30 0821Z JUL 295
Ygdis leaned on the railing of the command post, watching the woods.
"Where are they?" Grenwin muttered from behind her. "Five minutes and nothing."
The cloying scent lay thick in the air, yet nothing moved in the open that she could see.
Ygdis' tablet made a crackling sound, then Maia's nervous voice floated from the small speakers, oddly rough. "Hey, Ygdis. Can you hear me?"
She fumbled the device from her coat pocket, holding it up for Grenwin to speak to if needed. "Yeah, we can hear you. See anything?"
Looking up the street, they could see Knight's silhouette beyond the tenements. The head of the metal-man turned slowly, a thousand scales across its shoulders flickering open and shut. Ygdis could almost hear the susurration of those little vents from here, but she must have been imagining it.
"In the treeline at your 11, I think I see our wristless friend. He's halfway up a sentinel, can you spot him?"
Grenwin and Ygdis both turned, remembering the clockface analogy. Ygdis searched closely, spying just the hint of pale skin. "I think I see him," she nodded to Grenwin, pointing.
"What's he…" Maia's words were cut off by the tower shuddering, a long spike of ice piercing the low wall.
Ygdis heard Gren make a shocked sound, and she looked down. The spike had punched right through her belly, but she didn't really feel it. "Huh," Ygdis said, "That's new."
Grenwin shouted something, covering her and Ygdis' eyes a moment later. There was a muffled whump, then the sound of many small things raining to the earth.
"Did-" Ygdis grimaced, focusing to keep from coughing, "We get him?"
Grenwin nodded, clearly at a loss for words.
All at once, the ice melted, splashing the floor with water. Ygdis fell, Grenwin easily catching her.
"You'll be fine, we just need Maia…" The older woman murmured, pulling out the little medicine kit everyone carried. She took out the bundle of linen bandages, seeming at a loss of what to do. "I-"
Ygdis grit her teeth, pulling her tablet up to her face. "Hey, Maia, I'm hurt. Need your help, please."
"Shit! Okay, I'll be ther-" The tablet crackled, whined, then cut out entirely. The sound of water and damp things falling on stone from near the river was audible, and Ygdis grabbed the bandages from Grenwin. "I'll stay alive, deal with that!"
The older woman nodded, face paler than Ygdis had ever seen.
***
Brelan heard shouts of fear from the Lodge, turning even before Grenwin shouted down at them, "Into the Plaza! Cover the Lodge!"
Turning, he beheld a nightmare. Great spider-shapes nearly as tall as the Knight stood in the river shallows, water-bloated wights falling to splash in the waters and rise.
A flare of blue light burst forth from the Knight's left hand, a blade blazing with a warm light. Trails of energy, like the afterimages of lightning, puffed snowflakes into steam as the arm was brought back, then swung low and forward along the ground towards the spiders.
The wights unlucky enough to be caught in the path of that blade vanished, as though they'd never been, nightmares dispelled under the light of the sun.
Brelan had only just started moving with the rest of his squad as the spiders came forward, front legs like spears stabbing into Knight's abdomen and shoulders. The massive armor rocked backward; For a terrifying moment, Brelan thought it would fall and crush the Lodge.
More light flared from the Knight, this time from the small of the back and the knees. Somehow, the light pushed the weapon back up, forward, and Knight heaved one of the spiders over. Another spider stabbed again, striking at Knight's left arm, only to be cleaved in twain by the blade of light.
Deceptively slowly, Knight took to the air, the still-standing spider stabbing it's blades into Knight's legs. There was a great sparking as something burst within the machine, sending a gout of fire and smoke from the knee. Knight's right arm swung around, aiming a peculiarly thick dagger at the hanger-on. The dagger belched smoke, a rhythmic banging sound that struck at Brelans ears like knives.
The spider fell, body twisted and melted into ruin by whatever the weapon had done. The lights on Knight's back faded, and the armor began to fall. Brelan watched as it landed on its wounded leg, the limb buckling under the force. The torso turned, the blade swung once more, and the final spider was cut sloppily in two. The dagger was turned back towards the wights, barked a few times more, cleaving rifts through the waterlogged corpses.
Finally, Knight fell still, resting on its belly, smoke leaking from the great injuries sustained. A plate burst off of the back, shortly followed by a peculiarly dressed Maia, who slid off the shoulder to the ground and ran at a dead sprint to the command post.
Brelan's feet pounded up the road with the rest of his squad, his formation slamming into the wights battering the Lodge door. Using his spear to hold the closest body down, his fellows behind dismembered the thing, and Brelan moved onto the next.
Across the plaza, around the fallen myths, the scene was repeated. The living worked as one to reduce the disorganized wights around the swiftly melting spider-corpses.
***
Three hours later, the wights had been cleared away from the plaza, limbs and torsos stacked high outside the village for burning. Knight still rested where it fell, but Grenwin didn't really care at the moment.
"Are you sure you're feeling alright?" She asked Ygdis, poking her healed belly.
The younger woman slapped her hand away, sapphire eyes glinting. "I'm fine. You don't need to mother me, Gren."
Grenwin sniffed, turning away. "I just want to make sure."
"She's fine," Maia said, standing by the window and staring out at the plaza below. "Did anyone know they could do that?"
The men and women around the table were quiet until Herrick coughed politely, standing. "Some of the legends, the really ancient stories, did say that the Others rode Ice-Spiders like steeds, and wielded ice as a weapon with no equal." He frowned at the grim faces watching him, "That's all I have," he said quietly as he sat.
"Ice-spiders ain't nothing like those," Uven scowled at the window. "They're beasts of flesh and blood like anything else. Live in caves, and if they come out, they do it at night. Not in the morning."
Maia nodded, "I got a good look at them. If the Others are like humans made of ice, these are spiders made of ice." She tapped her fingers on the windowsill, turning back to the room. "Their flesh, bones, even their vital fluid is the same. At least, visually."
Uven shrugged, "Ice-Spiders bleed green, not Milkwater white."
"We need to call them something, then. Ice-Spiders are the animal, so what are these?" Grenwin asked the room.
"Arachnids?" Ygdis asked, "Like, the word that means spiders in general?"
"Too long to say," Uven clicked his tongue, "Arachs. Easy, quick."
Grenwin liked that quite a bit. "Aye, I second this. Call 'em Arachs."
A susurration of agreement marked the topic closed.
Maia was staring at Knight again, deep in thought.
"So," Uven started, "When do we get our own Knights?"
Maia turned, wide-eyed. "Your… Own?"
"Yeah, to fight them. You can't tell us we're going to fight the Others so our kids can live, then keep the weapons we need out of our hands." He leaned forward, resting a fist on the table. "The infantry can handle the Wights, but what if more Arachs come? Rather, when will more come? You cannot expect the Others to just forget about us."
Grenwin knew Maia well enough to see the conflict that had plagued her for the last few days coming to a head. "Maia, he's right. We need weapons like the Knight. Maybe not one for every soldier," she grinned at Uven's frown, "But we should incorporate them into the military. At least then you'll know what they're being used for, and how."
Herrick noted, "We could use that sort of thing for building, too. Great shovel-blades on the arms to excavate, axes for felling trees, and who knows what else? Could be that it makes setting up south of the Wall faster."
With a solemn nod, Maia acquiesced. "Alright, if that's what you want. I…" She blinked, "I think I'll head the team working on them, personally. There are a lot of bad accidents that can happen, mistakes we could make, that I want to avoid."
Ygdis sat up, clenching her fist. "What aren't you telling us? Your face says you're excited, not scared."
Grenwin blinked, looking back at Maia, studying her face. Yeah, she was eager, like she'd been just before the first time Ygdis had pounded the snot out of her.
Shrugging, Maia said, "I've found a personal connection to the topic." She waved out the window, "Muscle Tracer, as it happens, is just the term for any machine piloted through the so-named system. That thing out there, the Knight, is a machine of war, pure and simple. We'll call those weapons Armored Cores." She considered for a moment, "We should consider replicating the Valkyries, as well. They could fill the role of fast response units, pinning down the enemy until the slower, tougher Armored Cores arrive."
Slowly, they hammered out the roles of these new weapons within their armed forces. Given no timetables for the development of new models, nor any current functional examples, it was entirely speculative.
From her experience during the battle, Maia offered that each Armored Core needed a dedicated liaison officer to help guide the pilots. Apparently, there was too much information for the pilot to sift through mid-battle, and she thought that someone back at home with the training and equipment could undertake the analysis aspect so that the pilots could focus fully in the moment.
They would need to expand the Analysis corps, train the people needed for the job, train the people who would work on producing these new weapons… For a little bit, towards the end of the meeting, Grenwin really did understand why Maia had so many headaches. With the inclusion of Valkyries, they were to later establish a branch of the military dedicated to aerial warfare, as mad as it sounded. While they had no watercraft, they finagled the general structure of the naval arm into the whole, such that there would be an understood chain of command at all levels.
It didn't help Grenwin's mood much that everything was absolutely going to change once they started filling out the new framework, which meant more meetings for her, and the absolute promise of future headaches.
Ygdis, though, seemed to thrive. Quietly, Grenwin made a mental note to talk to her and Maia about moving the girl over to the nascent Intelligence branch to see what she could do with it. Ygdis had an eye for details and a ridiculous memory, and who better could they ask to ferret out actionable truth from myths, legends, and lies?
After they broke for the day, Maia all but dragged Grenwin and Ygdis back to her home, absolutely adamant that the two were going to continue training with her. "After today," she said, "I can't be the only one who can heal. Neither of you are leaving this room until we've figured it out."
It was no surprise to Grenwin that she asked them to stay overnight.
It was a surprise when the girl had shot up out her arms, babbling something in a foreign tongue, then settled back to sleep as though nothing had happened.