Warsinger Read online

  I hadn't even quite finished speaking when another quest alert chimed and flashed in the corner of my eye. I muted it and waved my hand for emphasis, like shooing a fly.

  Istvan's mouth opened, closed, opened again. “After everything we went through to be here, you're just going to leave me here to deal with this while you… while you…?”

  “Rescue the future Countess of Myszno?” I whirled on him and glared. “If she was your partner... oh, for fuck's sakes...”

  The quest alert wouldn’t shut up. I swore at the icon and muted it, then caught Cutthroat by her reins and dragged the hookwing over to Karalti. She snapped her teeth inside her muzzle, stabbing and raking at the ground with her hooks in petulant protest, but made no complaint as Karalti positioned herself over her like a hen settling onto an egg. Istvan knotted a hand up in his hair and shifted from foot to foot, watching as I buckled the hookwing's back to Karalti's front.

  “If the lords storm the gate, tell them I have an urgent crisis to sort out and I'll be back as soon as I can.” I clapped Cutthroat on the shoulder, turning my head just enough that Istvan could hear me. “Let them stay if they want to, or tell them to go camp outside the walls or something. I care about Myszno, Istvan, but I’m not leaving Suri to rot in Al-Asad to keep them happy. If they don’t like it, too bad. I’ll sort them out when I’m back.”

  Istvan's handsome face shut down into cold, disapproving lines. “As you say, Your Grace.”

  [You have lost Renown: -100 Myszno Defense Force (Current Renown: 2373)]

  “For fuck's sake,” I muttered. “Come on, Karalti. Let's get this over with.”

  “Are you sure...?”

  “Yes. I'm sure.” I grasped the saddle grips and crouched down for take-off. “Let's go.”

  Karalti shot one last guilty look at Istvan's back as he stormed off, then spread her wings and drew a deep breath. I felt her second heart engage and speed up, stiffening her muscles, magically reducing her body weight, and pressurizing her limbs. She bunched like a panther about to pounce, then flung herself into the sky with powerful, sweeping downbeats. The ground lurched away below. My ears popped, and my heart lifted into my mouth, followed by the dizzying rush of adrenaline as gravity pressed me to the rough leather like the cold hand of God. There were no safety straps here, no net to catch me if I was flung off by her shoulders as the powerful muscles along her spine flexed beneath my knees. The rush hit me like a shot of vodka to the brainstem, numbing the stress that gnawed in the pit of my belly.

  As soon as Karalti levelled out, I relaxed and tried to gather my thoughts. Was I really being irresponsible? Maybe. Istvan was so pissed off that I almost felt guilty for leaving, almost. The thought of Suri waking alone and naked in the place of her nightmares was too much for me to bear. Archemi didn’t let you respawn with your gear if you died in PVE, only PVP. Even though there’d been other players in the battle, she’d died from falling. She’d be in a cell, and no matter how strong she was… fuck.

  “She’ll be okay,” Karalti said. She sounded as unsure as I felt.

  “Maybe.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I didn’t. Instead, I pulled up the quest alerts I’d dismissed to find something to distract myself, and frowned when they came into view.

  New Story Quest: A Desperate Plight

  You have assumed your duties as the new Voivode of Myszno and boy, do you have your work cut out for you. The entire province is in dire straits after the Demon's invasion attempt, with your county seat, Racsa, being the most badly affected region.

  Your Vassal Lords are marching on your new castle, Kalla Sahasi. You will have to deal with them sooner than later. Kalla Sahasi was slighted during the invasion of Myszno, its defenses all but ruined, and you cannot endure a siege.

  To consolidate your rulership of Myszno, you must hold your first court and hear the grievances of your citizens, or risk losing your tenuous grip on the province.

  Reward: 450 EXP, Leadership +2, Insight +5, ???

  Special: This is a time-sensitive quest – it must be confirmed in 47 minutes or less.

  Special: You now have access to a range of tools to assist you in managing your province. Complete the tutorials for the Kingdom Management System to gain EXP and levels in the Leadership and Insight Skills.

  “A siege? Why the fuck would I need to endure a siege?” I closed them down without accepting, yet.

  “Uhh…” Karalti backwinged, beating them to hover in place. “You might want to look over my shoulder and down the mountain.”

  I scowled and leaned out. Then I felt all the blood drain from my face.

  There was an army winding up the road from Karhad. Ranks of heavily armored knights rode hookwings with the same stocky, powerful build as Cutthroat. They marched ahead of columns of footsoldiers, wagons, and light cavalry. Torn banners fluttered in the wind. There were four different companies, and behind them, a teeming mob of at least five hundred townspeople, villagers, and refugees. Some were mounted on Europasaurus, the dwarf sauropod used like cattle in this part of Archemi. The commoners were armed with everything from farming tools to broomsticks. Torches blazed in their hands.

  “Holy fuck.” Since I had become half a vampire, the sensations of my heart were more noticeable – especially when it sped up. Dismayed, I looked away, and paused when a dark shape on the horizon caught my eye. I zoomed in on it. It was a dark-hulled airship, with brilliant red sails. As good as my vision was, I couldn’t make out the design on them, but only one person in the country had the right to fly the black raven on a solid crimson field aboard his ships. His Majesty Volod Ignas Corvinus the Second, the king of motherfucking Vlachia.

  “We need to take care of this,” Karalti said, her voice small and worried. “Suri will understand that we have to deal with this now.”

  I wanted to argue with her. I wanted to scream, but I didn’t – and wouldn’t, because no matter how much I hated it, she was right. And so was Istvan.

  With a heavy heart, I accepted the quests, and added them to my ever-growing queue. “Yeah. She wants a home more than anything. She’d want us to make sure she has one to come back to.”

  ***

  I got ready in the Count’s Suite while the angry mob raged outside the castle walls: a thousand pissed-off Vlachians, all screaming at Karalti and the soldiers doing crowd control at the ruined gatehouse. Firelight flashed through the windows while I unlaced my long braidhawk and re-braided it as neatly as I could, shaved the sides of my head, and made sure I looked the part of a newly- minted nobleman. While I prepared to host my first court session at the barrel of a metaphorical gun, I couldn’t help but think back to the day I was conscripted.

  The letter had come on a warm, drowsy Sunday morning in smoky Los Angeles. I was tangled in the old sleeping bag I used as my blanket, snoozing after a long night working in the Full Stop, the biker bar beneath my apartment. The room smelled of cigarettes and old leather and eighty years of old beer and energy drinks. A rattling air conditioner kept the bedroom bearable during the day, cooling the corner of the room where I reclined upon my stylish floor mattress bed.

  Saturdays were the busiest night of the week. I’d handled two fights, three removals, who-knew-how many fake I.Ds, one junkie and a girl whose date slipped something in her drink. I’d only been in bed about four hours, dreaming about my new motorcycle when a heavy BAM-BAM-BAM rattled the door and shook through the house.

  I nearly hit the ceiling, scrambling around in the covers. Feet briefly scuffled outside, and then withdrew. By the time I was upright, silence hung heavily over the apartment.

  “The fuck?” Bleary-eyed, I checked my phone to see if I’d ordered a package and forgotten. Then I remembered: it was Sunday. There were only two reasons someone would knock on my door on a Sunday. Either someone was dropping off something I’d forgotten at the club downstairs, or one of the guys I’d thrown out or handed over to the cops had figured out where I lived.

  I got the extending
baton I kept by the bed just in case of that second occurrence, and flicked it out with a satisfying ‘schick’ before padding over to the door in my underwear. There was no sound from the other side. Scowling expectantly, I made sure the chain was attached, and cracked it open.

  There was a letter lying on the floor.

  I peered at it owlishly, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. No living breathing human being in the UNAC had sent letters in like… thirty years. Paper letters were up there with keyboards and gas-powered cars in the anachronism department. Suspicious as only a half-awake, mostly naked bouncer could be, I poked the envelope with the baton, in case it was full of anthrax or Liquid Ass or both. When it didn’t explode, I picked it up and tried to read the envelope. My birth name and address were printed on it with neat, mechanical writing. ‘Jeong-Ho Park’.

  “What in the…?” I tore it open, heart hammering, and painstakingly struggled through the five awful words no man under the age of twenty-six ever hopes to read. ‘Order to Report for Induction.’

  My first reaction was bewilderment. There was no way this could be real. My immigrant parents had been enrolled on the Hostile Alien watchlist in the first years of the Total War, meaning that me and my brother both should have been exempt. We weren’t allowed to serve in the government or the armed forces, claim Social Security or Medicare, or anything. But there it was. This was a Draft Card. I’d been conscripted.

  The second sensation was numb exhaustion. My sinuses were gluggy, my back was hurting after a long night on my feet, and the rest of the letter might as well have been written in hieroglyphics. The print was so small I couldn’t read it beyond the title, so I smoked a cigarette, went back to bed, and had one of my racing friends read it to me later that night. His voice shook as he dutifully recited the dry order for me to report to Camp Parks in two days’ time. When he was done, he threw it down on the ground, twisted it under his heel, and begged me to pack a bag. Told me to go to his house, lie low for a week in his basement. Told me to take my brand-new Ducati up the coast all the way to Canada. The only reason they would be drafting me was because they were scraping the bottom of the barrel… which meant the War was going badly.

  I thought about it. I thought about it hard. But even as a metaphorical ten-ton bag of lead settled into my stomach, I shook my head.

  “It is what it is, man,” I’d said, lighting another cigarette. “If I bug out to Canada, they’ll still find me. There’s just some kinds of shit you just can’t run away from.”

  I heard the echo of my own words from all those years ago in myself now. Archemi wasn’t Earth, but as the months wore on, the line between the real life before and the virtual life felt very blurry. The mantle of the Voivode settled over me as heavily as the duty of the draft, and that same tired lead-in-the-guts feeling came roaring back.

  While Istvan scrambled to get the Voivode’s throne room in order, I cleaned my battered Raven Suit, donned the Voivode’s crown – a simple spiked band of white-gold - and the crimson cloak that Ignas had given me. Then I looked at myself in the mirror, and saw… well. I saw a freak, to be honest. No matter how well I dressed or how nice my hair was, I had large, bird-like eyes with dark blueish sclera, unnaturally acute and piercingly bright in my face. My face was harder and I had a mouth full of sharp metal fangs courtesy of Ashur. In any other circumstance, I thought I looked pretty bad-ass. But now, with the pitchforks and torches bobbing up and down outside the walls of my defenseless castle, I felt the same quaking anxiety that had set in all those years ago when I’d rocked up to Camp Parks with my bag, my motorcycle, and a head full of bad noise.

  “I’m sorry, Suri.” I sighed. “Hold on just a little while longer, okay?”

  Chapter 4

  Unfortunately, the Voivode’s Throne wasn’t a huge-ass fantasy chair with flaming skull torches or voluptuous women and-or panthers lounging around the base of it. It was a simple, well-made but worn chair of dark wood, green leather, and silver thread. The chair was up on a stage, so that I got a great view of the screaming mob surging through the doors of the Great Hall toward me.

  The only thing between the throne and me was a line of guardsmen, soldiers who’d fought for me during the War for Myszno. They crossed their spears and the rush of people broke against them like a furious tide. Shouting, yelling, eyes flashing with rage, they rushed against the blockade in a furious boil of clanking armor and muddy silk.

  “Order! Order!” Istvan shouted over them, sharp and authoritative. “This court WILL NOT proceed if you cannot gain order!”

  “Fling your ‘order’ into the ocean, you overblown swamp rat! My citizens are starving!” One of the men in front, a lantern-jawed guy with a thick, drooping mustache and fine armor flung his arm out at me, pointing at my face. “Our crops are three weeks off from dying in the fields, and there's no one to harvest them! How’s THAT for order?!”

  “…and the bandits have taken over Vyeshniki’s granary!”

  “My village is overrun by scavengers!”

  “Solonovka-!”

  “Karhad is the ducal county! I demand to speak first!”

  “-The refugees are returning-”

  “-We've lost twenty children to plague in the last two weeks!”

  The voices overlapped each other, building into a wall of noise that felt like it was crushing me back into Lord Bolza's old chair. My fingers tensed into claws on the armrests, until I finally couldn’t take it anymore.

  “THAT’S ENOUGH!” I shoved up from the seat and got to my feet.

  It wasn't instantaneous, but the mosh pit at the front of the dais got the message enough to take a big step back, triggering those behind them to pay attention.

  I fought the urge to jump down off the stage and start bouncing people out of the door, just like the old days. Instead, I balled my fists, then deliberately relaxed my hands and stretched my fingers. “Form a queue, all of you. Every person who wants an audience needs to introduce themselves, and then you get to talk. Anyone not willing to rein themselves in will be arrested and carried- or-dragged out of my goddamned castle!”

  “Arrested!? This is outrageous!? Who is this foreign wretch? Where is Lord Bolza?” The bearded man ignored me, and turned to glare at Istvan.

  “Baron Kapolks, you are out of line. Lord Bolza is dead. He fell in the Battle for Myszno.” Istvan stood at ease, his handsome face drawn into sharp, unreadable lines. “And this ‘foreign wretch’ is Voivode Dragozin Hector, Primor of Racsa and Prince of Karhad, appointed by his Majesty- “

  “His Majesty?! What does that ragged old Raven bastard know of our troubles here!?” Baron Kapolks snarled back. “He’s thousands of miles away, eating his way through our harvest in his gods-damned castle-!”

  Istvan bristled, laying a hand on the hilt of his saber. “Are you going to stand there and commit treason in the presence of his duly-appointed Count, you cur? Say that again. I dare you.”

  The furious noise started back up again. The Baron snapped something and reached for his sword, but was caught by the people standing around him and shouted down.

  I pressed my lips together, clamped down on my temper, then turned to Istvan. “None of these people can control themselves. Clear them out. All of them. I can't do anything to help until they get control of themselves.”

  Istvan's pale green eyes darkened. He gave me a troubled look. “All of them?”

  I rubbed my forehead, grimacing. The crown was an uncomfortable pressure against my temples. “Yes, all of them. Start tickets at the door or something. Every minute we’re stuck here is another minute Suri is possibly being hurt. I'm not in the mood to deal with this.”

  “Yes, Your Grace.” He bowed stiffly from the neck, then swept off down the dais and made for the door at a brisk walk.

  [You have lost Renown: -100 Myszno Defense Force (Current Renown: 2273)]

  I swayed anxiously on my feet, at a loss for what to do. Part of me was bewildered that a game could put a player in th
is kind of position. Part of me was impressed that the game's A.I so accurately depicted the complete, animalistic stupidity of an angry mob.

  “Are you okay?” Karalti's voice rang in my mind like a bell. “You feel awfully stressed.”

  “I am the opposite of okay right now,” I replied. “Whoever thought this would make for a fun game was sadist with a public humiliation fetish. Or a masochist. Maybe both. This is crazy.”

  “It's not great out here, either. There's a huge crowd outside the gate and they keep waving torches and shouting rude things at me. They’re more afraid of me than I am of them, though.”

  “Good. Make sure it stays that way. I don’t know if they have guillotines in Vlachia, and I don’t want to find out.”

  Istvan's departure was only noticed by a few people. A slight young girl in piecemeal armor that was too large for her tracked him as he left. The girl shot me a piercing, fearful look, and pushed up against the wall of crossed spears blocking access to the dais. “Your Grace! Please, listen to us! I am the last of my House! I beg your audience!”

  A normal man probably couldn’t have heard her over the noise. I drew a deep breath, clapped my hands on my thighs and strode to the line of guards. “Guys, let her up to talk. Just her.”

  I might have been hemorrhaging Renown with the Defense Force, but the guards didn't question the order. One of them moved his spear aside just enough to let the girl worm through. Three older, concerned men tried to stop her, but she pushed past them and waved them back. I offered her a hand up the steps as she tottered, trying to stop from tripping over her own spurs. Seeing her step up caused howls of protest from the back of the room. I ignored them, and focused on the one sane person in the room.