While the quintet had avoided the first remedial lesson, they had not escaped subsequent lessons. Half were applied alchemy, and half were lectures, with more remedial lessons at night. Between Haydn, Nadia, and Natalia, the quintet managed to avoid Weber’s remedial lessons. Seeing a group of groaning squires shamble into the cafeteria one morning, Nadia added sadism on underlings to the list of the invading she’d killed Weber for.
The quintet had their own nightly lessons, with Weber or another officer taking Haydn and Melchior meeting with Nadia in the greenhouse. Brannon was asked multiple times to be investigated, and while he obliged, Natalia followed behind every time. Gershwin prayed the night away, and Samuel—surely feeling out of place on a blimp of flesh artisans—wandered the ship aimlessly. Nadia managed not to run to him, and he managed to do the same.
But the zip-trip came to an end, and while the group stopped for a night of partying in Warsaw—amounting to fast-brewing their own booze, wine, and liquor—they arrived at the front all the same. A forest of towering trees rose several thousand feet into the sky in front of the parked blimp, each one a spear aimed at Fried and his children. 15,000 feet up! Nadia marveled as she looked through the computerized windows and their readouts. How far down does it go?
Something slimy scratched lightly at her ankle before another one joined it, followed by another scratching at her calf. Before she could kick them away, a hand rested on her shoulder, and Nadia spun quickly to see Natalia behind her. “Oh, did I startle you?” Natalia asked softly.
Nadia nodded. “Just a little bit, but I am fine. Did you sleep well?” Nadia asked, somehow resisting the urge to add my daughter. By Fried, it’d eat her before the panthers or the moles ever got a chance.
Natalia shook her head. “No. Franz was waiting with the knight who asked to poke around in Brannon last night,” she said with an entire lesson’s worth of venom. “Needless to say, I left him with another eleven curses.”
“How?” Nadia asked quietly, looking around for anybody Franz might have hired to listen in. “We were in zip?”
“Nadia Nadia Nadia,” Natalia said with a sigh. “When you have the money that the Kruggs do, you can achieve a great many things such as finding a zip tub and splicing yours onto it.”
Nadia blinked several times. An interceptor? Those are just plot devices, they can’t actually be real. Natalia’s visage showed no sign of exaggeration or deception, and Nadia figured if anyone had access to something like an interceptor, it would be her and her family. “We will have to be on the lookout for any knights looking at you weird.”
Natalia nodded. “He very well could have the whole blimp in his pocket, and”—Natalia glanced around her—“we still need to get your guy.”
Nadia smiled. “So begins our sixth month hunt. You have brought me battle, and I will bring you victory,” she said.
Natalia grinned. “To you I will always bring victory,” she said before giving Nadia a curtsy with an invisible dress. “My most ghoulish matron.”
Nadia blushed. “I think we should be meeting our squad,” Nadia said before moving toward the hangar, “in whatever shambling state they’re in.”
The rest of their quintet awaited them, already covered in their mountains of green ceramic. Brannon and Haydn swayed in small circles as they stood, still drunk off last night’s revelry, while Gershwin was predictably statuesque in his stillness. Nadia had pushed herself with ten large steins of ale—three more than Tobias could ever drink—but stopped there. As ghoulish as she was, she was still a lady, and ladies did not get shitfaced, especially on the eve of battle. A year ago, she may have deafened Haydn and Brannon for being so stupid, but realized such a thunderous lecture would win her no friends in Second, whose bodies had evolved to handle much worse poisons.
“Are you with us today?“ Natalia asked. “Or are you still crawling to us from last night?“
“Pretty shure”—Haydn hiccuped—“pretty sure we’re standing right here in front of you,” he managed to say before hiccuping again. “Right Bran-bran?”
Nadia anad Natalia both arched a brow.Either Brannon didn’t notice the nickname or he didn’t mind it. “Yea, we’re here alright, which is odd, because I only vaguely remember being in the greenhouse.” He touched his chest-plate curiously. I guess at some point I got dressed and came here,” he said before turning to Natalia. “How do I look? I think my girlfriend is nearby. Do I look hideous?”
Natalia chuckled. “Oh you look hideous, but in an oddly cute way, like a pug.”
“Do girls like pugs?” Brannon whispered.
The heiress shrugged. “I have one named Cyclops or Si for short.”
“Is he cute?” Brannon asked. Nadia and Haydn shot each other a glance and a shrug.
“He’s—”
Before Natalia could further their little game, Weber strode past them. “Follow me, we’re assembling on the floor,” he said as he passed.
Once they were gathered again, Weber cleared his throat. “Normally, Kriegers battalions are formed of 160 squads of six, with the remaining 64 serving as specialists and reserves. However, with the the squires here, we will form squads of five led by a knight, to help avoid mistakes,” he said, drawing a chuckle from his knights Mistakes apparently meant exposure to HF by the squires, something she had seen the knights do for time.
The knights broke from the their spots al picked the nearest group of squires. Luckily, Melchior found their little quintet and put himself at the center. “Figured I’d put pick you since we’ve already met. That”—he glanced at Haydn—“and wanted to get Weber’s little protege for myself.”
“And not me?” Nadia asked with a pout.
Melchior sighed. “You too, but I doubt we’re going to be doing much cataloging while we’re down on the ground. Although”—he shrugged casually—“I suppose it will be a bit like gardening, pulling weeds and all that.“
The squads loaded into the large tilt-rotor helicopters, five knights and their squires to a vehicle. Their armor was lighter than those of Tenth—worryingly so—and sported a dark green paint job. Unlike the card-stackers and plastic fort makers in that more noble order, the ships had several white and black snakes painted onto the side, their forms running over one another like camouflage.
The blimp must have scared off the anti-air defenses for the day, and while this should have comforted Nadia, she knew they’d be back for round two. With a forest this big, there has to be a thousand anti-air guns below that canopy, Nadia reasoned. And while we cannot see them, they are climbing the trees and calling shots to their friends below. We are sitting ducks.
“If you’re looking for them, you won’t find them,” Melchior said. “We‘ve already cleared out the first twenty miles around the spoke foundation sites. It’s beyond that little cordon where the action is gonna happen—“he grinned”—where the fun is going to happen.”
“And when it comes, it is going to come like a trillion punches to the face,” Brannon said, drawing scattered nods.
“You serve out east before?”
Brannon nodded. “Twelve tours. I think I left my other eye behind in one of them.”
Melchior chuckled. “I’ll send word to the others to be on the lookout. Glad to be back out here instead of that freezing hell in Friedstadt?”
Brannon nodded. “And the freezing hell up north.”
Melchior’s eyes widened. “So you were with Captain Klauss, were you? Heard that front was casting hot from start to finish.”
“It was service, simple as that,” Nadia said. “While we could beg for an easier assignment, there are no beggars in Atlas. We are the Ironclad’s hands, and we serve through slag and steel.”
Melchior smiled, a thin line breaking up his glassy features. “Wise words if I’ve ever heard any.” He stood up. “Did you all hear that?” he bellowed out. “We serve through slag and steel.“
Gershwin raised his hand slowly, as if debating doing so with every inch. “It is the job of the Volkswaffen to shield Atlas from the horrors of the universe, and it is the job of the knights and squires to shield them.” He stood as well. “We must remember that ours is a just lord, the most just. He is not cruel in peace and amongst the lords of our enemies, he is the only one who knows mercy in war. As such, we must view these beasts not as our sworn enemies, but as children born outside of Fried’s light. We must not be cruel to the conquered, for while life and death flow through us, it is our lord’s glory and grace that transcends all.”
“Yea!” someone called out, stopping Gershwin for only a moment.
“This war and this city give us the opportunity to show that grace to the universe, to show that ours is the proper path, of virtue and glory, rather than barbarism and cruelty. As the Ironclad’s strongest and most faithful hands it is our job to ensure that this vision is both achieved and actualized,” Gershwin finished before he straightened himself. “Dein Wille ist unser, es wird geschehen!”
“Dein Wille ist unser, es wird geschehen!” the cabin echoed back, Nadia loudest amongst them. He is back! Our priest is back! Nadia told herself as she embraced her long-lost friend.
When they parted, Melchior strode to the center of the cabin. “Great words, my friend. It would do well if you all took them to heart. We may be life and death given form and armor, but it is our lord’s glory that guides us all, glory that the beasts below will soon know well. Never forget this.”
A few minutes later, the ship came in view of the new city, or at least the start of it. The spoke swallowed up the horizon, far wider and taller than both docks of the nameless city combined. It was as if a wall had suddenly appeared and demanded that nothing else be looked at, and Nadia didn’t even know how much of the spoke she was seeing. Ten degrees, maybe? Five? So this is a spoke, Nadia thought as she pressed her face to the window in a most unladylike manner.
The trees stopped abruptly as the foundations of the fledgling city pushed against them, with several crews of men and machine buzzing about. While Nadia tried to count the crews, she soon lost count and gave up, content to just look out the window.
Eventually, the pilot found whatever glade he was looking for and landed, depositing the knights and their squires onto the forest floor. “Just a little bit more,” Melchior said before he began to trek into the forest, a line of grumbling squires behind him.
A faint mewling accompanied each step through the forest and Nadia found herself constantly scanning the darkness above her. There were large cats above her, surely, all wanting a piece of the butcher who had traipsed through their forest months prior. Nadia had no such plan of giving it to them. If they wanted her, they could take her from Fried’s cold dead hands.
A growl rolled through the forest, as if each tree were a small cilium on its lungs and throat. “Ah, so you come back here to me,” a deep, gravelly voice said. “Come here to butcher my sacred blood and babes again, have you? We are ready, and the trees will wear your corpse like a coat,” the voice said before a wind blew through the forest and scattered it.
My lord, Nadia prayed as she walked, Third Saints, bless your servant with the discernment to see the path you have set for her, so that she may bring your glorious light to this abyssal glade. Let your enemies be known to her, and let your judgement and justice be swift. Dein Wille ist unser, es wird geschehen, Nadia finished before deciding to add the mottos of Second and Third, Leben und Tod durchströmen un, durch Schatten und Klinge.
Life and death flow through us, by shade and by blade. It has a certain ring to it, Nadia thought as she tried the motto of Fourth, the bulky Sturmbataillon, only to find that it didn’t quite fit. It seems I will need to study Deimos’ writings further.
If the beseeched saints had anything to say regarding her prayer or her theory, they did not make their thoughts known, nor did Fried. I suppose once this city is constructed, I will have a better connection, Nadia told herself.. Wait for me my lord, for when this dreadful canopy is cast aside, I will be the first of your servants in the light.
Melchior’s march stopped as Nadia completed her prayers to the individual saints, and she knew the extra words were well spent. Arranged like a fan were twelve clusters of tents—five tents each—with the he path from the forest forming its handle. “A Fächer der Hände,” Melchior said as they strolled up to the neck of the fan. “Not often that we get to work as twelve, but it’s always good to see everyone again,” he said before adding under his breath, “except for those creeps in Fifth.”
“Were you not in Fifth?” Nadia asked.
Melchior nodded. “And I left for—“
He froze when a red body emerged from the forest’s shadow and put its hand on his shoulder. “Melchior,” the red knight sang eerily, her snow-white skin, brittle black hair, and symmetrical face buttressing her haunting beauty. “It has been so long since I’ve seen you. Who would have thought it would be here?”
Melchior winced and turned around, plastering a smile on his face as he did so. “Ilse, can’t say I expected to see you here,” he said before turning back to his charges. “This is Ilse Gabor, sergeant in Fifth and one of the few synaptic rippers I have had the fortune of meeting in addition to being my former boss two orders ago.”
Nadia’s eyes widened and it was all she could do to keep her jaw attached. A synaptic ripper? Does our lord employ these storybook villains as well? she wondered, already knowing the answer. They were another arm in the wall of flesh that her lord needed, another hand.
“Oh, what a time we had,” Ilse sang, her voice somewhere between a coo and a hiss. “You know, Lord Deimos will have you anytime you want to come back.”
Melchior chuckled, a mirthless thing that was all air. “I’m well aware, his messages are persistent. Me and Ilse here had the fortune of learning at the foot of the Fifth Saint.”
“What did you learn under him?” Nadia blurted, part out of curiosity for the saints and part hoping Melchior might spill some eldritch truth.
Ilse perched both of her hands on Melchior’s shoulder as she turned to Nadia. “I would tell you”—she grinned—“but then I would have to kill you. What the Gehirnschlächter do is only the business of Deimos and our enemies, and of the latter it is not for long.” Nadia looked immediately to the side of Ilse, lest they lock eyes for a fraction of a second. Maybe Ilse couldn’t cast her spells with only a gaze—oh who are we kidding?—but Nadia wasn’t going to test her assumption. “Well, Melchior, I look forward to working with you and your squires. Maybe we can do a little joint exercise between our charges?” she said before leaning in and whispering, “or just us.”
Melchior shuddered. “I’ll have to see where I’ll be and then get back to you. Who’s in charge of the knights here anyway? Weber wouldn’t say.”
“Because he knew you wouldn’t like it,” Ilse sang.
Melchior paled. “No, not him,” he muttered.
Ilse nodded sadly. “Victor Lafleur, Commander of Eighth.” The squires bounced wide eyed glances and hushed mutterings between them. “Don’t act so surprised,” Ilse said with a dismissive wave. “This is to be a large city, so of course they’ll send at least one commander.”
“Yea, but why that bag of penises?” Melchior whined. “Are there any other commanders? Any other officers that I should know about?”
Ilse shook her head. “No more commanders, but I’m sure with you being you that you can find some new enemies in the officer class here, but”—she sighed—“I must be getting back to my own squires to lecture them on the finer points of displaying bodies,” she said before disappearing back into the shadows.
“Can I go to that lesson?” Brannon asked as soon as Ilse had left.
Melchior shook his head. “No, you’ll have time enough in your tours to play with them and trust me when I say that six months with Fifth is more than plenty,” he said before waving his hand over the collection of green tents. “Pick a tent and get settled in. We’ll have assignments and sorties for you all in a few hours,” Melchior said before trudging to the center of the camp.
With only a backpack, rifle, and pistol, unpacking was quick. As soon as he set down his backpack, Haydn ran off with a smaller satchel he had brought, Brannon tagged after him—which Nadia supposed counted as supervision—and Natalia ran off to see some Krieger friends, leaving Nadia and Gershwin alone with their prayers. “That was a good speech you gave today,” Nadia said sometime later.
Gershwin glanced up at her and nodded before straightening himself. “You remember my rules from the first phase?”
Nadia’s remembered the tundra well—how could she not?—but to bring it up here, several hundred million light years away, made it feel centuries ago. Would she remember it in centuries? Millennia? You will forget them, forget this, Vogel had told her. “Yes, I think I do,” Nadia said softly.
“Then you should know that even when we are knights, we are still to be pure, to turn from unnecessary violence.”
You are right, Gershwin, you are so right, but so foolishly wrong, Nadia wanted to say, to tell him of what Fried had told her. Instead, she merely nodded again and jostled his shoulder and said, “I wish the universe did not make it so necessary for cruelty,” she said before continuing her prayers. My lord and all of his saints, bless your servant Gershwin with all of the virtues that are your domain, so that his heart may stay true in the darkness and that your will may be known to him. Dein Wille ist unser, es wird geschehen.
“Nadia,” Gershwin said hoarsely sometime later, as if each word was flaking off his throat. “I have faltered,” he continued before Nadia even turned to look at him. “In that trial of nanites months ago, I faltered. There was so much blood and so much death, that I nearly left you that night. I was weak.”
Nadia threw her arms around him, his gauntness and her gangly arms making the task easy. “You are not weak, Gershwin. Anybody would have reacted that way.”
“Why, Nadia?” he cried as his once doughy head sank into her chest. “What is our lord so afraid of that he must use that?”
The Ventracarii, Samuel, the voice of the north and so many other topics lingered on Nadia’s tongue, begging for release lest they blow out her cheek. “Gershwin, we are the shield of Atlas, the sword against the dark. She sighed. “We just never knew hell would be so big.”
Gershwin gripped Nadia’s forearm like a life raft and burrowed his head deeper into her plate carrier. Nadia wished to be rid of it, if only to give Gershwin whatever softness she still had. “I killed”—he took several deep breaths—“a child, Nadia,” he confessed before emerging from his shell to look into Nadia’s eyes. “Is the darkness a child, crying and unable to even fire his gun at me? Is that the dark we must push back?”
Nadia rubbed her nose against the top of his head and patted his broad shoulder blades. “Gershwin, you think I did not see the children too? That I have not known this death intimately? We are warriors, yes, but we need not fight like the warriors of the past. You made a mistake, a quick, and great, and horrible mistake. But we can be merciful, we must be merciful. Even if there are just five of us, or even just you and me, we must do so. For the universe, this cruel and dark universe, to know mercy, we must first show it how.”
Gershwin climbed further out of his shell. “You are with me?”
Nadia nodded and managed a tear-streaked smile. “Always. I am always with you, as you have always been with me.”
Gershwin fell forward into another hug as Nadia caught him. “Thank you,” he whispered. “By Fried and all of the saints, thank you.”
Nadia said nothing and let him linger for a moment before a loud horn rolled over the camp. “I think they are calling muster.”
At the center of the camp stood a tall knight in the stormy grey armor of Eighth, inlaid with jagged streaks of nickel. His chin length white wisps were silver linings to the cape he wore below, a thick black mass off silk that churned and billowed from some far off wind. Like all knights of Eighth he was on the skinnier side, but the shifting lightning on his armor cast off the frailty, replaced with nimbleness and dexterity.
A large shuttle bike rose to his navel, covered in a carapace of dark grey plates, with two machine guns at the front serving as mandibles. Its exposed engine grumbled like thunder and sparked the occasional arc of lightning, as if powered by a storm. Looking upon its owner, Nadia felt a force tug at her knees that she could only barely resist. He was not a commander; he was the storm itself. Nadia considered for a brief moment whether polytheism—that damned pagan thing—was really so bad, and whether or not Fried would let her worship another.
When the last of the officers arrived, Victor spoke. “As Commander of Eighth, it is my pleasure to welcome you all to Welpenstadt!”
Cheers went up from the assembled knights and squires, but beside her Nadia could hear Gershwin grind his teeth into each other, like a rope about to neck. She needn’ta sk why. Welpenstadt, pup city. With just a word, he has forced them back into their burrows to dig until the last, and it will be us who clears them out!
“Like me, you have been brought here by Fried so that the Ironclad‘s grace may reach further east. We to drive these pagans from their communes. For that is what they are, communal pagans who know nothing of civility. We are our lord’s shield against the dark and his blade plunging into it, and we will make his will known here as we would on any other battlefield. I ask of you only that you are as cold as ice, and unflinching in your resolve as a glacier. Know that the task before us is holy, and that you walk in righteousness and virtue, all twelve and beyond. Dein Wille ist unser, es wird geschehen!”
“Dein Wille ist unser, es wird geschehen!” the gathered soldiers sang back.
“Reite den Blitz! Reite!” Victor barked, using a bit of alterism to thicken the air and give his voice the power of a thousand thunderclaps.
Several knights and their squires barked back the motto of Eighth, while others shouted the motto of their own orders. As loud as Victor had been, his shout was nothing compared to booming chants of Seventh—literally thunderborn—who waited until the others had finished their pitiful calls to issue their own. Like a line of artillery, their chant shook the earth and parted the sky, filling the air with deafening ripples.
Victor rubbed his nose and sighed. “Well, Seventh is clearly with us, if anybody was wondering,” he said before nodding at Seventh’s officer. “Meyer, good to see as you as always. Same for you Gabor—“he nodded at Ilse”— and for those I don’t know, I’ll be sure to acquaint myself with you in time.”
“Don’t waste your time on me, I won’t mind,” Melchior mumbled.
“Say something Albrecht?” Victor asked with a knowing smile.
“You heard me,” Melchior called as he stepped forward. “Let’s all try to get along and remember that even as we are one, we are also twelve, and that the purpose of these tours is to educate the squires in the operation of their assigned orders.”
Victor gave him another nod. “Just keep your little potions under control and we’ll be fine,” he said before turning back to Ilse and pointing a finger at her, itself a thin pillar of storm, “and you, no scaring the squires like last time.”
Ilse merely straightened herself and turned up her chin, like a soldier at attention. “I make no promises as to how my work or my lessons will affect the squires.”
Victor rubbed his temples. “Alright, rest of the knights, you have a new duty of watching Sergeant Gabor and making sure that she doesn’t get a new suit of armor anytime soon, at least not from us.”
Ilse only smiled.