The first one quickly went down in a stream of fire and lightning, and a victorious shout went up from the skythane.
The second shot off away from the fight, but one of the skythane had already reached it. It was Alia.
She held up her arm and let out a great cry, and then fired into the heart of the beast.
She leapt off and spread her wings as it abruptly changed course and slammed into the forest at full speed, sending up a huge cloud of smoke and a hail of dirt and pieces of vegetation.
It was done. First blood had been drawn.
The skythane gathered. Xander sent them to look for the bodies of the dead.
Some would never be found, but at least they could honor the bodies and spirits of all the fallen. It was only a fraction of his people, and yet they were far too many.
He swore he would seek revenge for each and every one.
It was to be war, after all.
Chapter Fourteen: Battle Lines
IT MUST have been a massacre.
Jameson looked around, his mouth twisted in a grimace of disgust. The stairs inside the tower and the bell chamber at the top were splattered with dried blood, some of it still sticky to the touch.
Alix paced the chamber, peering at the trails of dark red, kneeling here and there to look more closely at something.
Jameson pulled his wings in tightly lest they touch the bloody stone walls of the tower. “What happened here?”
“It’s just a guess.” Alix pointed to a clump of feathers in the blood against one wall. “There were probably three or four skythane here. The lander force ambushed them, coming in at night.”
“How do you know it was landers?”
“I don’t, for sure. But there are burns in several places that look like they came from pulse rifles. Do skythane usually carry pulse weapons?”
Venin shook his head. “Not before now.” His nose wrinkled in disgust at the sight. “Of course, I can’t speak for the Erriani.”
Alix nodded. “I’d guess one or two made it out the window and were shot down as they emerged.”
Jameson felt sick. He forced down his nausea. This was no time to be a weakling. His people needed him. What had been done here… it was unforgivable. “Is there… do we need to do anything else in here?”
Alix must have seen his distress. “No, I think we’ve seen all we need to see. Come on.”
He led the others outside.
Jameson breathed deeply of the clean sea air, trying to wash away the iron-tinged smell of so much blood.
Alix clapped him lightly on the shoulder. “It’s never easy, seeing the aftermath of death and war.”
“Are we at war?” Venin asked.
“I don’t know what else to call it.” Alix looked up the coastline. A cluster of white towers was visible in the distance. “Errian?”
Jameson followed his gaze. “Yes.” A flurry of memories vied for his attention, but he closed his eyes and steadied his breathing. Then he chose one among the multitudes.
The city of trees.
Slender white towers, the dead stalks of a native plant called turbien. Strong as concrete, they soared above Kylan’s head like a forest of bone-dry trees, somehow majestic and terrible all at once.
He shook his head. They were just natural things. Bigger than anything he had back in his own village, two day’s flight from the Erriani capital. But still, just plants.
One day, he’d get used to this place, but for now, he was a country boy on his first day in the big city.
“They’re plants.” Jameson’s voice was soft with awe.
Venin nodded. “They grow them whenever they need a new building. Each one takes about a year to reach maturity. Then it blooms and goes into a quiescent state.”
“That’s amazing.”
“We should get out of sight. There might be OberCorp patrols.” Alix led them away from the tower.
Jameson cast one last sad look at it.
“I figure it will take us about a day to get there on foot,” Alix said as they reached the cover of the trees. He started packing away his glider.
“We can be there in less than an hour if we fly.” Jameson tilted his head. “Why walk?”
“You want what happened in there to happen to us too?” Alix pointed at the tower.
He had a point.
“Besides, we have the element of surprise. Once we get there, we’ll need to figure out what the OberCorp force is up to and what they’ve done to the Erriani.”
“My people.” Jameson said it more forcefully than he had intended. Seeing the aftermath of the slaughter in the tower had really shaken him up. It was his fault. Maybe if he’d come there faster… “What about those cat things?”
“Martach. We’ll just have to be careful. If we’re going on foot, we’d best get started.” Venin pulled on his carry sack. “I’ll lead the way. I’m the only one who’s been here before.” He shot an apologetic look at Jameson. “Your memories excepted.”
The space under the trees was dark. Jameson sighed. “Lead away. I still haven’t gotten full control over them. That all right with you, Alix?”
“Yup. Follow the wing man.”
Venin snorted. “Come on, then. I want to reach the outskirts of Errian by nightfall.”
Jameson dreaded what they’d find there. He was still shaking from the scene inside the tower, but he had a responsibility. It was one that might have been thrust upon him unwilling, but he’d come to embrace it. If only Jessa and his parents could see him now.
Alix put a hand on his shoulder. “You should practice with that key thing.”
“But you just said—”
“Pick a spot about twenty meters ahead and take us there. It will be good practice and might save us some time.”
Jameson nodded. “I can do that.”
“Besides,” Alix said with a lopsided grin. “You never know what we’re gonna find in Errian.”
XANDER’S PEOPLE gathered the dead, those they could find. There had been at least thirty casualties.
He sent Alia to organize a bonfire, and they cut down redoaks and scavenged deadwood from the riverbanks and built a wide platform in the forest.
One by one the bodies of the fallen were lain on the raised wooden dais. Their friends and family came by to put flowers on the bodies, to say a quick prayer to the gods or a quiet last goodbye.
Xander circulated among them, saying a kind word here, pulling a grieving widow or son or father to him for what little comfort he could offer.
When all had said their last words to the dead, he climbed up on the platform and looked out at the gathered throng. The forest clearing was lit by torches. He held one aloft.
“We suffered today as a nation,” he said, so softly that the crowd moved forward to hear. “We lost friends. Family. The world is changing around us, more rapidly than any of us thought.” He looked down at the body of a young man, beautiful in repose, his legs crushed by his fall and one wing torn nearly in two. His voice caught in his throat, and he had to turn away before he could go on. “When I came to Gaelan, you accepted me. You fought for me. And now I’ve brought you to this.” He put his arm over his face, afraid to let them see him cry. He would not cry.
The platform vibrated under his feet, and then someone pulled his hand gently away from his face.
Alia gave him a sad smile and squeezed his hand. Then she turned to address the crowd. “It’s because of this man that we took back Gaelan. It’s because of him that we still have a world to stand on, and because of Xander that we were able to knock those bastards out of the sky.”
There were murmurs of assent.
She stood back. “Tell us what we need to do next.”
Xander lifted her hand and kissed it, mouthing “Thank you” to her. He’d been thinking about this for hours. As a group, they were too vulnerable. Here in the forest, with torches ablaze, they presented a sitting target, but this was a necessary catharsis for his tribe. “We will honor the
dead and send them skyward.” He held his torch aloft. “Then we will split apart. Our enemy is strong, but it is the strength of a giant. If we attack him as one, he will stomp us into the ground. But if we come at him from many directions at once, like gnats, he won’t know where to look, and we will overwhelm his brute force with cunning.”
People in the crowd were nodding,
“Tonight we will go from here in bands of no more than five. We will make our separate ways to Torr Talam, south of Errian, three days from now, spreading the word to the Gaelani and Erriani who live between here and there. And if we find the landers in Errian, we will strike.”
Errian. Where Jameson had gone.
“Xander!” one of the women shouted.
“Xander! Xander! Xander!” The crowd took up the chant.
Xander raised his hands and signaled for quiet. “Now is not the time for rowdy anger. Now is the time for respect. For silence. For honoring our dead.” He turned to gaze once more to the fallen. He remembered what his mother had said in Gaelan two days before when they sent the dead to their maker. “By the light of Gael, we commit the dead to the sky.” He touched his right fist to his chest, twice.
Then he knelt and climbed down from the platform. At his signal, five others took up torches. Together, they stepped forward with Xander and lit the pyre.
“May their ashes climb to find their peace,” Alia intoned.
“In peace they reside,” the crowd replied with one voice.
The flames leapt high, aided by an oil ground out of berries from the paraba bush.
One by one, the bodies disappeared into flames, including the young man who lay there so peacefully.
Xander closed his eyes and turned away. I didn’t even know your name.
He would find a way to avenge the boy, nonetheless. He would avenge them all.
JAMESON FOLLOWED Venin on the trek through the jungle. It was hot, a clinging tropical heat that soaked through his clothing.
Every few minutes, he would find a spot ahead and create a waygate to move them forward. It was getting easier with practice, though once he almost dropped them into a pond.
They stopped often to drink at the streams they crossed. The water tasted bitter, probably full of minerals that a decent filter would have taken out. There were times when he really missed civilization.
The land here was a series of rolling hills that stretched from the water inland, west toward distant Gaelan. The jungle offered a dense canopy that kept them well hidden from any eyes above—great red-trunked trees with wide heart-shaped purple leaves that Venin called red shanks. Vines wrapped around them with flowers in a riot of colors, and unknown things slithered or crawled through the underbrush. So far, nothing had challenged them, but the sun was just reaching its peak, as glimpsed through the crowding of leaves. They still had a long way to go.
Jameson wished they could take to the open sky. More than anything, he wanted Xander to be with him. Jameson missed his cocky manner and his unexpected flashes of direct honesty, even if he was often a pain in the ass about it. He missed his touch….
Alix came up to walk next to him as they skirted a clearing, staying under the cover of the red shanks. “How are you doing?”
Jameson glanced warily at him. He still wasn’t sure he trusted Alix.
But he’d also helped Jameson with his memories and had come to help him liberate Errian, so Jameson decided to cut him a little slack. “I’m all right. Sweating like a Tander’s World miner, but I’ll live.”
Alix snorted. “How about the memories?”
“Still there.” He could feel them pressing at the back of his skull. It wasn’t too bad at the moment, but then again, there were no landmarks here to trigger them.
“Good.” Alix was silent for a long time.
Jameson glanced over at him. The ranger was handsome and strong. His stubble, now half-grown into a beard, only accented his masculinity, and there was a determined grit to him that was appealing.
“Can I ask you something?” Alix said at last.
That didn’t sound good. “Sure. Shoot.”
“Did Xander ever say anything about me?” He caught Jameson’s eye and then quickly looked away. “I know it’s weird, asking you that.”
“That’s okay.” It was weird, but the poor guy had no one else to ask. “Yeah, maybe once? He said you were a really good guy who rescued him from the Syndicate.”
“He did?”
Jameson nodded. “I think he missed you terribly, until….”
“Until you came along. Got it.” He spat.
“You guys coming?” Venin had gotten ahead of them. He gestured impatiently.
“Yeah, we’re….” Jameson’s mouth fell open. A dark shadow fell over Venin, and then the man was gone.
“Venin!” Jameson instinctively made a waygate, jumping through to where Venin had been standing and slamming it closed. Alix ran after him.
Jameson looked up. Venin’s legs were kicking as something black, multi-legged and monstrous dragged him up the trunk of a red shank tree.
He dropped his carry sack and pulled out his pulse rifle. “Guard yourself,” he called to Alix. “I’m going after him.” Jameson launched himself into the air, pulling himself up to the canopy with his powerful wings.
He looked around and caught a glimpse of Venin once more. The thing pulling him along a wide branch looked like a furry spider with a catlike face. It had to be a martach.
It was as nimble as a squirrel among the tree branches. Venin’s body was limp in its spindly forelimbs.
Jameson flew in pursuit, slipping past overhanging leaves. He hoped there was only one of the things.
When he caught sight of them again, they were much closer. The cat-spider thing was dragging Venin’s body into a sticky-looking nest, made of broken branches, bits of leaves, and a black connecting substance.
Jameson took aim and fired at the thing, managing a glancing blow across the top of its thorax.
It let go of Venin and spun toward him, leaving Venin’s body on the high branch. Without warning, it leapt at him, spinning out a black thread behind it.
Jameson pulled back and hit the thing with three pulse shots in rapid-fire order, ripping off its head and forelegs.
It fell just short of him and swung down into the forest, smacking into the trunk of one of the shank tree. Its body shuddered and then was still.
“Holy fuck,” Jameson whispered and shoved the pulse rifle into his belt. He surged forward to retrieve Venin’s body. There was a nasty bite mark, angry red, on his neck.
A memory pushed into his head, but he shoved it back. There was no time for remembering. He needed to get Venin out of there in case there was another of these creatures nearby.
As he swept Venin’s limp form into his arms, the nest exploded with activity. Miniature versions of the thing—kitspiders?—that had attacked them poured out of the hole, leaping toward them.
Jameson leapt off the branch and flew away under the canopy.
One of the nasty little things jumped at him, landing on his shoe. It was about the size of a cat, and it scrambled to get purchase and to crawl up his leg.
He shook it and kicked at the thing viciously with his other foot, dislodging it and sending it tumbling to the ground far below with a loud rowrsqueee.
Venin was heavy. Jameson couldn’t carry him far by himself. He opened a waygate back to where he’d left Alix.
Alix had his own pulse rifle drawn.
“What the hell was that?” Alix asked as he landed.
“Some kind of spider thing. I killed it, but it had babies.” Jameson closed the waygate and scanned the trees, but there was no sign of the little horde.
Alix pulled out a knife.
“What are you doing?” Jameson asked. “He’s still alive.”
“I know. I want to suck out as much of the poison as I can. Set him down here and hold his shoulders.”
Jameson did as he was told.
&
nbsp; Alix made two quick, practiced cuts across the wound and then leaned down to suck the poison out of it and spit it out onto the ground. He repeated this five times before he was satisfied.
Then he pulled his canteen out to clean the wound with water. He wrapped one of his shirts around Venin’s neck as a tourniquet. “Not too tight, or we’ll cut off the blood to his brain. That’s all I can do. Duck!”
Jameson put his head down and felt the hot discharge of Alix’s pulse rifle. He turned to see one of the kitspider things twitching on the ground, split in two.
“Let’s go!”
Jameson grabbed his carry sack and pulled it on, and they took Venin between them and ran as fast as they were able.
When they’d put some distance between themselves and the site of the incident, Jameson slowed down. “Wait, I can get us out of here.”
“The key?”
Jameson nodded. It was risky. He only “knew” a few places from his memories in and around Errian, but it was better than being eaten alive out here by cat-spiders.
They laid Venin down gently on the ground. He moaned softly, which Jameson took as a good sign.
He pulled out the key again and held it up. He closed his eyes and remembered the center of Errian. Tall white towers rose up all around him, and the crater wall was a black rim around the edge of the city. When he was sure he had it, he twisted the sphere. It vibrated, and the waygate opened up before them, showing the streets of Errian.
There were sounds of battle on the other side, the rumble of amalite engines and screaming both in rage and fear.
Alix and Jameson exchanged a glance and looked back behind them.
Three more of the kitspider things were falling from the trees.
They grabbed Venin and leapt through the waygate, slamming hard against one of the white towers.
Jameson flipped the key, and the waygate sliced closed, cutting one of the kitspiders in half. He shoved the key into his carry sack and looked around.
They’d jumped right into the middle of a battleground.
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