by S. J. Ryan
Hagan trotted his horse alongside, gaping at the apparition in the north. “Lords of Aereoth! Morant told me how huge that thing was, and I did not believe him!”
“It will not harm us,” Carrot replied. “If it could, it would have done so already.”
“Still – the sight – it's – “
Carrot watched his face and saw that his resolve was melting. If someone as level-headed as Hagan could be unnerved by the sight of the airship, what effect was it having on the troops? She decided it would be best if they were given no more time to think about it.
Carrot pointed to the right side of the Roman line. “We will break through there. Inform the regimental commanders. Bring forward the rams. I will give the signal.”
“Yes Colonel!”
The converging lines were less than four hundred meters apart and closing fast. The Romans were seconds away from launching their darts. She rode over to Geth and shouted, “Ready the smoke slingers!”
Geth galloped behind the front line, shouting to the hundreds of men who had been equipped with slings. They loaded in their carefully-prepared projectiles of stones wrapped with dried grass. With hand lanterns lit in daylight, they set the grass smoldering. They swung and launched. The projectiles shot high into the sky, leaving streamers of smoke.
As expected, the airship ceased to signal the troops below. With the smokescreen in place, its observers could not track the movement of the Britanians. The effect was only temporary, however, for the slingers were rapidly running out of projectiles.
Carrot rode back to the clacker-chief. “The concentrating signal – now!”
He pounded stick and board over his head: whack whack whack. The regimental and company clackers repeated, and the army shifted to the right and concentrated. No signal from the airship; the smoke was hanging over the battlefield as a thick white veil. The near windless day that had been a blessing for the airship had become a curse of blindness.
The Britanian regiments amassed on the right, behind their front of sheets and sticks, and waited. Carrot rode to their fore and held leader-spear high. Two hundred meters. Roman darts started to arch across the gap – no more time to waste! Tucking the spear, Carrot fumbled the flute to her mouth, dropped the reins and fingered the tune. Instantly, the five notes were repeated by the flute boys across the length of the Britanian line.
The signal meant nothing to the Britanians; they marched to the clackers. The Romans, who did march to flutes, heard the signal to retreat. Their line abruptly halted, spears wavering to evoke the confusion that Carrot was certain they felt. They became even more confused as their own battle-flutes sounded the command to advance. The Britanian flutists replied even louder, again to retreat.
Carrot nudged her horse through the front line, surveyed the field, shook the leader-spear over her head. She heard a tremendous roar behind her, followed by the stampede of the entire West Britanian army. She wailed a battle-cry of her own, leveled the spear and charged across the field, braving darts and arrows, until she was halfway between the closing lines of the opposing armies. There she halted and waved on the hordes of Britanians. They stormed past her toward the Roman line.
The Romans must have decided by then to ignore the flutes and assume a defensive position, for they held spears level and shields locked. It didn't matter. The Britanians brought forward freshly-chopped tree trunks with branches still intact, carried by teams of dozens of men. The battering rams smashed wide holes in the Roman line.
Leafmen poured into the gaps, skewering, axing, clubbing, amputating and decapitating the Romans. Roman shields twisted, spears broke, swords fell from hands. Most Romans scattered and those that did not were trampled. They may have outnumbered the Leaf two to one on the field, but at the point where the line broke they were one to five and despite their superior skill and equipment they were overwhelmed by sheer numbers and a wrath fueled by a quarter century of imperial exploitation and oppression.
Any illusion that war was beautiful faded with the mists of sprayed blood, the flinging of tattered flesh, the screams of men disfigured and crippled and mortally wounded. Carrot was not shocked. She had seen it all in her nightmares for two and a half years, ever since her village had been destroyed by Romans. This time it was being done to them. She did not gloat, but she did feel that if war had to be, it was best for the agony to be inflicted on the aggressors.
Astride her horse, Carrot waded through the cesspool of carnage, unable to participate because she held reins in one hand and leader-spear in the other. At such close range, a Roman dart, arrow, or spear might have easily pierced her, but all the Roman soldiers were preoccupied with Britanians at their faces. She was a detached observer, floating imperviously above the battle like a ghost or angel. Except that her mount wobbled whenever a hoof squished upon a portion of a corpse.
– And then the ground was clear. Without looking back, Carrot trotted ahead of her rampaging soldiers, galloped well ahead when she reached empty grass, and surveyed the northern edge of the poison ring.
The point where the Romans had marched through the poison ring only minutes before was easy to spot. It was littered with dead men, water jugs and piss buckets. The Romans must have used every drop in ten thousand canteens and formed a bucket brigade to forge through the ring. Those at the head of the bucket brigade had been too close to the poisoned ground and had succumbed. She wondered what assurances of safety their officers had given them.
She rode back to her father, pointed and shouted, “The exit is there!” She handed him the leader-spear. “You must guide them through!”
“Where are you going?”
“To check the rear.”
Her concern was that the left-front might be cut off from escape. She galloped south, fearing the worst. But the Romans had yet to recover. Like its terrestrial counterpart millennia before, the Ne'arthian Roman military machine, normally invincible against mobs of savages, lacked the creative initiative to handle surprise. The Britanians were soon past while the Romans still regrouped. Carrot rode north again to join her father and the rest of the army in exiting the poison ring.
On the way, however, she happened to glance to the right. She saw the huts of the base and the airship hangar. They were deserted and untouched by the maelstrom of fighting so close by.
Then movement caught her eye. Near the huts, at the northern edge of the training field, were the remains of Athena's airboat. Someone was there, rummaging through the gondola. Except for glimpses, the bulk of the wreckage concealed them from Carrot's sight. What would anyone be doing there at this time?
Overcome by curiosity and sensing that the army could fare without her for a moment, Carrot rode over, dismounted the horse, unsheathed her sword.
“Who is there?” she asked.
Behind her, the horse whinnied in alarm.
She was hit on the back with the force of a stone flung by catapult. She stumbled flat and groggily raised herself to hands and knees, her shoulder throbbing and her dress soaked with blood from the scrape of claws where the shield on her back had not protected.
The creature that had knocked her down alighted. Carrot recognized the bat-like wings, the scaled and feathered hide, the gaunt yet muscular limbs, the talons and fangs. It was in the form that Inoldia had taken for flying, that she had manifested when she had appeared before Carrot atop the airship. Carrot leaped erect and raised her silver kedana.
A second creature, identical to the first, emerged from scavenging the airboat.
A third creature landed on her right, a fourth on her left. She turned and found two more behind her. Finally, three more landed together, making nine. All the surviving Sisters of Wisdom were present, and Carrot had no allies.
There was no way to tell them apart, until the one in the middle of the threesome spoke. The hiss of the High Priestess was unmistakable.
“Mother said, bring you to her! You'll not escape again!”
The creatures behind her lunged. Carro
t heard in time and dodged and slashed, and then the rest closed in. Against so many, Carrot knew her sword was overwhelmed.
She pulled out Athena's gun. Nine bullets, nine Sisters.
She aimed the barrel at the head of the High Priestess. She pulled the trigger. The gun spat a tongue of flame and everything above the neck of the High Priestess exploded in a cloud of blood and bone. The creatures standing alongside the High Priestess wore looks of puzzlement, but only for a second and then their heads exploded too.
Carrot almost laughed at the ease. The dreaded Sisters of Wisdom, scythed like ripe harvest!
She swung the barrel to the right and blasted two more, whirled about and blasted the ones behind her. She swung toward the two remaining.
She had time to see the blow pipe, no time to dodge its tiny dart.
The gun slipped from her paralyzed fingers as she sank to the ground. No, no, no! Please no! In a drugged haze, her thoughts were disjointed regret: she had forgotten to tell her father one last time that she loved him, she would never hold Matt again, she would not become a teacher, never marry, never have children, never see Rome driven from Britan.
She lost consciousness as claws clamped her arms and dragged her into the sky.
18.
“Matt!” Galatea's voice said inside his head. “Wake up! We're over Britan!”
After hours asleep during the flight over what was called by Britanians the Western Sea, Matt's consciousness reintegrated with his body inside the folds of the dragon's chest cavity. Plugging into the sensory network provided through Galatea and Ivan, he again he felt the stroke of the dragon's wings, the rush of wind against its scales.
It had felt clammy inside the pouch at first, but he had to admit the experience had grown on him. Thanks to the integration of his nervous system with that of the dragon, he was no longer inside the dragon. He was the dragon.
Hundreds of meters below, the sea gave way to hills of evergreen trees. The forests of Britan reminded him of the forests around Seattle, but when he thought of Home, he thought of Carrot and his friends. When he thought of what could be happening to them, he was sickened.
“Where's Ravencall?” he asked.
“It's still many minutes away,” Galatea replied. “Please be patient, Matt. Silvanus is very tired. This is the longest he's been in flight.”
Matt pined for the speed of an airship. Based on her airboat's estimated cruise velocity, Ivan extrapolated that Athena must have arrived the previous evening. Galatea, in the interim, had explained that the airboat had been outfitted with unmarked pressurized tanks. Matt tortured himself by imagining the worst.
The Western Sea became a line on the horizon behind. They passed a mountain range on the left, then tracked the path of the Oksiden Road. Matt stared north, enraged at how he been deluded into abandoning Carrot in the land of the monstrous creatures known as trolls.
“We are passing over Savora's village,” Galatea said.
Savora's description matched what he saw. She hadn't lied about her origins – not the human part.
“Matt, I still regret what I did to her.”
“It wasn't your fault. You were controlled by Athena.”
“I appreciate your understanding. You are a true friend, Matt.”
Silvanus tilted his wings and sank smoothly through the cloud layer. Mist thinned to reveal the layout of Ravencall Base. There was the supply hut, reduced to char. There was the barn, its roof still open from the Good Witch's escape. The rest of the base buildings were intact, but Matt saw no line at the meal hut.
The field was where the action was. Thousands of soldiers in gleaming armor – those would be Romans. They were chasing north a smaller force dressed in drabber yet more varied clothing. Matt knew at once that they were the volunteer warriors of the Leaf. As both armies vacated the field, they had left behind abandoned weapons and unmoving bodies. The death count was far less than what Matt expected for a battle, but clearly a violent confrontation had taken place.
“Matt,” Ivan said. “My analysis of Roman troop movements north of the base indicate a tendency toward interception of Britanian forces which is well above random probability. It indicates the presence of aerial reconnaissance.”
“Archimedes said the Romans would build another airship. Let's find it.”
“Visual scanning . . . located.”
Ivan's augmented-reality arrow pointed. Hovering over a small lake by a hill a few kilometers north of Ravencall was the airship. Matt saw a gondola ten times the volume of the Good Witch's and engine housings the size of village huts. He identified observation blisters but no gun turrets. Not surprising, since the Roman military had yet to develop gunnery.
“Ivan, do you see any weapons?”
An AR arrow indicated the platform extending behind the gondola. “These appear to be rocket launcher racks.”
“Can you give me any data on the rockets?”
“Ten launch tubes are visible, five on each side. Total number of weapons aboard vessel is not known. Assuming solid fuel consistent with historical designs, rockets will have a range of several kilometers and are likely to contain an explosive charge that detonates on contact with target.”
“I suppose they can't be very accurate.”
“They are likely to be unguided. However, historically, unguided rockets have been effective in warfare when used in mass attacks.”
“You shoot enough of them at once, one of them is bound to hit the target by pure chance.”
“Yes, Matt.”
“Do you see any launchers mounted topside?”
“No, Matt.”
“Okay, then we'll come from above and from the rear. Galatea, take us up.”
Silvanus dove into a cloud bank. As the dragon cork-screwed in an ascending spiral, Matt assessed the potential for a 'dogfight' between the dragon and the airship. The ship had speed, arrows, and rockets, while the dragon had maneuverability and claws. Their biggest advantage was that the dragon wouldn't explode from a single spark. Being filled with tons of hydrogen gas, the airship would – spectacularly.
As Matt saw it, they just had to get close enough to deliver the spark.
Matt wriggled inside the pouch, unzippering the survival kit that he'd pilfered from an emergency supplies crate while exploring Nemesis. His hand slipped around the contours of the handle of a flare gun. Without the fire-suppression equipment of Nemesis, the Roman airship could become flaming wreckage with a single shot. All he had to do was get close enough.
With powerful strokes, Silvanus broke above the cloud layer. The dragon made a hammerhead maneuver, allowing gravity to drain his upward momentum until he came to a halt. He tilted downward and dove toward the ship's rudder.
As they streaked toward their target, Matt saw the men in the tail observation nest staring back. He avoided their eyes but wondered if the ship carried parachutes. His moral qualms were dispelled when he saw a glint of reflected sunlight flashing below the ship's nose. Observers aboard the ship were signaling the ground, closing a noose made of legions around the fleeing Britanians.
Carrot, Matt thought. What would they do if they caught her? What if she was already dead?
“Let's do this.”
They had rehearsed the attack many times in the hours over the Western Sea. As the dragon swooped over the ship, its chest cavity opened a slit. Matt extended his arm and the flare gun. Ivan provided targeting cross hairs, which was unnecessary as the ship filled Matt's sight. Matt pulled the trigger. The flare gun bucked and a smoking star struck the airship envelope. It bounced off.
“The flare failed to penetrate the skin of the envelope,” Ivan said.
“I can see,” Matt said, irritated. “We'll have to do this the hard way. Galatea, have Silvanus land me on the starboard elevator fin. I'll have to cut a hole in the envelope and shoot the flare into it.”
For a moment, the only sound was the stroking of the dragon's wings as he hovered above the airship.
�
��Galatea, did you hear me?”
“Matt,” Galatea said at last. “I can't let you do that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I'm sorry, Matt. The risk is too great.”
“Galatea, I have to do it. The Romans are going to destroy my friends and I have to stop them.”
“You are Synesthesia's friend and I am her emulator. She would not want her friend to come to harm.”
“Carrot and the others, they're my friends.”
“They are not Synesthesia's friends. You are her friend. She would not allow you to come to harm.”
She's Eric Roth's implant. Roth didn't value self-sacrifice, and Galatea had never been programmed with the recognition that a human host might value another life above his own.
Matt switched to a private channel. “Ivan, can you go into Silvanus and take over – “
“Matt,” Galatea interjected. “I am detecting covert subvocalization. If Ivan attempts to modify my directives under these circumstances, I will instruct Silvanus to immediately land and release you in a safe place.”
“Galatea, unless we stop the Romans, pretty soon there are not going to be any safe places in Britan.”
“Then you can leave Britan.”
“What about when Athena and Eric take over the world? Where will I go then?”
“That is the future, Matt. I am concerned about your present survival.”
Matt focused his willpower on the dragon's wings. He felt every muscle, but they would not respond. “Galatea, take me to the ship, or give me control of Silvanus so I can do it.”
“Matt, please be logical.“
“I am being logical!” Matt snapped aloud.
“Matt, I question why you should sacrifice your life for people who are strangers.”
“Carrot is my best friend! I can't live without her!”
