“Struggle, scream, be a Yarronese woman,” he said. “Try to say that you’re Bartolican and I’ll kill you before the guards can drop me. You will die and you will rot. Understand?”
Laurelene bobbed her head and said that she did. Glasken bent over and drove his shoulder into her abdomen, scooping her up into the air. Now Laurelene screamed, partly in surprise and partly through fear of being dropped. Nobody had been able to carry her for many, many years. Glasken tottered toward the wall over the rubble, with Feydamor limping behind.
“Get a girl, toss that bag away!” shouted one of the Bartolicans posted at the breach.
“They run too fast,” Glasken shouted back in slurred, but passable Bartolican.
He slapped Laurelene on the buttocks with his free hand and she gave an embarrassed squark.
“And this one weighs like five girls,” Feydamor added in flawless Bartolican.
Laurelene gasped in outrage, then screamed again rather than not retort at all. They left the guards laughing and were quickly lost in the gathering darkness beyond the Bartolican siege lines and camp. Glasken dropped to his knees and dumped Laurelene at the first opportunity.
“If you want sympathy, don’t look to me!” snarled Laurelene, getting to her feet and glaring down at Glasken, who sat wheezing with his hands on his knees.
“Your idea, she is,” Glasken gasped to Feydamor.
Glasken led them for some miles until they found a burned-out farmhouse. The bodies of several men and boys were lying nearby, but there were no women to be seen. Feydamor lay down the moment they were through the door.
“You stay here,” Glasken said to Laurelene as he began changing into the clothing of one of the dead farmers. “When the city stops burning and the merchant officers arrive, find the most senior of them and get his protection.”
Glasken began foraging for food in the blackened ruins. Laurelene regarded him by the glow of the burning city, which was reflected from the clouds.
“Why were you in the prefect’s building?” Laurelene ventured.
“If you knew, you would be killed,” he muttered. “Forget about me, say nothing. There are people who would kill you for just knowing I exist. Return to Median, it will be better tomorrow. Just stay outside the city until you can find a merchant officer.”
He began to dress a dead farmer in a Bartolican uniform. Shots echoed across from Median’s ruddy glow in the southwest.
“So you saved me from the Yarronese then saved me from being that carbineer’s toy and now you just leave?” she asked presently, her question pointed but her voice full of amazement.
“Wrong. Sair Feydamor saved you from the carbineer.” He checked the pistol he was carrying. “Watch for .38 rounds, Jeb, I can take another four.”
“Sair Glasken, I disgraced you in Condelor and you were shot,” said Laurelene.
He put the gun in his coat pocket and regarded her in the dim, red light that permeated into the ruin.
“I was disgraced long before I met you, Semme Hannan,” he said with a leer.
He took a small .22-caliber revolver from his coat.
“None of the chambers has been fired, and this is a lady’s weapon,” he said, holding it up for Laurelene to see. “I took it from a dead Bartolican. I’d say some Yarronese woman tried to fend him off with it, but he rightly assumed that she would be less frightened of being raped than of killing him. Very foolish of her. Do you know how to shoot one of these?”
“I do, Sair.”
“I see,” he said, handing the weapon over to her. “Now, having been beaten, flung down, and very nearly ravished, what would you do next time?”
“Sair? I—”
“Shoot him!”
“I—shoot him. Yes.”
“And more than that. Shoot him in the head to leave his uniform undamaged, dress in his clothing. Grab a bottle, act drunk, rub your face with dirt, rub your clothes with vomit and turds so that nobody will come near enough for a good look at you. Fight and survive, Semme! Love life! Too many people would rather be dead than be embarrassed or soiled. That is very foolish. Life is a brilliant and wonderful adventure. Never throw it away, and never hide from it.”
The words were odd to hear from someone that Laurelene considered to be both a lecher and stupid, yet they carried a strong ring of sincerity.
“Sair Glasken, what part of you is the act?”
“None of me, Semme Hannan. Can you say as much?”
In the hour that followed Laurelene convinced Feydamor that she was needed to nurse him and help him to walk. She found some women’s clothing in a laundry basket that had been dropped in the yard outside. The fit of the smockshirt was loose and comfortable, but the dresses belonged to someone much shorter. An oilcloth cloak hid most of the tight, short dress that Laurelene managed to squeeze into, however, and she arranged a hump of cloth between her shoulders. They set off with Glasken in the lead, and they passed as quite convincing farmhands.
“And who are you, Sair Feydamor?” she asked as she walked with his arm around her shoulder, supporting him on the rough, darkened path.
“A guildmaster engineer, Feydamor Engine Guild.”
“Ah, and how were you shot?”
“I was on a steam tram, a Bartolican gunwing fired on it.”
“Never! Bartolican wardens have a code of chivalry, they fight only clear-skies duels.”
Feydamor began a wheezing laugh. “Shot just below the knee, but … tram’s steam engine was not hit. Gunwing broke off. Perchance it had no more bullets.”
“Why did you not stay with your family on the estate?”
“They’re dead, Semme. My wife and five daughters were violated and murdered by Bartolican carbineers.”
“Impossible, lies—”
“I was there, you stupid pudding. Only Glasken and I escaped. My son was away fighting, he’s a gunwing flyer.”
Laurelene did not want to believe any of what he said, but her own experience suggested that he was telling the truth.
“I can hear the barking of a terrier pack,” Glasken cut in. “If they are a Call guard we are safe, but they might be trackers. No talking from now on, and if we’re challenged Jeb must do the talking.”
The surviving wings and estate refugees who could fly were moved out to the eastern city of Casper by Governor Sartov before Median came under siege, leaving other guildsmen and their families to flee on the tramway to Forian. Alion, Ramsdel, Bronlar, and Serjon all flew armed sailwings north to Casper; then they were ferried back on an overloaded regal to fly some surviving gunwings out of Median as well. On their third trip that day they were even joined by the wounded Kumiar, who flew a sailwing. Serjon managed to land his gunwing, but spun it on the flightstrip and came to a stop facing backward.
“I was unlucky,” he said as they ate in the refectory at Casper wingfield that night. “It’s because I ascended in service without a lady’s colors.”
“So … are all of your sisters dead then?” asked Alion, hesitantly.
Serjon nodded. Ramsdel had no colors at all and Kumiar had colors from another dead girl on the Jannian estate. Bronlar began to sniffle when she thought of Kallien, and of how she had died. Ramsdel pointed out that Alion’s colors were from a Bartolican, and that he risked a charge of treason if he ascended in his airlord’s service wearing them.
“Well I’m a flyer, I fight and I’ve got one confirmed victory to prove it, so you can all stop looking at me for colors!” Bronlar stated emphatically.
“Which reminds me, I finished these for you, Serjon,” Ramsdel said as he tossed a bundle of ribbons to the thin youth. “Note, violet for boys.”
“You have colors?” exclaimed Alion, aghast. “No man has ever had colors.”
“I like to make history,” explained Serjon.
“Oo, can I wear them?” asked Bronlar. “I like to make history too.”
“Besides, you’re the only girl in Mounthaven who is qualified to wear them,” Serjon pointed o
ut.
He handed her the colors, and as their fingers touched he flinched away.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Cold hands,” he muttered. “I’m sorry. I—I touched too many cold hands at Opal. The sensation makes me ill.”
Ramsdel helped Bronlar attach Serjon’s colors to the tag on her right arm.
“What about the rest of us?” asked Kumiar. “Any more bad luck and I’ll be dead.”
Ramsdel waved a serving girl over and asked her if she wanted to honor a brave and wounded flyer with her colors. She explained that she had none. Ramsdel took down her details and promised to sew up a set for her to give to Kumiar. Serjon said that he would carry the colors of no more women after what happened to his mother and sisters.
“You see, luck is all balance, like day and night, good and bad, love and hate,” he explained. “There is an equal amount of good luck and bad luck, and the more good fortune I have in the air, the more bad fortune is visited on the lady whose colors I wear. I’d rather have the bad luck than harm a lady.”
“What if Bronlar is lucky in war duels?” asked Alion.
“Bronlar doesn’t believe in luck,” said Serjon. “I’m quite safe.”
“What about you and Alion?” Bronlar asked Ramsdel. “There are more serving girls over there.”
“They’re commoners!” said Alion with great finality.
“They have no dress sense,” declared Ramsdel. “I mean look at those aprons over those drab-colored dresses that have bunch-belting instead of proper darts. I want a girl whose clothes will not mortify me on wingfield parades. Bad luck is preferable to bad taste.”
“And I would rather have bad luck than forsake true and noble love,” said Alion.
Bronlar applauded, then got up and hugged Alion from behind. Ramsdel went over to ask some of the serving girls if they would consider dressing better, and according to his directions—and got his face slapped. Serjon sat gazing down at his meal, then gave a cry of dismay and pushed away from the table. Bronlar came around to his side, stared at his plate for a moment, then picked it up and took it over to the serving counter.
“Could I have one more bean, please?” she asked the serving girl who was to give colors to Kumiar.
“One bean, Semme?”
“One bean, Semme. There are thirteen on this plate, and it’s upsetting the flyer whose colors I wear.”
“The flyer whose colors you wear?”
“Yes,” said Bronlar, holding up her right arm. “His name’s Serjon—”
“Ah, the warden-killer boy with five victories. And you are the flyer-girl Bronlar with one victory, now I understand. I hear everything, you see.”
“I know your name is Liesel.”
The girl gasped. “How?”
“I heard you tell Kumiar and Ramsdel back at the table.”
Liesel laughed, and added a bean to Serjon’s plate.
“You’re not at all like normal wardens, squires, and flyers,” said Liesel. “Are you the new Air Carbineers of Governor Sartov that I’ve heard whispers about?”
Bronlar winked at her and said, “We just might be.” As she carried Serjon’s plate with its additional bean back to the table she whispered to herself, “Who knows, we just might be.”
Median was marked by a diminishing column of murky smoke on the horizon as Glasken, Feydamor, and Laurelene walked east across the irrigated desert. They stayed in burned-out farmsteads during the day, tethered and with one always awake to keep watch. Feydamor was weak and feverish, but responded to Laurelene’s nursing. Glasken cut him a pair of greenwood crutches and helped him learn to walk with them. At one ruin they found a sty that had been torched and discovered two dozen swinelets that had been roasted alive but not badly charred. The meat was tender and succulent after a day of hunger. Bartolican sailwing patrols droned overhead from time to time.
“Pannion’s house, but not a Pannion squire,” said Feydamor, glaring up at a sailwing that passed almost directly overhead in the late afternoon. “Running a Daimzer engine by the sound of it, but in a Schneider airframe.”
The words were his first for the day that were not terse replies to questions.
“Is that important?” asked Glasken.
“It’s a clumsy combination of light patrol engine and armored sailwing airframe. The Bartolicans are ramming everything into the air that will stay up by itself. That flyer is short on experience too. Look at the way he wobbles and dips as he turns on the updraft near those hills.”
“It’s sensible. Why waste wardens on scouting?”
“It is ignoble,” hissed Feydamor between grating teeth. “It flies in the face of everything it means to be a warden, squire, or even a flyer. Commoners should not do the work of wardens.”
“Have you any word of the Yarronese wardens?” asked Laurelene.
Feydamor scowled uncertainly at hearing such a question coming from a Bartolican, then decided that it was asked in goodwill.
“Only nine original wardens were elsewhere when the bomb was set off at our airlord’s palace. We have many gunwings intact, but there are few experienced nobles to fly them. Most of our new wardens are just boys, they have not even got their battle commissions and sashes from the Airlord.”
“They stopped the Dorakian wardens,” began Glasken.
“Pah, that was a miracle of courage against experience. A single Bartolican governor commands more wardens than the Dorakian Airlord, and the whole of Greater Bartolica is upon us.”
“The Bartolican carbineers are the real danger,” observed Glasken. “They are sweeping through Yarron like foxes in a chicken coop.”
“Foxes?” asked Laurelene.
“Wild terriers, sort of.”
“What do you know of the noble and chivalric arts of battle, Sair Glasken?”
“I commanded infantry in the wars of my homeland, er, Mexhaven. You might call me a merchant carbineer. We were not as rabid as the Bartolicans, but not as stupid as the Yarronese.”
Feydamor bristled, but was too weary for an angry exchange.
“Then what would you do here?”
“Blind their commanders. Order every Yarron gunwing into the sky, shoot down Bartolican scouts.”
“But you can’t order wardens to do your bidding, like some commoner swinelet herder!”
“Whoever is flying that wing up there is no warden,” said Glasken, pointing up to the sky. “He is taking orders, he is scouting, and Bartolica is winning.”
“I’d rather die,” Feydamor replied sullenly.
“You nearly did just that. Come now, we must bundle up as much pork as we can carry and be on our way at dusk.”
They made good progress that night, traveling another fifteen miles before sheltering for the next day in an irrigated orchard. There were other refugees there, and they got news of the invaders ahead. Yarronese-controlled territory was only ten miles away, and the Bartolicans were inexplicably letting refugees flee to safety.
“It doesn’t make sense,” said Feydamor, “they’re letting carbineers through who can turn and stand against them in the service of Yarron.”
“It makes sense,” replied Glasken.
“How?”
Glasken shook his head. “You listen, Jeb Feydamor, then you scoff.”
“Well, you talk bollix!”
Glasken sighed and seemed wistful for a moment. “Semme Laurelene, what is the condition of the refugees we just met?”
“Like us, sair. Women, children, aged, and wounded.”
“There are new rules in use here and neither of you can see them,” Glasken explained. “Where I come from it’s called total war. Refugees strain the resources of the Yarronese defenders, and also spread tales of slaughter, rape, and the invincibility of the Bartolican carbineers. Yarron does not get fresh fighters from the likes of us, it gets chaos, fear, and a dead weight to carry into battle. There is one thing that puzzles me, though.”
“I’m stunned to hear it, you
seem to know everything else,” said Feydamor.
“The Bartolicans learned these arts almost overnight. They fight in perfect unity, like a team of counterball players, like … a machine!”
Glasken frowned and stroked his recently bare chin, deep in thought. Presently he said that he was going to scout around and vanished from sight. Feydamor shook his head and huddled down in his blanket.
“The man is mad, but he has a good heart,” he told Laurelene as she changed the dressing on his leg.
“He has the passions of a rutting stoat, and his heart is not the organ he favors.”
“Not so, Semme. He may be a lecher, but he has a certain nobility and he stands by his friends.”
“The same may be said of you, Sair Feydamor,” said Laurelene, idly stroking his leg. “I am the enemy, yet you protected me.”
“Yet I am no lecher.”
“You are the more attractive because of it.”
It would be fair to say that although Laurelene’s actions were motivated by guilt for her people’s invasion and a vague idea of revenge against Glasken, she did have some genuine affection for the wounded Yarronese engineer. Their lovemaking was a hurried fumble of skirts and lacings by two people who had had little recent practice in furtive seduction, and when it was over they were quick to roll apart and restore their clothing. Neither raised the subject again.
They sheltered in the orchard for most of the day, and in the afternoon a flight of Bartolican gunwings flew by going south. Glasken counted thirty of the aircraft through a gap in the trees. There was sporadic shooting in the distance from cart cannons.
The night’s journey was much worse than before. The invaders controlled the roads and paths more tightly in this area, and Feydamor did not progress well over the fields with his crutches. Glasken had to carry him while Laurelene staggered along under the weight of their packs. The front line itself was no more than a chain of invader camps linked by patrol paths and lookout stations. They were stopped by a squad of Bartolican carbineers, but managed to barter their passage across the line with most of their load of cold pork. After all they were only farmers: two grizzled men and a hunchback woman. Once clear of the line they stopped, and Glasken and Feydamor changed into the Yarronese jackets that they had been carrying.
The Miocene Arrow Page 19
