The present aulogemscic alarms were in dire need of a redesign – so Hylli had decided, after listening to the escalating emergency sounds throughout their infiltration of Northastr.
In her time as head assistant to Chief Aulogemscire Ivaldi she had helped create the very systems that were now torturing her ears, and while the piercing chimes were far from her only worry, it needled her professional pride that designs she had helped oversee could become so grating on the ear.
The din had begun when they were in the laboratory, she and Ivaldi’s second assistant Ofan meeting with the aulogemscires of Northastr while the counselor was using his status and credentials to slip away and access golem control for the fortress.
Hylli herself had only just returned from her own task, and was still fretting over how Ivaldi’s might be progressing as she pretended to look over the remains of a ruined Skidbladnir, when the alarms sounded.
Her heart skipped a beat as she wondered if he had been caught. She had known from the start that the plan was too risky. Someone else should have gone in Ivaldi’s place. At least he could have let her accompany him… but alas, anyone short of the Chief Aulogemscire and member of the King’s Council would never have been allowed into the control chamber.
However the sharp crystal tone wasn’t the intrusion alert, or the more generic emergency within the fortress notes – it was the call to battle, the warning of attack coming from without, not within.
The laboratory chief had smirked at the looks of concern on the faces of several young technicians, muting the warning and smugly assuring his guests that there was no need for evacuation – Northastr’s perimeter was ever tested and probed by the Formorians, but they were easily driven off.
Yet that lab chief had almost fainted himself when mere minutes later a figure had staggered inside, soaked in coolant, blood and other unpleasant fluids, shouting hoarsely about an attack on the very fortress itself.
Hylli was as shocked as anyone at that. The attack had all been part of the plan of course, but it had never been intended to lead to Pharyes injuries.
Bleeding from the head, his clothing torn and filthy, it was only as the intruder collapsed into a chair and she caught a glimpse of the handsomely curving taper of his nose, and realized that his hair wasn’t just red with blood, that Hylli recognized him as Counselor Ivaldi himself.
She had rushed to him then, terrified to see his head wound, the tears in his clothing and the bloody mark on his back where something had pierced his skin.
Yet despite the horrible sight he made, Ivaldi had revived quickly, nervous energy bringing him back to his feet as if his collapse was all just acting, while he assured everyone his injuries were minor ones.
Hylli had wondered then how Ivaldi had gotten so much better at acting, but as she wiped the mess from his cheeks she found them deathly pale, his hands trembling even as he pushed hers away.
“We h-have to go, right now!” he’d spoken, with surprising force.
His whispered warning had been the greater shock however; Ivaldi had left a Varangian, Captain Eyrir whose Skidbladnir she had just been working on, bound and incapacitated inside golem control.
Having known the Chief Aulogemscire since he was himself merely head assistant to his mother during her own tenure, Hylli could have said with some confidence that he was, among many qualities, a deeply truthful man. Too truthful in fact, as incapable when it came to deception as he was in combat. More than once Hylli had overpowered his ancestral machine with her own production model while testing new designs, and she had yet to know him to lie to her.
And yet he had overpowered an elite Varangian captain, not even with his Skidbladnir, but with his bare hands.
The thought made her chest pound with wonder and fear. Ivaldi was a brilliant man, a mind she had long envied, or even desired, and a character beyond reproach, but surely he spoke nonsense. He was dazed, concussed by the blow to his head.
If that was so, Eyrir would be sure to raise the alarm and tell Control what had happened.
She had been arguing with the lab chief that they must indeed evacuate at once, hoping she could get away in time to warn the others that Ivaldi’s part of the plan had failed, when the golems he had been sent to commandeer actually arrived.
With the simple pre-recorded verbalizations encoded into their gems the security golems had informed the occupants of the laboratory and workshop of the evacuation order.
The bureaucratic old overseer had disbelieved even that warning, repeating the sheer impossibility of any foe ever breaching the perimeter and breaking into the docks. The man had come close to actually speaking to Control to verify the matter, however Ivaldi’s awful state had convinced him that this was no simple system malfunction.
Allowed to leave without further trouble, she, Ofan and Ivaldi had been screened by a squad of footsoldiers, led and followed by the larger Triskelions, obscuring the trio from sight as they moved out through the access corridors connecting the lab to the Skidbladnir bays.
With the alarms only escalating and the sounds and even tremors of real battle shaking the fortress they should have been easily ignored, however they were moving in the wrong direction. All non-combat personnel were evacuating downwards, into the heavily fortified lower floors, closer to Control and well away from the most vulnerable areas, like the docks or holding cells – where as it was to those docks that they had to travel.
Multiple times they passed groups of Varangians and other base personnel. Each time the three had held their breath, trying to move in time with the steps of the machines and begging that no-one would happen to glance through the moving legs of the golems as they marched past and notice the smaller people in their shadows.
Had they been seen their golems would have defended them, but there was only so much that even Triskelions could do against Varangians, even if their design had not prohibited any attempt at causing physical harm to Pharyes, be they civilians or Varangian pilots in the cockpits of Skidbladnir.
Those they passed were too distracted however; too busy organizing the defenses to notice several Pharyes among the automatons, one limping along on the shoulder of another.
Filthy as he might be, Hylli had felt no compunctions about lending Ivaldi her aid. It might not be the embrace she would have preferred, but even with the acrid scent of coolant and what she suspected to be vomit coming from him, as the daughter of lesser noble house she suspected this would be as close as she could ever get to him.
Even if he wasn’t already in love with General Reginn, even if he liked women at all, Ivaldi saw her as a friend and colleague, not anything more.
As such, she had silently made the most of their strange circumstance, and the feeling of carrying the fragile young man on her shoulder, insisting on helping him even when he tried to suggest that he had recovered enough to walk unaided.
Hylli had barely noticed the shudders running through the floor and walls around them, or the flickering of the lights.
On reaching the docks she had reluctantly given up her charge, as the three had to split up into their individual Skidbladnir.
Ivaldi had taken her hand as she helped him into his cockpit.
“Thank you, Hylli, for… well for a lot of things, but especially for sticking with me through all of this. Don’t worry about me, I’m not so useless that I can’t pilot Idi through the docks. I’ll see you at the crawler soon.”
As his cockpit had closed, separating the two, she wondered if Ivaldi had always had such a forceful, determined look in his eyes, or so strong and firm a hand.
If not for the smears of digestive juices on his face and chest, still faintly glittering with gemstone residue, he would have looked like a carving of the valiant heroes of the Braga’s throatsong.
~~~
“Treachery worthy of the foul Thiazi,” Lord Hlesey had been saying as Gastores pushed past him.
Or at least, that was what the ogre imagined. When the ostentatious lord spoke he could rarely parse more than half the words, but he’d found that the residue were usually unimportant when it came to the man’s speech.
The battle outside the fortress had kept the Varangians away initially, despite the betrayal of which Hlesey spoke, but now it seemed that they had fended off the direct attack on the walls. Skidbladnir and hastily activated additional golems were starting to filter up to the gaol complex, just a few thus far, but with more certain to follow when the fighting outside ended. All brought there by the backstabbing so-termed ‘noble’ Lady Idavoll.
Now Lords Uldmar and Hlesey were gathered together with Captain Beyla, having a heated debate in Pharynx while Sulis struggled to interpret for their non-Pharyes members.
He should have been among that group, but there was no time for that, for listening to more people talking and debating what was to be done.
Gastores could have cursed the lot of them, Idavoll yes, but Uldmar and the rest too – they were just as culpable for the invasion as she after all. Even now as they claimed to be fighting to atone for the terrible crimes their people had committed and free the people of Chasm, Southtown and the rest, it was one of their own that had sabotaged the raid and forced them to evacuate everyone back to the storage chambers, without even rechecking the cells for stragglers.
Up the ramps and through the broken ceiling he could hear the fighting above, golems and others of Uldmar’s team fighting alongside members of the rescue party to win time for the escaping captives. They had numbers on their side for the moment, but if the Formorians gave up on the attack entirely then Gastores presumed the full force of the Varangians present at Northastr would be aimed towards them.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Much as he wanted to be up there, searching in what time they had left, Gastores was instead down in the cavernous chamber where the crawler was idling, the last of their commandeered supplies being loaded along with the final groups of escapees from the gaol.
Having helped the majority of the passengers board he was pushing and twisting his way through the crowds in the holds, the only spaces ogres or highborn harpies could hope to fit, checking everyone he could see.
He was searching for some glimpse of Encheiro’s bald head among the crowd.
Thus far he had seen no trace of her.
He had seen her son however. Tavos’ skin matched her tone uncannily, his face just like his mother’s below the eye… an eye Gastores had been unable to meet as he passed the boy by.
Gastores couldn’t even imagine was expression Tavos might have shown him, after learning of his mother’s disappearance, but Gastores meant to make sure he would never have to find out. One way or another he had to find her. Not just for his sake, but for her family.
And yet she wasn’t anywhere on the crawler. Nor had he found her in the cells up above.
Gastores started backtracking, going in and out of the cargo bays again, starting with the back of the crawler.
“Hey, Gas.”
Ripides spoke quietly. The ogre had a painfully swollen lip where Gastores’ hand had caught his mouth, but there was no sign of reproach in his eye, his brow furrowed not in anger but sadness. That just made him feel guiltier.
“Kid, she’s not here. You can’t find her cause she never got on.”
“I know that!” Gastores snapped, banging his wounded hand against the crawler hull, then wincing as the laceration throbbed, hot as his temper.
“But she wasn’t in the cells either!” he went on, “so she has to be here! Nothing else makes any sense! If she… if she didn’t make it, back at Chasm, then we’d have found her body!”
“Doesn’t always go that way, you know same as me,” Ripides said quietly. “Could be she fell, or got caught in one of the tunnel collapses. Whatever it was, we know the Captain’s not here, and we gotta get the last people on and get going. That Ivaldi’s lot just made it to us, too, so no more waiting.”
Gastores could feel his head spin as he stepped back down off the ramp of the crawler. He had to reason with the others. They were really planning on just leaving without her.
Further up the train of modules, there were more raised voices. They came from a large huddle, the gathered ‘leaders’ of the raid. They were those who had played key roles, or acted as coordinators for their teams or groups, checking in as they were finishing loading the released captives. He recognized the speaker as the Skidbladnir Ivaldi piloted and heard the tiny inventor’s words, transmitted through the headpiece.
Sulis was still translating, just barely keeping up as everyone tried to talk to everyone else. Gastores might have made sense of the conversation without her, but not at the pace people were talking, so her calmer, more pleasing voice was the one he focused on. Still the words she related were far from happy ones, and her own agitation was showing through.
“We must leave at once! Safkhet has destroyed the gate blocking our exit, but the defenders are securing the dock already! They shall move on the storage bay at any moment! It was a miracle we were able to make it as far as the gate before they detected us!”
“We left the golems to hold them back and sealed the gates behind us,” said another woman, one of Ivaldi’s assistants, Gastores thought. “But the Varangians are starting to return from the fighting outside!”
“Yes!” Ivaldi said quickly, his voice higher than ever. “Unless we leave now we face a pincer from below as well as above!”
“We are taking the last of the surfacers aboard as we speak,” Lord Hlesey replied. “We shall depart in no more than a few minutes – I have informed the good captain Beyla to make ready.”
“No!” Gastores called out in Pharynx, striding over. “You can’t... there… the people….”
Stumbling over his words he switched to Cycloan in frustration.
“Tell him, Sulis! Tell him there could still be people in the cells! There must be, there are people missing! We have to go back up and look for them!”
Gastores couldn’t see the faces of the Pharyes he was talking to, but even so he could tell they didn’t like the translation Sulis was giving them.
~~~
Out of sight in his cockpit, Lord Uldmar had been spared to need to speak overmuch or to face anyone else. Since entering the gaol Hlesey had taken charge – and done so quite admirably indeed. Uldmar had wondered whether Hlesey had always been so… competent… or if the man was just meeting the occasion with newfound clarity to match his ample aplomb.
Perhaps he felt the need to make up for Uldmar’s failures.
However the words of Lord Uldmar still carried greater weight… and it seemed the surfacers were unconvinced by Hlesey’s urgings that they depart posthaste. The towering ogre Gastores had strode over to them in a state of great agitation to insist they stay, despite all the dire warnings, and even the sounds of fighting from overhead.
“We lack the time for this,” he said, cutting Hlesey short mid retort. “Gastores, your captain is not in the gaol above, no more than she is here in the crawler. My people searched, as did your own. No-one has been left. Were it not so, it would still be impossible for us to go back now. Even as we speak Pharyes and surfacers alike are risking their lives to protect this crawler. We cannot ask them to hold the gaol indefinitely.”
The translation took a moment, but Gastores face darkened as he heard the words.
“Easy for you say that, but what if we’re wrong? What if there are more people we missed?!”
“They would be retaken, yes, but my people do not mistreat captives. Anyone who surrenders will be safe.”
The giant stared at him, a bloody fist tightening as the ogre’s single browline twisted in a strange parallel of a seething glare, nostrils flaring as he snorted and launched into a retort. Uldmar found himself actually taking a step back in his Skidbladnir.
Sulis seemed hesitant to translate the response, but in the heat of the moment Uldmar couldn’t follow the staccato jumble of words being fired his way.
“You dare say that, after everything your kind have done?”
Sulis related the speech in Pharynx with a sorrowful, worried inflection, looking as though she wished the Underworld would fall down upon her. Even if she didn’t preserve the ogre’s tone, Gastores left nothing to the imagination in the vitriol of his voice and face.
It was absurd, not just to suggest, but to fight over at such a time. With the forces they had it was suicide to try to hold out – especially for the sake of a few people who might not even be there to find – yet like a child in a tantrum the ogre would hear none of it. He would have expected greater wisdom, not to mention better judgment, of the fierce negotiator who had orchestrated the raid in the first place.
Listening to the man’s words, Lord Uldmar found himself wondering if he had misjudged Gastores, as he had Idavoll.
“Your people have the blood of hundreds on their hands already, maybe thousands! Don’t pretend you’re so honorable and noble after what you did to Chasm! Don’t tell me Encheiro and anyone else your king can get his hands on wouldn’t be turned into hostages the second the Pharyes started losing the fighting! If you care so much about making peace then the prisoners have to be returned, all of them, now while we can!”
“You dare to speak such calumny?! I shall not permit you to impugn the King’s name in my-”
“Lord Uldmar!”
With righteous indignation and the ferocity of maligned Royal honor to fuel him Uldmar had been ready to unleash a burning tirade against the impudent surfacers, but it was Ivaldi of all people who cut him short, signaling also to Sulis, not to relate the outburst.
“W-we’re all afraid, and angry, and, well, downright frightened… at least I know I am… but we cannot allow ourselves to fall to infighting now! Now with, you know, actual fighting to do!”
The words sounded absurd coming from that tremulous, frail speaker, the man closer to fainting than fighting to Uldmar’s ear… yet in a way that was fitting. Ivaldi always seemed to surprise him. The surrealism of the moment punctured the egotistical responses that were still running through his mind.
Of everyone there, it was Ivaldi who had kept a clear head.
The whole raid was on the brink of failure even at that moment, but it wasn’t due to Gastores, or any of the surfacers. The disaster was all thanks to Lord Uldmar’s arrogance; his foolhardy self-assurance that he knew the minds of his friends and followers, and that none among his inner circle could ever betray him.
How then could he condemn the judgment of others? He who had told Idavoll so haughtily that he knew his people, even as she was trying to turn him against Hlesey and plotting her betrayal. It was he who had driven them to crisis... who had driven Gastores to desperation as they prepared to abandon the search.
Worse than that… crude and base as the accusations against King Jotunn were, his mind called forth the memory of his uncle’s past actions. No, the King would never do such a thing, but could he truly say the same of the Justicar who ruled for him? He wanted to deny it, yes – the Lord Hreidmar he had known, who had taken him in and raised him, he would certainly never disgrace himself or his people by executing surrendered prisoners like hostages… but Uldmar had also been certain he would never have sabotaged Vitrgraf mine, sacrificing the lives of the workers….
Just as he had been certain Idavoll was on their side. Just how far would people like Idavoll and the Justicar go to win the war? He had thought he knew the answer, but now it seemed frighteningly unclear. If a foe like Safkhet were to lead a counteroffensive, were to threaten to advance on Kingdom territory, even the Deephold itself… well they had already seen how deeply the surfacers valued the lives of their own, just as did the Pharyes. Hostages could prove decisive, and with a dreadful clarity Lord Uldmar saw how easily his uncle might choose to bloody the hands of his people for the sake of victory.
His head spun at the thought… yet even if Gastores was right, delay remained impossible.
People were arguing still, Ivaldi fading from the ferocious shouting of Gastores, Sulis trying and failing to maintain communication while calming the man, Hlesey giving his own useless interjections, as were a dozen more voices, Pharyes, Ogre, beastfolk and more.
He choked down his pride, as well as the lingering outrage at the accusations. Rather than indulge in a deluded sense of superiority, he had to stop Gastores from making as grave a mistake as he had himself.
“Excuse me,” he said loudly.
There was a lull in the bickering, faces turning to his Skidbladnir. In the momentary quiet the sounds of battle came to the fore, focusing his thoughts on what had to be said.
“I… apologize, Gastores,” he began quietly. “As Counselor Ivaldi says, this is an appalling situation in which to be placed. For that I am… deeply sorry, both for my own role and for the actions of my people.”
The ogres in particular looked stunned. Gastores stared at him, with something between confusion and suspicion in his eye as he listened to the translation.
“You are correct… anyone we should fail to liberate may face grave danger. Not from King Jotunn, but from his Council… his Justicar. But is it not for that very reason that this raid was deemed vital? We have now at the least the vast majority of the victims of Pharyes attacks on the surface. More exist, it is true, on crawlers yet to reach Northastr, and even in towns and villages which are at this moment under attack, but should we attempt the salvation of all we will help none. Your captain, Gastores… she is one woman. Further attempts at her rescue will doom everyone, including those she held dear.”
As if to underscore his words, the sounds of thuds and booms had started echoing up the ramp through which the aulogemscires had recently ascended.
~~~
Gastores felt dizzy listening to the translation of Lord Uldmar’s words.
The Pharyes were to blame for everything, just as much as he himself, yet they spoke of Encheiro as if this were all just some hypothetical question, an easy sacrifice to make for their greater good, even with her own son alone and afraid in the belly of their crawler, wondering where his mother was.
What was worst of all was that Gastores couldn’t refute a thing Uldmar was saying. With that refined noble mouth he was condemning Encheiro forever, sealing her fate through reason instead of force.
“No… no,” he said, speaking under his breath.
Tears flooded up around his eye, and he felt himself stagger back a step, but he knew that if he yielded now it would be over.
“Come on, Gas,” Ripides said, patting his shoulder. “Captain wouldn’t want this. Nor would Tavos – he’s a grown man you know. Can’t do neither of them any good getting yourself killed.”
“You don’t understand! You can’t! You aren’t the ones who left her behind… I am!”
Shouting again without even meaning to, he glared around at the gathered faces. None of them had taken Tavos’ mother from him. None of them had abandoned her.
“I have to do this!” he bellowed, pushing Ripides back as he tried to speak. “Even if no-one else comes with me! I have to find her!”
He tried to turn, but his legs didn’t move right. Two of his arms were caught on something too, pulling him back.
“Gastores.”
Only one voice could render his name in those sad notes of song.
In the chaos and sorrow he had near forgotten she was there, despite hearing her words throughout. Looking down, he saw her face through his tears, and felt her tentacles tighten around him.
“I have to go, Sulis,” he said quietly, pulling against her tendrils.
She was incredibly strong for a girl half his height.
“I-I can’t abandon her twice….”
“Do you remember?” she asked him “What you said to me?”
He shook his head uncertainly.
“I was afraid that Calidae wouldn’t be there, that he never made it to Northastr. You told me that if he was missing there would be nothing we could do. You said we would save everyone we could, then get out, as planned.”
“I remember that,” he murmured.
He wasn’t straining against her hold any more, but even so the naiad was gripping him tighter than ever. She was crying too, he realized, her tears sparkling in the uneven light as they slipped down her cheeks and splashed into her flowing liquid dress.
“We can look for other ways to save anyone still missing, but first we save the people who are here. That… includes ourselves, Gastores.”
Her tentacles formed a silky, petite hand, and took him by his injured palm. Soothing water flowed over his skin, and the pain was soothed in moments.
“Come with me into the crawler – we have to go.”
“Yeah, come on kid… you done everything you can.”
Heart in turmoil, the young ogre allowed himself to be led back towards the ramp into the crawler by Sulis and Ripides.
He felt defeated, hurt and confused, yet somehow liberated at the same time.
Behind them, the frozen gathering burst back into activity, loading the last people aboard, recalling the last of the Skidbladnir holding back the attackers above and gathering up the Triskelions that would defend the crawler as they broke through the docks.
Gastores heard none of it as they walked together into one of the cargo bays.
He and Sulis found seats squeezed in between another ogre and a harpy, opposite Ripides and in sight of Calidae.
“Tavos got on too, didn’t he?” Gastores asked, a fresh pang of fear striking him abruptly.
“Few modules down,” Ripides replied, “saw him earlier, remember?”
“Right.”
“Oh, miss! Miss!” called another voice.
A figure was following after them through the crowd, a wiry young beastfolk man with a modest set of horns and a dripping nose.
“Miss Naiad! I found her, the one I told you about!”
In an instant Gastores’ heart leapt, the malaise clearing from his mind.
“Encheiro?!” he asked, jumping up.
He flinched as Sulis’ grip around his injured hand tightened abruptly. Looking askance at her his heart dropped.
Her face was a deathly mask of horror as the cervine approached them.
Turning back he saw nothing on the newcomer’s face to so mortify her.
“I found her,” the man repeated, in his easy, light voice. “The one that told me the story! It was all true, like I thought!”
The ogre was baffled more than ever.
Sulis shook her head at the beastfolk man, then looked back up at Gastores.
“Eh?” the man muttered, looking between them, then “oh… oooohhh….”
Bowing his head he stepped back.
“I’m sorry… Gastores, right? I didn’t… I mean… well, sorry.”
The man turned and scampered off, flitting between the larger occupants of the module.
“Gastores…,” the naiad said softly, stroking his hand gently.
“Sulis… she… Captain Encheiro….”
“I’m so sorry, Gastores. I couldn’t say until I was sure.”
“Encheiro isn’t at Northastr, is she?” he said eventually.
“The… injured captives were transported separately. Taig was confined with one of them later, a girl who mentioned that there was a red-skinned bald ogre who saved her life at Grand Chasm.”
“What happened to her?”
His words were a whisper, inaudible against the whine of the crawler moving and the chatter of rescued captives, but Sulis had no need to hear them.
“She… stopped a bolt with her own body. She was given the best healing the Pharyes could have administered, but our bodies aren’t like theirs, and the woman was too badly hurt.”
“Sulis… please… please….”
“I’m so sorry Gastores. Encheiro didn’t reach Northastr… she… she died.”