Shield and Crocus (30 page)

Half a century after Nevri’s coup, here we are. Three missions, five Shields, and one goal we’ve been pursuing the entire time.

Perched atop the crown of Audec’s Skull, The tower of the City Mother scaled so high that it hurt First Sentinel’s neck to scan all the way up to see the top. He dragged the fourth and last of the door guards onto his pile and went to the door. Clearing out the guards had taken one of his last flash stones, but he knew that time was of the essence. Both of the other teams were already in play, which is why he only had to deal with four guards on the door instead of a whole squadron on alert.

Time will tell how much they’ve committed, how much of an errand I’ve set for myself.
First Sentinel pulled the heavy golden key from the guard’s belt and opened the ancient doors.

There were ten guards scattered around the room between him and the door to the stairs up. Three were huddled around a table, playing cards, another four paced the room, and the last three stood by the far door. First Sentinel dropped the key to the tower as the guards at the table turned and stood to alert. First Sentinel drew his fighting staves, spinning quick defensive patterns as he walked into the tower.
Here goes everything.

“Surrender now and this won’t hurt,” First Sentinel said. There was no response.
I don’t begrudge them the choice. I need the warm-up.
The first guard swung a blackjack towards First Sentinel’s head, but the Shield raised a staff to spoil the shot and snapped the other one against the guard’s ribs. First Sentinel slipped a staff under the guard’s arm. He tossed the guard to the floor. The other two flanked out, each holding out swords.

The four pacing guards were closing fast.
Not much time. Keep to the wall, don’t get surrounded. Fight smart, old man.

He pounced on the guard by the near wall. First Sentinel beat his sword against the stone and rolled towards his off-hand side, smacking the guard across the face. The guard dropped his sword and First Sentinel put him out with a short jab with a staff. He faced the third guard as another four closed to within ten paces. The last guard was more cautious than the others; he stood at a wide distance and waited for backup.

Have to keep momentum, no stopping until I’ve reached the top.
drawing a vial from his belt, First Sentinel took three quick steps forward and leapt into the air, downing another elixir. The alchemical worked, ending his fall and suspending him in the air. First Sentinel put his staves away, drawing a handful of throwing blades.

Two guards stood aghast for a moment, but the other three raised crossbows. First Sentinel spun around to a three-quarters position, as if prone to their perspective, and tossed the first two blades at the nearest crossbow-carrying guard. One blade struck deep into the unpolished wooden stock of the crossbow, the other clipped his collarbone. The guard dropped to a knee and his bolt flew wide and ricocheted off the wall. Another bolt came within a hand span of First Sentinel’s leg. The third punched a hole in his longcoat.
That didn’t take long.

First Sentinel tossed two more blades at the next guard, a tall Pronai woman with arms near as long as her legs. She ducked and bobbed out of their way. First Sentinel heard a volley of twanging crossbows and he twisted in the air to dodge.

Not enough.
he felt the bolt glance off a rib and thanked the City Mother he hadn’t been a half-turn to either side, which would have left him with a foot-long metal rod through his gut. He tried to ignore the wound and reached for another set of blades. This pair sailed towards the third crossbowman, a Millrej canine-kin, with the elongated black nose but not the full-blood traits. The Millrej failed to dodge, catching a blade in the chest.

Two down, that’s all I need.
as expected, the elixir’s effect wore off and First Sentinel flipped over, falling. He dropped knees-first onto a guard with a sword, catching the Ikanollo by surprise. The Shield drew one fighting staff and a fighting knife, his most versatile arrangement for fighting armed foes.

He lashed out with the staff to knock aside another guard’s sword-blow. Two of the guards lunged in on him at once, and the trio toppled to the ground. First Sentinel scrambled to protect himself from their blades as he tried to find his footing. While dodging a knife-strike to the heart, he caught a knee to the ribs just below where the bolt had glanced off.

He curled his arm in front of his chest and took a knife-cut along the outside of his arm, mostly blunted by the reinforced coat.
Not good, move it or they’ll have you trussed up and sent off to the tyrants for dinner.
he had to break free, reclaim control of the fight.

First Sentinel squirmed free and rolled backwards, finding his feet and leaving his knife in one of the guards’ backs. The other guard stood slowly, forming a circle with the rest. He was surrounded.

This is supposed to be the warm-up, old man. You’ll never make it to the City Mother with this slop. You’re embarrassing yourself. Get up.

And he did.

Sapphire’s team was down by two Shield-bearers before they reached the exterior of the mint’s vault. The first one, Fuhn Jumps, took a crossbow bolt through the eye when they took the door. The second fell under a hail of knife blows from a Pronai guard in the halls leading to the vault room.
His name was Ove Questions.

Sapphire repeated their names as a mantra and kept her team close. She assigned Ghost Hands to scanning more actively for thought patterns so they wouldn’t be surprised again.
Please let the list stop at two.
Singing
kesh
for two blood-kin she had barely begun to know was more than enough.

The halls were almost painfully well-lit, electric lights in sconces on both sides of the wall, every five paces. The whole place smelled like burnt ozone. Sapphire took the lead, advancing along the wall in a moving crouch.

According to the Shields’ plan, both of the other teams should already be in place, and judging by the alarms sounding throughout the halls, Sapphire’s team was doing their part in pulling forces from the tower for First Sentinel.
He still should have let us send backup
, she thought, praying the wounded veteran could scale all seventy floors of the tower and liberate the City Mother.

[
Incoming. Two more, from the left turn ahead
.] Ghost Hands said in Sapphire’s mind.

Sapphire halted and stood at the ready. The four remaining Freithin set down the crates and stepped out into the center of the corridor.

“Use your numbers, and your size. They won’t be used to fighting this many of us at once,” Sapphire said by way of encouragement.

Two Ikanollo rounded the corner, leading with their spears. “There they are!” one shouted as he lunged at Sapphire. She wrapped her hand around the top of the haft and yanked forward, pulling the guard off-balance into her fist. The second turned and stabbed inward, but Sapphire swung the first guard around to take the blow for her.

The rest of Sapphire’s squad closed and pummeled the woman into unconsciousness. They left her tied to her spear and buried the blade in the top of the wooden frame of a doorway, leaving her hanging. The ease of their progress inside the mint left her worried. Where was the real security? Had the tyrants really left it with a skeleton crew?

“Keep up the pace,” she said. “We want to make our stand inside the vault and the reinforcements will already be on their way.”
They may just flood the halls with numbers, try to overrun us. Either that or send in the elites. It’s what I’d do.

Sapphire ducked around a corner to scout and saw the vault filling the whole end of the hall. A full squadron of guards stood at the vault door, half armed with crossbows, the others carrying halberds. Several of them were looking down the hallway and locked eyes on her.
And there we are. But they won’t leave their posts, in case we flank.
She ducked back out of the corridor and waved her unit back.

“Is there another way to the vault?” Sapphire whispered to Ghost Hands.

[
Not that I remember
.]

She considered for a moment, looked down to the crates her fellow Freithin were carrying, and smiled.
They won’t expect this.

“How fast can you throw one of these bombs, Ghost Hands?”

Sapphire felt as much as heard Ghost Hands’ chuckle in her mind. [
Fast enough. Pick the right one and the blast radius should cover half the hallway. Leave yourself some room for the shrapnel
.]

She motioned the team back around the end of the corridor, and pulled a box the size of her head from one of the crates. “This should do.”

“Follow two paces behind me,” she said to her Shieldbearer cousins. Ghost Hands extended a hand, and the box floated out of Sapphire’s grip.

Sapphire watched around the corner as the switches flipped. The bombs shot down the hallway as fast as a crossbow bolt. Sapphire judged the explosive’s velocity against her own running speed, waited a few seconds, then started running.

“Go!” she said. The guards dove to the floor as the explosive detonated against the vault door, consuming the far end of the hall. The concussive blast muted her hearing, but she kept running. Sapphire reached the far end of the hall as after shrapnel clattered to the ground at her feet. She took a quick look over her shoulder and saw her team a few paces back.

Ghost Hands wiped the smoke away to reveal a hole the size of a dinner table in the vault door. The handful of guards that weren’t killed or incapacitated by the blast went down quickly and Sapphire took stock of the room. It was thirty feet long, twenty feet wide, with room on each side of the vault door. Plates and tools and dyes lined the walls, each in their own lock box.
All I have to do is break the plates, but if we take the whole room when we go, all the better.

“Set the perimeter, and prepare for siege. Ghost Hands, you’re in command of the door, I’ll take any who get inside. Shield-bearers, two on each side of the door. Space yourselves out at arm’s length to protect against bolts and blasts, but always support your partner. I’ll take care of the plates.”

The team took their places, as Sapphire confirmed that all of the plates were present and accounted for.

She hoped Aegis’s team and First Sentinel were faring this well.
And with fewer casualties, City Mother permit.

The Brilliant Guard had broken through the walls three times, and Sabreslate was running out of material to use in shoring it up. Much more, and she’d risk bringing the rest of the house down. The soldiers hauled away as many of the chunks as they could each time, depleting her supply. Every bit of stone drawn from another wall made the other entrances that much easier to penetrate. It was a game of attrition, and not one that favored the Shields.

We’ve had one bout of luck, if you could call it that.
after the third breakthrough, when forty of Nevri’s thugs were swarming the courtyard, a Spark-storm tore through the neighborhood. The storm hailed knives that cut into the guards, and where they were cut, the blood turned into coils that swallowed the soldiers.

Moments later, the soldiers were reborn out of the blood into dark-red insectoid creatures that tore into their former fellows. The Brilliant Guard now fought itself, and in the chaos, Sabreslate had the opportunity to shore up the defenses, pulling out the cobblestones in the street to remake the front wall.

Aegis and couple of the Freithin took cuts from the hail of knives, but their blood flowed as normal, sparing them the choking coils.
I think we can call that a successful test. City Mother be praised for Fahra’s gift.

But the respite didn’t last. Another thirty soldiers arrived, carrying a battering ram.

“We can’t keep going like this,” Aegis said. “We need to consolidate, give ground, and reinforce our position.” he dispatched the last few guards from the most recent wave to flood through the broken doorway.

“To the waiting room, then? What’s our exit route?” Sabreslate asked. Nore and Aung pulled the bodies aside and stuffed them into the foyer closet, then replaced the heavy desk to brace it closed.

Aegis recalled the floor plan and said, “There should be a sewer access from the back door, where they dump the garbage. Leave the walls around the sitting room, the back hallway, and the door. We should be able to hold that a bit longer.”

“Right.” She took a deep breath, mustering her strength. The effort was taking its toll.

I can’t ask her to do much more of this,
Aegis realized. “How thick will the wall have to be to stop that battering ram?”

“Thick enough that I’d only be able to cover the waiting room—and then we wouldn’t have any way to breathe.”

Aegis thought out loud. “Nine people in a room that size. No good. Give me the hallway and the back entrance.” he raised his voice to carry through the building.

“Team one, hold position! Teams two and three on me! Form up! We’re retracting the walls! Move, move!” he shouted.

“They’re readying another volley,” Sabreslate said. “This is going to hurt.”

“Start pulling in the walls.”

Sabreslate nodded, retreating down the hall to take her new position. Another explosion shook the building. Spider-webbed cracks spread all the way up the two-story foyer.

Move quickly, Father. I’m not sure how long we can hold here.

The third floor was segmented by long, narrow hallways, much easier for stealth. First Sentinel walked them like a ghost, picking off the guards one by one on his way to the next stairwell. Each level, the stairs rotated between the west, east, north, and south sides of the tower. Originally, it was supposed to be a part of the priests’ prayers, walking the paths of the four directions in an intricate pattern as worship to the City Mother.
I remember taking the whole day when we came here on a trip for my school, all those years ago.

For First Sentinel, it meant the ascent might take the better part of the night. Every step he took could cost his friends’ lives.

Climbing along the outside was out of the question— the exterior of the tower was impregnable and smooth, no gaps or holds for climbing gear. Ghost Hands might have been able to fly up the side, but the lack of windows meant she’d still have to break in somewhere.
And she’s fantastic at crowd control when supporting a group, but not on her own.

And this is my battle now.

Checking around the corner, First Sentinel saw another pair of guards, forty paces away. The old wooden floor creaked, but the ceilings were low enough that he wouldn’t be able to sneak up on anyone by floating along the ceiling.

So I bring them to me.
First Sentinel cupped his hands and shouted down the hallway. “Hey you, which way to the stairs?”

They turned and called the alarm. One waved down the T-crossing hall. The other, an armed Freithin male, started towards the Shield. His greatsword was as tall as First Sentinel.

Thank you for splitting off from your partner.
The long hallway gave him the time to put on a shock glove and then draw a knife. The guard had range to spare, but moving as fast as he was, it would be good for one swing and then First Sentinel could go in for the grapple.
Grappling a Freithin is a fool’s errand … unless you have tricks.
First Sentinel rolled a smoke pellet between his fingers as the Freithin shouted a battle cry.

Intimidation, really? I wrote that book before you were born.
The Freithin stepped within ten paces and First Sentinel smashed the smoke pellet on the floor. The shimmercrab goggles kept the smoke out of his eyes, and registered the guard’s heat amidst the grey cloud. First Sentinel ducked and rolled beneath the wild swing and severed the Freithin’s right hamstring with a passing slice. The guard dropped to a knee and First Sentinel buried the knife in the guard’s kidney. He jumped up to grab the Freithin around the neck with the shock glove, sending electricity racing through the big man’s body.

But he was a Freithin, so that only made him mad.

The sentry reached up and grabbed First Sentinel’s arm, then pushed off with his good foot and smashed the two against the wall.

First Sentinel tucked his neck to avoid cracking his skull, but as his back hit, something twinged in his ribs where he’d taken the glancing shot earlier. First Sentinel reached down to pull out his blade out with a twist and stab again, closer to the Freithin’s spine. The tangy smell of blood tinted the air, and the Freithin fell against the wall again. First Sentinel swung around the Freithin, avoiding the crush. The Freithin’s legs were useless, so First Sentinel brought the knife up to slit the guard’s throat, putting him out of his misery.
I’m sorry.

First Sentinel looked up to see three more guards fill his vision. The first one thrusted for his face with a spear, and First Sentinel dropped a knee to duck under the shot.

He reached up and grabbed the haft, then wrapped his around it and pulled himself up towards the guard and stabbed up into his armpit.

First Sentinel felt a dull impact against his side as the protection in his shirt kept a mace from caving in his ribcage. First Sentinel swung the handle-end of the spear around at the mace-holder, who ducked under his swing and circled away.

First Sentinel stabbed the staff back behind him in a blind shot, hoping it bought enough time to get out of the pinch.

Breaking loose, First Sentinel lashed out with his knife.

The second guard’s mace swung around to strike First Sentinel’s hand as he attacked, so the Shield changed the arc of his cut to avoid the strike and cut across the guard’s collarbone.
And that’s why I use knives.

Turning with the strike, First Sentinel knocked the second guard over with a kick and saw an overhead strike coming in from the third guard’s longsword.

He didn’t have time to block, even if he could count on his knife to stop the swing. Instead, First Sentinel dropped straight down as he raised the knife, praying he was right in judging the arc of his strike.

The cut sailed through empty air and connected with the wall inches above First Sentinel’s face. The guard’s strike skidded along the tile wall with a horrible sound.

First Sentinel stood up into a tackle, taking the guard while he recovered.

You better stop counting on your luck, old man, or it’ll run out just in time to get yourself killed.

First Sentinel clocked the guard with the pommel of his knife and felt the man go limp. The Shield’s ribs sang a discordant song of agony as he stood up, and before he could catch his breath, a giant hand curled around his foot and brought him right back to the floor. First Sentinel scrambled around to his back, feeling the twisting pull in his ankle, foot still held in a vise grip.

The Freithin guard stared at him through blood-shot eyes, crawling along the floor with a trail of red behind him.
No time to stop and wonder how he’s still alive, I need to get him off my foot.
First Sentinel stabbed at his hand while he reached for another smoke pellet.

“You’re not getting away, Sentinel,” he said, blood filling his mouth.
Damned fool is killing himself faster by trying to talk.

So First Sentinel goaded him on. “None of you are going to stop me. Not Yema or COBALT-3, and definitely not you.” First Sentinel cracked the smoke pellet in his hand, reversed the knife grip, and brought the blade down towards the Freithin’s head.

Through the smoke, he saw the red-tinted signature of the guard’s hand come up to block, but the Freithin couldn’t see the strike. First Sentinel took off the better part of the Freithin’s thumb before the knife stuck through the top of his skull. The grip on his foot went limp, and First Sentinel shook his leg free. First Sentinel collapsed backward on the floor, feeling the warm puddle beneath his longcoat.

He took a few long breaths, assessing of his injuries.

At this rate, I’m not going to be able to reach the top in one piece. Something in my plan needs to change, and I’m not sure what other tricks I have left to spare.

An old voice spoke up in his head with a temptation, and he brushed it away.
No, never again.