Paladins of the Storm Lord

by Barbara Ann Wright

  Dué snorted a laugh as if he’d spoken aloud.

  “Just hold still.” He tried not to look at the goo as he cleaned her. Since he’d helped Dillon shift Lessan’s body to the corner, he’d tried hard not to look at anyone. He hadn’t even looked at Lessan, except to lace her hands across her stomach. It hadn’t made her look any less dead.

  Lieutenants Marlowe and Christian stood near the captain’s console, not speaking to anyone, though they nodded or gestured, acting as if lost in their own mental conversation. And Lazlo could feel them standing there, could hear their heartbeats in his ears, and he could sense something around them like a holographic overlay, an invisible umbilical between them.

  As Marlowe gestured over her shoulder, a piece of debris shifted, and Lazlo sensed a spike in her brain, as clear as when she’d flexed her arm. Christian had a discernible heat that hadn’t been there before, like a proverbial fire in his belly.

  Dué brushed Lazlo’s leg, and he jumped. “I’m sorry, Ms. Dué.” He tried a nervous chuckle but cut it off quickly. “I’m guess I’m a little preoccupied.”

  “That’s how he’ll get you.”

  “What?”

  The door to the hallway slid open, and Dillon walked in, rubbing his hands together nervously, just as he had ever since Lessan died. He glanced at her, gaze lingering and becoming a worried, almost lost, look.

  Damn. Lazlo had never been able to resist the wounded ones. “Are you sure you’re all right, Mr. Tracey?”

  “Dillon. I’m fine.”

  Lazlo felt a blush, and by Dillon’s wry smile, Lazlo was certain he’d noticed, but God, he was handsome. A little older than Lazlo preferred, but the gray at his temples and the lines near his eyes gave him gravitas. Double damn.

  Lazlo couldn’t help staring as Dillon put his hands on his hips. They were strong hands, lean and certain, just like the rest of him. Triple damn.

  “Breachies are safe,” Dillon said.

  Marlowe and Christian ignored him. “Breachies?” Lazlo asked.

  He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “The people whose Chrysalis pods breached, the ones who lived.” The ten breachies stumbled through the door, blinking away the fatigue that lasted for hours after stasis. They huddled in a corner. “The intact Chrysalis pods are fine, ready for the colony whenever the hell we get there.” He nodded at Dué. “She any better?”

  Lazlo shrugged. Besides the promise of coiled power, Lazlo sensed something else in Dillon, an imperfection: the cut on his forehead that had stopped bleeding but was still open. “I can fix that,” he muttered. All it took was a little concentration.

  Dillon rubbed his forehead, but Lazlo knew he’d find no cut, no pain. Shivers ran up and down Lazlo’s spine, mingling with disbelief. Oh God, all the things he could do.

  Dué, her eye. He turned, ready to help her, but her palms cupped his cheeks, and her empty socket seemed to flash blue. She leaned forward as if to kiss him, and he tried to pull away, but her grip was as unarguable as stone. She tilted her head, breath tickling his ear.

  “Touch me with that power, Simon Lazlo, and I will pluck your brain from your skull.”

  He could feel the strength in her, layer upon layer. It tingled over his body. He’d had several conversations with her before the journey, finding her a friendly, if distant, woman. When she pulled away now, he realized he’d never met this woman, this great force. No one could ever claim to know someone so vast.

  Lazlo stood and cleared his throat. “Are we ever going to talk about this?” Even Marlowe and Christian turned to look at him. “The elephant in the room, hmm? Hearing one another’s thoughts, moving things without touching them, and…” He glanced at Lessan’s body.

  “We can’t afford to lose focus,” Dillon said. “We have to get the ship right.”

  Marlowe and Christian nodded. Avoidance. Fantastic. It was holidays with the family all over again. On the floor at his feet, Dué threw her head back and laughed.

  One of the breachies shuffled forward, pulling an emergency blanket tighter around her shoulders. “We need water.”

  Dillon waved her back. “The waiter will be around in a moment.”

  Lazlo tried to smile for her. “We’ll get you something as soon as we unearth it, Ms…”

  “I’m the requisitions officer,” she said through clenched teeth.

  Dillon gave her a wide smile. “Then fill out the correct forms in triplicate, and we’ll get back to you in seven to ten days.”

  Before she could retort, alarms blared through the bridge again, bathing them all in another wash of amber.

  “What now?” Lazlo yelled.

  Marlowe and Christian bent over a console, working in tandem. “Copilot Dué’s codes have launched Chrysalis.”

  Dillon pointed to her. “She’s sitting on the floor staring into space.”

  “The colonists are headed for the planet?” Lazlo asked.

  “With no way to recall them,” Marlowe and Christian said.

  Lazlo looked to their display, where the bright flare of the pods hurtled toward the green planet, the same one Dué had shown him before.

  How could the day get any worse?

  Marlowe and Christian both looked at him, looked through him. “It couldn’t.”

  “Is that planet even habitable?” Lazlo asked.

  “We will care for them,” Dué said, “and they will live.” She stutter-stepped to the display and ran one finger beside it as if caressing the planet’s curve. “We shall be as gods over men.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  Two Hundred Fifty Years after Planet-fall

  Cordelia slid her gloved hand along the grip of her blade. She didn’t blink, and the boggin’s chubby eyestalks were fixed on her steadily. Standing just over three feet tall on two legs, it held a crude wooden spear in its clawed hands. The weapon hung low in front of its bloated belly, and the creature didn’t even glance at the bodies of its comrades floating in the dark, shallow water.

  A shaft of sunlight pierced the rustling branches overhead. Any deeper into the swamp and the canopy would have been too far overhead to admit direct light, but if the boggins had stayed deeper in the swamps, they wouldn’t be having this little dance. Cordelia shifted, waiting for the boggin to throw itself at her as its fellows had done, but this one seemed more cautious. It took a little step to the side and back. Cordelia followed. It could bolt, she supposed, but by the Storm Lord, she hoped it wouldn’t. It retreated again, the shadows making patterns across its oily green hide. Its wide, full lips pulled back in a snarl.

  Cordelia took another step, and the boggin just backed up. Its eyestalks bobbed downward as if looking at her feet, and she wondered if it was calculating how fast she might be in her armor, but boggins didn’t think like that, didn’t think at all, really. Even with the spears, they were little more than animals. It moved a bit more to its left and then hopped back. If she kept forcing it to retreat, it would run into a tree, and then she’d have it.

  Her right foot came down on nothing, sliding into a sinkhole. With a grunt, she fought to keep her balance. The boggin leapt, and she brought her blade up to catch its spear. Her left leg had sunk almost to the thigh, her right leg bent too far for good leverage. The boggin’s sticky toes clung to her armor, and it bounced, trying to drive its spear into her face, but she forced herself to look past the length of wood to four rows of sharp teeth. If it knocked her over in the water, it’d have the upper hand.

  But that might be the only way to shake it loose. She grinned into its snarl and tensed, ready to throw herself backward and launch it over her head. A crack of displaced air came from her left, and the boggin’s head jerked to the side. It stood for one moment, its face gone slack, before it toppled backward, one foot stuck in her belt. Cordelia forced herself to breathe again. As she clambered out of the hole, the boggin hung from her hip like a trophy.

  Liam stood in the shadows of the nearby trees, his armor gleaming in the sun, making him look like a kni
ght from some old story. He winked, the bastard, green eyes sparkling as he holstered his sidearm.

  “A waste of power,” Cordelia said. “And you stole that fucking kill from me.”

  “Stole a kill, saved your life, what’s the difference?”

  “I had that covered.” She waved at the bodies. “I got the rest of them.”

  “Whatever you say, Delia.” He pointed at her belt. “You going to wear that all the way home?”

  She shook her hips back and forth, making the dead boggin swing, its long arms trailing through the water. “Jealous?”

  “Not for me. Looks good on you, though.”

  She shook the boggin loose, then dug the slug out of its skull, grimacing at the grisly work. “How many did you find?”

  “Six, though none as frisky as yours.”

  “Mine led me toward a sinkhole, so it either knew the hole was there, or it made one.” Terrifying if she thought too hard on it, but exhilarating on the surface. “I’d expect tactics like that from a drushka but a boggin?”

  “You’ve never fought a drushka.”

  “I bet they’d be more of a challenge.”

  “Come on, back to town before more of them appear.”

  She looked to the trees. “Think there might be more?”

  He dragged on her arm. “Yes, a host of boggins riding an enormous pack of progs and a group of drushka lobbing angry turtles with hangnails.”

  She let him lead her out of the soup and onto a narrow dirt path. “Boggins using tactics. What do you think that could mean?”

  “They use spears. They hunt in packs.”

  “They use sharp sticks that they probably find, and most of them don’t use anything at all. And pack hunting is different from preparing a battlefield.”

  “Let Captain Mom figure it out.”

  “Mama’s boy.” When he gave her a look, she laughed. “Wait, who has the hangnails, the turtles or the drushka?”

  “You decide, and I’ll back up your story to my mother.”

  Cordelia snorted, and they fell into an easy silence as they walked, following the road until the large trees that stood between civilization and the giants of the swamp thinned almost completely. Within an hour, they reached the outskirts of Squall, though how a cluster of wooden houses and a few acres of crops rated a name, Cordelia had no idea.

  Squall’s mayor waited for them in his tiny, unadorned office inside the largest house, wiping his neck with a handkerchief. “Did you get them?”

  “We’re fine, thank you,” Liam said under his breath.

  Cordelia held in a laugh. “Fourteen accounted for and dispatched. If you see any more, you might want to move your people closer to Gale.”

  “The Storm Lord knows I’ve thought about it often enough, but we’ve made a home here.” He nodded, still wiping, eyes shifting back and forth between them. Cordelia waited for more; some gratitude, maybe.

  He looked from one of them to the other again. “Is there something—”

  Liam cleared his throat. “We’ll be on our way.” He waited until they were outside to say, “The nod means, ‘You can go now.’”

  “What an asshole.”

  “I’ll assume you mean the mayor.”

  “They could have built their farms north of Gale, anywhere but closer to the fucking swamp.” She pointed farther southwest, toward where the first human settlement used to be. “Did they not see the ruins? Everyone’s at least heard of them.”

  “Well, the drushka wiped out Community. Maybe they think it’s only fitting to let the boggins take out Squall.”

  “Like I said, assholes.”

  An hour’s hike brought them in sight of Gale, where the trees of the swamp had thinned away but still provided some shade, and before the plains began in earnest. The wooden palisade surrounded the city, with the Paladin Keep rising like a spear over the eastern side. The Yafanai Temple guarded the southwestern side, but unlike the keep, its wooden gaps were filled with brick and stone quarried from the mountains to the north. The keep’s sides flashed with metal scavenged from the first settlers’ pods.

  Cordelia looked on all of it with pride. Two hundred and fifty years of scraping and clawing at the dirt, of trying to coax reluctant metals out of the mountains. Humanity had accomplished so much in the face of hardship, but they never could have done it alone. Before she and Liam passed through the gate, she took one look upward, to the unblinking star, the Storm Lord who watched over them, bringing sweet rain when they needed it and sunshine when they didn’t.

  He’d never build on the swamp’s fucking doorstep; that was certain.

  The leathers on guard duty saluted. Cordelia and Liam returned the gesture, and Cordelia gave them a grin. She’d been in their shoes not long ago, sweating and itching in that damned boiled hide. A promotion to lieutenant would earn them the metal and polycarbonates that made up her armor; still heavy, but damn, it moved so much better. If they still had the means to power it, the paladins would be unstoppable.

  At midday, the crowds around the gates were thick with people moving to and from the market at the city center. The wealthy, their clothing covered in embroidery, rode in rickshaws with servants hollering at people to clear a path. Everyone else clogged the street, moving aside after a glance at paladin armor, but it was still slow going, and the noise and clutter surrounded them like a childhood blanket. Cordelia wasn’t even angry when they had to step around a broken-down rickshaw that took up half the street. It gave her an opportunity to study the rickshaw runner, a curvy woman with dark brown hair. When she straightened, adjusting her money belt, she kicked the rickshaw’s broken wheel and cursed like a sergeant. She had pretty, dark eyes, and the anger in her face gave her cheeks a nice glow. But as the woman’s gaze passed over them, she lingered on Liam and batted her lashes.

  Cordelia nudged him. “That’s your cue, hero.”

  “I’ll meet you at the pub.” He slowed and turned to the rickshaw runner. “May I be of assistance, madam?”

  Cordelia chuckled and continued through the crowd to where the street split, one avenue leading to the keep and another toward her favorite bar. Her shift wasn’t over yet, but she could turn her armor in early. Nah, she liked making Brown wait for it. Made her appreciate it more.

  Cordelia smiled at the thought and stepped quick to the Pickled Prog. Walls lined with mesh-covered windows let in the light and kept out most of the dust, leaving fresh air along with the sweet smell of dried flowers that Edwina used to scent the place.

  “It’s our favorite pally,” Edwina called from behind the bar. “Mead? Or hanaberry juice for those still on duty?”

  “Mead. I’m off-duty enough.” Cordelia took off her helmet and gloves, laid them on the wooden bar, and smoothed her short, sweaty hair away from her face. Edwina served the few other customers who were scattered around the tables, chitchatting with everyone. Cordelia eased onto a stool, waiting. Edwina would serve her last, like always, ever since their brief fling. It was her subtle reminder, a way to say, “You could have been served first if you’d stuck around.”

  “How’s that mead coming?” Cordelia asked as Edwina came around the bar again.

  “It’ll be there when it gets there.” She didn’t look up, but Cordelia could see the starch in her shoulders, the irritation in the way her hips twitched beneath her skirt.

  When Cordelia took a slow look around the room, though, her grin dropped away. A pair sat at a table, wearing light-colored robes and hoods. She couldn’t see their faces, but the golden sunburst embroidered on one’s robe and the blue and silver moon on the other’s told her all she needed to know.

  “Serving heathens now, Ed?” Cordelia asked.

  The robed figures looked to her, pushing back their hoods and revealing a man and a woman, but she’d known they would be. The Sun-Moons always came in such pairs.

  “Don’t mind them,” Edwina said. “They’ve come to trade.”

  “Please to forgive us, madam,” t
he man said in accented Galean. “We are not to be looking for trouble.” They moved almost in sync, and Cordelia shuddered. She’d heard that pairs lived together from birth, did everything together because that was how their gods operated. As if their gods even existed.

  “And you’re about finished, yeah?” Cordelia asked.

  Edwina glared over her shoulder before beaming at the pair. “Let us speak later.”

  They nodded, laid a metal coin on the table, and hurried out the door.

  “Try not to glare too hard, pally,” Edwina said. “You’ll chip the varnish on my bar.”

  “I didn’t know you traded with heathens.”

  Edwina set a glass of dark red mead in front of her. “It’s not against the law.”

  Liam strode through the door before Cordelia could retort. “What’s not against the law?”

  “Trading with Sun-Moon worshipers,” Edwina replied.

  Liam removed his helmet, shaking free his light brown ponytail. “Yeah, I saw them as I came down the street. What did you get?”

  “I’ll show you.” She hurried into her stockroom.

  “Fucking Sun-Moons in our city,” Cordelia mumbled.

  “Ease up. Fighting’s done for the day.”

  “I guess you’re right. How did it go with your damsel?”

  He took a swig from Cordelia’s glass. “She gave me her address.”

  “You do move fast.”

  “Your jealousy is delicious. Have I ever mentioned that?”

  “If you like that, you’ll love the taste of my fist.”

  “You know I like the rough stuff. Speaking of.” He craned his neck toward the stockroom. “What exactly does one have to do to get one’s own glass of mead?”

  “Coming, coming.” With a flourish, Edwina set a glass of frothy yellow liquid on the bar. “Try this first.”

  Cordelia choked on her mead. “Ed, that is a glass of piss.”

  Edwina glared at her. “It’s called beer, made from grain. On the house for you, Liam.”

  “Looks…tasty,” he said. “What shall we drink to?”

  “To the Pickled Prog,” Cordelia said, “where every paladin gets a free glass of urine just for coming in the door.”