Klaus Wulfenbach and the Queen of Skifander (Chapter 5)
Disclaimer: Phil and Kaja Foglio and Studio Foglio own the universe of Girl Genius and
everything within. I just like to play with the characters.
PG-13 for now, will be rated NSFW/L in later chapters.
It took several days for the Skifandrians to completely set up camp both inside and outside their border in order to house the injured warriors from both sides. The 15 dead Skifandrian warriors had already been sent back to the city for preparation for their sendoff and cremation, while the rest of the dead allied troops had been sent off to their own villages. As for the dead enemy troops, they had been set aside and preserved as well as they could be. High Priestess Xarbis had been unsure of the burial rituals of Shanii's people and so had decided to try to preserve them instead. Still, she hoped, as Zantabraxus did, that the Gowakian envoy would soon arrive to discuss terms and take them back to their country.
Xarbis, a woman of advanced age but still able to fight on the back lines, knelt over one of the injured warriors and checked her injuries. Her position required her to be a fully fledged doctor, not typically to treat wounds such as the one she was inspecting now, but to oversee her people's general well-being. Much of the time, this meant giving guidance in sexual matters, as sex was considered Ashtara's greatest blessing and could not proceed without proper care.
The warrior was a young mother who had taken a bad wound to her lower abdomen. Xarbis was worried that it would not heal up properly to have more children that she would want. She sighed and nodded to her assistant that the patient was stable enough to be shipped back in the next transport. She got up and noticed Zantabraxus at the entrance of the tent.
"Mistress," she bowed her head slightly.
"How are they?" Zantabraxus asked.
"Pretty good, all things considered. Some of the wounds will take longer to heal, but all in all, it was a successful campaign." She looked back at her patients and then back at the queen. "Any word of the envoy?"
"Spotters saw some movement on the savanna that looks to be a royal entourage. They should be here within the hour."
"Good. I hope we can wrap this up. The holy days are upon us." Xarbis put her hand on Zantabraxus' shoulder and herded her over to a quiet corner. "How are you holding up?" she asked in a lower voice.
"Tired, not looking forward to this meeting," Zantabraxus sighed and rubbed her eyes. "Most likely they will accuse us of killing their leader."
"I'm not a political expert," Xarbis spoke up, "but we do occupy the winning position. I would hope they would agree to return the sparks for the war dead and leaving us alone."
"We can only hope," Zantabraxus sighed again, and looked outside the tent. She saw Klaus attempting to strike up a multi-language conversation with one of the village elders and, while mostly failing, having a fun time at it. She smiled.
Xarbis shifted her eyes. "And what of him? You seem well on your way to taking him as your consort." She lowered her voice even further. "You know there still may be elders who would disapprove of a male offspring from him, even though he has proven himself as a great warrior."
Zantabraxus looked back at Xarbis. "Maybe. But most of the elders I was facing down before in some of my more, as they put it, 'radical decisions,' have now started to come around."
Xarbis frowned. "Chump seems to be the perfect match for you, and I fully support you in your decision, mistress, should you choose him for your mate. He will indeed provide you many strong daughters. Still, I know you. This was already weighing on your mind. Please consider carefully."
Zantabraxus smiled. "Thank you, Xarbis." They embraced, and Zantabraxus walked out of the tent to prepare herself for the meeting.
Zantabraxus looked across the room at him. She blinked once and sighed. The heir to the throne of Gowaku, the new emperor, was the former emperor's 15 year old son. He stared back at her, trying to maintain his serious composure, but Zantabraxus sensed his nervousness as she noticed he spun a little cog in his left hand at his side.
"His royal highness, Emperor Mashtai, will hear your demands now," one of his aides said in Skiff. Zantabraxus, who had a basic understanding of the Gowakian dialect, wanted to talk to his highness directly, but it seemed that his envoy was making that impossible at the moment.
She cleared her throat. "We, that is, the elders of the combined villages and the council of Skifander, would have you to return the sparks that you kidnapped from the villages over the past month, send materials to repair the villages that were damaged during such kidnappings, have all of your personnel cross back to your side of the Kanbaan River, thus reestablishing the previously agreed upon borders, and leave the combined villages and Skifander alone. In return, we will return your war dead and wounded and also agree to not pursue additional military action."
A translator repeated the demands to Mashtai, he considered for a moment, and then he nodded. The same aide answered Zantabraxus. "These demands are agreeable." But when Zantabraxus went back to nod to him, she saw him grow angry. His cog spun around his finger until he threw it across the tent and stood up. "You killed my father! You had won and you killed my father!" His aides surrounded him but he could not be contained. He leaped at Zantabraxus with a small knife.
She sat still and held out her right arm, stopping him in midair with it. She reached out with her left hand and squeezed his hand until the blade dropped in her lap. "You," she said calmly in Gowakian, "have been misinformed." As he relaxed, his aides pulled him back to his side of the tent and sat him down.
Zantabraxus handed the knife off to one of her aides. "I attacked your father personally in order to disable his machine and save his life. I was able to cut enough connections to force the machine to start walking back to its base. Your father, however, activated a self-destruct device, and I only had enough time to get clear from the explosion. Victory had not been decided at that point."
Mashtai fumed. "Where's your proof?" Zantabraxus indicated towards the general direction of the downed clank. "You may inspect it if you desire." Both of them stood up, and surprisingly, Mashtai wove off all of his advisers as he exited the tent with Zantabraxus. Following suit, she did the same, and they went alone to the wreck.
After they were out of earshot, Mashtai spoke up. "I am...sorry about the outburst." He looked up to see Zantabraxus' surprised face before continuing. "There are many who mourn in my country for my father, and they expect me to reflect their anger at you. But...they do not know my father as I do."
As they reached the wreck, Mashtai jumped into what was left of the cockpit and started rummaging around. "To me, he was cruel. It was only when I became a spark that he was nicer to me, although then he wanted me to join in all of his schemes. Those schemes brought famine and poverty to our country." He found the control unit for the self-destruct device and pulled it out. "This," he showed it to Zantabraxus, "will help convince them that my anger was premature."
Zantabraxus frowned. "I see what you are doing, but you cannot pretend that you actually think your father was a good man for long. If there is anything we can do, even in secret--"
"You have done enough," Mashtai sighed angrily as he jumped down from the wreckage. "My father is dead and I can now do what I need to bring Gowaku back to its former self." He started walking back, but sensing that Zantabraxus was still staring at the wreck, he turned back around. "Thank you." She looked at him. "You figured out a way to stop this while keeping death to a minimum."
Zantabraxus smiled and walked towards him. "It wasn't me. It was my great warrior Chump. He figured out how to distract the machines with the guns."
"Then, please," Mashtai said, "give him my thanks." He looked towards Skifander in the forest. "I wish..."
"What?"
Mashtai shook his head.
"No, nothing." They headed back to the meeting tent. Early the next morning, Mashtai's envoy left with some of the village warriors to fetch the kidnapped sparks. Most of the Skiffandrians were also packing up to go back to the city, only leaving Zantabraxus, Klaus, and a few other aides there to make sure the transfer went smoothly.
Klaus sat on the edge of the Skifandrian border, hanging his legs over the edge and watching the sun set. He was fresh from a nice cool dip in the river, letting the last rays of the sun warm him before he went off to sleep. They had a long journey ahead of them back to Skifander the next morning.
He sensed her before he actually heard her behind him and looked up. Zantabraxus was now standing there, her soft sleeping robe blowing against him in the gentle breeze. She sat down. "Are the sparks settling in?" he asked.
"Yes, although there is still much to do." Zantabraxus leaned on Klaus' left side and put her head against his left shoulder, closing her eyes. "Most of them want us to teach them what we know. We are willing to do it, but the travel time between the border and the city would take them away from their families." She sighed. "That means setting up a school here on the border, away from most of the knowledgebase. It also means asking some of our sparks to move here."
Klaus mused. "How long would it take to travel by air?"
Zantabraxus pouted in thought. "Maybe half a day? You come from the land of airships. We don't use them."
"Maybe you should..." Klaus turned his head towards her.
Zantabraxus sat up and looked straight at him. "An airship would draw attention, and questions, and then people. And we wouldn't be a lost city if we ran daily tours!" She sighed again. "I doubt this 'lost city' role will last for much longer. Originally, we wanted to remain untouched by the horrible world outside, by all of the things that hurt our people. But you and the Heterodynes showed that information flows much quicker now, and it is inevitable that we will have to reveal ourselves to the outside world and deal with the consequences." She leaned against Klaus again, and this time he put his hand around her shoulder. "I love Skifander, even with its imperfections and blind adherence to the old ways. Still, since I was a child, I always wondered what the outside world was like. I wanted to travel and explore all the places I had heard about in stories and see how different all of them were. You're so lucky, Klaus. You got to travel to wild, distant places and do good things for many different people."
Klaus snorted half a laugh. "We went a great deal of places. But travel can be rough sometimes. It was also good to return home."
Zantabraxus smiled. "Your home is wild and distant to me. Tell me about it."
"There isn't much to tell about Wulfenburg," Klaus started, "There are my parents, who are good people, but my father mostly deals with small-town politics. There's Sturmhalten, which has its fame from the Storm King but also sits on top of Balan's Gap and taxes all who use it. It's also cold. Mechanicsburg is the most interesting, though. That is the ancestral home of the Heterodynes. The castle has the strangest artificial intelligence running it, that even Bill and Barry had trouble dealing with it.
"And then there are the Jägers. One of the old Heterodynes created them. Take a strong human soldier, have him drink some type of potion, and his strength, reaction time, senses, stamina, and survivability all improve. Their outward appearance also changes. Their skin changes color, they get razor sharp teeth and pointy ears, some of them get horns, and there is even a rumor of one with a tail. Most of them have already lived for hundreds of years, still speaking with an older accent, zo dey talk like dis, dollink. And they have an obsession with hats. They defeat a worthy enemy, and if the hat fits, they claim it as a trophy. They would like your hat."
"My ceremonial crown?"
"Yes, they would say it is a nize het."
Zantabraxus giggled.
"And they claim to be attractive to da vimmin, which actually seems to be true. They're fierce on the battlefield, loyal to a fault to the Heterodynes, but are, according to rumor, excellent lovers and even somewhat submissive in bed."
Zantabraxus said dreamily, "Sounds like my people. The further you get from one home, the closer you get to another one."
Klaus turned his head to look at her. She had closed her eyes while smiling, enjoying the breeze. He moved his other hand to her open cheek and softly stroked it. She moved her face to allow him to cup it completely. He leaned forward to kiss her, and she answered softly. Everything had been so hectic lately, that Zantabraxus felt the only reprieve was Klaus and the closeness of his spark to hers. She felt calmed and warmed by his presence, and all she wanted to do now was sleep like this in his arms. He seemed to have other ideas, as he started kissing down her neck. She started breathing heavier, and she so wanted to continue that she regretted having to break away.
"Klaus...we have an early morning tomorrow. And I have my own preparations for the upcoming holy days."
"Zan...I..." Klaus frowned. "Fine, I see your point."
"I'll be thinking about you throughout the holy days, though." Zantabraxus kissed him briefly and stood up. "Find me then." She walked off, her robe swaying in the wind and almost glistening in the twilight.
Klaus watched her until she disappeared into the tents. He sat, watching the horizon, thinking, for a very long time before he finally went to his tent to sleep.