Warsinger - Chapter Three

  Now? Really? Did it have to be NOW?

“My vassals?” I slammed the harness buckles in together. The harness was slightly crooked, but it worked. I’d spent the whole day making it. “Like, the other Counts, or-?”

Istvan scowled. “Your vassals, as in, the Barons who serve you. My scout reports they’re marching in force here. There’s apparently townsfolk from Karhad with them, and no fewer than two messengers…”

“Okay, no worries. Whatever they want, it can wait three or four days.” I took up Cutthroat’s part of the ensemble. The device was part bondage device, part baby carrier. She could be strapped to Karalti’s belly and told to find Suri. As she paddled and strained, her nose would point in the right direction and lead us right to her. That was the hope, anyway. “There’s no return trip. Once we find Suri, we can teleport back. We’ll be gone less than a week.”

“My Lord. You are the Voivode of Myszno.” The Captain’s normally-pleasant voice took an acid tone I hadn’t heard since early in the campaign for Myszno. “You haven’t even gotten your royal papers delivered to establish your court, and you’re going to let your subjects languish? For the sake of one woman?”

“That ‘woman’ died to defeat Ashur and his army and restore their lands to these vassals of mine,” I snapped back. “She died knowing that she would respawn in a place that is a literal hell for her. She’s not sitting there diddling herself, Istvan. She’s being tortured.”

“You don’t know that,” Istvan said. “Suri is a powerful, capable warrior, a soldier-”

“And that place traumatized her so badly that she screams in her sleep about it every other night.” I leaned toward him, anger pressing up behind my eyes, winding through my chest and up into my jaw. “We’ve got half an army bunked here. My vassals can have the best rooms in the castle, eat the best food we can give them, think about what they want to say, and chill here on my dime for four fucking days while I pull Suri out and bring her home. They’re not trapped in a dungeon. She is.”

I hadn't even quite finished speaking when another quest alert chimed and flashed in the corner of my eye. I muted it and waved my hand for emphasis, like shooing a fly.

Istvan's mouth opened, closed, opened again. "After everything we went through to be here, you're just going to leave me here to deal with this while you… while you…?"

"Rescue the Countess of Myszno? They serve Suri as well." I whirled on him and glared. "If she was your partner... oh, for fuck's sakes..."

The quest alert wouldn’t shut up. I swore at the icon and muted it, then caught Cutthroat by her reins and led the hookwing over to Karalti. She bent from the neck and chirruped in her throat, a sound Cutthroat echoed as she strutted to a stop and fluffed her feathers out against the fog starting to rise over the courtyard. Istvan knotted a hand up in his hair and shifted from foot to foot as I buckled the hookwing's back to Karalti's front.

"If the lords ride up to the gate, tell them I have an urgent crisis to sort out and I'll be back as soon as I can," I called down to him. "Let them stay if they want to, or tell them to go camp outside the walls or something. I care about Myszno, Istvan, but I’m not leaving Suri to rot in Al-Asad until they’re happy. If they don’t like it, too bad. I’ll sort them out when I’m back."

Istvan's handsome face shut down into cold, disapproving lines. "As you say, Your Grace."

[You have lost Renown: -100 Myszno Defense Force (Current Renown: 2373]

"For fuck's sake," I muttered. "Come on, Karalti. Let's get this over with."

"Are you sure...?" 

"Yes! I'm sure!" I grasped the saddle grips and crouched down for take-off. "Let's go."

Karalti shot one last guilty look at Istvan's back as he stormed off, then spread her wings and drew a deep breath. I felt her second heart engage and speed up, stiffening her muscles, magically reducing her body weight, and pressurizing her limbs. She bunched like a cat, then flung herself into the sky with powerful, sweeping downbeats. The ground lurched away below. My ears popped, and my heart lifted into my mouth, followed by the dizzying rush of adrenaline as gravity pressed me to the rough leather like the cold hand of God. There were no safety straps here, no net to catch me if I was flung off by her shoulders as the powerful muscles along her spine flexed beneath my knees. The rush hit me like a shot of vodka to the brainstem, numbing the stress that gnawed in the pit of my belly.

As soon as Karalti levelled out, I relaxed and tried to gather my thoughts. Was rushing off to find Suri the morning after we’d taken the castle irresponsible? Maybe. Istvan was pissed off enough that almost felt guilty for leaving. Almost. The thought of my beautiful, passionate lover waking alone and naked in the place of her nightmares was too much for me to bear. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Archemi didn’t let you respawn with gear. She’d be in a cell, and no matter how strong she was… fuck.

“She’ll be okay,” Karalti said. She sounded as unsure as I felt.

I couldn’t think of anything to say in reply, so I didn’t. Instead, I pulled up the Quest alerts I’d dismissed to find something to distract myself, and frowned when they came into view.

New Story Quest: A Desperate Plight

You have assumed your duties as the new Voivode of Myszno and boy, do you have your work cut out for you. The entire province is in dire straits after the Demon's invasion attempt, with your county seat, Racsa, being the most badly affected region.

Your Vassal Lords are marching on your new castle, Kalla Sahasi. You will have to deal with them sooner than later. Kalla Sahasi was slighted during the invasion of Myszno, its defenses all but ruined, and you cannot endure a siege.

To consolidate your rulership of Myszno, you must hold your first court and hear the grievances of your citizens, or risk losing your tenuous grip on the province.

Reward: 450 EXP, Leadership +2, Insight +5, ???

Special: This is a time-sensitive quest – it must be confirmed in 47 minutes or less.

Special: You now have access to a range of tools to assist you in managing your province. Complete the tutorials for the Kingdom Management System to gain EXP and levels in the Leadership and Insight Skills.

“A siege? Why the fuck would I need to endure a siege?” I closed them down without accepting, yet.

“Uhh…” Karalti backwinged, beating them to hover in place. “You might want to look over my shoulder and down the mountain.”

I scowled and leaned out. Then I felt all the blood drain from my face.

There was a small army winding up the road from Karhad. Ranks of heavily armored knights rode hookwings with the same stocky, powerful build as Cutthroat. They marched ahead of columns of footsoldiers, wagons, and light cavalry. Torn banners fluttered in the wind. There were four different companies, and behind them, a teeming mob of at least five hundred townspeople, villagers, and refugees. Some were mounted on Europasaurus, the dwarf sauropod used like cattle in this part of Archemi. The commoners were armed with everything from farming tools to broomsticks. Torches blazed in their hands.

“Holy fuck.” Since I had become half a vampire, the sensations of my heart were more noticeable – especially when it sped up. Dismayed, I looked away, and paused when a dark shape on the horizon caught my eye. I zoomed in on it. It was a dark-hulled airship, with brilliant red sails. As good as my vision was, I couldn’t make out the design on them, but only one person in the country had the right to fly the black raven on a solid crimson field aboard his ships. His Majesty Volod Ignas Corvinus the Third, the king of motherfucking Vlachia.

“It… it’ll be okay,” Karalti said, her voice small and worried. “Suri will understand that we have to deal with this now. She wants a home more than anything. She’d want us to make sure she has one to come back to.”

I wanted to argue with her. I wanted to scream, but I didn’t – and wouldn’t, because no matter how much I hated it, she was right.

With a heavy heart, I accepted the quests, and added them to my ever-growing queue. “Yeah. She would.”

***

I got ready in the Count’s Suite while the angry mob raged outside the castle walls: A thousand voices, all screaming at Karalti and the soldiers doing crowd control at the ruined gatehouse. Firelight flashed through the windows while I unlaced my long braidhawk and re-braided it as neatly as I could, shaved the sides of my head, and made sure I looked the part of a newly-minted nobleman. While I prepared to host my first court session at the barrel of a metaphorical gun, I couldn’t help but think back to the day I was conscripted.

The letter had come on a warm, drowsy Sunday morning in smoky Los Angeles. I was tangled in the old sleeping bag I used as my blanket, snoozing after a long night working in the Full Stop, the biker bar beneath my apartment. The room smelled of cigarettes and old leather and eighty years of old beer and Red Bull. A rattling air conditioner kept the bedroom bearable during the day, cooling the corner of the room where I reclined upon my stylish floor mattress bed.

Saturday was always the busiest night of the week. I’d handled two fights, three removals, who-knew-how many fake I.Ds, one junkie and a girl whose date slipped something in her drink. I’d only been in bed about four hours, dreaming about my new motorcycle when a heavy BAM-BAM-BAM rattled the door and shook through the house.

I nearly hit the ceiling, scrambling around in the covers. Feet briefly scuffled outside, and then withdrew. By the time I was upright, silence hung heavily over the apartment. 

“The fuck?” Bleary-eyed, I checked my phone to see if I’d ordered a package and forgotten. Then I remembered: it was Sunday. There were only two reasons someone would knock on my door on a Sunday. Either someone was dropping something I’d forgotten at the club downstairs, or one of the guys I’d thrown out or handed over to the cops had figured out where I lived.

I got the extending baton I kept by the bed just in case of that second occurrence, and flicked it out with a satisfying ‘schick’ before padding over to the door in my underwear. There was no sound from the other side. Scowling expectantly, I made sure the chain was attached, and cracked it open.

There was a letter laying on the floor.

I peered at it owlishly, trying to make sense of it. No living breathing human being in the UNAC had sent letters in like… thirty years. Paper letters were up there with keyboards and gas-powered cars in the anachronism department. Suspicious as only a half-awake, mostly naked bouncer could be, I poked the envelope with the baton, in case it was full of anthrax or Liquid Ass or both. When it didn’t explode, I picked it up and tried to read the envelope. My birth name and address were printed on it with neat, mechanical writing. ‘Jeong-Ho Park’.

“What in the…?” I tore it open, heart hammering, and painstakingly struggled through the five awful words no man under the age of twenty-six ever hopes to read. ‘Order to Report for Induction.’

My first reaction was bewilderment. There was no way this could be real. My immigrant parents had been enrolled on the Hostile Alien watchlist in the first years of the Total War, meaning that me and my brother both should have been exempt. We weren’t allowed to serve in the government or the armed forces, claim Social Security or Medicare, or anything. But there it was. This was a Draft Card. I’d been conscripted.

The second sensation was numb exhaustion. My sinuses were gluggy, my back was hurting after a long night on my feet, and the rest of the letter might as well have been written in hieroglyphics. The print was so small I couldn’t read it beyond the title, so I smoked a cigarette, went back to bed, and had one of my racing friends read it to me later that night. His voice shook as he dutifully recited the dry order for me to report to Camp Parks in two days’ time. When he was done, he threw it down on the ground, twisted it under his heel, and begged me to pack a bag. Told me to go to his house, lay low for a week in his basement. Told me to take Mona the Brand New Ducati up the coast all the way to Canada. The only reason they would be drafting me now was because the war was THAT bad.

I thought about it. I thought about it hard. But even as a metaphorical ten-ton bag of lead settled into my stomach, I shook my head. 

“It is what it is, man,” I’d said, lighting another cigarette. “If I bug out to Canada, they’ll still find me. There’s just some kinds of shit you just can’t run away from.”

I heard the echo of my own words from all those years ago in myself now. Archemi wasn’t Earth, but as the months wore on, the line between the real life before and the virtual life felt very blurry. The mantle of the Voivode settle over me as heavily as the duty of the draft, and that same tired lead-in-the-guts feeling came roaring back.

While Istvan scrambled to get the Voivode’s throne room in order, I cleaned my battered Raven Suit, donned the Voivode’s crown – a simple spiked band of white-gold - and the crimson cloak that Ignas had given me. Then I looked at myself in the mirror, and saw… well. I saw a freak, to be honest. No matter how well I dressed or how nice my hair was, I had large, bird-like eyes with dark blueish sclera, unnaturally acute and piercingly bright in my face. My face was harder and I had a mouth full of sharp metal fangs courtesy of Ashur. In any other circumstance, I thought I looked pretty bad-ass. But now, with the pitchforks and torches bobbing up and down outside the walls of my defenseless castle, I felt the same quaking anxiety that had set in all those years ago when I’d rocked up to Camp Parks with my bag, my motorcycle and a head full of bad noise.

“I’m sorry, Suri.” I sighed. “Hold on just a little while longer, okay?”