New Enemies

  Chapter 48

  It took minutes for Snow to stand, to feel he could lead Element back to the Front. The Contegon’s breathing was low, her face taut, but she held him throughout his emotional outpouring. When he looked up, he saw that she had sympathetic tears in her eyes, though she did not know why he cried.

  “I don't understand,” Element said. “What's wrong?”

  “Sol...” he started, then had to take a long, deep breath. Snow wiped his eyes. “Sol has asked for a tremendous sacrifice to keep you safe. He has taken from me, taken something–”

  His explanation was cut short when the sounds of approaching Disciples echoed around the clearing. They looked around, the injured Contegon and the former Acolyte, and heard that the monsters approached from the north west.

  “Come on, we need to hide,” Snow said, rising.

  “Why? Can't you fight them?” Element asked.

  “No,” Snow insisted, pulling her robes still tinted by her blood. “that was what I was saying: Sol demanded the sacrifice of his Gift for your life. So we need to hide, now!”

  Element spluttered some half response, but followed him nonetheless. Together, they fled to the cover of the nearest trees. They would have gone further, but five Disciples burst into the clearing: movement would give away their position.

  Snow cursed not having sent the platform back down when its presence attracted the Disciples. He also should have realised the Acolyte Killer's death might have set off an alarm. As a result of this, and his inability to cope with Sigil's sacrifice, the Disciples knew someone was nearby: it was only a matter of time before they were found.

  The Disciples marched down to the workshop’s entrance, and stared at it. Red lights shot from their heads, covering the area around the entrance, crimson dots dancing across the metal, grass, and raised plinth. All five points converged on Snow and Element's tracks toward the tree line, and followed them up.

  “Shit,” Element said. “They've found us.”

  “You should go,” Snow said.

  “What?”

  “You should go,” he said again. Then he started to pull his robes off. “I have faced Disciples alone before, and I know how they can be stopped. Even a group of them. This is an order, Element: I have not sacrificed my Gift so that you can die here. Now, go.”

  Element shook her head. “They will just follow my tracks.”

  “Not if I detain them. Don't disobey me.” He smiled. “I'm from a higher Station, after all.”

  The Contegon tutted. Her eyes narrowed, her lips pulled taut. But she turned and hobbled away.

  Snow watched her go and then threw his robes away, leaving him standing in just his underwear. He wouldn't be marked as a soldier now.

  The Disciples neared, so he stepped in front of them. Nearly naked, his skin covered with cold pimples, he raised his arms in surrender.

  “I am unarmed. I am a civilian, and I surrender,” he said.

  The Disciples stopped walking and raised their gun arms toward him. Those red lights danced across his naked torso. However, instead of trying to march around him, that strange and horrible battle music started. Whatever slight compassion the Disciples had once had for non-combatants had disappeared.

  Snow turned and ran in the opposite direction to Element. Bullets hissed past him, narrowly missing. He threw himself down, turned in random directions, everything he knew to do when facing Disciples unarmed. The tactics worked: he was going to make it to the trees, where he would have more cover, where he–

  A bullet clipped the back of his leg then, sending him sprawling. He landed with his hand underneath him, crushing his fingers together and winding him. Wheezing, he tried to stand, but his right leg gave way.

  This was it, then: Snow was going to bleed out. His purpose, given to him by Sol, had been to ensure Element's safety. He supposed his Contegon friend was valuable, that she would do great things in the coming war. It almost didn't seem fair, for his part in Sol's plans to be so small, but he tried to be grateful he had a role at all as the Disciples marched up to finish their kill.

  A loud scream pierced the Disciple's battle music. Then there was a chorus of slicing, metal being rent in two. The battle music softened slightly.

  Snow rolled over, expecting some minor internal scuffle like the one between the Lions. A figure in black robes, a hood leaving their face in darkness and two golden whips in their hands, stood over one of the Disciples. It was sliced in two, its innards steaming by its brethren's feet.

  More importantly, he felt something akin to Sol's Gift.

  The figure in black lashed out as it span to avoiding the Disciples’ bullets. The nearest Disciple had its gun arm shorn clean away by the whip. Two bullets then struck the figure in the head, but that Gift-like energy flared, repelled the bullets like Sigil had.

  “Sigil...” Snow whispered without thinking.

  This strange warrior fought the Disciples with unerring grace, power, and style. Their moves and techniques seemed familiar, though he could not place them. Their effectiveness, however, could not be questioned: the Disciples were disarmed – literally – so their greatest threat would not risk the warrior. When four gun arms lay on the ground, the warrior used their whips to keep the Disciples at range. Once, they nearly closed in on the warrior, but the warrior swing around the trees behind them, fast as an insect. The monsters had no chance of catching up or closing the distances.

  With these tactics, the Disciples were soon downed. They fought to the last, convinced they could beat this superior warrior, but they were wrong. All five were left to smoke on the Brittlegrass.

  Then, the warrior turned to Snow. “What is your business here?” they asked in an oddly deep voice that sounded put on. Now they had stopped moving, he could see a slender face beneath the hood, and a mouth whose points naturally turned down.

  “I could ask you the same thing,” Snow said.

  “But you will not,” the warrior said. “Answer me first. Who are you? Why are you here?”

  Snow felt himself bristle, not used to being ordered about by strangers, but he was in the weaker position here: unarmed, almost naked, and without the prestige of his Shield-General post, he was the suspicious one. Though only marginally more so than the warrior.

  “My name is Snow. Shield-General Acolyte Snow,” he said, seeing no value in lying to someone with access to something like Sol's Gift. “I came here to track Disciple creatures which attacked the towers outside Tenth. We found them down there.” He pointed to the platform. “Then we destroyed them.”

  The warrior looked him up and down. “Where are your robes?”

  “Over there,” Snow said, pointing.

  The warrior looked over to his clothes, then back at Snow. They said nothing.

  “I had to sacrifice my abilities to save someone I care about,” he said slowly, concentrating on not breaking down at thinking of Sigil. “When these Disciples came, I was unarmed and she was wounded. I faced Disciples before and they showed clemency to the Stationless: I hoped to distract them long enough for Contegon Element to escape if I did not have my Station robes on.”

  “Go and get your clothes,” the warrior grunted. “Slowly.”

  Snow retrieved his robes. The warrior – Snow was unable to determine their gender yet – looked over the robes, and then looked over Snow.

  “That is Scar's signet?” the warrior asked, pointing at the chain hanging from his neck.

  “It is,” Snow said, moved to hold the bronze image. “How did you-?”

  “Did you not realise that would give you away after you have used it in battle so often?”

  He looked down at the signet, and then laughed. “Oh, Sol, I'd not even thought about it. This is just so much a part of me... That explains why they went after me.”

  The warrior's grim face briefly allowed a smile. “A silly mistake for a Shield-General.”

  “Agreed. I’m still new to the job. Now, to whom do I owe my thanks?”

>   The warrior stiffened, their dark robes and their grip of their whips tightening. “You have put me in an awkward position, Shield-General Acolyte Snow: you have discovered something your people are not yet ready to know. It would be easier for us if you died here, as it would allow us to continue our work.”

  A slight panic rose in Snow, but it was kept at bay by the figure's tone, which indicated an internal struggle. “I am used to keeping secrets, if that is what you would ask of me.”

  They considered him for a while, in particular Scar's signet. “I do not think I would have... been brought here if our meeting was not meant to be. I would ask your secrecy, but you must know what you are protecting. Not least of all because of this... discovery you have made.” They pointed to the underground laboratory. “This, I think, tips the balance, as we were not aware of such Disciple trickery either.”

  “Who is 'we'?” Snow asked.

  The warrior sighed. “My name is Anger of Lun. I am a Lun Cultist.”

  Snow stepped back, dropping his robes. “A Lun Cultist?”

  Anger tutted at him. “Already, you judge me. I have just saved you from five Disciples, and you act as though I am worse than them. Typical Solarist. You all think that the Disciples are the work of Lun, but you have been misled, all so that you had someone to blame for your ills!”

  “You shall have to forgive me,” Snow said, “but what you are saying is Heresy.”

  “Exactly!” Anger said, pointing at him. “Exactly! Questioning the Sol Lexic, even if you are right to do so, is suppressed in Geos. You live in a horrible, totalitarian world, where the only option is to worship Sol or remove yourself from society. We Lun Cultists have protected Geos for years, stemming the Disciple advance with our sweat and pain, but you are already internally measuring me for a Hereticum.”

  Snow's mind whirled. “You are saying that you, those who worship Lun, have fought the Disciples for years? And you’ve done so here? In the Moenian Forest?”

  “We have. Lun granted us powers as Sol granted you Acolytes his Gift. We both use these to fight our real enemy: the Disciples. Yet, only one of us is allowed to exist in Geos, despite the blood we too have shed.”

  “I am sorry,” Snow said, holding out a hand to Anger of Lun, “this is moving too fast for me. You are... you are saying not only that Lun is not the source of the Disciples, but that there is a cult dedicated to his worship that has powers which are the equivalent of Sol's Gift, and you organised a defence of Geos years before we established the current Fronts?”

  Anger of Lun shook their head. “Your incredulity disappoints me.”

  “You're claiming enormous Heresy, but saying it has been beneficial to us,” Snow shouted. “Forgive me if that is a lot to get my head around!”

  The warrior stepped back, looked around them. “Perhaps this was a mistake.”

  “No, please,” Snow said, reaching out to Anger, “telling the truth is never a mistake: it is just that what you claim is difficult to comprehend. Let me think as though I completely believe you: you have kept yourselves secret from Geos as the Lords, Contegons...” He stopped himself using Lun as a curse, instead said, “Well, everyone would reject you. But you still need to protect Geos because it is your home. You said that you have been fighting this battle for years, right? I guess that coincides with Sol granting Maya the Gift, so it would make sense that Lun – were he not an adversary but an opposite – shared his Gift when he saw his brother did so. He balanced things out.”

  “Your reasoning is impressive,” Anger of Lun said.

  “Thank you. So... let's say I'm willing to believe this. And I am, what with what I've just seen, with how...different your powers are to an Acolyte's. What should I do with this information?”

  The warrior shrugged. “It is not my place to question Lun: he told me to patrol here, and I did, which meant I found and saved you. You have some role in this for both the Dark and the Light brother.” They looked around. “A role that I shall leave you to.”

  Anger of Lun went to run into the tree line. Snow shouted after them, “Wait!”

  “What is it?” they shouted back, not looking at him.

  “Two things,” Snow shouted back. “We may be pushing the Fronts north in the next few years, depending on how we react to these new Disciples and the underground lairs. If so, your people will need to be ready to move, and hide their presence.”

  Anger of Lun nodded. “I appreciate the warning. What is the second thing?”

  “Can I please see your face? I need to know that I don't know you, ensure you're not someone embedded in the Fronts. Please? It will help me trust everything else you've said.”

  The warrior sighed, then turned to face him. “Fine. But you need to know that my... my form is a betrayal of who I am: I am male, in spite of my face.”

  Snow nodded, walked closer to see this warrior. He needed to know that Anger wasn't one of his Acolytes, that he wasn't being tricked in some way by a Disciple sympathiser. At this point, it seemed more likely than Anger of Lun's story, but him revealing his face would put those doubts to bed, allow him to digest the incredible tale he had woven.

  Anger of Lun pushed back his hood. Beneath was a thin face that could have belonged to either a man or woman. His cheeks had images of Lun scarred into them, and his dark eyes were steady as he allowed Snow to inspect him, prove he did not recognise this figure with the Gift. Snow did not recognise him at all, and felt something inside him relax at that knowledge.

  “Thank you,” Snow said.

  “May our gods be with you,” Anger of Lun said.

  Before Snow could respond, he flicked out his whip and started to swing between the trees, leaving behind questions that may go unanswered for decades.