David Durham - The Sacred Band

“Oh… look at you,” Dariel said. He sheathed his knife and reached in cautiously. “Look at you.” He stroked one of the pups on the head. It tried to back away. “Shhh. No, no, it’s fine.” His touch was gentle. His fingers sank into the soft fur, over the ears, and then down under the chin. The other pup inched forward. Its eyes were the same color as its fur, a slightly auburn tint now that he was up close. Just like the hound outside. Dariel offered his hand for it to scent. After doing so, the pup slapped its pink tongue wetly against his knuckles. Before Dariel could smile with the joy this gave him, a realization stopped him.

“That was your mother, wasn’t it?” Dariel moved to the doorway and scanned the scene. It lay as it had before, dark and glowing at the same time, still and crackling with unseen motion, silent and filled with a cacophony of sounds. Exactly the same, yet different now.

Looking back at the pups, Dariel asked, “What am I going to do with you two?”

Rialus Neptos went to bed each evening swearing to himself that he was not betraying his entire race. To really be doing what the Auldek asked of him would make him the greatest villain in the history of the Known World. He could think of nobody else who had sunk so low. Not even during the unfortunate years he served Hanish Mein had he been such a traitor. He had just been biding his time then, pretending to serve Hanish and the Numrek. He had proven as much by bringing the Numrek into Corinn’s service and saving the empire! He would find a way to do so again. He would lie and fabricate, confuse and obfuscate, trick and deceive and somehow emerge from it a hero for the ages. He had to. He had a wife, Gurta. He had a child who might already be born and living in the world. Didn’t that matter more than anything?

Going to sleep thus convinced made waking in the morn all the more peculiar. He found himself surrounded by the enemy. He watched himself go through motions that looked, smelled, and felt like the very treason he so despised. The situation was complicated enough to challenge his capacity for knotted excuses. The Numrek had never, in fact, been true to the Akarans. The “allies” he had brought Corinn had been planning the conquest of the entire Known World all along. The Auldek horde progressing around the curve of the world were every bit the threat they considered themselves to be, and they were daily educating themselves on all things Acacian-with Rialus as their instructor. At what point, exactly, would he transform himself into the agent of Acacian defense that he believed himself to be?

“Hey, Rialus leagueman!”

Rialus heard the shout from outside his room. He recognized the voice-Allek’s. He sat cross-legged with a writing cushion before him, pen poised above it. Just leave me, Rialus thought. Go on. He had begun yet another journal attempt at outlining his actions, justifying and explaining how he was handling himself while with the Auldek. He thought such documents would prove useful should he ever be called before Queen Corinn. For some reason, he found it quite hard to organize his arguments coherently.

Fingel uncurled herself from the corner of the room and moved for the door. Rialus waved her to stillness. Don’t play dumb, girl! he thought, as he had many times before. The Meinish young woman, his slave since Avina, showed a dogged unwillingness to ever anticipate his desires. It should be dead obvious that he would not want to be disturbed.

“There is someone at the door,” she said, staring at him with her gray eyes.

As if on cue, the circular portal was yanked open, letting in a howling beast of a wind that surged through the chamber, making it instantly frigid. A furred figure stepped across the threshold. He was bundled from head to foot, hooded, and wore black goggles. He cast about a moment, no doubt letting his eyes adjust to the dim lamplight.

“Rialus,” Allek said, “get dressed. Stop all that scribbling. Sabeer wants to massage your feet. Or… she wants you to massage her feet. I forget which. Either way, she asked for you. What charm have you put on her?” he asked.

“No charm but my wit and the pleasure of my company,” Rialus said.

The hooded figure guffawed. “Right. Your charm. Come, Rialus! Show me your charm at work. She’s in the steamship.”

“Please tell her I’m busy. I’m-”

“I’ll drag you by your locks if you don’t start dressing now. I’ll enjoy it, too. Just like last time.”

Still an ogre, Rialus thought. “Fine,” he muttered, setting his pen aside and tidying his supplies. “I’m coming. Keep your nose on.”

Rialus carefully pulled on his fur-lined leggings and boots. He shrugged himself into his sealskin jacket. The garment draped bulkily about him. He had learned the hard way that if it hung loose, wicked fingers of cold found their way to his skin, so he cinched down the buckles. He even strapped on the visor to protect his eyes, and then tugged his hood in place. All this for a walk that would only take a few minutes. Damn this place. So thinking, he followed Allek out.

The wind smacked him as if it had clung just above the door, waiting to pounce on him. He stood on a platform running along one side of what the Auldek called stations, rocking, taking in a scene he still barely believed. His room was but one chamber of several in the large wooden and steel structure, a rolling tower that churned across the frozen earth with unrelenting steadiness. All around him other stations rolled, pulled by long lines of harnessed rhinoceroses, the same woolly breed that the Numrek had ridden down into the Known World. The structures creaked and groaned. The creatures bellowed and snorted. The blown snow obscured further stations, making it feel like they went on forever, out beyond the reach of his vision.

The vessels were relics of ancient Auldek travel, quickly outfitted for this journey. Indeed, much of the preparation was made easier because of the great stores of old equipment and devices the Auldek had but to dust off and haul into use. The stations. Cargo wagons. The sleds. Stores of arms and supplies, tons of grain and other foodstuffs in crates and barrels. All of it slid into motion more rapidly than Rialus would have thought possible. Slaves had tended herds of the beasts outside Avina. Rhinoceroses. Antoks. Kwedeir. Not to mention the freketes. Rialus had not seen much of the monsters since the cold weather had set in, but he understood them to be housed in stations outfitted for them.

Beneath and between the structures figures moved, driving animals, hauling supplies, doing the million things needed to feed and care for an army in constant, rolling motion. Rialus had doubted it would be possible, but the Auldek-or their slaves-were more efficient than he thought. They unpacked food stores in an organized manner that meant they could abandon the vehicles that had carried them. They ate the animals freed up from this, or any that got injured or sick. Rialus even suspected that the slaves themselves became food for the animals or worse. He tried not to think about it.

A man rode by atop an antok, swaying with the beast’s strides, as at ease as a horseman on a trusted mount. The swine blew plumes of white vapor from beneath the heavy patchwork of throws that covered it. Rialus felt the vapor billow around him, fogging his visor. He smelled the rank scent of the creature’s breath. But that did not make sense. It was not that close. Rialus scrubbed at his visor a moment, smearing the scene before him. He pulled back his hood and yanked the visor from his head.

The antok had moved away, but still the steaming breath blew past him. A noise at his back turned Rialus around to meet the clear blue eyes of a snow lioness. The cat crouched just a little distance away on a ledge of the station, tensed as if it might pounce. It thrust its chin forward, and then cocked its head, then righted it. Rialus had no idea what that was meant to convey, but the female of the species worried him as much as the massive males. In the wild, he had been told, it was the females that did most of the hunting. The males just used their brawn to fight one another and win wives. Miserable beasts! Rialus thought. He fumbled for the ladder poles, dropped over the edge, and descended.