The Miocene Arrow

by Sean McMullen

  “Very good, Commander Serjon. What hour would suit you best? Dawn, while things are quiet, or after breakfast when more people are about to help?”

  “Now, Sair Adjunct,” Serjon said firmly as he rubbed his eyes.

  “But commander, it’s nearly ten P.M. You have been two hours in the air. There are no lamps lit in some of the—”

  “Then bring a lantern, Sair Adjunct. I want to start now.”

  There were few surprises as the inspection of the gunwing halls and maintenance tents got under way. The adjunct expected Serjon to pause at some experimental wings that were in the early stages of flight testing, but he gave them scarcely a glance. Several wrecks of Alliance wings held his attention longer, but he quickly went on to the next gunwing hall. Here there were three complete Yarronese gunwings and five sailwings amid the Bartolican wings under repair, but they were older, standard models.

  In Gunwing Hall 11 Serjon stopped in front of the most recent Yarronese gunwing to fall into Bartolican hands. It had been kept under tarpaulins, and nobody was allowed near it. Serjon stood and stared when the tarpaulins were thrown aside.

  “Is there something the matter, Commander Feydamor?” asked the adjunct.

  “Is this a joke?” Serjon replied in a hoarse, contorted voice.

  “What do you mean, Commander? This is a captured Yarronese gunwing. We have had it since May, and the mark on my manifest shows that it was landed here by a defector.”

  “A defector? What was his name?”

  “That has been left blank on the register, sair Feydamor. It had been marked for destruction by fire, but with all the confusion and the rapid Sennerese advance we have had more important things to attend. Now all such orders are yours to review.”

  “It is completely intact,” breathed Serjon.

  “Indeed. Do you like it? Your guildsmen could check it for flight status.”

  “He lied to me, he lied to everyone!” shouted Serjon in Yarronese with his eyes squeezed closed. “He played us like puppets, then he tried to burn us!”

  The adjunct and his staff remained silent, aware that something was seriously wrong.

  “Do not touch the gunwing,” Serjon rasped more quietly in Bartolican, pointing to the main double doors with a trembling hand. “Now leave me alone.”

  Once the doors had been rolled shut the sound of smashing glass and splintering wood came to them from within the gunwing hall. After a few minutes Serjon came out, looking unsteady and disheveled. He was holding a length of pipe, which he dropped as he reached the adjunct.

  “It would not do for a commander to display unseemly or unstable behavior in front of a vanquished enemy officer, would it Sair Adjunct?”

  “No, Commander.”

  “Clean up in there, then call my guildsmen. Tell your people that I shall kill anyone going within ten feet of Princess.”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  Glass from broken beakers and stills was everywhere, and the smell of compression spirit was heavy on the air. Serjon had smashed up a spirit testing bench, wrenching it from the wall mountings and reducing it to a pile of kindling. Once the hall had been swept clean Serjon examined the gunwing in great detail, starting at the propellor and finishing at the rudder. He took notes, copied guild marks and serial numbers, documented and sketched damage, then allowed his own guildsmen to bring it to flight status.

  At first light Serjon’s guildsmen had the gunwing on the flightstrip with its engine chugging. Serjon took Princess into the air, circled the palace several times, then landed. The gunwing was rolled to an earthwork buffer where the reaction guns were fired into the soil. The bullets were then dug out and examined. The adjunct watched as Serjon completed the report, then handed it to one of his guildsmen. The man set off in the direction of the palace.

  “Get Princess back into Gunwing Hall Eleven, now!” Serjon barked as the adjunct went up to him. He looked as if he had not slept at all during the night. “I have already arranged for a dozen Dorakian carbineers to stand guard.”

  “Is the gunwing so very special?” asked the adjunct as he waved some of his own guildsmen over.

  “It shot me through the heart,” Serjon replied, then made for the ablutions screens.

  Half an hour later the flock of five Skyfire gunwings arrived over Condelor. With their powerful tandem-radial - engines roaring and the clean lines of their single-wing configuration, they had crowds running across to them as they taxied up to the guild tents. Warden Alion Damaric presented his credentials to the adjunct, then left the big gunwings in the care of the guildsmen that had arrived the previous day. They were only there for the victory flypast, and would then return to Yarron. Sartov did not want his best technology being studied and copied. The adjunct began filling him in on all that had happened the previous day.

  “If the Archwarden pleaded innocent, then the Lady Airlord must share his sentence,” the adjunct conclude as they stood before the pennant pole.

  “True. He must have great faith in his innocence to plead thus. He is to be paraded above the city in one of the super-regals in the flypast this morning, then flown to Median to be put on trial before his victims.”

  “So soon?”

  “Pah, can’t have him around here with the confusion of the celebrations. Loyalists will try to free him, won’t they? In Median the guard is liable to be tighter.”

  Serjon found Alion as the warden was supervising the painting of a new pennant plaque for himself.

  “Can you spare the time for a few words, sair Warden?” asked Serjon crisply.

  “Only a few, sair Commander,” said Alien, looking distracted and impatient. “I am to be in the victory flypast above the city in just twenty minutes.”

  “Oh good, then you can use your old triwing, Princess,” said Serjon in a voice so cold that it could have iced over wings on a midsummer’s day.

  Alion lost color but replied smoothly and without any pause.

  “Princess was destroyed, shot down over Condelor and burned. I crawled from the wreck just before—”

  Serjon backhanded Alion across the face and he went reeling back, crashing over the artist’s table. Serjon was upon him at once, breaking a light chair over his back and kicking him about the shoulders and head until a crowd of bewildered Dorakian carbineers pulled them apart.

  “Your old triwing is in Gunwing Hall Eleven!” cried Serjon in a fury. “It’s completely intact and still bears Yarronese guild seals. It never crashed, it never burned, and it has barely any groundfire damage. You landed at the palace of your own free will, damn you, confident that you would not be shot at. That would only be the case if you had proved disloyalty to Yarron by shooting at my super-regal. I had several others examine Princess, they are all ready to testify that it is yours.”

  The carbineers slowly released them and stood back.

  “Come with me,” Serjon snarled.

  Alion closed his eyes. “Leave me alone,” he whispered.

  “I’ll not say it again,” warned Serjon in a voice like the clacking of the safety release on a reaction gun.

  Alion shambled forward, but did not come within reach of Serjon. They began to walk and soon Alion had only his accuser for company on the wingfield. An uncharacteristically cold wind was blowing for August, and Serjon’s greatcoat flapped free.

  “I want to die,” Alion moaned, then stopped and sank to his knees with his hands clasped.

  “For that all you need is a bucket of water and the willpower to keep your head in for long enough.”

  “Would you accept the revenge of the aggrieved?” pleaded Alion. “Would you shoot me down in a duel?”

  “I want no duel with you,” replied Serjon. “You are clearly unchivalric and I would not dignify you with an honorable death. Get up and walk.”

  He pointed to the line of Yarronese Skyfire gunwings being refueled for the flypast.

  “After the flypast, go,” ordered Serjon. “You may have enough compression spirit to reach a
neutral domain, and then again you may not. If you land here again, then Airlord Sartov will have some very hard questions for you after he opens his mail this afternoon.”

  “That’s … generous of you. Why are you doing this for me?”

  “I am not doing this for you, I am trying to get your filthy body out of my sight. You shot me down, then you caused me to be rescued—for whatever reasons you had. Now I give you your own freedom in turn, so that I can be free to hate you. Go. If ever I meet you again I shall surely kill you, Warden Alion Damaric.”

  “Serjon, I swear by my honor that I was only trying to distract you from firing into the crowds of Bartolican nobles. I never sought to kill you. I could see Samondel at your mercy—”

  “Tell me, Warden Alion, just what is your word and honor worth? You are very adept at proclaiming and defending your honor, but it’s a pity you have no honor in the first place.”

  “It’s you who has no honor!” Alion retorted. “You’re just a killer.”

  “Warden Killer is my name, and I do not pretend to be otherwise.”

  Serjon turned and walked away in the direction of the maintenance tents. As Alion got to his feet the distant onlookers hurriedly dispersed, although whispering and glancing back at him as they went.

  Harkli da’ Mik looked up from his orders log to see a senior warden from Yarron arriving. The man bowed curtly and presented a sealed envelope. The seal was that of the Yarronese Airlord, and was countersealed by that of the Airlord of Senner. Harkli broke the seals and took out the letter. It was in Yarronese. He made a show of studying the letters, not willing to admit that he could not read the language.

  “So, is the prisoner ready for transfer?” asked the warden.

  “Do you wish to check our arrangements?” asked Harkli in turn.

  The warden nodded and they walked to a tent where a squad of nomad carbineers stood guarding Stanbury and Samondel.

  “I was told there would only be one prisoner,” said the warden.

  “Hah, this place is bedlam, it’s a wonder the couriers get any messages through at all. Both Archwarden and Lady Airlord are to be flown over the city in chains, then taken to Median. Their destinies are linked, if you know what I mean.”

  Stanbury noted the arrival of the Yarronese warden at the flap of the tent, but did not hear the Sennerese conversation regarding his fate. Four carbineers unchained him and locked light shackles to his wrists and ankles. He shuffled out between the carbineers and behind Samondel. She walked with her head down, listless and unaware of what was happening, her hair tangled and loosely bound back. She had not spoken to him since the previous evening. Carbineers, flyers, and guildsmen lined his path, staring and scowling but silent. Over near the flightstrip. wardens were waving their arms and shouting while adjuncts ran about with maps and weather briefing slates. The engines of four of the Skyfire gunwings and a super-regal were idling. Stanbury was impressed by the machines, in spite of where they were taking him.

  Harkli folded his arms and whistled with relief as the four Skyfire gunwings roared into the sky. They began to circle the palace and wingfield complex as the super-regal began to move down the dispersal path. The super-regal reached the far end of the flightstrip, turned, then stood unmoving. Harkli could make out the figure of the flight guildsman and two carbineers climbing out of the hatch in the underside. They walked over to a wheel and began examining it.

  “Oh no, not a mechanical failure!” groaned Harkli. “Not with the escort already in the air.”

  Just then he heard someone hail the wingfield adjunct in Yarronese. The tall, thin youth was the new commander, by the bar colors at his collar. After a moment both the adjunct and commander came running over, calling to him urgently.

  “Where are the Bartolican leaders?” demanded the adjunct in Sennerese.

  “There in the super-regal, as per these orders,” replied Harkli, taking his orders from his coat and offering them to the adjunct.

  The adjunct read for a moment, cried out in horror to the commander then turned back to Harkli.

  “This is the seating layout for tonight’s formal declaration of the war’s end!” the adjunct barked angrily. “What is going on here?”

  “But the Lady Airlord Samondel and Archwarden Stanbury are in the guard of the super-regal’s wingcaptain—”

  “There’s the wingcaptain!” shouted the adjunct, pointing to a man in white underwear running toward them at the head of several wingfield guards.

  Harkli turned back to the super-regal. Dark shapes fell out of the hatch; then the hatch was pulled shut from inside. The compression engines revved up to full power and the huge wing began to roll forward.

  “Stop that wing!” Harkli shouted in Sennerese. “Shoot! Shoot out its engines!”

  By chance there were no Sennerese guards in the immediate vicinity, and none of the Bartolican guildsmen or Dorakian carbineers spoke Sennerese. As Harkli drew his sidearm and dashed out onto the flightstrip he heard the adjunct translating at the top of his voice. The commander ran up beside Harkli, his own pistol out. Together they emptied their clips at the sailwing as it roared past, already airborne.

  Serjon turned and ran back to the guildsmen, shouting for his gunwing to be started and fueled at once.

  “The devious bastard, he managed to get away with both of them!” he shouted to the adjunct as he flung off his dress cap and checked that the gunwing being prepared was armed.

  “But there are four Skyfire gunwings escorting him, how can he escape them?” asked the adjunct. “They are the fastest wings in the sky.”

  “Very easily! That super-regal can fly four thousand feet higher than even the Skyfire gunwings, and it has a greater range!”

  The steam trolley was wheeled up and backed to the compression engine of the remaining Skyfire gunwing. As it spluttered into life and began to warm, Serjon began a preflight check of the controls. The adjunct watched the super-regal circling the wingfield with the four Skyfire gunwings, climbing all the while.

  “Send a runner to the tents, tell them to get the remaining super-regals into the air with a full load of fuel and ballistic rockets—and experienced wardens flying them. Give them a bearing of … well, track him until he’s out of sight. Tell him to look for my Skyfire, I’ll be trailing him at whatever height I can manage, and—What bearing is he taking, anyway?”

  The adjunct had his binoculars to his eyes. “He’s still circling, but gaining height slowly.”

  “That makes sense, he wants to get to safety before—Hie! What’s that at the end of the flightstrip?”

  From his vantage in the cockpit Serjon had seen four figures standing beside the long grass at the end of the flightstrip, just where the super-regal had stopped.

  “Adjunct! Send a dozen guards down the flightstrip. Warden Alion dumped Archwarden Stanbury along with his guildsman and guards. He’s only got the Lady Airlord Samondel aboard.”

  Serjon slumped back with relief, but he was still tense and angry. Alion had abducted Samondel in his escape, and that had not been part of the bargain. The super-regal was at about 4,000 feet now, but was still circling. There was high cloud, he could easily hide amid that, once he gained enough altitude. A group of carbineers reached the end of the flightstrip.

  “They have Stanbury,” said Serjon to the adjunct.

  “That’s a relief. It seems we have an embarrassment rather than a catastrophe.”

  At that moment there was a change in the sound from the compression engines above them as the gunwings began to disperse like dark sparks from a pinwheel. Above their compression engines’ noise there was a much louder, sharper note.

  “The super-regal is diving,” whispered Serjon, stating the exceedingly obvious.

  “Run for your lives, he’s coming down here!” the adjunct was shouting.

  Serjon was well behind the others, having had to clamber out of his Skyfire first and shuffle along in heavy flying boots. All the while the howl of the compression
engines above grew louder, the pitch rising as the super-regal picked up speed. Fighting down his panic Serjon slowed, looked up and took a bearing on the plummeting V-shape above him. A year of desperate fights had taught him to estimate speeds and courses with instinctive accuracy. He quickly realized that he was safe, but the super-regal was still plunging earthward.

  The ground shook as the super-regal smashed into a gunwing hall and detonated its full load of compression spirit in a thunderclap of flame and roiling smoke. Dirt and smoking debris rained down on Serjon as he crouched with his hands over his head. The devastated gunwing hall had collapsed outward and was rimmed with wreckage and burning gunwings. The adjunct came running up to Serjon, his field glasses still in his hand.

  “Did either of them bail out?” Serjon asked.

  “I checked just a moment ago, no,” he answered.

  The fire guildsmen were now on the way, pushing water wagons and pumps, and waving people back from the ruin. The adjunct turned his field glasses back down the flightstrip.

  “At least they have—Good Lord! It’s the Lady Airlord Samondel!”

  Serjon began to walk toward the burning gunwing Hall, the confused adjunct trailing behind.

  “That’s Gunwing Hall Eleven, isn’t it,” said Serjon. “That just has to be Gunwing Hall Eleven.”

  The adjunct glanced about hurriedly. “It is Gunwing Hall Two, sair. On the roof it is written in Old Anglian classical numerals. It looks like eleven to confuse non-Bartolican enemies, but it is really two.”

  Now it was Serjon’s turn to glance from hall to hall. To either side of the annihilated hall were 01 and 03. The halls were arrayed in staggered ranks, to further confuse any attacking super-regal bomber after what had happened early in May. There were three rows of four. The second last row at the north left corner was XI, but the number at the south right row was II.