Guns of the Temple (The Polaris Chronicles Book 1) (6 page)

Besides the exarch’s tower, it was one of the most secure places in Argead territory, and for good reason. Behind a gargoyled stone facade were the accumulated arms and ammunition of the Temple. Swords and spears were common and available, but the shrine’s true role was to safeguard and venerate the Dominion’s stockpile of ancient guns, and the valuable ammunition that fed them. Far from the heavy and untrustworthy arquebuses in common use by peasant levies and mercenaries, Temple Guns were elegant, irreplaceable relics from a glorious age subsumed by fire. Inimitably fine engravings of archaic characters and symbols on unblemished steel spoke to their puissance in the hands of those worthy to wield them. The loss of a Temple Gun was always a calamitous occasion, and merited funeral rites more lavish than any given to its bearer.

The shrine was quiet that day, for most of the other fighting companies were out on assignment. War with the eastern horde was on everyone’s mind, but so far there had been no battles of note. Taki took a moment to marvel at how spacious the nave seemed on the inside. Besides his squad, there was only a bow-legged old man scooting around on his hands and knees scraping candle drippings off the floor.

“In God’s name, who let you idiots out of the kitchen?” asked a craggy-featured neokoros behind a templon of wrought and gilded iron. Draco sneered at him.

“We handle your food, you ass. Are you sure you should be giving us lip?”

“If I ever get the shits, I’m hunting you down. Make your withdrawal and get out.”

“Here.” Draco handed over a requisition Taki had drafted earlier. “And if you can’t understand the funny-looking symbols, young Natalis here will help you out, so don’t be afraid to ask questions, mmkay?”

“Blaspheming scum. Wait here and keep your filthy hands off my counter.”

“He’s on friggin’
fire
today,” Hadassah whispered to Lotte, scrunching her brow in disdain.

“You were really concerned about him, weren’t you?” Lotte winked back at her.

“Don’t make me say it. That’ll just pad his ego.”

A few minutes later, the neokoros emerged from the vaults, carrying drab gray sacks. They clinked dully when he tossed them into a shallow trough underneath the templon so the squad could take them. Draco opened the sacks and showed their contents to Taki, whose nimble fingers sorted over the ammunition to make sure the squad wasn’t being cheated.

The unfired military-grade surplus made before the Fall, or milligrad, was what really attracted everyone’s attention. It was instantly recognizable by the gorgeous copper plating of the bullets, the seductively dusky brass of the casings, and the mysterious scripts and symbols stamped too finely for any workshop to duplicate. Fired from Temple Guns, they were unfailingly accurate and able to pierce most armor, even the plate worn by Imperial kataphracts. The very properties that made them so valuable in combat, however, fostered their use as currency. A nine millimeter round could buy a feast, and a rifle cartridge could pay for a month of lodging in the capital. Every round fired increased the value of the others. At the current rate of deflation, war seemed almost illogical.

Therefore, most people who shot at each other for a living used “dirty” reloaded ammunition instead. Reloading was the process of remaking cartridges by pouring powder into shell casings and seating a metal bullet on top with a press or mallet. Lethality was questionable as was accuracy, and any given round could simply blow a gun to pieces instead of fire. Worst of all, reloads produced a thick, acrid smoke that was the natural consequence of using black powder as their propellant. The most dangerous specimens were made of tin casings with rounded pebbles substituted for bullets. The best quality were brass-cased half-grad with lead projectiles and cordite propellant. Most reloads tended to fall in between, and producing these cartridges was mostly a cottage industry controlled by local ordinance exchange guilds. Good reloads tended to have high intrinsic value and could be easily traded for milligrad. In reality, they were the most widely used currency in the land.

“It looks like everything’s in order,” Taki said, satisfied that the actual counts matched with the list he had drawn up. “Since this is a dangerous patrol, everyone gets mostly 'grad.”

“That’s our boy!” Draco said happily. “I know your career’s in the jacks right now, but we certainly appreciate the abacus in your head. These assholes will skim you blind if you’re not careful,” he said, gesturing to the sexton behind the bars, who glowered silently back. “You know, a Luger here, a double-deuce there…”

“Corporal...” Lotte warned him.

“But can’t you read too, Emreis?” Taki said, putting the cartridges back into the sacks.

“I can read most things, but I never learned to write or factor,” Draco said.

Taki rocked back and forth on his heels. “Do you...do you want me to teach you at some point?”

“Dassa and I would be obliged, so long as you don’t try to do it like at the academy. I’m a bit tired of smacks on the head.”

“I’m done with school,” Hadassah said.

“Quiet, you,” Draco huffed. “Education is important. If you become smarter, maybe you’ll find the secret of smokeless powder, make a mountain of milligrad, and live in a castle.”

“Don’t make me laugh,” Hadassah said. “Even little kids know that you’d need to find the azoth for that to happen.”

“But the histories say that everyone and their mother had 'grad in abundance. Surely we’d have unearthed a friggin’ azoth by now if it one was
truly
necessary. It can’t be
that
hard to make powder smokeless!”

“Says you. You’re not an alchemist.”

Draco put his hands on his hips. “I’m a
historian.
”

“You and your delusions,” Hadassah scoffed, crossing her arms. “You’d be luckier with women if you thought about something useful, like why it takes so many stupid bullets to buy feta.”

“Maybe you’d be richer if you weren’t a cheese-eating heretic.”

“Break it up,” Lotte said, separating the two. “We’re wasting our precious liberty here. Emreis, you come with me to go get our guns from the sanctuary. Natalis, Mikkelsen, go buy meat and bread. You can also buy some cheese and herbs if you like. And...and eggs. It should go without saying, but
absolutely
no potatoes.”

“Yes, Captain!” they said, dispersing.

“Come with me, I know where we can get a good deal,” Hadassah said, grabbing Taki by the hand. As she did so, he could not help but blush. Like most fighters who’d survived their share of battle, Hadassah possessed a multitude of scars. Lotte had more, including one that went from her hairline to her jaw. But for Taki, the fact that they were women was more than enough to drive him to shyness. And then there was Hecaton Mezeta. She was old enough to be his grandmother, possibly his
great
grandmother, and yet it was her that had convinced him to take the plunge based on merely her
voice
.

He was convinced of it now: too much time spent studying had permanently scrambled his libido. If he survived the battle to come, he’d go to the nearest cathouse and relieve himself of a specific, shameful burden that he alone seemed to carry. For that, he would have to start saving his milligrad. Taki smiled to himself. If nothing else, he could solve his problems through budgeting.

They left the next morning, bellies still full from a feast devoid of hated tubers. The path leading down the mountain from the Temple wound long and treacherously, but all polaris who survived their training were virtually guaranteed to be sure of foot. Before long they had made it to the first neighboring hub of civilization in the foothills, a small blotch of a village that provided services the exarch would not allow within his walls.

Draco and Taki began to stare longingly at the wooden brothel signs until Lotte dragged them both away by the ear and forced them into the busy caravan line leaving town. The northern border of the Dominion was days away, and the time was spent alternating between the crushing boredom of safe travel on well-frequented roads and the unwelcome tension of keeping vigil while traversing hinterlands infested with altered beasts and bandits. Though the others did not seem to mind or care, Taki noticed that at no time was the major with them during the journey. When he asked Lotte about it, the captain merely shrugged.

“Keep your sword sharp for when we get there,” she admonished him, leaving him to wonder about the old woman.

The Vergina town armory overlooked a bend in the river of the same name, and was an otherwise unassuming-looking structure: a large conical keep topped with a red dome and surrounded by a thick stone shell. At night, its otherwise monotonous face was punctuated by pinpricks of torchlight emitted from arrow slits. The fortified main gate faced landward and overlooked an ancient paved road through which it could receive shipments. A small town had sprung up around its barbican, a free-standing cannon tower which could send concentrated fire up to a kilometer away. Assaulting from land was futile. However, the keep’s riverward entrances were accessible by a short climb up some stairs from the docks. The weak defense was shored up by the Dominion navy in the form of heavy-hitting lorchas. One always trolled the river, ready to rain canister shot and scrap-metal bombs on any invasion force approaching from the Imperium-held shore.

Taki shifted uncomfortably in place as he maintained stiff-backed attention behind Lotte, who was having a shouting match with the castellan. Usually, a junior officer would serve as captain’s adjutant, but the squad had no other officers besides the major, and Hecaton had gone and faffed off to the grog stores as soon as they had crossed the keep’s threshold. Thus, Taki had accompanied his commander into the office while the others stood guard outside. He had thought it a good sign, until matters promptly deteriorated.

He could tell that Lotte was expending great effort to keep herself from dashing her chair against the wall and possibly someone’s head. Underneath that cool, sisterly exterior, Taki had seen hints of a temper that rivaled any he had ever seen in his life.
She’d have actually killed us back there in the kitchen.
In front of the castellan, however, his captain was doing an admirable job of holding back her rage. Threatening to choke the man on his own entrails would only endanger whatever cooperation the squad could eke out from the garrison. If the locals all decided to turn their backs to the polaris, or even worse, sabotage their efforts, securing the place from assault would become much harder.

“Look, honey,” the castellan fumed, “the thing is this place always gets a lot of threats. If it isn’t the Imperium about to send a destroyer upriver or the entire Ursalan Crusade just over the hill, it’s dire warnings about the plague or locusts or mutants or what have you.”

You lazy, impious ass,
Taki thought.
It’s your job to be anxious about those things. Haven’t you sworn an oath of fealty to your lord? I’d do a better job if I had your rank.

“First, it’s ‘captain,’ and second, we were warned by a prime intelligence dispatch,” Lotte said. “Do I have to tell you how many of our brothers and sisters probably died for this information? This is different from all of the rumors and old wives’ tales you deal with every day. After all, why in God’s name would they call us out here?”

“Eh, you’re not the first tainted ones to visit. Bottom line is, we have a budget and a way of doing things. I’m not going to make the entire garrison stay up without rest and shoot at every shadow and scurrying rat because of some dispatch. The men get pissed off, I have to shut them up by opening the grog stores, and the baron gets pissed when I ask him for reimbursement. I mean, look out there! There’s nothing on the riverbank, and we’ve got sentries around and the navy trolling the waters. I’ll sound the alarm if we see anything. You’re free to skulk around if you wish, but don’t agitate the men or I’ll have you witches thrown out.”

Lotte’s right cheek twitched at the term. It was common among the populace and especially used by Dominion regulars. Polaris had originally been given the task of quelling twisted beasts roaming the countryside and extinguishing dangerous elemental phenomena that tended to arise wherever a battle of the Gotterdammerung had taken place. Though they had excelled at these tasks, nothing could erase the fact that they were still the legacy of the abominations that had plunged the world into holocaust. Using their talents against their fellow man only cemented their reputation as pariahs.

“We will fulfill our duty,
sirrah
. Thank you for your cooperation,” she said, rising from her chair. She cocked her head at Taki. They were done here. As she turned, the castellan craned his head to try to glimpse the underside of her buttocks past her lamellar skirt. Taki shot him a warning look before exiting himself. Draco and Hadassah saluted as the pair emerged.

“Where’s the major?” Lotte asked, returning their salutes.

“No sign. Probably drinking this place dry and shitting in the river,” Draco said. “Don’t get me wrong, though. Her absence is a good thing, when you think about it.”

Lotte nodded. “We’re getting scraps at best. Mostly that the garrison continues to sleep and those on night watch won’t attack us for looking around. But perhaps that’s for the best. Jumpy soldiers mean accidents. Everyone, have your full kit accessible at all times. Mikkelsen, you’re up on the roof with Emreis. Natalis and I will do sweeps of the lower levels including the gates. No point in using a voice sutra here, it’s too cloistered. If you see anything, just start shooting.”