Guns of the Temple (The Polaris Chronicles Book 1)
Read Guns of the Temple (The Polaris Chronicles Book 1) Online
Authors: Bryan Choi,E H Carson
Contents
Guns of the Temple
Bryan Choi & Erica Carson
Copyright © Bryan Choi & Erica Carson
All rights reserved.
Guns of the Temple
is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are a product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.
Published by Delphinium Press, LLC.
To Domo
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Shay, Whitney, Greg, and Colby for being my beta readers and providing feedback. You told me what was good, what was stupid, and what deserved death by dog pits. I received help and inspiration from the Frequency writers’ community in Providence, RI, and from the gamers of Ninpocho Chronicles. I will always be grateful to Jason Yarn for his time and valuable insights. And finally, I couldn’t have done any of this without the skill, love, and sick burns of my coauthor, Erica. – Bryan
Thanks to everyone who encouraged me to stick with it, especially the Thunderdome team. Double thanks to my inimitable parents, abeonim, and eomeonim for encouraging and supporting our efforts. – Erica
The Polaris Chronicles:
Guns of the Temple
Swords of the Imperium
Prince of Maladies (Fall 2016)
Knives of the Ring (Winter 2016)
Taki chewed the cuticle of his thumbnail as he scanned the river of fighters that wound slow and dusty around where he crouched. Nearly every able-bodied squad and company was headed toward the gates of the Cloud Temple. From there, the men and women would start their marches north to relieve their peers from months of restless vigil against the Imperial hordes. But Taki was not part of this congregation—at least not today. Instead, he was on the lookout for a deserter from his squad: a senior corporal who had lost his mind and was now trying to make a run for it.
Draco Emreis, you stupid ass,
Taki thought.
I haven’t even met you and you’re already ploughing my career.
Unexpected pain made him realize he had bitten a bleeding divot into the root of the nail. Taki sucked at the wound and chastised himself. Biting was a nervous habit he had picked up even before academy training, with multiple bouts of remission and relapse. Until today things had been going well and his fingers had begun to heal. He had graduated third in his class and had been promised a rare posting in the capital. There, he would have worn white livery with braids and brass buttons and have had little chance of seeing combat. But he had turned the job down, and in just a few hours of post-academy life his fingers looked like raw bark again. Two weeks of disciplined progress undone.
“Newboy! Are you blind or just slacking off?” Hadassah snarled. “He’s approaching you now.
Next to the cornet in red brigandine!”
Taki winced. Though she was actually meters away in a steeple overlooking the street, the effect of the
Phon
sutra made it seem as if she was yelling right in his ear.
“My name’s Taki,” he muttered.
“I don’t
care.
Go stop Draco or we’re really in the shit.”
“What does corporal Emreis even look like?”
Hadassah grunted with displeasure. “Muscular, dirty blonde hair. Tall,” she said.
“Can you be more specific?”
“He’s
pretty
. Now go!”
Taki clenched his jaw and continued to scan the crowd. Garish standards proudly flapped in the wind atop pikes and splashed color against the dust. Light glinted from polished helms and mail armor. A cart loaded with cannon and shot pushed its way through, accompanied by cursing and spitting from driver and pedestrian alike. He found the cornet wearing red brigandine.
Hadassah was right about the man next to the officer. Draco
was
a pretty specimen, with blonde hair, high cheekbones, and thick calves. He chatted gaily but his smile was forced and he glanced backwards too often, as if aware that his squadmate had him in the sights of her crossbow. Taki hopped off the boxes he’d been sitting on and started to make his way forward.
“I just realized,” Taki said. “He has no idea who I am. Won’t that be a problem?”
“That’s why we put you on the street. He’s less apt to run away,” Lotte said.
Taki’s back stiffened at the sound of her voice, though she was also far away. Lotte was a regimental captain and the leader of his squad. He had met her only a short time before, and she had immediately ordered him to search the Temple grounds for Draco. Strangely, she did not seem to have lieutenants, and had issued commands to Hadassah and Taki directly the entire time. “Just keep him occupied for a bit,” she continued. “We’ll nab him soon.”
“Yes, Captain,” Taki said.
He slowly shook his head. Depending on the circumstances, an attempt at desertion usually earned a heavy flogging followed by hanging. It was easy to understand Draco’s motivation, and hard to sympathize with him. Taki had never wanted to be a polaris of the Temple in the first place, but the fact that he could use what the alchemists called
prana
gave him no other choice. Everyone, especially polaris, knew that they were dangerous and unfit for life on the outside. It was their just penance to be confined to the Temple and atone for centuries of sin by fighting for the Argead Dominion. If Draco couldn’t accept that then he deserved what he got.
Scenarios ran through Taki’s head for how he would distract his target. He could always be rude and try to entice Draco into fisticuffs. Or pretend to be an old acquaintance in need of a loan. Or just flirt with the man. The latter option made Taki fuzzy in his stomach, anxious that perhaps Draco would simply scoff at and dismiss his smile.
A Dominion priest grabbed his wrist and Taki glared. One of the many pestilences afflicting the Temple was the sheer number of vagrant ascetics who trolled the streets exhorting for holy war and begging for alms. Hitting them was frowned upon, as was refusing to donate. Taki tried to wrest his limb away but the wizened priest held firm.
“I bless thee, brave polaris!” The priest swung his censer dangerously close to Taki’s face. Thick, fragrant smoke washed over his hair and caused him to cough. “Know that it is
not
a sin to kill the degenerate sodomites of the Osterbrand Imperium! They serve none other than Shaitan Himself in the guise of man.”
“Thank you, Father, but I cannot stay here,” Taki said.
“
Payment,
dear son. I have given thee my blessing!”
“I didn’t ask for it!”
“It is thy
duty
to repay God for thy destruction of His earthly kingdom! Just one bullet will do.”
Draco was about to pass by. Hurriedly, Taki dug his free hand into his belt pouch and thrust a steel-cased .25 caliber round in the priest’s face. The holy man smiled jaggedly, snapped up the cartridge, and let go. Taki swore under his breath and turned just in time to almost collide with his target. He tried to fake a familiar grin but it came out as a grimace instead. Draco cursed, turned on his heels, and dashed away into a side alley.
“He’s running!” Taki snapped, forgetting how loud the sutra amplified his voice for the recipient. He could almost
feel
Hadassah recoil.
“Ow! Not so loud, damn you!”
Taki bounded after his target over hastily-overturned bales of trash. Draco had already begun to climb to the rooftops near the far end, and swung from jutting pipe to protruding brick with practiced grace.
Prana-enhanced physique. An Achilles,
Taki realized.
I can’t match him for speed or strength, but that means he’s probably not a good caster.
“Slow him down. Attack him if you have to. I’m almost there!” Lotte shouted.
Taki thrust a hand forward and opened his prana gates wide. He was a decent swordsman and a passable shot with a firelock, but his real talent, rare even among his kind, was elemental channeling. Under any other circumstances he would have been flogged for using destructive sutra on Temple grounds, but his captain had ordered it.
“Khala!”
he intoned. A biting chill enveloped his arm and frosted his fingertips. Pressurized air lanced forward and hit his target squarely in the back. Draco slammed face-first into stucco, lost his footing, and tumbled to the ground. Taki froze. He hadn’t intended to make Draco fall from such a height. He hadn’t intended to break his senior corporal’s neck.
Like a cat, Draco twisted a meter off the ground and landed splayed on all fours. The cobbles under his feet and fingertips cracked and the air shimmered against a dusty corona. He hopped to his feet and drew a fighting iron. Invented by the Chung Kuo far to the east, the kau sin ke was a brutal and yet simple device: three solid bars of steel jointed together with a single chain link between them, a leather-wrapped handle, and a nasty bludgeoning end. Draco whirled the spiked head in the air so fast that it became a blur, and slowly advanced.
Taki backed away in terror. He had a knife sheathed at his side, but was not wearing armor or a helm. He could attempt to use sutras, but against an agile opponent in close quarters he was dead. A rifle would have been useful, but those were all locked away.
“Skipping the court-martial and going straight for the execution, are we?” Draco growled.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to hit so hard.” Taki said. He extended his hands in surrender. “I’m in your squad. The captain told me to stop you. I’m just following her orders!”
“
My
squad? I’ve never seen you before.”
“My name is Taki Natalis. A corporal, like you. I just joined today.”
“A likely story, that.”
“It’s true!” Taki paused and jammed a hand against his right ear. “Look, Hadassah is telling me to tell you to stop being a damned potato or she’ll put one in your left nut. I’m sorry! These are
her
words, not mine.”
Draco frowned, but his menace melted away quickly.
“I just can’t win, can I?” he said. “The captain’s close by, isn’t she?”
“Will you put down your iron?” Taki asked.
“Oh, right. Sorry,” Draco caught the swinging end of the kau sin ke, folded the bars together, and holstered it at his waist. “Just so you know, I wasn’t
actually
going to attack you. Just wanted you to run away.”
Taki exhaled. “It’s fine. I’m sorry I went too far with the sutra.”
“So you’re new, eh? It’s been a while since we’ve had a fresh face.”
“Why did you try to desert?”
“It’s a long story, but I’ll tell you if you’ve got the time.”
Lengths of weighted rope cut the air with a whooshing sound, wrapped around Draco’s torso, and squeezed the wind from him. Taki whirled around just in time to see a woman charge past and tackle the hapless corporal to the ground. She rolled him onto his back, drew back a fist, and punched him in the face. Blood spurted from his nostrils onto the cobblestones.
“Stupid bastard!” Lotte huffed. She rose to her feet and wiped her knuckles on the hem of her blouse.
“Captain?” Taki asked, grimacing in awe.