The Miocene Arrow

by Sean McMullen

  “Ryban’s far luckier, sharing her tent,” he said to himself, vocalizing his thoughts.

  As if cued by his whisper, angry voices began to come from the tent.

  “I say no more!” insisted the unseen Bronlar.

  “To the Call with Feydamor and saving his thirteen!” Ryban cried back. “I’m full nozzle again.”

  “Well take it to Ma Gertie’s in town! This is personal.”

  “I deserve better.”

  “So do I! You’re rough, and it still hurts.”

  “I’m insulted.”

  “You should be honored, with what you’ve had.”

  “What I’ve had? Sharing you with Farrasond?”

  “Get out of my tent.”

  “My tent? My tent? Last night it was our tent! I’m not going until I—Argh!”

  Ryban burst from the tent as if pushed, and he rolled naked on the ground clutching his groin. With a glance to the carbineer, he got up and ran off among the other tents, most of which already had heads poking out in Mirrorsun’s light. The adjunct hurried over, his feet bare and his coat over his star-pattern pyjamas. Rummaging sounds were coming from Bronlar’s tent.

  “Have, ah, they been arguing?” the adjunct asked Hongraz.

  “Aye, that appears so, Sair Adjunct,” Hongraz replied nervously.

  Bronlar crawled out of her tent, hastily dressed and carrying her flight bag. Both adjunct and carbineer backed away a few steps, each hoping to leave the other to speak to her, then stood facing the advancing warden side by side.

  “Warden Jemarial, giving notice of leaving for Evanston, Montras,” she said as she reached the adjunct.

  “It’s close to midnight,” began the adjunct.

  “Evanston is a capital, and has flightstrip beacons burning all night. I want to spend the day in the markets there before I go on to Condelor for the victory banquet.”

  “Yes, I see,” said the adjunct, taking a notepad from his coat. “New, fine clothes for the banquet, and perhaps presents?” he said as he scribbled the ascent notes.

  “Just clothes. As of a few minutes ago I finished making my present, and I want to keep it safe.”

  The steam engine was fired up by Bronlar’s guildsmen while the adjunct’s men ran along the flightstrip lighting the beacon lamps. At a few minutes to midnight she pushed Slash’s throttle forward and the gunwing ascended into the wind, turned northeast, and was gone. Slowly the wingfield began to blend back into the night as lamps were extinguished and guildsmen returned to their tents.

  Hongraz watched as the adjunct hung an annotated pennant on the pole.

  “I saw that Lesh fueled her gunwing instead of Ryban,” said the adjunct to the carbineer. “Did you happen to hear what was going on?”

  “I heard the warden say ‘No more,’ then Sair Ryban called out something like ‘To the Call with Feydamor and saving his thirteen’ and that he was full nozzle. After more words along that course she threw him out with his moon full.”

  The Vernal adjunct leaned against the pennant pole, shaking his head.

  “Ryban will be slow to show his face tomorrow. He must have forgotten that she hates Serjon Warden Killer more than she favors any guildsman.”

  19 August 3961: Condelor

  Even though he had been one of the principal contributors to the defeat of Greater Bartolica, Serjon was not invited to the allies’ victory banquet on the night of August 19th. Late afternoon found him wandering the Condelor palace grounds, tracing on foot the approach paths of his super-regal on that day in early May. Most of the bushes, paths, statues, ornamental walls, and flowerbeds were etched into his mind, but the people were missing. The palace gardens were almost deserted as everyone prepared themselves for the great revel that would see the end to the most savage and damaging war since the wardenate system had been established in some long-gone century.

  Suddenly Serjon stopped and blinked. A girl in a blue promenade gown with long, flame-red hair was standing where one like her had been framed in his canopy’s forward pane on the day he had flown his super-regal against Bartolica’s heart. Airlord Samondel.

  “Might I have a word?” she asked in accented but clear Yarronese.

  “Who am I to withhold words, Ladyship?” he replied. “Have as many as you will.”

  “Would the truth about Alion be of interest to you, Serjon Warden Killer?”

  Serjon regarded her for a tense, chilly moment. Was there sarcasm in her voice? She also sounded as weary as he did. Perhaps he was the only one she could trust with the truth. He wondered if he could take its weight.

  “I suspect the truth is worse than the Airlords’ verdict,” he answered.

  “Indeed it is. Are you interested, Serjon Warden Killer?”

  “Just flyer now, Ladyship, and I am not interested. I’m tired of hurting, and I’m very tired of being hurt.”

  Serjon strolled on without another word. Presently he noticed that Samondel was walking beside him.

  “I, I … apologize for calling you Warden Killer,” she offered.

  For an airlord this was a considerable concession. Serjon hung his head, but held up his arm for her hand as he kept strolling. Samondel put her hand on his forearm, and choked down a sob with a deep breath.

  “When he pushed me from the super-regal Alion said ‘Never forget what I did for you, Samondel. Always remember that I did it for love.’ Then he pulled the hatch shut. In that moment I would have given the world to have loved him, but I could not. He died without knowing, that was all I could give him.”

  Serjon stopped, and Samondel walked around in front of him. Alion and Samondel, Serjon and Bronlar. Two halves of two great, tragic, and one-sided loves. She kept her hand on his forearm, then took his hand in both of hers.

  “Serjon Feydamor, Alion died honorably.”

  “He died trying to destroy Gunwing Hall Eleven, where evidence clearing Warden Jemarial of his crime was in storage. Fortunately he bungled the attempt.”

  Samondel had not known this, and was at a loss for words. Alion had died for her, but not without malice. They walked in silence for a way, about a yard apart and both staring at the red gravel path at their feet.

  “The Sennerese Airlord’s son has proposed a betrothal with me,” Samondel revealed.

  “Congratulations.”

  “Remove Condelor from Greater Bartolica and there is no Greater Bartolica.”

  “Good.”

  “I rejected him. Sennerese nobles treat their women like furniture. They see both stupidity and beauty as alluring in a woman.”

  “Taste is nature’s justice.”

  “Are you pleased that my dominion has been destroyed? Does it satisfy you to have revenge for the invasion of Yarron?”

  Serjon stopped again and turned on her.

  “Yes, Ladyship, all of that pleases me a great deal. It pleases me for the seventy-eight thousand Yarronese who died on their own soil at the hands of your carbineer murderers. Less than five thousand Bartolicans have died on Bartolican soil, remember? I have seen a whole hall littered with the bodies of raped and murdered Yarronese women at Opal after the Bartolicans passed through. I have seen the flower of Yarronese chivalry dead beneath the ruins of a hall brought down by a bomb hidden by Bartolica’s featherhead mercenaries. So many cold hands, I’m so sick of the touch of cold hands. With Condelor and the surrounding farmlands as part of Senner, your realm will shrink to a tiny mountain domainlet the size of Montras. Mounthaven will be the better for it.”

  Samondel pouted, then looked at him through her red eyelashes. “I am pleased too, Serjon. You saved us.”

  The answer could have been taken a number of ways, but Samondel was unused to intelligent duelspeak after months as airlord, and Serjon was too tired to take it at anything more than face value.

  “The Sennerese prince offered me an alliance almost the size of Greater Bartolica. It wrenched me, but I said no.”

  “If you do not like the direction of your life, Ladyshi
p, then take the controls into your own hands and fly it in one that suits you better. Hone your flying, really lead what’s left of your people as an airlord.”

  “I don’t even have a gunwing.”

  “Borrow Starftower while I’m gone. Just don’t use overboost until new compression rings are settled—oh, and the port gun has a tendency to jam unless you lock the release down really hard.”

  Samondel folded her arms beneath her breasts and drew them up until the setting sun cast a deep shadow in her cleavage.

  “You’re taking me seriously,” she said with her head inclined.

  “I know a few jokes, if you prefer. What’s black and crisp and sits at the bottom of a crater?”

  “I—I—”

  “A court herald after his first solo flight.”

  Samondel laughed before she could help herself. “I am to attend tonight’s banquet as an act of reconciliadon and peace. I would like to enter with you.”

  “Grats, Semme, but I’m specifically not invited. I shall eat at a tavern, then try to find bawdy women with warm hands.”

  “Really?” Samondel exclaimed.

  “Well, so far they’ve not found me. Now I must go. I apologize for trying to kill you, Ladyship.”

  “And I’m sorry for your mother and sisters. I did not know, truly, I did not know.”

  The setting sun cast shadows a hundred feet in length from the Airlord of the new domain of Highland Bartolica and the greatest flyer in Mounthaven’s history. Both stood with her hands clasped before them.

  “Tomorrow you must go to my guildsmen, I’ll speak to them first,” Serjon said earnestly, his heart suddenly opening to her. “Take up Starflower, get flight time. Be more than a bauble, be a fighting airlord, be proud of yourself, Ladyship. I don’t adore you as Alion did, but I do like you, Ladyship, and, and—”

  “Samondel to you, my brave and chivalric friend.”

  She reached up and drew Serjon’s face down with her fingertips beneath his jaw, then she kissed him softly on the lips as the sun dropped and their shadows lengthened across the palace gardens to be greater than the highest spires of the palace.

  “That … could cause unseemly talk in court,” said Serjon, brushing her cheek with his fingers nevertheless.

  “Let them talk. I have been thinking a lot since Condelor fell, Serjon. It ripped my heart out to admit it, but you saved the people of Bartolica from the featherheads by what you did. My people. I wanted to hate you but I could not, and now … I may not be a bawdy woman, but my hands are very warm.”

  After a moment the astonished Serjon realized that his mouth was open. He closed it.

  “I am very tired of hating,” he managed, wondering whether the words were even vaguely appropriate.

  “Then it is time to stop.”

  At dusk a lone gunwing droned out of the southeast, a green approach flare burning at its underside. The flightstrip beacon lamps were alight, and a permission rocket streaked up and stabbed brilliantly through the dark. The gunwing landed on its first approach and taxied to the wing halls. The adjunct was back from the Flying Swinelet by then, where he had enjoyed dinner but missed Serjon. He noted that it was a Yarronese triwing gunwing of recent design—in fact one identical to that still stored in Gunwing Hall 11 and another that stood before Serjon’s maintenance tent.

  The victory banquet was by then in full cry in the Condelor palace. Bartolican servants and retainers were doing their best to adapt to the new circumstances of Condelor, but had to use lists to keep track of people and titles for the hundreds of unfamiliar guests.

  Serjon stood swaying at the door to Samondel’s chambers, far across the palace. They had emptied a small jar of her finest sherry together in the hours past.

  “Until this evening I did not drink,” Serjon confessed.

  “Oh no! You should have told me.”

  “It seemed a worthy occasion to start.” He waved a strand of her red hair at her nose. “You must gain flight time, it would be good for your soul. You need something more than beauty to be proud of.”

  “My flying is a joke,” she answered, pulling her hair over her bare breasts and shivering with cold. “I took four months to ascend solo.”

  Serjon removed his unbuttoned flight jacket and draped it over her shoulders. “Sorry for, ah, the awkward ascent just now,” he mumbled.

  “What comparison have I?” she replied, hugging him into her hair. “Besides, I think I liked it better for having a partner who knows no better than me. You were very considerate, it was nothing like I had feared.”

  “Keep my jacket,” he offered. “Wear it to the banquet, say it is a gift from Serjon Warden Killer who broke Stanbury’s grip on your people. That will be very good for inter-dominion relations.”

  “But—”

  “I have a spare, not as nice but adequate. Goodnight now, beautiful and gentle Samondel.”

  They kissed again, then Samondel pulled the door closed. Serjon’s head was wobbling like a mis-tuned radial compression engine as he made his way back to his rooms in just shirt, trews, and boots. He glanced at his watch, which showed a minute past nine. As he turned into the corridor where his room was, he saw a servant girl knocking on his door and calling out in Bartolican.

  “You won’t find me in there,” he said in Yarronese, knowing only too well why she was at the door.

  She bowed low to him, exposing a wide expanse of flawless white cleavage. She was dressed in a Yarronese-style apron-robe that was convincing but chunky in its execution, obviously a hasty attempt to please her new masters. In a few years she might have a weight problem, he speculated, but for now her figure seemed healthy and generous.

  “Come please, if it is your pleasure,” she said in strangled Yarronese.

  “I speak Bartolican, Montrassian, Yarronese, Dorakish, Old Anglian, and a little more Cosdoran than is good for me,” Serjon replied. He was tired, tipsy, genuinely happy for the first time in years, and uninterested in doing anything that required effort.

  “Sair, will you please come with me?” the girl now said in Bartolican. “A very important warden wishes to speak with you.”

  Serjon entered his room to fetch his spare embroidered flight jacket, but did not do up the buttons when he had put it on. He straightened his collar and scarf, rubbed his shoes against his trousers, then followed the girl. She took his arm and guided him some distance through the corridors of the palace.

  “Are you a warden, Sair Serjon?” she asked as they walked.

  “Not a warden, only a free flyer. Free means nobody has to support me, but I work for the Airlord of Yarron just now.”

  “Oh, that is important.”

  “Maybe so, but I am not.”

  The girl took a while to assimilate this, but frowned as she caught the meaning.

  “I am Seyret, sair, a baker’s daughter. I am very sorry about the invasion of Yarron. Big mistake.”

  Serjon burst out laughing, then stumbled over a Dorakian rug on the marble flagstones.

  “Think nothing of it, Semme Seyret.”

  “If you like, I will sleep with you and help make up for everything.”

  Even though it was not the first such offer made to Serjon since he had landed in Condelor, he still felt an involuntary thrill run through him. Many Bartolican women were looking for favors, protection, and patronage among the victors, and he now understood what was on offer. “Your offer flatters me, but I’m very tired,” Serjon responded without needing to act. “My head spins and aches.”

  “Oh! Are you wounded?”

  “It’s an old wound, to my heart. I have been applying sherry to it.”

  She stopped at a roped off section of a heavily decorated and pillared corridor. The doorway beyond the heavy red rope barrier led into a pit of blackness through which a cool, pleasant breeze was blowing in the late summer night.

  “You will wait here, please,” said Seyret with a curtsey, and then she hurried back the way they had come.


  Serjon waited, staring out over the pit of rubble lit by torches affixed to high poles. With a start he realized that it was the ruins of the throne hall. This corridor had once led onto some staircase for the Bartolican airlord to make a grand entrance, but both staircase and Airlord were no more now. The occupation forces had torn down the façades and coverings erected by Stanbury and bared the destruction for all the citizens of Bartolica to see. Bootsteps clacked on the stone floor in the distance behind Serjon. Steadily, remorselessly, they drew closer. They stopped.

  “All your own work?” a female voice behind him asked, this time in perfect Yarronese.

  “Bronlar, good evening,” he said without turning.

  She approached another three steps.

  “What? No welcoming embrace for your long-lost wing cover?”

  Serjon slowly turned, his arms hanging limp and his jacket still open. Bronlar was in a parade uniform and was wearing her daystar. There was a well-healed but alarming scar that ran from her left temple down in front of her ear and ended at her jawbone.

  “If I thought an embrace would help I would give one,” he said as he let his gaze drop to her boots. “But hugs are as cheap as words, and they mean no more.”

  Bronlar took a step to one side and leaned against a pillar, folding her arms across the double row of brass buttons that fastened her coat.

  “When I got word that you had accused me of shooting your super-regal down I thought my world had ended,” said Bronlar. “I cursed, I cried, I even took a guildsman to my bed and gave him my virginity. Remember it? The one I would not give to you last October?”

  “We’ve not been introduced,” said Serjon, feeling giddy and aware of the drop behind him.

  “Weeks later I found out that you had lied in your testimony! By then I had a second lover.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sure you are. We really enjoyed doing it”

  “I’m sorry that I accused you thus.”

  Serjon’s reactions were those of total defeat, but Bronlar did not want him vanquished without a satisfying fight. This was to be a war duel, not a strafing run.