Embers on the Star-Canoe

Bronze javelins whistled through the crimson gale, seeking the throat of a poet.

Markkalt skipped backward along the braided reed gunwale of the star-canoe. He needed this vessel. With the Eclipse Vanguard sealing the outer lanes, only a fast reed skiff equipped with a blockade compass could ride the red solar thermal out to the frozen agricultural discs, where a true master of the Gale-Edge Clan belonged. Three Eclipse skirmishers in lacquered bronze breastplates blocked his path to the stern, their weapons leveled in the interlocking formation of the Triad Stance.

"Three points converge upon the stage," Markkalt sang out, his slender rapier tracing an idle spiral in the burning draft. "Yet none match my lyric rage!"

He flicked his wrist. Internal heart-fire surged down his arm, channeling radiant qi through the bronze guard into the tapered blade. The bronze blossomed cherry-red, spitting embers against the rushing current.

With a crisp snap of his elbow, he met the central spear head-on. The contact was neither a block nor a crude deflection. The heated rapier slid along the bronze socket of the spear, transferring a sharp pulse of vibrational heat. The sudden thermal shock shuddered into the skirmisher’s hands, forcing his grip to loosen. Markkalt guided the spearhead upward with a flourish, knocking it clean into the left skirmisher’s incoming javelin.

Bronze struck bronze with a ringing crack.

The third soldier on the right lunged low, driving under Markkalt’s guard to pin him against the steering bench.

Markkalt did not retreat. He whipped his singed cloak forward with his left hand. The heavy, ash-hardened fabric caught the javelin’s point and bound the shaft in a tight wrap. Pivoting on the balls of his boots, Markkalt used the attacker's own forward momentum to pivot his weight. He hauled the wrapped javelin sideways, sweeping the legs out from under the second skirmisher who was still recovering from the clash above.

Both soldiers crashed into the rowing well in a tangle of bronze plates and cursing tongues.

A sharp, searing pain pulsed behind Markkalt’s collarbone. Heart-fire was powerful, but the solar radiant tide demanded its toll. The rapid circulation of heat through his upper meridians felt like molten lead pooling in the joint of his sword shoulder. Push the internal fire one breath too long in this blistering updraft, and the muscles would seize into rigid, scorched iron.

Markkalt instantly dropped into the low, grounded posture of the North-Gale Cooling Stance. He tucked his chin, widening the stance of his boots on the woven reed deck, and drew a slow inhalation of the frigid cosmic draft that curled along the margins of the thermal stream. He exhaled a long plume of gray steam through his teeth, venting the excess heat from his spinal channel.

The lead skirmisher shoved himself up from the deck, drawing a broadsword from his hip as his teeth bared in a snarl. "Gale-Edge dog! The Eclipse Warlord has locked the southern thermals behind the great reflecting-shields. You freeze with the rest of the outer rings!"

"A dog, perhaps," Markkalt replied as the cool qi settled the burning in his chest, "but one who respects the meter of a duel."

The skirmisher lunged with a heavy cut from his bronze broadsword, hacking down toward Markkalt's head. Markkalt did not bother with a heavy parry. He stepped inside the arc of the descending blade, letting the bronze edge glance harmlessly across his shoulder guard. With his left palm open, he struck the center of the soldier's breastplate, releasing a short, kinetic burst of cooled qi.

The concussive shock threw the skirmisher backward over the stern. The soldier plunged into the blinding solar slipstream, where his emergency copper mantle snapped open to arrest his descent toward the lower civilian currents.

The remaining two skirmishers scrambled out of the rowing well. They looked at the empty stern, then at the cherry-red point of Markkalt’s rapier, and finally at the theatrical bow he offered them.

"An encore?" Markkalt asked, raising an eyebrow.

Without a word, both warriors leaped over the low gunwale, their descent mantles opening into small copper sails against the red expanse.

"A hasty exit," Markkalt said, sheathing his rapier with a soft click. "They lacked an ear for verse."

He turned toward the steering pedestal at the stern. Mounted upon it sat a heavy bronze thermal compass, its central needle floating in amber resin and pointing steadily toward the outer disc of Suvantor.

Markkalt detached the heavy bronze compass from its brass bracket and latched it firmly into the leather frog of his sword belt. The metal was warm with captured solar energy, pulsing lightly against his hip. With this Vanguard compass and full command of the reed star-canoe, the passage across the great thermal gap was his. He took the wooden tiller under his arm, testing the tension of the steering cords.

A sudden rumble rolled across the thermal stream.

The crimson air above the star-canoe buckled with the dull roar of a falling boulder. A massive silhouette dropped through the blinding solar spray, descending straight toward the craft's forward deck.

The collision shuddered through every woven reed in the hull. The bow dipped sharply, throwing up a shower of glowing plasma spray as the star-canoe groaned under the sudden weight.

Standing in the center of the splintered forward decking was a woman clad in soot-darkened bronze apron-mail over thick wool tunics. Her broad shoulders carried the heavy leather bracers of the Sun-Hammer Guild. In her calloused right hand, she gripped the thick iron chain of an octagonal sun-flail, its studded bronze head resting heavily against the reed flooring. She did not stumble. Her dark, level gaze swept across the mast, the rigging, and the cargo hatch before finally settling on Markkalt.

Markkalt adjusted his singed cloak and offered a sweeping, low bow. "A magnificent entrance, lady of the furnace! Did the cosmos dispatch you to witness the third stanza of my victory, or do you merely seek instruction in the lighter arts?"

Vilhelmiina did not blink. "Quiet."

She took two heavy steps forward, the bronze plates of her apron clinking together with the dull rhythm of a smith's hammer. She planted an iron-shod boot firmly against the base of the mast.

"This star-canoe carries thirty bags of hearth-grain in the lower hold," she said, her voice dry and flat as split oak. "The agricultural rings are freezing because the Warlord turned the sun-mirrors away. People are chewing reed pulp for dinner."

"A tragedy of epic proportions, surely," Markkalt said, resting his hand casually on the pommel of his rapier. "And one that my blade shall rectify in due course, once I have sailed to the outer reaches to challenge—"

"Step away from the tiller," Vilhelmiina interrupted, resting the heavy flail head over her shoulder with effortless strength. "I am taking the helm."