Cory Herndon - The Fifth Dawn

“Yes, I live. Your eyes are sharp as ever,” Raksha said, his voice a little rougher than Glissa remembered. The elf girl noted the former Kha had also dropped any pretense of his old formal speech pattern. “You came. You finally …” He propped himself up on one elbow and stared at her as if he expected she might dissolve into smoke. The bright golden fur on his chin was flecked with white and silver, and his wiry whiskers were shorn clean on the right side. Three pale, ragged scars ran diagonally from the center of his forehead and down across his eye socket to his left cheek, though his sharp eyes were both intact. His mane had become as wild as Glissa’s own tangled cable hair, but more nappy, snarled with twigs and sticks.

Raksha sniffed the air and flashed the tips of his teeth. “What is that smell?” He followed his nose to Glissa, and peeked over her shoulder.

“Hi there,” Geth’s head said from inside the open pack, and winked.

“You brought the head?” Raksha growled in disbelief. “How did it even-”

“He might be useful,” Glissa replied. “Besides, I’m still figuring out what to do with him. Every time I think about throwing him away, something stops me.”

“Who’s throwing what?” Geth asked.

“Let’s just keep our enemies upwind,” Raksha said, and flipped the bag shut.

“Heym, my muz talkim!”

“Shut up, Geth. Raksha, they told me you’d gone crazy. That you destroyed Taj Nar.”

Raksha snorted with disgust. “Lies,” he said. “You wound my honor by even asking me, but I admit I am not surprised. But think, old friend. If I were truly mad, why would I save you?”

He had a point. The entire story about Raksha’s attempted sabotage hadn’t felt right to her. Nor did it strike her as right to doubt Lyese’s word, but the leonin standing before her did not look like a maniac, let alone ready to destroy his own home den in a suicidal bid for honor. Her instincts told her to trust him for now. Besides, Glissa didn’t have much choice. She did not want to fight Raksha, even if everything she’d been told was true.

“Raksha, there’s something else,” Glissa said. “In a few days, Memnarch will be vulnerable. This-” she raised the Miracore-“is the weapon that can kill him. I’m the only one who can do it, but I can’t try it for another three days.”

“Yes, I know,” Raksha said.

“You what? How long have you been here, Raksha? Yshkar told me you were most likely dead,” Glissa said. “He certainly seemed to hope you were, I’m sorry to say.”

Raksha’s grin drooped into a scowl, and he flashed his canines as a low growl that sounded distinctly unfriendly rumbled deep in his throat. “Do not speak that name,” he snarled. “He’s as dead to me as I am to him.”

Glissa suddenly felt very exposed, here in the dark lacuna with a possibly dangerous madman. She cast a quick glance at the knife on Raksha’s waist, but it was not quick enough to escape feline eyes.

“You injure me,” he said. “Glissa, I am not going to attack you. Nor did I do anything that you were told. We were both manipulated, but now we have the chance to set things right. My cousin was a faithless man, and I fear my throne was more important to him than victory over our enemies. He has been duped. And Bruenna, too, I fear.”

“‘Dupe’ seems a little strong,” Glissa said. “Yshkar seems to have the military situation well in hand. He married my sister, you know that? An elf and a leonin. She always liked you, you know. But she seems happy now, even if I didn’t expect that kind of life for her.”

“Your sister …” Raksha said, and grimaced. “Glissa, your sister is dead. The thing that wed my cousin an imposter.”

Bruenna’s back itched, but she couldn’t reach it. She hated wearing leonin armor, but she hated being cut open more, so she endured the discomfort. The battle had lasted two days, and now four of the suns were already down. The fifth dawn was not far off now. Bruenna hoped the suffering below would prove worth it. If Glissa wasn’t successful, there might not be anyone left on the surface to save.

Her zauk trotted cautiously onto the smoldering battlefield at the head of a group of twelve mounted leonin warriors in battle regalia. Bruenna’s own armor had been damaged beyond repair the day before, when Krark-Home’s last charbelcher had gone up under an aerophin suicide run. The ’belcher had tipped over sideways, causing its molten ammunition to ignite, but not launch. Within seconds, the overheated weapon exploded, taking the aerophins, several levelers, dozens of nim, and far too many Krark-Home defenders with it. Only her sturdy old Neurok battle armor had saved Bruenna.

Now the mage wore a borrowed suit of segmented silver plate that was once worn by Rishan, the seer Ushanti’s long-dead daughter and at one time Raksha Golden Cub’s intended. Lyese had insisted the mage put it on before heading out onto the field, and Yshkar had concurred. The armor was certainly strong and would no doubt protect her from harm as well as the old suit, but it didn’t fit quite right across the hips. Nor, she groused, did it easily allow one to reach the middle of one’s back. The mage awkwardly slid the sword on her belt a little forward so it would stop slapping against the side of the bird, which brought a stop to its frequent squawks of complaint.

Bruenna chided herself for worrying about her own discomfort in the midst of an ongoing battle. The carnage the riders passed through was devastating and made her stomach roil. Corpses and pieces of corpses lay everywhere, interspersed with the writhing wounded who couldn’t leave the field under their own power-hapless souls who were already dead, but hadn’t realized it yet. Twisted chunks of metal and debris from the shattered vedalken quake-beasts and broken charbelchers lay amongst dead zauks, horribly mangled pteron corpses with their delicate wings crumpled and broken, and piles of stinking nim bodies that in their stillness looked more than ever like dead insects. An amber haze hung low over the scene-a noxious fog of blood, smoke, necrogen mist, and steam that spewed from ruined constructs.

The artifact armies had finally been beaten back into retreat with determination, courage, and hundreds of spent lives. Yshkar was already boasting of this “great victory.” Bruenna found the Kha’s boasting ill-advised, but the leonin had told her that the troops needed a victory, no matter what the cost, to keep going.

The other half of the royal couple was not on the field. Khanha Lyese had not been seen by anyone since returning from the battlefield the night before and entering her quarters. The mage wondered if Glissa’s departure was the reason for her retreat. It was strange, though, not to see the Tall Queen leading the defenders. Bruenna had never known Lyese to shirk a fight, and in fact the elf seemed to enjoy it a little too much. Maybe humans could never really understand the behavior of elves.

Bruenna reached the closest fallen defender and reined the zauk to a halt. She half-dismounted, half-fell from the side of the bird, thrown off balance by the new armor, but managed to land on two feet. She dropped to one knee next to a goblin soldier whose legs were gone. The Krark-Home defender was pinned to the ground by what had once been a part of a charbelcher. He moaned pitiably and reached up to Bruenna.

This was why she was here. With so many dead, dying, and wounded, there weren’t enough healers to go around. Bruenna had offered to do whatever she could, and the healers had told her they were happy for the help.

The mage took the goblin’s hand in her remaining real one and held it tight. “I’m here to help you,” she whispered. “Don’t try to speak. You’re hurt.” She locked eyes with his, and Bruenna saw that the goblin knew he was more than hurt.