PodCastle 405, ARTEMIS RISING: Beat Softly, My Wings of Steel - a podcast by Escape Artists, Inc

* Author : Beth Cato

* Narrator : Elizabeth Green

* Host : M.K. Hobson

* Audio Producer : Peter Wood

*

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PodCastle 405, ARTEMIS RISING: Beat Softly, My Wings of Steel is a PodCastle original.





Welcome back to Artemis Rising 2!

Beat Softly, My Wings of Steel

by Beth Cato

By the light of the full moon, I crept onto a battlefield mounded with decaying soldiers and horses. Mud squished beneath my boots as I searched for a horse’s soul. This close to the Jen picket lines, they had likely already scavenged for souls of both flesh horses and those that had already been reborn as pegasi, but I was desperate.

Not far away, the campfires of the Jen army flickered, their encampment a living wall across the peninsula. At my back, my own city Sharva repulsed me like the rotten flesh on this battlefield. Holes dotted the magicked dome over the spires like a moth-gnawed veil unable to hide an ugly bride. I would rejoice over Sharva’s imminent fall but not for what that meant for me and Grandmother.



My hand glided over the smooth metal belly of a pegasus. Voices caused me to hunker low. After a long minute, I crawled forward. Gauzy clouds smothered the moon but I could still make out the bodies around me like miniature foothill ranges. A Jen Cavalry officer lay nearby, her death evidently more recent than most.

The golden emblem of Jen Cavalry on her surcoat was not that different from Sharva’s: a rearing pegasus, wings flared. The city-states of Jen and Sharva vied like jealous sisters for the love of the benevolent horse goddess Atanta.

I rubbed my filthy fingers over the embroidered patch, then looked away, ashamed of my own pettiness.

That’s when I spied the soul.

The wisp was dull yellow like a star fallen to earth, its light nearly extinguished after so long on the field. I slid over a pegasus’s metal corpse to get closer as hot tears filled my eyes. A soul. Blessed Atanta, there was hope. We might be able to escape.

Only the souls of especially strong-willed horses could linger on earth after death, and it took even more fortitude for such souls to persist after their reconstructed bodies failed. Mother often said Cavalry families of Jen and Sharva had that same resilience. We were of Atanta’s brood, too—and horses responded to that. It’s as though they recognized a scent on Cavalry souls that marked us as part of their herd.

I cupped the soul in my hands. Faint warmth remained, as in a round of bread left cooling for an hour. “There, there,” I whispered. “I’m Ulyssa. I’ll take good care of you.”

I had known and loved many horses throughout my fifteen years, but I had never bonded with one.

With trembling, mud-stiff fingers, I pulled the ready heart from my pouch. I knew every dent and curve pounded into the metal surface. I twisted the lid from the right ventricle, and murmuring praise to Atanta, I poured the soul inside.

I slipped the heart into my pouch just as gunfire punched through the quiescent night. An unseen bird cawed, the sound almost as loud as the lurching of my heart. I eased myself back over the broken pegasus and officer. The bombardment would begin anew at sunrise. I had to hurry. My pegasus must be ready to fly before Sharva’s dome was breeched.



“Miss Ulyssa, do you require assistance?” asked Three. He met me at the estate’s gate, his three-fingered hand held aloft to cast its embedded illumination.

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