TYRAM

For the next four days, the mornings began with a council of war. First about how to make sure the town was defended. And then, on the fourth morning, the discussion turned to plans of attack.

Tyram attended with his arm in a sling. There was no hospital in town but every town around seemed to have a doctor, and they all seemed to have shown up to help out when somebody decided to fight the bandits. They were all very well equipped, which Tyram realized quickly shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. His own farming village had been within easy transport distance of a hospital but he'd always known farming wasn't the world's safest occupation, and out here in the middle of nowhere they'd have to be ready for anything with the necessary tools quick to hand.

Fann was there, as was Verro. Sasha, J'vann, and Rimni were all still being treated for their wounds. A trained body suffused with auram had incredible healing powers, especially J'vann's, but even that had limits. None of them were likely to be up and around for at least another day. Although Tyram was starting to feel a little guilty about his sling, like he was goldbricking or something.

Andry was there as well. Aurina had told people where they'd been during the battle. The part about Zwiebel at least, he didn't think anyone knew about his fight with Andry. The village seemed more than happy to celebrate “their” knight, especially since he'd ridden into the battle at the last second and saved everyone. Technically he'd just been a passenger, Aurina had been doing the steering and Tyram had fired the blast that ended the battle, but Tyram didn't feel incredibly proud of how he'd ripped all those men apart in a single sword swipe anyway. Besides Andry had been there ready to fight at the end, when they faced off with Jalgoz.

But the leader of this war council wasn't any of the knights, it was Chaddim. Tyram was beginning to wonder if the old man had been in one of those armies where you needed a serious Regalia to get promoted, or family connections or a noble title or something beyond just being good at the job. As far as Tyram could tell the old man would have made an excellent general. Dorret was there as well. Somewhere along the line Andry and Auria's father had become Chaddim's second in command.

“And that's what I know about their base,” Andry finished, stepping away from the roughly drawn map. He was their only source of information unless they decided to start torturing the prisoners they'd taken in the battle, and nobody in town had been pushed quite that far. “I don't know how many men they actually have, I don't think it's much more than we saw that night. But don't forget, Jalgoz and his brothers...they're stronger than anyone we've actually fought so far.”

“That's a great big rock in the gears alright,” Chaddim said thoughtfully. “But we can't just leave them sitting out there, getting ready to attack again. We need to settle this.”

“You could lose a lot of people,” Fann pointed out.

“I know,” Chaddim shook his head. “And it might be a little hard to get some people to go along, now that they've seen a real taste of battle. Are any of you having that problem? No judgments but now's the time to say.”

He fixed the knight's with a level stare, and Tyram almost quailed. He remember leaning over in an alley, covered in vomit, blood all over his boots. He hadn't expected it to be so bad. And did reacting so badly when he'd finally seen it make him a coward?

“We're fine,” Tyram said softly. “I spoke to the others this morning.”

“Besides if we don't fight,” Verro said, “who's going to take out their Regalia users? You'd lose even more people that way.”

“Maybe,” Andry's father said. “But we might not have to do this alone. I put in another call to the enforcers.”

“The what?” Verro asked.

“Our planetary police force,” the innkeeper explained.

“Oh,” Tyram said. “I didn't know you had one. No one mentioned them, and with all this happening, I just assumed this was lawless territory. That's how it is on a lot of ruin worlds. I didn't even realize you had a planetary government.”

“It's not much of one,” Chaddim said. “We don't need much. There's fewer than six million people on the whole planet, and we're pretty spread out. So they mostly do a sweep around to see how everyone's doing every so often. Haven't seen an enforcer in....oh, gotta be about eight years now. But they've got riot armor, gas canisters, trained men...with their help, we could probably get the job done a lot easier.”

“Why not call them in before?” Verro asked. “You've been having these bandit problems for years, haven't you?”

“I did,” Chaddim said. “They said they'd look into it.”

“Useless,” Andry spat. “I got the same line last year when I went to the capitol in person. Told me it was being handled and do my best, whatever the hell that meant.”

“They're sending somebody out now though,” Dorret said. “We had a call this morning. I guess the fighting finally made somebody get off their ass.”

Communications technology wasn't exactly primitive on Trego, just rare. The farms kept in touch via basic radios, all of them short range. Which might seem counter-intuitive so far from other civilization, but then who was there to really call? Then there were the ground-to-orbit comms, made for negotiating crop sales with the ships, which were no good for planetary communication at all. The village had exactly one real long range planetary communicator, located upstairs in the Rusty Shield.

“Still seems a little strange that this is the first time they've responded,” Fann said. “You'd think any killing should bring the police. In a place like this anyway.”

“Well I don't really know,” Dorret said. “We haven't needed the police around here often enough for me to get a feel for the business. Most of the problems around here are tiny, local magistrate can handle them.”

“Something about all this still doesn't sound right,” Tyram said worriedly.

“Let's assume they won't be any help,” Andry said. “They haven't been so far.”

“Boy has a point,” Chaddim said. “Let's think about how we're going to do this without their support, then we can rework the plan if it turns out we're going to have official help.”

JALGOZ

Jalgoz looked at the video screen and through it the face of his grandfather. Jalgoz envied the old man for his power. His presence.He had more charisma old and dying and lying in what would almost certainly be his deathbed than Jalgoz had on his very best day. And Jalgoz would do a lot to make his grandfather proud. Jalgoz was in awe of the old man the way other people were in awe of earthquakes, or mighty waterfalls, or supernovas. Here was a power beyond anything they understood, a natural force that could not be resisted. The same mentality that led whole civilizations to pray to the thunder and bow to the volcano.

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“You got stormclouds in your face boy,” the old man wheezed. “Ain't heard from you in a couple of days. What happened? I was starting to feel like getting up and coming over to see how you were myself. And oh, look how they jump when I say that! Boys here got itchy trigger fingers.”

“I underestimated the knights,” Jalgoz admitted. “I lost four of my best Regalia users. Oh, and Kish.”

“Kish?” the old man said questioningly. “I don't remember a Kish.”

“I haven't mentioned his name before,” Jalgoz said dismissively. “Weasely little guy with Humidity Regalia or something like that. He's not really important. He was supposed to sneak in and scout, and he couldn't even do that right.”

“Well boy,” the old man sighed. “You got beat. What next?”

“Next?” Jalgoz clenched his fist. “Next we kill the bastards. I've got the boys reorganizing right now. This time we'll go in smart, do the job right.”

“That's my boy,” the old man laughed. Like always, it turned into a cough at the end. Jalgoz hid a grimmace at the reminder of the old man's weakness, if more power than most men possessed in a lifetime could be called that. “Give'm hell. When I die, and it's gonna be soon—not soon enough for these vultures, but soon—you'll be all that's left of me. You gotta make sure they remember why they were so afraid of me, right?”

“Right, Grandfather,” Jalgoz told him. “There's just one thing...they've got hostages. Just regular men, but...”

“Ah,” the old man wheezed. “They've got a lot of them.”

“Yeah,” Jalgoz said. “And if anyone over there has the guts to kill them, well...” “Hell take the hindmost” was a great strategy in theory, but Jalgoz was a savvy enough leader to know that morale could be permanently damaged by having twenty or thirty men callously killed off by an enemy who was supposed to be a pushover.

“I doubt they got the stomach for it,” his Grandfather said. “Not with Knights on the other side. They'll have heads full of glory and illusions about shiny battles, knights usually do. I always liked killing knights. You know how many knights I killed, boy?”

“Hundreds, Grandfather.”

“Hah! Try thousands. Well you'll figure it out. The knights and the hostages, all of it. If it really comes down to it, to hell with them. Just go in there and make the town a cemetery, and dig a fresh grave for anybody who complains. But you'll figure it out. I gotta go to sleep again now. I'm still dying and all.”

“Goodnight Grandfather,” Jalgoz said. “I'll get back to you once we take care of it.”

He turned off the screen and walked out into the hallways of the bandit base, trying to form a plan in his mind that could handle all their troubles.

AURINA

Aurina was spending most of her time carrying supplies from one place to the other. These potatoes need to be in a different building? Aurina took them. They need these sealed needles in the infirmary? Aurina was right on it.

It wasn't that the work getting to her. It was exhausting, but it was better than another blast from Zweibel and his Onion Regalia. No what was getting to her was how happy everyone seemed to be. There was almost a feeling like a great big party in the air. We won! The bandits retreated! Yippee-Sikppy, hooray! And alright, there was some truth to that. They had won, they had finally gotten some of their own back for all the horrible things the bandits had been doing the past few years.

But somehow all the new faces in town made it easier to notice the ones that were missing. The people who'd died to give them that bloody nose. They'd held services, and other people were pulling the bodies away and burying them as respectfully as they could. The bandit corpses were all going in one big mass grave, although that huge knight with the scales on his face....J'vann, that was his name....said he intended to say a prayer over it just the same later on, and maybe plant a tree.

“Here's the needles,” she said, placing them at the feet of a short, round doctor with chocolate skin. She didn't know him, he must be from one of the other villages.

“Thanks,” the doctor said. “Hey are you alright? You look pretty ragged.”

“Oh there's just...” Aurina gestured to the town. Carnival feel or no carnival feel people were working, getting the town's defenses shored up just in case the bandits tried another assault. “You know. A lot to do.”

“And a lot of people to do it,” the doctor said sternly. “Take an hour. Right now. Eat something. Drink. We're not short on supplies, so take what you need. You won't be helping anybody if you collapse.”

“Alright,” Aurina promised. “I will.”

And somewhat to her surprise, she did. She walked away from the infirmary and no one called her name, or asked if she could move something, so she walked around until she got her hands on a sandwich. It was just a slab of dried meat on a bun with a thick shingle of cheese, but it was something, and combined with a little fruit juice it was ambrosia itself.

“This is a nice spot,” Tyram said. She hadn't heard him walk up, but he was holding a sandwich just like hers. There were a lot of them getting handed around, apparently. “Do you eat here a lot?”

“Is that a cheesy pickup line or a real question?”

“Real question,” Tyram smiled. “From what I can tell around town, pickup lines aren't in style right now. It's all direct questions and dire predictions.”

“Hey baby we almost died and the fight's not over, so lets screw?” Aurina suggested.

“I heard someone use that exact line a little while ago,” Tyram said. “It worked too, at least the girl went off with him. But I just meant in general. This is your home town, after all.”

“No not really,” she said. “Normally it's nice and quiet in town, and I just eat at home. I don't even know if our house is still standing. With my luck they're keeping prisoners in it or something.”

“Or something,” Tyram nodded. “Do you want to know what's craziest about all this for me?”

“Mmm?” Aurina couldn't ask a more intelligent question, her mouth was full.

“It isn't that it all happened in the course of a couple days,” Tyram said. “I can handle that part. It's that we haven't even technically started our quest yet. I mean sure, we're knights, we're going on a quest. Of course there would be battles, right?”

“Dragons to slay,” Aurina nodded. “That kind of thing.”

“Right! But we'd barely sat down to talk about actually going on this quest our grandparents left us and boom! We're at war with a bunch of bandits.”

“Well think about it this way,” Aurina said. “You're ahead of the game. So you're either really, really good at this questing business or you're really, really bad at it. And either way, you're exceptional!”

“Hold on,” Tyram held up a hand. “I need to...wait for it...yeah, yeah I think I've got it down and I'm pretty sure that isn't actually a comforting thought.”

“Well I tried,” Aurina giggled. “So you guys come up with a plan of attack?”

“The start of one,” Tyram said. “I'm not sure how happy I am with the idea of attacking a place without real soldiers. I mean alright, I'm not exactly an old and experienced campaigner like my grandfather was—or like Chaddim is, for that matter—but at least I've got a Regalia and training. Also there's something about this whole setup that bugs me.”

“It's a war,” Aurina said. “Alright it's a really small war, but still. It ought to bother you.”

“Not what I mean,” Tyram said. “It didn't occur to me when I thought this was a lawless world. You don't have any real law enforcement you get bandit problems. Happens all over the place. Except now I find out you do have a police force around here.”

“Yeah,” Aurina said. “The enforcers. We hardly ever see them.”

“Yeah but after everything the bandits have been doing to you?” Andry said. “After Chaddim and Andry both contacted them? They still don't show up until there's a big battle?”

“Well it is a big planet,” Aurina said. “That's a lot of ground to cover.”

“Something about it stinks,” Tyram said. “We're missing something. There's something really important about all of this we don't know yet.”

The chatter of the town was broken by a humming noise in the air, and then people were pointing up and clapping. Aurina and Tyram followed their gaze to see three arrowhead-shaped air cars hovering low over the rooftops, looking for a place to land. Aurina recognized the circular eagle wings logo on the underside.

“Enforcers,” Aurina said.

“Well I guess we're going to find out,” Tyram sighed, stuffing the rest of his sandwich in his mouth. “Come with me to see what's up?”

“No you better just tell me what happens,” Aurina sighed. “I'm curious, but they can still use me at the infirmary.”