The Arcana: Shadow Wars, Codex I

IV

“... And the servants will fall.”

In which a giant’s answers birth more questions

Edana spoke so quietly, and with such deadly assurance that Bessa’s insides froze again. Bessa had more questions, but Edana’s advice reminded her they weren’t out of danger yet.

“Inspect the barricades,” Grandmother ordered her sons. “If you are satisfied, let’s be on our way.”

The men did as she bade them. Bessa moved closer to Edana, and pitched her voice low so the others couldn’t hear.

“Is this why you asked about Lysander?”

Edana met her gaze, and her green eyes clouded. “I wish I could be sure of where you will be safe. If I thought it would make a difference I would have you leave Silura this very night for one of his family’s estates. But we cannot be sure yet where the raiders will place the brunt of their destruction. At least if the Xenakis family will agree to defend your lands, that should help. I would pray so, anyway.”

Bessa started to ask another question, but Edana grasped her arm, and shook her head.

“Let us survive first, and I will tell you what I can after. I swear.”

Bessa subsided.

When the men pronounced the barricades satisfactory, everyone arranged themselves in a defensive caravan. Two of the three remaining guards flanked Edana, who walked point. They carried shields almost as tall as themselves, concealing all but their eyes and feet.

The last guard, with Uncle Hedrek and Uncle Linos, walked behind. The three of them carried their shields above their heads so they overlapped the shields of the first set of guards, testudo style. The metal would absorb the lightning bolts, or so they hoped.

The blacksmith and his sons passed out shields to their row and to the carpenters, joiners, and masons behind them. The tradesmen hadn’t been in the vineyard or the winegrowers’ compound when the attack began.

No one spoke as they walked. Aunt Kalyna and Aunt Vesper arranged themselves behind the last group of laborers. They fingered their long knives, weapons Bessa knew would be futile against the heavily armored giants. Aunt Nerissa tightly clutched her baby, Lucius, uttering prayers in his ear.

Bessa assigned her own handmaiden to assist her cousins. Pippa guided Aurelius, Lucius’s four-year-old brother. Dacia, sixteen, and like Bessa looking forward to her own wedding, led her eight-year-old brother, Nikolaos. The boys, side by side, staged an air fight with their toy soldiers, bringing a smile to Bessa’s face.

“Benevolent One, I beseech you: protect my family,” she whispered.

Bringing up the rear, Bessa walked arm-in-arm with Grandmother, whose iron grip made Bessa relax slightly.

Soon the breeze of the river filled her nose. The stars twinkled in the heavens, and for just a moment she felt safe. Then she spotted one of her guardsmen hurrying over to them.

Without preamble he said, “We have one, my lady. Rodrigo hit it with his sling—”

“The bullet got through that armor?” Bessa asked, startled.

“Not even close, my lady. But the hit distracted the bastard, which let us use this.” He pressed a silver, hinged medallion into her hand. Bessa’s heart skipped a beat as she recognized the engraving of an eyelid dominating the center. Her father’s aegis.

One rainy afternoon, Edana’s father told them how he came to craft aegis. It was one of many stories he’d told them about his adventures with Bessa’s father, who had died when she was four.

When opened, Uncle Min’da had told them, the medallion would reveal an eye of the catoblepas he and Bessa’s father slew during their army days. Powerfully built as an aurochs bull, the creature’s head was so heavy it rarely lifted its gaze from the ground—the only salvation for anyone unfortunate enough to cross its path. Death otherwise came to all beheld by the catoblepas.

The creatures lived in Ta-Seti. On their first mission together, Min’da and Nikandros investigated an insidious plot involving the smuggling of a catoblepas into Karnassus, a premier city in southern Rasena Valentis.

Uncle Morivassus must have retrieved the aegis from the tomb of Nikandros, stacking the balance in their favor against the giants. Bessa glanced at Edana, who had come beside her and was staring intently at the aegis. Their eyes met, and Bessa read the same thought in Edana’s: from beyond their graves their fathers were still protecting them.

Bessa’s pleasure at their vengeance was short lived.

“The giant lives, my lady. Hopefully not for much longer.”

Bessa gaped at him. “It survived? But the gaze of the catoblepas is supposed to kill!”

The scout’s jaw bunched. “Not this time. The eye only slowed him enough for us to bring it down.”

“Did it speak?” Edana demanded.

He started to reply, but Grandmother cut in, “What of my workers? What of the vineyard?”

“All of the farmhouses are destroyed, along with the nearest vines. At the coast we spotted a bunch of tracks heading west, to the marshes. We found three people heading opposite, to the shore fort. They wait over yonder,” he said, pointing to the willow tree several feet to their right. “They’re in shock; don’t expect anything sensible out of them right now.”

“You have my thanks,” Grandmother replied. “You have done well.”

Grandmother looked back and forth between the guards and the survivors, then squared her shoulders. “The giant is yours,” she said to Edana. “The workers are mine.” She turned on her heel and headed for her survivors.

Edana was already striding towards the fallen giant. Watching her, Bessa felt torn. Though she was eager to know what intelligence Edana would glean from the raider, at the same time her conscience insisted she go and see to her survivors. The smallness of their number made her heart heavy as she trudged over to the willow tree. What could she do besides offer sympathy?

“If that’s all I can do,” she whispered, “then I will do it.”

Edana approached the giant warily, stopping well short of its reach. The glowlights the guards had suspended from the tree still didn’t give her enough light to see the giant’s face. Its helmet was more like a mask, with eyeholes she could not see into in this light. Assuming the giant had a face to see.

She tossed a stone bullet at its helmet.

The giant’s exhale was deep and unnerving.

Edana kept her composure. Steeling herself she waited, but the giant made no other sound.

“From the Cloudwalk to Silura,” she began. “You’ve seen a lot of Rasena Valentis, haven’t you? And you’ve managed to keep hidden—except when you wish to slaughter unarmed farmers, of course.”

Contempt rang in her voice. While she waited for the giant’s response, she studied his armor. Never had she seen its like; imperial soldiers wore leather and light breastplates. The giants’ armor was entirely metal, far thicker, of a deep matte blue that would render them invisible at night. Did the subtle pattern on the breastplate form a spell of protection? Or perhaps a spell of animation, if the giant was indeed a machine.

Edana continued, “You seem to be hired scum. Not even mercenaries, for you won’t match yourselves against our soldiers. Who paid you, and how much? Where did your paymasters find you?”

A growl from the giant this time. Edana’s eyes narrowed. Was the giant a person? Lady Nensela and the other seers had three hypotheses. The first: the giants were arsh’atûm, monsters unleashed from the Abyssal Serpent in the nether realms of Erebossa. Second: the giants were animachina, living machines created by the tekmagi. Or like the dragon-teeth men, but not subject to ordinary weapons.

However, Edana had always championed the third hypothesis: the giants were mortal, killable foreigners from an unknown country. Via stealth attacks, she felled enough tonight to prove mortality at least. Her eyes strayed to the armored fingers dangling from the giant’s hand, torn by a scout’s grappling hook.

The injury did not lessen her astonishment. Nine feet long, the giant easily dethroned the Salamandra as the tallest beings she knew of. Salamandra were reputedly never much more than seven feet. The giant’s mask wouldn’t allow for a Salamandran’s spikes, either. What did it look like?

The giants must have come from across the Borealis Ocean. None of the Gold Sea nations were known to have giants.

Except…the giants’ attacks originated from the opposite direction of the Borealis. That left arrival via an unknown Gate, as Nensela suspected.

Still a more important question loomed, that of the giants’ purpose. With such lopsided battle supremacy, they must intend to do more than simple raiding. If they were trying to probe defenses and test the waters for a later invasion, why concentrate on farmers and not garrisons?

“Answer me,” she demanded, her patience ended.

Suddenly, the giant made a gurgling sound. Was it choking on its own blood?

“We are the children. You are the motes. The servants will fall.” It—his—voice was racked with pain.

Shock jolted Edana, making her nerves sing.

It spoke. It spoke Rasenan, revealing volumes by that fact alone. The giants had studied the empire of Rasena Valentis in greater detail than she was comfortable with. Worse, they had studied in secret, unchecked, as their movements had been throughout the empire.

Appearing from nothing, vanishing into nothing.

Or so it seemed.

After a moment, Edana calmed herself enough to ask, “Whose children are you? What servants?”

The Star Dragon’s dossier had not hinted of the giants having a specific cause, but of course he had died before he could complete his report. She could not fault him for her ignorance now. She was on her own. At least now she had confirmed the giants were sapient.

The giant did not reply, lapsing into silence, with only the twitching of his ruined hand to let her know he still lived.

“Speak, or I shall end you,” Edana informed him. “But if you answer my questions I will send for a Restorite to heal you.”

The giant was not finished astonishing her.

A blue glow flared from his body, the same color as his armor, enveloping the giant entirely. What was left of his hand withered, dissolving to ash. Exactly like the body of any other evil creature slain by a sorcerer or a priest. Especially a priest.

Edana stepped back, her insides freezing. Primal instinct screamed at her to run. But the giant was dissolving, she reminded herself. It was dying. It was defeated. She exhaled. The giant was no threat, not anymore.

With hard-won calm she watched as the giant continued to glow … but the space where its hand had been glowed brighter. Atop the ash now she saw bones. Sinew. Muscle.

Muscle!

In her shock, Edana didn’t understand the significance at first. Then it hit her, just as the guards began swearing.

“It’s regenerating!” Edana cried.

The scout came to her side instantly, followed by the rest of the guards who had hitherto kept their distance.

Edana reached into the folds of her gown, but the scout moved faster. His sword glinted in the glowlights as he swung it. Striking metal first, a hasty wiggle pried open the space where the helmet and armor met. His frenzied hacking underscored their urgency. Edana’s heart skipped a beat as she unsheathed her own weapon to hand to him. However, his brute strength coupled with his panic had gotten the job done.

Moments later he held up the still-helmeted head for her like a trophy. Already ash rained down from inside, forming a pile before their feet.

Exhaling, Edana sheathed her blade, then watched dispassionately as ash seeped through the openings in the giant’s armor. The guards swore, but Edana kept her silence, contemplating what was left of the giant. Finally, she took the scout’s sword and prodded the giant’s now-empty armor.

With her mind enveloped in a dream-like haze, Edana heard herself ask the guards to gather up the pieces and bring them for the Watch to examine.

Having completed her task, Edana drifted away and tried to ride out the slowing of her blood. The surreal time she had operated under since she first saw the fires began ebbing now, and she felt herself coming back to herself. She grit her teeth when she felt the first pangs of aching muscles, and looked forward to soaking in her bath at the inn—

Bessa.

Shocked into full alertness, Edana realized she had completely forgotten where she was and why. She whirled to look back, at the fire blazing bright in the night sky, and shuddered at the ruin it would bring for her friend.