The Miocene Arrow

by Sean McMullen

  “Here’s his confession!” cried the prancing Monterbil, wiping the seat of his trousers with the paper.

  “Darling Bronlar, I never doubted you for a moment,” said Ryban.

  Bronlar squeezed her arms around Ryban’s neck and kissed him full on the lips, then danced a few steps of a Cosdoran jig on the dispatch before seizing Monterbil and kissing him as well. Someone produced a flask of mountain whisky and Bronlar took a swig. Monterbil began playing a reel on his flute. More whisky was brought out from caches being kept to celebrate the end of the war.

  The courier from Condelor walked over through the darkness, and behind him the white tips of his propellor described a flickering white circle. He bowed to the adjunct, the torchlight glinting off the panes of his goggles, then said something to him.

  “The courier requires a reply for the council, Warden Jemarial,” the adjunct said as he stepped into the light before the pennant board. “And he says you are expected to fly to Condelor by the nineteenth of the month to be honored at a banquet.”

  “Tell them to piss on Feydamor!” she laughed, kicking at the paper on the ground.

  “Semme! That is not the response of a warden to the Council of Alliance Airlords.”

  “Then thank them for their wisdom and justice, and oh I don’t know! Say anything! I’ll go to Condelor when I’ve thanked my friends here and given them a revel to end all revels with Serjon Feydamor’s money.” She kissed Ryban again. “Friends like these supported me in my deepest need while Feydamor threw shit at me, so they come first. Tonight we revel!”

  The adjunct scribbled out a formalized version of Bronlar’s thanks, and explained that it would take her a day or two to prepare for the flight to Condelor. The adjunct managed to get her signature with some difficulty, then he countersigned it and handed it to the courier. The courier bowed to the adjunct, the lamplight flashing on the panes of his goggles.

  “We’ll all go to Yarron and live on the Damaric estate,” Bronlar shouted above the music.

  “The former Damaric estate,” Monterbil corrected her. “Then you can challenge Feydamor to a duel.”

  “No she can’t, he’s only a commoner without rank!” cried Ryban.

  Out in the darkness the courier sailwing suddenly revved up and turned sharply on a braked wheel, blowing dust and gravel back over those by the pennant board.

  “Hie, damned wardenling!” shouted Monterbil.

  “Adjunct, don’t give him a clearance flare until he comes back to apologize,” added Ryban.

  The adjunct lit a red lantern and began walking over to the flightstrip. Out in the darkness the courier gunned his compression engine. The adjunct stared for a moment then began to run forward, waving his lantern.

  “Stop! You’re ascending with the wind!” he shouted, but the sailwing was already beginning its ascent run.

  The sailwing roared past along the path defined by the strip-side beacon lamps. After rolling nearly the entire length of the strip it lumbered into the air, banked sharply to miss a nearby ridge that Mirrorsun barely outlined, then turned north. The adjunct stood staring, his lantern a red point of light in the darkness.

  “Hie there loon, where’d you buy your certificate?” Monterbil shouted in the direction of the sailwing.

  By now word of Bronlar’s good fortune was spreading through the tents of the wingfield and more guildsmen and flyers were running over to the pennant board.

  “And would you like me to shield you again tonight?” Ryban said in Bronlar’s ear as they danced.

  Bronlar jammed a flask of whisky upside down into the waist of his trousers. “Fuel up your engine and keep it warm for me,” she cried back for all to hear.

  A mile to the northwest Serjon’s sailwing was gaining height rapidly as he checked his bearings by Mirrorsun’s light and his compass.

  “Six guildsmen, the adjunct, Bronlar, me, a directant, and three wingfield carbineers: that’s thirteen,” he whispered miserably. “No wonder she took it so badly.”

  He held a glowbar to the fuel float. Enough for about a hundred and forty miles, but Condelor was ten farther than that. Evanston was closer, but no, that would never do, the dispatch from Bronlar was there in his flight jacket pocket, eating away at his soul like an oil fire in the engine bay. He had to deliver it at once, to get it away from him. It was Condelor or nothing.

  The adjunct of the palace wingfield at Condelor had begun his round of the strip-side beacon lamps when he thought he heard an engine. It died, even as he turned his head from side to side to get the direction. He shrugged, concluding that whoever it was had landed at one of the outlying wingfields. He had checked the level of oil in the first of the midfield beacon lamps and was setting out for the second when there was a squeal of wheels at the end of the flightstrip. The shape of a sailwing rolled out of the darkness, silent except for the rumble of its wheels on the surface.

  Abandoning his oil trolley the adjunct ran after the sailwing as it slowed.

  “Hie, you’re lucky to be alive!” the adjunct shouted as he reached the aircraft.

  The flyer jumped to the ground in the darkness and held up what appeared to be a folder.

  “Sair, I am actually unlucky to be alive but I have to make the best of it,” Serjon replied. “Flyer First Class Serjon Feydamor, returning from Cosdora with the reply of Warden Bronlar Jemarial.”

  “Feydamor! You didn’t have to return tonight!”

  “Oh yes I did. Is the adjunct still awake?”

  “I am the adjunct.”

  “Sair Adjunct, your pardon. Please accept a dispatch from Warden Jemarial to the Council of Alliance Airlords. Now then, might I impose upon your charity to help me push this thing back to my guildsmen’s tent?”

  It took twenty minutes for the pair of them to push the sailwing onto a dispersal track and over to the tents. The Yarronese field guildsmen were asleep as they arrived at the tent, but Serjon was not inclined to wake them.

  “I shall sign the Descents Register, then go to my room in the palace,” said Serjon as they walked away.

  “Your guildsmen will be surprised in the morning.”

  “The work of guildsmen is to keep one flying, Sair Adjunct, not to tell one how to fly,” Serjon replied with undisguised loathing.

  “I guess that you had an exchange of words with guildsmen in Vernal?” asked the adjunct knowingly.

  “I exchanged few words, but I heard a great deal and saw even more. Goodnight to you, Sair Adjunct, and my thanks for your help with my sailwing.”

  “Sair Feydamor, a moment longer!” the adjunct called after him.

  “Yes?”

  “I … ah, I saw your super-regal bomb the palace. Even though you were the enemy, I still want to say that it was superlative flying, and bravery beyond imagining.”

  Sermon bowed to him in the dim light. “Strange that the only kind words for Serjon Feydamor should come from a former enemy.”

  “Tomorrow I should like to buy you a drink.”

  “I do not drink, Sair Adjunct, but I can watch as you have one for me.”

  “Sair Feydamor, ah, did you, ah, care for Warden Jemarial?”

  “That I did, sair, but I only realized it today, and today was far too late. Now, I should like to be alone with my nightmares for a few hours, so I shall bid you goodnight.”

  Being an aviad, Theresla was in a difficult position in postwar Condelor. She represented the very beings that caused the war and it would take no more than a sample of her hair to expose her, yet she had also rescued Virtrian from the palace dungeons.

  Sartov was standing in a doorway that opened into the space and ruin that had once been the throne hall when Virtrian arrived with Theresla beside him. The bomb that had brought down the roof of the throne room had worked with strange precision, leaving the back and side walls weakened but partially intact.

  “One bomb and a war was lost,” he said as he turned back to Virtrian. “What did you think when you saw the super-regal fl
y overhead, Virtrian?”

  “I thought that Bartolican propaganda had outsmarted itself yet again, Lordship. Then when the throne hall’s roof collapsed I knew that the war was over.”

  “And you, mysterious Semme, did you see it happen too?”

  “Only from a distance. I was hiding from the authorities at the time, after all.”

  “I have heard a lot about you. You seem to have talents and capabilities that would not spread thinly over a dozen agents and spies. I assume that you are from … over there, wherever that is.”

  Theresla was dressed as a Bartolican woman, with voluminous skirts reaching down to chunky high-heeled boots, frilly ruffs at the wrists and shoulders, cutaway cleavage, and a scarf trailing from her throat. Her body was a lot thinner than suited the Bartolican taste, but then Sartov was not a Bartolican. Would that I look as young in my fifties, thought Sartov, then wondered if the Callwalkers aged more slowly than humans. He also noticed that her breath was ripe with something like rotted flesh: a predator’s breath.

  “I am from the same continent as those you call featherheads and Callwalkers, but I represent a minority faction,” she explained in Old Anglian. “Those who are at work here wish to rule humans, but my people think that the future of our race would be better served by doing things for ourselves. Slavers are parasites. Unfortunately the temptation to dominate is very great when one’s kind can resist the Call and all others cannot.”

  “So, they came here after conquering their own continent,” Sartov probed.

  “Nothing of the sort. There are few aviads even in Australica, some tens of thousands, and even these are balanced by factions with different and competing aims.”

  “This is all very plausible, Semme, but I am a good storyteller too—it is a talent common among leaders. I could conjure half a dozen conspiracies to cover what has happened in Mounthaven before and during the war. What have you done for Yarron, apart from show compassion to Virtrian? If it comes to that, why did you take so long to release him? Was it that you wanted to make sure that Yarron was winning first, so that you could be with the winners? Perhaps all of you featherheads work for the same master, but some are planted on the other side, just in case.”

  “I’ll not plead, Lordship,” said Theresla with no concern in her manner. “What will it take to convince you? Who will you believe?”

  “I’d believe a man named Glasken. He came to me when Yarron was all but crushed. He gave me secrets to allow us to fight back and win.”

  “Glasken is dead,” said Theresla with an even stare and an impassive expression.

  Sartov was moved by the news. He looked over the ruins of the Bartolican throne room where a thousand people had died not three months earlier. It had been war, there were always casualties, yet the Mounthaven way had once been to confine casualties to those whose place it was to fight. Glasken had been one of the fighters, even though he could not fly … that somehow made it easier for Sartov to accept.

  “I am sorry to hear that, he was a fine man. Unfortunately, Semme, that means it will be all the harder for you to—”

  “But you may speak with him. Sair Virtrian, please leave us.”

  When Virtrian had gone Theresla touched the band beneath the scarf at her neck, and at once thin whirls of light motes gathered out of nowhere, thickening, solidifying and stabilizing until they became—

  “Glasken!” Sartov exclaimed.

  “Death is a very unexciting state, Lordship,” the faintly glowing spectre declared. “Try to put it off if you possibly can.”

  For the purpose of this appearance Glasken was in his early fifties again, but with the gunshot wounds that had killed him and a great deal of blood on his clothing. He was dressed as a monk, which was a little touch that Sartov recognized from what he had said back in Sheridan.

  “Glasken, are—are you all right?” gasped Sartov, at a loss for any more sensible words.

  “I’m dead, Lordship,” the image replied, spreading his hands wide. “It really did hurt.”

  “But, but, what are you?” Sartov stammered.

  “I am a copy of the inner soul of Glasken. My body lies rotting in a monastery grave near Denver, which is quite a pity because there are two or three bits that I rather miss.”

  There was a certain fatalism about the manner of the image, but it still came across as unquestionably Glasken.

  “This is some trick of the ancient guildsmen,” Sartov said to Theresla.

  “Yes, it certainly is!” Theresla responded “A trick which keeps the essence of what was Glasken sufficiently alive to speak with you. What is your word, Lordship? There are others we can go to.”

  Sartov turned back to Glasken.

  “Say your words, sair Glasken, I shall give them a fair hearing.”

  “I can say little more than Theresla can tell you. My image lives within Mirrorsun’s structure, but I have access to little of its resources. I am like a king’s pet cat: existing in luxury and free to come and go at will, but with little power and even less understanding of what is going on around me. Mirrorsun is studying me, Lordship. It has had no direct contact with humans. It is ruled by the image of Highliber Zarvora, and she can hardly be described as human. Trust Theresla. Give her the freedom to search the Condelor palace from tower top to dungeon, give her a squad of carbineers to break down doors and carry things about, force Bartolican clerks, servants, and flunkies to answer her questions. There is more to the Callwalkers’ Miocene Arrow plan than we yet know, and that ignorance may kill us—or kill you, at least. It has already killed me.”

  Sartov felt uneasy about trusting Theresla, but Glasken and he had an odd kinship. He reached out a friendly hand, but it passed through the image of Glasken’s arm. Sartov jerked back a step, and nearly toppled out into the nothingness of the old throne hall.

  “Would that include the location of the second featherhead wingfield?” he asked, trying to maintain his dignity in front of the smirking Theresla.

  “Friend and benefactor, that is the one thing I can help with. I have a lovely view of the earth from Mirrorsun, and can resolve objects as small as a single gunwing. Many, many gunwings have been landing at a place named Sioux City on your Archaic Anglian maps. Most stay there.”

  A meeting of the Council of Alliance Airlords was convened very soon after Sartov had heard what Glasken had to say. Sartov reported that he had the location of not just one but two aviad bases in the eastern Callscour lands. One was at a ruin a mere three hours’ return flight from the wingfields of Forian, but this was just a staging field for the main wingbase. At the Sioux City ruin was an enormous wingfield, restored by the aviads and now housing four hundred stolen gunwings and sailwings from Yarron, Bartolica, Montras, and Dorak.

  “But, but a round trip to drop firebombs would be nine hours,” spluttered the Cosdoran airlord. “Nearly all of that would be over Callscour lands, and the furthermost two hundred miles would be over territory not seen by human eyes for two thousand years.”

  “My super-regals can fly for ten hours without refueling, Lordship,” Sartov assured him.

  “Very impressive, Airlord Sartov, but those things lumber along at one hundred miles per hour. Even a couple of armed sailwings could bring one down, and you suggest that there are four hundred wings at the Sioux City ruin.”

  “My guildsmen have developed techniques to massively extend the range of gunwings and sailwings. Any gunwings and sailwings, not just those of Yarron. Starting with six hundred aircraft we could provide an escort of perhaps a hundred gunwings over the target.”

  Sartov now told of how the aviads were gathering a massive stockpile of guildsmen and wings to take south to Hildago and other dominions in Mexhaven. These were already under aviad domination, he had been told, but even worse was that they were in rich country compared to Mounthaven. They already supplied over half the compression spirit used by the Mounthaven wardens, and much of the flight-rated wood, cloth, and metal besides. If they ever learned to
build and fly their own wings they could reduce Mounthaven to a client backwater in years, if not months.

  After another hour of debate the council gave a guarded approval to one single, massive attack on the two aviad bases, but there was still the problem of the fragmented Bartolican regions. They had some hundreds of wings operational, and that was a dangerous vulnerability to leave unattended when the best of the victors’ wings were going to be at Forian for no less than a fortnight.

  “There is no question of it, we shall have to bring the Bartolican Regions in with us,” concluded Sartov.

  “What!” exclaimed the Dorakian Airlord, who had had bitter experience of working together with Bartolicans. “They would turn against us, they—”

  “Would be outnumbered,” Sartov pointed out. “We would reduce their numbers in domestic defense by just as much as ours. More importantly, we might also gain their trust and make them less likely to huddle together for fear of us.”

  “Why stop at the Bartolican regions, why not send to all Mounthaven’s dominions?” the Airlord of Omelgan suggested.

  “Towervale has only five gunwings and they have not been in action since 3917,” the Pangaver Airlord said dismissively.

  “But Friscon and Colandoro both specialize in long-range wings, yes, that is a good thought,” Sartov decided. “Tomorrow I shall send a courier to the former Bartolican regions and another five to the remaining neutral dominions. In a few weeks we could well have a thousand wings ready to ascend from the wingfields of Forian.”

  17 August 3961: Vernal

  Carbineer Carlen Hongraz was standing guard between the tents and gunwings. After twenty-four hours of nearly continuous revelry he was glad that the guildsmen and flyers of Vernal had finally exhausted themselves. Carbineers on the guard roster were less lucky, and had to stay sober. Still, Hongraz had sipped some firedew and had a brief dance with the first female warden in all Mounthaven, so in a sense he counted himself lucky. The carbineer glanced at one tent in particular.