by Col Buchanan
Ash could feel it stinging his eyes, but despite that he took a few steps closer, one hand gripping hard around the railing of a dying tree. People flashed past his vision. Through the yellow smoke he could see fallen figures trying desperately to regain their feet, but armoured guards were catching up with them now, and batons were rising and falling, boots kicking and stamping, bones snapping, heads bouncing.
Memories flushed through his mind like freezing water.
‘Yoy-yay, Yoy-yay!’ shouted the crowd in their anger, coalescing again on the other side of the street to pierce the air with their whistles and taunts. Rubbish and grit blew about their legs in a downrush of air. Some shielded their eyes from the white light shining on them from a winged craft hovering above, a light which shifted onto the figures being beaten on the ground, prone forms in the rolling smoke surrounded by gangs of guards.
Part of Ash was back in his home village again, watching the soldiers beating the life out of his people. But another part of him was watching, thrilled, as one of the park dwellers vaulted over the low wall with a stick in his hands, yelling at the guards to desist. It was the young black fellow with the spectacles – his blankets and glasses gone now, his torso bare – plunging into the mist.
In a heartbeat Ash was over the railing too and running after him, his sheathed sword in his hand.
He saw a pair of guards beating a young woman on the ground. He took down the first guard by sweeping the man’s leg out from under him, and the second with a ringing blow to the guard’s helm with his still-sheathed sword. The young woman was curled in a ball with her teeth gritted in a bloody face, hands scrunched up for protection. Ash grabbed her coat and dragged her back across the street, his eyes streaming with tears from the yellow smoke.
Around him, goggled figures were scampering amongst the smoking grenades to snatch them up wherever they lay in the street, before hurrying back to drop them into pails of water. The street dogs danced between them in play. Near the walls of the park, more people were busy breaking apart the paving and building mounds of rocks for others to use.
Soon projectiles were flying towards the guards. The fiercest of the crowd surged forwards with sticks in their hands, yelling at the guards to get back and to leave the fallen alone. Like an eddy they formed around the young black man. Roaring their might, they somehow drove the guards back to their ranks and their lines of shields on the far side of the street, jeering them on.
A brief victory then; a resurgence of spirit that Ash felt rushing through the crowds of people and into his own body, entirely sweeping him up in the moment. Wiping at his eyes, he took the chance to look at the faces about him. They were young for the most part behind their scarves, their own bloodshot eyes open wide with excitement, though there were older people there too, some who were helping with the wounded or passing out water, or running milk into people’s eyes to clear them. One old man came to Ash and gently tilted his head back so he could wash out his troubled sight, murmuring soft words of gratitude.
Suddenly the air rattled with shots from behind. Right next to Ash someone dropped to the ground. It was the old man who had been treating his eyes, lying there motionless on the paving with his spilled milk spreading out next to his head.
Ash ducked down behind the fallen man and squinted over his still form to the far end of the street and the open plaza, where a cloud of white smoke was rising from the lines of guards stationed there – rifles aimed squarely at the crowds. He gripped his sword fiercely.
They fired another volley of shots, though most of the people were down on the ground by then, protecting their heads with their hands or huddling behind whatever scant cover there was. Three shapes sprinted off the street to join others waving them up from behind a low wall, their legs bouncing loose with fear. In the very middle of the road, amongst the shouting and the gunfire and the shifting haze of smoke, a lone person stood undaunted with legs spread wide, swinging something round and round through the air – a slingshot singing for its release.
It was an old grandmother, Ash glimpsed in surprise. An old white-haired elder with goggled eyes and a white mask covering her features, leaning forwards over her belly to release the shot from its sling – sending it not at the guards themselves but at the limb of the Sky Bridge far, far overhead.
Right in front of Ash, a hatchet-faced man who was sprawled on the paving glanced back over one shoulder and offered a crazed grin. The fellow clutched something in his hands, and when he climbed to his feet Ash saw it was a bottle with a faming wick of cloth stuffed into the neck, and he knew what would happen next even as the man threw it, even as it sailed through the air in a high arc to burst into flames right at the feet of the massed guards.
A roar rose up from the throats of thousands. More figures were rising now with faming bottles in their hands.
These people knew what they were doing.
Within moments the bottles were showering towards the shooting guards, so many that it was a sight to behold, dozens exploding in ripples that forced the guards backwards in faming panic, some beating at their armour and dropping rifles in dismay.
Back in the revolution of Honshu they themselves had used fireflasks to good effect, but never before like this, not in such numbers. A reckoning of fear it must be for those armoured men trying to hold their line against a wash of fire and the rage of a thousand pressing people.
Those lines could break, he was starting to realize. And if they did it would provide the perfect cover for Ash to seek a way into the plaza beyond, and then the Sky Bridge itself.
It was the opportunity he had been hoping for.
Drawing his sword, Ash rose to his feet and waved the naked steel above his head like a rallying flag, as dramatic as old Oshō in his day, then set off towards the end of the street, joining others likewise, doing the same, gathering more as they went until they were a mass of people rushing for the lines and the roiling black smoke. Even the street dogs were running alongside them, snarling at the nearing forms of the guards behind their black shields; just like the strays from his days in the revolution.
Through the smoke the crowd charged blindly, only to face a sheeting jet of water from a stationary vehicle behind the lines. The raging jet washed back the flames and scooped people off their feet even as the ragged lines of guards were parting in two. Over their helms, Ash spotted a wedge of riders surging across the open plaza towards them, violet sparks flying from their waving batons.
A stranger’s hand yanked him to the side of the street clear of the charge, and with an onrush of air the cavalry riders leaped over the flames and into the scattering crowds, hacking with their batons as they went.
It was chaos after that, like the bloody rout at the end of a hard-fought battle. Though rather than defeat it was simply another ebb in the tide, for as the crowds fled from the scene Ash could see them filtering through side streets to gather again elsewhere, perhaps to try the line at a different spot. A running battle which looked like lasting for the whole night.
His chances of breaking through were gone though. Even as he looked towards the plaza he saw guards breaking out to take a crack at anyone sprawled on the road.
Time to go, he realized. Time to find a better plan.
*
Ash looped his sword over his back again and turned about smartly, only to find more guards rushing in from behind. Someone toppled to the ground before him with a shout.
Towards the park he retreated, towards its welcoming shadows beneath the dying trees. Ten strides he’d taken before something struck his back and a paralysing pulse of pain ripped through his body.
When Ash blinked through his swimming vision he found himself sprawled on the paving unable to move or gain a breath. He tore the mask from his mouth, gasping desperately for air.
Through sheets of nausea, Ash saw a baton lying on the ground next to his face, flickering with that violet light – and above it, two pairs of boots approaching. He tried to move but failed. His cheek was p
ressed against the hard surface of the paving, and a beam of light from the guard washed across it so that he saw a fossil imprinted in the grey surface, something small and oblong and edged by frills.
Get up! he told his body, though when he tried to move again he was only able to roll onto his back.
Helpless, Ash watched as the guard grabbed a hold of his bur-noose and hauled him to his feet, seeing random colours flashing. He could barely feel his left leg.
Two guards had a hold of him, and they yanked his hood back and turned his face from side to side for inspection, gabbing away with their pops and clicks and strange words. Guallo, they kept saying in their excitement. Guallo! Guallo!
His head was just beginning to clear when he felt his hands being clasped roughly behind his back. Felt the cold touch of steel manacles locking around his wrists.
The shock of it jolted Ash back to life.
His foot swung out, planting a boot firmly in the groin of the guard before him. Even as the man bent over he swung round and lashed the armoured kneecap of the other guard with the toe of his boot. The man went down with a snarl.
Ash was off, hopping through the park with his hands locked behind him and his left leg barely working at all. Shouts pursued him in Trade, from people on the ground being manacled by guards.
‘Hoy, hoy!’ they were yelling. ‘Run for it, Guallo!’
He made it to a shadowed alley, reeling against the wall and twisting himself round to look back at last. One of the guards was following him, aiming a pistol right at his head.
Ash could only gasp at the sight of it.
The first shot tore a chunk from the wall above his head. His ears rang from the concussion.
The second shot ricocheted from the space where Ash had pushed away an instant earlier.
*
The old farlander staggered along the alley with the guard behind yelling raggedly in his native tongue, as though the man had breath to spare for it.
It was hard to run with his hands behind his back and only the thin air to sip upon, hard not to wonder how he’d gotten himself into this desperate position. Ahead, Ash could see a wide thoroughfare lively with people and the sounds of music. He staggered into it, almost running into a passing groundcar on the road. Over the passing flash of its bodywork he glimpsed a pair of guards on the far side of the street, uniformed backs turned on their own parked vehicle.
Why not? he asked himself in sudden hopeful mischief and with a quick glance backwards, and then he was staggering across the road towards the vehicle, propelled by his inspiration.
How hard could it be, after all?
The two guards were talking with someone on the pavement as Ash slid himself into the driver’s seat, and with a limber writhing manoeuvre looped the manacles over his feet so that his hands were before him once more. He adjusted the sword on his back so it wasn’t prodding his spine and took a quick glance to his left, where the pursuing guard was just emerging from the alley, right in time to walk in front of a speeding groundcar.
Ash looked away from the man’s flying body and back over his shoulder. The pair of guards were turning now to the scene of the sudden collision. He glanced down at the switches and knobs and dials before him, all of them unintelligible. It was his feet that struck upon something hopeful, touching some kind of pedals down there, one for each foot. The old farlander pressed one of them hard, and then the other. The car whined but failed to move.
There was a mirror on the top of the windshield. He saw one of the guards looking his way.
‘Come on, how hard can it be?’ Ash snarled and started flicking switches at random.
A pair of squeaking arms swept across the grime of the windscreen.
‘Tchenhey-po!’
More guards had emerged from the alley and were running towards the groundcar. Ash growled and shook the steering wheel in frustration while his foot stamped on a pedal, and in the process accidentally pushed something on the wheel, just as the nearest guard pointed a pistol at him.
Suddenly the groundcar was lunging forwards down the street, fast enough to push Ash back into the cushioned seat.
He glimpsed a guard gaping at him from the middle of the street and then he was past him, seeing the fellow in the mirror running after the groundcar with the others just behind.
The road pitched downwards and the vehicle picked up speed. The guards slowed and then stopped, giving up the chase.
‘Hah!’ Ash exclaimed as he leaned around in the seat, jerking his chin at them in the hope they could see him. ‘Hah-hah!’
A jolt almost bucked him from his seat as the groundcar bounced off the side of a parked vehicle. With the buildings flashing by on either side Ash twisted the wheel to straighten the machine out. It was harder than it looked, or maybe his arms weren’t working right yet. Either way the car wove across the road and clipped another coming in the opposite direction. Metal screeched and then he was past it, head up and grinning like a dazed fool, racing along an ever-steepening street which seemed to lead down the slope of the caldera itself; a sleigh ride in a contraption he had no idea how to stop.
They were giving chase back there. Purple lights flashed in the mirror and sounds wailed in the distance like birthing squatcha; sirens, he realized, waking the whole world to his flight. He knew then that he’d gained himself a little breathing room but nothing more. He still needed to find a way to get clear.
In absence of a way out you must create one, Molari, his old evasion instructor, had always told him.
Ash yanked on the wheel viciously and turned the vehicle into a side road curving off to the right. The groundcar wobbled and he jerked the wheel left, right, left again, getting a faint hang of it now, amazed at how the machine responded to his touch even as he barely held it on the curve of the road; somewhere in his mind wondering why the splayed wheels were screeching like distressed animals.
Teeth bared, he straightened out from the curve and barrelled down the middle of the road with the mirror catching distant flashes of purple. Through the windscreen people were jumping out of the way, cars swerving to one side or the other. Another experiment with his feet showed the other pedal to be a brake. With more confidence he applied speed and hunched forwards over the wheel, on the prowl for a way out of this. He was calm enough, for all that the flashes stayed fixed in the mirror, and for all that he was alone here in this city of strangers.
A dazzling light shone down into his face. Ash held up a hand and saw a pair of massive wings hovering in the sky over his head, a cone of brilliance shooting down from them to pin him to his seat. A downrush of hot air washed over him, scattering litter from the sides of the road.
Blinking, he yanked again on the wheel and negotiated another flying corner with the wheels screeching over the ground, enjoying the subtle art of it now, the flowing control of velocity held loosely on the edge. His sight was swimming again, though he glimpsed greenery to his right: a park flashing by and the silhouettes of tree-tops.
Ash applied the brake and twisted the wheel sharply, heading for the darkness of the park. In the frame of the windscreen the pavement bounced out of sight and a green lawn landed in its place, and then he was crashing back into the seat and the contraption was slewing across slick grass, Ash yanking the wheel one way then the other.
Signs flashed by both left and right of him. All he could see now was the green world whirling past within the cones of light from the front of the groundcar, and the purple lights flashing close behind.
A tree whipped through the glare of his lights.
Another tree.
A bench.
‘Whoah,’ exclaimed Ash as the car headed for a high stone kerb, and before he could react the wheels bounced over it and the vehicle vaulted into the air.
He felt a lurch in his belly then a crunch in his spine as the car landed hard with a splash of water. He was in a pond, it seemed, which explained the cold water flooding in around him.
Ash was out and wad
ing to the edge before the pond’s surface had even settled. Shedding water, he hurried off into a line of trees with the sounds of guards on foot close behind, beams of light bouncing around him. No damned way out of this, he was starting to think.
Keep going.
Ash surged onwards, slowed by the sodden burnoose flapping about him, and was startled when the nearest bushes exploded with a charging zel.
He thought it was one of the guards at first, but then he glimpsed the rider on its back, a man wearing a wide-brimmed hat like a ranchero and with a black scarf across his face. Even better, the figure was bending down in the saddle and holding out his hand in offering as the zel charged past.
No hesitation in the matter. Ash clasped the gloved hand and leapt up onto the back of the animal, and then he held on tight while the rider turned them in a circle back from where he had come.
‘Keep your head down!’ shouted the rider over his shoulder, though the branches whipping past their faces were all the warning Ash needed.
A light glared down through the trees as the flying machine swept over their position, noisily seeking them out. In its passing glare he saw that the rider was another black-skinned Anwi man.
‘Who are you?’ Ash shouted in his ear.
‘Call me Juke!’ he boomed back, and then the zel surged beneath Ash as they bounded from the trees onto hard paving, and the man turned the animal and spurred it clattering across an empty street, leaving behind the park and the frantic searchings of the law.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Council Grove
From the floor of the Windrush forest, Council Grove appeared ahead of them as a wide and shallow hill with steep sides, its flattened top bearing pine trees laden with snow and the drifting smoky columns of camp fires.
With curses of relief the party staggered towards it.
‘You were with us before Chey-Wes,’ Sergeant Sansun was saying to the big man Bull ahead, clad in Contrarè buckskins. ‘What happened to you?’