SCYTHIAN DAWN

(SAMPLE)

by

P.K. Lentz

§

Copyright © 2018 by P.K. Lentz

All rights reserved.

§

Cover and all art for Scythian Dawn by

Aituar Manas

https://www.artstation.com/aituarmanas

One

Arixa didn’t know the purpose of the iron object she had unearthed

in the ruin. Its creators had known, but they were long gone. Like any

Scythian, Arixa only knew that the Parthians, who once had built cities

in this land south of the Bleak Sea, had forged harder metals and

known more uses for them than the Scythians of today did.

Long ago, the Parthians had ruled from their distant capital,

building forts along the rivers of what now was Scythia.

And then the Parthians had fallen. Some enemy in the East, it was

said, had devastated their capital. If you believed Ishpakian street

preachers, then the gods themselves had razed the Parthian cities, as

one day they would return to devastate others.

But Arixa did not believe the Ishpakians. Nor did most Scythians.

Were the gods to return, one of the cities struck down must be their

own, Roxinaki, the capital of the Scythian empire ruled by Arixa’s

father.

How the Parthians had fallen was a debate for the palace scholars

who had tutored Arixa as a child. She had been their favorite student,

keen of mind and quick to learn, but that had not been enough to keep

her there. The scholars could argue all they wanted about why the

Parthians fell, but in the real world, the world of the steppe and forests

and mountains, the reason didn’t matter.

What mattered was that Parthians today were slaves and farmers

whose toil provisioned the Scythian war bands that ensured the safety

of Roxinaki and its long-winded scholars. War bands such as the one

Arixa had founded and named the Dawn.

She rose with the dirt-encrusted object in hand, returning her knife

to its sheath. Having been used to prize the artifact from hard earth,

the blade would need cleaning, sharpening and oiling back at camp.

“Arixa!”

It was Ivar who called to her. He came into sight around an intact

corner of the ancient, crumbling and roofless Parthian fort inside

which Arixa knelt.

“The captain of a war band does not also need to be a scavenger,

Arixa,” Ivar scolded in his odd accent of the frozen North. “A princess

even less.”

“I’ll decide what a captain and a princess should be.”

Arixa brushed caked clods of soil from the bent metal rod she had

unearthed. A half-rotted wooden handle clung persistently to one end

of whatever it had been. Some sort of tool.

“This iron makes good weapons,” Arixa said, carrying the scavenged

item toward Ivar. “I don’t know about the icehole you crawled out of,

but in Scythia, a good warrior cares about good weapons.”

“A warrior in Svialand cares about raiding. Not digging rusty lumps

out of the ground.”

“I’m trading,” Arixa joked. “I took a piss behind that wall, and the

Parthians traded me this good metal. Sviar know about trading right?

Until their boats flip over and Goths kill them all, that is.”

As she met up with Ivar, Arixa saw the midday sun glint on

something in the grass. She stooped to investigate.

“That’s a low blow, Arixa,” Ivar complained, even if he punctuated

the complaint with a laugh. “Even for you.”

Six years ago, the trading boat on which Ivar had voyaged far south

from his homeland had sunk on the Dneister, stranding its entire

crew. Two days later, a band of Goths had attacked the shipwrecked

Sviar, killing most and hunting down the scattered survivors for sport.

Arixa had found Ivar alone and feral in the mountains a month later.

At least, that was the story Ivar had told her once he’d learned to

speak some Scythian. He had also claimed that his crewmates had

called him by the generous epithet Ivar Shieldbreaker.

Foreigners were not uncommon in Scythian war bands, but Ivar

stood out more than most with his frost-white skin and hair the color

of straw. Amazingly, he still had the weapon with which he’d left

Svialand: a hook-headed ax not much larger than the ones used for

chopping wood. Ivar had cut down a great many men with it in the last

six years—many of them Goths.

When they’d met, Arixa had been just a spite-filled runaway royal

full of vague notions of proving something to her father. Ivar had

helped her build her own war band. Their bond ran deep.

Ivar spat. “Fucking Gotar,” he cursed, using his people’s name for

the Goths.

The Sviar’s phlegm landed not far from the glinting shard that Arixa

had spotted in the grass and now picked up.

In addition to stronger metals, the long-ago Parthians had been

able to craft pots and other vessels from a material which one could

see straight through. Some vessels were tinted various colors while

others were fully transparent. No Scythian potter or craftsman had yet

managed to recreate the material, its secret apparently lost with the

razing of Parthia’s capital and the collapse of its power.

What few of these goods remained intact were highly valued. Even

the broken shards were used by artisans in decorative applications.

Sometimes Arixa collected such shards for trade, but since this piece

was tiny and it was to be many days before they reached a trading

post, she flicked it back into the ruin.

She and Ivar walked in the direction of the road leading to the

Dawn’s camp.

“If you don’t want to be insulted,” Arixa said, “then don’t call me a

princess.”

“Bah,” Ivar scoffed. “You’re right. Princesses are much more

beautiful, not half a head taller than me, with tattoos from shoulder to

wrist and blue hair so tightly braided it couldn’t get clean if you tried.

Which you don’t.”

Ivar was not wrong. Arixa’s looks were plain by Scythian standards,

and she was taller and broader of shoulder than many men, including

Ivar. Her dozens of blue-tipped braids were only untwined once every

six moons or so by another female warrior of the band, usually in the

vapors of a cannabis lodge. Each of the designs inked on Arixa’s skin,

acquired over the last six years, had a meaning. Many of them were

distorted by scars.

“Magnificent...” Arixa observed mockingly. “What a word-picture

you create, O Shieldbreaker! To think that you learned our tongue so

late in life, yet already you’ve mastered—”

Ivar pursed his lips and blew a farting noise. “Enough! Your point is

made!”

“No, I mean it! You should be in the capital composing verse.”

“Stop! You win. Like always.”

“Captain!”

The small figure waving at them from the old stone-paved, weed-

strewn Parthian road, was another foreigner of the Dawn, Memnon.

His people the Hellenes had once ruled the lands around the warm

Southern Sea, a sight which Arixa had never seen.

As with the Parthians, Hellenic dominance had long ago been

smashed—either by men or gods—and today most Hellenes were

slaves in foreign lands. Memnon and his sister Andromache had come

to Scythia in chains and joined the Dawn a few years back, after

winning their freedom. Neither sibling was a champion fighter, but

they had enough other skills to make them worth their provisions.

For one, they looked after the band’s most invaluable resource, its

horses, with as much competence as any Scythian breeder, which was

to say the best breeders in the world.

“Did I hear Ivar call you princess again?” Memnon asked. “He never

learns!”

Next to Memnon on the road were two more men of the band.

There was Matas, Arixa’s maternal uncle, who had left the city with

Arixa those six years ago, partly to protect a favorite niece but just as

much for his own reasons. A year later, his son Plin had joined him.

And there was huge Sandaksatra, whom they called Dak, the only

one among the four who was taller than Arixa and the one no one

dared to challenge at arm-wrestling unless they had no need to hold a

weapon the next day.

“Can’t a girl take a piss without four men showing up?” Arixa

griped.

She knew why Ivar had come. In fact, his presence shadowing her as

bodyguard was expected and appreciated, if rarely required. But

Memnon and the others must have had some other reason.

Matas announced it: “The scouts returned. The Goths are taking the

expected route. It should be two, maybe three days before we have

them where we want them. There are three farming communities in

their path. I have riders awaiting your word to warn the locals to

evacuate.”

Here was the function of all of Scythia’s ranging war bands: to

detect incursions and draw the invaders to a place where it was

convenient to destroy them. In generations past, there had been no

cities or towns to defend at all, and so it hardly mattered where an

enemy army marched. Nothing existed for them to threaten.

Today there was a capital, Roxinaki, on the northern shore of the

Bleak Sea, plus a few towns here and there, but the bulk of Scythian

territory remained as it had ever been: vast stretches of steppe and

plain dotted with seasonal encampments and subject villages. Enemy

bands ventured in at their peril, finding little worth raiding. If an

invader came in vast numbers then the small war bands of Scythia

could coalesce into a horde to meet the threat on a field of its

choosing.

Sadly, such an occasion had not transpired in Arixa’s lifetime and

didn’t seem likely to.

Raiding Goth war bands were larger than their Scythian

counterparts, but unlike Scythians, the Goth warriors were not all

mounted. A great many marched on foot and thus they were easily

outmaneuvered.

“Send the riders,” Arixa commanded. “Tell them that if any of the

threatened farms grow cannabis, return with all of it they can carry.

No sense leaving it to be destroyed. Since we won’t be fighting

tomorrow, tonight we can throw the last of our supply on the fires.”

“If I ever were to return to Svialand,” Ivar remarked, “cannabis is

the one Scythian tradition I would take with me.”

“I thought the soil was always frozen there,” Memnon said.

“Only in winter. The remaining two months are—”

“Did you see that?” Arixa interrupted, staring into the sky in the

direction of the Parthian ruin, away from camp.

She pointed. The others looked.

“There!”

“It’s just a star,” Dak grumbled.

Arixa smacked his tattooed, iron-hard upper arm. “Is a star green,

and does it pulsate and glide about in the daytime sky like a firefly?”

“It’s a firefly, then,” Dak snorted back.

The light continued to glide slowly across the sky, growing subtly

larger. As they all watched, it halted and changed direction, moving

groundward.

“We all know what it is.” This from Memnon. “I’ve seen its like once

before and had the sense to go in the opposite direction. You’ve heard

the legends. There is some truth to them.”

Ivar gave the Hellene a shove. “Are you ready to go join the

Ishpakians now?”

“It’s nothing to do with that!” Memnon insisted. “This is about

Hunters and Watchers.”

Ivar chuckled. “If you’re such an expert on monsters from the

heavens, tell us, which variety is this?”

“How do I know? Any of you with any sense will return with me to

camp and forget you saw this sight.”

Already, Memnon had turned from the descending light and begun

the walk back to camp.

Arixa, on the contrary, watched with intense interest as the green

glow touched the horizon in some wooded hills to the east.

“Matas, Memnon, return to camp and dispatch the riders,” she said.

She handed her uncle the scavenged metal bar. “Ivar, Dak, accompany

them, then one or both of you return with my horse and bow. I’ll start

on foot toward where the light landed. You’re welcome to accompany

me, but you need not.”

“Of course we’ll come,” Ivar answered for them both. “But should

we not ride in greater numbers?”

“Bring ten,” Arixa conceded.

She didn’t care how many came. It was curiosity which drove her.

There were some ways in which the favorite student of Roxinaki’s

royal tutors had not fully died, but instead lived on inside the tattooed

body of a war band captain.

This was an opportunity to learn something. If it also meant danger,

then the warrior side of her would welcome that, too.

“I would come along,” departing Memnon called back over his

shoulder, “but you know, there’s my sister to think of. And the horses.”

“We’re all aware of your famous cowardice,” Ivar taunted. “No need

to call attention to it.”

“Cowardice and common sense are cousins,” Memnon answered

plainly. “One is often mistaken for the other.”

“One of your Hellenic sayings?” Matas asked.

“Sure, if that improves its credibility.”

The rest of the conversation between the men on the road was lost

to Arixa as she hurried alone through the Parthian ruin toward the

hills beyond.

Less than an hour later, a dozen sets of hoofbeats vibrated the hard

earth under her boots, as Ivar and Dak and ten others caught up. They

brought her saddled red roan horse, Turagetes, which she mounted.

Progress thereafter was much swifter, with Arixa taking the lead and

the others trailing at a gallop.

It wasn’t long before the terrain forced them to rein in their mounts,

the open plain giving way to rocky, lightly wooded slopes of the hills

into which the green glow had descended. Arixa tried to keep an eye

always on the very spot where it had vanished, a task which would

have been easier at night with stars to serve as guides.

It was instinct more than any landmarks which at length caused her

to signal a halt and dismount. As the others behind her followed suit, a

slight movement up a slope caught Arixa’s eye: the swaying of a low-

hanging branch of evergreen. There was no accompanying fluttering of

wings, and few large birds would perch so low. A squirrel, perhaps, but

Arixa spared no thought for rodents before stringing her bow and

setting an arrow to it as she ran up the slope.

Her comrades followed. First to mount the crest, Arixa looked down

with bowstring drawn, and she saw—

A dog.

Standing upright.

Wearing clothing.

Its wide, dark eyes gave her only the briefest of glances before it

sped off behind some rocks.

It was gone by the time Ivar and the rest drew up alongside her.

She stared at the place where the thing had been. She had only

glimpsed it for an instant. She must have been mistaken.

“What did you see?” Ivar asked.

Briefly, Arixa considered lying. She knew what her own reaction

would be to this truth. But she was Captain, and these men would be

wary of mocking her.

In a few breathless words, Arixa told them what she had seen.

Without waiting for them to break their stunned silences, she unbent

her bow and bounded down the slope.

“Arixa!” Ivar hissed loudly. He cursed in his native tongue, and then

Arixa heard branches snap as fierce loyalty sent him after her, even on

a course he found foolish.

He was probably right. He definitely was. But Ivar had not seen the

dog-man. If he had, he would be leading the way, for who could see

such a sight and not give chase?

Arixa reached the spot where the dog-man had vanished behind

jutting rocks, but it wasn’t there. She scanned the terrain, which was

treacherous. A valley lay ahead. Hardly a step of the passage into it

consisted of unbroken ground. The space between trunks in the sparse

wood was nothing but naked, uneven rock, worn smooth by time such

that any careless step could end in a limb-smashing fall.

Just beyond one of those rocks, a small dark shape caught Arixa’s

eye. Without hesitation, she barreled on toward it, leaping from crag

to boulder to shallow tree-root, one hand clamped on the shaft of her

slung war-pick when she could, to keep it from swinging wildly. She

slipped more than once on barren soil and landed hard on her

backside before bouncing up to continue without losing speed.

“Arixaaaa!” cried the increasingly distant, echoing voice of Ivar.

But Arixa pressed on, knowing the danger, knowing that this might

indeed be one of those monsters of legend who were said to descend

from the sky for seemingly no other purpose than to challenge mighty

warriors.

Such legends only ever ended with the warrior’s glorious death.

Arixa had no fond desire to die this day, but she couldn’t conceive of

a future in which she had not given her all in pursuing this encounter

to its ending, whatever it may be.

The dog-man hadn’t struck her as particularly fearsome. Was it

possible she was being led into a trap laid by some more formidable

creature?

Maybe, but it was equally possible that a monster’s ability to kill

men and women should not be judged by its appearance.

While vaulting over a boulder, she took a fleeting glimpse behind

her to find that the members of her war band were small, dark shapes

high up on the ridge. They were loyal, but hurling oneself down a

rocky hill in pursuit of what sounded like a cannabis-dream was a test

of any man’s loyalty. Memnon would call their reluctance common

sense.

Arixa hoped they would not risk themselves. The further behind she

left them, the more convinced she became that this was something for

her alone. Those warriors in legends always met their destinies alone.

Of course, she might be destined to climb back up the hill with

nothing to show for her efforts. And for many years, behind her back,

the story would be told of the time she had chased an invisible,

clothed, upright-walking dog...

There!

Fear of humiliation fled as Arixa caught fresh sight of her quarry

between some arrow-straight pine trunks, and there was no mistaking

it. The thing was fully visible, if for only an instant. She had gained on

it, just a little.

“Stop!” she cried out. “What are you!?”

She could hardly move faster than she was, but Arixa managed to by

belatedly throwing down her bow and quiver of arrows. Even if this

creature gave her the opportunity, she had no intention of sinking an

arrow into it. If she needed to defend herself, she had her war-pick,

which was also slowing her down. She might have been tempted to

discard it were it not for the few seconds delay it would require to do

so.

Also, she loved the weapon dearly.

“Wait!”

The thing disappeared again in the rough terrain, which offered a

surplus of cover. Even if she looked back, which she was not willing to

do, Arixa knew she would no longer see her comrades at all. Fully

alone, she plunged on into the deep valley, finally reaching a stretch

where the footing was surer. She poured on the speed, frantically

scanning ahead for traces of movement.

It was then, perhaps due to overconfidence, that she lost her footing

and found herself sliding head-down on a rocky slope far too steep to

descend by any unassisted means other than falling. And fall she did,

feeling explosions of pain all over her body, one after another, from a

dozen impacts. Each time her body met a surface she grasped for

purchase and tried to slow or break her fall, only to be denied or have

a joint wrenched in a direction the gods had not intended it to move.

On one hit, the lesser spike of her war-pick was driven hard into the

side of her stomach, piercing armor and flesh.

At some point, though her head still spun, she realized she had

come to rest awkwardly on some rocks. Her body was a mass of pain

which barely responded to commands to move. Gazing up helplessly at

clouds in an azure sky, the sky of Scythia, Arixa wept.

She had written the ending of her legend, after all, that of the

princess who had given up the stifling comforts of a palace to build her

own war band and lead it to victory after victory in battle, only to

accidentally run off a cliff.

It was not a warrior’s death. It was that of an idiot.

She hoped that when her story was told, it might omit the part

about the dog.

She managed a faint smile. For all he may enjoy teasing her, Ivar

would never let others do so.

With that smile still on her lips and tears drawing tracks down the

sides of her broken face, Arixa shut her eyes on the skies of Scythia for

a final time.

Two

The city before her was one unfamiliar to Arixa, which was to say it

wasn’t Roxinaki. The people crowding its stone-paved streets weren’t

Scythian. They were lighter-skinned, and the colorful garments they

wore left their arms and legs bare, as if the weather and elements were

of no concern.

The structures towering above the people’s heads were also brightly

colored, with stout columns of fluted stone supporting fabulously

engraved roofs. Among and between the buildings stood vivid

likenesses of semi-nude heroes and ornately draped goddesses. Water

splashed into mirrored pools from the snouts of stone beasts.

Arixa seemed to look upon this foreign vista from some tower or

ledge—she did not know where for she could not turn her head. In a

way, there was no need to. It was as though she saw not with eyes at

all. With impossible clarity, she saw these unknown folk walking their

markets and gardens, trading and bickering, laughing and shouting,

running and lazing. She wondered idly who they were and how she

had come to be among them.

The sky was as Scythia’s sky, vast and blue and streaked with

insubstantial clouds behind which the sun blazed. The day seemed

warm, and it must have been judging by the people’s dress, yet Arixa

felt no warmth. She was aware of no sensations at all, no body whose

limbs she could summon to motion.

The sky darkened. A shadow fell upon the roofs and fountains. The

gaily dressed men and women looked up as one at a dark object

emerging from the clouds, cleaving them like a sailing ship on the

Bleak Sea parts a morning mist.

The object in the sky was oblong in shape, and it grew. And grew.

And grew, until Arixa could see that it was itself the size of a city.

Its surface was smooth, mostly, but irregular in places. In no way

did it resemble anything natural, like a mountain or an enormous

beast. No, this thing had been made by men. Or gods. Much of its

surface reflected the ground below, warping the image slightly as

water might, or...

Not water. Was it possible that this behemoth was built entirely of

metal?

That would require far more metal than all of the swords in Scythia,

every stirrup and buckle, every Parthian artifact, every woman’s

brooch and hairpin. Even then, Arixa could not imagine it would

amount to enough.

Her heart would have pounded, but she had no chest to contain one.

She would have backed away, but she had no legs that were hers to

command. She possessed no body, not even any eyes to close, and so it

was only her mind that trembled in fear at this overwhelming sight

which she had no choice but to witness. She heard the object, too, or

rather felt its steady hum in imagined bones: a deep, permeating

vibration.

Staring at the behemoth, she began to understand what it must be.

This was a vessel, but not of the sea, and not of men.

It was a ship of the boundless heavens and of gods.

From points along the perimeter of the floating object there issued a

number of smaller, swifter shapes which soared like eagles in graceful,

swooping arcs. As these smaller ‘skyboats’ descended upon the streets

and temples of the city, Arixa better discerned their outlines. They

were boxy and lacked wings. Green discs glowed brightly on their

undersides.

Many of the city’s inhabitants began to scream. Some ran. Others

prostrated themselves wherever they happened to stand. Shrill horns

of warning sounded, but they were as the buzzing of gnats before the

great hum of the god-ship overhead.

When they had reached a height barely above the highest roofs, the

skyboats began to deploy a yellowish substance upon the streets,

particularly over the largest congregations of men and women. Arixa

thought for a moment that it must be meant to kill, some sort of

poison which the gods threw down on men, as farmers might poison

vermin.

Then she saw her mistake. This yellow substance was no lethal

weapon but an ensnaring one, like a fisher’s net or a spider’s web. On

reaching the ground, the liquid solidified to form a clinging prison for

whomever it touched.

After each craft’s passage, what had been a mob running for its

collective life was rendered a single, translucent yellow mass in which

individuals were embedded as bugs in amber or nuts in a festival loaf.

Once these skyboats had criss-crossed the city, trapping clusters of

its people, they turned and circled back, flying lower. A door opened in

the rear of each blocky vessel and thin arms of metal emerged. Bands

sprang from the ends of the arms, coiled around one end of the yellow

cake, from which jutted a head or a leg here, half a man there, and

began to hoist them into the air and toward the ship’s waiting open

hatch.

The masses of snared men and women were pulled into the ship like

dough into an oven, and then the hatches shut while the craft moved

into position to consume another.

The ships went about collecting like this for some time. As the

bellies of each craft became full, it returned to the god-ship above.

A great many men and women yet remained in the city. Some still

ran, screaming or not, while others vanished, seeking refuge inside

homes and temples. In any case, the number taken by the skyboats

could represent only a small proportion of this great city’s inhabitants.

When the last of the skyboats had disappeared again, small red

discs flared to life near the edges of the huge god-ship.

Wide beams flashed down toward the city. Wherever they touched,

men and women simply dropped to the ground, dead, their flesh

smoldering until the corpses were withered husks wrapped inside

clothing that remained pristine. Likewise the streets and walls,

anything which was not flesh, remained intact and undamaged. The

beams swept left and right over the whole of the city and its periphery,

eradicating all who had managed to avoid ensnarement.

The horror on display was sufficient to crush the stoutest of hearts.

No man or woman could look upon this sight and fail to shriek, or flee,

or pray, or vomit from fear, or some combination thereof. Yet Arixa

was given no choice but to watch. With neither stomach to empty nor

eyelids to shut tight, she witnessed a city far finer than Roxinaki

reduced to empty streets and wailing spirits.

The god-ship’s red beams winked out, but it was not yet finished.

Near the center of the impossible metal hull, an array of white lights

appeared, and from them lanced beams of blazing fury like a hundred

bolts of lightning entwined. Where they struck, fires erupted with

explosive force, splitting open the roofs of temples, collapsing walls,

turning stone-paved avenues into pits of blackened gravel.

Like the diffuse red beams before, these more focused and brilliant

rays of white swept back and forth across the city, etching trails of

total devastation. On and on the bright lances danced, roving from

neighborhood to neighborhood until everywhere fires burned and

nothing was left. Where mere minutes ago had stood a glorious city,

now hardly two stones remained stacked upon one another.

By now Arixa’s desire to give vent to terror by screaming, by

sobbing, by burying head in arms and never emerging, verged on

overwhelming. But it was not to be, for she was only a bodiless spirit.

She was... dead.

She had fallen. Her body was smashed. The memory of it dwelt just

out of reach.

With unblinking eyes, Arixa watched the god-ship withdraw into

the sky, the clouds absorbing its massiveness as sunlight was restored

to a freshly wrought ruin.

* * *

As a nearly drowned man finally breaking the surface of a lake,

Arixa gasped for air. Her limbs, too, flailed as frantically as a drowning

man’s.

But her eyes, suddenly wide open, told her she was not drowning.

This was no sea or lake. No water filled her mouth and nose or slowed

her wild movements, which she promptly ceased.

Neither did she gaze upon any sight that matched either of her last,

fleeting, mismatched memories: of a city annihilated, of a bone-

breaking fall.

Panting, she sat upright on a yielding surface, like a moss bed. But

this was no forest. All around were smooth surfaces that gleamed.

Seeing a hint of dark movement at the edge of her vision, Arixa

turned her head—and she screamed.

Staring back were a pair of wide, black, reflective eyes set in a face

coated in gray-brown fur. Its nose was black, with wide nostrils set at

the end of a blunt snout, and the mouth under it was a dog’s mouth

full of canine teeth set in glistening purple gums. Its ears were stiff

and protruded upward half again the height of its head. Around its

neck were waves of still thicker fur hanging down over the collar of its

clothing—clothing—which was blue and white with sleeves down to

the furry elbows.

Faced with the nearness of something which should not exist,

Arixa’s body acted clumsily and of its own accord to put distance

between her and it. The attempt sent her tumbling backward off of the

waist-high platform on which she belatedly realized she was perched.

Some of her instincts must have remained intact, for she partly broke

her fall with one arm.

While falling, she realized she was still screaming. She also realized

she was naked.

Both revelations were equally embarrassing, but only the first was

in her power to quickly remedy. She did so by shutting her mouth.

Regaining her feet, she looked across her former perch, a soft-

topped table of sorts, at none other than the dog-like creature which

she had recently chased to her—

Death.

It raised its right hand, which was not like a dog’s paw but

comprised of a palm with three fingers and a thumb. Its left hand

gripped a slender white cylinder with intricate markings lining its

smooth surface.

When the dog-man stepped closer and raised the object

menacingly, still more instincts took over Arixa’s body. She leaped

over the table, reaching out to catch the wrist of the thing’s left hand

before it could bring the weapon to bear.

Instincts may have been present. Agility was not. Her limbs felt

thick and sluggish. Instead of reaching her target, she ended up

draped over the thin table on her belly, her fingers having barely

brushed fur.

The dog-man touched his wand to her shoulder, and all became

black.

* * *

She awakened on her back with a feeling of ease and well-being

pervading mind and flesh, as when one has inhaled just enough

cannabis vapor, but not too much. She drew deep breaths and blinked

her eyes to focus. The sight that met them was that of a smooth,

polished surface broken by clean lines and perfectly etched circles.

Even though this was a strange and fear-inspiring sight, she

remained strangely at ease. She tried to move her arms, then her legs,

and found she could not. Even that revelation failed to shatter her

calm. A light dent, perhaps, as she realized she was at the mercy of...

Who?

Those gods who had destroyed a city and scooped up its people in

scores?

That particular thought did manage to speed the beating of Arixa’s

heart with mild panic.

“Be welcome, Arixa,” someone very near said in accented Scythian.

She tried to angle her head toward the speaker. Though her other

muscles weren’t currently obeying, that worked.

She realized that this was the same room in which she had spilled

naked onto the floor. Once again, she was not alone, but her company

had changed.

Man, not dog-man.

She was pleased to find herself clothed, even if it was only in a sort

of linen shift.

“Do not be afraid,” the man said. “Bodily control will return to you

shortly. Considering your earlier reaction, we thought it a wise

precaution. We mean you no harm, and you are unlikely to accomplish

any against us.”

The man was smallish of frame, smooth of complexion, and neatly

groomed with a pointed black beard that matched his short, gloss-

black hair. He wore a long-sleeved, tailored garment of black and gray

with no ornamentation. Arixa had never seen such garments, in or

outside of Roxinaki.

“I don’t...wish harm,” Arixa said with some difficulty. Her jaw,

much like her mind, felt more relaxed than was ideal for conversation.

The man smiled. “I believe you, Arixa. You saw something outside

the confines of your accepted reality. Rather than fleeing or trying to

destroy it, as most would, you let the desire for knowledge drive you,

unless I’m mistaken. A rare quality, and in a warrior, no less.”

“You know... my name.”

“We have our ways. None of which are needed when your comrade

is kind enough to shout your name repeatedly in the vicinity of a being

with quite large and sensitive ears.”

“The dog...”

“Indeed, he does resemble a dog. Dr. Fizzbik was enjoying a walk

when you elected to give chase. He felt quite badly when he saw you

fall. He turned back to check on you, and finding you clinging to life,

he fetched you to our shuttle and repaired you. You’ll find you are

rather better off than you were when you arrived. For one, you had a

tumor in your breast which would have killed you before you reached

thirty. Had you not broken your skull and spine first, that is.”

“Fizz... bik?” Arixa spoke the name of the absent dog-man which

she was meant to believe had saved her from certain death. She said to

her present company, “You’re human.”

“Forgive me for not introducing myself,” the man said with a kind

smile. “My name is Vaxsuvarda. Yes, I am human. You might try

moving now.”

Arixa wiggled her fingers and flexed an arm, feeling pins and

needles on the skin. She brought the arm before her face and found it

to be the one she knew, with its familiar inked bestiary. She could take

nothing for granted. She attempted to push herself up and succeeded.

Her captor, or host, Vaxsu... something, made no move to assist.

Looking herself over, she accepted herself to be uninjured. Maybe

better: at least one scar which had been below her right knee had

disappeared.

She now vividly recalled her fall, the snap of many bones on stone.

She should have been a cripple for life, if she had lived.

Yet she was healed.

Something felt wrong with her head, a certain lightness. She put

hand to temple and realized that her braids were gone. Instead her

scalp was covered with fine, soft hair of a length not much greater than

an inch.

“It was necessary,” her host explained. “Dr. Fizzbik was also

prepared to remove your tattoos in regenerating your skin, but I

convinced him to make some effort in preserving them. I felt sure they

must hold special meaning to you.”

Fingering the soft hair which felt nothing like her own, Arixa began

to feel her strength return. She looked squarely at her host, appraising

him. Being human, he was the lone familiar thing in this polished,

strangely lit environment.

For what her steppe-born instincts were worth in this strange place,

she sensed no deception or ill intent on his part.

“Many thanks,” she said, and meant it. “That loss would have

pained me. You will have to repeat your name, possibly more than

once.”

The man with the pointed beard smiled his acceptance of her

gratitude. “Vaxsuvarda. Some call me Vax. You may, if you like.”

“Where do you come from... Vaxsuvarda?”

“That...” Vax began with a strange and thoughtful look, “is no

simple question. Or you could say it has two answers. My ancestors

came from a city called Parsa, which once stood to the south and east

of your land.”

“I know of it,” Arixa said. “An empire of old. Persia. My ancestors

fought them often. And won.”

Vax laughed softly. “Congratulations.”

“What’s the other answer?” Arixa prompted.

“That is the unsimple part,” Vax said. “My birthplace, from your

perspective, would be... the heavens.”

Three

“I had a vision,” Arixa told the Persian after giving some thought to

what he’d said.

“I know. I supplied it.”

“Are you one of...” Now Arixa was able to feel a bolt of fear. “The sky

vessel I saw...”

“No, no, no.” Vax was emphatic. “That was a Jir ship.” He shook his

head. “There are many barriers to your understanding. We must—”

“My vision was that of the Ishpakians,” Arixa deduced. “It is what

they warn will happen to all cities, and why they urge us to leave

them.”

“Yes...” Vax said uncertainly. “Long ago, human visitors like myself

engineered such faiths in nearly every culture by showing men and

women what I showed you. We could not stop the Jir, or even risk

being caught acting against them, but we hoped at least to save a few

tens of thousands of lives by hampering the growth of cities.”

“The Jir...?” Arixa repeated the word as if to retain its memory on

waking from the cannabis dream she presently inhabited. “Then it’s

true? The Ishpakians are right? Our cities will be destroyed by these...

gods?”

“Not gods,” Vax corrected. He pressed his lips together in seeming

reluctance, but continued anyway. “What you saw, to be clear, was not

only a vision of what is to come, although it is that. The destruction

that you witnessed was the true record of a past event. That city was

called Roma. The Jir erased it two visitations ago, just as they erased

Persa and kidnapped my distant ancestors.”

“I saw the skyboats taking people away.” The vivid recollection

haunted Arixa.

“The Jirmaken—the Jir military—sells them to offset the costs of

their visit to Earth.”

“Slaves...?”

“Some. Their fates are many and varied. Some are lucky.

Settlements of free humans exist, largely thanks to the Gaboon, the

race of your personal savior, Dr. Fizzbik. Now that you’ve had some

time to adjust, I think it may be time for you to meet him. The Doctor

does not speak Scythian, but you will find—”

Vaxsuvarda stopped and turned toward a circular expanse of the

polished wall which suddenly fragmented into six segments that

shrank and disappeared. Until this moment, Arixa had not managed

to identify any means of egress to the room. Now she understood that

this iris-like feature was a door.

In the round opening, the dog-man appeared. It continued into the

room and straight toward Arixa. The opening sealed behind him.

Arixa’s breath caught in her chest. She steeled herself, as she might

in battle, in the face of a sight which was not menacing, exactly, but

certainly unsettling.

The dog-faced, four-foot tall ‘doctor’ looked Arixa over with an

expression she had no hope of reading, for she was not acquainted

with the facial expressions of dogs. As he studied her (she began to try

thinking of the creature as ‘he’ rather than ‘it’) she studied him back.

His face was not that of a wolf, although the fur that surrounded his

wide, black nose and hung off the end of his blunt snout in a graceful

wave was grayish.

“Arixa, meet Dr. Fizzbik, one of the Gaboon Harmony’s foremost

human experts.”

“The foremost,” the dog-man corrected.

Arixa’s appraising look became one of puzzlement even as a furry,

three-fingered hand gripped her jaw and turned her head left and

right to allow Dr. Fizzbik to examine each ear.

The two had not spoken in Scythian, yet Arixa understood every

word.

“As I was about to explain,” Vax said to Arixa. “During your

recovery, we took the liberty of imprinting your brain’s speech centers

with Nexus, our preferred language for inter-species communication.

Variants of it account for divergent vocal cord structures. Humans

speak Nexus-G, while Gaboon use Nexus-M. Your two dialects may

sound different, but that will not interfere with comprehension.”

“Stop talking, Vax,” the gray dog grumbled in a voice which

sounded very much like a dog should sound if it could form words.

“You lost her at imprinting.”

“Her culture may be primitive, but she is not stupid. Far from it.”

Vax looked directly at Arixa as he spoke these words, not in

Scythian as before, but in a version of the language used by the dog.

“Try speaking it,” Vax urged her. “Just will it. It may be difficult at

first, but you’ll manage.”

“You... are...” Arixa began haltingly. The syllables which emerged in

her own voice were unfamiliar. “...a dog.” The last word did not

translate, but remained in Scythian. “I am... talking to... an upright

dog.” Again, the last word went untranslated.

“Let’s get past that, shall we?” Vax advised.

“I must be dead,” she continued, marveling at the strangeness of

what her mouth and mind were doing. “Or I’m in a cannabis lodge.

None of this can be true.”

Fizzbik emitted a sharp bark. There was no other way to describe it.

“First she smashes herself. Now this! Your ‘not stupid’ hypothesis is

short on evidence.”

“This encounter would be a shock for anyone,” Vax argued calmly.

“I think she is coping well.”

“Dr. Fizzbik...” Arixa ventured, penitently. “I was raised better than

to insult a... man... while a guest in his home. Especially one who has

given me gifts. I’m told that you saved my life in more ways than one.

Never has anyone said this more truly than I now do: I owe you my

life. Please accept my apologies and deepest gratitude.”

Vax smiled broadly.

Fizzbik scratched his furry chin and twisted his muzzle in some

unknown expression. “Hmm, maybe she is not fully stupid. Only

clumsy.”

“She speaks a fresh imprint with high fluency,” Vax countered. “Not

stupid, indeed. As for clumsy, if that was ever true, I suspect your

efforts have remedied it.”

Arixa comprehended the language of Vax’s last comment, but not

his meaning. Another mystery piled upon a heap of them.

While they spoke, she slowly swung her lugs over the edge of her

platform and lowered bare feet to the smooth floor.

To be surrounded by so much metal! And nowhere a trace of sky.

“A race called the Jir,” Arixa summarized, “swoops from...

somewhere... lays waste to the cities of men, and carries humans to

the heavens. Another race, the... Gaboon? is friendly to us. I wish to

better understand all of this.”

Arixa’s palace tutors would be as proud of her for that sentiment as

her childhood military trainers already were of the name she had

made for herself at the head of the Dawn.

“I feel this knowledge holds grave implications for Roxinaki and my

people. Yet the question that springs first to my mind is a selfish one.”

“Ask it,” Vax urged.

“What’s to become of me?”

“Why, you’ll be sold, of course,” Dr. Fizzbik muttered. “Stupid,

clumsy human like you has to be worth at least a quarter-gram of

satranium!”

That’s the end of the sample! If you’d like to continue

the adventure, continue below to visit the series page on

Amazon.com.

NOT SURE YET?

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BOOK 4 of the series. I think it stands well alone, and spoilers are

minimal, so if you’d like a FLASH-FORWARD before you commit, tap

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