Shadowmouse felt a twinge of envy. The flyer climbed onto the lower wing and lay flat, strapping herself behind her controls. Then the lamps were snuffed and the huge doors were pushed open. In Mirrorsun's light they could discern the flat expanse of the ascent strip as they walked outside. The baffle pipe was removed and the flyer opened the compression engine's throttle. The kitewing rolled out under its own power and continued straight down the ascent strip, the note from its exhaust steady but shatteringly loud to Shadow-mouse, who had gone days keeping his charges as quiet as possible. Suddenly the woodland on the edge of the wingfleld was lit up by a string of flashes.
The kitewing was saved by its very strangeness. The humans had never seen anything move so fast, had never seen a kite as big as a house, and had certainly never seen anything that size lift from the ground. The aviads were already returning fire as the kitewing's ungainly form rose, to be quickly lost against the dark sky.
"I knew there were too many friendly strangers about!" said Shadowmouse as he frantically reloaded in the darkness. "They must have been stalking us, even on the wind train."
"Fras Possum, those shots," said Frelle Finch.
There were two long blasts of a whistle.
"Fall back to the sheds!" shouted Frelle Finch.
Shadowmouse estimated that there were a dozen aviads gathered around him and lying flat in the grass. Fras Terian was giving orders.
"Forty or fifty humans," he estimated as bullets whizzed overhead. "Southwatch and Westwatch have whistled in, Eastwatch is silent."
"That means they followed us as we brought the children," said Shadowmouse.
"Trout, Wombat, proceed to Eastwatch and hold there. The rest of you, go with Finch."
Frelle Finch led them crawling to a scatter of low, bushy mounds. The human party had been working its way along the edge of the wingfield when the kitewing had ascended, startling some of their number into shooting and giving the aviads the alarm that the dead guard at Eastwatch had not been able to provide. A string of shots rattled out from where the kitewing had been housed, and was returned by a dishearteningly large number of flashes from the approaching humans. Shadowmouse could feel the body heat of Frelle Finch, who was lying beside him.
A fire began amid the woods, and there was a cheer from the humans as they hurried past, crouched over.
"Get down," hissed Frelle Finch. "Chain bombs."
A moment later there were five massive blasts, and a huge plume of flame erupted from the woodland. The aviads raised their heads to see the surviving humans outlined against the glow. They opened fire.
The humans lost fully half of their number in no more than seconds, but after that the fighting was both horrific and desperate. The aviads had better night vision and quicker reactions than the humans, but the humans were battle-hardened veterans. The surviving leaders rallied their men and charged back at the aviad position before the enemy could reload for another volley. Sabers flashed in the firelight against bayonets and skirmish knives. Shadowmouse parried with his empty musket, then cut with his saber at a human outlined by the fire. Frelle Sparrow fired her pistol past Shadow-mouse at another shape, then Shadowmouse found himself in a fencing duel with a skilled opponent. Shadowmouse parried against a
head cut, noted that his opponent was strong but had a much heavier saber, did a rotating half-parry, then lifted his leading foot and dropped into a lunge. The point of his saber found his opponent's throat.
Shadowmouse crouched, glancing around, saw a human with his foot on a body and thrusting down with a bayonet. He chopped his saber into the man's back. The other humans were now bunching together, their sabers and bayonets raised but defeat in their posture. Four humans faced three encircling aviads as Fras Terian came striding out of the burning ruins, his jacket smouldering and a double-barrel flintlock pistol in each hand. Shadowmouse, Frelle Sparrow, and one of the kitewing artisans had survived.
"Frelle Finch?" asked Terian.
"Under him," said Shadowmouse, with a wave of his saber. "I was not fast enough."
Terian put a pistol into his belt, then heaved the human's body off Frelle Finch and dragged it clear. He knelt beside the girl and felt for a pulse at her throat. He brushed a strand of hair from her face, then stood up and drew his other pistol again. The humans looked apprehensively from the body to Terian. The fire roared in the background, drawing a soft wind over them. Terian fired the four barrels of his two guns in rapid succession, and the screams of the humans were quickly silenced.
"My daughter," explained Terian, kneeling beside the girl's body again.
Forty-eight humans had died in the fight, for the loss of eleven aviads. Of the remaining humans, three were shot down as they guarded the horses and tracker terriers, and two more were killed as they tried to flee past Eastwatch. The terriers had been trained from birth to hunt aviads, and they barked and lunged as Terian turned on them. There were two more shots.
Terian called in the guards, and together with the others they stripped the humans of their weapons. The aviad bodies were tied to some of the horses, and barrels of compression spirit were loaded onto the others. What could not be carried was set ablaze, then they set off for the south. Each aviad was leading a line of packhorses.
Shadowmouse and Frelle Sparrow watched them ride out of the reach of the firelight.
"So, again we delivered our charges," said Frelle Sparrow.
"And lost all this," replied Shadowmouse. "She was only seventeen, did you know that?"
"Frelle Finch?"
"She wanted to fly. Now she's dead, tied to a horse and going to a hidden grave."
"But you have seen death before, Shadowmouse. You even killed the human who killed her. She's been avenged."
"It was not enough. Someone betrayed us, and I am going to go on a rat hunt."
They began riding, and were soon lost to the fire's glare amid the trees.
"I have noticed that those with glorious dreams are the ones that die first," said Frelle Sparrow after a time.
"Is that meant as a sneer at Frelle Finch?" asked Shadowmouse.
"No, it's a warning to you. The cold, cruel people like me survive in times and places such as these. Dreamers are creatures of peacetime."
I he following day Martyne toured the burned-out remains of the aviad wingfield and compression spirit distillery. The human dead still littered the place, surrounded by carrion birds and wild dogs.
"They were a group of veterans from the western castellanies, allied with some Woomeran mercenaries," explained the Bendigo Constable. "As I heard, they attacked the place but got sponged."
"Not before doing some damage," observed Martyne. "How many aviads died?"
"Can't say, they always drag their dead away and bury them in secret. Maybe half as many aviads were fighting here as humans. They took all the guns and horses too."
"Any idea what they were making here?"
"Some type of oil to burn without smoke in their steam engines, I should think. They don't like to attract attention."
"And what do they use this strange, flat field for?" asked Martyne.
"It forces attackers to either approach over open ground, or through those trees where the chain bombs were planted."
"Clever."
They walked with two of the militiamen from Bendigo through the burned-out distillery. There was nothing more to see but twisted tubes and iron hoops amid the ash. The distillery had been designed to burn and leave nothing useful or informative. The skeletons of four of the men from the human vanguard lay white and powdery in the postures of agony and despair. The remains of flintlock muskets lay with them.
"Ach, I wish the Call was still with us," said the Constable.
"Why is that?" asked Martyne, surprised.
"The aviads never hurt us while they could hide here, they lived in peace. Now every human who dreams of a farm on the frontier is rushing in, and where are the aviads to go? I feel sorry for those aviads."
"Ha
ve you met any, Fras Constable?"
"Yes, I have, Fras Espionage Constable. A lot of folk wish them well, but they keep their opinions quiet."
"Which you had better do with your own opinion, Fras. This is a serious incident: people in high places will be very angry."
"What will you recommend?"
"Limits must be enforced on human expansion into aviad territory, else there will be more deaths on this scale or worse. The Overmayor will send musketeers in to clear paths and establish safe settlements."
Martyne heard a loud click as one of the Bendigo musketeers stepped on a buried chain bomb's trigger, then came a concussion so loud that he perceived it as silence. He was standing in the blast shadow of the Bendigo Constable, whose body was hit by enough flying metal to kill two dozen men. When Martyne awoke he was lying on the flat, grassy ground, fifty yards from where he had been walking before the blast, and the militiaman who had stayed back with the horses was kneeling beside him. His clothes were soaked
in blood, but his only wound was to his right forearm. Parts of the Bendigo Constable were strewn nearby, and a haze of dust and ash was still on the air.
"Fras, Fras! You're alive!" cried the militiaman as Martyne stirred.
"Traps, left in rubble," gasped Martyne, squeezing his bleeding arm. "What of the others?"
"Gone, Fras, they're just gone!" the man shouted hysterically as Martyne rolled over and sat up. "He was a good man, a decent man, Fras, he hated nobody. There's no God, Fras, there's no God. God would never let a fella like him die this way."
With the explosion still ringing in his ears and aching from his wound and dozens of bruises, Martyne helped the militiaman rig up several charcoal-and-board warning signs before they returned to the Bendigo Abandon. It was another five days before two more chain bombs were found and detonated, and a week before what the bush scavengers had left of the bodies was gathered up for burial.
Rochester, the Rochestrian Commonwealth
IVIartyne returned to Rochester two days after Christmas. Much to his surprise, he was escorted from the paraline terminus to the palace by several members of the mayoral guard. There he was masked, then led into the throne hall, where he was awarded the Bronze Cross by the Overmayor. The ceremony was closed, but was attended by a few senior administrators from Libris and a dozen of the mayoral court. A public announcement was made, declaring that an agent of the Dragon Librarian Service had been decorated for bravery, having been wounded in a battle with aviads. Some time later an unmasked Martyne read the notice pinned to a public board, then fingered the Bronze Cross hidden within his jacket before walking on.
When he opened the door to his room Velesti was sitting cross-legged on his bed, stripping a Morelac target pistol with Martyne's service kit.
"I hear you make war on aviad children," she said as he closed the door behind him and leaned back against it with his eyes closed.
"Why do I bother to even carry a key?"
"Where is the Bronze Cross?"
Martyne tossed it to her. "I would have been given a Gold Cross, but they probably thought I would melt it down and sell it for the metal."
"But seriously, about those aviad children?"
"Would you prefer them fried or boiled, Frelle Dragon Blue?"
"What happened?"
"You mean you don't know?"
"Martyne, I am not in a mood for facile banter and mannered levity."
"And I have just come home from the frontier with a four-inch gash in my arm, more bruises than a tavern's doorman could accumulate in a lifetime, concussion, my ears still ringing, and memories of the bushland scavengers masticating pieces from four dozen bodies. I need a friendly ear, a welcome, sympathy. Do you know the meaning of any of those words?"
"You got a medal from the Overmayor, presented in the palace, before her court."
"I got stabbed in the left pectoral by the Overmayor, who had never presented an award before—and she fluffed her lines. I got three cheers from the courtiers and a trumpet fanfare, oh, and two little squares of toast smeared with emu liver pate at the reception in my honor—at which I was not permitted to speak. Ever try to eat while wearing a mask?"
Velesti sighed. "All right, all right, welcome home, I'm sorry you were hurt and I'm sure you were very brave. Now, what happened?"
Martyne walked over to the bed, scooped up the carefully laid-out components of Velesti's gun, dropped them into her lap, then sat down.
"I was in the Bendigo Abandon, investigating the presence of a large group of veterans from the western castellanies and Woomeran Confederation. They had no women, children, or tools, but they
were armed and mounted. On the night that I arrived there was a huge fire visible to the south, in the former Calldeath wilderness. At dawn I accompanied the Bendigo Constable and three militiamen as they rode out to investigate. We found over four dozen dead veterans and the burned-out remains of several buildings. One of the militiamen also discovered the hair-trigger to a concealed chain bomb."
"The hard way?"
"Yes. Aside from myself, one militiaman survived, but his grip on sanity is no longer all that it could be. The Overmayor was not anxious for it to be known that Gentheist vigilantes are hunting down aviads that her own lancers should be protecting, so I was made the hero of a battle that annihilated an aviad fortress in order to open bushland to honest Rochestrian farmers."
"So you fought no aviads?"
"I did not even see any aviads. For all we know that battle could have been between Gentheist veterans and some Inglewood warlord. The Overmayor wants it known that her forces are in control of the former Calldeath lands, however, so she has declared a great victory and I am a hero."
"A victory against aviads."
"Yes."
"Always the aviads, always the enemy," said Velest, shaking her head. "People still fear and hate them, even their protectors."
"They are stronger, faster, and more intelligent than us. These seem like quite good reasons."
"What a depressingly human thing to say. Speaking of humans, I was going to help with your problems with female humans, but now I am not sure that I want to."
"Help? What do you mean? The last time you helped me I ended up in bed with Marelle."
"Are you complaining?"
"Yes! I called at her tavern on the way home, but she yelled at me and threw me out."
"About?"
"About being away so much. I risk death in the wilderness, then
get accused of being with another woman! Involvement with women and suffering are two expressions for the same thing."
"What about me?"
"Could you seriously describe yourself as a woman?"
"Point taken. Did you know that my mother is in Rochester?"
Martyne sat bolt upright at once. "I'm going to sleep in my study tonight."
"I showed her the sights, had long talks with her, and discussed family business."
"Family business? What sort of family business? Involving me?"
"Not saying."
"What? Why not?"
"Because I want to see you suffer."
"How Christian of you," said Martyne, rubbing his face in his hands.
"What is your plan now?"
"Hide from your mother, avoid Marelle, and teach theology at the university."
"And train with me?"
"Why not? It's as good an excuse as any to hit you."
"Speaking of hitting people, I have been thinking."
"Not again."
"It is about my self-defence guild. I have spoken with some of my sister students at the university, and many are anxious to be able to fend off unwanted advances without resorting to formal duels or keeping company with men just for protection."
"A worthy venture."
"You agreed to help, remember?"
"No," said Martyne firmly.
"Why?"
"I want to see you suffer."
"Martyne, seriously! We could emphasiz
e locks, holds, and throws, teaching them to defend themselves without weapons."
"Me? Train a group of women? Velesti, I have been involved in one way or another with fo—er, three women over the past three months, and all three involvements have been absolute disasters."
"Even me?"
"Especially you. Now you want to involve me with training a couple of dozen of them!"
"Spoken like a true monk. You have skills with subtle fighting arts, better suited to girls and women not as strong as me."
"The answer is still no."
"What girl has not found herself alone with a much stronger man, and subject to unwelcome advances? Chivalrous it may be to defend a woman's honor, but even more chivalrous it is to give her the means to make her own choices at all times."
"You are talking to a man who has found himself alone with women and also subject to unwelcome advances—and superior strength was of no assistance. I still say no."
Velesti leaned her folded arms onto her crossed legs and batted her eyelashes at Martyne.
"Even if I was to free you from my mother?"
"I said no and I meant—"
Martyne made a choking sound, then seized Velesti by the lapels of her jacket.
"Now, let me see, what is the new Balesha method for escaping this type of hold?" asked Velesti with a wide and malicious grin.
"You're lying to me," Martyne rasped, his face very close to hers.
"No."
"How?"
"Do we have an agreement?"
"You bastard."
"May I interpret that as yes?"
"Not until you do the impossible. What is your solution to your pregnant mother?"
"I can say with some confidence that you were still a virgin when you left my mother's house for the last time."
"There is a God." Martyne sighed, releasing her lapels and slumping back against the wall.
"However . . ."
"However?"
"Interesting experiments were conducted in the cause of fertility and carnal pleasure."
"Spare me the circumlocutions, Velesti. So, I may not have ro-gered her, but I was in no condition to know or remember clearly what I was doing."
Eyes of the Calculor Page 27
