He grimaced. Damn, Tetra – where are you? Could really use some of that diplomacy from earlier right about now…

  A shrill yelp threw his attention over-shoulder. Uriost fell wincing to one knee with an arrow bolt straight out between the joints of her collar and shoulder plate. A jolt of canine paternal emergence shot through the heretic – he needed to go to her, to help her – but self-awareness took hold again as he watched her push up on Kortho like a cane, gripping to retract the arrow with her free paw. Uriost shouted into the bay, “Watch who you’re firing at!”

  “By order of the Ministry of Peace, you are both under arrest for conspiracy against the Zuut!” shouted one of the soldiers.

  “Both of us…?” The command sent Uriost’s whiskers aquiver.

  “Lieutenant Uriost! Lay down your sword and remain where you are!”

  Uriost closed her eyes with a deep exhale. She cursed in canine with a shake of her head. “Idiots.”

  “Can you blame them?” the heretic asked.

  “Shut up.” With a solid wrenching motion, the arrow shaft broke free from her armour. She tossed it aside, ignoring the spurt of blood that followed. “I don’t have time for this.”

  “Agreed,” said the heretic. Without another second of hesitation, he made an escape.

  Another slew of arrows rained siege against the gangway. Amidst sparks and deafening clangs, the heretic dove headlong into the cab. He slammed and locked the door behind him.

  Awaiting the heretic was a console full of flashing buttons, stiff levers, and tiny switches and knobs. None of them were labelled. He hissed back an internal typhoon of desperation and frustration. “What in the guff am I supposed to do with these?! Goddess damned droppings!”