Ken Scholes - Antiphon

The mechanical took it. “Thank you, Father Petronus.”

Then, the mechoservitors were moving again, back into the valley where the vessel awaited.

They’d been gone only minutes when the sounds of snarling and howling reached Petronus’s ears. He’d heard it before during his time in the Wastes, though distant, and every time it ran long nails of dread along the slate of his spine.

Kin-wolves. But these were not far off and in the open. These growls echoed through the caves, growing louder and louder as they sped toward them. When they intersected with Rudolfo’s men, he heard a cacophonic choir of muffled shouts and feral yelps. Then, he heard the savaging and felt the air rush out of him.

“Hold the cave,” he bellowed, his voice ringing out over the din.

A voice was in his mind again, but this one was not Neb’s.

No, it said. Fall back with your men to the ship. The power of it set his nose to bleeding and his ears to ringing.

He winced. Who is this?

I am called Whym. Parent of P’Andro and T’Erys. Parent of Nebios.

“Gods,” he whispered.

Yes, the voice answered. Fall back with your men to the ship. I cannot go with him. You will accompany my son and save what may be saved of us.

He heard the wolves in the caves, heard the cries as Rudolfo’s men paid for each span of rock they held, and looked in Grymlis’s direction. Then, once more, the man who did not believe in faith took a leap of it.

“We need to fall back to the ship.”

The old captain snorted. “Not a likely scenario.”

Petronus closed his eyes. Dreams. Voices. A ship that sailed the moon, restored and even now rumbling to life behind him, its own growl louder than the wolves that savaged his men. “Fall back,” he said again.

Rafe chuckled. “You mean to take us to the moon, then?”

Petronus gave the whistle himself at Grymlis’s hesitation. The old captain followed it up with a shout. “Fall back!”

They moved backward at first, listening to the sounds of fighting as the scouts fought in retreat. But when they heard the first of the kin-wolves break the narrow line, they turned and ran.

Petronus felt his heart pounding in his head as he went. He and Rafe were nearly neck and neck, with Grymlis just behind. He felt the slight wind of movement but could not tell how many scouts ran alongside them. Certainly not all, because the sounds of fighting continued behind them.

A gray circle of light took shape ahead of them as they approached the entrance of the valley, and the howling behind them increased as more kin-wolves flooded the caves. In the dim predawn light, Petronus felt a large mass of stinking fur lunge past, ignoring him entirely to nip at Rafe’s heels. The pirate went down, and without thinking, Petronus thrust his short sword into the kin-wolf. The beast yelped as the Gypsy Scouts added their invisible blades to its hide.

He reached out and caught Rafe, dragging him from beneath the thrashing kin-wolf and back to his feet. Now, they were in the valley and saw the ship looming over them, its gangway down and its large hatch open as the mechoservitors as one released the chains that held it down.

Something growled deep in the vessel, and it shifted upward momentarily before hovering in place. Overhead, the moon was gone now, and the last of the night stars were fading as the sky moved toward morning.

Another wolf hurtled past, this one racing for the closest mechoservitor. It leaped, bringing down the metal man only to yelp when the metal hands closed upon its neck to snap it with mechanical precision.

The other metal men fanned out at the base of the gangway as more kin-wolves poured from the cave.

Petronus ran, his chest aching from it, and he felt the ghosts that ran alongside of him. Ahead, Rafe reached the bottom of the gangway and paused. “Get aboard,” Petronus shouted.

The last two of Rafe’s men were there now, too, helping their captain aboard, and Petronus was nearly there himself when he heard Grymlis cry out.

He stopped and turned.

The Gray Guard lay on his stomach, two kin-wolves worrying at his legs as the last of Rudolfo’s men, unseen and barely heard, moved about them, their knives drawing lines of dark blood upon dark fur in the predawn gloom. Petronus glanced back to the unmoving metal men where they awaited.

“Help us,” he said.

When they didn’t move immediately, he cursed and ran back. Three other kin-wolves had joined the skirmish, and another two had sped past Petronus, oblivious to him.

He reached Grymlis and swung his short sword at the closest wolf. It yelped, snapped at him and turned, yanking the blade from Petronus’s fingers. Grymlis had flipped onto his back, but his flailing and kicking had slowed.

Petronus grabbed up the fallen soldier under his arms and pulled at him, putting his full weight into dragging the man free from the wolves. He tried not to notice the blood that soaked the man’s shredded gray uniform, focusing instead on moving them toward the waiting gangway behind them.

The wolves closed, and the last of the scouts danced backward beside him as he pulled his friend. One grabbed at the tattered remains of Grymlis’s boot, nearly pulling Petronus over as the old captain cried out.

Then, metal hands were upon them, lifting them, and they were on the gangway. The vessel groaned again and shifted, but the sure-footed mechanicals carried them aboard, kicking at the wolves that tried to pursue.

The last moments were a blur. Petronus found himself in a large metal room stacked with crates and sacks bearing the Order’s seal upon them. He lay propped against a metal wall across from a crystal porthole, cradling Grymlis against him as the gangway was brought in and the large hatch was closed. Inside the ship, the growl was nearly a roar, and he felt the room shake and then sway.

He clung to Grymlis and glanced quickly around the room. One of Rafe’s men tended wounds he could not see on the last three surviving Gypsy Scouts while another tended Rafe. The mechoservitors had vanished up a ladder into some other part of the ship, and there was no sign of Neb.

“We made it,” Petronus whispered.

Grymlis mumbled something, his voice thick. He’d lost a lot of blood. Petronus felt it warm on his own hands, seeping through his own clothes. He leaned his ear in close to the working mouth but could not distinguish the words.

“Rest easy,” he said, then looked across the room. “I need a medico over here.”

Grymlis muttered again, and this time he heard names in the muttering. Lysias. Resolute. “I can’t understand you,” he said.

He felt the hand, weak, upon his leg. At first, he thought the old man simply squeezed it, but his mind put together the words he was pressing into his thigh.

I helped Lysias kill Resolute. Tam forged a note for us.

It was a confession, he realized, and he knew why now. “We do what we must to serve the light,” he said. “I killed Sethbert and ended the Order.” He thought for a moment. “What was it you used to say to the orphans you recruited? That it is easier to die for the light than it is to kill for it?”

And now, he held his dying friend in the belly of a ship that bore them slowly upward. Voices that called him out to serve. Dreams that pointed the way in whispers he could not comprehend. Promises of home and promises of violence. These all moved across his inner eye, going back two years to the pillar of smoke that marked Windwir’s grave.

Petronus looked up and saw the bloody sky of another sunrise over the Churning Wastes.

“Look Grymlis,” he said. “We’re flying.”

But Grymlis had already flown, and Petronus hoped his friend would find home and light awaiting him in whatever place he landed.