David: Savakerrva, Book 1

by L. Brown

  Frenzied waves of humanity now falling back, they slammed into Garth and dropped him once more. The delay enraged, but knocked to his hands and knees, he glimpsed, through running legs, a bloodied couple shielding their child, a limp young woman missing her hat.

  “Eylahn!” Garth yelled, but lunging forward with explosive resolve, he felt a strong hand jerk him back. Then hoisted upward, choked in the vise of seven barnacled fingers, he gasped at Firefly’s dark-goggled face. But as he hung their suspended, he heard something improbably strange, a voice from a past he assumed long gone.

  “David!” the voice called. “Don’t move!”

  Moving immediately, Garth twisted around, a move alerting Firefly to do the same. And in that moment, both glimpsed a lightning-bright slash, an X-blade arc whipping their way. It almost hit Garth, nearly cleaved him in half, but through aim or luck, the lash found only G’mach.

  Yet Firefly only flinched, at least at first. But going unsteady and showing some tilt, he peered through his goggles at a just-severed arm, his warm, steaming limb now hitting the ice.

  “Be still!” Garth heard the voice yell, and when the man with the blades snared Garth in mid-sprint, he could only hang there, just blink at the marvelous scars.

  Dahkaa?

  “Dahveed!” cried Eylahn behind, and Dahkaa or not, Garth kicked loose and crashed to the ice. Proof of life, he still could hope, but when he finally stopped sliding and turned back around, he saw her, tight between her parents, square in Atta Ra’s path.

  “Please?” she yelled, now lifting her hand. “Okay?”

  Vision tunneled as he rushed her way, nothing else existed and he’d get no second chance.

  Then something wailed, a most unholy horn. Not a klaxon, this came from the ice, from a long, sleek boat nearly running him down while charging Atta Ra. His future unfolding like a stressed canvas rip, Garth watched an iceboat of ten warriors aim Z-rifles at the Wraith, and in one awful instant, everything turned on the girl caught between.

  “No!” Garth cried. “Don’t shoot, don’t—!”

  Out-shouted by Z-rifles, Garth thought it looked surreal, a movie made to amuse. But no slow-motion pander or soft piano plink now soothed, the reality ahead distilled into Atta Ra’s chains repelling a barrage of bullets, sparking deflections savaging a family of three.

  Their spasm went still in less than a breath, the three didn’t move. And after scraping to a stop, neither did Garth. Refusing to believe the moment just played, he waited for a sign, the usual cinematic stir, one last okay? But when the ice under Eylahn’s face bled red, Garth knew she’d never move again, never dance or laugh or smile.

  Then Garth flew, was scooped right up. Someone held him, skated him away with vaalik-assisted speed, but Garth didn’t care. Staring behind, not really there, he watched Atta Ra’s gunship attack the iceboat. But as the craft of the gravity-bending future blasted the wind-driven past, its light pulses somehow missed. An improbable result, but when the iceboat then had to swerve, when it dodged a second boat and momentarily veered from the horizon of the two-moon storm, the gunship found its aim.

  Lit by a single hot flash, the iceboat billowed into flame. And as warriors jumped out, some afire, some not, Garth went airborne. Thrown by his rescuer — “Rek!” Dahkaa yelled — Garth crashed into the second iceboat, landed among vaalik-wrapped warriors shooting back at G’mach.

  Dahkaa leapt in next, but before he even hit, Tusk banged two levers. Unsprung again, a pair of lateral masts flipped out like wings, popped their sails, and slammed the iceboat ahead.

  Accelerating fast, Garth did nothing but block it all out, just tried to hide from the shots in the boat and the madness behind, the weapon-sleeve screech and screams of the herd. But the noise was too much, he had to look back.

  They weren’t alone, two more iceboats closed the gap, yet so, incredibly, did Shark. Sprinting unnaturally fast, the Third Progress G’mach actually gained. But it was more than a race, so lifting his weapon sleeve, he shot on the run, sprayed his last rounds and emptied his clip. Then switching to flame, he fired a long whoosh that, aided by gusts, nearly ignited their sails.

  Gator sprang up. Wrapped in a bloody vaalik, his creature apparently hit, the warrior leapt from the speeding boat and onto the ice. Somehow keeping his balance, he charged the G’mach.

  Z-rifle booming, recoiling with blasts, Gator never swerved, just powered for Shark as if in a joust. But just before impact, Shark loosed a hideous cry, then a last lick of flame.

  Engulfed immediately, Gator tumbled, rolled to a stop and burned into the ice. Yet Shark had been slowed, and though he chased, nothing afoot catches a Zahlen sail, not in a storm.

  Masts extended and running the gale, three Zahlen iceboats tacked toward the storm’s fulgent vortex, the horizon afire with two dueling moons.

  Chapter 12

  Rage

  Garth shivered alone.

  Hunched under some skinned critter’s pelt in the middle iceboat, he grimaced in the grip of subzero chill. No leather roof kept out the cold — jettisoned before battle, the boats ran uncapped — and now, exposed to the storm ahead, Garth quaked from every thunder and flash. Ungodly energies blazed the space between the moons, the violet spiral vs the larger orange. The storm sprung only from atoms, from fleeting ions and magnetic flux, but to Garth, it reminded of the horror now fled, the battle and blood and Eylahn face-down.

  He looked away. Seeking diversion, a lift from a depth never before felt, he eyed the other two boats, similar vessels of low-wing sails and stiletto form. Which trembled, like his own wood and leather craft, at some ragged speed just north of do-not-exceed, a velocity tiller’d toward the storm’s center, the battling moons directly ahead.

  “It blinds them,” said Dahkaa. Unwrapped of his vaalik and layered in pelts, he settled in beside. “Not completely, but—” He nodded above. “Their river through the stars seems to infuriate our moons, adds fuel to every lunar storm. We see nothing odd, but to a G’mach? For them, our storms corrupt their sight, the electric eyes that aim their guns.”

  Garth said nothing, just watched the boat on his right.

  “And if the storm is large,” Dahkaa continued, now untying a cloth sack, “the effects can vex even their higher Progressed, even Atta Ra. You saw his gunship miss?”

  Unable to articulate his anger, Garth stayed quiet.

  “No, well, battle does tend to distract,” said Dahkaa, reaching into the sack. “But since you’re still with us — since you’ve somehow survived both the River Afar and a ravager of the ice, shall we not rejoice?” And with that, Dahkaa pulled out an eel-ish thing, a writhing black freak whistling through hollow spines.

  “We shall,” Dahkaa affirmed. “For not only have we found you alive, but Logaht and I still breathe as well. Now, remember how you left us, things seemed a bit close?”

  Not waiting for an answer, Dahkaa bit the eel-thing behind its head until the last whistle died.

  “Too close, as I recall, so it’s good you left when you did. In fact, just after your departure, we took several hits,” said Dahkaa, pulling out his curved X-blade. “Nothing catastrophic, Atta Ra wanted you alive, but just after you entered the river, so did we. And since Atta Ra thought you were still with us? Hah, he followed us to another world, to some dark, dead rock Logaht knew well. Then after more evasions, we hid, just waited for Atta Ra to leave. And when he did, we limped back as well, but—”

  “If you hadn’t had come—” Voice flat, Garth eyed the endless ice. “She’d still be alive.”

  Perplexed by the pronoun, Dahkaa wondered what he meant. “She?”

  Garth added nothing, just looked away.

  Wondering no more, Dahkaa gutted the eel. “You came to save us, David. Not to mate.”

  A spark into tinder, Garth felt himself catch. “I came because I was forced, and you didn’t know her, I did! And if you’d just left me alone like you did when I crashed, she wouldn’t be gone!”

  “
And whoever she was, she was only a Worm.”

  “A ‘Worm,’ she saved my life!”

  “Then she was a Worm of Fate, but despite her charms, whatever allure she undoubtedly possessed, this girl you thought you knew? Like everyone else under that ravager, they help our cause only when they stop helping G’mach. So if you tell me she’s gone, no longer alive? Well, forgive my grief if it looks like cheer.”

  No degrees in counseling, an alien to empathy and every mealy cliché, Dahkaa pierced Garth to his miserable quick.

  “But as for your crash—” Resuming his eel gutting, Dahkaa squeezed a glisten of slop into the sack. “We’d no idea where you put down, our only news came from our ravager spy, a warrior who found my blades. But when he said he’d taken them from a strange-talking boy, when I realized the Son of Kel Vek was serving the very J’kel he came to destroy? In truth, David, it was no small task to assemble this rescue, I quite had to beg. So before you ache for a Worm, I suggest you remember the warriors, those brothers we left. Do you hear my words?”

  Hearing no reply, Dahkaa glanced at Garth. But instead of a stoic Savakerrva, son of the great Kel Vek, he saw only a boy overwhelmed, a wince ruptured by sobs.

  Minutes passed in unchecked lament, in memories of Eylahn and flashes of death and then it was done, nothing remained but sniffling clots of slag-dust and snot. Sobbing complete, Garth wiped his eyes, and that’s when he saw it, when he noticed the strain in Dahkaa’s neck and jaw.

  “You lost them,” Dahkaa said.

  Garth sniffed. “Them?”

  Dahkaa gestured ‘look behind,’ so Garth did. And while the closest warrior was a boy barely twelve — busy with work, he polished the brass fittings on an elkish splay of horns — he bore a scowl worthy of someone sixteen, a skewed lip now curled at Garth. And that was just the kid, for as Garth glanced at the rest, eight other warriors returned looks either infuriated or incensed, but the worst was Yellowhair. His wolfish eyes framed by whipped-wild hair, he glared at Garth with unvarnished contempt. A feeling, it seemed, also shared by his vaalik.

  Seeing enough, Garth sunk deep into his pelt and turned back to the ice. “I didn’t ask them to come,” he muttered. “What did I do?”

  “What you did,” Dahkaa began, now cracking eel spine, “must never be done, you cried on the Great Ice. And given our captain, I’m amazed you’re still aboard.”

  Garth looked at Dahkaa, then behind once more. But instead of warriors, he eyed the captain, that Master of Sails and Commander of — tusks? Gripped by the oddity, a tribal affectation beyond any abasement of millennial tongue, nose, or ear, Garth noticed the ivory extensions framed a weathered face of scorn, a slow-chewing squint deciding between keelhaul or flog.

  “So to be clear, David,” Dahkaa resumed, “if you ever again show such weakness, you’ll destroy whatever faith in you remains. And therefore, starting now, you’ll act like a Savakerrva worth saving, the Son of a King chosen by Fate. And if you believe, then so will they — and so, perhaps, will Logaht as well.”

  Garth said nothing, just tried to decide how he felt about Logaht. Indifferent, he supposed.

  “He came, too?” Garth asked, just needing to hear about something, anything besides Fate. “Logaht?”

  “By the ways of Fate,” Dahkaa replied, “Atta Ra did great damage to our craft, so to effect repair, Logaht stayed behind. Though in truth—” Pausing, Dahkaa looked at the stars. “I’m sorry, David, but the damage was so extreme, you’ll never get back.”

  Garth followed his gaze. “Never?”

  “Destiny brings no choices, only a task. And though you arrived here with plenty of time, though the J’kel’s completion was once forty moons off, you’ve just wasted twenty-one.”

  “Wasted, what — you shot me out like a cannon, and the next thing I knew, I crashed! And what about the Bloodlands, huh? You said I’d land where it’s nice and warm!”

  “It is nice, it’s a magnificent night on the ice. But as for the warmth, well, I’ve no idea why you went off course, but consider it a lesson, David, for surviving the unexpected is the stuff of life,” Dahkaa opined, now offering a slice of eel. “Now, tell me of Atta Ra; did you see him, face him, stand in the light of his chains?”

  “No,” said Garth, ignoring the eel. “But — I think I heard him speak.”

  “And?”

  Garth heard the words came crackling back, the loudspeaker voice so cold and deep. “He asked if I was him, Savakerrva. And then he said the answer was in my mind, some — secret.”

  Dahkaa gnawed some eel. “About?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  Dahkaa gnawed a bit more. “Atta Ra is a Ninth Progress G’mach. You know what that means?”

  “No.”

  “No, well, neither do I,” Dahkaa sighed. “But when it comes to knowledge, to piercing the veil of worlds beyond and ages long past, Atta Ra stands as far above us as we above this.” He dangled the eel carcass. “And yet, though he wields the power of a god, his deeds prove him less, so if, by chance, you hear him speak again? Whatever he says, it’s a lie. Understand?”

  Garth hunkered far under his pelt. Understand? Of course, he understood, Dahkaa needed a Savakerrva, Atta Ra wanted his mind, and Eylahn showed him kindness, so therefore, she died. And if such was the sweet fairness of life, Garth was not surprised, this he well understood.

  “Then again,” Dahkaa went on, flipping the eel into a pail, “whatever else Atta Ra might say, he does seem to believe.”

  “Believe?”

  “In you, of course,” answered Dahkaa. Popping the cork on a jug, he filled the pail with an amber liquid smelling of alcohol, some kind of ale. “Which is curious, because for a being of such knowledge, such a command of science and machines? Then why such interest in our cursed little world; does he really believe our legends, some promise about the son of a king?”

  “Whatever,” Garth mumbled.

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning whatever you both think I am, I’m not.”

  Dahkaa swirled the slosh of eel and ale. “And whatever we’re not, perhaps we might yet become,” he replied. “But for now, this moment, we honor the fallen, our brothers left, this night, on the ice.” Lifting the pail, he offered Garth the first drink.

  “I can’t, I’m too young.”

  Dahkaa grunted. “I was young once, too, I think. But—”

  “But you don’t remember?”

  “Not a thing,” Dahkaa said, and again, he offered the pail.

  Garth took a breath, then the pail. But whiffing a scent like old malt liquor spilled on the bus, he tried to delay. “They won’t follow?” he asked, nodding to the ice just sailed. “The G’mach?”

  “They never have, not during this,” said Dahkaa, glancing at the storm above and ahead.

  “So the storm hurts their eyes, they really can’t see?”

  “They can see, they just can’t shoot,” Dahkaa corrected. “At least not as well.”

  “But maybe well enough?”

  Dahkaa considered, then stirred the pail’s contents with a knife. “G’mach advance in rank and power — ‘progress,’ they call it — only with success. So when our moons begin to storm, when their commanders sense a loss of advantage, they become cautious, less willing to fail.”

  “Even him?” asked Garth.

  “Atta Ra,” Dahkaa grumbled, “makes his own rules, it’s what you do when you think you’re a god. But—”

  “But?”

  “But Ninth Progress or not, old habits die hard, which is why even Atta Ra might still avoid battle when victory’s less than assured. So, my guess? He’ll search for us when the storm dies, but not before.” Stopping his stirring, he nodded ‘drink.’

  Out of delays, yet relieved of the fear of imminent pursuit, Garth lifted the pail and drank. He grimaced, nearly spit it back up, but suddenly aware of a desperate thirst, he continued to gulp.

  “Then again—”

  Garth stopped in mid-drink, ju
st waited for Dahkaa’s addition which would surely subtract.

  “Oh, just a thought,” Dahkaa began, “I’m sure we’re safe. But if you were Atta Ra, if you’d lost your quarry yet again, well — progressed or not, would you not feel anger, some bit of rage?”

  Stares met a moment, then Garth looked back at the ice, at the dark horizon opposite the storm.

  Shark knelt on the frozen ocean. Bent by wind, the relentless howl, the Third Progress G’mach traced his pestilent stalk of an index finger along a faint scratch on the ice. The track of an iceboat, it led toward the heart of the storm, toward the horizon of two fiery moons.

  A static-laced question — “Savakerrva?” — crackled the receiver in his ear. Glancing back at his ride, at Atta Ra’s gunship hovering just over the ice, he noted how his troops shivered, the twelve G’mach huddled in exterior creases or crouched on a landing skid. Cold but conscious, so he lifted the gaze of his living gray eye to the airlock, to Atta Ra cradling a rifle, some gunpowder-era antique.

  Sparked by the chase and feeling no chill, Shark jabbed the air and pointed ahead.

  Thick with eel grog, Garth dreamed. He muttered a bit, twitched as well, because far from soothing, he dreamt of blood: the herd dropped in their nets, three boys murdered by Firefly — and what gnawed without end, Eylahn on the ice.

  A beastly wail scared Garth awake. Expecting a monster, he instead beheld that splay of antlers, a horn blown by the boy.

  “Up!” shouted Dahkaa. “I’m calling them in!” Still muddled with sleep and grog, Garth watched the other two iceboats trim their sailwings and move close in.

  “Something wrong?” Garth croaked.

  “Everything’s wrong,” Dahkaa replied. “But now, we’ll set things right. So, look strong, stand tall—” He yanked Garth up. “And sound like the Savakerrva foretold!”

  But when Dahkaa hoisted Garth’s arm and the awful antlers wailed once more, three boatloads of warriors did nothing, just stared from overhangs of bushy, frosted brows. No one welcomed the new Savakerrva except Tusk, who, manning his tiller, offered a resonant belch.