by Jon Kiln
Pul whipped absently at his horse’s reins, knowing it was already traveling as fast as it safely could on the skinny road. Accordingly, it ignored him.
Pul did feel bad for the civilians that would undoubtedly be caught in the battle. There could be no doubt some of them, more than a few, would lose their lives in the events to come. But E’ghat’s will superseded their lives as all gods’ wills were greater than the humans below them. Even more so E’ghat, who was destined to one day be the god of gods.
He tried not to think about them either. It was not his place to worry for the souls of others. He had a job to do. An important one. And he was going to do it.
Chapter 36
Pillari Stomsen had been a soldier-policewoman for nearly thirty years. Fifteen of those years she’d had the same post, the FG 10, which they called the “watch-and-scramble” patrol. She spent the first two hours of each shift at Figa’s south gate, watching citizens and visitors alike enter the city, and watching them get inspected by the lower-level guards if inspection was deemed necessary. This was the most tedious part of her day, as little was required of her unless contraband was discovered on a would-be entrant to the city. This was rare, as those items which had to be smuggled in to Figa often found less obvious routes than the main gates. She’d learned to use this watching time for meditation and, sometimes, a very light sleep she had perfected which didn’t actually cause her to shut her eyes all the way.
For the next two hours of every shift, she roamed the market stalls, making sure the people didn’t cheat the merchants and, just as often, vice versa. These stalls were not of the fine variety scattered amid brick-and-mortar stores on the city’s illustrious north end. They were not for traveler’s passing through or for the elite and pseudo-elite whose manors dotted the northern third of Figa. The stalls she patrolled were for Figan natives, the salt of Figa’s earth, from the middle-class, such as the merchants and skilled workers, down to the poorest of the poor.
At lunch, she ate at Micke’s food cart. She ordered the same thing every day: lamb and greens. The chunks of meat and various vegetables were skewered on long wooden dowels for ease of eating.
The next four hours she spent in the slums beyond the merchant’s stalls. This was her favorite part of each shift. Even though there was a fair amount of crime, incidents that had to be responded to often without all the information and with no warning (hence the “scramble” designation in the patrol’s nickname), she enjoyed being with the people. She was trusted by those who would otherwise treat soldier-policemen with the utmost paranoia. The people knew her, and she knew them. She was a fixture here. She belonged.
And it was for those last four hours of every patrol that she lived. Her patrol was often the same from day to day, and from year to year. So it should come as no surprise that one morning, when something unexpected happened—unprecedented, even—that at first she didn’t believe what she was seeing.
The day was overcast, not uncommon for this time of year. When she’d taken her place at watch that morning, her fellow watcher, a handsome soldier-policeman who’d been around nearly as long as she had, had asked her if she thought it would rain. Usually she was uncanny in her predictions after the briefest glance at the sky, but today she hadn’t been able to say for certain. The clouds had the strange lightness of a clearing sky, but seemed to carry a threat of darkening.
She had been in her patented form of light sleep. Her eyes automatically scanning the road which led to the city, her ears listening for only one sound, her name, if it were uttered by the green soldier-police below her because she was needed for something more serious. Her mind was in another realm entirely. Something like a dream, forgotten as soon as it was intruded upon.
Dark figures in the distance caught her attention. Pouring from the forest’s edge and converging with the main road. She rubbed her eyes and yawned, fully expecting the odd flurry of movement to have disappeared when she was done.
But they weren’t gone. They were human, and they had carts and horses.
And there were a lot of them.
Her brain still sluggish from her rest, she called the keywords, indicating the highest level of danger, alertness, and action.
“Red response!”
Instantly, there was action all around her. In the academy, nothing was drilled so deeply into the psyches of the soldier-police than this phrase, though it was uttered in actual duty less than once a year.
She almost felt she’d made a mistake. The words had simply come out, as if all on their own. But it was too late to worry about that. She turned and glanced at the city. A runner was already headed to the castle, calmly saying the same phrase, “red response” to each soldier-police he passed.
No one panicked. It was something of a secret code unless immediate danger threatened the populace, but inside each of the soldier-police adrenaline flowed like wine at a banquet and emotions roiled like magma.
“There,” Pillari said to her fellow watcher and to the young soldier-police at the gate below her. “About two miles down the road.”
But it was hardly necessary for her to point anything out. The coming mob was clear.
“What is it?” her fellow watcher said. “Who are they?”
“I don’t know, but how could it be anything good?”
The statement was enough to fully rouse her own faculties. The truth of it hit Pillari like a splash of cold water in face. She’d never heard of anything like this happening. The city being approached by a band of a hundred or more.
No, she’d never heard of anything like this.
Except in stories of war.
Those images and more spun past her consciousness. The faces of the people she thought of as hers were there, too. The slum-dwellers who trusted her, who needed her, who came to her with complaints and concerns. Even sharing their hopes and dreams and fears with her when the afternoons dragged on, quiet and without incident.
As the senior soldier-policeman at the gate, she began barking orders with what she hoped sounded like real authority, issuing orders to close the gates at every entrance.
She shielded her eyes with the flat of her hand, and watched the approaching mass of humanity, a deep frown etched on her face and a knot of worry growing in her stomach.
Chapter 37
Where the river lead them out of the forest, Draken and Jace found themselves in between Pul’s band of bear-masks and the southern gate of Figa. The gate was going up, Draken saw. A good sign. Maybe the bear-masks wouldn’t be able to overcome the soldier-police.
But then he thought of the strap of leather he and Jace had found the day before.
He’d had a lot of time to think about what it might have been, and even though he didn’t know, he was smart enough to realize it fit into a bigger plan. They wouldn’t be approaching the city walls without at least a chance of being able to deal with the opposition they knew they’d find there.
Draken knew this was really the bear-mask’s main advantage, being an unknown quantity. Anyone could read statistics about Figa’s defenses. But beyond having heard the words, “E’ghat” and “bear-masks,” when Draken had tipped the city’s officials off to the group in the sewers those years ago, no one in that city knew a thing about what was approaching.
“I’ve been a fool!” Draken told Jace. “I should have revealed everything I knew about E’ghat! But I didn’t want to drag myself any deeper into the muck than I already was. I knew about fire-bombs back then, about the training of the bear-masks. I knew!”
“We need to get inside the city,” Jace said, ever the voice of unwelcome pragmatism.
Draken thought about it. Every second that passed was one less he had in which to act. The bear-masks were approaching the city. They moved with purpose, something almost cocky in their gait. Or perhaps that was unavoidable, considering the audacity required just by coming like this, openly, to the largest, most fortified city in Drammata.
He had to do something.
>
“How?” he asked himself. “What to do?”
But there wasn’t time for thought. These was no way to get this question answered. He could only act. And so he did, without even a weapon. Jace had been able to find his crossbow, but not the sword Draken had taken from the Merreline monastery. Draken left the cover of the trees, placing himself directly between the city and the bear-masks.
Pul was in the lead, a foolish place for a commander considering the legendary accuracy of the bowmen at the city’s gate. He was almost close enough now to be in range. Draken prayed with silent fervor that some string-happy soldier-policeman would fire the instant Pul got within bowshot, even though he knew this was unlikely.
On the battlement, a small line of soldier-police watched. Even at this distance, not being able to make out the expressions on their faces, Draken could read the tension in them wound as if through a machine. That was good. These men and women would have seen their fair share of action in their time, but these would have been small criminal altercations. Nothing like the battles and skirmishes the bear-masks had trained for their whole lives.
Decades of peace had done Drammata uncountable good, but at the moment Draken wished for battle-hardened soldiers instead of the police variety the city was packed with.
Now Pul was closer, moving as Draken sprinted for the gates. He still didn’t know what he would say or do once he got there, but he felt better now that he was doing something.
“Halt!” a woman yelled from the battlement. Judging from the color of her insignia she was a soldier-policewoman of no small standing in the city. That was good. She would know the protocols, the—
And then a bowman was tracking him, and Draken realized the same fear he hoped might inspire someone to kill Pul without provocation might be worked against him. He couldn’t let that happen, not while he was the only one with the knowledge needed to deal with these terrorists.
“I’m Draken Wellstroma!” he said, knowing his name would get the attention he needed. That alone should be enough to prevent his premature killing. If he was shot, it would be a public relations nightmare for the soldier-police.
Draken was surprised by the question the soldier-policewoman in charge yelled down at him. She didn’t ask what he was doing there, or where he’d been, but instead cut to the most pressing matter. “Who are those people?” she barked, pointing to the bear-masks.
“Cultists! Fanatics! The followers of E’ghat.”
She eyed Draken, and then the coming mob, and apparently gauged there to be enough time to let him in and get the gate back up, because she ordered it be lowered. Draken wasn’t so sure there was time, but he was still grateful.
The gate was a historic model, and instead of the bars which came straight down that any new gate would be built with, this was in the style of a large, arched door. Its hinges were at the bottom so it could fold forward, almost like a drawbridge, only there was no moat around the city. Before it had come all the way down, Draken climbed over the top of the gate, and rolled down its incline. They began pulling it up as soon as he had, but still it was close; the vanguard of the bear-masks, Pul accompanied by a small number of what Draken guessed were his closest guards, were only a few dozen yards away. The gate moved slowly, but it was up before Pul got there.
Draken clambered up the ladder to the battlement, where the hatch had already been unlocked and opened for him.
“They have weapons!” he said without being asked. “The likes of which you’ve never seen! We have to get down from here.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, and Draken knew she felt safe atop the gate. She didn’t know about fire-bombs or any of the other nasty surprises the bear-masks might have in store.
“Shoot their leader,” he yelled to the bowman, a young soldier-police who looked as if he’d lied about his age to join the force. “And then we must get down!”
“Belay that,” the woman said. “We can’t kill them without knowing who they are!”
Draken knew he couldn’t convince them to do it, despite the look of worry on the bowman’s face. “Then we have to get down. Now!” he said. “They have weapons. Devices. Like mining detonations, but worse, much worse.”
She saw the desperation in his face and seemed to come to a decision. Draken was sure that her regulations called for her, the other watcher, and the bowman to remain, but she was smarter than that.
“Everybody down, down, down!” she said, waving her fellow soldier-police to the hatch.
But it was too late. A ball of fire erupted on the battlement, the fire-bomb striking the bowman directly. He screamed in agony as his body was consumed in the instant blaze.
Draken knew he himself had to survive. He had to explain, to help, to guide. He turned toward the city and leapt from the wall, falling twenty-five feet into a patch of dirt, hoping he would still be able to do anything after he landed.
Chapter 38
Pandemonium reigned. The arena fighter had jumped from the gate, but Pillari couldn’t worry about his welfare at the moment. She was shoving another soldier-police into the hatch, hoping he’d catch hold of a rung and not simply fall past the ladder entirely.
The bowman was gone, and the stink of his burned and charring flesh filled her nostrils. The flames of the device were licking at her back, but her armor seemed to be taking the brunt of it. Even through the madness, she felt a pang of annoyance. She’d had this armor for a decade, and she didn’t want it ruined.
There were still three other soldier-police on the battlement. Peering through her gloved fingers, trying to see through the blaze, she saw one was already dead, consumed by the unholy fire. But another was nearby.
There was no time. She felt as if she were predicting the weather, that another of the bombs was on its way, and she knew her green soldier-police wouldn’t be able to get down the ladder. She shoved him bodily off the gate in the direction the missing fighter had gone. Maybe he’d land on top of the celebrity and that would save him.
The next explosion came. This fireball even larger than the last, or perhaps just nearer to her. It was impossible to tell. The heat was unthinkable. Putting her hand near a campfire or stove, even an accident with boiled water, none of these sensations compared. It was the fire of Hell.
The skin on her face was peeling. She was screaming without realizing it.
But she thought of her slum dwellers. How they needed her. And she moved. She didn’t know what direction she was going, only that it was better to try to escape than to let herself be devoured by the hungry flames.
Dimly, she was aware of a feeling through her boot. She’d tripped over a box of arrows. She was falling… falling…
On her way down, an impossible length of time, she prayed to Shinna, the goddess she served, that she’d survive.
***
Pul turned on the bear-mask at his right, the one who’d thrown both of the fire-bombs. “What are you thinking?” he screamed. “Draken is up there!”
The gruff voice came out with an unexpected note of uncertainty, “I thought—”
“You wait for my command!” Pul yelled. Then, to the others in his vanguard he said, “We need this gate down, now! Draken is the top priority here. Our secondary goal is Figa.”
“Yes, sir,” they said in approximate unison, and a small, tactical firebomb was sent to the top of the gate. This one would burn much hotter over a brief period of time. If it didn’t burn the gate to dust, another would be employed.
But it was enough, and as the flames died, Pul stepped through. He was going first as a show of faith that E’ghat would protect his chosen commander. The symbolism of this act was very E’ghat and not an iota of its meaning was lost on the bear-masks.
He didn’t have much to worry about as far as being attacked. Flames had followed some of the burning solider-police who had jumped from the top of the gate, and the chemical nature of the fires in the fire-bomb ensured their rapid spread. Madness was a wonderful mask.
> “More bombs,” Pul told the one who had thrown them too early. “There and there.” He indicated a spot on the main road leading to the gate from the heart of the city and to a large, multi-story building that might have been a hotel.
Instantly there were fires raging in the chosen areas, blocking the path of the solider-police that were surely converging on this location, hopefully obscuring the fact that the real action was on this side of the flames.
The bulk of the band was now coming through the gate. They needed no orders in the moment, having practiced and reviewed their actions endlessly long before this day had come. Fanning out along the long city walls that spread out from either side of the gate, they circumvented the flames as best they could and made their way through the city.
Most of them had a “bear-trap” to match the one at Pul’s hip. He hoped he wouldn’t have to use his, but almost all of the devices would be used in less than an hour’s time.
Once more he thought of the innocents who would perish. And once more he reminded himself that innocence was an illusion that E’ghat had little patience for.
Draken was less than ten yards from Pul when Pul turned away from the masking flames to find him. He approached with bravado, knowing how important it was he appear in control. But his confidence was only skin-deep. He’d seen Draken best a hundred opponents in straits which seemed more dire than this.
“Brother,” Pul said. “It’s good to see you.”
Draken looked as if he wanted to spring, but then Pul noticed how he clutched his ankle. It was sprained, rolled, or worse from his jump down.
Pul pointed to the bear-trap hanging from his side. “You know what this is?”
“Another fire-bomb?”
“You wish.” Pul tried to speak with an air of understanding instead of cruelty. “It is much worse, I’m afraid. Don’t do anything stupid, now. If I see even the smallest indication that you intend to attack, I’ll smash it with my fist. I will die. You will die. And everyone in a hundred yards of here will die.”
