Emissary- Beasts of Burden

by Silas Post

  “A matter for my own worries and none of yours,” Redelia said. Her words were assured; her tone was final.

  “Your grace,” I said, toeing toward an invisible line as my words prepared to transgress it. “I worry this plan is ill-fated. We serve—”

  “Emissary,” Redelia said, standing from her throne and taking a step toward me. Her acolytes closed in around us, three men in cloaks with their hoods covering their heads, each holding a looking stone inside a single square of silk. Those stones increased in brilliance as the goddess’s volume rose, washing out the acolytes’ faces completely. “You will address such misgivings to the silent portion of your rearmost mind and not question my judgment aloud.”

  “Yes, your grace,” I said. “I allowed my concern to cloud the duty of my rank. I wish only—”

  The door to Redelia’s inner sanctum burst open, drawing our attention to a harpy whose face and beak still dripped with river water. She panted after her long sprint, but dropped to her knees before the goddess and clasped her hands together.

  “Forgive me, your grace,” she said.

  “Fayzia,” I said. “What troubles you?”

  “The lamia,” she said. “They spoke of an army. One that moves swiftly and will soon be upon us.”

  “It begins,” Redelia said.

  “How far and how many?” Jarah asked.

  “A few minutes’ distance,” Fayzia said. “I didn’t ask what number they brought. I’m sorry.”

  “You have nothing to be sorry for,” I said, petting her head and her neck to calm her nerves as I assessed my own. With so little information and an enemy fast approaching, there was no telling whether Redelia’s legion of devotees could hold our ground.

  “The sunstone,” Rikki said. “With it, Redelia can see all who surround us. We must mount it at once.”

  “Fayzia,” I said. “Can you and the girls lift the stone toward the top of Redelia’s temple?”

  “Right away,” she said, then ran from the temple with us close behind. Redelia sat once more on her throne, but sent her acolytes with us to observe through their carried gems what her blind eyes could not otherwise perceive.

  The forest surrounding the temple was eerily quiet, the month-long echoes of constant construction finally at their end. A dozen golems stood idly by the temple’s entrance, matte gray plates of natural stone covering their pink, fleshy bodies, speckled with only the occasional glint of the natural maroon metal that strengthened their mighty carapaces.

  “Form a ring,” I said. “Don’t let anyone or anything near the entrance to the temple. I have seen a prince of Greenloft wet his sword with a goddess’s lifeblood and I will not witness that travesty a second time. Go!”

  Their hulking bodies positioned themselves as a living wall around the temple we had spent a month reinforcing. Jarah, Rikki, and I assumed our places beside them.

  I took up my wooden pike and frowned at its simplicity. Even the dented spear I carried when disguised as a royal guard had more attack power than this, but without venturing into a proper city there would be no replacement in store for me.

  A pair of harpies squawked and beat their wings in unison, sharing the weight of Redelia’s sunstone in their clawed feet. The stone was larger than my own head, and the way the avian women strained suggested its weight and size made its carriage a grueling chore. A third harpy joined her sisters, supporting the stone from beneath with her head.

  Movement in the underbrush caught my attention. Furtive warriors crouched and waved toward their comrades, their dark green tunics helping to camouflage their shapes, but only barely. The chainmail that covered those shirts stood out against the foliage and revealed their locations through unavoidable sound.

  One man stalked closer than the rest, his gaze trained precisely on my own.

  “Aho!” he yelled, holding his sword forward and parting the bushes with a careful hand. He approached in small steps, eyeing each of us carefully.

  I did not reply.

  “We have you surrounded,” the man continued, his feet positioned as a fencer’s would be at the start of a contest, prepared to thrust or parry as our conversation evolved.

  “Why would you care to surround this place, so far from the castle Greenloft?” I asked.

  “The king’s presence must be felt in all corners,” the guard said, “and his enemies destroyed root and branch. These creatures are foul aberrations that will not survive this day, but you might — if you declare your loyalty to King Corrow at once.”

  “My loyalty lies with Redelia,” I said, “and all who serve her.”

  “As you wish,” the man said. “Charge!”

  A row of swordsmen erupted from the bushes behind him and ran at us while their leader, now within striking distance, lunged forward. A flash of sunlight glinted off his polished blade as the tip sped toward my chest.

  I swung my polearm in a wide arc, catching that swordsman under the arm and knocking his attack away. Jarah stepped forward, grabbed him by his other arm, and spun, lifting him from the ground and launching him at a nearby tree. Whether it was his spine that cracked or simply the trunk of that mighty oak, I could not care. What mattered was his incapacity. He slumped and let his sword slip from loosening fingers.

  Jarah’s sprawling and fluid motion left her vulnerable, but a pair of golems stepped forward and shielded her from assault as the row of royal fighters came upon us.

  Rikki blocked a blade against her horns, then kicked a man in his stomach. His body fell backward, anguished and misshapen from the lasting indentation her powerful hoof left in his torso. She did not step forward to stomp him into the dirt. Instead, her attention diverted toward the trees further ahead.

  “They have archers,” she said. “A half dozen.”

  “They ready their bows,” I said, peering into the trees beside her. “Everyone, a hail of arrows!”

  Without a body covered in plates to deflect their iron-tipped arrows, Jarah, Rikki, and I crouched low to avoid that first volley. The golems protected us, pushing the blade-wielding front row back as arrows ricocheted off their natural armor.

  The archers were quick, reaching for their quivers the instant their arrows flew from their strings. We would not chase those rangers from their rear position until we beat down the foot soldiers at our front.

  The harpies were above us now, their bodies visible only in the empty patches between green leaves. They rose haltingly despite the constant beat of their majestic wings, and occasionally their position slipped lower before they recovered themselves.

  Their task was an arduous one. They chirped at each other in a language that was foreign to me, but their meaning was all but irrelevant. The sound of their chatter drew the attention of the company’s leader, still slumped against the trunk of a tree after Jarah flung him from the fight.

  “The birds,” he said, his voice a loud and labored groan. “Disable the birds!”

  The cluster of cloistered archers turned their aim skyward, releasing wave after wave of projectiles from their longbows. Half of their arrows were ruined by the upper branches of the forest’s trees, but the other half sailed through the leaves and onward.

  It wasn’t long before the harpies carrying the sunstone screamed.

  First, the sunstone slipped from their combined grasp and cratered the dirt behind us. Second, the harpies fell, flapping and shrieking while their wings bled from arrows still embedded in their tender flesh. Third, a flurry of azure feathers descended like snow.

  Amidst the clangor of royal-sword-metal against golem-body-stone and the cries of the wounded all around us, I set down my wooden staff and lifted the sunstone to inspect its surface. Twelve flat panels were equally sized and even spaced, all without a scratch or a crack to be seen. The only markings were the odd glyphs etched by the goddess’s own hand and imbued with meaning I could not discern.

  A flash of relief coursed through me. It was undamaged, sitting warm and whole in my hands as mystic p
ower curled within the gray stone like smoke-kissed glass.

  “Victor,” Rikki said. “We have to try again.”

  “Victor?” one of the attackers asked, pausing his attack in a moment of curious surprise. “Is he the one?”

  “Men,” their leader called in response, “take that man alive. He’s the one that murdered our prince!”

  Rikki turned back, facing the captain of this crusade, and padded her hoof against the dirt.

  “Let the golems handle this,” I said, resting a hand on her shoulder. “They haven’t taken a wound and they rather seem to enjoy the fight.”

  I turned to Jarah next. “We must mount this stone.”

  “Yes,” she said, turning toward Rikki. “Satyrkind have an affinity for rocky ledges and scaling heights.”

  The satyress glanced away sharply. “A goat may not know better the price of a lengthy fall, but I am a woman too keenly aware of the distance between ground and sky.”

  “I meant no harm,” Jarah said. “We all have our strengths and I had always learned climbing was a natural talent for some more than others.”

  “With your long limbs and thick muscled thighs,” Rikki said, “you are the better choice.” She spoke quick and loud, as though brusqueness might hide a more vulnerable sense that exposed itself in her pinched shoulders and worried brow.

  “The tower makes for a long climb,” Jarah said, “but I might manage it.”

  A golem collapsed under the weight of three attackers that used his bodily plates as stepping stones on their ascent up his rocky body. One attacker landed a piercing stab that found a thin gap in his natural armor and sank into his flesh before other golems pried those men from their brother’s back.

  “I would not put either of you in a position to try and fail, where to fail is to fall prey to the earth’s ardent pull or the pierce of an arrow — or both. I will go.”

  “Let me,” Jarah said. “The sunstone is heavy, but I can carry it and my own weight. I just need time for a tower so tall.”

  Tall. The word did not fully encompass the grandeur of Redelia’s improved temple. It was a feat of divine engineering, higher than the castle Greenloft’s mightiest tower. The wider we built the foundation, the higher the tower grew, its rounded base sloping quickly upward toward a tapering point that rose well above the forest’s canopy. To scale its wall in normal course was a lengthy proposition we could not endure.

  “We are out of time,” I said. “The army is larger than this contingent. If reinforcements are near we must abandon the temple, a painful loss I will not incur unless the sunstone reveals its necessity. I will climb this tower myself, but you can cut the climb in two.”

  “How so?” she asked.

  “Throw me.”

  “You cannot mean that,” she said.

  “Fold your hands as one and I will set my heel to your palm,” I said. My arm already strained against the weight of the sunstone as I held it against my side, nesting in the crook of my elbow. “This is no time for concern, only action.”

  Jarah nodded and crouched low to provide a perch for my heel. “On three,” she said.

  “On one,” I replied.

  “Fine, one,” she said. With a powerful leap, Jarah channeled the strength of her muscle-dense thighs, lifting her arms high as she launched my body upward.

  I caught one final glimpse of movement amidst the trees — was it oncoming soldiers or only the wind? — and then I rocketed from the ground in a whirl of leaves and rushed air that braced against my cheeks.

  The space between the tower and my body shrank, then my chest thumped against the stone. The sunstone nearly slipped from my grasp, but I curled my other arm around the curving façade of the temple’s spire and pressed the insides of my feet against its rough surface.

  My body skidded several feet toward the temple’s base, but the friction of my boots against the stone slowed me to a stop. My whole front ached from impact, but I had evaded the first three stories of this climb in mere moments. Now, for the final four.

  The midpoint of the temple’s upper prominence was wider than my frame, so I climbed horizontally first. The stones had been set with care, but they were still in their natural state, providing sufficient ledges and divots for my toes and fingers to discover.

  Some arrows whirred past me as I worked while others smacked into the stone and fell lifeless to the ground below. After a few quick moves, I positioned myself on the far side of the spire, using the building itself as my shield. Now, any arrow that flew from an archer’s hand was destined to hit stone or nothing at all.

  I turned my sights upward.

  The spire narrowed as it ascended, limiting the potential for future grips to lift my body higher. My vertical rise was a strenuous test of my endurance, burning my legs and my arms from the combined weight of my body and its sunstone cargo.

  Still, I climbed.

  The spire’s tip was not a fine point; it was a concavity of stone carved with painstaking exactitude and blessed by the goddess well in advance. I approached it now, mounting the temple’s nose inches at a time as I sought the next stable perch.

  I was six stories up, taller than any tree in sight. At this height I became partly exposed, praying now that my distance from the archers’ bows would reduce the accuracy with which they wielded them.

  While the battle raged on below us, I ascended that last stretch of stone and I came within reach of the temple’s peak. I cradled the sunstone in my arm, maneuvering it toward my hand, then lifted it toward its carved reservoir.

  Redelia intended for this gem to sit perfectly within its cradle, the etched indentations of the stone aligning with invisible energies that rested dormant within. I placed the sunstone and tweaked its position until it sat securely. Nothing happened.

  Five more times I repositioned the holy jewel and waited for a reaction. Five more times I was disappointed.

  Then, on my seventh attempt, it began to glow. The wisps of gray within that smoky gem swirled and pulsed with orange light.

  I had done it!

  A miniature moment of elation burst like a fragile bubble that unleashed a wave of vertigo. Seven stories from the earth’s hard mantle without a clear path down, I had succeeded in my task but doomed myself to an impossible end.

  “Victor!” Jarah yelled. “I will catch you!”

  It was too frightful a promise to contemplate.

  My arms and legs throbbed from constant strain, but at least I could use two arms on my descent. I scraped my toes along the spire and attempted to recall the path I had taken up. My muscles had no memory of it.

  A ridge and a grip. I used them to lower my body several inches. A divot. A gap. The climb down was slower than I had hoped. An indentation here and a small, almost-too-narrow ledge there.

  This rate would not do. Below me, injured harpies limped into the temple for protection while the troop of royal warriors extracted blood from our golem defenders. Rikki charged into the forest to disrupt the archers, and the attackers’ governing leader was gone, leaving only the splintered trunk of a tree where once had rested his battered body. He would find his reinforcements, and soon.

  I needed to return to the fight.

  Fate would force my hand. My next intended grip was a shadow of the anchor I thought it would be, failing to support my hand and throwing me off balance. My other hand twisted from my own jerky movement, slipping until only the tips of my fingers supported my whole weight.

  I scoured the spire frantically for a grip — any grip — but none of the minor pocks within reach were deep enough.

  Somewhere below me was a woman with powerful arms and a devoted heart. My continued vitality would hinge on her accuracy and attention now.

  I let go.

  3

  Oak branches battered my back as I plummeted with my face aimed at the clouds. I could not witness the ground as my body raced toward it, nor could I anticipate the saving embrace of Jarah’s arms. There was only sky above,
receding behind the leaves as my plunging body parted the branches.

  True to her word, Jarah stood ready. I felt the warm and welcome touch of her slender, muscled arms beneath me and she moved instantly into a scooping motion, dipping low to slow my descent rather than catch me in an abrupt and damaging finish.

  With a deep breath of relief, she pressed my face into her chest and drew me toward a tight embrace. My nose sank into the pillow of her giant singular breast as firm arms wrapped around my back. I was surprised when Rikki emerged behind me and grabbed onto us both, sandwiching me between both girls as they proved to themselves that I had survived the whole ordeal.

  “I was so worried,” Rikki said.

  “Jarah is an able woman,” I replied, “and would not have offered to brace my fall if she were not wholly capable.”

  “Thank you,” Jarah said. Her cheeks reddened and her hold tightened. Our combined attention snapped toward the golems as they finished off the last of the royal attackers. A series of bloodied, lifeless bodies lay at their feet and now they had the helmet off the final swordsman. With one bash of a mighty rock fist, a golem split the man’s skull and tossed him aside. Then the harpies arrived, dragging the dead bodies of a few archers behind them.

  “Still,” Rikki said, searching for my hand and interlacing her fingers among mine. “Fear is an irrational mistress and I succumb quickly to her wiles. I thought you might leave this life. I don’t ever want to not be touching you, Victor.”

  I climbed out of our threefold embrace and released Rikki’s hand, but she did not release mine. “The golems and harpies have done well,” I said, “but we need Redelia’s orders.”

  The girls followed me into the temple while Rikki refused to drop my hand from her grip. The goddess stood beside her throne, her hands clasped before her.

  “Your grace,” I said. “We have established the sunstone.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I can see far and wide.” Her white eyebrows lifted while her dark eyelids remained sealed. “The river runs red with blood.”