SWARM TIME ON MARUZAR

SWARM TIME ON MARUZAR, by Dariel R. A. Quiogue

 

Of the seven who had attempted to escape the mines of Sommathar through the fabled Ancients’ Way, only Lakann came out to see Maruzar’s gold-banded night sky again.

He breathed the chill air and suppressed a shiver. Free.  But cold, hungry, and so tired, body and soul. Was this what freedom meant, after all? He had been a slave for so long he no longer remembered freedom. Only that he resented the whips and sneering faces of the overseers, the burden of the daily salt quota,  and the soul-sickness that enfolded it all. The slaves who ambitioned to be overseers themselves, often making up accusations against their fellows to ingratiate themselves with the guards. The daily stealing and bullying for food. Only his imposing size and strength, and a nature that brooked no crossing, had allowed him to survive unbroken. But at a price.

He stared at his clenched fists, knowing the blood was long gone by now yet still expecting to see it there.

Fired by the tales of old, mad Delgonn, he and six other slaves had resolved to find the of-whispered about secret exit from the mines. His accomplices had been feisty Sarrud Lor, sullen Anda Arrik, Gilan the joker, Akkal Tayik and Dorok Tayik the brigand brothers, and his own chain-mate Keshal Kun. Once in the natural caverns below the salt mines, however, Maruzar’s savage life found them.

Creatures that did not venture into the dry and sterile salt tunnels lurked in the abyssal caves. An albino worm had seized Gilan and carried him off into the darkness, the Tayyik brothers were taken by some water creature at a pool while refilling their skins, Dorok’s attempt to rescue Akkal ending in his own death, and Sarrud Lor was stung by a triscorpion, falling into a chasm along with most of their remaining water. In the end, Lakann and Keshal Kun found themselves sharing only one waterskin.

That had triggered the betrayal.

As they had rounded a curve in the narrow cavern they were traversing, Lakann in the lead, he suddenly discovered that Keshal’s lamp had gone out. He went back to investigate, calling upon his friend. Only a faint, unexpected sound had caused Lakann to instinctively dodge, and then he realized that Keshal Kun had swung a pick at him from ambush.

They had wrestled then, Lakann narrowly avoiding that murderous pick and wresting it from his attacker’s hands by sheer strength, only to find out that Keshal had secretly been carrying a knife. The jagged, rusty blade seared his side, but then he got hold of Keshal’s wrist, broke it, and took the blade.

When the inevitable was done he shook his weakly choking chain-mate by his tunic and growled, “Why?”

Keshal Kun laughed weakly. “Water,” he croaked. “If Delgonn’s stories be true, we would’ve come out in the Ancient city of Valhazhar. Closest city’s at least five days’ trek from there. We barely had enough water for one to make it. Looks like it’s going to be you, may rakhrids eat your guts.” He coughed blood.

“You’re wrong,” Lakann remembered telling him. “There’s got to be water nearby. I smell life — faint, but there’s dung, piss, sweat. Smells human, but really bad, worse than the slave pits ever did.”

Keshal Kun’s eyes widened. “By the gods! Kill me!”

“You’re dying already. Why hasten it?”

“Those’re feral humans, you fool! Kill me now! Before they find me!”

Lakann got up. “You brought this upon yourself,” he said tiredly. And then he began to run. Keshal Kun’s cries followed him for a long time.

At last he had found himself in what must be the underbelly of ancient Valhazhar, for the cavern of living rock gave way to mirror-smooth tunnels of fused stone. Here and there one of the Ancients’ lamps still glowed dimly from the ceiling, lighting the tunnels with a wan and ghostly pallor.

There was even more evidence of life in the air here, dry though it was, and Lakann knew he had to reach the surface quickly. Legends spoke much of what had come to live in the deserted cities of the Ancients, and they would be most concentrated underground, where the water if there was any would be. And that was the punchline of Fate’s cruel jest. Life meant there was water. Keshal Kun had murdered, and been murdered, for nothing.

The ruins of Valhazhar gave Lakann all he needed after that. First he found the mummified remains of several warriors in the tunnel, their bodies looking as if some creature had turned their insides to soup and sucked it all out, and searching the area rewarded him with a broken sword and a dagger. Further on he found yet another dead warrior’s husk, this one in a fine war-coat studded with plaques of iridescent blue chitin that glistened like glass. A longsword, its curved blade as fine as the armor, was in its hands. Lakann took them all, for the armor looked like it would fit him. He left only the helm, which had been pierced on either side as if by huge mandibles.

Then he found a cistern of water. While the water was good, he wrinkled his nose at the cave cray shells and bones scattered carelessly around it, still redolent of decayed flesh. Some of the bones were human, and bore marks of the crude tools used to scrape out their marrows. The feral men came here often.

Not daring to sleep in the infested warrens, he kept moving until, perhaps another day later, he found the way out into the night.

 

#

 

The night was cold and clear as only desert nights can be.

To north and south the sky was pitch-black, but pierced with a myriad twinkling gems for Maruzar was near the galactic core, but from east to west the firmament was bisected by a shimmering arc. That must be what Delgonn had alternately named the Ghost Bridge, the Grave of the Shattered Moon, and the Veil of Taharna, and it was so bright that no stars were visible near it.  Maruzar’s rings. Its glow bathed the towers of the ruined city and the mountains he had come beneath in an eldritch, softly golden light like a second morning.

Shadows of peculiar form scudded across the Veil. He heard a rustling in the wind and looked up to see a fleshy, translucent bag, stretched taut and round with some kind of buoyant gas and trailing sickly purple-green tendrils, drifting between Valhazhar’s broken towers. It was big as a wagon, and its longest tendrils hung mere feet above his head. A small animal writhed weakly in the coils of one tendril. Little flying scavengers swirled around it in a cloud, trying to steal morsels. And it was descending toward him.

He ducked back into the tower door from which he’d come and sat down, away from those tendrils. The thing drifted on down the empty, sand-covered street, and Lakann paused to drink in the faded splendor before him.

It was Lakann’s first sight of the surface in over a year. Awe swelled in him, clashing with fear, pain, nostalgia for the lost glories of the Ancients, and yes, a kind of dark joy. He was free, free to make Maruzar his own. Cursed and broken his planet might be, but it was still a ripe oyster for the plucking.

But he had forgotten the feral men. The corridor behind him was suddenly flooded with a miasma of unwashed bodies, followed by a rush of many bare feet. Lakann sprang out the door barely in time to avoid a thrown club. It splintered on the door jamb, and he saw it was a human femur. He ran out into the street, but half a dozen more feral men were emerging from another broken tower, boxing him in.

He turned at bay.

Then one of the feral men screamed and crumpled, followed by others. Arrows protruded from their backs. The survivors wailed and turned to flee back into the darkness inside the buildings, but Lakann now saw four warriors in well-made leathers had emerged at one end of the street and loosing arrows as fast as they could nock and draw. Not one of the cannibals made it back to hiding.

Then their bows swiveled to cover Lakann, dropped along with all four men’s jaws, then rose again. This time the evilly glinting arrowheads did not waver. “My lord! You must see this!” one of them cried out.

A four-footed pounding followed then a tall man came into sight, clad in hunting armor of iridescent blue chitin plates sewn onto the supple skin of some reptile, and mounted on a great bronze-plumed gannor that hissed at Lakann and glared at him with a carnivore’s hot gaze. The rider’s surcoat was blazoned with the same sigils as on the war-coat Lakann had taken. The escaped slave found himself unable to move, as in a dream. When the mind cannot comprehend what is going on at all, the limbs do nothing. He could only stare with mad surmises.

“You!” the rider roared. “Who are you? Where did you find those arms? And how dare you wear the armor of a high-clan Lord?”

Lakann tried to recall what Delgonn had told him about the desert lords and their customs, but memory fled with the puzzlement of it all. Instead he took refuge in the truth. “I am Lakann, Lakann a’Marid, and I ask for sanctuary,” he said at last. “I escaped the salt mines of Sommathar through the Ancients’ underground way.”

“Where did you find Lord Malakonn’s armor, slave, and what did you do with the body? And address me as my lord, or else!” the rider growled.

“In the tunnels, my lord,” Lakann said carefully. “I found it lying in a heap, along with several other warriors’ bodies, so dry they must’ve lain there for years. Your Lord Malakonn’s helmet was pierced on both sides, as if by a worm’s jaws.”

“Had you left it lying there and told us, you would’ve been forgiven,” the nobleman declared. “Had you brought up the armor and given it back to us, you would’ve been rewarded. But you, a slave, dared to put it on. I am Lord Ardakonn of Melkavar, Lord Malakonn’s sister-son, and by right of blood I sentence you to death for your presumption.  For finding those arms I’ll let you choose your end, though: here and now, or at the Arena of Justice in Melkavar?”

The lore Delgonn had given him through tale after tale began to come back to Lakann. The desert lords, proudly claiming descent from the Azhir, highest race of the Ancients, held to an iron code of honor. Sure that he would die, Lakann chose to take the highest of his foes with him if he could. “I can choose who will send me onward, can I not? Then, Lord Ardakonn, I choose you.”

The nobleman seemed taken aback. For several seconds he could make no reply, though Lakann could see Ardakonn’s pale gold skin purple with rage, and the golden eyes flashed — but with fear?

Only then did Lakann take a better look at himself in his purloined gear. He was, to his surprise, as tall as the inhumanly tall Azhir lord, and much more heavily built. He knew he’d been among the strongest of the mine slaves, but only now did he realize by how much his arms swelled with muscle compared to the rather delicately built nobleman.

“My Lord! Invoke blood-right and send me against him instead,” cried one of the warriors.

The reaction of the other three to that suggestion, however, firmed Ardakonn’s mind. “I could’ve asked my minions to do this, but I will grant you this privilege. Today you will see an Azhir fight, and why even after the breaking of the world we still rule it.” He swung easily off his mount and advanced upon Lakann. “Draw your sword.”

In answer, Lakann hefted his mining pick. “I fight better with the weapons I know,” he replied.

Apparently, it was yet another offense to Ardakonn’s honor. With a wordless scream he leaped at Lakann, longsword whistling down. Lakann dodged aside and swung his pick in a mighty arc. But then it was Lakann’s turn to discover something unpleasant about his opponent. Weaker than him Lord Ardakonn might be, but the noble had been trained in the sword since childhood.

Ardakonn easily parried the blow, deflecting the pick head into the sand, and made a lightning counterattack. Lakann caught it on the pick’s haft, barely in time. Another exchange, and the haft was shorn in two. Ardakonn stepped back with a satisfied smirk; now that he’d seen how unskilled his opponent was, the lord was determined to play with him.

Reluctantly Lakann drew the longsword at his hip. He had no idea how to use it. He took stance as he’d seen the lord do, and waited for the next attack. Already a plan was beginning to form inside his head. The lord could not be defeated with his own weapon, and Ardakonn knew it. But now that Lakann had drawn the sword, Ardakonn would expect to be fought with the sword. Ardakonn feinted, then aimed a sweeping cut at his neck.

Rather than attempt any kind of parry, however, Lakann simply dived under the stroke, dropping his sword and drawing the dagger. He tackled Ardakonn, the two of them crashing onto the hard fused stone of Valhazhar’s pavement. They rolled. Lakann came up on top, drove a crushing left into Ardakonn’s chin, then the dagger’s point found the place where his armor plates laced together and went between them.

Ardakonn gasped, tried to strike his foe one more time, but instead went limp.

Slowly Lakann pulled himself away from the body. He swept the four warriors with a gaze he tried to make level, and apparently succeeded. They made no move, save for one who knelt to tend the fallen lord. “I am the victor,” he declared. “By your codes, I can go free and that’s all I want. You have no need to fight me.”

“There is no need,” agreed the warrior who’d volunteered to stand in for Ardakonn. “Go your way, man. We will lift no hand against you today, but there may be other days. You will find no welcome in the city of Melkavar.”

“And yet I need sanctuary,” Lakann said. “Where can I go?”

“The closest city is indeed Melkavar; fourteen farsangs north. There is Sommathar beyond the mountain, but of course you dare not go back there. And there is Raadnar, nineteen farsangs to the east. Raadnar is your best choice, stranger. Little good it may do you though. Raadnar is doomed.”

“Doomed?”

“We are at war with Raadnar. Last year we defeated her badly, very badly. Now it is spring, and the south winds bring the Swarm again. Raadnar cannot have the strength left to hold. But if you go there you can be sure of a welcome. They are desperate for fighters.”

“Then to Raadnar I shall go, and hope you are wrong. Thank you.”

“Wait, stranger. Let me make you an offer: we are of Melkavar, and we cannot bear to see Lord Malakonn’s arms fail to come home. What say you to a gannor, a good cloak against the night winds, food, water and the firelock I have here along with powder and shot, in exchange for that armor you wear and the lord’s longsword?” The warrior patted the flintlock pistol at his waist.

“A most practical offer. Done.” Lakann began stripping off the long-dead lord’s arms.

 

Suddenly the warrior unhooked his own longsword from his belt. “Returning our lord’s arms will leave you swordless. Here is mine. If you should take service with Raadnar, perhaps I will have the honor of taking it back in battle. I am Zamek, Talon-leader of the Fourth Company, House Malakonn.”

“May Taharna keep you until then, Talon-leader Zamek. I am Lakann— but I know neither my home city nor my House.” He offered Zamek his hand, and they clasped wrists firmly in the warriors’ farewell.

Ardakonn groaned, and the warrior tending him looked up. “He will live,” he announced. “I was able to apply the sarcosalve in time.”

The prostrate lord glared at Lakann. “This shall not be forgotten,” he whispered.

“Have it your way,” Lakann replied. “I care not.” He completed the ransoming of Malakonn’s arms, then having thrown the fur cloak over his shoulders he mounted the beast they’d given him and spurred away, into the slowly brightening eastern horizon.

 

#

 

It took Lakann five days to reach Raadnar.

He had but little trouble on the way, though he came upon chilling reminders of Maruzar’s deadly rites of spring. Swarm Time had begun, just as old Delgonn had warned, and he picked up his pace lest that tide of predaciousness catch him in the open. Here and there were fallen floaters, which he now remembered were called windgrazers, wormseeds or wormlanterns. Some had captured an animal large enough for them to take root, and begun to metamorphose into their dendrot form.

One was even bigger than the ones he’d seen at Valhazhar, and had enough energy left to lash at him with a tentacle, but too slowly to be a threat. He passed the exoskeleton of some huge worm-like creature, long dead, surrounded by fragments of veined, transparent material like glass panes, which he realized had once been wings.

And then there were the remains of another fallen giant insect, whose scent bewitched his hungry omnivorous steed. Not having ridden a gannor since he was a child, he could not stop it from changing course toward the carcass. Only when they had come too close did Lakann discover the pack of feral folk feeding on the carcass, and they came boiling after him. He shot one dead and galloped away, and they, preferring easier meat, broke pursuit to return to their carrion.

On the third day he fell in with a beggarly caravan which was also headed for Raadnar. Six merchants with nothing left to lose, no guards, and a string of starving pack-beasts laden with second-hand weapons. They were only too glad to have him riding with them, taking him for a simple mercenary, and asked no questions.

He kept to himself when they made camp, but kept his ears open. As the merchants gathered over the dung fires, they nervously eyed the occasional windgrazer drifting above. They spoke of the coming Swarm, arguing with each other over the decision to run weapons to doomed Raadnar so close to Swarm Time. There was talk of turning back for Melkavar, which alarmed Lakann, but  the caravan leader vetoed it.

“We’re much closer to Raadnar than to Melkavar by now,” the lead merchant said. “Let’s just push farther every day, well into the night. Doesn’t matter what condition our pack beasts are in when we get to Raadnar – we’re leaving them. Just think of the profits we’ll make from this run, with the lords of Raadnar so desperate for arms after the war.”

“But can they pay our price?” one of the younger merchants wondered.

“They have no choice,” their leader replied, and that was the end of the matter.Lakann breathed a hidden sigh of relief at the merchants’ conclusion, but his relief was overlaid by new doubts. What was he walking into? As he gnawed the hard journey bread the merchants had given him, he hardened his resolution. If I have to fight for my life in Raadnar, I will. As long as I can live free.

Despite their extended marches, it still took the heavily laden caravan five more days to reach Raadnar.

The city occupied a high butte standing alone in the desert, looming above the half-buried expanse of the Ancient city from which its people had come, its gates facing the setting sun. In the dying light, the entire rock and its crown of walls and towers were bathed a glorious, ominous crimson.

As with all desert cities built after the Breaking of the World, Raadnar was a fortress first, its architecture blocky and artless, yet the symphony of its curtain walls and towers rising and falling with the terrain was not unlovely. There were four circuits of wall, the oldest ringing the brass-spired citadel at the top, and the lower ones demarcating the city’s expansions. All the walls and towers bore that unmistakable look of great age.

To Lakann it seemed a symbol of life defiant, scarred and worn yet unwilling to fall into the brooding ghostliness of the nearby ruins’ broken perfection.

The caravan track wound up to the butte in serpentine curves. As he rode closer he saw how the gate towers, bristling with bronze cannon and what might be an Ancient energy weapon, covered every approach. Raadnar was well-built to keep out any human foe. But walls were only as strong as their defenders, and the foe Raadnar feared was a force of nature.

The signs of weakness were all too plain once he took a closer look. A lone air cruiser circled above the city, where Sommathar had had a dozen aloft at any time. Nor did the air buzz with Spaceclan flitters as it had over Sommathar and his birthplace, Sulkoris; the city of Raadnar was too poor to interest the offworld merchants.

The huge lightning-thrower at the barbican turned out to be burnt out and pitted with corrosion, either inoperable or more likely to fry its operator than anything it was pointed at. At the gates, all but one of the guards were old men of at least a hundred winters. They  challenged him to state his business, and he replied with what he hoped was the standard: “I’m a free fighter. I heard Raadnar is hiring, so here I am.”

“Every sword is welcome,” the guard replied. “But when the Swarm arrives, how sure are we you’ll stay?”

Lakann gambled on the truth. “I’m an escaped slave,” he whispered. “I’ve got nowhere else to go.”

The guard looked surprised. “Honest man, aren’t you? I’d be slow to repeat that story if I were you. Put a bounty on your head, it will. I’m telling no one, though. The city needs strong men like you.”

“Thank you. How do I sign up?”

“Just find your way to the market square — you can’t miss it. At the center you’ll find three tents. The lords’re hiring from there. Up to you which House you want to join. They’re all equally good — or equally useless, as they are now. Only young and inexperienced lords up there now. The senior ones are all dead or rotting in Melkavar’s dungeons, waiting for a ransom we can’t afford no more. But tell no one I said that.”

Lakann smiled. “Which would you say is the best of the worst, then?”

“You could do worse than sign up with the Lady Arianne,” the old guard replied. “Melkavarian she is, but she joined House Urid here and has been one of their bastions since last year’s disaster. She pays well and is fair to all.”

“She’s Melkavarian? What’s she doing here?”

“Indeed, and a scioness of their ruling House, Malakonn, too. Right bastards they are, but they breed tough ones. Heard our Lady was too tough even for them, so they kicked her out.  No love lost between our Lady Arianne and her cousins. Killed two of their lords she has already, and raring to pop for more.”

“I believe I’ll try to enter her service, then,” Lakann said thoughtfully. “This could prove most interesting.”

Riding through the gate, Lakann saw yet more signs of desperation and decay. Throngs of men, women and children, many in rags, were abandoning the outer city for the safety of the citadel. A grizzled veteran, lacking an arm and an eye, drilled a pack of street boys in the use of spears. The oldest among them couldn’t have been more than fifteen.

A sweating smith labored over a forge, striving to repair weapons well beyond their prime — a crazy assortment of polearms, blades, and muskets, all rusted, chipped or warped. Shabby sellswords lounged together in indolent huddles, smoking narcotic uruzha spice and making unsavory plans. He overheard one speak of spiriting away some woman he liked, another bragged of the treasures he’d stolen from his employer, yet another spoke of buying a fast gannor to ride away on before the fall.

Others, though, spoke of the Swarm. “Perhaps the winds will not blow the sky-worms our way this year,” one rookie said, but that only made the others laugh. “The wind blows our way every year, sooner or later,” they jeered. “Day or night, the sky will darken with wings, myriads of them. We’ll be fighting for days.”

“We’ve only one aircruiser standing skywatch, and the Kalkarian is old. Old, and unreliable — battle captures always are, they never find the right parts for them.”

“Thank Taharna I’m not posted to the south quarter. That’s always where it’s worst,” said one.

“It’ll be bad all over the city, son,” said one veteran. “’Long as the wind blows, they’ll keep coming. Never seen it blow more than four, five days straight though — it always shifts before then, and the Swarm’ll go elsewhere with it. Three days. That’s how long we have to hold out. Three days, and we’ll have weathered the worst of the storm.”

“Even if we hold, what then?  How long before the army of Melkavar returns?”

“One day at a time, boy, take it one day at a time. That’s all the gods allow.”

Lakann rode past them into the recruitment square, where he dismounted. He asked a street urchin which of the big white tents in the center was House Urid’s, and joined the line of mercenaries queuing for it. It was by far the shortest of the queues. He asked why.

“Because House Urid’s responsible for the southern quarter,” was the heavy reply. “First place the Swarm touches down, and the thickest.”

 

#

 

Four of House Urid’s seven commanders were women, all of the golden-skinned, golden-eyed and pantherishly elegant Azhir race, but Lady Arianne was unmistakable.

Inside the recruiting tent, the Urid commanders hiring each had a desk and personally examined every sellsword, though they usually let their secretaries do the talking. She was the only one in armor, not the vermilion that Lakann saw was House Urid’s color, but in severe obsidian black. Only a silk sash in the Urid colors about her waist told of her allegiance.

Her face was chiseled perfection like all other Azhir, but power and pain forged in the crucibles of Hell itself burned in it. She prowled restlessly like a big cat, and spoke with every recruit herself. Despite her House’s need she never hesitated to send away any who failed to satisfy her scrutiny. The man before Lakann was brusquely turned away thus, and left muttering curses. “Next!” the formidable warmistress barked, and Lakann stepped up, making a shallow bow. He would never bow lower again, he promised himself.

Lady Arianne eyed him coldly. Her burning amber gaze swept approvingly over his swelling muscles, then turned withering. “Draw your sword and show me your stance,” she demanded.

He did so.

The warrior-princess barely seemed to move, but in an eyeblink Lakann was staring at his empty hands, the longsword knocked out of them and onto his feet by Arianne’s now-naked blade. “You don’t know how to use a sword at all!” she spat. “What do you think you’re doing here, you fool?”

“I’ve never held a sword in my life til a few days ago,” Lakann admitted. “But if you would see what I’m worth, Lady, ask any of your guards to wrestle with me. I was – I was an airdock worker,” he lied, “so I’m strong.”

Arianne looked him up and down. “You’re too pale to have been a worker in the open-air skyship docks,” she said shrewdly. “You’re an escaped slave, aren’t you? From the mines?”

Lakann shook his head, trying to think of a better lie. But no. The woman was too perceptive. “Yes, I was a mine slave in Sommathar,” he admitted. “Give me shelter, Lady, and all the strength I have is yours to command.”

Arianne burst into surprised laughter, clear, ringing, and more honest than any mirth Lakann had ever heard before. “By the Chained Gods! I ask the heavens and hells for lions with swords, and they send me an ox! No, no need to wrestle for my benefit, man. I’ll believe you.  I’ll even hire you.

“And I finally know what I’m going to do to end the boredom of this blasted exile. I’m going to make a swordsman out of you, if it’s the last thing I ever do. What’s your name and where are you from?”

“Lakann, my Lady. I was born in Sulkoris, of the Engineer caste, but have lived half my life as a slave in the mines of Sommathar.”

“Then, Lakann, let me formally pronounce your manumission and adoption into the warrior caste. I’ve done many shocking things in my life, but I’ll do this proper. No one will ever say Lady Arianne stooped to teaching the sword to a slave.”

Lakann found himself bowing, much lower than he’d intended. “I thank you, my Lady. But … why?”

“Because in this tent full of snakes, half of them planning to desert as soon as they’re paid, you are one honest ox.”

He bowed again, but did not fail to catch the spark of hatred in the eyes of many warriors nearby; specially in the eyes of the Urid warlords and warmistresses, and the hulking warrior who stood at Arianne’s shoulder, also clad in her obsidian black. That giant now brusquely motioned him out the back of the tent, where he was to be supplied with Arianne’s livery and armor. As he left, though, he could hear her mirthful parting shot:

“Don’t you dare slack in your sword training, Ox. The creatures of the Swarm do not wrestle.”

 

#

 

The next few days taught Lakann much about Lady Arianne and why she was called the Shaytana of Raadnar, as well as invaluable lessons on the Maruzarian arts of war.

Arianne’s drive to have the most effective company in her adopted House went well beyond her strictness at the recruiting tent. Every fresh recruit, whatever their experience, went through rigorous testing with sword, bow and spear. The hulking captain, Thargos Marr, personally conducted the sword trials.  In fact he performed them himself. Only those who faced him with neither hesitation nor desperation were taken into the core of Arianne’s warband.

The warmistress herself supervised the archery trials, and only those who satisfied her with both accuracy and speed were allowed to keep their bows. Those who failed with sword and bow alike were tried with the spear, and if they failed that too — there being very few of these — they were issued matchlock arquebuses and made to mime the process of loading and firing from sunup to sundown. Not a single shot was fired during the arquebusiers’ training though. Raadnar had no powder and shot to spare.

Lakann found himself assigned to neither the sword, spear, bow nor gun contingents. Instead, he became one of the only ten fighters detailed as Arianne’s personal bodyguard. These not only watched over her night and day, they also served as her partners in training — and she was as merciless with herself as she was with any of her warriors.

As the newest man, and Arianne’s new obsession, Lakann had to spar with her nonstop for hours every day. While most of Raadnar’s fighters spent the next several days using their bows on the wormlanterns that always presaged the coming of the Swarm, harvesting them for their edible flesh and tough membranes, he was closeted with her in the training halls.

On the first day of sparring, he successfully amassed a wealth of blue bruises that would’ve taken him a year in the mines. On the third, he managed to parry nearly half her strikes. They fought in full armor with blunted blades, and Arianne always struck full strength. Lakann perforce learned quickly; man is also an animal, and every animal learns fastest through pain.

Toward the end of the third day he had completely overcome his reluctance to strike at Arianne, confident she could take anything he threw at her, and began attempting the combination attacks he had seen her employ.

That day ended with Lakann sending the warmistress’ blade spinning out of her hands, and he slowly mimed the finishing cut at her neck. To his surprise Arianne stepped inside the blade’s arc, intercepting his wrists, and then he was down, crying out as she bent his sword-arm almost to the maiming point. He dropped the blade, and the warmistress let him go.

“You must teach me how to do that, my Lady,” Lakann panted, his hand and arm still throbbing.

But Arianne was withdrawn, her eyes unseeing and her features rigid. “I hate the memory that move brings back every time I use it,” she whispered. “That’s how I did it.”

“Did what, Lady Arianne?”

“Kill my father.”

Lakann picked himself up and retrieved her fallen sword. He offered it back, and she mechanically rammed it back into its sheath. “What made that necessary, if I may ask?”

“Necessary? You can believe it was necessary?”
“I’ve seen enough to know you do nothing lightly, Lady. And you’ve treated everyone I see fair, hard but fair. So there must be a reason.”

“Betrayal has become a way of life to us nobles,” she spat. “I’m not sure anymore who betrayed whom first. But our dreams of power diverged over the Spaceclans. You know of the offworld merchants? We both wanted to open trade with them, something Melkavar has resisted for centuries. I wanted to buy medicines, new strains for the fungus farms, things that would let our people increase naturally and so make us stronger. My father was more direct — he only wanted weapons, and loans to hire more warriors. He wanted only the quickest way.

“In the end, the ruling council agreed with him. The Spaceclan envoys were invited. I feared them; feared the strangehold they would have over us if we borrowed gold from them as my father wished.  So … I sabotaged their mission. I had one of the envoys killed. My father found out. We had a confrontation — and we drew swords.” Arianne shook her head. “If I could call that last blow back, I would. But it would’ve meant accepting a future for Melkavar — for all Maruzar — that I cannot bear.  We shall not be the offworlders’ slaves!” she cried.

“Perhaps he was blinded by what he thought was a need,” Lakann said. “I killed the only friend I had from the mines because he wanted our last waterskin to himself. Alas, I found water only a short while after that.”

“A pity,” Arianne agreed. “But for you, it ends there. You struck in self-defense, did you not? I’m not sure I did. My crime makes me a hunted woman for as long as there is one scion of House Malakonn still living. Enough. We shall speak of this another time — if ever. You have caught me off-guard indeed, Ox. That is a matter I rarely speak of, not even to such bed-companions as I’ve taken here.” She made a dismissing motion, and Lakann bowed.

He turned to go, but turned back instead to Arianne. “You will always have my gratitude for taking me in and making me a warrior, Lady,” he said. “You will always have my loyalty.”

That brought a faint smile to the warmistress’ lips. “I know. You are one direct and honest ox; not an ounce of guile in you.” Then more firmly, “And that is also your weakness. The sword is not your weapon, you have not the malice for it. See Thargos Marr and get him to issue you a wormcrusher. I’m sure we have one in the armories big enough for your hands. Now leave me. I want to think.”

“As you command, my Lady,” Lakann bowed himself out.

As he exited the training hall, though, he ran right into Thargos Marr. He saluted the captain and relayed Lady Arianne’s command, to which Thargos Marr retorted with an order to follow. The big man entered the hall and bowed to Lady Arianne. “I’ve a report from the skywatch, my Lady.”

“Report,” she ordered, once again the crisply collected warmistress.

“There’s been a signal from the Kalkarian, my Lady. A Swarm has been sighted, coming in from the southeast. At current wind speed they’re estimated to be here before midnight tonight.”

“Turn out the nightwatch early, and have the daywatch stand down and take their meals now,” the lady ordered. “All archers and gunners to the walls, and our swordsmen patrolling the streets supported by the militia squads.  Go. And make sure this ox has a wormcrusher.”

Thargos Marr hesitated. “My Lady — we are seriously understrength now. The city of Raadnar cannot hold. Your airskiff is ready, and I or one of my men can pilot for you. But go. Now. Please, my Lady.”

“Our oaths require us to stay,” Arianne replied coldly. “Go. I will follow as soon as I am armored.”

“I would give anything for your survival, my Lady,” the captain rumbled. “But let all be as you command. I go.” Thargos Marr bowed and marched out, and Lakann dutifully followed. The captain radiated a sullen frustration that was known to make him dangerous, and Lakann was glad to be ordered to leave him as soon as they had procured a wormcrusher at the armory.

The wormcrusher turned out to be an iron-bound war-club, its pommel reaching midway up his ribs when he rested it on the ground, festooned for half its length with big iron studs. He hefted it, and something made him wonder how he would fare with it against the power and skill of Thargos Marr.

 

#

 

Even the winds betrayed Raadnar.

Shortly after Lakann had rejoined Lady Arianne, accompanying her on inspection along with the rest of her bodyguards, the winds brought the first wave of the Swarm upon the city hours ahead of the skywatch’s estimate. The invading insects were preceded by the wormlanterns, whose  buoyant bladders and sails made them as fast as the wind.

The largest and heaviest of these were blown across the city, and despite all caution a few men were caught up in their tentacles. But the defenders did not bother to shoot these down.

They were minor threats compared to what would follow, and there were no arrows or bullets to spare. The wormlanterns were accompanied by clouds of webmoths, creatures the size of two outspread hands that spewed a sticky silk from their tails, then settled in scores to feed on those that they immobilized thus. These were easily dealt with though, for they were fragile and could be knocked down and killed with almost anything.

On the heels of the webmoths came the first sky-worms, and Raadnar’s defenders began to die in earnest.

These sky-worms were not much longer than a man is tall, but they snaked through the air at high speed and attacked from every angle. Lakann smashed one from the air with his iron club, and had just enough time to study it in the glow of the Veil before he was attacked again.

The creature was indeed like a worm, or rather a centipede, but with a pair of buzzing wings emanating from each of its armored sections. The tail ended in a cruel pincer, and the jaws were a complex horror of grasping mandibles and daggerlike sucking mouthparts. Even as it died the thing writhed and tried to strike at him, ceasing to be as dangerous only after Lakann had completely crushed its head.

Now the buzz overhead grew to an ominous crescendo.

“Here come the big ones!” warned Thargos Marr.

Lakann looked up and felt his insides turn to ice. Amongst the flock of lesser worms were now increasingly bigger ones, some of them seemingly greater than the air cruiser above them. Lady Arianne cried out, and the archers and arquebusiers posted at the walls and towers finally opened fire. They had been under the strictest orders to waste no shots on the smaller fry, saving them for the greater threat. The greater worms also made easier targets, and scores fell from the sky.

The Kalkarian also went into action now, and its fulgurator sizzled and boomed as it sent crackling green ball lightnings into the monstrous flock. Burning worms fell writhing into the city, to be finished off by squads of townsfolk led by veterans. But there were too many.

Lakann watched in horrified fascination as one stooped upon an archer from behind, his warning cry to the man lost in the noise of the invasion,  and then the victim was writhing in the sky-worm’s jaws as it lifted him away. A few seconds later the worm dropped the archer, now a withered and deflated husk that oozed dissolved flesh when it broke on the flagstones. He was avenged moments later, though, when a shot from the air cruiser dropped that sky-worm.

To his surprise Lady Arianne immediately called for her guards to follow her as she leapt down the rampart stairs atter the falling monstrosity.

It knocked splinters from the walls and shattered roof tiles with its writhing, but with instinctive coordination they cut and smashed it to bits. “Get between it and the residence towers!” Arianne cried. “Flamers, stand by! Don’t let any get into hiding!”

Moved by wrath for his fallen new comrade, Lakann closed in and crushed the sky-worm’s head with his iron club. He never noticed he’d been the only one to close on the creature, for the rest of Arianne’s guard had formed a ring safely out of the sky-worm’s reach.

“’Ware her brood!” Thargos Marr warned. “Let none escape!”

Lakann involuntarily cried out in horror and revulsion. The dying sky-worm’s sides now heaved and warped, as things in its belly chewed their way through its hide and came boiling out. Now he was truly fighting for his life, for the creatures were many and their hunger a mindless, unstoppable force that recognized no obstacle in its way. He was quickly covered in crushed chitin and foul ichor, making the iron club slippery in his hands and getting into his eyes, but he could not pause until the entire brood was destroyed.

Those of the lady’s men with flame-lances opened up on the brood, playing gouts of fire upon the crawling creatures and the mindless assault began to cease. Lakann stepped away, wiping his slime-fouled face.

Arianne too had ceased fighting, and was wordlessly pointing skyward with incredulous anger. “The bastards! Where do they think they’re going?” she cried.

Lakann looked up and saw the Kalkarian speeding away and climbing, into the upper atmosphere and out of the battle. All across the city now rose cries of despair. It shot down a few worms that had followed it, but in moments it was beyond their altitude. Then it disappeared into the night.

“We are betrayed, my Lady,” Thargos Marr told the warmistress. “Once again I beg you — let me fly you out on your airskiff as soon as there is a lull in the fighting. There is no holding here, not with our air defense gone.”

“And once again I refuse,” Arianne said coldly. “We stay, we fight, and if necessary, we die. Have you forgotten all I ever taught you of honor, Thargos Marr?”

The captain bridled at the insult, but controlled himself and bowed. “We are all at your command, Lady. Only that it would be easier for all of us to know you will live even after Raadnar falls.”

“The city shall not fall while I live,” the warmistress vowed, and then she led them after another fallen worm.

This, Lakann now remembered, was the true evil of the Swarm. Every one of the greater sky-worms was a female and pregnant. All throughout the long flight from the southern polar regions, from the great gash in the world that was the Viridian Deep, the young were developing within their mothers.

When the mother was forced down, either by violence or the sheer weight of her brood, they chewed their way out and emerged to feed. It was the only way the sky-worms’ larvae could be born, for she had no birth canal. Though the broodlings were beetle-like rather than worm-like as their parent, they would reproduce and eventually hatch more sky-worms if allowed to escape into the city’s water-rich tunnels.

Fortunately, their hunger was such that they were also cannibals.

Time and again Lakann crushed a broodling dead, which was then immediately attacked by its siblings. He learned by imitating Thargos Marr that this was a useful tactic, crippling broodlings to make their brethren easier prey. But the worms’ spawn were not the only things that fed on their own kind that night.

As the chaos in Raadnar’s streets reached new heights of madness, they encountered a troop of mercenaries that had turned to looting. When they ran into the narrow street Lakann saw an armored man burst into a door, followed by a woman’s scream. The sellsword came back out, sword wet with blood that ran red instead of worm-yellow, and carrying a fistful of baubles. They all whirled guiltily on hearing the approach of Lady Arianne’s squad.

“It’s the Shaytana! Run!” one of the looters cried.

“Take them!” Arianne howled. The bodyguards did. Thargos Marr dropped one with a thrown knife, Lakann caught another from behind with a sweep of his iron club, and Arianne swept havoc through them like a desert tornado. They fought desperately, though, and in that storm of blades two of the lady’s guards went down.

Suddenly one of the looters ran back into the house and emerged with a shrieking child held in one arm, a knife in the other at the little one’s throat. “Let me go or she dies!” he snarled.

Arianne hesitantly lowered her sword. Her mouth worked. Finally she spat and said, “Very well. Go.”

The looter backed away, still holding on to the child, and only when he was too far to be outrun easily by Arianne’s more heavily armored men did he let the child go. But the warmistress drew a fulgurator pistol from her sash and shot him from behind, pumping ball lightnings into his jerking, burning frame until he was completely charred. She beckoned, and the child ran to her.

“Treat every jackal you meet thus,” she growled to her men. She checked the fulgurator then and smiled grimly. “I think that was its last shot. Here, Ox!” she tossed the device to Lakann, who caught it uncomprehendingly. “Hold it for me. Maybe one day I’ll find a way to recharge it.”

Lakann thrust the pistol into his belt. “What about the child?” he asked.

“Take her to safety. Then meet us under the Phoenix Tower,” Arianne said.

Lakann took the little girl’s hand in his. “Come, child, let’s find you a place you can stay safe.”

“Nowhere,” the girl whispered. “There’s nowhere to go. My mummy is dead. I don’t know where my papa is, they took him away and made him carry a spear. I wanna stay here.”

Lakann swept her up, a wave of helpless grief and rage sweeping over him. Without another word he carried the child into the upper city, dimly thinking of finding her a place in the citadel where the warrior caste lived. She might have to live the rest of her life a servant, but she would live.

 

#

 

The wind died down shortly after dawn, and with it, the assault on the city.

Lakann found himself fighting above the citadel until then, too occupied by another wave of lesser sky-worms — which he later found were the males — to make rendezvous with Lady Arianne. When the fighting ceased he wondered where she was, but it was she who found him. The horrors of the night had been a crucible that had melted and recast something inside him, but recast into something the Shaytana could approve of. She had looked into his eyes, given a satisfied nod, and said, “Well done, warrior. Now go and get some food and sleep. Be ready to fight again whenever the alarm sounds.”

He bowed and obeyed, too tired for even a word.

Indeed, Lakann was so tired he went straight to the barracks and slept like a log, awakening only at noon. Ravenous, he repaired to the mess hall and found he was late for the noon meal. He was not alone, though. Thargos Marr was eating alone, and on seeing him motioned him over. “You did well last night, boy,” the captain rumbled as he settled down with his food.

“I’ve never fought so hard before,” Lakann admitted.

“You mean worked,” the captain corrected him. “That’s what we do. Work, just like any other man. Save that ours is damn messy.”

“You’re right, Captain. Even my first day in the mines seemed easy compared to last night,” Lakann said around a mouthful of flatbread dipped in a spicy fungus stew. “I’ve never fought the Swarm before. Too young before I was enslaved, and kept penned underground when Sommathar was attacked. It is always like this?”

“It gets worse,” Thargos Marr grinned.

“It all feels so stupid, though. We’re killing them in thousands. Why don’t they just go elsewhere?”

“The creatures of the Swarm live for just two things. To feed, and to breed,” answered the captain. “They need food and water, and the only place there’s enough of both across Maruzar is in our cities. And the losses don’t matter none to them. It only takes a few to escape us into the city’s tunnels, and Raadnar will be completely infested within the year. That’s why we have to fight them outside. Even if we last out this Swarm, we’ll have to spend the next few weeks or months beating up the tunnels, hunting down every last escapee.”

Thargos Marr turned somber. “In the short term, you can always fight to live another day,” he said. “But in the long run, no. I’m fifty. Shortly before I was born Santhor and Deraal became infested and were abandoned. In my lifetime, Lorhal, Xeoris, Sythraal. Tomorrow, or a week from now, Raadnar. If you live anywhere in the southern hemisphere of Maruzar, boy, the Swarm will eventually reach it and snuff it.”

“They’re strong, but it seems to me they’re only mindless insects,” Lakann objected.

“Ah, the worms and their brood – those’re mindless all right,” the captain said. “But I think there’s design behind it all. When the spring winds begin to blow, the landcoral trees of the Deep release the wormlanterns. They’re food for the flying insects who follow them, but even more, they grow into landcoral, which the insects nest in. Swarm infestations multiply faster when they nest in landcoral.

“Then there’s the sky-worms. Isn’t it strange to have flying animals that can’t ever land? They’re totally helpless on the ground. As if their maker didn’t care whether they lived or not, as long as they reach us and deliver their broods into our cities. They’re weapons, that’s what they are. Living weapons.”

The captain suddenly turned earnest. “Now look here, boy. You’ve somehow gained our warmistress’ ear. You can help me — and her — by doing this; convince her to escape. As soon as there’s a lull in the fighting I want you to bring her to the rooftop hangar. We’ll take the Lady to safety on the airskiff.”

“We?”

“You, me, and any of the guard who can make it,” Thargos Marr said. “The airskiff only holds six.”

“What of the rest of the company, Captain?”

The captain scowled. “They will do their duty, warrior, as I’m telling you to do yours. Sometimes our duty requires us to die, but sometimes it requires us to swallow the pain of not standing with our comrades at the last for a higher good. Our Lady must live. Melkavar needs her, they’ll realize that eventually. Maruzar needs her. Do you understand, boy?”

“I – I believe I do, Captain. I will do as you command,” Lakann said.

 

#

 

The next wave of the Swarm arrived at sundown.

It followed the same pattern as last night, save that  the big mother-worms came earlier and there were more of them. The city, particularly the southern quarter which House Urid held, was sore beset. There were grievous losses among the archers and arquebusiers, much worse than the previous night, and this led to even more losses on the streets. More than once Lakann saw an entire squad of auxiliaries — women, old men, older children — wiped out before his eyes by ravening hordes of broodlings. Wield the wormcrusher as hard as he might, he began to feel helpless against the constant onslaught.

Now orders came from Lord Urrus, de facto head of House Urid while its High Lord was captive in Melkavar; use burners and flamers, whatever the cost.

Accidents happened. Men with flamers alight were set upon by broodlings and swung their flame projectors wildly. Stray bolts from the burners hit stacks of combustibles — wicker baskets, cloth, a warehouse full of oil. Fires started in scattered parts of the south quarter and spread. Soon Lady Arianne took responsibility into her own hands and ordered the abandonment of the quarter up to the second-innermost wall, and all noncombatants, including the auxiliaries, into the shelter of the citadel.

Only the fittest could survive the charnelhouse of Raadnar’s streets now.

Three more of Lady Arianne’s bodyguard fell. One was taken by a worm, lifted into the air by its tail pincers and torn apart as multiple worms converged to feed upon him. Another took a stray bullet. The third warned them of a falling worm-mother, and seeing Lady Arianne in danger of being overwhelmed by the broodlings that boiled out of it, gave his body over to them so she could escape.

Lakann somehow overcame his exhaustion to stay by Arianne throughout that mad night. When she came upon a pack of looters he had charged them ahead of her, taking down the leader before he could shoot the warmistress. That had yielded a burner, which Arianne took for herself. She then emptied its charges on the broodlings of one new-fallen worm, and when she had tried to shoot another worm with it only to find it out of juice, it was Lakann and Thargos Marr together who stopped its jaws from finding her. And still the Swarm kept coming.

By midnight, it had become necessary to abandon all of Raadnar save the citadel.

There Lord Urrus had personally ordered the Shaytana to stand down and rest, along with the remnants of her shattered company. Of the two hundred and forty seven warriors in her contingent, only eighty-four had made it into the citadel. The rest were either dead or laid up in the overflowing infirmaries.

But Lakann and Thargos Marr did not repair to the barracks as the rest of Arianne’s men did. Instead they went up to the citadel’s ramparts and looked at the sky. Only a few dozen worms were left of the last flock, their numbers being rapidly reduced by archery and musket fire.“They’re starting to thin out,” Thargos Marr said. “Go to the lady. Tell her she must go  while the sky’s mostly free of worms, before the next wave hits.”

“She will refuse,” Lakann said with certainty. “What can I say to convince her to go?”

“Don’t,” the captain told him. “Say instead that there is something she must see up here. Say I sent you. Here, leave your club with me.”

“But what if she asks me what it is that you saw?”

“Then tell her you can’t explain it, since you’ve never seen it before.”

He handed over the wormcrusher, bowed to the captain and ran downstairs. The guard who watched over Lady Arianne’s sleep knew him well by now, having fought beside him all this time, and let him in without question. He wakened the warmistress, who had not bothered to dress save to remove her armor and its underpadding. Half-naked but uncaring, Arianne sat up.

“Captain Thargos Marr says there’s something you should see on the parapet,” Lakann told her.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen its like,” he replied.

She gave him a searching look, which he withstood somehow, and then wordlessly cast on a war-coat and buckled her longsword over it. “Come, show me.”

They came to the parapet to find Thargos Marr and two of the surviving bodyguards with him. An airskiff floated at the edge of the wall beside them, moored to a merlon by loose loops to enable a quick casting off. Lakann wondered where his warclub was, having grown attached to it and seeing it was not in the captain’s hands. Suddenly he saw stars and was driven to his knees. A mighty blow had been struck to the back of his head. His helmet rolled off as he sprawled onto his belly, unable to see, but feeling the warm blood trickling off his scalp. He could not move.

“Take her,” he heard Thargos Marr tell the other bodyguards.

“What means this?” demanded Arianne, and he heard her whipping out her sword with the unmistakable rasp of steel on leather.

“You have forced me into open betrayal with your intransigence, Lady,” the captain rumbled. “Your brothers have offered much to have you delivered to them, and the Spaceclans offered even more. Enough for this tired old fighter to retire in the Fertile Belt, away in the Aryamehran Empire. Away from the Swarm.”

“Then take me if you can, worm-spawn!” the Shaytana challenged. Steel rang on steel.

Light returned, at first in a blur as if looking through an oiled glass, clearing reluctantly as Lakann shook his head. He drove himself to get back on his feet. His head reeled. He had been forgotten as all three of the traitorous bodyguards engaged Arianne.

Now Thargos Marr held her attention, being the strongest fighter of the three — but this had freed another bodyguard to circle around the Azhir noblewoman, and as he did so he produced a wet cloth from his pouch. A trick of the wind brought a whiff from it to Lakann’s nostrils, and the faintness returned as he inhaled the sweetish-medicinal smell. He tried to cry out a warning to Arianne, but nothing came out.

And then Thargos Marr lured Arianne into a bind, giving the other traitor the chance to wrap one arm around the woman from behind while his other hand pressed the cloth to her face. She struggled, then went limp.

Thargos Marr and his accomplices sheathed their swords and together manhandled Arianne’s unconscious form into the airskiff, then climbed in themselves. The captain took up the mooring lines to cast off, keeping one eye on the last few worms on the far side of the tower. Occupied with the soldiers there, the creatures were ignoring them.

And at that moment strength finally returned to Lakann’s arms and legs, and he catapulted himself forward, up onto the parapet and a desperate leap for the airskiff as the restraining cables came loose and it started to float up and away.

 

 

 

The little craft heeled sharply as Lakann’s hands caught its gunwales. His weight tipped the airskiff so suddenly and at such an angle that one of the bodyguards fell out, screaming all the way to the ground hundreds of feet below. The other one rushed Lakann, drawing sword, but there was scant room for swordplay aboard the little sky boat. His long hours of training with Arianne coming to the fore, Lakann took the bodyguard’s constrained blow on the vambrace of his left arm, swept that arm under and around to get a lock on his attacker’s elbow, and with his other arm levered the man over the side.

Then he was rocked backward as Thargos Marr’s fist crashed into his jaw. The big man followed up with a merciless combination of blows, all to the face, and Lakann was driven another step back, teetering dangerously over the airskiff’s side.

But the former slave was an even bigger man, and inured over his term in the mines to the savage, merciless brawls of the slave-pits. A lesser man should have fallen over to Thargos Marr’s relentless assault. But Lakann did not. Would not. And when he suddenly dodged, Thargos Marr overextended, and it was a simple matter to seize the man’s arm and pull, at the same time that Lakann’s powerful right hand clamped onto the back of Thargos Marr’s belt and propelled him in the direction he’d been going.

Over the side.

Thargos Marr did not scream on his long fall down, but instead roared his rage at being foiled, until he splattered onto one of the city’s tower roofs.

That last roar brought Arianne out of unconsciousness. Groggily she sat up — and found Lakann staring ahead in horror. For the fight aboard had caused the airskiff to slew from its intended course, and now it was pointed and barreling at full speed south. Straight for a rising black cloud of wings as the Swarm returned to the assault. And Lakann, of course, had no idea how to fly.

“Sit down, you fool!” Arianne yelled, dragging Lakann down even as she sprang for the controls. A heave on the wheel, levers were worked to angle the beating vanes that propelled the craft, and it banked sharply away from the alien arthropods.

But the creatures ignored them. Instead, they descended upon the city, and the two on board the airskiff looked on in horror as the swarm, reinforced by more predators arriving from the south, finally overwhelmed the last defenses of the citadel.

Arianne dashed hot tears from her eyes. “I should have died down there,” she grated. “Raadnar gave me a home when I was exiled. I owed them my life. My honor. Now I have none.”

“You were carried aboard this craft unconscious, my lady,” Lakann replied. “By men you trusted, who’d betrayed you for someone else’s coin. There is no dishonor. Or if there was, you can wipe it away.” A new flame burned coldly in his soul as he remembered Thargos Marr’s confession of betrayal, and the murderous arrogance of Lord Ardakonn. “It is House Malakonn of Melkavar, they and the Spaceclans, who caused the fall of Raadnar. And if you will fight them, my lady, then your enemies are mine too.”

Arianne laid a hand on his cheek. “My faithful ox,” she smiled through her tears. “You are right. I seem to have taught you better than I expected. Yes. We will take this vendetta together.

“But before that, I must turn you into a better bodyguard, since you’re the last one left. You need to master a weapon that’ll always be at your side, unlike that ponderous wormcrusher. I’m going to turn you into a swordsman yet, my ox, if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

 

________________________________________

Dariel R. A. Quiogue is a writer-photographer from the Philippines. In 1977, he was simultaneously exposed to Star Wars, Herodotus, Homer, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Robert E. Howard, and his brain has never been the same since. He now writes fantasy and science fiction in his spare time, flavored by his fascination for history, science, the sea, and the richness and diversity of Asian cultures. His creative motto is “Simple stories, powerfully told.” Quiogue’s works have appeared in The Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Volume I, the Philippine Speculative Fiction Annual Volume 7, Rakehell Magazine, and his self-published story collection, ‘Swords of the Four Winds‘.