Survivors

YA Steampunk-Fantasy
Word Count: WIP (currently: 2,274)
Book Two in The Diaries of Guardia series

Fleeing from the failed battle outside of Lierwick, Rye and his companions find themselves rescued by the remnants of the shapeshifter enclave. Led by the frail spider-shifter, Llewellyn, the self-named Guian have been hiding in the hidden canyons outside of Lierwick.

With Rye drowning in self-doubt, Cheeva dying and Tamara growing closer to the Guian, Lily finds herself the unwitting hero. With Laklas at her side, she storms Lierwick for the lifesaving goldwater and to rescue the survivors of the Lierwick charge. Along the way, they uncover a terrifying secret about the nymphs of Tylwyth Teg that very nearly spells their doom. But when Laklas confesses his admiration for her, Lily finds herself divided between her feelings for Rye and the growing realisation he might never love her back.

Tamara has fallen hard for the deer-shifter, Math, and plans to remain with the Guian. As Rye rallies forces to retake Lierwick, Tamara’s newfound love might just divide the group forever.

Jamie Troschke finds himself in the middle of a nightmare. Lierwick is blockaded against him and the Raggedite within are being led by the increasingly mad Rosie Criss. And when the faery, Chibche, delivers him a surprise gift in the form of his old friend (and Cheeva’s husband) Kered, he might just let Lierwick slip through his fingers.

Chapter One

-Jamie

Smoke, in a thick, blinding cloud, choked me as I dropped to my knees in the mud. Ears ringing, I scrabbled around for my cane. What happened? Where was I?

My hand closed around a reassuring metal shape in the mud. Fingers slipping, I pulled it closer, inch by inch, until I could wedge the damn thing under my arm. It took a few moments, feet slipping uselessly beneath me, before I could get upright.

Ears still ringing I looked about. The smoke was clearing slightly as slag hissed in the mud around me. Men lay in mire, mouths stretched in silent screams, gripping bloody limbs and torsos. I looked down as a hand closed around my ankle. Panting, I reached down, grabbing at the young Weirwold. I tried to drag him to his feet but our combined weight was too much for my knee.

We fell, thudding into hidden rocks and stones, down the other side of the hill, splashing into the shallows. I had to move. I had to go. The butterflies would devour us both if we stayed here too long. But I simply couldn’t get my body to work.

A rough hand grabbed me by the collar and hauled me into a creaky looking boat. It was all very ignoble. Here I was, leader of Guardia’s greatest revolution, no more than a drowned rat hauled into a skip. Someone threw a musty blanket around my shoulders as a burly looking farmer pulled the Weirwold lad in after me.

I huddled in the bottom of the boat as the man’s wife – or so I presumed – looked over the boy. 

“How is he?” I asked, wiping muck from my eyes. All around us, boats were ploughing through the water, scooping up men as they stumbled down the ridge. The haze was clearing. Men were either running toward us and the safety of the boats, or rallying under the remaining Wardens to charge down after those damned Royalists.

Our guns were gone, destroyed. Was it a malfunction or had something else caused the chain reaction? Our gunners were gone, nothing but twisted limbs among the molten remains of their weapons. Good men, brave men, gone in seconds.

Sometimes technology could be a devastating thing.

“Not good,” the woman grated out, turning to look at me. I saw her eyes widen. Her lip quivered a moment before she started stuttering. “I…sir…if I had known…”

“Cease,” I said. “You are doing a fine job.” I struggled out of the blanket and held it out to her. “Here, the Chevalier needs it more than I do.”

“Yes, sir!”

Her stuttering reminded me. Where was Jermaine? The last I remembered was the boy beside me, taking aim at my cousin. She had just been standing there, staring up at the ridge as I ordered him to fire. I frowned. Cheeva had to have eye contact to use her ability. Hands and eye contact – and her hands had been outstretched. But her ability no longer worked on inanimate objects. Not since our gifts had merged. She could not have blown up our guns.

…unless she was controlling one of the gunners.

I shut my eyes as I realised what had happened. She’d been controlling one of our men. Not well, not from that distance. But enough. And she’d lost control when Jermaine had shot her. On my orders. Was this carnage my fault?

I shook my head as I looked up. No. I was not the one who had been controlling the poor gunner. And I could not have known that was her plan. Yes, there had been casualties. But if I had let Cheeva go, if I had not given the order to kill the woman, then I could only imagine the damage she would have done.

Literally and politically.

I could see the headlines. I could see the rumour spreading up Raggedite turning on Raggedite. How a “betrayal” like that could shake the resolve of smaller shires. No, it was better this way. 

Better. I looked around as the boat crunched into the shore of a small farm-island. All around us men were screaming as field doctors ran from patient to patient. Better was very much a subjective word.

I watched as the young Weirwold lad was carried limply from our boat and set ashore, well out of the reach of the water. I tried to lever myself out but all too soon they were back, insisting on walking me ashore as well. Everywhere, orders were being barked. Doctors shouted to their apprentices. Wardens shouted to doctors. And farmers roared at their children as they circled the islands, butterfly nets in hand, fending off the beasts as they tried to swarm up the pebbled beaches.

I was left, collapsed, against the side of a house. Barrels of apples sat to my right, and a heavy cart of manure was to my left. My stomach rolled as the two scents mixed. I forced myself to control my body, to hold off the retching and the shivering.

Where was Harvald? And what had happened to Jermaine? I needed to know if he’d killed Cheeva. If he hadn’t, if she was still alive, then we were all in terrible danger. If the water had siphoned off the last of her magic, she could very well be controlling any of the men on any of the islands.

“Sir?” my thoughts were broken as a wide-eyed, mud-splattered man looked down at me. He couldn’t have been a year older than I but he seemed to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders.

I knew how he felt.

“Yes, Chevalier?” I said, struggling to sit straighter.

“Actually it’s Doctor,” the man sounded too tired to be apologetic at correcting his leader. He crouched in front of me, throwing open a bag that had seen better days. “Let me see your leg, sir.”

“Leg?” my eyes roved down as the man set to, cutting away my pant leg. I hadn’t even noticed, I hadn’t even felt anything until I looked down.

Sticking from my leg, just below the kneecap, was a slice of metal. Blood bloomed around it as the doctor cut away the fabric and cleaned the mud from around the wound. I watched it trickle into the mud, turning into a scarlet paste. 

I felt nothing. Nothing more than a slight pressure on my shin. That did not bode well. My leg had to be deteriorating. 

“Sir?” the man was offering me a mug of something viciously alcoholic. A quick and dirty field-anaesthetic. I waved it away. 

“I am not a drinking man,” I said, stiffly.

“But, sir, it will help…”

“Keep it for someone else. I can’t feel anything.”

I saw the flicker of concern on the doctor’s face as he looked back at my leg. I grimaced.

“I know,” I said. “I will have my physicians in Mirrside look at it. For now, do what needs to be done.”

“Yes, sir.”

I looked away as the man set to pulling the hunk of metal from my shin. I didn’t need to look at that particular depressing sight. Instead, I scanned the crowd for familiar faces – Harvald’s and Jermaine’s in particular.

To my relief, it didn’t take long to spot them, though I must admit I heard Harvald long before I saw either. I watched as he stalked around our island, voice booming as he alternated between yelling orders and berating Jermaine. The lad looked about to faint – a bandaged wrapped awkwardly around his head that was already rusty with stains.

“Doctor,” I said, looking at the man and trying to avoid looking at the state of my leg. “If you would, please hail the Keeper.”

The exhausted looking man looked up and nodded. He turned from his work for a moment, hollering to Harvald as he waved a hand. “March Keeper! Here!”

I saw Harvald look over, keen eyes narrowing on the doctor, before travelling down to the patient. Me. I raised an eyebrow as the man marched over, expression thunderous.

“What happened?” he snapped as he reached us.

“Your guess is as good as mine, Harvald,” I said, coolly, looking up at the hill. “I suspect Cheeva managed to get control of a gunner. When Jermaine shot her, she lost control and we ended up here.”

“Do not speak to me about the boy,” Harvald shot Jermaine a glare that would have melted lead. “He fled his post.”

“He might very well have destroyed our greatest enemy,” I said, raising an eyebrow. “And he hardly could have stopped this,” I gestured to my leg. Still, the boy had run rather than holding his ground. That would need to be addressed.

“Harvald, we can discuss disciplinary action later,” I said as Harvald readied himself to argue. “For now the most important question is what happened to Cheeva and our foreigners.”

“Hruar,” Harvald said, suddenly.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Hruar, that’s what the men are calling them. Trouble.”

I frowned. It wasn’t exactly the most pleasant of choices, but it was not as unwieldy as “the foreigners”.

“The Hruar, then,” I said. “We need to know what happened to them.”

“We have men down searching the dead now,” Harvald said. “Ours and theirs.”

“Be sure to allow them time to retrieve their dead,” I said, looking down as the doctor finished his clean up and began stitching closed the wound. 

“Sir?”

“We need to be the bigger men, Harvald,” I said. My leg was burning now and I was regretting refusing the cup. “The kinder we are, the harder it is to paint us as monsters.”

“But if we see the Hruar or Cheeva?”

“Capture and kill, respectively.”

“And Oretto?”

I met Harvald’s look. “I will leave that to your discretion.” I would budge no further from that as I looked over at Jermaine. The boy looked pale and terrified. He would learn. “Jermaine! Did you hit her?”

“S-S-S-Sir?”

“Did you hit Cheeva?” I snapped. “Think hard, boy. All our lives depend on this.”

If it were possible, the boy grew paler under the mud. I watched his eyes track from side to side as he thought, as he tried to remember all that happened. When he looked at me again, he was nodding.

“Yes s-s-sir.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. B-B-B…B-But I think…I-I-I-I think just in the shoulder.”

I exchanged a glance with Harvald. “Are you sure, lad,” Harvald seemed to loom over the boy.

“Y-Y-Yes,” he looked at me. “The m-m-m…m-man with her. I thought he m-m-m…m-might try to push her away. S-S-S-So I aimed t-t-to the left. B-B-But he didn’t. He just l-l-left her there,” the boy sounded surprised. 

“The lad, one of the Hruar,” Havald mused. “So Cheeva could be alive.”

I nodded, gravely. “She could. And if the water didn’t finish her off, a wounded Cheeva is a dangerous one. She’ll bide her time long enough to heal, and then she’ll strike.”

I looked over as the doctor finished bandaging my leg. He was in deep, quiet conversation with what looked suspiciously like stretcher bearers. I was not amused. I turned back to Harvald. For now, the indignity of the stretcher could wait.

“We need to find her and the Hruar, now,” I said. “Now, before they can regroup and strike again.”

“Yes, sir,” I could see Harvald looking around, gauging the men at hand. “We can do a sweep now. I think we’ve pulled all from the fields that we can.”

That was a grim thought. There would be letters for me to write, soon enough. The kind that sunk my heart.

“Excellent,” I move to get my leg under me, levering myself up with the cane. I saw Jermaine take a hesitant step forward to help, but my glare sent him back to place. I did not need help walking. I was mulo but not yet a complete lost cause. “I will join you.”

It was bravado and Harvald knew it. It was strength of will alone that kept my leg from shaking. If I could walk two paces, I’d be lucky. I might not have felt the wound, but it had done its job all too well.

“With all due respect, sir,” Harvald said, nodding to the stretcher bearers. “You will only slow us down. You would serve us better back at camp.” He cut me off before I could disagree. “I am the Keeper, Lord Troschke. I will not allow someone to come with my men if they could cause us any extra suffering today.”

I glared at my long-time friend as he turned on his heel and crunched away across the pebble beach, leaving Jermaine and I alone. Wisely, the boy said nothing as I submitted to the indignity of a stretcher.

We were bundled to the other side of the little island, the farmer and his wife still a ceaseless whirl of movement as they brought out linens and hot water. I made note of them. No man or woman went unrewarded when they aided the cause of the Raggedite.

Jermaine was ordered into another boat, set to work healing one of the field-doctors keep a wound compressed, as I was helped into another. I lay in the bottom, staring at the sky as I thought through our next steps. It wasn’t until a small wave bumped me sideways that I came face to face with my injured companion. The young Weirwold I had rescued from the ridge.

Sad, lifeless eyes stared into mine as we made back for the camp. Another letter to write.