Guns of the Temple (The Polaris Chronicles Book 1) (10 page)

“I’ll hold you to that,” she said, looking intently into his eyes.

Taki panted as he reached the wooden doors to the winch house. Everything else could fall or burn but this one place. Below, the keep’s innards were protected by two kilotons of solid steel gate that would never fall to even the most determined ram. If he protected it well, the Imperials would have to turn back. He didn’t care that the squad wasn’t there to back him up. With the exception of the captain, the others had shown their true nature as conniving layabouts. He angrily pushed against the doors, and they grudgingly swung open with much creaking and flying dust.

To his surprise, there were no soldiers tugging at the wheel, and no barrage of lead screaming his way. Merely a single woman wielding two straight swords, a demure smile, luxuriously straight midnight hair, and the sapphire eyes of a murderess. She gave Taki a coquettish wink and tilted her head from side to side. Though she was comelier than any other woman he’d seen in his life, the sight of her made his blood run cold for some reason.

“I-identify yourself!” Taki leveled his saber at her.

“You can call me Lucatiel,” she said with a playful curtsey.

“I am Taki Na—”

She raised a hand to cut him off. “No need, dear boy. It’s really not important.”

Taki glared. “So be it, Imperial. Will you surrender or will I be forced to dispatch you?”

Lucatiel let out a chuckle. “Why don’t you be good and sit in a corner until your fellows arrive?”

Taki flared his nostrils and tightened his hold on his weapon. No matter how comely this Lucatiel was, she’d have to die for such an insult. He let out a battle-cry and lunged at her with his blade raised high to cleave her neck. She raised one of her swords to counter, but her movement seemed too slow to counter his. He could almost taste her blood.

His vision flashed white and he instinctively pulled back before he’d have completed the downstroke. Everything he saw was doubled and spun around crazily. His ears rang with painful tinnitus and his sword-arm spasmed involuntarily. His yatagan had been reduced to a jagged stump and its fragments littered the ground before him. Something salty dripped into his mouth. He put a hand to his face, only to feel a deep cut on his cheek. He pulled the hand away and gazed at the blood with a mix of surprise and horror.

Lucatiel yawned. “Brother, kill him please. I don’t want his stink on my blades.”

Taki cast aside the useless weapon remnants and pointed an open palm at her. Even if the woman was a supreme fencer, no blade would protect her from a proper frying. His channeling ability had always been his strength, and the reason for his success in the academy. Now, the Imperial would pay, and painfully. He’d just opened the last gates when something hard crashed into the back of his neck. As if a torch had been snuffed, he lost feeling to his body and collapsed in a heap.

“No need. This one’s just a novice. I want to know where his commander is.”

Taki stared up at the ceiling, spread-eagled on his back and unable to do more than twitch. A new arrival stood over him wearing the same sigil Lucatiel had: a maroon cherry blossom motif over a white griffin. The mark of Sevastopol.
Spetsnaz,
Taki realized.
I have to stop them
. He strained and tried with all his might to get to his feet, or at least roll onto his side, but all for naught. Below his neck, everything felt blanketed by stifling fog. He’d heard of this happening before—a fall from great height or a careless blow to the back making a man a cripple—but only as a parable against recklessness during training. Realization hit him along with a wave of cold sweat.

“Imperial,” Taki groaned. “Have you made me an invalid?”

The man looked down at him and sighed. “Most likely.”

Taki swallowed back tears. “Then I beg you to kill me.”

“And I beg you forgive my sister’s rudeness. She sometimes lacks in the social graces. Pray tell me your name.”

“Taki Natalis, a corporal.”

“I am Aslatiel von Halcon, and I will honor your request. May you achieve enlightenment in your next life.”

Aslatiel drew a curved sword and held it firmly for a downward thrust into Taki’s chest. Taki trembled and tried to peer at his executioner, but the effort was too exhausting. Taki closed his eyes. He always knew he’d die in battle, but what irked him was that it had been so soon after graduating, and under such unheroic circumstances.

The brick wall of the gatehouse exploded as Lotte crashed through it and knocked Aslatiel aside like a ragdoll. She let out a triumphant roar and promptly turned to face Lucatiel with her weapons drawn. Draco barreled in after her and threw Taki over his shoulders. Hadassah squirted by and promptly tried to bayonet Aslatiel while he rolled away.

Two more figures, also wearing spetsnaz insignia, melted out of the darkened corners of the gatehouse to attack with thrown darts and flashing knives. Lucatiel became an inhumanly fast maelstrom of blades focused on Lotte. Sparks flew as the greatshield’s engraved sun was obliterated by deep gouges and the zweihander’s keen edge turned to fractured teeth. A spear-tip snuck under Draco’s armor and he dropped Taki to the ground.

Taki groaned, vomited, and to his own surprise, shakily pulled himself to his knees. His lower half no longer felt leaden and insensate. His legs burned and now he could tell that he’d pissed himself. The sensation was mortifying, but more importantly he could feel again, and most importantly, move again. Slowly, painfully, he pulled himself to his feet. His sword was broken, his Bastard missing, and he was in no shape to channel sutras. To his great shame, there was nothing he could do to help.

“Who dares wake me from my slumber? I’ll devour you all!” Hecaton cackled as she emerged through the hole in the wall. She sent an arc of blinding, violet current upward and instantly blew the gatehouse roof to smithereens. The Imperials quickly hopped back and pulled out their guns while the Tirefires did the same. For what seemed like an eternity, silence reigned save for the pattering of raindrops. Hecaton licked her lips.

“We meet again.”

The Unified Imperial was grammatically perfect, but accented with something eastern and more remote than the diphthongs of the Chung Kuo. When Hecaton saw who had spoken, her expression soured and she turned pale, if only for a moment. Chronicler carried no visible weapons, not even the usual dagger or officer’s pistol. His bare hands were sufficient to murder each and every single person in the gatehouse, the castle, and the town.

“Major! Let’s wreck this sonofabitch!” Draco growled. He gripped his pistol assuredly and tensed on the trigger.

“No!” It was the first time Hecaton had raised her voice at them in a long while. “All of you retreat. The fortress is lost.” Draco opened his mouth to object, but was silenced by the look on her face. “Do what I say or you will definitely die.”

As Hecaton’s charges started to slink back, the von Halcons attempted to step forward only to be halted by a casual wave of Chronicler’s hand. He spoke, now in a foreign tongue that only the spettsgruppe had heard him speak before:
“It has been far too long since we parted ways. But I was not mistaken to come all this way to find you. For that I am relieved, Sirin. Now, come with me, away from this place. We have much explaining owed to the other Powers.”

Hecaton squinted, let out a resigned chuckle, and replied in the same tongue.
“You always were a dumbass.”

She joined her hands with a complex interlock of the fingers in front of her. Before Chronicler could react, the gatehouse was choked with billowing, blinding smoke.

A torrential ejaculation of lead shattered the wooden walls, dead bodies, and stone blocks facing Alfa Gruppe as they simultaneously magdumped into the space Hecaton and her cohort had occupied a half second before. Chronicler grimaced, drew in a breath, and violently exhaled. The smoke parted instantly and fled as if moving of its own accord.

“Bitches and whores!” Lucatiel bellowed. Sullenly, she ejected the empty magazines from her pistols and shoved them into pouches.

“There there, my dear. You are a more respectable young lady than that,” Chronicler admonished, switching back to Unified Imperial. “Spettsgruppe Alfa, you have done well. I will inform the padishah of your prowess and see that you are rewarded justly. That being said, you should open the gate to allow our commandos to penetrate the inner fortress.”

Frustration leaving her face, Lucatiel nodded to Mikhail and they set to work turning a large wooden wheel on a pintle. Elsa joined in, speeding the process. The gatehouse rumbled, and triumphant roars erupted from below as the gate lifted and janissaries flooded the courtyard. Unlike other men-at-arms serving the Imperium, they were forbidden to sack the town or take liberties with the inhabitants, as they received a regular salary. Pacifying the surroundings would be easier once the Argead citizenry realized they had no reason to fear for their lives.

“Ba’gshnar,” Aslatiel said, kneeling contritely. He swallowed back a wave of nausea provoked not by his brush with death, but by the fact that he’d almost died to some damnable old hag. “Once again, you lay bare my unworthiness. You have my limitless gratitude for saving my soldiers.”

“Rise, Aslatiel,” Chronicler said. “You have incurred no disgrace. The woman you faced is unlike any other in the world, and even a match for me. She and I are bound by an unfortunate string of fate.”

“Who is she?”

Chronicler smiled wistfully. “I once thought her beautiful. But now that she is wizened and hateful, she is even more enticing.”

A non-answer. Aslatiel bowed again to his master. The Alfa knew better than to ask more, though he craved to do so. Chronicler rarely changed his mind, especially when he chose to guard the details of his past. Trying to probe would only lead to blood and loss.

By the time of his capture, ulcers raked Taki’s feet from constant rubbing against the insides of his boots and his heels wept where blisters had burst along the way. After a hasty descent down the walls of the keep, he and the rest of Tirefire the Lesser had sprinted, jogged, and then trudged for the rest of the night until light from burning towers no longer punctured the horizon. Every breath felt like a lungful of searing volcanic ash, and Taki wanted most of all to die, vomit, and rest, in that order.

He spent a good portion of his attention furtively looking around for any sign of a mount or wagon. Anything would suffice to rest his burning calves and soothe his chafing thighs, but the roadway was barren. He recalled a tale of some king who had offered to trade his domain for a horse under similar circumstances. At the time, he had thought the man foolish, but now the logic was flawlessly clear. Especially since the mere act of placing one foot in front of the other was becoming progressively difficult by the step. Draco slogged on ahead, arguing with Hadassah over something that involved tossing her rifle back and forth between them. Their words were gibberish. Taki felt himself falter and he sank to his knees.

“Natalis, have you the strength to walk?” Lotte asked as she crouched down next to him.

“I can. I’m fine,” Taki said, though not believing it. He struggled to rise but found he couldn’t. Staying in place and falling asleep, even forever, was becoming dangerously enticing.

Lotte clapped an ungloved hand over his forehead and frowned. “We’re far enough from the enemy by now. Take respite.”

“I’m sorry,” Taki croaked. “I didn’t mean to disappoint.”

“It’s okay, just rest. The Cross will be here for us any moment now.”

At her words, Taki brightened. An escort home was the answer to all of his consternation. His instructors at the academy had never quite explained what happened to a unit on the retreat, but hearing her words gave him hope that he would not be discarded, after all. Something nagged him, however.

“Why them? Have we broken the Code?”

Lotte closed her eyes. “That’s not up to me.”

A few moments later, they were surrounded by riders. A midnight tabard with golden trim over mail was the uniform of the Black Cross, enforcers of Temple law. Taki blearily raised his head, only to find himself staring down the barrel of a gun. He felt someone wrench his Bastard away and glimpsed Lotte surrendering her pistol and dagger to a mailed lieutenant. Draco and Hadassah were already in chains, and gloomily tromped their way into the bed of a wagon penned by thick iron bars.

With the aid of a cursory shove, Taki collapsed onto the gritty floor of the prisoner carriage near Draco’s feet. He closed his eyes and slept.

Later, things only got worse.

“This court-martial shall come to order.” The duty sergeant sharply rapped the steel-clad butt of his halberd on slate to create a sound not unlike that of gunfire. Despite his best effort to comport himself, Taki flinched at the noise. Fortunately, he was shivering so much that no one noticed.

His knees were sore from forced prostration on stone, and the tight-fitting manacles around his wrists caused them to ache. The worst source of his discomfort, however, was the itchy burlap prisoner’s apron that was his only item of clothing. The air in the high-ceilinged, open-roofed court lanced his flesh with goosebumps, and his pitiful excuse for apparel covered little. Trying to shift around to avoid a chill only exposed more flesh. Two days in the brig had been a frosty hell that made years of spartan living at the Academy seem luxurious by comparison. Far worse, though, was the potential compounding of disgrace to come.