The Miocene Arrow

by Sean McMullen

  “Well I think ‘faithful’ is a rather strong word, given what he was doing with a certain nurse from Casper until a month ago.”

  Alion put his face in his hands and Bronlar closed her eyes while trying to think of interesting air battles of the last few months.

  “So you think that his supposed love for the Bartolican is a blind to hide treason against Yarron?”

  “No, I do think he’s in love, sair—I mean if faithful means love. Not if it extends to other parts of his anatomy, though. I mean he was not kind to that nurse, and a truly chivalric warden would have remained faithful in mind and body to Princess Samondel while leaving the nurse to someone more suitable like, ah …”

  “Go on.”

  “His flockleader,” suggested Bronlar.

  “Order!” called the presiding warden.

  It took a few moments for the red advocate to get his breath back. “But what do you think of the message as a whole?” he asked next.

  “Oh it’s the most awful drivel I’ve ever seen. It scans terribly and the imagery is the sort of thing that makes drunks throw up during bards’ hour in the taverns. He reads it out to me all day on the operations bench, then people wonder why I hate poetry.”

  The presiding magistrate swallowed. Sartov snapped a pencil between three fingers.

  “If there’s a suicide mission leaving in five seconds then I volunteer,” muttered Ramsdel to Bronlar.

  “Order!” the presiding warden barked at Ramsdel.

  The red advocate had no more questions. The white advocate took the floor.

  “Flockleader Feydamor, aesthetics and morals aside, do you think that this letter is anything more than a desperate bid to contact a lover who happens to be an enemy noble?”

  “No. It was probably one reason why he volunteered for work over Bartolica.”

  Bronlar and Ramsdel confirmed Serjon’s testimony with somewhat more taste and discretion, and Alion was acquitted with a severe reprimand. Outside on the wingfield Bronlar hugged the limp and mortified Alion while Ramsdel told Serjon that his testimony had been the greatest animal act since the Archwarden of Cosdora had blown his nose in the colors of the Airlord’s consort.

  “And you were simply heartless about Alion’s sense of romance and affection,” sniffed Bronlar in sympathy with Alion.

  “I was trivializing the charge,” insisted Serjon dismissively. “Don’t all thank me at once. Besides, what about that nurse? I stayed up all night persuading Jenina not to suicide after he gave her the heave. I mean I didn’t so much as get a hand on a boob out of it, and at the end of everything she said she’d never trust another warden, flyer, or squire again as long as she lived and threw me out.”

  “Well so she should have!” snapped Bronlar. “And while the subject is open, I can do without these!”

  Bronlar ripped Serjon’s colors from her sleeve and flung them down to the gravel. She and Alion walked off together with arms linked and were lost to sight among the tents.

  “If she turns into his next Samondel substitute it’s all your fault,” chided Ramsdel. “She fancies you, did you know that?”

  “Me? You have to be joking.”

  “She wears your colors.”

  “Not anymore,” he said as he scooped the bunch of ribbons from the ground.

  “She named your gunwing.”

  “She named yours too. Sartorial, what a name.”

  “Bronlar speaks well of you when you’re not there, Serjon. She can name every warden you shot down, and she thinks you’re wonderful fun.”

  “As my old stepdaddy says, women like either strong men, or steady men, or interesting men, or pathetic men. Bronlar’s taste is for pathetics, but I’m definitely classed as interesting. I mean, does anyone want to know if I like her?”

  “Well?”

  “Ramsdel, I’ve come to realize something. The girls I really like are the sort who like interesting men. Now they’re rare, and the ones I’ve met have all been taken, but it’s better than collecting clever and sensitive brushoffs from those who like the strong, steady or pathetic—and having to put up with being their light comic relief.”

  About an hour later Bronlar sought out Ramsdel as he was handing out embroidered overall collars to his temporary guildsmen.

  “Alion kissed me rather too ardently as I sat with him behind the compression spirit store,” she explained as they walked out onto the flightstrip to inspect its surface. “He wants us to go on a picnic tomorrow and … I need to be in your company, if you know what I mean.”

  “If you wish to be one of the boys, then comfort him as one of the boys,” Ramsdel replied, dropping a knife from waist height to see how far it penetrated the flightstrip surface. “Embraces and kisses are also used in courtship, or had you not heard?”

  “He should not have taken all that the wrong way.”

  “Ah, but he was liable to, and he did. What now?”

  Bronlar withdrew the knife with her finger at the penetration line, then gave it back to Ramsdel. It was a firm, well-laid clay and gravel surface.

  “I … I might like him. The war will not last forever, and I do not want him to just drift away to some other because I had to seem cold. He has a vulnerable aspect, and, well, he has nobody strong to guide him. That nurse, she was just a girl with dreams of being a warden’s lady.”

  “She was two years older than you, and a warden’s niece.”

  Bronlar had managed to forget that.

  “Alion needs someone to look up to, Ramsdel, that’s why that princess infatuates him. I’m deputy flockleader, and I have four times more victories than him on my pennant board plaque.”

  “Wonderful, just the very foundations to build true love upon.”

  A siren wailed three short bursts, warning them to get clear of the wingfield, and Ramsdel said that he could hear a flight of gunwings. What appeared out of the north was a single sailwing of monowing design, with two dots to either side. They stood at the perimeter of the ascent strip, watching it approach and wondering where the additional sound was coming from. It was a single wing, lacking fuselage or tail, and it grew and grew. Six spinning disks pushed it from behind. The dots resolved into hybrid gunwings flying escort.

  Ramsdel exclaimed when he realized that the three aircraft were actually together. The single wing was at least a hundred feet across, he estimated. Its wheels were wound down, and it landed with a series of lumbering hops. The gunwing escort stayed aloft, warily circling the wingfield.

  “The flaps alone are as big as Sartorial’s wings!” exclaimed Ramsdel in amazement as it passed them.

  They jogged along the dispersal track behind the monstrous wing until it was steered into one of the larger tents. Serjon was standing to one side of the tent munching on a bread roll and looking surprisingly calm.

  “Did you see it land?” shouted Bronlar as they ran up to him.

  “It’s a super-regal, number SR-5. It carries a crew of four, a thousand-pound bomb, two pairs of reaction guns on universal joints, and has a range of a thousand miles on standard tanks.”

  “How do you know all that?” asked Ramsdel.

  “I volunteered to be wingcaptain of that one,” Serjon said in a cold, hard tone that Ramsdel had not noticed before. “I would like you, Bronlar, Alion, and Kumiar to fly escort when we are sent out to strike at Bartolica.”

  4 May 3961: Condelor

  The former Yarronese Airlord was already in the palace dungeons as Laurelene arrived back in Condelor. Vander had her whirled from the tram station to a revel on a canal barge to celebrate her return. The capital had changed a great deal while she had been away. It was as if a new type of pride in the place had grown up with the victory over Yarron. The Airlord wanted Bartolica to seem mighty in war, yet untouched by war, so a massive campaign of repairs, rebuilding, and cleaning had polished the city until it looked like some idealized painting of the place.

  Laurelene had the impression of a city whose stonework was brand-new. L
ichens and mosses had been scoured away, and weeds had been cleared out of the gutters and crevices. Some ivy was still tolerated, but only barely. After the traumas of her trip through Yarron, the city almost made her think that the war had never happened.

  The barge revel traveled all the way up to the wide canal that ran around the palace grounds and separated them from the wingfields. Here the barge turned to port, and presently arrived at the quay beside the palace gates. A senior courtier came aboard and invited Laurelene to come with him to meet the Airlord.

  Laurelene had been presented to the Airlord before, but had never exchanged more than ritual courtesies with him. As it turned out, he was taking the spring air only a short distance from the stone quay. In a shaded pavilion amid topiaried bushes and trees, the monarch of all Bartolica lay reclining on a wickerwork couch while a string quartet of girls played courtly dance music. Laurelene’s reception was informal, and he bade her listen to the variations being played—his own composition, she immediately guessed. Sitting on the wickerwork couch beside the Airlord, she remarked on the grace of the music, and then made a show of surprise when told that her own monarch had penned the notes. The mood relaxed further.

  “I have been thinking of visiting Yarron,” the Airlord announced. “Do you recommend the journey, Semme Laurelene?”

  “Yarron is no longer in any sort of order,” she began.

  “Oh but to the contrary, Semme, it is under Bartolican order!” he admonished.

  “Your pardon, Lordship, I chose my words badly. Yarron’s towns and cities are in ruins as a result of the war. Accommodation and provisions are not to the standard of Condelor.”

  “That will not be a problem, Semme. I am a warrior, trained to endure the chill of flying a gunwing and happy to eat no better than my own loyal wardens and carbineers in the field of battle.”

  “Battle is yet another matter, Lordship. The new Airlord of Yarron still controls most of the north. The central tramway through Yarron is well within the range of his sailwings, and there have been several attacks on Bartolican steam trams.”

  “Once again, Semme Laurelene, any danger that I ask my wardens to face I would not shirk from myself.”

  To her surprise, Laurelene found herself thinking how tiresome the conversation had become, and wishing that the Airlord of Greater Bartolica would dismiss her.

  “Lordship, I am neither a warrior nor young, so I found Yarron dangerous and trying. You asked my opinion, and that is Yarron as I found it.”

  “I see, yes. What manner of Airlord would I be if I dared not go where Semme Laurelene Hannan had already set foot, eh?”

  “It is not my place to say, Lordship.”

  After the Airlord had spoken to her, Laurelene was taken to Stanbury. He met her on the stone quay beside the barge, and was wearing his sashes and uniform as Archwarden. The whole of the company on the revel barge was watching.

  “Semme Laurelene Hannan, it gives me so much pleasure to welcome you back, alive and well,” Stanbury began. “For your treatment and suffering during the fall of Median I can only offer my most sincere apologies. I shall do my best to ensure that those who mistreated you from both sides will be punished.”

  “You are generous and just,” Laurelene replied in a clear but indifferent-sounding voice. Something about her tone unnerved Stanbury, however, and he went on hastily.

  “May I also offer my condolences on the tragic death of your husband. The investigation into the circumstances is continuing, but the unseemly rumors that have been circulating in the aftermath have been discredited. The reputation of your house has been restored.”

  “If you mean that he died abed in the act of infidelity, I doubt that anyone’s efforts will ever cover that up. Besides, I was no better.”

  In the stunned silence that followed Stanbury took a step back, his eyes bulging and his mouth agape. The barge was filled with gasps and titters, so that it sounded like a park full of birds at dawn. Stanbury’s shock turned to fury, and the color drained from his face. Vander Hannan had arrived at the head of the stone steps of the quay just as Stanbury and Laurelene had begun to speak. His first inclination was to cheer, but he managed to press his lips together and clap a hand over his mouth to hide the smile.

  Without another word Stanbury literally turned on his heel and hastened up the stone steps. He stopped as he reached Vander.

  “The horrors of your mother’s journey and losses have clearly turned her brain, sair Acting Inspector General. Be so good as to convey her from the palace grounds and do not allow her to return until a committee of palace physicians pronounces her fit again.”

  Minor courtiers jumped from the barge and sprinted away to spread Laurelene’s words to whoever would listen. Vander and Laurelene waited for his barge to be brought around, and in that time a crowd of minor nobles, servants, and groundsmen gathered. There were hisses and catcalls, but nothing more threatening. Laurelene was triumphant. She had successfully become an outcast.

  6 May 3961: Condelor

  Two days after Laurelene returned home the Airlord was due to formally declare Yarron defeated and have Virtrian paraded in to be charged as an outlaw. Because he had abdicated, it would not be before a Council of Airlords, but a Bartolican magistrate.

  Samondel had become a warden during the conflict in Yarron. With the deaths of several wardens in line for the throne she had to either renounce her claim in line, or get a warden’s flight qualifications. With the legends about Bronlar leaking into Bartolica, Stanbury wanted some type of public figure to be visible in Bartolica as a counter. Much to her surprise he encouraged her to take sailwing training, and in April she finally managed to take a gunwing aloft and bring it down again in one piece. There was no thought of sending her to Yarron, it was a matter of Bartolica having a female warden while North Yarron had none.

  Samondel was made the presiding warden at the victory parade to the palace. Virtrian and two hundred other senior Yarronese prisoners were marched all the length of the grand parade road and into the palace grounds by a squad of carbineer veterans while a band played a march written for the occasion by the Airlord of Bartolica. Lining the road were girls flinging rose petals at Virtrian in a parody of the force needed to vanquish Yarron. Samondel marched before the prisoners in a flight jacket and trews that blazed with gold embroidery and jewels, with her long hair unbound and flowing out behind her like a red cloak. Flanking her were Archwarden Stanbury and Acting Inspector General Vander Hannan, representing the courtly and civil arms of Bartolican government.

  Vander had been allowed back into the court in spite of the indiscretion of his mother, but it was clear that someone else would be appointed as the permanent Inspector General. He thanked fortune that he would probably retain the post of Regional Inspector, although that would remove him from the capital at a time when Theresla was using his house as her base of operations and he was finding her very educational company. The permanent appointments were due to be distributed at that same day, and many would be rewards for military achievements and bravery. As Vander had not been in Yarron, he was conveniently not in line for such a reward.

  The court was called to assemble while the parade was still approaching. The first matter of business was the welcome of the victorious wardens by their airlord, and these were assembled in the throne hall already. Across at the palace wingfield Laurelene was standing with the envoys’ aides, guildsmen, and duty wardens. Having disgraced herself, she was not on the invitation list for Bartolica’s day of triumph, but she was still nobility and thus had duties to perform. By the very nature of their duties, the wardens who were flying in the skies above the palace were excluded from court, so Laurelene presided over an extension of the court on the wingfield. There was a timber stand for the nobles to sit in, and this was decked with strings of flags and pennants. Laurelene read out announcements and . proclamations without any real enthusiasm, and watched the streamers of colored smoke being woven in the sky by the gunwings.
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  None of them were aware that the war was far from over, least of all the former Airlord of Yarron.

  6 May 3961: Wind River

  Eighteen days of intensive training followed the arrival of the super-regals at Wind River. The super-regal crews were pushed hard, especially those converting from the small and agile gunwings. Ramsdel was chosen as Serjon’s backup wingcaptain, but the other three of the flock did no more than normal patrols. Serjon also volunteered for night patrols over the Green River Basin, and the other member of his flock began to wonder when he slept, if at all. He could not speak of Bartolicans without cursing, and it was as if he was winding himself up into a frenzy.

  “Bronlar’s really worried about you,” said Ramsdel as he and Serjon shaved behind the outdoor ablutions screen. “I mean we all are, but—”

  “That’s because I look a bit tired and pathetic.”

  “Ah, so this is a play for her?”

  “No. One good night’s sleep and she’ll be back on Alion’s knee. Big assembly this morning, have you seen how the guildsmen have been working on the super-regals?”

  “Yes, we may be off to our first real target today.”

  The assembly was postponed several times owing to mechanical problems with one of the super-regals, but at last a trumpet blared for flock assembly. In the spring noon’s chill the wingcaptains and their crews gathered around Sartov. They had already been given an early lunch after exercise drills, which suggested that they would soon be leaving on a mission. The engines of the five huge super-regals were being started by the guildsmen while Sartov was speaking, as were those of twenty gunwings.

  “Long flight, I’d say,” Serjon whispered to Bronlar as they watched Sartov handing out sealed envelopes himself.

  “Look at what they’re loading,” she replied, and Serjon turned to see a line of trailers with the huge thousand-pound bombs being taken over to the super-regals.

  “I’m wagering it’s a strategic tramway bridge,” he said. “All crews have been practicing at low-level, precision drops.”