In the Crucible of Combat
He had dismissed the others almost immediately afterwards, daring no advice or reproach.
The crews had filed sullenly from the chamber, till the ringing of boots against marble shifted to the clatter of pounding against metal. The Cradle sang with movement, joyous to be inhabited by the myriad wayfarers of humanity.
It was a hollow joy. One Erastus could not share.
He stood alone in the Hall of Equals, let the quiet settle in around him, before exiting via a small servant’s antechamber. The station had many secrets beneath the observations of its masters, and in his years there Erastus had exploited many of them. The glamour of the high halls faded into the reassuring wreck of maintenance tunnels, their lume-strips flickering weakly. In places the light changed from the muted sodium yellow to the sharp red of emergency lumens. He had to duck into alcoves to avoid the mindless trudging of servitors, before he finally re-emerged into the common areas of the station.
The doors to the training halls were unlocked, and he stepped inside with the surety of purpose he had carried from the chambers above. It was a clean economical space; the walls bare stone girded with iron, with servitors lined before them. Each mechanical limb ended in a blade: hooked, curved, straight and long. He looked at them, judging each of the implements of death.
Erastus reached down and unhooked the plasma pistol from his belt, placing it gently upon a nearby ledge. He drew the power sabre, turning it in his hand. He felt its weight, unfamiliar and yet reassuring. The weapon glimmered as the light caught its edge, the blade of cold, pure metal; silvered, where its hilt was gilded. A weapon fit for a king. Handed down from one generation of Lamertines to the next.
‘You were never supposed to be my burden,’ he said softly. ‘I should never have had to carry you. But I do, so we might as well get acquainted with one another.’
The sword was called Bloodsong, and it was a relic of a bygone age. It had been his father’s. He hefted it, and stepped forward. The lights of the chamber shifted as it detected his presence. He took a deep breath, and centred himself.
‘Training cycle, pattern Sigma Omega.’
The servitors clattered, eye-lenses gleaming as they ratcheted up to combat readiness. Adrenal-jacks pushed their burning contents into the atrophied bloodstreams of the combat units, and they lurched forward. Blades scraped against the floor before suddenly snapping up, with the thunder of steel against steel. Erastus kept his sabre raised, watching their marionette movements as they jerked and shuddered towards him.
He moved before the first blade rotated round, primed to strike. He whirled left, bringing the sabre around to clatter against the first cyborg’s guard. There was a sudden alarm, and the machine’s jaw flapped with a spasmodic burbling of binary as it registered damage. He let himself grin as he spun between their strikes, ducking under the swipes of the swords. He pivoted, scoring Bloodsong down the chest armour of the next servitor. It reeled back with its own sirens of shock.
His father had taught him rudimentary combat, lessons of blade and shot in pale imitation of his sister. He remembered watching them from the edges of a chamber such as this: her effortless grace, her hair tied back in a dark bundle as she weaved and flowed through the melee. Their father’s eyes burning with something approaching pride, something so alien to Erastus as to be utterly unfamiliar.
He hesitated in the dance of swords and the blade-limb of a servitor clipped him, eliciting a cry of pain. He could feel the hot blood streaking his arm, soaking into his uniform. Erastus cursed, bringing the blade round in a vengeful arc. The servitor flinched back, joining the background radiation of wailing alarms. He gritted his teeth and stepped back. The clunking, plodding mechanical steps followed him, and he raised his guard. He caught one blade, turned it aside. The next slammed against his sabre, near the hilt. He almost dropped it.
‘Throne of…’ he muttered, pushing back against the servitor’s augmented strength. He could feel the sweat tracing its hot rivulets down his brow, along his spine, joining the blood in soiling his uniform. He held back from igniting the blade, content to let the stringent training protocols run their course.
‘If you die, then you die,’ his father had always said before training. ‘Better I lose you here, in practice, than you shame me on the field. After all…’
Erastus shook his head at the memory, before finishing his father’s long ago admonition.
‘After all,’ he grunted, and brought the sword round and across the side of the servitor’s head. Its joints snarled with feedback, but he turned the blade and let it slam back into the thing’s iron skull. ‘After all, your sister would never shame me so.’ He brought the sword back up, and then drove it down directly into its face. It sputtered erratically, then toppled backwards.
‘One way to exorcise your daemons,’ he heard someone say.
He turned to look at the speaker, as he wiped a hand across his brow. The servitors began to power down, and he sighed as he looked at them. Astrid Helvintr was smiling wryly, pale skin creased with paler scars. She did not move. She remained poised, echoing her mother’s animal grace. He had no doubt that she was aware of every vulnerability in this chamber, every crack she could exploit. He noted that her spear was absent, and was very aware of the unpowered blade still held in his hands. Still ready to do violence. He turned the sabre, and slid it back into the scabbard at his hip.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he said.
‘No.’ Astrid bared her teeth. ‘I probably shouldn’t, but here we are.’ She gestured around the chamber. ‘A fine place to hone your craft, or to begin to at the very least?’ She was taunting him, but he would not allow himself to rise to it.
‘I am no stranger to places such as these,’ he said. ‘I am my father’s son, if nothing else.’
‘Oh, indeed,’ she laughed. ‘Every inch the warrior prince! A Lamertine poet-king – no bluster, only blades. The stories you will write across the stars in blood and fire.’
‘You mock me,’ he stated dryly, and she beamed at that.
‘I do, but it is the way of things. The king is mocked by the wolves, no matter how well he rules, for they will always be at the edges, awaiting advantage.’
‘Is that what you’re doing? You and your mother? Prowling around the borders, like reavers in the old tales?’ He leant towards her, his hand back to resting on Bloodsong’s pommel. ‘You do yourself no favours, if you mean to set my mind at ease. You have supported me, and I appreciate that…’ He trailed off, and looked away from her. ‘But now I have to ask what you want, and what you intend.’
‘What we have always wanted,’ she said. ‘Men like you and your father may be the ones who sell the meat at market, but it is we who run the beasts down.’ She nodded to his sword. ‘It is good that you practise, though. The assassins who claimed your father may linger.’
‘Even when banished?’
‘Especially when banished!’ Her voice hitched as she spoke, as if scolding a child. ‘You think they will stop merely because you send them from your hearth?’ She grew quiet, and tense. ‘Assuming you have sent the right ones away.’
‘You doubt that it was the Astraneus?’
‘My mother and I, both,’ she said, smiling. ‘They are a strange breed, yes, the void soaked into their very marrow. Probably very easy to break.’ She tilted her head as though musing over that point, playing out how each of them could be taken apart. ‘But they are not idle killers, and they are not fools. Perhaps exile was a foolish choice, but it is done now.’
‘Perhaps,’ he allowed. ‘If not them, then who?’
‘I could not tell you, Lord Lamertine.’ She smiled again, a wicked flash of teeth. ‘As my mother has told you already, we would not lower ourselves to such treachery. We kill in the old way – red snow beneath you, and the foe before you. We would lay out a circle of spears, that you might know the challenge has been made.’ She pushed off the wall and paced to the centre of the sparring hall. She knelt, examining the servitors with a critical eye. ‘Not bad, for a pup.’
That made him laugh. He leant back against an iron column, cast his eyes to the tasteful murals upon the ceiling, and then looked back to her. ‘Perhaps one day I’ll see what you’re capable of.’
‘Oh, Erastus,’ she said with a sigh. She walked over to him, leaning in as she passed by him. ‘Let us hope we’re on the same side when you do.’ She walked on and out of the chamber, leaving him staring in her wake.
He let a smile flicker across his features. ‘Throne, save me from unreliable allies.’
Erastus finally allowed himself to return to his father’s chambers, his chambers now. The reflection gave him pause as he surveyed the room. The blood had been cleaned away, meticulously scrubbed by serfs and servitors. He would almost never know a murder had taken place here. Yet he saw the stains in his mind, a blemish he could not help but be aware of.
He moved around the desk, seating himself in his father’s chair. His hands felt locked on the arms as he looked at the desk’s cold expanse, broken only by the piled charts and papers. Some of them were stained, soaked through with the crimson of his father’s life. He took a deep breath, and reached for the first of them.
Erastus Lamertine began to read.