Guns of the Temple (The Polaris Chronicles Book 1) (2 page)

“Hey, want me to plug him? Just a flesh wound?” Hadassah asked. She strode into the alley with her crossbow leveled at Draco’s leg.

“Did anyone follow us? Did anyone see?” Lotte asked.

Hadassah looked back at the street and shook her head.

“Thank God,” Lotte whispered. She lifted Draco to his knees by the front of his gambeson and fixed her steely eyes on his watery orbs. “Corporal Emreis. Do you know that the punishment for desertion is death?”

He nodded. Taki held his breath. Hadassah spat.

“I own your ass,”
Lotte growled. “
I
, not
you,
decide when you live or die.
Is that clear?
”

“Yes, Captain,” Draco gasped.

“Good,” she said with an unexpectedly sweet smile. She drew him forward, as if to plant a kiss, and slammed her forehead into his with a dull thud. His eyes rolled back into his head and he went limp. Lotte let him down gently before turning to Taki and Hadassah. “Natalis and Mikkelsen, get him back to quarters and chain him to the radiator. If he complains, stab him. Then report to the kitchens for regular duty. We’ve fallen behind thanks to these shenanigans. Natalis, I hope you’re good at peeling potatoes.”

Days later, Draco seemed to hold no animosity toward his compatriots for the earlier beating. Rather, the discussion had turned to the Ursalans, whose skirmishes with the Dominion had ended under terms of armistice only a year ago.

“So what would you do in my place, then?” Draco asked Taki with a grin. “You’ve got a chevalier taking a piss with his back turned and all you have is a rusty dirk. If he cries out, his squires will rip your guts out through your bunghole. Your rifle’s gone tits up, and just as a bonus, you’re
naked.
” He stabbed a potato with his peeling knife for emphasis. The chain between his manacled ankles clinked merrily on the floor.

Severed carotid: five seconds till incapacitation and twelve seconds till death,
Taki thought.
Heart strike: near-instant death depending on depth of cut, but access from the back highly limited by ribs and vertebrae.

This place smells. I wish I were out fighting somebody.

“Wait, you were
naked,
too?” Hadassah groaned. “If I’d known I’d
definitely
have blown your cover.”

“Spiteful much? I had
circumstances.
Anyway, your answer, Natalis?”

“I’d slice his throat.” Taki shifted in his seat and mimed grabbing a target from behind and drawing a knife from ear to ear. “It’s the standard takedown, right?”

“That’s what everyone thinks, but it doesn’t
work
on a real person.” Draco waggled a finger at Taki. “They’ll bite you when you try to muffle ‘em, and it’s easy to slash yourself instead. Happened to me.” He tapped the back of his left hand. Purple scar tissue snarled between two knuckles and his small finger did not extend all the way as the others did.

“But what else can you do? Won’t the target make too much noise?” Taki asked. He reached into the tub in front of him and took out another potato to peel. Number two hundred forty for the day.

“Not if you go for the kidney. It’ll cause so much pain that all they can do is gasp. And it’s better if you step on the back of the knee. Make them fall onto the blade.” Draco wiped his brow with the hem of his shirt before also reaching for a potato and setting to work on it.

“It has to be a
quick
thrust, though,” Hadassah said. She jabbed the air with her peeling knife and slapped the opposite hand against her thrusting arm for effect. “You can’t expect someone to stay still while you inch it into him.”

“She’s right about that. Oh, and another thing, too. Just because you’ve put a man’s eye out doesn’t mean he’s done for. I stabbed a Templar right in the socket and the bastard nearly put a mace in my skull. You need to open an artery.”

“Yeah, and wherever you go, make sure you stab a few times after that, or at least twist around a bit,” Hadassah added. “All you virgins think it’s just ‘stick in once and leave it.’ You have to be
vigorous
to satisfy your partner.”

“Now you’re just being disgusting.”

“And you’re being a spoiled princess. If we don’t show this kid how to do things properly he’ll make us all look bad. What is he, like a day out from the academy?” She dug a potato eye out and flicked it across the room.

“Eight days,” Taki said, to her great disregard.

“The
best
place to go is right here and stab down,” she continued, pushing a finger against the base of his throat. There, the top of his breastbone made a deep valley underneath surprisingly thin skin and her poke induced nausea. “No one ever bothers to wear a gorget, so it’s like you’re sticking a pig. You’ve done that, right?”

“Er, I… No.”

“Really? How useless are you? Are you some rich merchant’s kid? Did you have servants licking your-”

“Dassa, lay off him,” Draco said. “He just wanted to hear about when we were fighting the Ursalans. And I was having fun telling him. Especially since we’re never going to battle again.”

“
Don’t!
Don’t remind me of that.”

“Right. Sorry.” Draco cleared his throat and was silent.

An involuntary frown crossed Taki’s face. His senior’s words were only the latest additions to the mounting strangeness of his life since graduation. Like how the first time he had met Draco was during the man’s attempt to desert. Or how Lotte seemed to be stuck peeling potatoes alongside her grunts. Or how they had spent all of their time in the kitchens rather than in battle rotation like every other company of foot in the Temple. His reservations finally overwhelmed, he raised a hand. After a few silent heartbeats he put it down when he realized the others were staring at him. This wasn’t the academy anymore.

“Sorry, Emreis. What did you say about never seeing action again?” Taki asked, trying not to seem embarrassed. “Aren’t we at war right now?”

The others exchanged a look.

“Is he an idiot?” Hadassah groaned. “I thought we didn’t take the touched ones.”

“Wait a second. Captain, haven’t you told him?” Draco asked.

“I thought the Major did. Or that one of you lot would,” Lotte said.

“You
had
to bring it up, Draco!” Hadassah buried her face in her hands.

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t told
anything,
” Taki said, shrugging helplessly. Sweat stung his eyes and his stomach turned. What sort of hidden taboo had he just brazenly exposed?

The door to their sweltering storeroom opened. Though the air it brought in was redolent of grease, it was at least somewhat cooler. A scullion stepped in to grab the potato bowl and replace it with an empty one, not bothering to acknowledge Taki and the others. It was enough of a reprieve that Draco could take in a breath and compose his thoughts.

“We had to tell him eventually, Dassa. Okay, Natalis, I’ll start from the beginning. You remember what happened to Berlin?”

“Sorry, what does Berlin have to do with anything?”

“Humor me.”

“Okay, Berlin. Didn’t their king torch it just ‘cause?”

“You’re oversimplifying it. What really happened was that a few years ago, the Sanctissimus Rex Ursalus looks over the maps and concludes that the Imperials will end up banging down the walls in less than a year. They’d already sacked Krakow and Gdansk a few months before, so the Capital was next up for a siege. But if there’s anything the Ursalans hate more than us, it’s the asiatic horde. So, the Rex orders half his godrotting army to the sole task of bringing every single tire in the land to the capital-”

“Wait, you mean those ancient dark orbs that spawn bloodsuckers?”

“Yes, those. Back before the Fall, everyone wore at least four tires on their person when leaving the home. Kind of like a codpiece, hat, and bodice all in one. Anyway, the Rex has his men pile all the tires up till every single city block was about a man’s height deep. Then he has it all set on fire.”

“That’s an odd choice for fuel.”

“No, tires burn
forever
. That’s why it’s called ‘The Great Tirefire of Berlin,’ because the most glorious city of the old world—the
only
place untouched by the mushroom clouds of the Fall—will still be a flaming rubber crematorium long after we’re all dead.”

“I thought the Ursalans called it ‘The Beacon of Triumphant Strength’ or something.”

“Well, they
do
, it’s just that everyone else calls it what it really is. Regardless, it turns out to be amazingly effective at stopping the enemy. The million-strong Liberation Army of the Osterbrand Imperium sees this gigantic smoke column in the sky and just
stops
. They’ve been laying around in Silesia cradling their manhoods ever since.”

“Why can’t they just...go around the thing?”

“Beats me. Maybe they have some kind of deep-seated fear of fire? Or maybe they felt like the Rex was too much of a mad dog to fight? After all, this is a guy who’ll turn the crown jewel of Queen Europa to molten rubber just to spite you.”

“Good point. So what does this have to do with us?”

“I’m about to get to that. You remember our basileus tried the same thing, right?”

“Yes, on Santorini.”

“Except we don’t have so many old tires lying around, so His Grace makes the legions find what they can and ferries them all to the island. They make a pile about twenty meters high or so and then light it on fire. It kills every fish in the sea for ten kilos and now the coast smells like burning hair.”

“‘The Triumphant Light of Argead Defiance.’”

“Also called ‘Tirefire the Lesser.’”

“Which is… Which is the name of this squad! I remember now. It was hidden in the papers that the Major had me sign. But isn’t that kind of
blasphemous?
Why is that even allowed?”

“Good, now you’re getting to the root of the problem. The basileus made
his
tire fire to show everyone how clever and strong he was—really had a lot of pride in the thing is what I’m told. But the Imperium just declared war on us the next week.”

“I thought they had a fear of burning rubber.”

“Maybe our fire wasn’t big enough? More likely, we’re just a small buffer state in between them and the Ursalans. Knock us aside, cross the Alps, and you’re in Versailles before you know it. Bottom line is, our squad’s name is a direct affront to our liege. I don’t think His Grace really knows about it, because otherwise we’d all be swinging on the gallows by now. But our exarch sure as hell does. The punishment for insolence is a flogging, but since no one has the guts to whip
that woman
...” Draco’s expression grew dark at the mention, “...we lowbies get the shaft instead.”

“So
that’s
why I’ve been doing nothing but peeling potatoes every day since I got here?”

“
You’ve
been peeling less than a week.
We’ve
been doing this for the last year.”

“The last
year?
When will this end?”

Draco arched an elegantly-manicured blonde eyebrow at his junior corporal, as if unsure whether to be derisive or sympathetic.

“Natalis, this won’t
end
. As long as our name is ‘Tirefire the Lesser,’ we’re stuck in the kitchens peeling potatoes from dawn to dusk, forever. We won’t sally forth to battle, and we certainly won’t partake of the spoils. Our lot is to suffer. I’ve lost so much skin off my fingers doing this crap that everyone in the Cloud Temple is now a cannibal, and I’m seriously thinking about ending it all.”

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to open a wound or anything,” Taki said.

“You say ‘sorry’ an awful lot. Look, it’s fine, I said too much,” Draco said, waving dismissively. “Honestly, we’re a bit surprised you waited this long to just
ask
us why your life went to shit for no reason.”

Taki let out a laugh which he quickly stifled. The last thing he had wanted was to make the burly man-at-arms start spouting off about bloody endings again, or try to escape. “I guess I didn’t want to make waves,” he said with resignation.

“I get it. You’re not a complainer. No wonder you got shanghaied into our squad. Weren’t you one of the top initiates this year?”

“I wasn’t at the bottom.”
But I
might as well have been,
he thought.

The academy had been a constant slew of fencing, shooting, sparring, and most onerously of all, hours submerged in lightless liquid meditation sucking air through a stingy tube. Most of his classmates were destined to end up dying in the mud of some horrid battlefield holding their guts in. Because of his talent, Taki had been pronounced as one of the rare students with an actual future. He was someone to keep far away from the front lines. With the luxury of hindsight, he now realized that turning down an offer to join the Praetorian Guard of the basileus had been foolish, but the woman—
that woman
—had made a very compelling argument at the time.