The Miocene Arrow

by Sean McMullen

  “Call in ten minutes, fasten your tethers, secure your children!” he bawled, over and over.

  People began to prepare, but it was not a busy time of day. If there had to be a Call, this was as good a time as any for it. Had it arrived an hour later it might have stopped over the town for the night as a Null Zone. That would have been bad for business, and the steam tram was due to leave for the south. As he strode about with his bell the deputar noted that the two trappers had attached themselves to a public tetherbar and were smiling amiably at him.

  Within ten minutes the Call arrived, invisible and silent. Everyone turned to mindlessly wander west, but all were tethered. Three hours passed.

  Deprian the tailor awoke from the Call, pressed against the padded west wall of his shop. Turning to the windows, he could see that the shadows had lengthened outside. Hardly any of the day left, he thought, hardly worth staying open. He turned to his workbench to pack up. The bell over the door rang as two trappers entered.

  “Sorry boys, I got more pelts than I can handle,” Deprian began; then he saw the gold Bartolican crendars in the taller man’s hand.

  “Want we clothes, traveling, for the purpose of,” he said in halting Old Anglian, and with a very heavy accent. “This, payment, for the purpose of.”

  “Sure son, that ought to do the trick,” replied Deprian at once. “When do you need ’em by?”

  “Tonight, steam tram, for traveling upon.”

  It was robbery to be sure, but they were willing to pay and Deprian was willing to miss dinner. Within two hours he had altered two existing suits to fit the trappers while they washed and shaved at the back of his shop. The deputar called in to ask if he had lost any money, as there had been several thefts around the town that had been noticed after the Call had passed. Deprian checked his float but found nothing missing. The deputar moved on.

  The chuffing of the steam tram leaving the service shed could be heard in the distance as the trappers had their final fittings. They had burned their reeking clothes and boots in the grate, but Deprian would have done that anyway. He noted that one had a bandage on his calf that was tied in a neat but unfamiliar pattern—almost artistically, he thought. Finally they bought Deprian’s own catchbag and fed their greasy packs to the flames. They had their own town boots, he noted, boots with a fine cut in unfamiliar leather, with hook-snap lacing. Deprian wondered where such a style might be the fashion.

  It was dusk as Deprian stood watching the trappers walk down the main road to the station, where the steam tram was halted while its wood blocks were loaded aboard and water was pumped into the reserve tank. Those departing embraced their friends and relatives on the platform as the driver blew the whistle. Finally the doors were locked, and with a series of ponderous chugs the steam tram began to ease its way along the tracks with its two dozen passengers, two crew, three carbineer guards, and cargo. People watched from the platform until the squat spruce and canvas tram disappeared around a distant bend. The engine’s chuffing echoed for a while amid the mountains before fading into the wind.

  Deprian sighed with relief as he turned back into his shop and began to close up for the night. The suits had been worth only a fifth of what the two trappers had paid, yet nobody had pointed that out to them before they boarded the steam tram. The deputar called in again as Deprian was about to climb the stairs to his dwelling.

  “You positive nothin’s been lifted from your shop?” he asked the tailor.

  “Sure as I got two hands. Why’s that?”

  “Weird stuff been happenin’. There’s more than a hundred gold sovereigns and Bartolican crendars reported missin’ across the town, from two dozen folk.”

  “You think them trappers did it?”

  “Nah, I watched ’em like a wood hawk, they were steady. There’s more too. Semme Thatching says she was, like interfered with during the Call.”

  Deprian laughed. “More like she’s been takin’ too long a-buyin’ her bread at the bakery.”

  The deputar did not smile. “Med says three other women have seen him since the Call, all agitated-like and askin’ if it’s possible to get mounted during a Call—by Callwalkers .”

  “Callwalkers? They’re storybook stuff, Pel”

  “I’m not sayin’ I got Callwalkers, just a pile of weird shit.”

  The tailor whistled nervously, thinking of the seven gold crendars in his pocket. There was much that he could have mentioned, but he chose silence. Why should he share in the bad fortune of those who had been robbed?

  1

  CORONATION

  5 May 3960: Condelor

  It was said that no dominion in Mounthaven did coronations and funerals so well as Greater Bartolica. In area it was the biggest of the dominions and Condelor, its beautiful and ancient capital, was the most elegant of the known world’s cities. The buildings that lined its streets were built proof against age as well as earthquakes, built with curving walls that tapered gracefully upward, as if striving to rise into the air. The windows were within heavy arches, but there were so many windows in each building that their interiors were never dark or oppressive. The apartment terraces, shops, and storehouses were all encrusted with multicolored stone and glazed tiles. Even the tiles on the roofs were glazed and colored, for it was important that Condelor also be pleasing to the wardens who saw it from the air. Raised aqueducts of sawn black basalt, orange sandstone, and red brick carried water in from the nearby mountains, where it passed down terracotta pipes to power machines before emptying into the canal waterways that interwove the roads and tramways of the city.

  As one neared the center of Condelor the parks became bigger, the mansions were more splendid, and the streets and avenues grew wider until the royal palace came into view above the trees. It was built in parkland interlaced with canals, and to the south was the spacious palace wingfield that could accommodate the gunwings of hundreds of visiting wardens and airlords. Even the gunwing halls of the wingfield had stained glass in their arched windows, while the adjunct’s tower was surrounded by flying buttresses and encrusted with winged gargoyles.

  The coronation of Greater Bartolica’s new airlord had attracted wardens and squires with over three hundred sailwings and gunwings, and the field guildsmen and their tents supporting the vast flock of wings had spilled out of the wingfield area and into the surrounding parks. Ground crews could be seen pushing aircraft of every airworthy shape imaginable along the avenues to reach the guild tents where they were to be serviced, tuned, and cleaned. Freelance engineers advertised and displayed their valves, cylinders, rings, bearings, and atomizers at stalls on the mosaic sidewalks. Compression spirit of many caloric blends was available from carts laden with barrels, while other carts carried little steam engines to spin compression engines into life. Freelance gunsmiths did a particularly good trade. The best reaction guns were sold in pairs and were built light—like everything else that had to fly.

  Quite apart from its most obvious objective, the coronation was a celebration of travel and class distinction. In fact speed of travel defined Mounthaven society, and one’s social status defined whether one had taken months or hours to reach Condelor. At the lowest levels, itinerant workers, poor scholars, outlaws, trappers, and bounty hunters traveled the trails by foot. Such travel was slow and dangerous, but free. At the next level, the farmhands, birdherders, and townsfolk never traveled more than ten miles from where they were born, but they were generally secure and happy, and never attended coronations. The merchants, artisans, and other respectable folk traveled on the steam trams, whose mesh of trackwork linked all the important cities, towns, and estates. The trams were regular and well guarded, but crowded and expensive, and averaged barely three times the pace of a brisk walk. Fuel, raw materials, and equipment were also moved by tram, which meant that everything was expensive unless produced locally. Most estates were self-sufficient, and few cities were bigger than a half-day journey with a farm handcart.

  The nobility flew. Airlo
rds, wardens, squires, and a few select guildsmen flew the sailwings, regals, and gunwings that defined the aristocracy. No part of Mounthaven was more than a few hours away from any warden’s estate, but even a flock of three or four wings required an estate of two hundred to support, maintain, and fuel them. A new aircraft cost what a prosperous commoner could earn in two decades. Wardens patrolled the land during Calls, fought duels and highly stylized wars, attacked renegade militia strongholds, and monopolized fast communication and travel. The wardens were visible to all, and in turn saw, taxed, and controlled everyone beneath. them. They were also free of the Call while in the air. While in many ways less than perfect as political systems went, it had endured since the reinvention of diesel compression engines over a thousand years earlier.

  Serjon Feydamor was the lowest of the flying elite, an apprentice guildsman and trainee flyer. The Yarronese youth wore a plain green flight jacket as he explored the multitude of stalls of what might easily have been mistaken for an artisans’ festival. On the right and left of his collar he also wore silver flyer blazons signifying that he was qualified to fly armed sailwings in the service of his airlord. He had the crest of his engineers’ guild on his cap, but his cap was folded up and hidden in his pocket. Occasionally he was hailed as a squire by the vendors, and each time his heart flushed warm with pride.

  Serjon was in a very curious position. After having sired several daughters but no sons, the guildmaster Jeb Feydamor had petitioned his wife and his warden under the tradition of assisted succession. Under this custom, Warden Jannian visited Jeb’s wife for several weeks until she became pregnant by him. Were the child another girl, the warden’s youngest son would become the nominal heir of the Feydamor guild family. As it happened, Serjon was born of the union, yet he was born with his true father’s love of flying and was proving a poor apprentice engineer. In theory, if Warden Jannian and all his other sons were to die, then Serjon could lay claim to the wardenate. Even though he never wished such a disaster to happen, Serjon nevertheless considered himself to be a flyer. The thin, angular, and intense youth of nineteen wore his engineer’s crest with reluctance and shame, and only when forced to.

  The great gathering of aircraft was not open to the citizens of Condelor, who had to content themselves with merely watching the wings fly in from all points of the compass. Sailwings and gunwings of the Mounthaven wardens soared lazily through the sky while Serjon wandered the streets. They were elegant and stylish aircraft, whose form had often remained unchanged over centuries because their estate guildsmen had decreed that they had achieved perfection already.

  There were more ceremonies than just the coronation, which was the actual focus for the gathering. The guildmasters of the engineers, airframists, fuelers, gunsmiths, and instrumenteers had meetings to refine standards, while wingfield adjuncts met to discuss wingfield administration, dueling and war protocols. Members of the guild of meteorologists discussed weather theory and precedent, squires met to arrange marriages for their children, weavers debated the virtues of the new crosswoven airframe silk that promised double strength, and the wardens themselves discussed flying. The competitions were already over, but pinned to Serjon’s collar at his throat was a little gold starpoint kite that marked him as the winner of the sailwing division in target kite shooting. Every so often he would caress it, as if reassuring himself that he was born to fly.

  Within the palace grounds the Inner Guard and ancillary carbineers all wore parade uniforms, bright, smart, and well tailored for the coronation. The instruments of the bands shone in the sunlight as they marched along the avenues playing bright, precise marches for the parades and processions, but by night string orchestras took over as the nobles and their wives, sons, and daughters danced in the brightly painted and tapestry-laden halls of the palace. An airlord from Senner had once said, “We go to Condelor to fall in love, and to remember how to live.” To Serjon, however, the Condelor gathering was an excuse to hide his cap in his pocket and mingle among strangers as a flyer.

  Serjon’s wanderings had taken him to the palace wingfield when a Calltower bell began ringing. He immediately went to a public rail and clipped his tether to it, then waited to watch the duty warden ascend for his Call patrol.

  The duty warden of the palace wingfield heard the ringing of the Calltower bell as he was breakfasting in the adjunct’s chambers. Even as he looked up, the guildsmen of his ground crew began shouting to each other. Moments later the compression engine of his sailwing spluttered into life as his engineers spun it with a steam engine on a cart. The warden stood up, buttoned his jacket, then took a steamed towel from his aide and wiped his face and hands. His flight jacket was a blaze of gold thread embroidery on blue and yellow silk quilting, with gilt epaulettes of dirkfang cat skulls and red gemstones inset within each button. Standing in front of a full-length mirror, he pulled on his leather and felt cap with raised domes of giltwork over the ears, laced it tight, then picked up his tassel-fringed gloves. Finally his aide brought a gold cloak with his estate’s crest embroidered on the back, and Warden Brantic strode from the room out onto the wingfield.

  Along with Serjon there were hundreds of foreign dignitaries outside waiting to watch the warden ascend, ranging from senior wardens to mere merchants. Serjon should have felt pride burning through his body, knowing that even the wealthy merchants alongside him were below a flyer in peerage status, yet something was nagging at his mind. Warden Brantic’s flight designator was 13. Serjon stared at the number as if it were a large and dangerous predator, fearful for the warden yet relieved that someone else was about to step into its cage.

  Most of the onlookers were in national parade dress, guild uniforms, or their own splendid flight jackets. There were so many dozens of wardens, squires, flyers, guildmasters, and envoys that Warden Brantic found the spectacle overwhelming as he emerged. What was usually a routine part of a warden’s duties had become a major ceremony. One hundred and thirty wardens and nine airlords were in the city for the Bartolican Airlord’s coronation, and Bartolican prestige and honor rode with every action of every official in even the most mundane of duties. The adjunct and the wingfield’s herald were waiting beside the warden’s sleek, white sailwing, and the onlookers included guildmasters from Dorak, Senner, and Colandoro, as well as several wardens from Yarron. All wore Call anchors or Call tethers but Brantic: for this day, he alone was to be godlike and above the Call.

  “The layabouts are of higher rank than usual today, Sair Jiminay,” said the warden quietly as the wingfield herald opened the silver clasps of the Book of Orders.

  “A Call now means no Call for three days or more,” murmured the herald. “Tomorrow morning’s coronation will be free of interruption, so the new airlord can rightly claim divine favor.”

  “Who knows, perhaps he really does have divine favor,” the warden replied.

  The herald rang his handbell for attention.

  “Hear now, citizens of Greater Bartolica and honored guests, that Warden Hindanal Brantic has been charged by the Airlord Designate of Greater Bartolica to oversee his palace, capital, and all its approaches during the Call that now approaches us. Warden Brantic, you are charged with the responsibility of flying high above Condelor, watching over its people’s safety, guarding its approaches, and warning other wardens and flyers of the peril of the Call. Do you accept this charge?”

  “I do accept this charge and all its responsibilities,” replied Brantic.

  The warden pinned the Airlord Designate’s pennon of arms to his jacket beside those of his wife, then strode over to his sailwing and eased himself into the seat. Like all wardens of means, he had a gunwing for dueling and a sailwing for Call patrols. The guildsmen of his ground crew removed the chocks from the wheels and aligned the aircraft on the wingstrip; then the warden was flagged clear to ascend. He tried all the flaps and control surfaces, opened the throttle, and rolled off along the rammed gravel surface. The sailwing lacked the power of a gunwing, but was l
ighter and more delicately built so that it could stay in the air for over four hours. The warden’s sailwing ascended smoothly, and then he cranked in his wheels and banked to the north. The ordeal was over, he was up. He had not made a fool of himself in front of the assembled nobles of Mounthaven.

  The Call was approaching from the east, luring every mammal larger than a terrier to wander mindlessly west. The warden flew over the city walls and out over the irrigated farmlands, aqueducts, canals, and trackways. Sure enough, the birdherders were milling about against the west fences of their fields, yet their rheas, emus, and ostriches were grazing normally. The Call did not affect birds of any size; neither did it affect people if they flew free in the air. Nine miles through the Call’s depth he flew over fields where its effect had passed. There were no outlaw packs hurrying along in this Call’s wake to raid the capital. The warden turned back.

  The Call had still not reached Condelor as he flew back over its walls, but the people were prepared. The streets were almost deserted, smoke was less thick from the myriad chimneys, and only the canal barges and gravity trams were still running. The warden noted several buildings that had not run up their flags: the owners would be fined in due course. He pressed the lever that released the sailwing’s siren, then methodically patterned the city so that none but the deaf could have missed its blare.

  The front of the Call finally arrived, and presently Brantic was the only human awake in a strip nine miles deep and thirty miles wide. The truth was that the capital did not need the sailwings to patrol its skies during a Call. There was an adequate network of signal towers, warning stations, and Call bulwarks, so that people were seldom lost through accidents or lack of warning. The patrols were symbolic; they were to be seen rather than to protect. The sailwing was a plain statement that the nobility were above the Call in every sense of the word, as it had been for many centuries.