by Ian McHugh
“There is another way,” she said.
He rounded on her, barely maintaining his self-control.
“I could do it.” She held up a hand to forestall him. “No, listen. I can line my plane up with the tornado. If you bring your plane up underneath mine, I can climb down onto your wing and get clear. My plane will hold a straight enough course without me at the stick.”
Masaru was shaking his head before she had finished speaking. “Not possible.”
“I’ve done it before,” she said.
“It is not—”
“Not for me to do? It’s my plane with the holed tank, me who went through the middle of those flyers. Remember?”
Masaru could feel the pressure of his answer in the back of his throat, unable to get out. He stared at her helplessly, this gaijin woman who had faced a charging monster with a steady aim, who had dived unflinching through a flock of the things, guns blazing. If she were a man, would he still reject her idea in favor of his own suicide? Could he really be rendered a coward by it just because she was a woman—a gaijin woman?
He teetered, caught between two answers, both of them true.
She grabbed his good hand, squeezed hard on his fingers. “We can do this.”
He stared. Then, slowly, amazed at himself, he nodded.
A breathless rifleman ran up. “Comrade General, it is done.”
Masaru started in surprise. His head felt light. So soon?
The general had been observing their conversation. He looked from Edie to Masaru. “I wish you good luck,” he said, offering his hand to each of them. “If you succeed, you will save many lives. If you fail....” He shrugged. “Well, one of you should still be alive to fly to Krasnovodsk.” He paused a moment, then added, “Do not fail. We cannot hold them if you do.”
Masaru accepted the general’s grip. Edie had already set out after the soldier, back towards the Avros. Masaru started to call after her, then paused. To say what? He hurried to catch up, his thoughts still unsteadily awhirl.
Lines of infantry trudged across the airfield through the mud and slush, herded by crack-voiced NCOs. These men were already exhausted, filthy and bloody, siphoned from other parts of the frontline to shore up the defense here.
A company shuffled wearily past in front of Masaru and Edie. A trio of tattered stragglers caught Masaru’s attention. Their gaits were even more lurching and uneven than those of the men they followed, peaked caps pulled low over their faces.
Wounded, was his first thought. But....
“Changelings!” he cried. “The Curse!”
The monsters’ heads snapped up.
“Changelings!” The warning was echoed across the field.
The Changelings’ torsos popped suddenly inwards, broken blades of ribs piercing their clothes. The creatures snapped off a blade in each hand. Two of them charged at the soldiers now converging on them.
The third came straight for Edie and Masaru. Did they know, somehow? How could it be possible?
Masaru’s hand went to his holster. He saw Edie do the same, both of them remembering in the same instant that their pistols had been taken. Their escort stood between them and the Changeling. It closed too fast, knocking his rifle aside as he fired. The soldier fell, clawing at the bone blade jutting from his neck. The Changeling snapped off another rib.
Masaru threw himself at the monster’s midriff. The impact was like diving into the trunk of a tree. The Changeling stumbled, feet slipping. A blade scored Masaru’s flank, ripping his flight suit. He tangled his legs between the monster’s knees, toppling it forwards. He scrambled on top of it, holding it down as the Changeling thrashed, crushing its face into the mud with his hands.
“Go!” he cried to Edie. “Go!”
She sprinted for the planes.
The Changeling bucked, throwing Masaru off. It sprang to its feet with a snarl. A volley of bullets staggered it. Masaru lunged into the mud after the fallen escort’s rifle. He scooped it up, rolling onto his back and firing just as the Changeling pounced. The bullet carved a path up the middle of its face. With a shriek, it flipped its bone blades point-down to impale him.
Soldiers barreled into it, hacking with bayonets, axes, and cavalry swords. Masaru curled into a ball, trampled and kicked as they charged over the top of him. The Changeling was dragged under by the frenzied attack.
An engine roared into life.
With a yell, spitting mud, Masaru pushed himself to his feet and raced towards the parked Avros. Edie’s plane was already rolling, with a hasty collection of sacks, cases, and rolled tarpaulins lashed to its fuselage. She hadn’t bothered with her flying cap. Her blonde curls whipped around in the draft of the biplane’s prop.
Masaru glimpsed her pale features as she looked his way. He couldn’t see her eyes behind her goggles.
The Avro accelerated. It bunny-hopped once and wobbled clumsily into the air.
Masaru sprinted for his own plane and scrambled up into the cockpit, yelling for the soldiers standing guard around it to spin the prop.
The biplane roared into the air. Edie was looping around, lining up for the long run in towards the tornado. Masaru flew to intercept her. His heart hammered. Could they really do this? Or would Edie end up making the honorable sacrifice in his place?
Winged figures dropped from the clouds towards Edie’s plane. Masaru cried a useless warning. At the last instant, the other Avro jerked aside, barely avoiding the first wave of attackers. Masaru watched Edie dodge and weave, the Changeling flyers swarming around her, as he raced to help.
He started firing as soon as he was in range and kept the trigger down as he tore through the middle of the flock. He banked hard and went back through for another pass. His Avro jolted violently, a Changeling colliding with the fuselage somewhere behind him. He glanced back, expecting to find half the tail missing and was amazed when he couldn’t see any damage. Facing forward again, he was just in time to dodge another plummeting flyer, slamming his plane onto its side. The Changeling’s claws tore strips of canvas from his top wing as it tumbled past.
Then he was clear of them and chasing after Edie.
Her plane was badly battered, trailing black smoke. A wing flap bobbed about uselessly behind her bottom right wing, dangling from one hinge that was still attached. Masaru wondered if the Avro would still hold its course without Edie at the stick. The whirlwind loomed in front of them, frighteningly close.
Masaru brought his biplane up underneath and to the left of Edie’s, easing his top wing as close to her bottom wing as he dared. Edie leaned over the side of her cockpit, gauging his position, then started to hitch herself up out of the plane. The Avro dipped when she let go of the stick. Masaru had to drop down to avoid having his wing clipped by her undercarriage.
Edie climbed out onto her plane’s wing and crouched. Heart in his mouth, Masaru brought his Avro back up under her. For a breathless moment, Edie held her place, clinging to the wet cables. The whirlwind filled the sky ahead of them. Masaru could pick out the individual Changelings twirling down among the slowly falling stones.
Edie stretched down with one leg. Her muddy boot found the top of his wing. The other foot came down. And then she was crouched between the two biplanes, fingers gripping the trailing edge of her plane’s bottom wing, booted toes at the very back of his top wing. She eased a leg past the edge of his wing, foot hunting for a strut to hook onto. Her arms stretched as the Avros drifted apart. Masaru didn’t dare adjust for fear of jolting her off.
Her foot found a strut. She slid her other foot off the wing and hooked it around the strut with the first, now dangling from the other plane by her fingertips. Then she let go.
She dropped. Her forearms bumped against his top wing as she slipped past, and for a moment Masaru was sure she would fall. Then she caught the strut, found a cable with her other hand and got herself in between the wings.
Masaru started to swing around. Edie worked her way quickly forward until she could lock her
arms around the leading strut and lie flat across the bottom wing.
Masaru dove steeply, his immediate thought just to get clear. He spotted the airfield and adjusted his course, opening up the throttle and keeping the nose down, waiting for the blast. The city buildings rushed up towards them. Edie looked back from her place on the wing, hair whipping around her face, eyes slitted, her teeth bared.
There was a flash. Masaru twisted to see. A fireball split the whirlwind, blinding, expanding, like someone had smashed the sun into a disc.
Tenement rooftops whipped past underneath, frighteningly close, soldiers and Changelings in the streets below frozen like animals in a locomotive’s headlamp. The biplane cleared the howitzers at the end of the airfield. He was coming in far too fast. Masaru closed the throttle and pulled back the stick. The plane seemed to hover in the air, on the brink of stalling.
Then the shockwave hit them.
The Avro jolted, tipped nose-down. Masaru saw Edie bounce clear of the wing, legs flailing, her hands still clamped around the front strut. The airfield rushed up, Bolshevik fighters scrambling to get clear. Masaru’s arms protested as he hauled back on the stick. Just barely, he got the biplane level again. It smacked into the ground, bounced, hopped twice more before the undercarriage collapsed. The Avro slewed around on its belly, propeller splintering as it gouged up mud and slushy snow.
Eventually, it slid to a halt. Masaru coughed, winded, and looked down at himself, amazed to find that he was unhurt.
The omamori lay wedged in the corner of the footwell. With a huff of disbelief, he picked it up, then sat back in wonder. Shaking his head, he looked towards the wing.
Edie was no longer there.
When had she fallen?
He was up, half-leaping, half-falling from the cockpit, ignoring the cries of the Bolshevik soldiers converging on the wrecked biplane. Others were hurrying towards a prone figure back along his trail of wreckage and furrowed turf.
He ran, stumbling and slipping over the churned earth. He dropped to his knees when he reached her. A soldier was already cradling her head on his thigh. Edie’s face was deathly white behind a half-mask of mud. Splintered bone jutted through one leg of her flying suit.
Her eyes rolled towards him. She showed him a rictus grin. “We did it.”
“You’re hurt,” he panted.
She chuckled, then gasped in pain, her teeth still bared. “Broke both my legs. And some ribs.”
“Both your legs,” Masaru repeated. His jaw worked while he fought for breath. He laughed, suddenly. “I told you.”
He sat back on the cold wet ground, his fist clenched tightly around the omamori. High above, the whirlwind was coming apart, stones and Changelings tumbling down to crash onto the half-finished tower, or falling back up towards the collapsing hole in the sky.
He would be writing to his sister, he decided. He imagined the joy and anguish, amazement and horror warring across her face when she read his request for an amulet to ward against supernatural powers as well.
Copyright © 2013 Ian McHugh
Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website
Ian Ian McHugh is the author of “Songdogs” in BCS #27 and “Red Dirt” in BCS #58. His stories have also appeared in publications including Asimov’s, Analog, Daily SF, and Clockwork Phoenix 2 & 4. His first short story collection, Angel Dust, will be published in 2014. His full bibliography, along with links to read and hear stories online, can be found at http://ianmchugh.wordpress.com.
Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies
A SIXPENNY CROSSING
by Don Allmon
Chapter 1
In which our hero learns the downside of fame.
Easric rarely received anything from Pearl Snow that wasn’t disgusting. It was the nature of witches to find the sublime in viscera.
He eyed the grocer. He eyed the unmarked postal slot in the wall behind the counter. He weighed the package doubtfully. It was small, thin, and light. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied with a string. Pearl’s loopy script said only, “Easric Dane.” There was no address. He had no address. How her packages found him, he didn’t know.
He sniffed at it, smelled nothing dead; nothing but the leather, grains, and dust of the general mercantile.
He thanked the grocer without conviction.
“Here now!” the grocer shouted past Easric. “You keep away from that man!”
Easric spun, package dropped, revolver out.
A kid stood outside, framed in the open doorway, pocketknife in hand. Sight of the revolver froze him solid. He paled and blinked. His pocketknife clattered to the wooden boardwalk.
Beside the kid, a man. He flung the rope bonds the kid had cut from his hands to the ground and he ran. He ran for his life.
Easric bolted after, bowling the kid over, out onto the through-road of Deer Cross Post.
The man made for Easric’s horse hitched nearby. He whipped the shotgun from the saddle scabbard, had no time to aim, and fired. Easric, beneath the shot; the store’s window blew, canning jars burst, jam everywhere.
He swung the shotgun, defiant. Easric caught it with a smack of wood on skin; stronger, twisted it free and slammed the man to the ground. He fell on him; threw all his mass behind a slap so hard the man’s eyes rolled back, struck silly.
Easric dragged him back to the porch by his collar, bound him with new cords.
He looked around for the kid, wanting to give him a whipping he’d never forget.
The grocer had the kid by the scruff of his neck. “What you want to do with him, Warden?”
The kid was, what, six? Ten? Easric had no sense for children’s ages. The kid didn’t struggle against the grocer. He stood, shirt twisted in the grocer’s hand. No fear. Only awe at what he’d seen.
Easric sighed. “Let him go.”
“You don’t want to give him a whipping, I will.”
“He won’t remember it come morning,” Easric said. “Let him go. Damage is done.”
The grocer let the kid go. The shirt stayed twisted. The kid knelt, retrieved his knife, his eyes never leaving Easric and his prisoner. Easric knew the kid would keep the knife somewhere safe. Maybe he’d never use it again. And when he had a boy of his own, he’d pass the thing on and tell him his story: how he helped the outlaw Freedom Cordrey escape Easric Dane, was almost shot, then watched as Easric caught him again.
The grocer said to the kid, “What he give you to help him?”
“He didn’t have to give him anything,” Easric said. “He promised him he’d be famous.”
* * *
Chapter 2
In which our hero crosses into enemy lands.
Riding north of the trading post on a dirt-packed road, prisoner in tow, Easric opened Pearl’s package.
An enclosed note read only: “Sign and return.”
There were always cryptic notes. Once, he’d taken her to task on this. “It’s the cards,” she had said in her charlatan voice. “The cards show me forms, not meanings. Meanings, you must provide.”
Easric thought that was bullshit. He told her so. He thought she was only covering her ass.
With the note was a book. The book was entitled The Rosemond Gold: Being the Sixth Romance of Easric Dane, by Hugo Lovelace.
Lovelace had toured the Marches once, ten years previous, an Imperial newspaperman. He covered the horse races. Of horses, he knew plenty. Of everything else, he’d taken only the sketchiest notes. And when he returned to the capitol, he introduced a war-tired Empire to his favorite savage, Corporal Easric Dane, March Warden of the Crossings, Second Company, having not the foggiest notion what that title meant. It was just something he’d heard.
Easric Dane had never met the man.
It was a sixpenny bit of sensationalist crap.
He cursed Pearl Snow, hoping her witchy ears could hear. She expected him to read.
* * *
“Now, sweet daughter,” the General boasted, “I will show you how your f
ather will regain the Emperor’s favor, so unjustly lost.”
He slid aside the glowering portrait of his venerable grandfather and revealed the wall safe whose existence none would ever guess. Therein he had locked away the ancient manuscript that held the secret to opening the Rosemond Crossing. Thus would the mountain of gold that had lain hidden within the pagan mound for untold ages come into his possession; thus his salvation; thus his glory. His palms grew excitedly moist as he tumbled the lock.
He swung open the heavy steel door.
“Papa!” the lovely and devoted Beatrice cried. “Whatever is the matter? Why have you gone so pale?”
“Stolen,” the General hissed. “Stolen!” he shouted, enraged. “It was Easric Dane, I know it! Upon my soul, it must have been he!”
Not only was it awful, but Pearl couldn’t possibly be suggesting there was any truth to it. There was no gold under Rose Mound. Imperial prospectors had proven that when they tore the thing down, looking. No Crossing, neither; no spiritland. The land there was dead as any to the east.
He thought of drowning the book in the river. He thought of taking her note literally, autographing its title page and mailing it back, postage due. But Pearl Snow had a wicked pack of cards. They brooked none of Easric’s sass and weren’t lightly ignored.
He put his horse east toward the Lentenlyf river.
“Think of it as a reprieve,” Easric told Cordrey. “But don’t get too used to breathing. It won’t be a long one.”
* * *
A spirit-stone stood on the bank of the ford, a limestone obelisk six feet tall and cut with offering holes long weathered to pits.
Spirit-stones marked Crossings just as mounds often did, so Easric stopped and closed his eyes and cocked his head and felt for one.
“It’s dead,” Cordrey said. “Anyone can tell that.”
Easric wasn’t sure. Like children, Easric wasn’t so solidly rooted in the real world. He had a knack for falling through Crossings and getting lost on the other side. The shamans had offered to train him, but studying chafed him raw, and he’d turned them down. Still, thirty-seven years of falling through had taught him something.