The Miocene Arrow
Page 60
“Warden Jemarial!” he gasped, going down on one knee.
Silence rippled out from the couple behind a dozen whispered exclamations.
“Beggin’ yer pardon, Semme, but will ye touch me carbine—so I can tell me wife and young’uns?” the carbineer asked, holding out a battered Harlington automatic.
Bronlar shuddered at being addressed by a commoner, but again made no outburst. “Don’t demean yourself,” she said tersely, and walked on.
“She’s been in the air for ten hours, sair, she’s a little scratchy,” Serjon said to the disappointed carbineer, then he shook his hand.
“Eh sair, did she get any today?” asked the guildsman.
“Three, all confirmed.”
“That’s forty kills! Three cheers for Warden Jemarial!”
Bronlar leaned against a wall with her arms folded, ignoring the cheers.
“And you, young sair: were you victorious today?” the girl asked.
“Only seven, it’s not my best but the range—”
“Serjon, I’m getting cold!” Bronlar called from farther down the road where she was still standing and tapping a foot. “Are you to bed or the revel?”
“Coming! A long peace to you, gentlefolk,” Serjon called as he left them for Bronlar. Hand in hand they walked down the street and were lost amid the shadows. The group stood stunned, gaping after them until they were gone.
“That was him, wasn’t it?” said the big carbineer.
“Serjon Warden Killer,” breathed the guildsman. “Warden Killer himself! Ninety-seven plus seven is one hundred and four confirmed victories!”
“They were so sweet,” slurred the trapper with tears in his eyes.
“Pity he’s taken,” said the girl in the carbineer’s hat.
“He shook my hand, Warden Killer himself,” cried the big carbineer as the group set off to tell anyone who would listen.
“Nobody’s ever going to believe us,” warned the guildsman.
Nobody noticed the ferrywing come sweeping silently in to land at the darkened Forian Central wingfield, so it was not fired upon. Feydamor asked the adjunct about his family as he climbed out of the cockpit, but was interrupted by Sartov, who came running over from the briefing tent near the pennant pole.
“You did it, you got it working!” Sartov exclaimed, running his hands along the smooth, tough fabric. “Tell me how.”
“For that we need privacy,” said Feydamor as they grasped wrists.
An aide was sent out to search for Laurelene and the baby as Sartov and Feydamor retired to an annex of the command tent. They were brought mugs of coffee by an aide, then left alone.
“Your stepson survived the raid on the Callwalker wingfields, I saw him a while back,” said Sartov. “He was with that warden girl, Bronlar. Oh, and Pel Jemarial was reported as being alive at the aviad wingfield.”
“Pel, ah, Pel, back from the dead. Did Bronlar and Serjon seem, er, happy?”
“Yes, and I’d not bother looking for them until the morning.”
Sartov gave a brief account of the attack on the ayiad bases. Only five sailwings had escaped south before the surrender at Sioux City, and there was a report of a Sandhawk gunwing linking up with one of the huge sunwings over the Red Desert.
“Six stolen wings are not going to bring Mounthaven down,” Sartov concluded. “We have beaten them.”
Although exhausted, Feydamor now began the long explanation of what had happened a thousand miles to the west that day. Suddenly it became clear to Sartov why the Call had ceased.
“This is the end of Yarron, of Mounthaven, of the wardenate system,” Sartov said, looking as if something inside him had collapsed. The shadows accentuated the lines on his face, and he looked decades older. “Everything I fought for, all that our people died for, all gone.”
“But with the Callscour gone we can expand east,” said Feydamor. “We have the wings with the greatest range, and we have over a million displaced people who can move into the wilderness and build new lives.”
“But it won’t be Yarron, Jeb. The rabble from Mexhaven will be there too. How can we fight their style of unchivalric war?”
“We just spent a year learning to do just that.”
Sartov, waved the suggestion away.
“I wanted to go back to gunwings and chivalry. I smashed on the code of chivalry to save the code of chivalry, and—gah, Jeb, I’d nearly restored it when the one Callwalker woman in all of Mounthaven thwarted me. Mounthaven is gone, broken like an egg. Now the chicken will leave the pieces of shell and never return. No more duels, no more parades, and why bother with having a pennant pole at a wingfield if the flyers are going to take their wings out over the frontier and never return?”
Feydamor sipped at his drink, tired and wrung out but unable to share in his airlord’s depression.
“The world has changed, Alveris, like it or not,” he said as he heard Laurelene shouting at someone in the distance and stood up to go. “You led Yarron out of hell, nobody else could have done it. Are you going to desert your people now, when they need your help and leadership even more?”
Sartov tried to put his mug on the low table, but misjudged the distance to the edge through fatigue and it fell to the ground.
“Do you really think I can do any good?” asked Sartov.
Feydamor extended his hand and drew Sartov up from his chair. “Alveris, nobody else is even in your class,” he said as they walked out of the command tent.
TOR BOOKS BY SEAN McMULLEN
THE GREATWINTER TRILOGY
Souls in the Great Machine
The Miocene Arrow
Eyes of the Calculator
The Centurion’s Empire
THE MOONWORLDS SAGA
Voyage of the Shadowmoon
The Glass Dragons*
*forthcoming
Praise for Eyes of the Calculator: Book Two of the Greatwinter Trilogy
A Booklist Top 10 Adult Science Fiction Book of 2001
“McMullen tosses us into the action—of which there is plenty—rarely revealing all aspects of events but instead letting us delightedly discover the full story as the characters do. A captivating conclusion to a brilliant series.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“This is great escape, and great fun.”
—San Diego Union-Tribune
“Boisterously entertaining … the complexity of the books plot is marvelous, like soap opera and Shakespeare, it is filled with fights, romance, wenching, revenge, greed, duplicity and misunderstandings—a cacophony of schemery and slapstick that never fails to entertain.”
—Denver Post
“Beamflash to North American fans: Australia Fowarding Huge Fan by Moonwing.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“One of the best epics I’ve read. If you’ve read the first two books, no doubt you need little urging to read this one. If you read it alone, you’ll probably enjoy it even without the back story, but you might want to start at the beginning with Souls in the Great Machine.
“The Greatwinter Trilogy is certain to become one of science fiction’s master story arcs, and the author will no doubt continue to provide us with good reading for some time to come.”
—Ernest Lilley, SF Revu
“Sean McMullen expands even further the busy, sprawling, and quite engaging series that began with Souls in the Great Machine … Not many thousand-and-a-half-page adventure epics have managed to hold my attention for the whole span, but this one has left me willing to read more.”
—Russell Letson, Locus
Praise for Souls in the Great Machine: Book One of the Greatwinter Trilogy
“A stunning idea—the Calculor’s as real as if McMullen had built it in his backyard—with an utterly convincing setting, breathtaking developments, and a captivating narrative.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Fast-paced and amusing, McMullen’s latest novel is an action-packed adventure in the tradit
ion of world-building SF … . McMullen’s dramatic pacing and believable characters ensure that readers will enjoy Zarvova’s quest through a well-wrought, richly imagined multidimensional world.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Decidedly original, sometimes whimsical, and captivating, this is a genuine tour de force.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“McMullen delivers a powerful tale of visionaries and schemers struggling to rediscover the secrets of their ancestors. Highly recommended.”
—Library Journal
“A complex, well-crafted novel filled with action and adventure … . There is a marvelous inventiveness which pervades Souls … . McMullen has a wonderful grasp of action and is capable of vastly entertaining sequences … . Souls in the Great Machine is good fun and worth seeking out.”
—Locus
“McMullen displays considerable cleverness. He’s quite convincing, as he indeed is in most other aspects of this very satisfying saga of empire and technology. You’ll enjoy it.”
—Analog
“There is no shortage of either entertainment or intellectual stimulation in Souls in the Great Machine. McMullen offers readers a thrilling and thoroughly alien view of far-future earth, playing fiendishly inventive riffs on the post-apocalyptic theme … . Souls in the Great Machine is an appealing book, crammed with gems that are sure to please almost every kind of reader … . Every time you think you know where McMullen is taking you, he swerves wildly, giving you a good hard laugh as you try to hang on.”
—Science Fiction Weekly “[Souls in the Great Machine] has some wonderful, sense of wonder-including ideas, and some exciting action and colorful characters … . I recommend this novel for the neat stuff … . The end is arousing and fairly satisfying … . And the book is marked by a definite exuberance that makes it a fun read.”—SF Site
Praise for The Miocene Arrow
“McMullen’s prose is plain but lucid, and, nicely enriched with low human comedy, coincedence and farce, is perfectly suited to explication of his crowded story of heroism and cupidity in this cross between an old-fashioned air-ace adventure and Arthurian Romance. The level of invention of The Miocene Arrow may be lower than its predecessor, but there’s much to enjoy … . McMullen ties up the numerous plot twists with an admirable facility, and the final pages are imbued with the burgeoning sense that the diptych of Souls in the Great Machine and The Miocene Arrow is destined to become a classic.”
—Paul McAuley, Interzone
“With remarkable imagination and insight, McMullen conjures factions, personalities, and plots, including well-placed glimpses of a lost, past America. A complex and lively story, rich with the action and reaction of human treachery, courage, battle-fueled passion, and quiet devotion.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“The tale features labyrinthine politics, a large cast of engaging, thorny and occasionally rather cartoonish characters, and many well-depicted scenes of aerial warfare. The author’s inventive use of several oddball technologies is particularly noteworthy, and veteran SF readers may well be reminded of the best work of L. Sprague de Camp.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Set in the same postapocalyptic universe as his groundbreaking Souls in the Great Machine, McMullen’s latest effort elaborates on the evolution of a strange and, ultimately, mystifying future. Recommended.”
—Library Journal
“Every bit as much ingenious fun as the last book.”
—Russell Letson, Locus
“A classic ‘good read’.”
—Analog
“McMullen has fused the relentless pertinacity of Bruce Sterling with the stylized exoticism of Jack Vance, and, as his command of novelistic technique grows, his neo-medieval tapestry glows with an ever greater speculative intelligence.”
—Nick Gevers, Nova Express
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE MIOCENE ARROW
Copyright © 2000 by Sean McMullen
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Edited by Jack Dann
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
eISBN 9781466821996
First eBook Edition : May 2012
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00-028624
First edition: August 2000
First mass market edition: May 2003