The Miocene Arrow

by Sean McMullen

  “When in Bartolica, do as Bartolicans,” she suggested as she offered him the love comb.

  “You know I can’t accept this,” said Serjon gently.

  “Yes. I just want you to know it is here,” replied Bronlar without rancor. “Did you collect many on your tour?”

  “I was offered thirty.”

  “And you bedded them all?”

  “What I did or did not do is between me and my conscience. I will admit that sex is wonderful, though. I know it now.”

  “With you, perhaps.”

  “I did ask you first, Bronlar. Last October—but not as nicely as Matthew Ryban, it seems.”

  “Will nothing I do scour that turd’s stink away?”

  “You raised the subject, Little Sister, and I’ll not take all the blame myself.” Bronlar began to sniffle, and he hastily put an arm around her. “Was it so very bad?”

  “It was the day I got my medal, my daystar. The little turd kept slithering about me saying wise and knowing nothings, and showing concern. It was so fast, he was so anxious to get it all in and shooting—and it hurt, it really did! There was another guildsman besides, yet another who seduced by being pathetic. So much guilt, hate, death and mess, I wonder why we bother living sometimes. Call’s touch, how I hate pathetic men. The very sight of seeing one cringe and simper makes me want to take out my cane and beat and beat—”

  “Shush, don’t think upon it.”

  “I’m sorry I made you bleed over Samondel, I seem to spoil—”

  Serjon exclaimed and bounced up from the stone seat. He backed away until he stopped against a columned stone rail, then eased himself up to sit with his arms folded, looking at the glinting brass caps on the toes of Bronlar’s boots.

  “What did Seyret tell you?” he asked in the weak voice of a condemned prisoner before a magistrate.

  “Your nose began bleeding in bed, and it was all in Samondel’s hair before you realized. You spent a half hour trying to stop the bleeding, while Samondel washed her hair and Seyret was called in to change the bed linen. By then it was after midnight. You said you had better lie underneath in case your nose bled again—”

  “That’s enough!” exclaimed Serjon, his hands to his ears. “She should be a sailwing war scout if she can report with that sort of detail and accuracy.”

  “From what she told me, you were very well—”

  “I said enough! Please! Hell’s Call, I should be in a merchant’s catalogue: semi-automatic, ideal for extreme conditions, does not jam when damaged, fast reload, low maintenance, can be adjusted to suit any user—”

  He stopped when he realized that Bronlar was laughing. He had not seen her laugh since … he could not remember. For a time he sat with his elbows on his knees and his chin on his fists, keeping a studiously glum expression on his face.

  “Did it hurt you too, the first time?” she asked.

  “This is positively the last question on all this. No, it doesn’t hurt boys.”

  Bronlar rose, squeezed his hand, and leaned her head against his.

  “Virgins and rakes are a bore, I’ve had both, so I ought to know,” she admitted. “What do you think?”

  “I said last question, and I meant it,” he replied, all the while wondering what she found so boring about virgins.

  “On the night of the banquet I found a magistrate, canceled my guildsmen’s articles, and posted proclamations of status and cause before the clock struck eleven. Now I know I had some hours free of them before you lay with someone else. That’s important.”

  “Why?” he asked, not daring to tell her the truth about what had been done, and when.

  “Because I changed the past a little, I cheated fate just a tiny bit by … by really hurting and humiliating someone who had hurt you. Now all that I want is you back. If I die for you will that be enough?”

  “You’d hardly be good company in bed, Bronlar. You’d be cold and stiff, and you’d smell.”

  “But would that purge my thirteen?”

  “Little Sister, if you died for me yet remained living, yes—but only then.”

  He returned to the stone bench and watched Mirrorsun rise between the spires of the palace. Bronlar was frowning with thought while Serjon counted the thirteen surviving spires. A bell began to toll in the distance.

  “A Call,” Serjon said. “It’s probably stopped for the evening, and just outside the city.”

  “If you were falling without a parachute and I flew past without a parachute, I could jump and cling to you for a minute or so. I could give my life for you, we would be dead yet still alive.”

  “Yes … but in the circumstances, I’d probably not get it up.”

  “But if that is good enough, then there must be other ways.”

  “If you’re thinking of getting yourself declared ney vitiar mondinil then forget it. That’s a death sentence, not death itself. Are you sleeping at the palace?”

  “Yes. I refuse to be near guildsmen, especially at night. I have a large room with a double bed. I’m fond of luxury, now, it’s beyond the reach of commoner guildsmen. East Southern, Third Floor, Suite Seven. There’s a glorious view of sunrise over the mountains. Knock twice three if you—”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “I—I’ll avoid your room, Serjon. I’d not want you embarrassed, if … you know. Samondel. I’ve told nobody that you sleep with her.”

  “Grats. Her position is delicate.”

  “If you please, though, I’ve had an uncomfortable ten days wearing your apology.”

  She took his hand and guided it beneath her coat, shirt, and singlet to her left breast. Serjon caressed the soft skin for a moment, then drew out the paper between his fingers. With hardly a glance he folded it and slipped it into her jacket pocket.

  They kissed each other’s cheeks in the cold light of Mirrorsun, then walked shivering to the palace with their arms linked. At the hostelry wing’s door they kissed goodnight again while the Dorakian and Montrassian guards stared ahead into the darkness and scarcely dared to breathe. When they had gone their separate ways, the guards turned to each other.

  “That her? Mad devil warden?” asked the Montrassian.

  “Devil warden, yes,” replied the Dorakian. “You say nice day, hullo, look good: she beat you to jerky.”

  “Then who is boy? Airlord or brave idiot?”

  “Serjon Warden Killer.”

  “Ah, Warden Killer. Explains all.”

  Later that night Serjon lay half smothered in Samondel’s hair. Both of them were sleepily contented and discussing the traumas and triumphs of the day past.

  “So you have a truce with Warden Jemarial?” Samondel asked.

  “So it seems. She is in a mess, but I am trying to help.”

  “I was a mess, and you helped me. Nobody else would have, nobody but one as … interesting as you.”

  Samondel’s flying had improved dramatically, and she could now shoot up target kites over the Salt Lake. The scattered remnants of Bartolican flocks were rallying around her as they returned from Yarron, and she had even persuaded Sartov to let some of them keep their gunwings.

  “How would your wardens take to us … being thus?” he asked.

  “Badly, but it is not their business.”

  “You are their airlord, so it is their business. We had best keep our voices down.”

  The airlords had repaired to their inner chambers once Serjon’s hearing was over. They examined the responses that he had brought back, and they were all in broad agreement.

  “Unanimous,” Sartov declared as the papers were passed around. “The new airlords of Eastgarde, Northreach, and Middle Bartolica will be here by this afternoon. Airlord Samondel will attend too.”

  “They cannot be part of this council,” warned the Airlord of Senner.

  “Of course not. That is why we have to make our decision now, before they arrive. Have you read my briefing folders?”

  The Airlord of Dorak opened his lea
ther and gilt folder and held up one of the sheets.

  “You claim that there are four hundred wings hidden in the Callscour lands by these featherheads that we keep finding everywhere.”

  “Between three hundred and five hundred, I cannot be sure. It is hard to distinguish between real losses and theft. I have been able to gather in scattered reports from eastern Yarron and the records of the Bartolican occupiers, but it all turns out the same. Gunwings and sailwings have been heading east out over the Callscour frontier and not returning. The headings converge on a circle twenty miles across, and my Skyfire flyers have found a refueling wingfield at the Alliance ruin. The storage wingfield lies far beyond.”

  “It makes sense,” added the Airlord of Cosdora. “In spite of their losses and the number of wings they captured, they always had flyers in abundance.”

  “There is a related matter that I am concerned about, too,” said Sartov, unrolling a large map. “The late envoy from Veraguay showed me the plans of a grand scheme when I was stationed here last year. It was a system of tramways running from Veraguay to Calgary. Our isolation would end, our gunwing skills would leak out and we would be just a gaggle of poor dominions in these cold, arid mountains. I always opposed that link to Alberhaven, and now I want work on it stopped.”

  “But the southern dominions are hundreds of years behind us in weapons skills, and they have no gunwings;” the Cosdoran Airlord protested.

  “The southern dominions have immense populations and resources, they could easily dominate us. The featherheads now have hundreds of gunwings and sailwings in the Callscour lands. Worse still, they abducted dozens of our best artisans, while trying to make it look as if they were slaughtered with their families. My thought is that somewhere in Hildago there are estates where Yarronese guildsmen are teaching the skills of making airframes, compression engines, and reaction guns. They may think that they are the Yarronese exiled resistance, and how are they to know otherwise?”

  “Impossible!” exclaimed the Airlord of Dorak. “Guildsmen are bound by oaths as sacred as our belief in chivalric war.”

  “Those beliefs were shaken by the Bartolican invasion of Yarron. The danger is real, my peers. Our only hope is an armada of gunwings, sailwings, and regals that can shatter their stockpile before Hildago flyers can be trained. Otherwise they will fly over the southern desert, smash the local wardens aside, and establish a bridgehead. The tramway over the Callscour lands will supply them better than us, and Hildago carbineers will pour in.”

  “Pah, such a tramway is too thin a line for supplies,” scoffed the Dorak Airlord.

  “The deserts are stable, and very kind to tramways,” Sartov countered.

  “And they may have started already,” exclaimed the Cosdoran Airlord, thumping the arm of his chair.

  “Precisely.”

  “But this circle is at double the return range of our gunwings,” the Cosdoran pointed out.

  “That can be accommodated. After a year of flying great distances under great duress, we Yarronese can teach you much about using four hundred wings to double the range of another two hundred. What is most important is that we act within two weeks at most.”

  “Two weeks—ah yes, the weather will close in after that,” said the Cosdoran.

  “Quite so. Now, can we have a vote?”

  The vote was unanimous, and later that day the three Bartolican Airlords joined the alliance. As a cover for the operation, an immense victory festival was proclaimed at Forian and voiced about as the greatest gathering of wings and wardens in history. Even neutral airlords were briefed about the real agenda, however, and they began to prepare their best wings.

  “Well, here we are again,” said Sartov as he grasped wrists with Vander in his rooms after the council meeting.

  “Who could believe what fifteen months can do,” said Vander.

  They sat down facing each other over a low table, but did not touch the drinks that had been set out for them.

  “Of all Bartolicans to find in the resistance I least expected the Inspector General,” Sartov said, his voice slurring with fatigue now that he was relaxing in trusted company. “But of all Bartolicans to find in the resistance, I most expected Vander Hannan.”

  “Was it as bad as the rumors we heard?”

  “Worse. On several wardenate estates the guildmasters were taken away on a tram, then everyone remaining was murdered. Some of the women were kept alive for a time, and of those a handful escaped—and I do mean a handful. Five out of three thousand. They wanted the wings, supplies, and guildmasters, nothing more. All who might have slowed them down or harassed them were killed. Seventy-eight thousand other Yarronese died, a third of them in battle, the rest of starvation, exposure, disease, or vandalized Call facilities.”

  “Why did they do it? Just to steal flight skills?”

  “Yes, and to arm Mexhaven against us. Mexhaven has resources and sheer numbers of people that we can only dream about, and they can easily control Mexhaven’s courts. Arm Mexhaven with gunwings and Mounthaven becomes a gaggle of poor client dominions.”

  A Yarronese carbineer announced that Theresla had arrived, and she was shown in at once. She was carrying a heavy arrow of metal, about two yards long and as thick as her arm. It was painted black, except for the edges of the thick barb, which gleamed bright with honing. Hanging from her shoulder was an artists’ portfolio which bulged with papers that had hastily been stuffed into it.

  “This is the Miocene Arrow behind Operation Miocene Arrow,” she said as she set the missile down on the low table.

  Sartov picked it up and examined it with the eyes of experience. The barb at the head was sharp enough to shave with, while metal fins framed a rocket nozzle at the tail. Noting a seam, at the base of the barb, he unscrewed it and found a short fuse. It was clearly not meant to kill people. A gunwing would be a more likely target, but why have a sharpened barb? A tram rocket? Again, why the sharpened barb just to punch through wood? The blade implied a living target to slice through, but such a creature would have to be as big as a tram. No such creature had existed since the Call had wiped out elephants.

  “I found this in a palace workshop leased to the Guild of Armorers,” said Theresla. “Searching this place is a lot easier now that I no longer have to stay out of sight, and have the authority to chop through locked doors. There are several hundred of these, all packaged up and marked for shipment to Forian Central wingfield. From the guild numbers I would say that five boxes of twelve were sent before the Red Desert tramway was cut, but they are easy to make.”

  “They do not look to be practical as weapons,” Sartov concluded and handed the pieces to Vander.

  “I think I know,” he said, barely glancing at them before replacing them on the table.

  Theresla set her portfolio on the floor and opened it. There were diagrams for the black arrows marked GRENADE ROCKET, and launching rails designed to fit beneath wings. Other papers had sketches of fish between four and ten times the length of human-scale figures, but it was a sheaf of pages that Theresla extracted and handed over to Sartov.

  “This is a copy of an ancient document,” she explained. “The original was in Archaic Anglian, but Darien has rendered this version into Old Anglian.”

  The first page bore only the words “The Chronicle of James Brennan.” Sartov riffled through the other pages.

  “This will take an hour, and I don’t have an hour,” said Sartov. “Ten minutes is all I could spare to meet with Sair Vander, and that’s almost gone. I’m so busy in Condelor that I get four hours of sleep a night, and even have a clerk taking down dictation as I stand having a piss.”

  “This concerns a Callwalker plan to kill every human in both North and South America,” said Theresla, twirling a lock of bushy hair around her finger.

  “Explain,” prompted Sartov when she did not elaborate.

  “Read,” prompted Theresla, indicating the sheaf of paper with her little finger.

  “I think
I know what she means, Alveris,” Vander said to Sartov, holding his forehead in his hand and rocking back and forth. “With enough of those grenade harpoons they could kill many Callers of the Call, provoking them to extend the Callscour lands over Mounthaven, Mexhaven, and Alberhaven. The Call can be varied, make no mistake. Politics, resources, even compassion for us by reformer Callers is what keeps these Callhavens preserved. With the Callhavens smothered in permanent Call as well the Callwalkers could then take possession of our entire civilization by doing nothing more than walking in and sitting down.”

  “He has read this chronicle, so he understands,” said Theresla. “Can you spend an hour to save the fifteen million souls of Mounthaven?”

  Sartov made as if to reply, then turned to the first page of the chronicle. He began to read, scanning the words and turning the pages quickly; then he stopped and looked up at Vander.

  “This is hard to follow,” he protested.

  “That is because it is real. There is a glossary attached.”

  Sartov turned back to the first page and began to read more slowly.

  At the end of an hour Sartov understood that the Call came from several species of immense, seagoing mammals that had once been hunted by humans. In Greatwinter times grenade harpoons attached to ropes had been used to kill them and reel them in, but the thing on the table was merely meant to kill. It would be fired from gunwings over water when the massive creatures surfaced for air, and would sink deep into their flesh and explode. After a few thousand had died it would seem to the cetezoids that the humans were killing them to destroy the Call, and they would strike back. Theresla began to fill in some gaps in the story.

  “Mountains are difficult to sustain a continuous Call over—especially the Callscour type of Call that is almost continuous. The Call sweeps are thought to keep humans in their place and sufficiently disrupted to be harmless, but give the cetezoids and their servant species enough incentive and they can do anything. They take to murder of their own kind about as well as a Yarronese airlord.”