Chapter Twenty-Nine
Li walked in front of Truck with Gold, as they did in the afternoons. It was a dusty afternoon, and the roadbed they were traveling on had eroded to where it was little more than a slightly flatter track through the landscape. Only when crossing the many low ranges of hills that rippled the land could you see where the road had once been. Li wondered at that, at who built these roads, that they could cut through a hillside, leaving a deep cleft.
Gold said that trucks, like Truck, chugging and whining along behind her, had done it. And people, lots of people, Gold had said. China had had the most people, Gold told her. But they are all gone now, and there aren’t many people in the land left. Li had tried asking about that, but Gold’s Chinese wasn’t that good yet, though she improved daily, and with a speed that surprised her. Gone, just gone long ago, was the answer that Uncle translated.
Li wondered at that. She was alive, so not all the Chinese had died. All but one in a hundred, Uncle had explained. Maybe less. This was long ago, he told her, before the ice had covered the land. That, she knew about. It was a children’s tale, several of them that she knew. Ice as tall as mountains, far to the north in some tales, right in Changsha itself in others. A winter that never ended, populated by cold but beautiful queens who still lay under the earth, but woke and roamed the snowy land, waylaying travelers and lost children.
Witches were dangerous. They would snatch children to raise them into strange, fey adults who had forgotten human speech and lived like animals. Or they could fly, fly like the four wasplike fliers on Truck's broad back, the drones, as Gold named them. But the drones flew with a high-pitched whine, sometimes soft as a whisper, and the witch children in those tales flew with a sound like thunder and powerful wind. They would prowl the cities, looking for stray little children to drag back to the witch and chop up into their pots, or worse, turned into mute servants of the witch, like themselves.
Li knew these tales were not real. Or she felt they were not. She had grown up with them, in the scavengers’ nomadic camps, listening to them. She was sure the other adults, even the elders, did not believe them, but they told them all the same. But they all mentioned the ice, the terrible ice and how hard life was then. Witches prowling the ice, looking for lost children to stew in their pots.
Gold and Uncle had a long talk about that one night in their camp. Whispered, because Kolton spoke English, and she was occasionally about, coming by to talk with Gold on this or that subject. Uncle had said Gold didn’t believe the stories of witches and agreed with her that it was likely just a children’s tale. Still, Li wondered. Where did tales come from, after all? And the lords of the south, the ones the scavenger clans traded with, they had witches, that much was sure. Li had seen them once at a market. They were terrible.
Witches judged criminals for the southern lords. They judged and extracted terrible punishments. They could see long distances and hear your thoughts. If you stole, or lied, or cheated someone, they would know. Li did not believe it because the scavengers were full of liars, thieves, and cheats, and the witches only punished the people who got caught. But they punished people. She had seen it. They liked to burn, but were not above meting out whippings or stoning if the mood struck them. Wild-haired women with pale, white faces and red-rimmed eyes. Li had stayed in the back of the crowd, not wanting to draw their attention.
She had enough attention as it was. No need for the gangly girl with long, pale blonde hair, the white skin and reddish eyes to catch their attention. It had been useless, as one crone on the elevated platform had seen her anyway, and pointed, and mentioned her to another, younger witch, who craned her neck to see. Li had run, then, back among the crowd, back to the wagons her people had hauled down out of Changsha to the market. She worried they had seen her, and hidden lest they come looking. But none had, and then, days later, she had found Uncle and taken him to Truck, and Uncle had told her she didn’t need to worry about the witches anymore.
It had frightened her, the witches, even if Uncle just said they were mean old women who punished people, and not magical, or able to fly through the night with a sound like a rushing wind. She had dreams, of course, nightmares, a whole series of them, over the years. Fleeing the witches. She would wake up with her heart pounding in her chest, her back and hair clammy with sweat. As she grew older, the dreams had faded. She had seen the witches since then, several times, and they had definitely noticed her sitting atop Truck’s cage, watching them from afar.
They were terrible, but they were also behind her. It was a wonderful feeling, and she relished it anew every time she remembered. The witches were in the past. The tribe was in the past. No more arguing. No more old men telling her she needed to marry this man or that man; the men had changed as she had kept saying no. Different men, different boys from the various groups that prowled Changsha and its suburbs. She had snubbed them, and so they hated her, of course. It made things difficult. It made her wary.
She never strayed far from Truck and Uncle these past few years. She had grown up, living and sleeping with the circle proscribed by Truck’s swiveling arms. She was safe there, safe from the old men who wanted to breed her. Safe from the young men with the staring eyes, who wanted, she knew, to rape her and control her. Safe from the witches, who wanted to break her. She had been safe then. Now, it was different.
Gold, she knew, was dangerous. The woman was like a banked fire, but intense when she revealed herself. They could not speak, but they could understand each other. And touch and be touched. Kiss and be kissed. Was she safe with Gold? These soldiers did not trust her; she could see it in them, their eyes and mouths when they looked at Gold, or Truck, or her. They were resentful.
So no, not safe, she knew. But free, and the danger was of her choosing. Nobody else. She was here, with Gold, and Uncle, and Truck. This was her path, to walk when and where she chose, and damn these resentful, scowling men and old whitefaced bitches.
The path was cresting a rise, a shoulder between two hills. Ahead there were soldiers. New soldiers. Gold called to her from Truck, and she saw her beckoning her up onto Truck. Li climbed up as Truck lumbered past. Gold nodded to her, smiling. She indicated the new soldiers, said something.
“Visitors,” Uncle translated. “May learn something.”
The new men watched them carefully with stony faces. All of them save one were Chinese, hard-looking men with hard faces and flinty eyes. Weathered faces. They rode shaggy ponies and carried both bows and long lances. One or two of them had guns instead of bows. Long guns.
Their leader was dark, like Kolton, and Li could see her riding next to him. The man watched them, and she saw him scan every inch of Truck, noting their gear, the cage, Truck’s long arms tucked away for travel but which could unfold swiftly. She noted he did not stray his mount within reach of those arms, while other riders did. One man spurred his little pony to within an arm’s length of Truck’s broad track. Li looked down at him, and he grinned back up at her. It was a friendly smile, but he did not otherwise look friendly. His ear was missing, and his teeth were very crooked.
Gold touched her arm and pointed up the hillsides as they passed through the little gap in the rise. There were buildings up there. Stone buildings. Forts, sheltered from view and easy attack. She saw a long row of stables cut into a terrace on the hillside. From those forts, men would command this pass. Gold watched her as she looked at them, a question in her eyes. Do you see them? Do you know what those forts mean? Li nodded to her, and Gold smiled.
They were near the end of their journey. They crested the last of the rise, and Li could see a broad valley laid out below them. There, in the center, was a fortress, a walled city with orchards and fields both within and without its white stone walls. They had reached Command.
Chapter Thirty
Silver was teaching Carter to fly the little airship. They were doing knap of the earth flying, or as close as they could get them to, given how cumbersome the Dutchman was. C
arter learned quickly.
“Keep it on this line here,” she said. “We want to stay out of the line of sight from that ridge up there.” She pointed to their forward port side.
“I can bring it down a bit,” he said, eying the ground. They were a hundred feet up. It was a safe altitude in a wooded, hilly country.
She shook her head. “No, stay here. Some of these trees look about seventy-five, eighty feet high. Best not to risk it.”
He nodded. He was learning fast, and she hoped it would be useful. He had proven it once already, on the river, and she expected there would be other times she would need to leave the Dutchman and get picked up later.
They had been practicing that too, these past weeks since the encounter on the river with the red-robed Marine with the southern accent. Silver had drilled him at least twice a day on this.
She would have him drop low on an area free of trees and, at first, pretend that she had rappelled down to the ground. He would then fly off and circle around the hill or meadow to pick her up at more or less their agreed-upon time.
The first few times had been disasters. He got blown downwind of her, he said, and it had taken him an hour to correct and circle around again, locating the meadow.
She had watched him silently during this. Just observing. Gauging his stress level from his grip on the control yoke, his frantic attempts to peak out through the scuffed clear plastic windows in the gondola’s nose.
He finally announced he had lined up on the right meadow, and she checked the time.
“About an hour,” she said dryly. “Long time to run or hide from the bad guys.”
“The wind took me for a ride,” he objected. “It took a while to get reoriented.”
“I’m not even sure this is the same place,” she said, teasing him. “I thought we passed it a while ago.”
“No way,” he said, frowning down through the windshield at the upcoming meadow. “I’m sure this is it. That big tree was my landmark.” He looked at her. “You’re tired. Get some sleep. I can fly her for a while.”
He was right about the tree, she agreed, although more to boost his morale than anything else. She needed him on her side, so she worked at that, smiling more than she normally would have. More than she would have, given her situation and mood. It was not great.
Lost, she admitted to herself. Somewhere over central China, maybe in Hunan, but she couldn’t be sure. The rivers had moved, the cities and towns were ruins. It was pretty country, all rivers and hills and big lakes crowded with birds. But the cities, the cities and towns, they were ruins.
Occasionally they would see signs of human habitation, a few small homesteads. She steered clear of these. The population density was low, very low for China, even the China of her long-ago memories. There had been populous towns on the rivers then. Barges by the hundreds.
They had only seen the one ship. Otherwise ruins, or rather, signs of ruins, overgrown walls and piles of junk. Roadbeds that still cut across the landscape in long straight lines, their top layers washed away. Once, they had seen a cloverleaf freeway intersection, one span still standing, the general shape of the looping on and off ramps still clear from above.
So, lost. That was frustrating, especially after the promise of catching the radiotelegraph messages between the Red Marine, as she thought of him, and his Command. There had been other traffic, but they coded it.
She had kept her ear to it, though, listening. She thought she could identify a few of the operators by their keying, their style. There were three or four of them, she thought. But the signals had faded as they traveled west, and gone faint and ghostly.
Coded traffic told her, what? She mused on it. Early messages, in the panic after meeting her, an airborne invader, had been en clair. Then, within hours, only coded messages. Then, Gold’s message. In the clear, then nothing after that, only the coded numbers, one after the other, groups of words she couldn’t understand. It was frustrating.
But it told her something. It told her this was an organized unit. She’d surprised them, and they had been comfortable tapping out unencoded messages. But then they rapidly switched to code. They were cautious and disciplined enough to manage that, which she knew wasn’t easy.
But also lax. Why not use code all the time? Why be broadcasting in the clear at all? This told her something of their protection stance, the threat profile they were operating under. Probably for a long time. Probably for a very long time. Humans, even augmented humans, were still… human. She frowned to herself and sighed.
People made mistakes. They got lazy, complacent, and they fucked up. Red Marine had fucked up and revealed things. She reviewed in her mind, for the hundredth time, she felt, what she’d cataloged from that brief, unencoded message.
There was a group of military personnel, US military, still operative. Still in communication with each other, at least. How? She shook her head. It didn’t matter how. Or it mattered, but she set it to the side for now. She could understand how that was possible later, she resolved.
She ran her hand through her hair. It came away greasy. She needed a bath. She had been with Carter for weeks and had only sneaked quick catnaps and wipe downs. It was making her irritable. That and not knowing where they were. She was reluctant to talk to more peasants. That had not been promising.
They had cornered one poor farmer and his family, swooping down on their farm in the early evening out of a fog. The family could not run, and she’d rappelled down, not unhooking from the line, to talk to them. The man had been wearing a rough-spun smock, rusty red to match his face. He had fallen flat on his face before her, across two of his newly hoed rows.
“Where is this place, Cousin?” she had asked, in her best lowlands Chinese.
He had gibbered at her, an accent so thick she could barely follow him.
“Boge-fung?” she asked him, trying to make sense of his words. “Beijing? Is that what you mean?”
Yes, yes, Lady. Booge-fung. This place. Buge-fang.
“Who rules here?” she asked. “Who is in charge?” No farmer dared stray into the wilderness without some sense of protection from bandits. She suspected there would be banditry. People were people.
Men, Lady. Strong men. Horses. Men with guns.
So. “Foreigners?” she asked. Barbarians?
He gave her a long look, and she could tell he was no simple man. He knew what she was getting at.
She leaned in closer to him. “Foreigners?” she asked again.
One, Lady. One man. He is very large. Very strong. Very tough.
“What’s this tough guy’s name?” she had asked.
The dashboard beeped, breaking her out of her reverie. She glanced down, quartering her view. Trees coming up, the land was rising. A long ridge coming up, they were climbing it. Not a great danger, Dutchman was just warning them. The little airship was easy to fly, which was why she had been careful around Carter, not to let her guard down more than she had to. He could strand her here, should she leave Dutchman.
Her plan was futile. She couldn’t get Carter to trust her any more than she trusted him, no matter how she smiled at him and tried all her old tricks. He wasn’t receptive to them, at all. “Carter,” she said, “I need to trust you.”
He sat up a little stiffer. Turned to her. “Why can’t you trust me?”
“Because I can’t read you,” she said. “You’re not like a regular man. I can read most men, or I could, anyway. Recently. Read them like a book. You, you’re a mystery, most of the time.” She looked at him, caught his eye. “Why do you think that is?”
“I’m a lot older than most men you’ve met,” he said. “Maybe that is it?”
She nodded. “Thought of that,” she said. “That is probably it.”
He smiled at her. “I can’t trust you because you won’t talk to me,” he said. “You’re always quizzing me.”
She smiled. “Follow the ridge for a bit,” she directed him, motioning to the right and ahead. “We
can follow the valley—”
The arrow sprang from the gondola’s inner wall with a thonk. The gondola rang like a bell. The shaft was inches from her face. She marveled at it. It was easily as thick as her thumb. She rolled left, looking down, trying to extrapolate the arrow’s path…down, down, and, yes, there. A glint, movement.
Men, men in the forest. Men on horseback. She frowned, trying to count them. Carter was swearing and had gassed the engine. The Dutchman began to whine, picking up speed.
“Stand by to go about,” she called to him.
“Go about? You mean go back there?” He looked down at her. “That’s an arrow!”
“I have eyes. Start your turn, starboard, full circle. Bring me around there again.” She looked at him. “Be ready to drop me and come back and pick me up. Like we planned.”
“There could be five arrows in the bag already,” he said to her. “You’re nuts.”
“Maybe, but will you do it?” she said, softly. “Or do I need to toss you out the hatch?”
He made a face at her, pinched up scowl, but turned to the controls. The Dutchman began a sharp banking turn.
There could be arrows in the bag, she thought to herself. In which case, they would crash so she might as well crash now. But she doubted, inspecting the arrow, that it would pierce the bag. That stuff seemed tough, woven of some wonder-fiber she’d never seen before, light and strong.
They were turning, almost complete, coming up on the ridge again, parallel to it.
“Slowing up,” Carter said. “Lots of trees down there.”
“Thirty minutes. Don’t be late.” She clapped him on the back and stalked to the back of the gondola, stopping to shoo the dog into the front. Giving him a little scritch behind the ear on the way. Good dog. He was a good dog.
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