The Miocene Arrow

by Sean McMullen

  “It’s such a relief to stand up straight again,” said Laurelene, stretching and thrusting out a very impressive pair of breasts.

  She caught Glasken glancing at them, but decided against saying anything. After all, Glasken had had better contact with them than Feydamor and the shame was more hers than his. As dawn broke they met a group of Yarronese militiamen, an aged carbineer veteran commanding six nervous youths armed with hunting rifles.

  “Big air battle yes-aday,” said the veteran. “Eighty gunwings of the invader met seven of our wardens. We had a great triumph.”

  “Seven against eighty, yet triumph?” asked Glasken incredulously in broken Yarronese.

  “Yair-certs, sair. They took fifteen invader wardens down a-fore the last o’them crashed to earth.”

  “Glorious,” croaked Feydamor, who was lying exhausted against a tree.

  “Aye, two o’them for each Yarronese wing to fall.”

  “Hah. Sixty-five Bartolican wardens flying. Rule sky.”

  “But they won without honor,” insisted Feydamor. “Yarron triumphed.”

  “Yarronese wardens, all shwhit!” Glasken made a slicing motion across his throat, re-framing the Yarronese moral victory for what it was.

  25 August 3960: Casper

  Governor Sartov’s gunwing was so low on compression spirit that he did not even circle the adjunct’s tower to check the flags before landing. His engine died on the dispersal track and his guildsmen had to push the gunwing while he walked ahead to report to the adjunct.

  “Three Bartolican sailwings,” he declared, and the adjunct chalked them on his board. “All of them dual-seat trainers making observations.”

  “A fine day, sair, and it brings your tally to—”

  “Damn my tally, this is about saving Yarron, not my reputation. The Bartolicans were fools, they were flying well beyond the range of their own gunwings to spy on us.”

  “Perhaps they expected no danger.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “All seven wardens of the Airlord’s Guard were killed in a battle over the Saratoga Springs wingfield. These dispatches were flown in before you landed.”

  Sartov took the proclamation and began to read. Not far away the guildsmen were already working on his gunwing.

  “Glorious moral victory … triumphant defeat … flower of Yarronese chivalry … Bartolican scum … touching memorial service in Forian Cathedral.”

  Sartov crumpled the proclamation and dropped it. The adjunct handed him another proclamation. Three bandsmen and a dozen guildsmen and flyers gathered behind Sartov as he squinted at the writing in the fading light.

  “Governor Sartov … hereby relieved of his posting—ah yes, I was expecting this. I’m being punished for refusing to get myself killed with the rest of the Airlord’s Guard. And Bromley Avondel is replacing me. Brave, but no experience. Adjunct?”

  “Sair?”

  “We are commanded by fools and incompetents.”

  “Sair!”

  The adjunct handed one more proclamation to Sartov.

  “Be it known to all … Warden Alveris Sartov … commander of all forces north of the Laramie River and Chancellor of Governors!”

  The proclamation slipped from Sartov’s fingers as the three bandsmen standing behind him struck up the Yarronese dominion anthem. Sartov turned as the adjunct picked up the proclamation, and at the end of the tune the assembled guildsmen gave three cheers and fired a volley from their carbines.

  The celebratory feast in the adjunct’s briefing hall was modest by any dominion’s standards, but that hardly mattered. Sartov was reading dispatches and appointment lists even as he ate.

  “It makes sense now,” he told the adjunct. “The disaster at Saratoga Springs killed the last senior traditionalists from court. The new airlord must have had this planned for weeks, he’s actually going to fight back intelligently.”

  “Would an airlord murder his own wardens, Chancellor?”

  “I would call it taking constructive advantage of their own stupidity for the greater good of Yarron. Finish up, now. I want every sailwing on the field ready to ascend at dawn, and I have a lot of decrees to dictate before that.”

  That evening Glasken and his companions reached Kennyville, where the Yarronese pennon streamers still flew above the Governor’s hall. As Glasken had suspected, it was a shambles of refugee guild families, wounded carbineers, reinforcements, and war supplies. He registered as a refugee from Median under the name John Walker and added Laurelene as his sister. Feydamor used his own name. There was little privacy at the refugee staging ground beside the tramway depot, yet the people were too absorbed with the events that had shattered their lives to eavesdrop.

  “You’re a wounded guildsman, Jeb, which means you can go to Forian on a hospital tram,” Glasken told the exhausted engineer. “The next convoy goes in a half hour, you may get a place.”

  “Where is Laurel—er, Semme Hannan?”

  “She is to go in the women’s tram. The steam whistle is broken, so she volunteered to scream whenever the driver grabs her bottom.”

  “Do I detect annoyance in your tone, Sair Glasken?”

  “Now that she no longer depends on me to stay alive, she’s behaving like a vindictive cow.”

  “What is a cow?”

  “They’re large, they bellow, they have horns.”

  “Laurelene has no horns.”

  “Give her time.”

  “I’d like to see her off.”

  “Not half as much as I would.”

  He helped Feydamor to his feet and they went to the tramway station where people were boarding the convoy. Laurelene was still on the platform as they approached.

  “Sair Glasken, I would lay bets that you would like to travel on the women’s tram,” declared Laurelene with a smirk.

  “I’m no woman,” replied Glasken, pulling his trousers forward and peering down. “Would you like to check the evidence?”

  Laurelene inclined her head away.

  “You know, you could charm a lady with ease if you but took the trouble to ply her with little pleasantries. Why if I were you—”

  “—you would be walking to Forian, and it would do wonders for your figure.”

  “Let me finish. If I were interested in you—”

  “Then it would be to prove something to me, or yourself, or both of us, or your husband, or Envoy. Rosenne,” Glasken declared, ticking off names on an imaginary chalkboard. He dropped to one knee, a hand against his forehead, the other gesturing above his head. “You have no interest in passion, Semme. You want to be desired, you want attention, you want to be taken seriously, and you want to possess hearts.” Glasken rose to his feet, swirled the dead farmer’s field cloak about himself, raised his nose, and dabbed delicately at his forehead with a ragged handkerchief. “But you don’t want something so tasteless or messy as passion stirring within your ample, aristocratic body.”

  Laurelene whipped a stinging slap at his face, but Glasken did a delicate twist-step and her hand missed him altogether, sending her spinning. Feydamor shuffled backward, making a show of leaning on his cane.

  “Well, yes, fury may be identified as passion, but it’s hardly alluring,” Glasken observed as Laurelene heaved herself out of the dust.

  “Glasken!” Laurelene barked back. “You want me to prove it with you, don’t you? Well I can prove it and I don’t need your help.”

  “Don’t try to prove it for my sake, Semme, I wouldn’t wish that sort of suffering on any poor yoick.”

  Feydamor closed his eyes and cringed, hoping not to be called upon as her champion. Laurelene aimed another slap at Glasken, but this time he plucked her hand out of the air, spun her around three times, then stepped back in a deep bow. A small crowd was gathering by now, unsure of whether it was a dance or a fight. Some clapped.

  “You took me with you from Median, you only did that for hope of bedding me!” Laurelene shouted.

  “Feydamor did that.
”

  “Ah, took you from Median, that is,” added Feydamor.

  “You consented to it, Glasken!” retorted Laurelene.

  “If I had piles I would consent to have them lanced, but I would neither enjoy it nor have any say in the matter. Pile aboard now.”

  Laurelene turned away and stamped across to the tram. It swayed on its springs as she climbed aboard and sat down. Her face was shining with fury and she was gasping for breath. She did not see Feydamor turned away from the fully loaded hospital tram.

  The steam trams whistled consecutively and began to chug forward. Laurelene sat thinking of what she would say to Feydamor when they reached Forian. He had not supported her against Glasken’s insults, and now she wondered whether or not it would be wise to extend their brief and furtive liaison. The thought of the look on Glasken’s face when he found out made it almost worthwhile, however.

  At the town of Cairnstop the convoy was halted and members of the Yarronese Inspectorate came aboard her tram. They took each woman aside in turn and asked them about a little sketch. Presently it was Laurelene’s turn.

  “He’s a tall, strongly built man of about fifty,” said the inspector. “His companion was limping when they were last seen at Median. Have you seen him?”

  The charsketch was a good likeness of Glasken.

  “No, but he’s a handsome scruff,” Laurelene replied with a wink.

  “The rogue has unbridled lusts,” the inspector responded uncomfortably. “He may approach you and make unseemly suggestions in Old Anglian. He speaks a little of Yarronese.”

  “I should be so lucky,” replied Laurelene, batting her eyelashes at him.

  The inspector took a step back, still holding up the sketch.

  “Well if you are, report it to the tram driver at once,” he said determinedly. “This man, Juan Glasken, is one of the traitors who are betraying our homeland in this war.”

  “I have met no man of unbridled lusts since escaping Median, sair, but I live in hope.”

  Laurelene watched the inspectors go from tram to tram, but noted that Glasken was not found. He had said he would walk to Forian, but he was very resourceful, of course, and a master of disguise—and with a spasm of horror Laurelene found herself admiring Glasken. She drove the thought away.

  With the line of trams searched, the inspectors set the signal to proceed, and Laurelene’s tram chugged back up to cruising speed. They won’t have you, Glasken, she thought as she watched the hills passing in the distance. Not until all of your insults have been returned with the very best rate of interest.

  29 August 3960: Condelor

  Condelor remained aloof from the tortures that were being inflicted on the dominion to the west. Cities, estates, and the families of guildsmen and nobles should have been exempt from the proceedings of chivalric war, but this war was being conducted in a manner not seen in Mounthaven for a very long time.

  Under instruction from his merchant carbineer advisers, Stanbury issued more than a dozen reports each day. He declared that in Yarron the Bartolican carbineers were being welcomed for driving away the outlaws and corrupt Yarronese wardens. He complained to Carabas that nobody would believe that defecting Yarronese wardens were encouraging the Bartolicans to press on and take Forian, but went ahead and released the report anyway. To his surprise it was accepted. The Bartolican court wanted it to be true, so the Bartolican court believed it.

  The Bartolican wardens had little to do with the fighting on the ground, while their squires were merely concerned with securing wingfields and supplies for their operations. The Bartolican carbineers were allowed no letters home, while the wounded were treated in camps on Yarronese soil and kept at work repairing equipment or doing whatever light work suited them. Because they continued to draw full pay, there were few complaints.

  The militia couriers were a separate branch of the air companies besides wardens and their people. Officially under the direct command of the Bartolican Airlord himself, they were originally a squadron of two dozen masterless squires and flyers who flew errands and deliveries in sailwings for the palace. In this war they quickly expanded by means of the captured Yarronese and Montrassian sailwings, until their number was over seventy. They were painted in strange patterns under their wings, and were assigned long and complex identifiers. The best of them were said to be able to drop a message capsule into the hatch of a speeding steam tram.

  In spite of the best efforts of the censors and commanders, some stories of strafed merchant steam trams and plundered estates found their way west to Condelor. Stanbury’s Condelor office gave frequent briefings for the envoys and wardens’ advisers in the palace, and a sanitized version of the war’s progress was presented to the Bartolican Airlord’s autumn court every week. On August 21st the orderly appropriation of Median was announced. The Yarronese were not displaying the forms of chivalry, the Warden of Forms pointed out in a long and indignant speech. There were none to meet the Bartolican airlords in duels over the city, in fact there were no Yarronese nobles or their carbineers to keep the ruffians of the city from burning and looting. The Bartolicans had barely arrived in time to save Median from destruction. They had been welcomed as heroes by all honest folk in the place.

  1 September 3960: Kennyville, Yarron

  Glasken had been waiting at the tramway station with Feydamor when a flock of gunwings became audible. The guildmaster identified them as Bartolican while they were still distant dots in the northwest, and followed them as they began circling the town.

  “All wardens, gunwings all,” said Feydamor. “The estates of Simfield, Dunnely, Ridgewhite, Silvereye, and Clintpeal. Five of the finest Bartolican wardens who ever strapped in.”

  “Then what are they doing here?” asked Glasken, his hand dropping automatically to his carbine. “Do they want lessons in unchivalric fighting?”

  “Sair Glasken, for shame. The brotherhood of the wardenate may be slow sometimes, but it’s exceedingly fair. These wardens have come to see for themselves what the carbineers are doing in Yarron. You note my words, retribution is on the way.”

  The flock broke their circle and the pitch of the droning from their compression engines rose. The idea of attack from the air was still so incredible that some of the refugees just stood watching in the open. Wardens only fought in clear air combat, war was the preserve of the nobility. Glasken was less of an idealist. Pulling Feydamor off balance, he dragged the cursing guildmaster off the platform and behind a stone and timber buffer.

  “What are you doing?” cried Feydamor as Glasken held him down. “They’re wardens!”

  Glasken did not have to reply; the steady hammering of reaction guns said it all. The gunwings came in, strafing the trams and the piles of supplies beside the loading sidings. Feydamor shouted incoherently and tried to wave the Bartolican wardens off as Glasken held him down, and then they were past. The station and tram sidings were alive with running carbineers and tramway workers. Two trams were burning.

  “Seems as the wardens have come for lessons in unchivalric warfare after all,” said Glasken as he watched the gunwings climbing in a long arc.

  “They were wardens,” said Feydamor, devastated.

  “Aye, and from the noble and revered estates of Simfield, Dunnely, Ridgewhite, Silvereye, and Clintpeal, if I recall correctly.”

  “Madness! This is like an airlord pissing on his own throne.”

  “Greater madness to keep your head up as they do another tour of inspection. Get down here!”

  Once more the gunwings came in together, barely a wingspan apart, shooting methodically into the trams and stockpiled barrels of compression spirit. Suddenly everything erupted around them. There was a soundless flash, followed by a thunderclap as the ground heaved. Rocks, dust, and wreckage showered down, and Glasken saw a gunwing come cartwheeling out of the sky to crash into the nearby Kennyville market. He clambered over the wreckage of the tramway station buildings with Feydamor, warily scanning the sky through the s
moke and dust.

  “Two still flying,” said Feydamor between coughs.

  “Don’t think they’ll be back,” suggested Glasken.

  Two gunwings had been blown to pieces when a munitions tram had blown up, but another had crash-landed in the main street beside the station. Glasken and Feydamor watched the warden dragged out of the aircraft by enraged carbineers, a tiny, glittering doll being mobbed by a swarm of dark ants. They began to beat the warden to death while those farther back in the crowd cheered and fired their carbines into the air.

  Fifteen trams had been destroyed or damaged in the attack, along with a large amount of trackwork. Spilled and burning compression spirit had set most of the stockpiles of weapons and supplies blazing, and Glasken gave up trying to count the dead and injured. The two surviving gunwings circled the town at a safe height, making an estimate of the unhoped-for damage, so Glasken remained wary and made Feydamor shelter beside an abandoned handcart filled with salt chicken sausage. The vendor lay dead beneath the pushbars, his chest bloodied by a large-caliber reaction gun bullet. At last the gunwings broke off and flew west. Glasken hurried away to examine the station. When he returned, Feydamor had limped over to the wreckage of the Bartolican gunwing. The warden’s head was at the top of a sharpened pole that the carbineers had wedged into the wreck.

  “‘That’s Warden Silvereye, even through the beating I can recognize him,” Feydamor conceded reluctantly.

  “They got the shells for the cart cannons,” Glasken panted. “Soon the Bartolican carbineers will be arriving here. This place is doomed, we just lost fifteen trams!”

  “We can do nothing but hold out here and try to slow them,” said Feydamor stoically.

  “Pox to that,” snorted Glasken, taking him by the arm and walking him back toward the cart. “There’s wurst in that cart, see?”