Paladins of the Storm Lord

by Barbara Ann Wright

  Pool’s laughter bubbled in Nettle’s mind. Reach had said that if given a patch of ground, the humans would spread like ivy. Pool’s memories called them a courageous people, often foolishly so, who would give their lives for those they cared for. Roshkikan had been so. But humans also blundered into danger without thought. Time always seemed to be hurrying away from them. Roshkikan had needed to know too much too quickly. She had been in love with change, and that had turned the bulk of the drushka against her, against all humans. And some humans did not know how to stop a fight once it had begun. A few punches, and they were ready for war.

  But Sa had not been like that. She had not responded to the downing of her mind-throwers by trying to kill the drushka. She had accepted the test for what it was, had showed restraint while making it known that she would only be pushed so far. Nettle could easily summon the memory of her proud, defiant shoulders, the angry flash of her dark eyes or the quickness of her smile. Her emotions changed as quickly as a beetle’s shell, but she had not let her feelings rule her.

  But Sa was young. She might make a good ally now, but her thoughts could change, steered by those who commanded her, like her Storm Lord. True, Nettle thought, but they could still use her help if she would give it now. Perhaps she could convince other metal skins to aid the drushka, and then she could command them to leave the swamp once the chanuka had been dealt with. She was true as well as fierce.

  And her form was as pleasing as her presence: the strong play of muscle under intriguing curves. Nettle’s temples tingled, and her chest tightened. Pool’s mind shivered as she delighted in the desirous sensations. Nettle grinned. Sa knew about the scent. Anything that happened between them now would not be tainted by lies, whether there was any truth to the scent or not, as long as both of them were affected. The next time they were alone, Nettle would let her desire show, would act more like young Shiv and let her wishes be known.

  Irritation thrummed down Pool’s connection at the mention of her rebellious daughter, a thorn hidden among soft leaves. Before the schism, queens were born to random parents, so that there was always one queen-to-be who learned among her fellow drushka before her time as queen began. Another queen was born just as a Shi died, and then the queen-to-be became Anushi, sapling. Pool had been a queen-to-be during Roshkikan’s time, knowing a human before she took her place as Anushi. And once she had become a queen, she had broken her people in two.

  And queens of the old drushka did not have children, for the child of a queen would be a queen, and they could not risk having more queens than trees that could bear them. But Pool had missed the company of other queens, the harmony that only their minds could provide. She could speak with all her drushka, but she could only commune with another queen. It had been a secret ache, deeply harbored. She had shared it with Nettle many times, until she could no longer bear it.

  And now they had Shiv, who had no tree to look forward to until the day long in the future when her mother died, and then she would be alone.

  “Not for long,” Pool thought, the words clear in Nettle’s mind.

  Nettle paused, waiting for an explanation, but none came. The root released her, leaving her wondering if Pool pondered having another child.

  A cry of alarm sounded from the trees. Nettle put her hands down for her daggers, and the tendrils of wood that kept them at her waist flowed over her wrists and secured the handles to her palms.

  She ran toward the sound and saw a drushka pulled into the underbrush by a multitude of chanuka arms.

  “To me!” Nettle called. Other hunt leaders echoed the cry around her. Nettle leapt for the chanuka, but another group of them rushed from the low brush.

  Nettle skewered one in the belly and dodged a spear from another. She kicked a chanuka in the face and slashed at a large female. All about her, drushka were locked in combat, but they were pushing the chanuka back. Perhaps the creatures had finally overreached. Whether they had or not, Nettle knew the drushka had to push them back or give up what remained of their ground.

  *

  B46 watched her children and trilled in glee. The sticky grit quickened her breathing, and she memorized the moves of the tall creatures, watching the way her children died. She signaled to the high branches where the bulk of them waited like coiled vines, covering the trees. Her muscles jumped, and she dug her claws into her thighs to keep from crying out. They were so close.

  C28 waited on the branch below, sending children trickling into the fray. When he’d left her, his eyes already enormous from the grit’s effects, she’d known they’d win this day. The tall creatures drew closer, led by the promise of slaughtering more of her children.

  She smeared more grit along her gums. The bag held crumbs now, but it would be enough. She heard the shredding, ripping sounds of enemy flesh being torn from its bones. It would be easy to give in to bliss, but she held to her anger. Rage ebbed but didn’t quit the field of her mind.

  The tall creatures passed far beneath her hiding place, and she unleashed the children waiting above her, dropping them on enemy backs. She sent groups of them to both sides of the fight, surrounding the tall creatures so none could escape. Soon, pockets of tall creatures fought for space as well as lives, but for every child of B46’s that fell, two more took its place, then three more, four. She leapt to join the fray as her children closed about the tall creatures like a fist, stabbing and clawing and biting. The taste of their flesh complemented the bitterness of the sticky grit, an intoxicating combination.

  *

  Shiv listened to the sounds of combat that echoed through the trees. She wanted to run into its teeth, to put her sorry knife to chanuka throats.

  Higaroshi pulled at her arm again. “Please, young one, if you leave, I will have no one to protect me.”

  She slapped her thighs. Nettle had only told her to protect Higaroshi in order to keep her from the fighting, but he would die if left alone. Perhaps the chanuka would not come this close to the enclave, but why not? They had already ventured too close to her mother’s hiding place. They had already killed many drushka and lost their fear.

  “Shi’a’na,” Shiv called with her voice and her mind. If her mother would reveal herself, Higaroshi could hide in the branches, and Shiv could join the fight.

  But her mother did not answer. Shiv slapped her thighs again and took another step toward the sounds of combat.

  Higaroshi screamed. Shiv whirled and spotted a chanuka creeping through the underbrush. Its eyestalks bulged at the sound of the scream, as if it was as surprised as Higaroshi. Shiv leapt for it, her carved knife streaking forward. She bent away from its spear and tore her blade across its throat.

  “Shiv!” Higaroshi yelled. He pointed to brush that now seemed alive with creeping chanuka.

  She pushed him toward a tree. “Climb!”

  One of the chanuka dashed at them, and she clawed its face. It clutched the wound and shook, falling to its knees as the paralyzing poison coursed through it. Higaroshi yelped and fell from the tree. Shiv glanced up to see the fang-filled mouth of a chanuka smiling down at them.

  She hauled Higaroshi to his feet and tried to find somewhere to run. “Shi’a’na!”

  Nettle leapt the closest bushes, several drushka beside her. A whirlwind of blades, she turned the chanuka into meat within seconds. She and the others had golden wounds marring their bodies, leaking over their clothes. One had an arm that hung uselessly, blood streaming from a bite in his shoulder.

  “The queen is coming,” Nettle said. “You and Higaroshi will go with her.”

  “Who?” Higaroshi asked.

  A branch snaked from the trees and curled around his waist, lifting him screaming into the air. Shiv leapt along with him into her mother’s tree, landing near where her mother sat in a little shelter of bark.

  Shiv held tight to Higaroshi. “You must hold on!”

  “A drushkan queen?” He pointed to Shiv’s hair and then to her mother’s, the same bright green, though her mot
her’s flowed over the trunk, held by tiny wooden tendrils. “Is this your…”

  “Hold on,” Shiv said again.

  The roots of the Anushi tree wrapped around other trunks in the swamp, and it pulled itself forward. It flung chanuka far into the distance or crushed them where they stood. Its leafy branches swung through their ranks, collecting drushka and holding them close.

  *

  B46 hurled a spear at the walking tree, but the tall creatures huddled too far into its branches. Her children balked, terrified. They scattered, but the walking tree killed them faster than they could run. She howled her rage at this thing that had disrupted all her careful plans. Every creature in the swamp would have been hers, and from here she would have moved on to the stinking nest outside the trees, but she’d never expected this.

  Trees weren’t supposed to move, not in the before times and not now. She remembered the roots that had taken the tall creatures from her before, but nothing like this had happened, and that had been far from this spot.

  She would have to plan again.

  Or perhaps it was time to abandon these tall creatures and turn her gaze to the others, those she could kill with fire.

  As she fled into the swamp, she knew one thing for certain: she would have to collect the panicked children and then make more, but she could always make more. She would make another plan, turn her thoughts again, and make them into a weapon.

  *

  The chanuka had fled, but the drushka stayed aboard the Anushi tree or kept close, scanning the swamp for danger. Shiv watched as the hunt leaders gathered the dead, what was left of them, so their bodies could rejoin the soil.

  The branches lowered her mother to the ground, and Shiv hopped down, too. “Shi’a’na?”

  Her mother waved her to silence as Nettle strode over to them. Golden blood still streaked Nettle’s body, some of it cracking open as she moved.

  “How many dead?” Shi’a’na asked.

  “A fourth.” Nettle’s eyes closed in pain. “A fourth of our tribe.”

  One of Shi’a’na’s roots curled around her own waist and another around her shoulders as if comforting her. Shiv turned away; she would never feel the comfort of a tree while her mother lived.

  “I will speak to my daughter alone.”

  Nettle moved away, though Shiv could have spoken to her mother privately through the roots. She tried not to curl her lip at the thought. Her mother preferred to speak to her face because the roots reminded them that their communion could never be pure, that Shiv was not a real queen.

  “Are you going to chastise me for fighting?” Shiv asked. “Or for something else?”

  “I cannot be angry with you for doing as I did.”

  “You can do whatever you want. You are queen.”

  Shi’a’na sighed both with her mouth and her mind. Everyone in the tribe could probably feel her aggravation with her wayward offspring. Again. “We are important, daughter. Drushka will die to protect our lives above theirs. We make them reckless.”

  Shiv slapped her thighs. “I have no tree. I hold no importance. If we were part of the old drushka, we could have ruled side by side!”

  “If we were part of the old drushka, you would not exist.” She laid her hands on Shiv’s shoulders, stopping any hasty response. “And I would not wish that.”

  Shiv wanted to sink into the warmth of that voice, but the words did not reflect her mother’s actions. “You never crafted a living weapon for me, though you gave one to every other member of our tribe. They have pieces of Anushi bark, your very self, to defend them, and I have this.” She flung her knife to the ground. “Dead wood.”

  Her mother straightened, and Shiv prepared herself for wrath. To Shiv’s surprise, Shi’a’na touched her forehead. “I am sorry, my daughter. I thought that having to craft your own weapon would make you strong, independent from me, and it has, ahya, but I wonder if it is worth the price of your anger. Since you would one day rule alone, I thought…” Her smile was sad, thoughtful. “Now I see that ruling alone was always the problem. We were not meant to be queens alone.”

  “And so?” She felt her mother’s call and looked up. Her breath stuttered as the Anushi tree lowered a stick to the ground. Small roots bunched on one end, and a smattering of branches graced its crown. It touched the soil and dug in, no taller than Shiv, but she felt it standing there as if it was one of her own limbs. She called to it with her mind, and it tottered to her, swaying, forcing her to jump forward and catch it. It laid its branches over her in an embrace, and like root to soil, they were one.

  “Shi’a’na,” Shiv said, joy quaking her voice. She hugged the tree carefully, scared of fracturing this joy.

  “Too young to carry you, but ahya, it will not always be so.”

  With a sob, Shiv threw her arm around her mother, holding the young tree in the crook of her other arm. “I am so sorry, Shi’a’na, for ever being a thorn to you.”

  Her mother clutched the back of her head and pressed their foreheads together. “The wind has not blown in our favor. These chanuka grow ever stronger, some doing of the humans, but I see the hand of the old drushka as well. There are rumblings in my mind. They are coming.”

  Shiv caressed her little tree and knew it was so. She sometimes felt the pull of the old queens, but she had never touched their minds as her mother had. And through this tree, she touched her tribe in a way she never had either, always having to go through her mother before. They were all connected, made one through the queens, and without the queens, they were alone. “I see now why we must survive. We are the drushka.”

  Her mother wrinkled her nose. She had created a child when it was forbidden, created a queen, and now she had made a queen’s tree from her own branches. Nothing was impossible for her. She would save them from the chanuka and the old drushka both.

  And Shiv would help her.

  Her mother laughed. “Yes, daughter. You will help. You will go with Nettle to the human place and learn more of them. If we are to remain free from the old ways, your path will stay close to the humans.” She gripped Shiv’s chin. “But you will obey the hunt leader as you would me and do as she says.”

  Shiv let her chin rest so her mother could see her obedience. “I will do as she says.” She clenched her jaw, letting her spirit shine through. “But I will not enjoy it.”

  Her mother smiled and wrinkled her nose again.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Cordelia stared at the palisade, wondering if she should go around to the gate or just jump over. She laughed at the thought, earning her a few funny looks from passers-by. Her cheeks were hurting from the grin she’d sported for two days, ever since the Storm Lord had joined his chosen people and charged their armor.

  It sent shivers down her spine just thinking about it.

  When she’d first seen him, her heart had hammered so hard she’d felt it winding into her belly. The Storm Lord on Calamity, among his people. She knew the old story: he’d become a god after humanity had reached this planet, but how had he come back to the planet as a human?

  Well, nothing was impossible for him. He’d been dressed in golden robes. She’d wondered why he hadn’t come to his people in armor, but all thought scampered from her mind as he passed within two feet of her, casting a joyful smile at his people.

  She’d followed in his wake, sliding in behind Carmichael, who hadn’t seemed as if the Storm Lord’s arrival rated any particular ecstasy. Liam crowded in at Cordelia’s side, and she grabbed his hand, squeezed it as Carmichael showed the Storm Lord around the keep, coming at last to the armory. He paused in front of the armor racks, where they stored the suits when not in use.

  But it had another function once.

  The Storm Lord had bent and arranged the old batteries, the heaviest part of the armor that no one bothered to wear anymore. He asked if those were all the batteries, and the crowd of paladins gasped as they realized the power he meant to give them on top of everything else.

&nbs
p; Cordelia had clutched Liam’s hand until he’d whined. The Storm Lord warned them to stay back. A buzz filled the room and several tiny clicks came from the racks. The batteries rattled, and when the Storm Lord hooked them into the armor, it glowed so softly Cordelia thought she was imagining it. The paladin recruitment vid kept playing in her head, the soldiers of Pross Co. doing the impossible, the leaps and the lifting that powered armor could give them.

  The Storm Lord had caught Cordelia’s eye and smiled, and she didn’t think she’d ever forget his first words to her: “I had that same look on my face the day I joined up.”

  He’d asked for her name, but Carmichael answered and threw out that Cordelia was the niece of the mayor as if she needed that connection to protect her. The Storm Lord gave her a shrewd look but didn’t lose his smile. Carmichael’s frown deepened when the Storm Lord began to train them. He taught them how to leap, how to keep their balance, how to take advantage of their new speed and strength. He showed them how to raise and lower their ultrathin visor, how to use the targeting functions and how to make the armor glow. Cordelia thought she might collapse from sheer joy, but the armor would hold her up.

  “You should have seen the real suits,” the Storm Lord had said. “The battle armor and not these dress pieces. This is damn fine tech, but it was sent as a show to make the original colonists feel protected.” He touched it fondly. “And it makes for good vid, but the battle armor was for business.”

  They’d sighed with him. The battle armor featured prominently in the recruitment vid, but the suits they had were impressive enough, as far as Cordelia was concerned.

  People had so many questions about what the armor was made from and how they could make more, but the Storm Lord said they couldn’t, not without metal and someone who knew how to recreate the components inside.