Dragon Horse

Nikolaos shudders awake, shrugging off the shredded blanket. His stomach convulses with cold and hunger. He sits against the wall, staring straight ahead, blinking away the blackness. The flares. The foam crawling under his collar.

Ammi holds him by his upper arms. Nikolaos starts to sign, but she places her hands over his and wraps her arms around him. Nikolaos buries his face in the crook of her neck, digging his nails into her worn shirt.

Ammi pulls away and motions towards Nikolaos’ ear. He pushes the power button on his hearing aid. He recoils from the surging static, but then he shoots her a shaky thumbs-up.

“Are you hungry?” Ammi whispers.

Nikolaos is hungry, but even if he does fill his roiling stomach with food, it will empty itself a few minutes later.

“Where are we?” he signs.

Ammi points up and to the right.

“Northeast.”

Cepheus.

“Home?”

Ammi looks away and takes out the rolled-up report that she had tucked under her arm. Nikolaos flips through the pages.

TRIANGULUM AND CEPHEUS SQUADRONS HOLD OFF ARTILLERY ATTACKS FROM FORNAX.

No headlines about Helike. The capital city. Their city. The library. The backyard. Their home. Already forgotten.

Nikolaos waits in line for three hours while Ammi waits for Baba to wake up. One of the workers distributing rations rummages through the crates behind him.

A soldier with two tapered clubs stands beside the stall and shouts at the crowd to remain calm. When one man steps as if to shove to the front, he slams the butt of his rifle into his gut and throws him to the back before marching back to his post.

That keeps everyone else in the figurative and literal line. The common good matters more than their hunger and their terror. No matter what Arctoleans lose, they will not lose control.

Once, Nikolaos watched a televised broadcast of a Polaris bombing Cetus’ supply trucks. It plunged the south into a famine and delayed their attacks for months. However, even though the Sub-Equatets starved, they still found ways to feed their fury. There were riots, killings, even feeding on each other, because below the equator, the individual’s hunger mattered the most, though the serpent almost consumed their own nation in their self-interest.

Sometimes, Nikolaos has fleeting flares of respect for their enemies. At least, he respects their respect for freedom.

What if he were born in the south? Maybe they wouldn’t have put out his spark just because he couldn’t hear that well. They would ignite it. They didn’t fight because they were ordered to do so, they leapt into the fray themselves.

Cadmus wouldn’t have had to go in his place.

Nikolaos reminds himself that the fire that fuels them for the short-term will immolate them from the inside out in a crisis.

He finally gets to the front. The worker passes him a small metal thermos, half-filled with dried food.

Nikolaos heads back to the stacked wooden crates that will have to suffice as his bed, tracking wet footprints behind him, and ducking to the side now and then so he isn’t flattened by the stampede of paramedics pushing wheeled stretchers through the hangar of the abandoned Air Force Station that now functions as a shelter.

Hundreds of mangled and maimed Arctoleans sprawl on the ground. Bloody bandages cover their bludgeoned faces. Those who have legs left have them in a cast. One paramedic pulls shards of stone out of a wincing woman’s skin. Another force-feeds painkillers to a writhing man with his arm bent the wrong way.

A scarfed boy hands a first aid kit to one of the doctors. No, not the scarfed boy. Nikolaos should know his name by now. Xolani.

Nikolaos finds his feet moving by themselves, taking him towards his desk partner. But before Xolani can swivel around, Nikolaos steers himself around the corner in a sharp ninety-degree turn. What would they even talk about?

How are you Nikolaos?

My kid brother is Missing in Action, the subquates sank my house, and this thermos isn’t even full. What do you think?

He passes a black-and-white photo mounted on the wall beside him. Hundreds of pilots kneel in front of a Eurofighter Typhoon. General Chiyou crouches at the front, and at his side is a young man with Cadmus’ smile, the name “Pegasus” hammered into the dog tags hanging from his neck.

The steed hammers its hooves against his sternum, and its wings beat against his lungs, and the trench tears itself deeper.

Nikolaos shuts his eyes, searing the sight of the broken xyston onto the backs of his lids. The code name carved into the metal, the shattered spear-points, the snapped shaft. Then, he slips out from under the blanket, tucking it tightly under his snoring (thank the sky) father’s stubbled chin. Nikolaos places his gloved hand over Ammi’s calloused fingers, squeezing them firmly, but not enough to stir her from her sleep.

He slinks through the corridor, barely breathing, his footsteps light, the strap of his backpack and his ice picks slung over his shoulder.

He dives behind the stall and into one of the empty cardboard boxes when the soldier with the firearm walks by. As soon as the illumination of his flashlight fades, Nikolaos moves once more, clinging to dark corners.

Better to be too cautious than not cautious enough. He isn’t scared of losing his life to seven years behind the barbed wire of a collectivized farm anymore, but he can’t lose his only chance at bringing his kid brother back.

He comes face-to-face with one of the posters that has been pinned on the tunnel wall. He fights the urge to tear it off the wall and put up a new one that reads O ADELFÓS MOU FÉREI MÁRTYRES. One that will force them to remember that his brother bore witness as well as the dead.

He fights the urge to climb into one of the hundreds of different aircrafts around him, to run his hands over their wings and engines, some of which he has seen before during his studies at Argos, and others which even Baba couldn’t name. He squints, dodging the snow-reflected sunlight spilling in through the skylights and onto the white, puffy insulation peeking through the half-deconstructed tunnel walls.

His backpack bumps against the chest of the soldier behind him. The edge of a bayonet brushes the back of his neck. He spins around and holds his hands up over his head, eye-to-eye with the god of war.

Nikolaos has forgotten about the security cameras, specifically their night vision. Still not cautious enough.

“Let’s go for a walk,” General Chiyou mouths.

Nikolaos keeps his head lowered as his hero leads him away from the platform. The floor trembles under his feet when the train pulls up behind him, but it’s too late.

The general’s office is empty except for a trash can, a cabinet, and a desk completely constructed out of steel. And the emergency exit sign at the back.

General Chiyou undoes the clasps around his amputated leg, twisting off his prosthetic, and leaning it against the cabinet. He sits and rubs the stump where his knee has been sawed off. Nikolaos watches his mouth with the corner of his eye, but his focus is on the emergency exit.

“I’ve seen your average in Aviation. You’re smarter than this. You’re Vayu and Pegasus’ son, for the sky’s sake.” The general slides a piece of paper and a pen over to him. “Why would you do this?”

Polaris called my kid brother Achilles and sent him to Troy. His name is Cadmus, he’s twelve years old, and you never warned him about his heel.

Nikolaos clicks the pen and passes the paper to Chiyou, who folds his leg in, taking a deep breath.

“You’re mourning. I swear to the sky that we will make Cetus pay for your loss when the war is won–”

Nikolaos snatches the sheet back and clicks the pen again.

The Sub-Equatets took my brother, but you sent him onto that battlefield.

“Nikolaos, I’m not the enemy. I won’t send you to a farm, I’m a friend of your father. I’m your comrade. I know you didn’t try to stir up dissent by fleeing from the station. Your city drowned yesterday….The war will end. They all end. If not for the sky, control yourself for your family’s sake.”

Nikolaos shoves the paper towards him, the sheet smeared with ink.

You think this war will end? Ask Polaris to fight in it themselves. For my family’s sake, take me to the south. If you won’t, I’ll find another way there, and I’ll see you at the next memorial.

When the general looks down to read it, Nikolaos scrambles to his feet and leaps towards the emergency exit.

The silicon foot of General Chiyou’s prosthetic leg hooks onto his ankle and drags him to the ground. The muzzle of the rifle presses against his forehead, the bayonet brushing the tip of his nose.

“You don’t think I want to go to the south?” he shouts. “Polaris wouldn’t let me onto that train either, not even to save my own co-pilot!”

Nikolaos’ hands hover midair. He’s never seen the general like this. In fact, maybe he hasn’t seen the general at all. Not a walking myth, or a god of war, or a lonely statue in a field of ice, but an old man.

“I called her Ao Guang, the sea dragon who would light the way to peace instead of victory. A good kid, and an even better student, around your age at the time. She had a perfect score in Aviation.” He lets out a strained laugh. “I think she saluted me three times before we took off.”

Chiyou lowers the bayonet, sets the prosthetic leg aside, and sits back down. Nikolaos watches his mouth, no longer looking at the emergency exit.

“We shot down the last enemy plane and started flying back to our base. Ao Guang warned me to stay low, but I didn't. A missile hit our engine. We plummeted into the sea. My leg got trapped and broken under the controls. The impact snapped it completely in half.”

Chiyou rubs his scarred, shriveled stump.

“I hid underwater, beneath the wreckage, holding my breath. A Cetus soldier climbed into my Eurofighter. Ao Guang tried to follow me, but she was too late. They shot her in the spine and paralyzed him. Before I blacked out, I heard her screaming from the surface, screaming for me to save her…Some victory, huh?”

His steely eyes stare through Nikolaos, a thousand yards away from his office, into a distant sea only he can witness again and again. Then, he reaches into the pocket of his combat tunic, holding out a rectangular transmitter with a tiny antenna.

“Your brother, however, is not lost.”

The device’s sky blue screen lights up with a map of the south. A blinking, white star flickers on the eastern coastline.

“Achilles broke the xyston, so he could remove the tracking chip. Somehow, he hid it so the Sub-Equatets couldn’t find it on his person when they took him prisoner.” His steely stare shifted, so he looked at Nikolaos now. “He’s Cadmus, a dragon-killer, all right.”

Nikolaos points at Chiyou, then at his own chest. He stacks his fists on top of each other and breaks them apart, then he moves his index finger towards the right.

“Help me find him?”

“This is a matter only Polaris and I can handle.”

“I. Go. With. You.”

“Nikolaos, I won’t lose another top student–”

Flashes of light fill the room, but these don’t soar over Nikolaos. They shoot towards him. Not flares, gunfire.

General Chiyou grips Nikolaos’ shoulder, shoving him under the desk. He secures the straps of his prosthetic over his stump and sprints over to the cabinet, grabbing several cartridges and loading one into his rifle.

The skylights split apart. Sheets of glass shatter against the platform. The sharp waves of sound from the bullets shiver through Nikolaos’ skin. Then, pitch black, and he’s drowning in darkness again.

No, no, no, not again!

Coarse, wrinkled, veiny hands pry apart his clenched fists. General Chiyou presses a card into his palm. As Nikolaos traces his thumb over it, he makes out three lines. Blue. White. And Titanium. Then General Chiyou closes the fingers of his other hand around the hilt of his bayonet – the bayonet.

More flashes of light. The emergency exit splinters apart. Shrapnel slices down on the back of Nikolaos’ shirt.

The god of war steps out of hiding without hesitation, firing again and again, Sub-Equatet soldiers falling to his right and to his left. Another armored figure tackles General Chiyou to the ground, their elbows locking around his trachea. The old man’s eyes flicker with the fear of Cadmus’ dark, shining irises when he waved to Nikolaos from that train window.

Nikolaos slithers halfway out from under the desk. The bayonet flails. He slashes the back of the Cetus soldier’s knees before pushing himself back to safety.

The enemy stumbles , but the general doesn’t miss his chance, however slight, jabbing the butt of the rifle into the enemy’s ribs. He slams his shin into the side of the Sub-Equatet’s neck.

The Sub-Equatet collapses, his corpse rolling towards Nikolaos, his arm still stretched out, reaching for someone that isn’t there to save him.

More operatives descend from the broken skylights with their grappling hooks.

The general throws his leg around and angles his hip downwards, roundhouse kicking another attacker. He grabs their head and clubs them in the belly. He lands a low kick to the other Sub-Equatet’s groin with his prosthetic leg. The third soldier sprints right into his uppercut and right spinning elbow. One combination. Three enemies taken down.

This is why you’re my hero.

Nikolaos’ eyes snap towards the grenade sitting on the floor — the grenade for which the dead Sub-Equatet beside him reaches. He rolls out from under the desk and onto his feet, tugging at the general’s sleeves and pointing at it. Chiyou pulls out the clip and tosses it in another soldier’s direction, placing his arm over Nikolaos’ shoulder and shielding him with his body as the explosion knocks the wind out of them both, and knocks them to the ground.

The smoke clears. Nikolaos squints and stiffly surveys the area around him. A giant, charred crack splits the wall of the wreck that used to be the office.

“I could’ve used some fresh air in there, anyway,” General Chiyou mouths. Nikolaos laughs hoarsely, a slow grin spreading across his soot-stained cheeks.

A silhouette smothers the sliver of pale light leaking through the broken skylights and slicing through the shadows.

The general shifts into a defensive stance.

The snow settles on the epaulets of the last soldier, clad in a galea plumed with black horsehair, as she strides towards them. She holds a dragon-headed, bladed staff in her right hand, and a narrow, single-edged sword in the other. Dark, scaled, angular, armor lines her torso and limbs.

“Commandant,” the general mouths. The word hangs even heavier and thicker than the lingering smoke from the grenade.

“General,” the enemy retorts, crouching beside the soldier lying beside the overturned desk to press her fingertips under the Sub-Equatet’s jaw, then she removes them.

“No pulse. You’ve killed a child. How far you’ve sunken.”

“May the sky have mercy on him, but I took his life for my nation. For a purpose greater than my own glory. Your attacks are random, borne out of self-interest and shallow fury.”

“I attack with my soldiers. You cower above the equator while your army wastes away below it.” The Commandant paces around the office, circling like the winds and waters that whirl around the eye of a hurricane. “The soldiers I bombed in that communications center, the refugees whose lives I took in that camp in Columba, the workers in the nuclear plant I destroyed…they weren’t random. They diverted the Arctolean alliance’s attention, so I could flood Helike. I turned the tides, and now you will drown.”

She draws her sword from its sheath.

"That young soldier's family will seek vengeance. It's only right I kill an Arctolean child in return."

It's only right she kills an Arctolean child in return.

Nikolaos’ knuckles whiten as he wraps his failing fingers around the hilt of the bayonet. The Commandant brings her blade down. Towards him.

The general knocks the sword out of the Commandant’s hand with his rifle, placing the muzzle against the Commandant’s forehead, and pulling the trigger.

The Commandant tilts her head to the side, smiling at Nikolaos from over Chiyou's shoulder.

“Unlike you, I learn from my mistakes.”

The sword slips into the general’s abdomen. General Chiyou keels over, the rifle tumbling out of his hands. The Commandant wrenches the metal out of his body, spinning her sword.

"Nikolaos, run!" the general mouths. Chiyou retrieves his rifle and lifts it to the height of his shoulder with one arm, clamping his hand over the scarlet serpents slithering out of his abdomen. The stain spreads from his sternum; his wounds splayed like copper wings across his uniform.

“Listen to your general,” the Commandant mouths.

The general tries to aim again, but then he coils in on himself in agony. The Commandant slashes him across the face with his sword and hacks at the general’s prosthetic with his spear. The god of war falls to the floor, his metal leg dislodged, immobilized.

Run.

The Commandant sheathes her sword. She takes the rifle and turns it over in her hands. The flashes of gunfire on the other side of the open door illuminated the weapon in flares of red.

Run!

Nikolaos staggers to his feet, the weight of his backpack shifted to one side. His knees almost collapse under him. The broken edges of the emergency exit cut his coat as he leaps through the jagged opening.

Snow splatters him and the wind claws at his clothes. He’s at the end of a corridor. He spots half of an elevator on the other side from the corner. He hurries towards it and hammers the button. It won’t open. The low, mechanical drone of the other Sub-Equatet soldiers' weapons rippled through the air and their blazing searchlights inflamed the corridors as they scour the hallways for him.

Nikolaos sprints down the staircase. He clutches the bayonet close to his chest and crawls under the rusted, metal steps. The enemy's shadow seeps into the tiles beside him. He squeezes his eyes shut for what seems like hours, then they chip open just as the darkness melts away.

Nikolaos isn’t safe yet. He can't forget the blinking white star, the silent objective that General Chiyou has given him.

“I swear.”

He pulls himself out from under the staircase.

“I swear.”

The coast seems clear, but his feet have frozen to the floor. He signs until the blood thaws his calves.

“I swear…”