The Miocene Arrow

by Sean McMullen

  “Surely the warning would create greater losses,” warned Traffon. “The Yarronese will be geared up for a fearful battle.”

  “No. From what I have been told, the Yarronese have nothing major to hit. Everything is in tents and hardened bunkers, and they even have mockup gunwings to tempt Bartolicans to waste their ammunition. With luck they will have all their real wings and equipment dispersed and hidden, and will not bother to send up any serious opposition.”

  Samondel and Alion were on a palace balcony, watching the scurrying guards search the palace. A pack of terriers was barking at the edge of a canal.

  “It has already been said that foreign merchants are spying on us, my love,” Samondel said softly, her hand on Alion’s.

  “It is hardly a surprise, my lady. Bartolica has occupied three dominions and is at war with another two.”

  “You are said to be in league with the spies,” she said with a face full of concern rather than accusation.

  “My lady, what do I have to do to prove my good faith and loyalty?”

  “There are traces of infiltrators at work in the palace. Papers have been disturbed in the office of the Archwarden himself, and the terriers have found strange scents that lead nowhere.”

  “The terriers ignored my scent when I was taken to them,” Alion pointed out with complete confidence.

  “They say you may have let others in.”

  “They, they, they, it is always they! This is impossible. I ruin my life to save you, yet I am still under suspicion.”

  “Oh not from me, Alion,” she assured him, slipping her arm about his waist. “Stanbury still talks and grumbles, though. I am the Lady Airlord, and he never ceases to remind me that you are an enemy warden.”

  “I am a nobleman who deserted his own airlord in the name of chivalry!” Alion snapped, whirling away from her and clenching his fists. “In a way I am more worthy than all those others in your court. Throw me in irons, then, or have me shot. I saved you, that’s all that matters. Chivalry asks no fee.”

  They were interrupted by the shift captain of the guards, arriving with his report. He glanced at Alion with plain unease as Samondel checked the report with the laborious care of a novice. Alion turned full on, folded his arms, and faced him. The captain let his hand rest on the stubby assault carbine slung from his shoulder. Alion put a hand out and began to stroke Samondel’s hair without taking his eyes off the captain. The captain lost color, but did not move until Samondel signed the report and returned it to him.

  “He hates me,” said Alion once the door had closed. “He specifically.”

  “He is a commoner,” Samondel replied serenely.

  “Stanbury is a noble,” Alion countered.

  “And I am Airlord,” Samondel countered again, then stifled any possible reply with a long and tender kiss.

  15 July 3961: Wind River

  The Bartolican flocks rallied for visibility as much as strategic advantage. From all over occupied Yarron and eastern Bartolica they flew in fives of twenty, with their mufflers minimized for maximum noise on the ground. All together there were two hundred gunwings and sailwings, and another fifteen regals, amounting to over a third of the Bartolican wingfleet’s engines. The flock rallied over the Sweetwater River. Standing orders were to return to Bartolica if operational, and to Median if badly hit. The idea was that losses would not be evident to the Bartolican public. The mission would involve little more than two hundred miles of flying, yet half of that would be after the battle that was sure to take place over Gannett.

  The first hour was quiet as the sub-flocks approached over the Red Desert. They watched their shadows travel over mile after mile of dry wilderness with their engines throttled right back. When they reached Wind River, the Yarronese flocks that were expected to meet them never materialized. Wind River was as they had expected, with new, unpainted buildings, huge tents, and a vast wingfield. The surprise was complete as they attacked, but the groundfire was nevertheless fierce. Two regals blew holes in the wingfield with their two-hundred-pound bombs, while sailwings dropped firebombs on the tents and buildings. The wardens in the patrolling gunwings grew bored and began diving to rake likely-looking targets with their reaction guns. As the tents burned, the outlines of burning aircraft were visible beneath them.

  At Gannett it was different. The Yarronese gunwings were in the air by the time the Bartolican flock arrived, and the forty triwing gunwings were a fast, fresh, and dangerous force to contend with. Again the damage on the ground was extensive, yet all but two of the regals were cut down as they lumbered in to attack. By the time it was Riverton’s turn, the ground attack force was exhausted and the gunwings were short on compression spirit. The attack was confined to a few firebombs dropped from a thousand feet; then the Bartolicans rallied into a single flock to return across the desert.

  All in all the gunwings came out of it well. Only nineteen were lost of the Bartolican flocks, and fourteen of defending Yarronese. The problem was that the sailwings had taken most of the groundfire damage, and it was these which now had to struggle to Median. Undamaged Yarronese sailwings ascended from Riverton’s wingfield, pouring into the sky and setting upon the struggling, weaker part of the Bartolicans’ combined flock. Fully two-thirds of the day’s casualties were lost here, above the Red Desert, yet on the day it seemed not to matter. The wardens in their gunwings had a triumphant return, and the Yarronese had lost two of their three bases. Stanbury declared a great victory in the name of the Lady Airlord, and celebrations in the capital featured an evening of fireworks, a parade of carbineer bands, and a free barrel of ale for the public delivered to every tavern.

  In fact, the bomb craters in the Wind River and Gannett wingfields had been repaired within an hour of the attack, and many of the buildings and tents destroyed had been decoys. Most of the Yarronese wings were dispersed under earthwork bunkers, and all of the super-regals had been away attacking the bridge over the Bighorn River at Whitefield. They landed intact amid the supposed devastation.

  Sartov always made sure that the enemy could never turn his own tactics against him.

  None of that was of any interest to the revelers in Condelor, however. Wardens of every faction swore that a great victory had been won, and Stanbury was again in favor. In the temporary throne hall the former Yarronese Airlord was given a pardon for atrocities against Bartolican carbineers at Forian as a gesture of goodwill, but he was then forced to listen as testimonies were declared by dozens of wardens to the Lady Airlord.

  16 July 3961: Condelor

  Serjon sat up on his stone bunk as he heard the tramp of guards’ feet in the distance. The door of the cell next to his creaked open and slammed shut. The tramp of feet receded again.

  “What was it this time?” asked Serjon.

  “Big victory,” rasped Virtrian. “Wind River and Gannett were bombed by the biggest flock ever assembled.”

  “So they are in Bartolican hands now?”

  “Oh no, they were just set a-burning, and craters blasted in the wingfields.”

  Serjon considered this for some time, then took off his prison shirt and examined his injured arm. The splint was off by now, and the last of the stitches had been removed. Grasping the bars of the door at their highest point, he began raising and lowering himself slowly. His arm gave him some discomfort, but was again functional. After a short rest he began to do pushups on the flagstone floor.

  Something does not make sense, Serjon thought as he worked in the darkness. There was nothing much to bomb in those places. He had flown out of Gannett and Wind River for weeks. There were a lot of wings kept there, but little in the way of buildings. All compression spirit was in underground barrel stores, most wings were in earth and timber bunkers, and even the engine shops were underground. Sartov always got the refugees and even idle carbineers digging. Gopher Sartov, they called him. Quite a lot of decoy sites were built too, and they looked passably convincing from the air.

  “What did they s
ay of Riverton?” Serjon puffed as he began a bracket of squat-kicks.

  “Why, nothing.”

  Odd, that’s the biggest supply base of all, though Serjon. “Are you sure that this is not some great hoax?” he asked.

  “I’ve heard a lot of wardens boasting in my time, Serjon. These seemed genuine.”

  “Well, if you’re convinced then I am too.”

  “By my herald’s red plush.”

  That was their private code for lies. Outside, the celebrations went on all through the night, but an air pageant planned for the next day was canceled when a Call’s approach was announced by a belltower.

  16 July 3961: Wind River

  “Magical devices, yet no evidence for these devices,” Sartov said as Rollins sat bound to a chair before him in a partitioned annex of the command tent at Wind River. “This does me no service if I cannot use such a weapon myself.”

  “Then you do not believe me?” asked Rollins.

  “Your papers and your story answer a lot of questions. The pedal device, wires on poles and metal boxes might allow communications over vast distances, and the calculor machine might be able to work out all possible solutions for any battle and select the right one. That would explain how Stanbury crushed two-thirds of Yarron with a few tramloads of carbineers who had never fought together before.”

  “But that is the whole truth!”

  “But Sair Rollins, your story and papers are like a verbal account of a gunwing by a Mexhaven envoy to some noble in Veraguay. It explains a great deal, but it does not help me to build my own.”

  Rollins looked down at the cords that bound him to the chair, thinking not so much how to convince the Airlord of Yarron to believe him but of how to please him.

  “Lordship, when I was a student I had a rival for the affections of a girl,” he began.

  “Didn’t we all,” replied Sartov, but rather than walking out he sat on the corner of a trunk and inclined his head.

  “I was a far better student, but my rival was the third son of a warden and had more money. He gave her moss-work gold bangles, scarves of silk from dyed parachute offcuts, and even had his brothers give her sailwing rides. I had better prospects, yet could she wait for prospects? It was war, Lordship. I hated him, despised him, I swore an oath that he would never have her.”

  “And you killed him.”

  “Yes. I came from a poor area, Lordship. A priest recognized my talent early and gave me a good education, but my streetmates taught me the way of the knife. I challenged my rival to a blood duel and he stupidly agreed. We met alone in an alleyway at night, and I slew him with the first thrust of my knife. Call’s curse, how was I to know that the stupid toad had brought his brothers to help dispose of my body? Those future wardens ran away screaming bloody murder. I ran too, and now I am here.”

  “True or not, what is the lesson?” asked Sartov, glancing at his watch.

  “I did not have riches, but I did not need them to keep my rival from my sweetheart. You do not have signal machines and calculors, but you do not need them to stop the black trams taking Yarron. You do not need their secrets to stop them.”

  Sartov sat thinking on what was fundamentally good advice. Eventually he slipped from the edge of the trunk and walked to the entrance of the tent.

  “You do not think by the rules, sair Rollins, you are the right sort of man for these times,” he called back. To the guards at the entrance he said, “Untie my new adviser and tell my aide to arrange papers for him.”

  16 July 3961: Condelor

  Alion was soon confronted with a serious test of his loyalty to Bartolica and Samondel. He was sent just north of Condelor to a wingfield where a new and very large gunwing was being tested by Bartolican guildsmen. Its wings were thirty-five feet across and it had two large, powerful compression engines driving tri-bladed propellers. Captured Yarronese gunwings had been put through simulated war duels with it, yet there was one important element missing: a Yarronese warden.

  Alion was put into the air in an assortment of gunwings against the Sandhawk, as it was called. His flight experience proved to be of value, as Yarronese were trained to get in close with quick, accurate bursts of fire rather than the Bartolican approach of heavier fire at a safe distance. One day of intensive tests passed. Alion ate in the cafeteria, then went to his tent. He felt exhausted and barely able to move a muscle as he collapsed onto his field bunk.

  17 July 3961: Condelor

  Unlike the Airlord Abdicate, Serjon was never taken from his cell and never spoken to by the guards. When he heard a guard approaching he assumed that they were coming for Virtrian and did not even get off his bunk. He stopped at Serjon’s door. Serjon assumed that the next meal had arrived early and watched for the slot at the floor to slide up. To his surprise he heard the turning of a key in the door’s lock.

  “As you live, Wingcaptain Serjon, make no sound,” a soft, piping voice pleaded in the near-darkness.

  Serjon did as he was told, and a moment later the door swung open. He walked to the door and was seized firmly by the arm and guided out into the corridor, where the single lamp revealed a man dressed as one of the kitchen hands. Beneath the lamp was a tray of bread and cheese that was to have been his next meal. The figure began to remove his kitchen oversmock.

  “Wear this, Wingcaptain, and walk down the passageway. Take the fourth archway on the left, then the right branching of that passage and climb the stairs that lie about four paces beyond. At the top of the stairs is the guardroom.”

  “The guardroom!”

  “Keep your voice down! A guard will come out and seize you as you pass, then abuse you for taking a wrong turn. Do not fight back, he is with us. He will drag you to the outer door and kick you out into the service cloisters. You will be met there by an old woman with a mop and bucket. Go with her.”

  “What about you?”

  “I shall be found in your cell, bound with strips of blanket and gagged with a rough-made wad. A pick-wire will be in the lock. I shall say that you had tinkered the lock open before I arrived, and that you took me by surprise as I made to push your tray beneath the door.”

  “They may not believe you.”

  “Then I shall die. Now go.”

  Serjon dutifully pulled the oversmock on over his head and made his way along the passageways as he had been instructed. At the guardroom he was seized, beaten, and flung out into a sunlit cloister, where he lay genuinely stunned for a moment. The scullion met him there, and he was escorted through at least a half mile of the labyrinth beneath the royal palace of Condelor until he found himself pulling a garbage wagon along the artisans’ access road. A few minutes after crossing the swinging bridge over the canal, the Yarronese fugitive was put aboard a steam tram dressed in a stonemason’s leathers and carrying a sling of facing tools. He took a seat between two nattily dressed merchants.

  “Hie, brother, be to Parratar wingfield?”

  Another dressed as a mason had spoken, but Serjon just nodded wearily rather than betray his Yarronese accent. The other man had spoken the prearranged rendezvous phrase.

  After a half-hour journey due north the steam tram stopped and Serjon alighted with his new companion. They were on the edge of a training wingfield which had been converted for the gunwings that were now assigned to defend the capital.

  “Bear to those tents yonder, sair Feydamor,” said the real mason and they began walking.

  “May I ask what is going on?” Serjon asked as they trudged the path of broken stone, their shadows lengthening with the late afternoon sun.

  “There is a resistance, even in the mighty capital of Bartolica itself. We rescued your companion Warden Alion from the wreckage of his gunwing before it burned—”

  “Alion!”

  “Alas, we’re few in number and did not reach your mighty wing’s wreckage until the carbineers had found you. The warden bravely feigned defection to Bartolica, then spied for us in the palace so we could rescue you.”

&n
bsp; Serjon considered the new pieces in his puzzle. He had been shot at by one of his escorts, yet Alion had showed loyalty to him. That meant Bronlar had opened fire on the super-regal when he had returned to fire rockets into the palace grounds. Bronlar? It was unthinkable.

  Once they reached the guildsmen’s tents and buildings of the wingfield they entered a tent where a warden’s flight furs and embroidered leathers were laid out. Serjon changed clothes for the fourth time since he had left his cell, and when he emerged he was met by a guildsman from a flight crew. The man said a few curt but deferential words in Bartolican, and from his attitude Serjon realized with a start that he was not with the resistance. He replied “Good,” in Bartolican, then to his relief the guildsman gestured for him to follow.

  They walked in silence out to where a twin-engine gunwing was warming up for what seemed to be a night training flight. It was a big aircraft, and had sleek lines. Serjon was saluted and shown to the steps at the front of the cockpit. Evidently he was the student in a training flight. As Serjon climbed up and strapped himself in he heard what seemed to be the crackle of shots above the chugging of the compression engine.

  Others now approached through the gloom across the wingfield, and Serjon noticed that one of them was being supported by two of his companions. “Dar-kay? Dar-kay?” the chief guildsman called—“What’s this? What’s this?” in Bartolican.

  Abruptly there was another burst of automatic small-arms fire, and the four guildsmen standing beside the trainer went down. The men of the resistance hauled a body up the steps to the cockpit.

  “This Alion, he hit in fight,” someone cried in heavily accented Yarronese above the compression engines.

  “How bad?” Serjon called back.

  “Hit in leg, fall, hit head. We bandage.”