Savage Legion

by Matt Wallace

  Lexi listens to the approaching footfalls, steeling herself to swing the bottle.

  Ginnix has closed half the gap between them when a sudden, awful gargling sound stays her feet and snaps her attention back to the parlor arch.

  Nils’s shoulders are flung back and his stubby arms splayed awkwardly. His eyes have gone wide and have rolled far back to expose the spidery red veins of their underbelly.

  The agent’s body twitches to one side and a head of dark hair and two burning eyes rise above Nils’s stumpy height.

  It’s Daian. He’s left his sickbed, and not only managed to replace his trousers and boots and make it down the winding tower stairs, he’s somehow summoned the strength to creep up behind the agent and end him.

  By now Lexi has turned around as well, and the sight of him causes her to forget all about the bottle and using it as a weapon.

  The blade of Daian’s dagger has impaled Nils at the base of the agent’s skull, piercing his brain and scrambling it like the contents of an egg in a frying pan. With nothing left to control his limbs, the only thing keeping his rotund body aloft is Daian’s grip on the dagger.

  “Three black eagles, all in a tree,” Daian intones in the cadence of a child’s nursery rhyme. “Count them down and see how they bleed.…”

  He quickly kisses Nils on the man’s chubby, sweaty cheek and pulls his blade free of his skull, allowing Nils’s body to collapse in a heap at Daian’s feet.

  Jindo’s dagger is suddenly in the agent’s bony hand. His knees bend until they appear bowlegged as the agent crouches down to seek Daian’s level for a proper frontal knife attack.

  Daian casually, even gracefully steps over Nils, flipping the dagger in his hand as he does and catching it by the handle with ease.

  Lexi feels as if she’s entered a dream state, especially when her eyes report that Daian is grinning.

  Jindo lunges at him. The two trade a series of feints and blocks with their blades, hands, and wrists, each movement faster than a cat’s paw. The exchange lasts less than three full seconds, and ends with Daian trapping the wrist of Jindo’s knife hand and yanking it downward as the blade of Daian’s dagger slices through the skeletal man’s throat, opening it wide.

  He’s already turning away from the dying man by the time the blood sprays half Daian’s face.

  Ginnix has remained calmly in the middle of the parlor the whole time, gloved fingers encircling her sheathed dagger’s handle. She draws and releases a loud, weary breath, the only visible sign of her exasperation with the performance of her agents. Now she skins her blade and takes a step forward, her posture shifting to that of a practiced duelist.

  Daian again flips his bloodstained dagger as he enters the parlor.

  “Daian—” Lexi begins to call to him.

  “Just stay back, Lexi,” he orders her in an eerily calm voice she doesn’t recognize.

  Lexi quickly reaches behind her body and retrieves a pointed stirring stick from the buffet top, enveloping it in the folds of her wrap skirt to hide it from sight.

  “For whom are you working, really?” Ginnix demands.

  “I am merely a humble servant of Crache,” Daian insists, though his grin belies that sentiment.

  The Ministry agent’s smile is as joyless as a funeral march. “Aren’t we all?”

  She strikes first, rushing forward and slashing at him from one angle after another, each time in a perfectly centered and straight line. Daian backs away, staying out of her attack range and avoiding her initial volley. When Ginnix loses her initial momentum he swipes at her head, causing the woman to duck down to where he meets her face with his knee. The blow stuns Ginnix and throws her off-balance. She slashes blindly as she blinks and shakes her head to recover her faculties.

  Daian seizes the opportunity to ensnare her knife-wielding arm with his own, trapping it. He reverses his grip on his dagger and stabs Ginnix just above her collarbone, piercing the artery there and spraying the parlor ceiling with her blood. An animal sound of surprise and rage escapes her throat as she falls to the plush carpet.

  Daian places the sole of his right boot on the agent’s chest and jostles her tentatively.

  “No black eagles sitting in a tree,” he whispers.

  “Daian…?”

  He looks back at Lexi, almost as if he’s forgotten she’s standing there.

  “Oh, don’t be afraid anymore,” he softly bids her. “They can’t hurt you now. I promise, the Protectorate Ministry will never hurt you again.”

  Somehow Lexi is anything but soothed by his words.

  “You seem… very different than you did just a relatively short while ago.”

  Daian only blinks at her vacantly at first, then a light of realization seems to ignite behind his eyes.

  “Oh well.” He shrugs, smiling pleasantly. “I’m afraid I wasn’t quite as incapacitated as I let on.”

  “Obviously,” Lexi says, glancing at the carved-up corpses that have once again turned her parlor into a charnel house.

  Daian’s expression turns grave. “I do apologize for deceiving you. That was wrong. You have been nothing but an exceptional hostess, and I thank you.”

  “It’s more than your injuries,” she persists. “You appear to be acting… quite differently than you did upstairs.”

  Daian sighs, his demeanor quickly becoming annoyed and impatient. “Yes, well, we’re downstairs now, aren’t we? And the situation has changed, as you said, from what it was a short time ago.”

  “How is it different?”

  Daian uses the tip of his dagger to very lightly scratch his right temple, smearing a mixture of the three Ministry agents’ blood above his eye there.

  “Well, I was waiting for Taru to return with this mountain of evidence your husband is supposed to have uncovered. I had originally hoped to find it on my own, just as I had hoped to find Brio himself if he was still alive. You see, I really was on your side this entire time, Lexi. We sought the same things. We simply have different motivations. But my investigation was cut short, if you’ll pardon the choice of words.”

  “Taru was right,” Lexi says. “It was no accident you answered the call and came to the tower the night I was attacked.”

  Daian shakes his head. “I’ve been keeping a close eye on your Gen for a very long time. I simply seized an opportunity.”

  “Is spying on my Gen part of your Aegin duties?”

  “Of course not. But being an Aegin makes it much easier. That’s why I chose it. It gives me just enough power to perform my true duties while rendering me obscure enough to go unnoticed by our enemies in the Ministry.”

  “ ‘Our’ enemies? Who do you truly serve, Daian?”

  “You’ll meet them soon.”

  “And what do you… what do they want with Brio, whoever they are?”

  “The same thing I want with you, now. You see, plans have changed. My friends have decided you’ll serve our purpose well enough.”

  Daian laughs then. It’s a joyless, disturbing sound.

  “I’ll tell you,” he muses. “The Ministry and the Planning Cadre truly won’t know what’s hit them until the blood fills their beady little eyes.”

  “The Planning Cadre?” Lexi asks, lost in his words. “What is that? And who are your… friends?”

  “You’ll meet them soon,” he repeats brightly, as if it’s delightful news.

  “Are they coming here?”

  “No. This place isn’t safe anymore. We’ll have to go to them.”

  “I don’t want to leave my home, Daian. Besides, Taru—”

  “By now they have Taru.” He shrugs. “There’s nothing to be done about that now. Plans will have to be altered.”

  “Perhaps, but I still do not wish to leave my home, Daian,” Lexi repeats slowly and carefully.

  He walks toward her then, and if he wasn’t holding a bloody dagger and half covered in the same spatter Daian might not appear threatening at all.

  “I hear you,” he say
s, “but then the day doesn’t seem to be working out as any of us planned.”

  The pointed drink stirrer is still hidden from sight among the ripples of her skirt. Lexi deftly and carefully upends it, reversing her grip on the handle without drawing attention to the movement. She’s never perforated anyone before, and although it might make more sense to thrust with the spike, stabbing down feels more natural to her. Being so inexperienced in combat, she decides the latter quality is more important.

  “What were you going to do when Taru returned, Daian?” she asks. “If the Ministry hadn’t come here, for me. What were you going to do?”

  He stares at her strangely. “You sound afraid, Lexi. I told you, you don’t have to be afraid anymore.”

  “What were you going to do when Taru returned?” she asks again.

  Daian spreads his arms helplessly. “I like Taru! I respect Taru, very much. I respect both of you, but your plan was very misguided, Lexi.”

  “What plan?”

  “Exposing the Savage Legion. Presenting proof of their existence and the crimes of the Ministry to the Arbiters and the people. Counting on the public to provoke change is… well, let’s just say naive, Lexi. Perhaps even foolish, if you’ll pardon me.”

  “And these… friends of yours? They have a different plan?”

  Daian nods soulfully. “They do. They really do.”

  “You haven’t answered my first question, Daian. What were you going to do when Taru returned with Brio’s proof?”

  He sighs, spreading his arms out in front of her in a helpless gesture.

  “Precisely what I did to these poor ghouls,” he relents.

  “And what were you going to do to me?”

  “As I said, you’re going to serve our purpose. If I was going to harm you, you’d already be harmed.”

  Moving as swiftly as she can command her limbs, Lexi raises her arm and brings the makeshift weapon down toward his chest.

  Daian reaches up and easily captures her wrist before the strike completes half its arc. He twists her arm to one side, painfully, causing the dagger’s handle to slip from her fingers and wringing a short yelp from her. He presses the tip of his blade beneath her chin, lightly, not hard enough to pierce her flesh yet firmly enough to give her pause.

  “Lexi, please,” he chastises her, like a child. “You keep your steel on the inside. That’s the steel that’s dangerous under your command. You’re a different kind of warrior, not one made for the battlefield. Violence does not become—”

  The rest of his words are mangled by growls as Lexi leans away from his blade and rams the hardest portion of her skull into his nose. Bones break beneath the blow and blood pours over his lips. The tears that involuntarily well up in his eyes sting and blind him. Lexi tears her wrist from his grip and takes off running across the parlor, knowing that if she can make it through the front doors and out into the cooperative he won’t be able to touch her. She doesn’t look back to see if he’s on her heels, she only runs, dashing over the bodies of Nils and Jindo and practically leaping from the parlor into the tower’s entrance hall.

  The front doors are only a few yards in front of her, and Lexi sprints faster to reach them, extending an arm toward the nearest rung. She’s ready to close her fist around it and tear the doors open when they seem to be physically pulled away from her. The doors become a distant sight sinking farther and farther away in her field of vision and Lexi realizes she’s no longer running; she’s falling. Whatever just slammed into the back of her head has also turned the world upside-down and caused Lexi’s entire body to go numb.

  A moment before she loses consciousness, Lexi sees Daian’s dagger lying where it landed after he threw the weapon at her, on the floor in front of her face. The pommel that struck the soft back of her skull is now decorated with a smear of her blood to which several strands of her hair have stuck.

  Lexi wonders, briefly, if he truly meant to hit her with that end of the dagger, but the only answer to her question that presents itself is darkness.

  MISSIO INTERRUPTUS

  TARU HAS NEVER BEEN ONE to embrace the idea of “shortcuts,” be they metaphorical or literal; to their way of thinking anything worth the effort, be it practicing with a blade or trekking over mountains as part of a long cross-country journey, must be earned without leniency from others or one’s self. It was Brio who impressed upon Taru the importance of taking shortcuts, especially when engaging in clandestine affairs, and particularly when the errands he undertook before his disappearance began to endanger them both.

  The alleys Taru is circumnavigating were also introduced to them by Brio, providing the quickest path from the Bottoms to the Gen Circus without making use of the sky carriages. The retainer moves swiftly, accepting the necessity of slinking through narrow, poorly seen spaces even as they resent having to do so.

  Taru’s booted feet abruptly stop short, halting almost instinctively.

  There’s an Aegin waiting at the head of the current alley, and he’s not alone. Three other Aegins flank him.

  “You are Taru, Gen Stalbraid’s lawful retainer?” their spokesman asks.

  He’s shorter than Taru, but appears in fair shape for a man of his middle years.

  “I am.”

  “I have to ask you to come with us.”

  “You’re arresting me?”

  “I’m detaining you.”

  “What is the difference?”

  “Manacles and the absence of my asking you beforehand.”

  Taru grunts something like a laugh. “I refuse your request.”

  “If you refuse then we’ll have to arrest you.”

  Taru becomes aware of more Aegins swarming up from the back of the alley. Without looking, Taru judges there to be four of them, from the sound of their footfalls.

  “You’ve brought along an excessive number of helpers, if you don’t mind me saying.”

  “We were informed you’re a warrior who demands to be taken seriously.”

  “May I know your name?” Taru asks.

  The Aegin stares for a moment, suspicious, and then says, “Kamen. Kamen Lim, Aegin second-class. Why?”

  Taru holds Aegin Lim’s eyes with a hard stare. “I was recently forced to kill two men whose names I’ll never know. That felt wrong to me somehow. I told myself I’d never again take a life without knowing the name of that person first.”

  With that, Taru unsheathes both short sword and hook-end in one greased motion that is a blur to the eye. The retainer’s feet spread, knees bending, the blade of the short sword held across one shoulder while the retainer extends the hook-end defensively.

  The Aegins surrounding Taru immediately draw the daggers from their baldric scabbards and shift into defensive postures of their own.

  Aegin Lim instinctively takes a step back, his hand going to the handle of his dagger. However, he doesn’t unsheathe the weapon.

  “This doesn’t have to be,” Lim pleads with Taru. “Our orders are only to detain you, not to harm you in any way. I give you my word. If you surrender your weapons now, no retaliation will be taken against you.”

  Taru senses truth behind his words and even sees it in his eyes, whether the retainer wants to or not. It’s possible they’ve sent an honest Aegin to carry out a dirty deed, and if so Taru doesn’t want Kamen Lim’s blood on their hands.

  He cannot, however, possibly vouch for every other Aegin surrounding Taru in the alley. Any one of the tunic-wearing stooges could be tasked with sticking their dagger in Taru’s back while the retainer is down on the ground.

  Taru probably cannot win this fight, but they will not be gutted on the filthy alley floor while lying there helpless. The retainer refuses to relinquish their duties under such conditions.

  “I thank you for your offer and accept the spirit in which it is intended.”

  Taru lowers the short sword and hook-end.

  Kamen Lim visibly relaxes his posture, breathing a subtle sigh of relief.

  “I
only wish I could find it in myself to place that kind of faith in your comrades here,” the retainer adds.

  The sole of Taru’s boot smashes into Lim’s face, flattening his nose and cracking his chin in one blow. The Aegin’s head is snapped back and the rest of his body attempts to follow it, causing him to curl awkwardly over the street until his feet give out.

  The rest of the Aegins immediately close in, rushing forward to slash Taru to ribbons. The retainer swings both blades in a single wide, complete arc, driving them all back. Taru takes a long stride toward the nearest Aegin and slashes at her, trapping her wrist as the woman blocks the strike, and driving her against the wall with one shoulder. Another Aegin comes at Taru and the retainer deflects his blade while kicking his feet out from beneath him.

  Taru tries to fend the rest off, but there are too many to keep track. The retainer defends strikes as they come, feeling the bite of Crachian blades against their leather armor. Finally, Taru feels a blade slice through their left leg just above the back of the knee. The cut is deep and the impact jarring, causing that leg to buckle. Taru collapses to the left, landing hard on one hip. They all seem to fall atop the retainer at once, pinning Taru to the street and seizing both short sword and hook-end.

  Taru is only able to peer up from the corner of one eye. The retainer sees Kamen Lim breathing laboriously and with obvious pain. There’s blood streaming over his lips and down his bruised chin and neck. His dagger is still secured in the scabbard tooled to his baldric. He stares down at the constrained retainer with what appears to Taru to be frustration rather than the anger or rage one might expect.

  Lim crouches down in front of the mass of bodies and digs inside Taru’s breastplate. The retainer makes a vain attempt at struggling further, but the dozen hands and arms and bodies crushing Taru to the street only constrict like an angry python. One of the Aegins kicks Taru with numbing force in the kidney.

  “There’s no call for that!” Kamen Lim barks in a compressed voice at the unseen Aegin who delivered the blow. “It’s over!”

  If nothing else, Taru is satisfied with the decision not to kill the man.