7 September 3960: The Road to Casper
Feydamor and Glasken sat resting in the ruins of the windmill tower of an aqueduct pumping station. It had been hastily dynamited by Yarronese carbineers to deny water to the advancing Bartolicans, yet the water that it might have provided was now denied to the Yarronese refugees.
Feydamor had been learning to use his crutches better, in spite of the chafing under his arms that was now seeping blood through his jacket. Their progress was nevertheless slow, and the stops for rest more frequent. Even though they had started out near the head of the column, they were now back a long way. Glasken had remained loyal to his friend, even though he needed less rest and could easily have trudged much faster. As they sat in the shade their conversation became philosophical.
“Remember when you met Laurelene?” began Glasken lazily. “Sair Feydamor, you need not have slashed that Bartolican’s throat as he attempted to mount her.”
“Yes I did, it’s my code,” Feydamor replied firmly. “What would you have done?”
“Oh, the very same,” Glasken admitted.
“Do you miss your loved ones?”
“No. I miss having loved ones, but I do not miss my loved ones.”
“Hah! I wager you still carry pictures of them.”
Glasken looked at him for a moment, then smiled sadly. “Pictures, ah yes. I carry pictures.” He touched a stud on what Feydamor had assumed to be a brown leather neckband. A scene solidified in the air between them, a view of a rotund but quite attractive woman reclining in sheer, silk-like robes on a pile of cushions, eating chocolates and sipping some thick, gold drink from a chunky crystal glass. Someone was lying asleep beside her, a man with a hairy chest and golden brown skin.
“Her name is Varsellia. She has a tendency to weight, and one day it will lead her to an early grave. The crystal eye device that spies upon her is in a glass case. She prizes it greatly as jewelry and wears it on very special occasions.”
The scene winked out of existence as Glasken tapped another stud. Feydamor blinked and shook his head.
“That … that was wonderful.”
“That is what ghosts see, Jeb. Ghosts are silent, invisible, and powerless.”
“But they were alive. That woman on the bed was unbelievable.”
“Hah, Varsellia was a lot better in her twenties, when I first met her. Now Varsellia’s face on Jemli’s body, ah, that would have been perfection—Jemli was my first wife, you know.”
“No, no, I mean your machine.”
“Pah, it’s become a means to torture me. A lady named Zarvora gave it to me a couple of years after she died. She probably meant well.”
“After she died? More riddles?”
“No, truth. It’s also true that I once had the rank of your airlords, but my title was mayor. Strange, but my wives and I changed roles as we grew older. While I became less of a lecher, mellowed and became fond of study and good living, they began taking lovers and dabbling in politics. I had ruled well for a year, then I found myself charged with blasphemy.”
“Blasphemy, Sair Glasken?”
“Blasphemy, Sair Feydamor. Certain philosophers in my pay were experimenting with steam engines, and even diesel engines—the things you call compression engines.”
“Yes, yes, and you mentioned that engines are forbidden by your religions?”
“Only engines that burn fuel. Christians, Islamics, Genthiests, all of our major religions have words against them in their Greatwinter scriptures. An alliance of fundamentalists raided the city university of my mayorate and discovered the experimental engines. The philosophers tending them were executed just as soon as the torturers were done, but I was somehow implicated. I’d known about them, of course, but nothing could have been proved. Alas, my friends feared to speak on my behalf, my eldest son denounced me, and my trial went very, very badly. I was convicted and condemned to death.”
“And here you are, dead?” Feydamor laughed.
“I was in the very cell of the condemned. I escaped.”
“I’ve noticed that you are resourceful.”
“At first I fled to my mansion, sure that my wives would hide me. There, through a leadlight window, I saw my first and principal wife, Jemli, with the prosecutor. He had bent her over a footstool and was exercising her feminine attributes. Ah, it was then that I began to really feel dead and powerless, like a ghost. I slipped away to a place that nobody would ever consider searching, a dour and joyless place, yet the only place that had a welcome for me—my old monastery.”
“You? A monk?” exclaimed Feydamor.
“Reluctantly, yes. It was there that I was recruited by a woman who eats marinated mice roasted on skewers. Such a strange one, Theresla. She did some unspeakable experiments on me a quarter century ago.”
“Yet you work for her now?”
“She never betrayed me, which is more than I can say for my family. She warned that forces were gathering to unleash a war that would make the Milderellen Invasion look like a tavern brawl by comparison.”
“I have never heard of the Milderellen Invasion.”
“It was big, Jeb, a quarter of a million people died.”
“A quarter of a million dead! In our wars we sometimes lose a hundred wardens and squires, but … a quarter of a million! Why, some entire dominions are not as big as that. Sair Glasken, why are you and your people here? What could you possibly want from us?”
“The answer to that could get you killed.”
Feydamor scratched his head. Glasken stretched.
“On your feet, Jeb. Time we were marching again.”
Glasken stood and picked up his pack.
“So, is Theresla your lover now?”
“No, just my friend. Strange, but she is the only woman who has really been my friend.”
As they began walking Feydamor heard the sound of a distant flock of gunwings; then he caught sight of a distant V of three aircraft approaching from the direction of Casper. Not only were they Yarronese triwings, they were using Feydamor engines.
4
THE MIOCENE ARROW
7 September 3960: Casper Wingfield
The adjunct of Casper wingfield stood at the pennant pole with Serjon, Alion, and Bronlar beside him. Before them, at the head of the dispersal track, guildsmen were preparing three wings with ungainly braces and struts grafted in around the engine mounts. Each featured twin heavy reaction guns.
“So these are the hybrids that people have been whispering about,” said Alion.
“They look like ordinary gunwings that have been built in a hurry,” Serjon observed, shielding his eyes against the sun. “Rough-looking finish, no pokerwork on the wood, unpolished engine metal.”
“They are Chancellor Sartov’s idea,” explained the adjunct. “Sailwing weight with gunwing power and configuration. They carry a lot of extra fuel and reaction gun ammunition.”
“Please explain why these are not gunwings,” asked Alion.
“They are far lighter, giving them fantastic range, but they have no plating.”
“No plating!” the two youths chorused together.
“None. They are fast, powerful, and heavily armed, but they can absorb very little damage. An attack from in front will hit the engine first, so you have a chance to jump out and fly the silk.”
“But if a warden gets onto your tail there’s nothing but tentcloth, wood, and seat padding between us and his guns,” said Bronlar.
“Yes, so you have good incentive to keep your eyes sharp.”
“They strike me as being very fast,” Bronlar pointed out. “I imagine they can exceed a hundred and twenty-five miles per hour very easily. That will bring down fire from the Sentinels.”
“That is another of Chancellor Sartov’s ideas. If you use prohibited speeds only sparingly and when in danger, the Sentinels may not notice.”
“May not?” asked Alion. “Only once is enough, and it’s a dishonorable way to die.”
“That
is what you are to find out for us today,” the adjunct explained further, keeping his tone cheery.
“What?” exclaimed Serjon. “We’ve done no conversion training.”
“They will be like a very agile gunwing with incredible range and firepower. Warden Sartov thinks that they can be used to blind the enemy by attacking his courier and spy sailwings.”
“But chivalric protocols demand—” began Alion.
“Damn the protocols!” shouted the haggard adjunct, his fists clenched. “The Bartolicans have flouted every protocol while our carbineers fight back like guildschool children. Flockleader Serjon Feydamor, you are to lead a patrol along the road to Kennyville. Good hunting.”
“Flockleader?” exclaimed Serjon. “But that was only temporary.”
“Not anymore. The symbol is being painted on your canvas as we speak.”
Serjon looked to his companions, then to the hybrid triwings. Sure enough, the flockleader symbol was being painted beneath his number, along with the word STARFLOWER. He had survived twenty-six missions in sailwings and destroyed seven Bartolican aircraft, three of them gunwings flown by wardens. The guildsmen at Casper called him Serjon Warden Killer. Practically speaking, there was nobody better to lead the flock of three.
“Warden Alion is, well, a warden,” said Serjon. “And what about the men who flew these in?”
“Warden Alion has three sailwings down, as has Semme Bronlar, they are ideal companions, but you are Serjon Warden Killer. The flyers who brought the hybrids from Sheridan have never been in combat …” He paused, took a deep breath, and then another. “That is why they are lying bound and gagged in my operations tent.”
There was no question that could follow an admission like that. The three young flyers stared at the adjunct in silence, all with mouths slightly open, none sure that they had heard correctly.
“These hybrids were being ferried to Forian, I commandeered them,” admitted the adjunct. “I cannot bear the refugees to continue being shot up on the road from Kennyville, day after day. Please, ascend these miracles and try to help, Flockleader Feydamor. My family is in that column of misery!”
He threw open his greatcoat, to show a pencil-on-card portrait of a woman and two girls pinned over his heart under a cover of greasepaper. Without another word he whirled the greatcoat about him again, turned on his heel, and strode off. They watched him walking back the way they had come. This was his way of fighting back, this was his way of helping. He was throwing away seniority, position, and wealth, and perhaps risking a confrontation with a firing squad to do this. The expression of entreaty on his face still hung before Serjon.
“It is a brave and honorable thing that he does,” said Alien. “We should do as much.”
“Well, looks like we both die virgins,” said Bronlar, slapping Serjon on the back.
“Thirteen kills between us,” sighed Serjon. “This will be a bad day.”
The triwing hybrids were tricky to handle on the ground, being so light yet overpowered. Guildsmen ran alongside, aligning them and helping to steer until they were on the flightstrip. They ascended in single file, Serjon first, followed by Bronlar, then Alion. It was a calm day, with scattered cloud to the south. They formed into a tiered patrol, with Serjon at the point of an inclined V, following the road through the Laramie Mountains. Thermals and drafts tossed and buffeted them at their low height, but it seemed important to let the North Yarron Air Carbineer markings be seen.
The refugee column wound out beneath them, the misery and despair lost at even such a modest height. The fast, skittish gunwings flashed past the fifteen remaining miles of the column in a few minutes; then all three climbed and made for the broken clouds above. The hybrid gunwings could climb at a rate unheard of and were as agile as swallows, yet the three flyers felt curiously vulnerable in their frail, flimsy war machines.
Far below and to the northeast, Serjon’s father stopped to listen as he and Glasken shuffled along in the column. The droning of compression engines came from up ahead as the flock of three Yarronese gunwings flew along the column.
“The markings are Yarronese,” observed Feydamor as they passed overhead. “Two inverted Vs in white and a Pole Star, that’s North Yarron. Nothing more. No wardens’ arms, no pennants, no squire symbols, only DK 1, DK 2 and DK 3.”
“They’re gunwings, and the engines sound hefty,” Glasken observed.
“They’re my engines!” Feydamor snarled in a surly tone. “Guardian Class 3T gunwing compression engines. They’re Hailbeater, Volkar, and Borsklo. My guild built them last century. Just look at those airframes! What a disgrace.”
Feydamor shouted abuse up at the aircraft, which continued on to the southwest.
“Is there a problem?” asked Glasken.
“Damn them to hell, my finest dueling engines in such rough, unpainted airframes!” Feydamor cried. “Yarron is lost, now my honor is lost too!”
The Yarronese aircraft climbed, soon becoming lost amid the light cloud.
“I’ve got eleven shells left, unless I can barter wurst for a few more,” said Glasken as he rummaged in a pouch.
“Feydamor compression engines in unpainted airframes! I should never have allowed their loan.”
“Another week to reach Casper at this rate,” Glasken remarked wistfully. “The mountains and mud are no help, nor are the Bartolicans with their little visits.”
“If we can survive for much longer,” said Feydamor
“Your fever has gone and both your wounds are healing, sair. Just avoid any further bullets and women like Laurelene and, well, you could live to, ah, reasonable expectations.”
“Avoid further bullets! Do you think I’ve not tried to—Hah!” Feydamor stopped in his tracks. “Listen, can you hear that?”
The drone of distant engines was clearly audible. Other refugees had stopped to listen as well.
“It’s just your people’s patrol flying home,” suggested Glasken.
“They’re Bartolican, and there’s a lot of them. There! Over to the southwest and wheeling this way.”
“Take cover!” shouted Glasken. “Take cover, leave the carts. Carbines, form ranks about me and stay low.”
Away to the west a flight of gunwings and armored sailwings was approaching at about two thousand feet. Feydamor counted twenty-five aircraft as Glasken hastily unslung his carbine and checked the magazine.
“That’s a Bartolican attack flock!” said Feydamor.
“Should I celebrate?” asked Glasken.
“They probably seek some wingfield up ahead, not us.”
“Don’t place money on it,” said Glasken grimly. “The sailwings are breaking off and diving. Chivalry is not the fashion, Jeb, and we are on the menu.”
The entire refugee column had already swarmed off the road for cover among the rocks. The sailwings swept unopposed along the road, firing in long bursts. Feydamor fired his carbine as each aircraft roared past, but Glasken saved his depleted ammunition for more realistic targets. They had cover, after all, and the sailwings did little more than shoot up the handcarts and bundles left abandoned on the road.
Bronlar was the first to notice the attack on the refugee column. She pulled ahead and rolled for attention, then banked across to the southeast. The other two followed. Serjon waved to Alion, pointed to Bronlar, then across to the Bartolican sailwings. He patted his own head and pointed up at the gunwings.
An attack, thought the incredulous Bronlar. Three against twenty-five. Serjon was committing them to engaging a full attack flock.
“I was hoping to do a bit better than eighteen years,” muttered Bronlar as she released the master safety lever for her two guns.
Bronlar had never flown into engagement with Serjon before, and the adjunct’s illegal orders were clear: no head-on challenge passes. Serjon led them in a long arc that took them through broken cloud and behind the approach of the Bartolican gunwings. As they came around they saw the enemy sailwings strafing the road. Serjon began
dipping his wings to pass his orders.
Alion was to follow him against the wardens while Bronlar shot up the sailwings. That meant two hybrids against five gunwings! Time seemed to slow down. Some things in Bronlar’s field of view became blurred, while others were focused as sharply as the edge of a razor. Her mouth tasted of something bitter, and she could smell her own fear in the scarf that muffled her face. The twenty sailwings were in two groups of ten, making alternate strafing runs in a line.
Bronlar attacked in a shallow dive. The form of a sailwing danced and expanded in her gunsights. The man is unaware of me—the target is unaware of me, she corrected herself. Closer, closer, today you die, Bronlar, but you charge a fee first. She pressed the trigger bar with her thumb.
The sailwing erupted into a comet of fire and fragments, then Bronlar streaked past.
Momentary elation flooded through her. She was alive, and an enemy was dead. That’s it, there’s fourteen kills between us three, Serjon, you can stop worrying about thirteen, Bronlar told herself. Another sailwing was ahead, framed by dancing mountains and a toy road littered with flecks of color. She fired again. This time her aim was wild, but she was so close that a second burst killed the sailwing’s engine and shattered its propellor. A third sailwing was beginning to strafe the road as Bronlar opened fire, flaying the fabric from his starboard wing root and setting the compression spirit tanks ablaze.
By now the sub-flock was curving up and around for another strafing run, but the leaders had realized that they were under attack. Bronlar slashed pieces out of her fourth victim, which turned on its back and plunged earthward.
“Just as easy as killing Opal’s unarmed families, don’t you think?” Bronlar shouted at the unhearing Bartolicans, exhilarated with revenge.
The Miocene Arrow Page 22