Read Shattered Shields - eARC Online
Authors: Jennifer Brozek,Bryan Thomas Schmidt
I pulled the reins. I slapped Shira’s side. I screamed my message out as we began to plummet, hoping that someone, anyone would hear me.
“The Spin-Devils are coming!”
The ground.
The ground!
* * *
The boy was looking up at the top of the tent, his head spinning. He’d felt his own bones crumble like old parchment as he’d hit the ground, felt his stomach rise into his throat with the rapid descent. Had that just been the impact of him falling off the stool he’d been sitting on?
Groaning, he sat up, the vision of the injured and dying Bandala still fresh in his head. Dizziness overwhelmed him and he pitched sideways wildly, knocking into a table full of arrows. They scattered to the ground.
“He never made it,” the boy said, his throat tight.
“You must be ready to fail,” his father said. “Are you ready to face the Ferendi?”
“Fail?” the boy said, looking up at his father’s cold face. “Why do I have to be ready to fail? I will not fail.” His voice hardened as he repeated himself. “I will
not
fail. I
am
ready.”
His father extended the cup. “Drink.”
With the slightest of hesitations, the boy reached out and took the cup.
* * *
I ran into battle only because there was an army running behind me and stopping would have meant being trampled. Death behind, death ahead. The open field throbbed with the beating rhythm of tens of thousands of footsteps, hoofbeats, the sound of falling bodies. The Ferendi host charged forward, their black armor sucking in the light. We ran, screaming to hide our own terror, weapons raised.
Somehow, I was in the first rank of soldiers. The lines clashed. Someone hit me from behind; I felt it all the way through my armor. A friendly soldier stepped on my ankle. I thought I could hear the bone break even over all the noise.
I looked up. A rearing horse, its rider holding a barbed spear high in the air. Time froze for a brief moment before he brought it down.
Oh, gods
.
* * *
“That’s it?” the boy shouted, incredulous, furious. The feeling of emptiness, of pointlessness, was so great inside of him that it threatened to swallow him whole. He nearly forgot the incredible pain that still lingered from where he’d been stabbed in the stomach by the Ferendi cavalryman. “What is the purpose of this? What am I learning?”
He wasn’t sure whom he was asking the question to. Was he wondering at the purpose of these visions, clearly intended to frighten him? Or was he wondering what the purpose of such a short, futile life was? The simple soldier had barely even lifted his sword. Instead of charging forward into glory, cutting down enemies, valiantly sacrificing himself for the greater good, he’d simply…died.
“Are you ready to face the Ferendi?”
His father did not even offer advice, that he must be ready for futility and meaninglessness. That he must be ready for his life to mean almost nothing. That he must be ready to be forgotten and left on the field to die.
Was
this
war?
The boy nodded. He could change this. He could avoid that fate. It wouldn’t happen to
him
.
He
was different. Not pointless. Not just a target for a Ferendi spear.
“Drink,” his father said. Through tear-blurred vision, the boy could see the copper cup in his father’s hand. He did not reach for it.
“Only once more.” His father’s voice was almost soft. Almost.
The boy snatched it from his father’s hand.
“You are just trying to make me go home,” he said. “I will not. I
am
ready. The Ferendi will die by my hand.”
He threw the liquid back in one gulp.
* * *
I kept an image in my head for times like these, a mental picture of my daughter dancing with my wife in the middle of our house. I saw both of their dresses twirling as I stood in the corner slapping my hands on the drum head and shouting out the words to an old song that my mother had sung to me when I was a boy. That was how I preferred to remember them: their dark skin healthy, shiny, smooth. Thinking of the peal of my daughter’s laughter coaxed a broad grin from my dirty, grimy face.
“What are you laughing at?”
I looked up. Tomani was looking at me across the fire as he sharpened his barbed spear using a slick rock. He’d done it so many times that he didn’t even have to watch; a less experienced man would have cut his knuckles to pieces. Behind him, his black armor gave off an ominous sheen, reflecting the firelight along wet traces of blood left on its surface.
“Home,” I answered honestly.
He clicked his tongue at me. “Home is far away, Samcha. And we may not see it again.”
I shrugged. “I know. But if I don’t think of it often, I worry that I will forget that it ever existed.”
Tomani laughed. He had no time or interest in family, like so many other Ferendi that had chosen the path of the Spin-Devil.
“Home may be gone already,” he said, and his laugh suddenly turned bitter. “Let us just hope that the pale dogs keep scattering like lambs. Then maybe we can talk of home again.”
I thought back to how Ferend must look now, with the sickness killing off all the crops, making the land infertile and useless, the people starving. I hoped my wife and child could still eat. I hoped they were still alive.
“Let’s go, Samcha,” Tomani said, standing. He gave a great stretch and a yawn before reaching for his armor. “Our home is on that field, now.”
I looked out on the grassy plain that would certainly bring us another day of tireless fighting and tried hard to see them dancing again.
Ten years had faded the memory, a bit, but…it was still there, for now.
* * *
When the boy came back to reality, he found his father sitting on a second stool, staring at him with a blank expression. His father did not hold the copper cup in his hands; the coals behind him that had helped him distill the potion had long since died out. How long had he simply been sitting here, doing nothing? The guards changing outside again told him that hours had passed, but all of this had felt like mere seconds.
“I was…,” he said, having trouble bringing the word to his lips, “a Ferendi soldier. A Spin-Devil.”
His father nodded. “And are you ready to fight them?”
The boy swallowed. “I don’t understand,” he said. “That Spin-Devil had a wife and child. He missed them.” He put his hand across his chest. “The pain in my heart…I can feel it.”
It was more pronounced than any of the terrors he’d experienced; the fall from the Bandala, the spear through the gut, the cold knife in the chest. It was a pain of duality, of complexity, that settled like a great weight on his shoulders. He felt at once very wise and very heavy, and found himself wondering if there had ever been a way to separate those two sensations. What had happened to the Ferendi homeland? Did fighting for his own home mean robbing the Ferendi of theirs? Was that right?
“Never forget,” his father said. “This is not black and white. It is not all glory. Sometimes you will lose. Sometimes you will need to bear the heavy pain of your decisions. Sometimes your enemies are not dogs to be put down. They fight for things just as we do. They bleed, and die, and mourn. When you dishonor your enemy, make him less than human, you dishonor yourself.” He reached out and placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder.
Suddenly bells began ringing somewhere in the distance. The boy looked out the tent flap and saw thin fingers of dawn creeping in through cracks in the canvas. He’d been in here all night. He should have felt tired, but for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to feel anything. Sounds of people putting on their armor, shouts from commanders to get people into position, and sounds of horses whinnying broke the silence of the early morning. Battle had arrived, whether they were ready for it—whether
he
was ready for it—or not. The Ferendi were coming.
“So,” his father said. “Are you ready?”
The boy stood up, frowning. He shook his head as he clutched his chest again. He could still feel the loss, even though the visions had faded. Two girls, dancing in a living room that had looked frighteningly like his own.
“No,” he said. “I am not.”
“Good,” his father said. He threw him a sword, and the boy caught it without flinching. “You are in my detail today. Get to your mount and meet me at the head of the camp in five minutes.”
The boy looked at his father, looked at the sword, and looked inside himself. Then, silently, he went off to a much different war from the one he had come to fight.
Words of Power
Wendy N. Wagner
Kádár scrutinized the flake of clay on the blade of the screwdriver. “He’s just getting too old to be a war truck,” she said. “Look at this clay. The
logos
barely flickers in it.”
Zugsführer Warren spat on the packed earthen floor of the machine house. “You know I can’t see that magic shit,” he growled. “And it wouldn’t matter if I did. An order is an order, Gefreiter Kádár, and the Oberst needs every last golem out on the field.”
The small woman wiped the screwdriver clean on her shirttail and restrained a sigh. There was no point arguing with the big American; if anyone was a stickler for following orders, it was the Zugsführer. They’d butted heads before, and Kádár had come away with a headache.
She stroked the pitted side of the golem. Even the Amero-Hungarian state seal, painted on each of its shoulders, looked worn out. “Poor old Benchley.”
“You
name
them?”
She didn’t bother glancing at Warren. Instead, she studied the dull gray places where the field operators had patched the injured clay. She narrowed her eyes. “This patch clay is shit,” she growled. “Even the clay I used to convert him from a fighting man to a war truck was better than this, and I wouldn’t have used that crap to make a singing teapot.”
She said this as if she’d been a clay artist or wizard before the war broke out in ’29, when even an NCO like Zugsführer knew she’d only been discovered during basic training and that she barely had enough talent to patch the clay creations’ wounds. The real ceramic workers—the ceramic wizards, the ceramicers—were working night and day at the capital, making golems to protect the Emperor and government offices.
“Patch it up,” Warren growled. “I’m losing golems fast out there.”
Kádár folded her arms across her chest. “I’ll get to him.” She jabbed her chin in the direction of the two twenty-foot-tall clay men stretched across the vast hangar floor. “Those guys are almost done.”
Warren rolled his eyes. From experience, Kádár knew he didn’t care about the weapons class golems. Warren oversaw the unit’s supplies, and the war truck golems were his only interest. They pulled his carts of munitions and tents and foodstuffs.
“Just as long as I get my golem,” he said.
“I’ll get to him,” she repeated.
The American turned around and trudged toward the exit. Kádár resisted the urge to sigh. She didn’t like talking to people much. After four years as a ceramitech, she’d learned to prefer the company of the clay men. And anyone’s company would be better than Warren’s.
She rolled her shoulders. She’d been working the past ten hours, and she had at least another ten ahead of her. The next wave of injured would probably arrive soon. Not for the first time, she wished the Empire could spare another ceramitech for the unit—one with more talent. Some of the spells she was using pushed her to the very limits of her power.
She kicked over a barrel full of magic-enhanced clay and rolled it toward the stricken clay giants. A canvas-wrapped table stood beside the nearest golem, a jug of water on top. Her tools, ready to work. She’d already patched the worst of this golem’s wounds: he’d taken an artillery shell in the upper chest, losing one arm and a good chunk of his chest armor. His new arm looked better than the original, the joints smoother and more carefully formed. She was proud of her arm and leg work.
Quickly, she removed a few pounds of clay from the barrel and worked it into a thin sheet, the word magic within glimmering blue and gold to her trained eye. She should be able to finish patching the golem’s chest in no time.
His new chest armor still cooled in the logomantic kilns. Soft, unfired clay formed most of the golem’s body, the magic giving it stability and firmness. In the safe harbor of Vienna, most of the serving golems received only soft clay shaping, but out here on the battlefield, armor was a necessity. The time in the kiln hardened the ceramic to twice the strength of steel. Words of magic kept it from chipping or shattering.
Kádár hesitated. Before she could apply the chest armor, she needed to seal the golem’s
animus
into its chest cavity. Of all her tasks, she hated this one the most. She had just enough talent to keep the balls of magical energy under control—but only just. Any distraction, any lapse of focus, and the damn thing could go rogue.
The unit’s last ceramitech died in an
animus
explosion. That kept the danger in perspective.
Something creaked behind her. Kádár jumped.
The battered war truck golem now listed sideways. A little trickle of steam puffed out his stylized mouth. Someone had given him bull’s horns as a joke, giving him an endearing animal quality. Kádár smiled at the old thing. “I’ll be right with you, Benchley,” she called. As if he could hear her. As if a golem understood anything beyond the order scrolls the officers shoved in its order hatch.
She rolled her eyes at herself and covered the worked clay with a piece of dampened canvas. Then she turned her attention back to the war golem. Even without his chest armor, he looked every inch a knight. Not much could penetrate a golem’s
logos
-infused chest armor, but the empire’s enemies worked at it. This golem had been felled by a Chino-French artillery round: Kádár recognized the signature crimping on the bits of shell case lodged inside the golem’s ruined chest cavity. She’d been seeing a lot more of them lately. The enemy had made a leap in technology no Imperial spy had seen or expected.
She forced away such thoughts. She could muse on the state of the enemy’s technology, or she could get to work. Only one of those alternatives would get her out of this hangar and into her bunk.
She hurried across the hangar to the sealed case of
animus
spheres. Her hand trembled as she unsheathed her knife. She didn’t mind pricking her finger to draw the bit of blood that opened the spelled lock; what she hated was the way all those artificial spirits pushed and jabbed at the edges of her control. During the seconds the case stood open, the
animus
threatened to break free.
Kádár scooped up the closest ball of
logos
-infused mesh, slitting her eyes against its burning brightness. The hairs on her arms rose up; her close-cropped hair prickled. Magic played over her skin, but she clamped a mental shield over it. With a toe, she kicked shut the chest.
She hurried to the golem and placed the mesh ball inside the chest cavity. The shaking in her hands intensified as she lowered the thin slab of clay over the glowing orb. This was the worst part. Until the magical energy bonded with the golem’s clay, it would struggle to get out. She had to keep her mental shield firmly covering herself and the golem to keep the energy from escaping. She wished she wasn’t so damn tired.
A puff of steam burst from the warrior golem’s lips, and she sagged with relief. Its softly glowing amber eyes opened and closed.
“You’re re-energized,” she said. Her voice sounded creaky to her own ears. She needed a break. Better yet, some food. “I’m going to grab a snack, then get you armored up. You’ll be back on the field in no time, warrior.”
The thing blinked a few times. Its flat clay face showed no emotion, and of course, it made no sound. Golems couldn’t speak.
Behind her something thudded. She turned around. “Anyone here?”
No one answered. In the brilliant glare of the work lights, nothing moved.
Kádár rolled her shoulders and moved back toward her little desk. Benchley sagged beside it, his silly horned head cocked.
“You next, Benchley.” She stopped in mid-step, realizing that not only did Benchley sag sideways, he’d actually knocked into her desk. Her snack drawer had slid open, revealing her secret cache of dried fruit and canned beans.
“That’s just what I needed,” she admitted. “Thanks, buddy.”
She patted his arm as she took out a can of beans and a can opener, then shook her head. As if he could hear her. As if he could know what thanks was. She’d been working with clay men for far too long—they almost seemed alive to her.
The hangar doors burst open and a half-dozen men charged through, a war truck golem running behind them. The can opener fell from Kádár’s fingers.
“What the—”
“Gefreiter Kádár!” Leutnant Breuer bellowed.
The sight of the highly decorated officer launched her into action. Kádár ran across the hangar just as Zugsführer Warren slammed shut the hangar doors and jammed them with a stretch of iron post. Someone shouted as he ran to undo the ropes tying down the cover on the sledge the war truck had dragged in. The chaos made Kádár’s head spin.
A bandaged field operator stepped out from behind the leutnant and caught her by the arm. “Can you save Freddy? Is he going to make it?”
Kádár’s gaze went to the work sledge the war truck had brought in. Something writhed and twisted inside it, but canvas shrouded the thing. Zugsführer Warren grabbed the edge of the canvas and whipped it off.
“Jesus,” Kádár breathed.
Two golems lay twisted in each others’ arm, both of them smoking, writhing. The Imperial golem gleamed a soft white, its clay the same bisque as tableware. The other’s sullen red clay swallowed the sunlight. Kádár had never seen a golem like it before. Its long flexible limbs twined around the Imperial golem like snakes, four rust-colored pythons squeezing the life out of its prey. They hadn’t loosened their hold yet, either, despite the smoke boiling out of the thing’s mouth and nose.
The war truck golem gave a nervous puff of steam. Kádár could tell at a glance that it wasn’t a modified warrior golem, like Benchley. This poor thing had been meant for labor on the streets of Vienna. It had probably pulled a fancy carriage—its shape even echoed a horse.
Horrible thumping sounded inside the sledge. Then the Imperial golem shrieked.
“Freddy!” The operator threw himself at the sledge, but a flailing red arm launched him across the room.
The war truck rose up on its hind legs, shrieking like a horse. The leutnant shouted at it, but the golem had fallen back on its original order scroll. Kádár threw herself at its knees, pinning them together and throwing the beast off-balance. It came down on its feet, hard. Steam puffed all around her. Kádár barked a word of power. The horse-shaped golem went still.
For a moment, she thought she’d killed it, that she’d picked the wrong word, that she’d used too much talent and over-spooled its order scroll. Then its yellow eyes blinked back on. It backed away from her until its back pressed against the wall.
“What the hell did you do to my golem?” Warren bellowed, but the leutnant was grabbing Kádár’s arm, shaking her, screaming in her ear. She had to do something about that red golem before anyone else got hurt.
She wrenched herself away from the leutnant’s grasp and scrambled up on the edge of the sledge. She wasn’t sure she had the strength for another word of power like that.
The Imperial golem suddenly sat upright. Its left arm, the one Kádár had designed, drove into the bottom of the red golem’s face. A horrible crack resounded throughout the hangar.
Steam boiled out of the Imperial golem’s joints, its eyes, the scroll hatch in its chest. A high-pitched wheeze filled the air, so shrill and pained Kádár clapped her hands over her ears. Then it twitched, once, twice, and went still.
Silence settled over the golem repair hangar. Kádár lowered her hands. The white golem’s face was pressed close to hers, its eyes flat planes of yellow glass.
“Bravely done, Sir Knight,” she whispered.
“They’re dead?” the leutnant snapped.
She nodded.
“Then get to work. I want a full work-up on the Chino-French machine. I want to know what powers it, who built it, and how we can kill it: now.” His lips tightened. “In fact, I want it yesterday. I’ve got an entire battalion of those things coming our way, and they’ve already destroyed twenty of my best units. That’s an order, Gefreiter!”
He unblocked the door and stomped outside. His men followed him.
“What did you do back there?” Warren said.
“What?”
He took a step closer. “You heard me. What did you say? You took down my war truck, and you knocked out both these golems.”
“That wasn’t me!” Kádár waved her hands. “The golem did it all on his own. I definitely don’t have that kind of power.”
Disgusted, she squatted beside the unconscious field operator. “I can’t believe none of those guys stopped to check on this man.” She knew enough about first aid to guess he was all right, just knocked out. “I’m going to move him out of the way, just to be safe.”
She worried, moving an unconscious man, but she didn’t want anyone too close to that Chino-French machine. Some golems were equipped with a self-destruct, even Imperial models. It was impossible to tell merely by looking. Kádár dragged the man toward her desk.
Benchley cocked his head at her.
“Look after him, okay?” she asked. His head bounced, almost as in reply. In fact, it nearly looked like a nod.
She went back to the sledge, where Warren still stood. She put her hands on her hips. “Going to help me?”
“I’m not going anywhere until my truck can move, and I don’t think it’s going anywhere right now.”
She spared a glance at the horse-like golem. Its eyes were dim, half their usual brightness. The thing had gone into its rest mode. “It’s sleeping,” she snapped. “It probably needs to re-spool its order scroll and restore its
animus
. They need rest, too.”
She turned her attention back to the task at hand. The red golem made her nervous. The long arms, the intensely armored construction: this was all new design. The Chino-French had been stealing Imperial technology for years, but this was the first original creation she’d seen. She scrambled up on the sledge to get a better look. She had to push aside the cold hands of the Imperial golem to really see the red golem’s face. The long crack running up its skull exposed something strangely damp-looking. What kind of magic were the Chino-French using? Some kind of alchemy, maybe?
She reached out to its cheek and wriggled a finger into the crack. She pulled out her finger, now stained red. She sniffed it and made a face at the copper smell.