Paladins of the Storm Lord

by Barbara Ann Wright

  Horace tore the boggin’s spinal cord from its brain with one neat flick of power. It dropped, and he stared until Jacobs’s cry brought him back to himself. He knelt at her side.

  “This will hurt, but not for long.” He yanked the spear free, and she screamed, a sound that died as he closed the wound and eased her pain. She gasped, coughing as she drew in too much air.

  “Breathe,” Horace said.

  “Thank…thanks.” She stood and wiped the blood from her mouth. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  But she was already tottering away to join her fellows.

  Horace stared at the boggin, and bile burned his chest. Life could be over this quickly for anyone, Lieutenant Ross or Simon or Natalya, or anyone he hadn’t let himself think about since this whole thing started. What the hell was he doing wasting time?

  He crossed to Captain Carmichael and leaned to her ear. “I need to speak with you in private.”

  Her mouth quirked. “We can’t exactly go into the parlor.”

  “I can send you a telepathic message that no one else will hear.”

  She stared as if wondering what he was playing at. “Well, you asked permission first, so I guess that says something. Go ahead.”

  “The Storm Lord killed the mayor,” he sent.

  Outwardly, she didn’t change, but Horace’s power told him what was happening underneath her skin. Her muscles tightened as if someone had pulled her strings, and anger brewed inside her.

  “You’re sure.”

  “From his own mind.” He gave her a glimpse of the images he’d seen, including the fact that the Storm Lord knew someone was on to him.

  “So you’re the only proof?”

  Horace went cold, but he gathered his power, wondering how many of them he could subdue if he’d just made the worst mistake of his life.

  Something in his face must have answered the question. She nodded. “Stay close to me. I’ll keep you alive.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Cordelia kept angling toward the Paladin Keep, leading Reach and Liam. She hoped Carmichael could tell them what had happened to Gale, and she wanted to talk about the Storm Lord. Both Paul and Carmichael hadn’t been pleased to find the Storm Lord among them. Maybe she’d already had the same thoughts Cordelia had, and she might have a better idea about what to do.

  But what could anyone do to a god? She’d been faithful to the Storm Lord her whole life, and to have that repaid with murder? Even if Paul had done something wrong, he didn’t deserve to die for it. That sounded less like a god and more like a monster. Maybe it’d be easier to have a god that didn’t exist, as the Sun-Moons did.

  The streets were filled with shredded fabric, broken crockery, smashed open boxes, and pieces of wood. Here and there, a body lay among the wreckage. Liam bent over one person who sprawled in the street, her arms outstretched. He felt for a pulse and then opened his visor. “Do you think they—”

  A boggin slithered out of the debris on the other side of the body. Cordelia started forward, and Liam went for his sidearm, but the boggin hurled a spear into his open helm. He clutched his face, howling, blood gushing around his clasped hands.

  Cordelia cried out. This was not happening again. Her weapons forgotten, she launched toward the boggin with her bare hands. It ducked into a pile of heaped wood and plaster, and Cordelia crashed behind it, scattering debris like sand.

  She yelled every obscenity she knew, letting out the rage for her parents, for Paul, for all of Gale. The fucking swamp just wouldn’t let them be, and their god might have turned on them. The boggin skipped halfway up a shattered building, but another of its fellows ambled around the corner. Cordelia grabbed the new boggin and swung it into the ground before nearly pulling it apart. It screamed until she planted a foot in its skull and squashed it like an overripe melon.

  “Sa!” Reach yelled. “He lives. You must hold him still.”

  The first boggin still crouched on the building, licking its lips. She could catch it if she—

  “Sa!”

  She glanced back, but she couldn’t let another murderer go free. The boggin scrambled farther up the house, almost out of sight. It was now or never, and revenge was screaming at her to keep going.

  With a strangled sound, Cordelia ran for Liam. He rolled on the ground, clutching his face. Reach tried to hold him, and the little boy on her back began to cry. Cordelia fell across Liam’s torso, pinning him. Reach fumbled in a pouch at her waist and pressed something to his face. She began to sing, and Cordelia’s heartbeat slowed, letting her breathe again. The little boy calmed, and Liam went limp.

  Reach eased his helmet off and bent over his face, singing all the while. Time fell away, and the destruction around them seemed to fade. Cordelia pictured her uncle doing all the things he’d loved and thought of her parents sneaking kisses while she groaned at them to stop being so embarrassing. Funny, after losing them, she’d thought she was done with grief, that nothing could ever hurt so badly again. Everyone in her life seemed immortal. They had to be, or she wouldn’t survive.

  She looked to Liam’s face but couldn’t see around Reach. “I’m sorry. I almost let you die; I’m sorry.” Revenge had made too much sense. If she killed that boggin, she’d thought, everything would have been okay. But that wasn’t true, not at all. All the people she’d taken her anger out on over the years, all the fights she and Liam had caused. Had they ever helped?

  Reach leaned out of the way. Liam’s eyes were shut, but his mouth moved as if trying to follow Reach’s song. At last, the notes faded, and Cordelia breathed deep. The clarity receded, and she tried to keep hold of it, but she was only left with: the living were always more important than the dead.

  “A large wound through his cheek,” Reach said. “I have tried to sing it away, but I have never had to heal this much damage to a human before.”

  Cordelia nodded. She was shaking, didn’t know if she could rise even with the armor.

  “Sa, he will live. Rejoice.”

  “He’s lucky.”

  Reach stood, pulling Cordelia up as she went, stronger than she looked. “Many will live if we save them.”

  “Right. You’re right.”

  Liam had a small, seeping hole in his cheek, but he blinked and focused on her. “What happened?” It sounded as if he had a mouth full of wadded fabric, and half his face had already started to swell.

  She couldn’t help a smile. “Can you move?”

  “Dizzy. Help?”

  She pulled him up. “Clear that head, soldier. We’re moving out.”

  “Fuck off.” He swayed but accepted her arm.

  Reach held her poleaxe ready. “Someone comes.”

  Brown dashed around the corner, pulling up short when she saw them. “Where the fuck have you been?” Before Cordelia could answer, she added, “Don’t tell me you’re going for the railguns too?”

  Cordelia blinked before she remembered. They’d all looked hungrily at the heavy artillery when the Storm Lord had first charged it. “I hadn’t thought of them.”

  “Yeah? Well, keep not thinking. Carmichael told me where to deploy them, and I get dibs. There might be enough for you if no one else is around.” She looked hard at Liam. “What happened to him?”

  As if she couldn’t guess by everything around them. “He tried to keep me away from a railgun.”

  Brown sputtered a laugh. “Well, there are four of them. I guess I can share.”

  As they kept toward the keep, Cordelia’s thoughts tried to pull her into another snarl of anger and guilt. She tried to hold on to the purity of Reach’s song, but her need for revenge was hard to ignore. She’d been chasing it for so long. And if the Storm Lord was responsible for Paul’s death, he had to pay, even if she had no idea how to make that happen, even if it cost her life.

  Close to the keep, someone leapt into the street in front of them, and Cordelia and Brown went for their sidearms. Reach cast her poleaxe away
and stepped in front of them, leaving Liam to sway on his own.

  “Stop, Sa!” Reach said. “Do you not see?”

  Shiv stepped around her, and Cordelia pointed her gun at the ground. “What the hell?”

  “Sa, the old drushka have attacked us. My mother is threatened. You must come.”

  Reach sucked her teeth.

  “What happened?” Cordelia asked.

  Shiv told them of a battle in the swamp, drushka attacking drushka. She peered around the city as she spoke, as they continued toward the keep. “What has happened here?”

  “Later.” Cordelia’s mind was racing. If Pool’s drushka were outnumbered as much as Shiv claimed, they wouldn’t last the night. And the only way to reach them fast enough was with powered armor. And they’d need some firepower.

  “I will come with you,” Reach said. But as she was, she’d be casting her life away with so many others.

  At the entrance to the keep, Cordelia looked back at the city. Maybe Gale would be all right without her. It had the rest of the paladins. It had the yafanai. It had the Storm Lord, who may or may not have killed her uncle. And it had Carmichael, who had gotten them into this mess in the first place, unless that had been the Storm Lord’s doing, too. Hadn’t she once mentioned something about being under orders?

  Cordelia rubbed her forehead. All this mess caused by one order? “I’m coming, too.”

  Brown gawked at her. “You’re abandoning Gale?”

  “And I’m taking a railgun.” She nodded at Reach. “Two of them, if you think you can handle it.”

  Reach gave her a flat look. “I am as capable as you.”

  “You can’t abandon your post!” Brown said.

  “Well, I’m supposed to be guarding my dead uncle’s house, so I already abandoned it.” When Brown continued to stare, Cordelia added, “Look, Jen, if the old drushka take out our allies, where do you think they’ll head next? How well do you think we could defend Gale from another attack?”

  “Oh, but you think you can just march into the swamp and take care of all the drushka?” Brown asked.

  “I have to try.” There were a lot of people left alive in Gale, but she couldn’t stop thinking of Shiv losing her mother and her people. And she couldn’t forget Nettle’s smile, her grace, the feel of her lithe body. She pictured Nettle struggling against a horde of drushka until they pulled her down.

  A low rumble made them turn, and Lea pushed Cordelia’s ballista into the light of the keep. “Thanks for the loan,” he called.

  Cordelia didn’t know whether to gawk or laugh. “I forgot I had it!”

  “It came in handy. We ran out of stuff we could use as ammo. I sent some yafanai back to their temple and thought I’d come here. Where are we off to?”

  “We’re deploying the railguns around the city,” Brown said.

  Cordelia pointed toward the palisade. “I’m going to the swamp just as soon as I get a gun of my own.”

  Lea shook his head, and Cordelia thought he was going to try to talk her out of it, but he said, “Railguns in the city won’t work. They’ll shred walls like paper and hit anyone inside.” When they stared, he blinked at them. “All the times you’ve seen the paladin vid, have you ever really watched it?”

  “That’s not what Carmichael said!” Brown shouted.

  “Swamp it is,” Cordelia said.

  “No.” Brown held up a hand. “We are not marching into the swamp to take on the whole native population.”

  “Captain Carmichael will figure out about the railguns once she thinks about it,” Lea said. He nodded to Cordelia. “Come on. I know where they are.”

  “I can lead you into the swamp,” Shiv said.

  Cordelia shook her head as she followed Lea into the keep. “You and Liam are both staying. No arguments, or I will slug you. Liam, you’re hurt, and, Shiv, you’re too important.”

  They agreed quicker than she expected. Brown raged at them as they donned the battery and ammo packs for each railgun and then hefted the guns themselves. Reach set her poleaxe and the sleeping boy in the corner. If the gun was too heavy for her, she didn’t show it.

  At last, Brown shut her mouth with a snap. “This feels wrong.”

  Lea hefted his gun. “Nothing wrong about it.”

  Brown eyed the gun with longing and then picked up the last one. “We make this quick. Save the fucking drushka, then come back, and clean up Gale. Can’t believe I’m doing this.”

  Reach listened as Cordelia instructed her in the railgun’s use. If she kept the trigger down, the bullets would keep dropping into the chamber, and the magnets—powered by the battery packs—would propel them from the barrel with violent force. “Be mindful of the ammo. You can spend more than you want real fucking quick.”

  “One of us should carry it for you during the trip,” Lea said, “with our armor powered and all.”

  Reach handed him the weapon. She picked up the little boy and cuddled him close. “Queen’s daughter, will you care for my son while I am gone?”

  Shiv sucked her teeth but took the boy in her arms. “Yours, shawness?”

  “Ahya, I saved his life. He is in my hands now.” She sang a few notes, and the boy settled deeper into sleep.

  “I will do as you ask. His name?”

  Reach caressed his cheek with one knuckle. “He cannot speak to tell me, so I will call him Paul.”

  Cordelia’s throat tightened. She would never again be a pain in her uncle’s ass. That hurt so much it was hard to breathe. It was easier to focus on the many people she could annoy if they lived through the night.

  “He, um, he might have some relatives left,” Liam said, nodding at the boy.

  Reach glared at him, and Cordelia cleared her throat, warning him to drop it, but he didn’t stop his stare.

  “I inquired after I found him wandering in the street,” Reach said. “A mother, a father, a grandmother, all dead.” Her head tilted. “Do you remember where to find their corpses? So you can check?”

  “Yep, that’s…all right.”

  Cordelia clutched his shoulder. “Stay safe.”

  “I’d tell you the same, but you’d ignore me. Come back, all of you.”

  “It’s a promise.”

  Reach led them out of the keep, claiming she could find her people even if blind. Brown still muttered under her breath, but Lea seemed almost jaunty as they wound through Gale’s stricken streets, heading for the palisade. A quick jump and they were over, into the abandoned fields. The sky in the east was beginning to lighten despite the rain, but they still had to use the glow of their armor to light the way.

  *

  Everywhere B46 turned, her children were killing and feasting. The water creatures had done their tasks well, battering this nest and scattering its inhabitants. She could not hear their roars anymore, thought them all dead, but the children seemed without number.

  She wished she could join the fight beside them, but pain ached through her body, and her thoughts would not stay on a single track. She watched several children die and knew she could have helped them with her body or her mind, but she could not spur her shuffling steps into anything more.

  She followed the scent of the sticky grit that drifted through the nest. The children felled a creature that reeked of it, and B46 drank its blood, lapping it from the stones, but it only whetted her appetite. There had to be more.

  She stumbled on, and a tantalizing breeze passed over her nose that made her legs straighten a bit and her mind clear a little. Somewhere ahead, the sticky grit called to her in its pure form.

  The way was barred—like so many paths in this winding nest—but her claws could always find a way. First, she had to kill the tall creature who guarded this place, who reeked of the sticky grit. If B46 feasted upon her, maybe she would find the strength to get inside to the grit itself.

  *

  Lydia’s head pounded in time with her pulse. She’d cried every tear she’d ever had, but the sobs wouldn’t stop, not si
nce Freddie’s breathing had faded away like a snuffed candle. She sat on the steps of the temple and wept, rocking herself and wondering if she should move Freddie’s body then wondering what the point would be.

  At the end of the lane, someone tottered into the light with halting steps, probably looking for help. Lydia tried to clear her throat to call that there was no help here, but she couldn’t make the words.

  Licking her lips with a sandpaper tongue, she tried again. The boggin wobbled through a patch of light like something out of a nightmare. Its eyestalks were locked on her, and there was nowhere to run.

  Lydia moved to Freddie, thinking the monster had come to eat, but when she let her power play out, she watched the boggin shuffle toward the temple gates, ignoring Freddie, fixed on Lydia like a starving woman.

  Time rewound, and Lydia moved into the open, looking for a way to dash around the boggin as it crept closer. It panted, wounded or ill, but its claws and mouth were stained black with blood. She thought to just stand there and be devoured, let her grief end, but something primal raged against that thought. She couldn’t run. She would have to fight.

  She slid a pole from the rickshaw’s torn canopy, though she had no idea how to use it as a weapon. She held it in front of her, thinking to bat the boggin out of the way, but maybe it would be better to jab and hurt it if she could or drive it away if she couldn’t.

  Well, there was one way to find out.

  She let her power hover, going moments into the future before sliding back into place. She lived in two different times, entranced and yet aware. The boggin leapt in the future, and she ducked to the side in the present. The boggin flew past her, and Lydia whirled around, having already seen where it would land. She thrust the pole into its belly, sending it off balance.

  It caught itself and raked at her, but Lydia’s leg was no longer in its path. She swung the pole around and smacked the boggin in the head. In the future, the claws came up again, and she leaned away, but she didn’t go far enough to see that the attack was a feint. In the present, the boggin snapped her pole in half.