Part 1
"Impossible Decision"
“I do not need your permission to buy a goat,” Julia said. “Goat milk is delicious, and we can make cheese.”
They’d been arguing all evening. Ardan was hunched over his power gauntlet, sanding down the edges of a grill he’d removed to improve air flow. Outside in the yard, a goat shrieked into the moonless dark. “Goats stink and scream like fiends,” he grumped. “It hasn’t stopped for an hour. How will the twins sleep?”
“The kids need a pet. Are you dropping metal shavings on my divan?”
“And who will make this alleged cheese? When have you ever made cheese, your highness?”
“I could make cheese!” Julia shouted. She stomped out of the room and slammed the bedroom door behind her, the goat’s cries dramatizing her exit.
Celeste toddled out of her room, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “Dadda? Is Mamma alright?”
She had her mother’s accent. Ardan plucked up the toddler in his unarmored arm and kissed her cheeks. “Mamma is being ridiculous.”
“What is ridick oo luss?”
“It means she brought a goat home without talking to me about it.”
“I like goats.” This from Vox, who wandered in after his sister. He seated himself on his father’s foot, wrapped his arms around Ardan’s leg and rode along as Ardan took Celeste back to bed, staring out the window toward the screams.
“You like the idea of goats. None of us actually know how to care for a goat.”
“There’s a baby crying outside,” said Celeste, half asleep.
“It’s the stupid goat,” said Ardan, planting her back in her bed.
Vox uncurled himself from his father’s leg. “He’s afraid,” he said. “Maybe lonely.”
“It’s a she, Vox. At least I hope it is a she, or your mother’s dreams of cheese are –”
Ardan paused, turned toward the window.
The goat had stopped screaming.
His adrenaline spiked.
“Hide, both of you. Do not open the door.”
There was no time to make sure they obeyed him. He ran to his bedroom. “Julia,” he hissed at the bedroom door. “They’re here.”
Julia opened the door. Her face had gone white. “Now?”
“Outside.”
The armor stood in pieces around the front room in various states of renovation. Tools littered the floor. “Legs first,” he grumbled, stepping into the sabatons. Julia scrambled to her knees in her nightdress, a poor but necessary replacement for a proper battle squire. She pinched her fingers on the knee clamps, struggled under the weight of the chest pieces.
The button panel whirred and crackled with static, then burped out: “System. Offline.” Ardan slammed his left fist onto it. “Worthless damn power source on this model…”
“Shh.” Julia’s hands were black with oil, her face smudged as she attached the generator to his back and connected it to the power gauntlet. She stared out the door, into the hall. There was no sound. No disturbance. No goat. “Are you sure they’re…”
“System. Online.”
Glass broke. Ardan turned sideways in time for a metal arrow to slice a scratch through his breastplate, just under his chin, and thud home in the wall opposite the front window. Ardan cursed and squared up, the wood floor creaking under his armored weight. “I’ll watch the front door.”
“But your cannon arm!”
“It’s useless, unless you want me to blow up the house. Stay behind me.”
Julia closed her eyes, turned her palms upward. “I’ll protect you,” she murmured, her voice dreamy, green light forming in her hands.
Ardan winced away from the twisted-guts feeling that magic always gave him. “I can handle myself,” he grunted.
A forearm appeared over the window, decorated in an archer’s gauntlet, and then the archer herself swung inside. Another woman followed and drew her sword. More came in behind her, magicians and assassins, all wearing the same insignia.
“Stormguard!” he yelled, but Julia was lost inside her trance, eyes rolled back.
Ardan’s armor groaned and buzzed as he moved forward, painfully slow, but he was grateful for it when the Stormguard attacked. They moved in tandem, each with a weapon they’d held since childhood. He ran forward, energy buzzing through the armor, propelling him, heating the metal to burning, steel cracking against the breastplate. When he backhanded the archer across her face, he left a burn mark. She crumpled, her bow clattering to the floor.
The others raised shields of wood, metal and magic to counter Julia’s trance and Ardan’s assault. He stomped forward and plowed into them, knocked them from their feet, sent them flying in a crunch of bones to the wall. Their blood spattered the divan. They rolled in shattered glass, discarded weapons and their own knocked-out teeth. He could not resist every attack: Blades sliced through his unprotected arm and his cheeks; magic stung and froze him with deafening whipcrack sounds. But he was a wall between the enemy and his wife, and all the while, he felt warmth coming from her, a blanket that enveloped him, closed his wounds, melted the ice and gave him strength. It churned his insides, these unnatural talents, but he’d deal with the sick when his family was safe.
Then, the blast.
All went silent and cold. His teeth clamped shut. A shock pulsed up through his legs, his arms, his throat. He couldn’t scream. He couldn’t blink. Paintings slid from the wall and the bolts fell from the front door. He could hear the static noises from his armor display, the groans from the pile of wounded Stormguard, but he could not move. He could only watch as the front door opened and the last of the Stormguard stepped inside, as if invited. She surveyed the room, then snapped her fingers at two of the guard who were scrambling to their feet even as Ardan struggled to move. She pointed to the twins’ room and the two guards sprinted that way.
The woman walked from the door, past Ardan as if he didn’t exist, to Julia, who stood frozen in her nightdress and bare feet.
“Catherine,” gasped Julia.
“Such a shame,” whispered Catherine as she pressed her sword against Julia’s chest.
Ardan’s heart pounded out one beat. Another. Air filled his lungs and he coughed. To his right, the two Stormguard emerged carrying the twins, stunned as rigid as he. The other Stormguard rose, some shakily, some bleeding, all stone-eyed and with a firm grip on their weapons.
To his left, Julia stared into Catherine’s eyes.
His heart beat a third time.
In another heartbeat, his children or his wife would be dead, depending on which way he ran.
He ran.
The general’s sword, turned sideways, slid easily between Julia’s ribs. Her last breath was his name, and with it came the last otherworldly green swirl of her magic. It hit him, Julia’s last gift becoming part of him, wrapping around his insides, giving him the burst of strength he needed. Ardan wrapped the twins up in his arms and crashed out of the window. The two Stormguard who had taken the children lay unconscious. There hadn’t been time to kill them… or to hold his wife as she died.
He fled from the house into the dark, past the poor dead goat, whose screams had been silenced by one well-placed arrow through the throat. The children remained silent, in some lucky instinct, leaving the questions to the night owls in the trees.
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Part 2 coming soon!
Till the next post.
