The Remige Road was one of the main routes built by the Castle for the movement of fyrd to and from the Front. It was wide, for two wagons abreast, and it had worn a deep cutting into the chalk on the downs west of Awndyn where it had not been cobbled. Lightning, Mist and Serein led the coach-and-pair inland across a broom and gorse heath, under a sky of the vivid blue that is the field of the Awian flag. They rode alongside an oak plantation belonging to Mist, then an orchard. Sunlight shone on the horses’ well-groomed flanks. Light reflected from the metal panels on my boots and darted bright patches on the path.
Flying is the most selfish pastime in the world. It’s all I ever want to do. Flying is being alone but not lonely, swept up on the exhaust of the world; my wings and the ground two magnets pushing each other apart. The sky is more gentle than the touch of any lover, and gliding on a hot day is as effortless as sleep. I hold out my wings, supported on rounded air, and change direction with a tiny movement. I traveled at an altitude too great to be seen from the patchwork farmland and toy cottages. I urged myself higher, trying to cram more miniature moated granges and dwindling trees into my field of vision. I sang, “Oh, we met in the Frozen Hound hotel, down on Turbary Road.”
Lightning and Mist seemed to be arguing. I dropped height and circled above them, my backswept sickle wings beating quickly with the wrist joint bent gracefully as a falcon’s. I risked spooking the horses but I wanted to hear the Archer.
“This is far worse than the year fifteen-oh-nine,” he rebuked Mist angrily. “Gio Ami is much more desperate than Eske was then.”
Mist said, “Well, I agree, but the Castle will weather another such revolution, especially when you and I can negotiate.”
“Let us send Comet ahead.”
“No. I want to be present when he gives his report.”
“What was the year fifteen-oh-nine, anyway?” asked Wrenn.
“Oh, don’t get Lightning started or he won’t shut up till nightfall.”
“Your charm never falters. Wrenn, I’ll tell you. Five hundred years ago we pushed the Insects farther out of Lowespass than their Wall had been for centuries. The Insects were less of a threat, so the southern manors decided they were safe. They thought they no longer needed the Castle, so they refused to pay our dues. The governor of Eske manor led the way, and the whole Plainslands followed within the year.”
Mist sniggered. “When the taxes dried up, many Eszai thought their power was being eroded and they panicked; it split the Circle half and half. The Sailor-my predecessor-led those who wanted to use violence, and San nearly expelled him from the Castle. But Lightning’s diplomacy won, as it will again.”
“Oh, yes,” said Wrenn admiringly. He drew nearer to Mist.
Lightning continued: “The wisdom of our Emperor resolved the situation. We’re only his servants, whatever Ata may say. You see, San offered Eske’s only son a place in the Circle. He was a damn good horseman and deserved to be Hayl. Lord Governor Eske died of old age fifteen years later, taxes unpaid. His immortal son inherited the manor and the uprising simply collapsed.”
They reached the edge of the escarpment and looked down; the land fell away like the inside of a bowl, to the flat-or at most gently undulating-Plainslands. From the curved grassy ridge that formed Awndyn’s border they could see to the serrated horizon of Eske forest.
The square fields on the hillside were white with chalk soil; they looked like they were covered in snow. Yellow patches of barley with straggly orange poppies between them contrasted with the sky and hallucinogenic-green grass of the downs. Awndyn was a beautiful manorship.
Eske and Awndyn were the only two Plainslands manors owned by families who originated, centuries ago, in Awia. The Plainslands manors might seem weak and old-fashioned, incessantly bickering over their boundaries, but because the land was decentralized, its cultures were stable, tolerant and as varied as the Plainslands landscapes-peoples of forests, heath, Brandoch marsh and Ghallain pampas.
At the foot of the hill the coach and riders forded the pure water of a trout stream. Dust clouds and chaff blew across the road from a tariff barn where schoolchildren, who holiday at harvesttime, were brushing the paved floor in readiness to store next month’s crop. They peered out from under the barn’s thatched fringe. The older ones bowed their heads when they saw our sunburst insignia-while the teenage girls turned to each other and shrieked with passion.
I descended and said to Lightning, “There are fewer farmers here than usual. If they’ve gone to Gio, more people are involved than I thought.”
“Great. With a shortage of labor and food the last thing we need is the farmers joining a rebellion.”
The air brushing the pits of my wings and the paler silky feathers under them was so erotic I started thinking of Tern again. How she giggled when I pushed my cold face down her bodice lacings. How her touch was so gentle I screamed but she kept stroking. I remembered Tern walking slowly in the snow, a parasol over her shoulder. My flitting footsteps crunch as I sprint around the corner of the black manor house. My body collides with hers. “Caught you!” We fall embraced into the snow, laughing and kissing. She would bend my flight feathers to give me a sensation of speed, and I would encircle her whole body with them. Her wondering face looked up at my smile. And all the time she carried on her affair in secret. I snarled and spat down into a corn field.
I borrowed the horses just over ten hours ago. It had been one hour since we descended from Awndyn heath and entered the arable land. It should take another thirty hours’ travel to reach the Castle. In five hours it will be sunset. One hour after that we will reach the Cygnet Ring Coach Inn in the dense part of the forest. In eight hours I would need another fix.
It was four P.M. when we entered the forest. The road cut through it cleanly; the spaces were open and bright sunlight permeated between the trees and threw moving highlights on the ground. Bracken and angelica sprouted among piles of bleached-white timber. In the tussocky clearings luscious purple foxgloves stood like racks of lingerie. I saw the road clearly from the air-two tracks from the wagon wheels with a grassy strip between them.
The air above the road shimmered; it looked wet and glassy. In every hollow of the dry track there was a mirage of a silver puddle that peeled away as we got nearer, and repeated farther up the road in the hot air rising from it.
We passed a cleared area beside the road intended for a fyrd division muster point. About every forty kilometers we passed a coach inn. These pubs and stables were semifortified with high walls. Travelers, hunters and workers of the surrounding farms could seek refuge there if Insects set upon them. Luckily, there had been no attacks this far south for twelve months. I considered the forest to be free from Insects; we had spent the last five years hunting them down.
Wrenn dozed on the back of his palfrey. The Swordsman had no horsemanship whatsoever and sat like a sack of spuds, his chin on his chest, nodding forward and jerking awake so I thought he was going to fall under the hooves of Ata’s mare. Ata reclined in thought, under a denim cap. Her legs braced in the stirrups pulled her leather trousers tight over well-defined muscles. She stared at the backside of Lightning’s stallion.
Lightning knew the forest well, and he loved it. He rested his bow horizontally on his knee and an arrow across it, nocked to the string. Holding a weapon changes your perception of the surrounding world. The very act of carrying a bow tunes your awareness to find the quarry. Lightning listened to every rustle in the undergrowth, or breaking twigs in the canopy. He noticed the “coc-coc” of pheasants, the sound of grasshoppers switched on by the heat. He noticed the subtle odor of deer and differentiated it from the stink of the horses, wild garlic and ditch water. His senses were heightened-in the country, after an hour smell and hearing became as important as sight. A less experienced hunter would jump at any play of shadows and snatch up his arrows, but Lightning was confident. He knew that you always have more time to draw and loose a bow than you think.
I noticed a commotion farther along the road. The highway ascended a slight hill; near the top it was blocked completely with people. At this distance I could only see splodges of color, brown or black clothing, some pikes or flagpoles moving about, and an occasional bright flash in the center of the milling crowd that was either a mirror or polished steel. I narrowed my eyes. This could be Gio’s work.
I wheeled over my colleagues and called, “Lightning?”
“Yes?”
“There’s something strange ahead. I want to find out what it is.”
“A den for you to sleep in, perhaps.”
I clacked my wings together impatiently. “It looks unusual…Just because I’m hooked doesn’t mean I can’t function,” I added, muttering. I pulled on the air and surged up. I was only between one and two on the room-spinning scale. I should be treated the same as when I’m clean, especially if I have a good supply; it takes very careful examination to tell the difference.
A company of about one hundred men was walking slowly up the hill behind a double ox team that pulled…At first it looked like a massive farm dray, but with an enormous wooden beam across it. At the front the square-sectioned beam was attached to a horizontal capstan whose great spiked handles projected like an unfinished cart wheel. A hawser made of twisted sinew joined a leather sling half a meter wide. It was a trebuchet, a thing of horrible potential.
The tops of heads, like dots, became pink as men turned their faces up to see me. The drover slapped the oxen’s snouts, and when the trebuchet team ground to a halt he slipped wooden wedges under its solid wheels.
On the hilltop was another circular, grassed-over clearing maintained for a fyrd camp. Tents packed the earth, some small triangular shelters around a spacious cream canvas pavilion. Most were thread-bare, stained with dirt, grease and wine, but some were from brand-new supplies. There were awnings and lean-tos, but I had no time to take it in because people on the ground spotted me and started shouting. Men dashed from all over the encampment to the center where a huge bonfire smoldered. They stoked it, poked it, and threw on new logs and green boughs.
A thick column of dark gray smoke rose up. I saw it coming and a second later I was completely enveloped. Smoke burned my eyes and nose. I breathed in a lungful and started coughing violently. Acrid smoke seared my throat. My sinuses were full of it; my inflamed eyes ran with tears.
Black flecks and sparks swirled past me. Leaves and lichen burning around the edges stuck to my shirt. I beat my palms on my stomach. I tumbled out of the billowing smoke, blinded and disoriented. I started to fall. Air whipped past me. Treetops hurtled up from where the sky was supposed to be. The sky was underneath me. I rubbed my face vigorously, tore out of my spin. I found myself above the road again, very low.
The hard-faced men by the ox team drew their longbows with disorganized timing and loosed. A hundred arrows flew straight up; I banked away hard. Long shafts passed in the air on my right. Flights whistled as they reached their zenith, turned around and plunged back. A breeze brushed my face from the nearest one. Spent arrows thumped on the upper surface of my wings. Shafts slipped between my fingered feathers. I straightened my flight path and beat madly away over the forest.
This could not be a case of mistaken identity.
Hot with panic I yelped, “In San’s name, stop!” Arrows poured around me like solid raindrops. “In the name of…San Emperor, for the will of god…” But I was coughing too much.
I flew out of range but they kept shooting for five seconds to make their point. The arrows’ broad heads crackled down behind me onto the topmost branches.
I winged back to the coach, furious. What’s it like to be hit? To have a solid wooden rod impaled through my whole body-would I be able to feel it with my insides?
I landed next to Lightning and Mist. “Did you see that?”
“Yes,” said Lightning.
“They aimed straight at me. Me! The Emperor’s Messenger!” My clothes stank of smoke. I blew my nose and flicked mucus off my fingers. “Bastards! Bastards! It’s a wonder they didn’t hit. If it wasn’t for my agility…They wouldn’t even stop for ‘the will of god and the protection of the Circle’!”
“Aye,” said Mist. “You shouldn’t have gone ahead. Now they know we’re here, and soon they’ll tell Gio.”
“Me! An Eszai!” I was smart enough to know I am not universally loved, but I never thought I was hated.
Mist said, “There must be something in that camp they don’t want us to see.”
“Probably another bloody big trebuchet like the one they’re dragging up the hill! I didn’t see its serial number.”
I described the ox team and Mist listened with a faint smile, either admiring Gio’s ingenuity or passionate for a good chase. She said, “Why’s the trebuchet this side of Eske, if he’s taking it to the Castle? Has Swallow given it to him? Or has he stolen it? There, Lightning; you see that Awndyn’s as treacherous as the other Plainslands manors.”
Wrenn’s eyes were wide in disbelief. He ventured, “Stop here and see if they come down to us.”
“In range of the trebuchet? Why not carry a target and make it their sport? We could offer foreign gold as prizes!” Lightning had a clearer idea of Gio’s character.
“They must be very confident,” said Mist.
“They shot at me!” I said.
“Jant, quit wringing your hands and tell us-you know these roads-how can we reach the Castle without pushing past them?”
I said, “We’re about halfway to Eske. This is the only coach route, unless we go back into Awndyn and join Shivel Road. It’ll take a couple more days because it’d put us two hundred kilometers out of our way. And it’s probably packed with mangonels.”
Mist took off her cap and ruffled her hair, which was damp with sweat. Her face betrayed the stress she was under, some puffiness around her disturbing indigo eyes. “Into the woods and outflank them, then. I’m carrying important information that I don’t want them to capture.”
Wrenn found this ignominious. “We can fight if necessary!”
“Unfortunately, Serein, I think they’d shoot you, too.”
I ordered my driver to take the carriage back to the last coach inn, the Culver Inn, and wait there for instructions. If he received none after three days, I told him, he should return to Awndyn. I didn’t want to lose my possessions. Lightning, Mist and Serein dismounted and led their horses off the road into the forest undergrowth. At first the going was hard; brambles hooked in my trousers and tore them. The pungent smell of bracken was up around our noses. Farther from the track, less light penetrated the canopy and fewer plants grew between the trunks. Tinder-dry oak and beech leaf litter crunched under our feet and the hooves. “I hope Gio’s rebels don’t torch this,” I said.
Mist said, “God, now he thinks of it! Scout ahead and tell us how far we have to walk before we can rejoin the road.”
I shrugged off my water bottle that glugged at every step, and hung it on Wrenn’s saddle. I dashed away. It was impossible to move without sound in the forest; stories that tell of my predecessors doing so are just flattering lies. But I have lively reactions and I can run so swiftly through the tangle that no one registers the sound as human. I ducked under branches, leapt over fallen brushwood and sprinted with long strides. I sped up the rise and doubled back to the road. It seemed clear beyond the camp. I hid behind a tree, peered out and withdrew immediately. Another band of men strutted past with their pikes on their shoulders.
I ran on again, enjoying myself, but every kilometer I spotted more groups, so I returned to my friends, nimbly through the spaces between snarled undergrowth. Hot saliva was gushing into my mouth; I felt real once more. “This isn’t good-they’re all along the road! We…” I lowered my voice. “We could walk in the forest all the way to Eske but there’s a hundred and twenty kilometers to go, so it would take you days. I say we keep going until nightfall and then try to rejoin the road farther on, when the rebels should be encamped or indoors. I’ll scout ahead again.”
Mist said, “Lead on then, smoky creature.”
“Somewhere around here is the Cygnet Ring Inn ratskeller. Foresters drink there so we should pick up a track eventually.”
“Damn, you move so fast I can’t even see your footholds,” Wrenn grumbled. “There’s no path here.”
“Then we make a path.”
We walked, leading the horses, over the copper-colored floor, under the stippled green ceiling for the next few hours, some distance from the road so we wouldn’t be heard. The light began to fade and the dusk became darker by degrees. The ground could not be seen clearly; tree boles seemed to float toward us, distanceless. I felt as if something sentient and silent was watching us. I couldn’t decide whether it was large and invincible, or small and instinctive.
On the road with their mounts, the others had been slow, but now negotiating trees and bramble thickets they slowed still further until they didn’t seem to make any headway at all. I burned with frustration. I kept urging them on until Mist lashed out, “I’m going as fast as I can! I can hardly see. I keep stumbling over things and so does this stupid nag. I hate this; we’re in the middle of nowhere and the Empire’s suddenly crawling with people who despise us.”
Lightning intervened. “Look, Jant, let’s rest here, have a few hours’ sleep and then check if the road is safe. The newspapers said Eske is full of unrest and I don’t want to be exhausted when I travel through town.”
“You’re all so unbelievably tardy,” I said, but I flopped down immediately and made myself comfortable on the leaf litter. The others, who were not as practiced at bivouacking or as careless as a Rhydanne, looked about for a patch of grass or a landmark to camp next to.
Wrenn threw his pack on the ground and sat on a stump that was so rotten he bounced off it and it fell to pieces. He brushed moss from his arse and began to unlace his boots.
Lightning paced about. “I think that the town will be safe without Gio to stir up the Zascai. The ingrates don’t understand how hard we have been working for them all this time…” He tripped over a tree root and kicked it angrily. “Creeping about in the dark like highwaymen!”
The post-coach jumps the news from manor to manor. I imagined every governor realizing that the Castle is only protected by tradition and their own beliefs. I almost heard them thinking: what could be in this for us? “Half the Plainslands has supported Gio for six months. We don’t know what we’re heading into.”
Mist said, “I only know we must make haste to reach San.” She made a small hearth, unrolled her blanket and shared out some Trisian pan forte and a flask of red wine. “I think Gio wants to cause us as much pain as possible before we inevitably catch him. I can tell he must have little hope because his methods are so desperate…” She fell into a reverie and did not speak again. We heard people passing by at the road’s nearest approach. I felt satisfied that I could lie hidden and observe them, and they wouldn’t know I was listening.
Lightning took out one of his books. He was writing his three-hundredth romantic novel, which would probably be much the same as the other two hundred and ninety-nine, but maybe this time with a nautical theme. Their popularity was a constant source of wonder to me. He usually pays me to translate his unimaginative but ardent scribblings, but he always has my translations checked. Lightning looked wistful, a powerful emotion he had practiced over centuries, which he now fell into easily. He had adopted it when it was fashionable, although it didn’t suit him. “Swallow is never here when I love her,” he said. “I wish I could speak to her. In times of trouble, she finds an inner strength. Maybe it’s because she lives in pain and is hardened to it.” He sighed, and went back to writing, with the practicality of a lover who has sought the same character in different women over fifteen hundred years.
For the past hour I had thought of nothing but scolopendium. My mouth watered for it and my joints ached. I couldn’t hold out much longer before my need began to show. It’s just a weakness of my body, I thought; it isn’t really me. I opened a knotwork painted tobacco tin containing my stash and a syringe. I acted casually to protect me from the others; underneath I bubbled with excitement and blame. “Don’t mind if I hook up?”
“Oh, go ahead.” Mist shook her head in disgust, though I could tell she was taking notes.
“Thanks. You don’t know how much I…”
“I’m beginning to guess,” said Wrenn.
“So one day it’ll kill me. Want some?”
“Certainly not!” he said contemptuously. He walked to the edge of the clearing and stood with his back to us to have a piss. Then he returned and lay down on his coat with his rapier to hand. He watched me covertly, pretending to be asleep.
I hunched over and mantled wings around a candle stub. I licked my needle more or less clean, ran it through the flame and filled it from a skylark vial. I tied a tourniquet around my upper arm, and made the injection. I flushed the syringe out with my own blood and pulled the spike from my arm. Then I keeled over, into the leaves. An aching nausea filled my empty stomach and dispersed as my rush came on. Gradually and gratefully I gave up on thinking about anything at all.
The tops of the oak trees were pushed by a wind that didn’t touch us below. Each gust churned the topmost boughs in the distance, then shook the branches above us as it passed.
A crunch sounded somewhere deep in the forest. Lightning glanced up from his book and stood up silently. He bent his longbow against his boot and strung it. He kicked the fire out, then hauled me to my feet by the scruff of my neck and simultaneously gave Wrenn a hefty kick on the bum. The Swordsman woke with a start and Lightning raised a finger to his lips. “Footsteps,” he whispered.
“Insects?” Wrenn’s eyes widened.
Lightning shook his head. After the first few trees the ground was obscure. I listened. The footfalls extended deep into the woods from our left to right. As they came closer, we could tell they were made by men. There were at least five directly ahead of us, but the noise seemed to stretch out far on both sides.
“How many?” Ata mouthed.
Lightning held up his free hand with the fingers extended, clenched his fist, then opened the fingers again.
Wrenn sprang to his feet, crossed his arms over his waist and drew his rapier and dagger at the same time. Mist pawed uneasily for the 1851 Wrought sword that she carried buckled to her pack.
The footsteps resolved; the people making them walked about two meters apart. I peered into the gnarly gloom but I couldn’t glimpse anybody. We should be able to see them by now. I smelled hot oil. The crunching continued; they were almost on us. They stopped. There was silence.
Wrenn went into guard.
A yellow glare turned our camp bright as day. Black jumped to colors, disorienting us. They had been carrying covered lanterns and with one accord they raised their shutters.
I was less blinded than the others. I turned as a man jumped from the forest behind us. Dagger in hand, he ran past Lightning and cut the bowstring with a neat slice. Lightning’s powerful longbow sprang back straight.
It gave a dry crack. Splits opened along the bow’s limbs from the tips to the grip. It snapped its eighty-kilo draw weight back into his arm. Lightning jerked away so the string didn’t gash his face. The shivered wood creaked. He dropped it and the arrow, and grabbed his left arm. “Damn you, Gio Ami! Traitor and sneak!” He drew his sword with an efficient gesture but his wrenched arm seemed awkward.
The horses neighed and reared, frightened. They pulled out their tether pegs and scattered.
I can’t take off. The branches are too dense for me to push up between them. I’d be scratched to bits and never break through into the clear air. Fuck it, there isn’t even enough room between the trees for me to open my wings, let alone run with them spread.
Gio sauntered toward Wrenn, gazing fixedly at him.
“Revenge isn’t worth it,” I said quietly.
“Comet, aren’t you fast?” Gio sneered. “Is fame worth it? I walked through Wrenn’s party and no one spoke to me. When I entered the hall, the Eszai all fell quiet and turned their backs. You didn’t even notice me!”
He pointed his rapier at Wrenn. Gio still wore the blue frock coat, open to his naked chest. His dusty trousers were the same, tucked into scuffed boots with stirrup guards. He had probably been riding between manors, raising his rabble, for weeks. His fair hair was dirty; strands escaped his ponytail and hung around his face. His lip raised in loathing, hatred contorted his features; it burned in his eyes as he stared at Lightning. I thought: This is not the Gio I once knew. I must be careful until I know what he’s become. I said, “What do you really want?”
“I want to fight the novice.”
Wrenn’s whole body language was a swagger. He spun his poniard like a drumstick. “I’m Serein. I get to live till god comes back. What’s it like to be older, Gio?”
Gio kept his rapier leveled at Wrenn. He motioned with his dagger and the twenty or so men behind him placed their lamps on the ground and advanced.
Lightning stepped across in front of Mist. His gallantry annoyed Gio so much that he turned from Wrenn and made a thrust low under Lightning’s sword. Lightning evaded it expertly. Gio’s rapier was blacked with boot polish; the point was difficult to see. He stabbed in again. Up went his other hand to ward off an overhead blow from Wrenn.
“Oh, shit,” said Mist. She slid her Wrought sword from its scabbard.
“Keep a clear head!” I shouted to her. “They’re nothing but Insects-defend yourself!”
My old gangland fury seeped through my high. If these guys are attacking me it’s their funeral! A man squared up to me, tall and very broad. Everything was dark and indistinct but I glimpsed the purple ribbon of Ghallain Fencing School wound around his swept hilt. Bugger. There’s no way I can stand against one of Gio’s fencing instructors. The man smiled, his teeth incandescent white in his shadowed face. He watched me like a cat with a mouse many times its size. He strutted and said, “Comet?”
A fencing master wouldn’t use such bluster, only a poser apprentice. To bolster their own self-esteem town-boys have to believe they can fight. Heat rose into my head. I yelled, “What?”
I ducked under his blade, came up well in distance, kneed him in the balls and as he fell sank my ice axe in his throat. The pick emerged from the back of his neck, shining, covered in blood.
I didn’t see Gio’s next moves because I pounced onto the man’s body, both feet on his chest, to pull my pick free. I rolled and slammed it through the nearest foot with so much force that I fastened it to the earth. The foot belonged to the man Mist was fighting. He howled. He jerked his leg, tripped over the handle, which jolted the pick from his shoe. He reeled away.
It seemed that Gio was now the one prepared to die in the struggle for immortality. Wrenn stamped the ground and thrust at Gio. He blocked it halfway. His rapier and dagger moved fast as an Insect’s feelers, keeping Wrenn at bay. Wrenn failed to engage his sword and Gio reached right to cut at Lightning.
None of the Zascai were prepared to help Gio take on Lightning or Serein. They concentrated on me instead, stepping forward warily, trying to time their attack together. I backed against a tree and motioned for Mist to do the same. She never stopped swearing as she raised her katana with both hands. A gleam ran along its perfect edge, daunting the rebels.
Gio circled Lightning’s short sword with his rapier blade and then hit it hard under the forte. He flowed the move on with grace, beat away the straight thrust Wrenn made at his chest. He kicked a foot at Wrenn’s hips, shoving him off balance. Wrenn bounded back, spread his wings.
The man fighting me turned and ran. I looked to Mist; she was shaking, white hands wrapped around her hilt and an expression of disbelief on her face. Blood peeled off the blade’s razor edge. Her adversary lay on the ground in two pieces. For one beat, blood pumped out slickly around his solid guts. His lips moved, then set.
“Shit,” I said. “It went straight through him!” I hadn’t seen before what a blade designed for cleaving Insects could do to a human.
Mist said nothing, trying to think her way out of the horror.
Gio spun on the ball of his foot and lunged at Lightning. Lightning missed his parry but instinctively turned away from the point. It ripped through the left side of his shirt at the waist and into his back.
Gio whipped out the black blade, thirty centimeters slick with blood.
Lightning fell to his knees, heavily. Gio turned to Wrenn.
The Zascai stopped and looked at Lightning. He lay on his side with his body arched, knees bent, his wounded side raised from the ground. His eyes clenched shut with agony; he drew deep breaths through his open mouth.
The thugs shrank back, their broadswords loose in their hands. Gio’s charisma had worn off and they were themselves again, every terrified individual. I shouted, “See what you’ve done? Killed the Archer!” I made no attempt to hide the panic in my voice. “Lord Micawater. The oldest man in the world after the Emperor himself! Put your weapons down!”
Their blades dropped to the earth. They turned tail and fled, in ones and twos, every direction into the forest. I yelled after them, “San will bring you to justice! I’ll see you all hang!”
Gio and Wrenn were still dueling to kill fifty meters away. Gio forced Wrenn to retreat against a broad oak trunk; he was in danger of tripping over its roots. The last of Gio’s allies raced past. A look passed between them-the terrified man urged Gio to run. Gio glanced back, realized his friends had split and his chance had gone. He jumped out of Wrenn’s reach, shouted something I couldn’t catch, then disappeared between the trees.
“What did he say?” said Wrenn. “Jant, chase him!”
“No such thing-look at Lightning!”
“Hurry!” Mist snapped. “Help me with Saker! Saker, you’re going to be all right.”
Lightning’s square face was pallid as clay; sweat broke out on his forehead. His body was rigid. “Leave me alone,” he said faintly. He tried to fend me off and pull himself into a sitting position, so Wrenn and I supported him, me on the left and Wrenn on the right, and eased him against a tree trunk. We propped him upright and I rucked up his shirt to see the damage.
The rapier had passed through the forearm of his left wing, between its two long bones; radius and ulna, and then out and through the wing’s bicep before gouging deep into his side. So his folded wing had been stuck through twice, leaving two entrance holes and two exit holes, but it had protected his side from receiving the length of the blade.
Lightning tried to spread his wing but couldn’t. “It’s only a scratch,” he said, vaguely and inaccurately. I took its wrist, held together its three elongated fingers and pulled it open with a grating sound deep within the lacerated gristle. Blood flowed in strong pulses from the upper limb and soaked it. Normally broad with splayed feathers like a hawk, it looked thin with the wet golden plumage plastered down to the skin.
“Water. Hot water.” I rounded on Wrenn. “You can do that, can’t you?”
Wrenn fetched a canteen from the fire Ata had built and began to pour water through Lightning’s wing. I whispered, “He can live without a pinion. The stab in his side’s more serious. Here, cut away the shirt.”
Lightning tried to tug his wing out of my hand. He would rather die of blood loss than be in such an improper position. “I’m sorry, Saker,” I said aloud. “We have to treat it.”
We mopped away the blood on his back, leaving a red-brown map of his skin’s tiny pores and lines. The skin around the puncture hole was spongy and inflamed. Lightning was growing too confused to be rid of our administrations. “Better luck next time,” he said to Wrenn, then rested his head on his knees. “Ah…it bloody…hurts.”
I applied my tourniquet to his wing for a minute while I cut strips from his shirt to make a field dressing. It was impossible to tell how deep the wound was. I saw that it was more than four centimeters, but I had been taught not to probe them. I couldn’t do anything about internal bleeding. I couldn’t prevent infection; I didn’t have sutures, nothing even as basic as a mold plaster or a clean bandage. Lightning looked so weak that all I felt was shame. I had never seen him like this before, and I should never have to. It wasn’t the right way around: as at Slake Cross, I should be the injured one and Lightning should be helping me. He’s the second-oldest Eszai, the richest immortal. He is the center of Awia; he taught me its language, etiquette, martial arts. His money drip-feeds Wrought. What will happen without him? “My god, what are we going to do?”
Mist said, “Finish the job.”
Wrenn said meekly, “How can I help?”
I yelled, “Look after your own sorry hide! Gio had a system for fighting two men that you didn’t know!”
Mist spat, “Shira, keep working. Wrenn, then go and fetch the horses.”
Wrenn plunged about in the forest, falling over, cracking branches and making an awful noise. When he returned holding the reins of our three mounts Mist took two from him and left him with his palfrey. “Ride back to the Culver Inn, find our coach and summon the driver. I’ll build the fire up so you can see where we are.”
The Swordsman was only capable of a canter rather than a gallop; he led his horse to the road and we heard its hooves resound loud in the night then steadily fade. Mist said, “I wish you weren’t tripping so hard.”
“Ha! I saved you.”
She looked surprised. “Well, a second later I saved you! That man I cut apart, he…Oh, forget it…”
A quick fix would steady me and help me think clearly. Or I could take my whole supply; unconsciousness was very appealing. I pushed the inappropriate thought away and said, “He can’t reach the Castle. In fact, I don’t want him to lie in a coach even as far as Eske.”
Lightning forced himself to recover a little. Calmly but muzzily he said, “San needs us. I’ll be there. Gio broke my bow…Pass me my bow; I want it.” He was blanking out the pain, which I admired because I have tried to do that more than once and failed. “I hate rapiers. A murderer’s sword. Worse than…”
“You haven’t been hurt before in my memory,” said Mist.
“Long ago.” Lightning sighed.
“There’s something I can give you,” I offered, gesturing for Mist to fetch the splintered longbow and my pack. “Everything will look a little strange for a while but you’ll be too relaxed to care. Don’t worry and let yourself-”
Lightning seized my hand and clenched it so tightly I winced. “No drugs. Promise?”
He spoke with such certainty that I nodded. “I promise.”
He huffed in great breaths, chest heaving like the sides of a tent in a gale. Then he lay down carefully and in a couple of gasps was unconscious. Mist dragged across his opulent gold and pale yellow coat, its gray fur lining collecting beechmast and broken twigs. We draped it over him.
Then I sat down beside him on a tree root. I ignored the blood soaking through my trousers and tried to sense the Circle. The Doctor once told me how, but she had more practice than me. She had taught herself to feel when the threads of our lifelines are strained. She can sense if someone is close to death because they pull on the Circle and it tries to hold them. Like a spider with her fingers on invisible filaments, it’s possible that she already knows Lightning is injured. The Emperor would feel it; after all, he makes the links, sharing our time and preventing us from dying.
I watched the rise and fall of Lightning’s shallow, in-shock breathing. If it stopped, I wanted to be prepared for the terrible sensation, the very moment when he rips through the Circle. No, I mustn’t think that.
Mist stalked up to the fire and turned to me, her expression livid. “Zascai shouldn’t be able to murder Eszai. Immortals can’t be struck down this way! Saker can’t die. He’ll wake up. I’ll kill Gio Ami. I will-the bastard-how could he dare?”
“Ata-”
Her white hair tousled as she beat her fists on her thighs. “Gio Ami. When I’ve finished with him there won’t be enough left for a dog to roll in!”
“Look,” I said loudly. “The thrust hit his wing and didn’t go deep in his back. If dust doesn’t infect it, the wound may not be fatal. But if we stay here, I won’t bet on it. Return to Awndyn, and his so-called lover can nurse him.”
Mist’s eyes glittered; their shine in the darkness looked halfway insane. “No-on to the Castle.”
“You landed us here. For once plan for someone other than yourself.”
“I can’t believe a Rhydanne has the gall to say that!”
“Only half-”
She interrupted, “If we retreat we give Gio the advantage.”
“As if we have the advantage now!” I glared at her. “Wrenn’s illegal vendetta against Gio is bad enough without you joining in. He’ll duel with Gio’s followers all together or one at a time. Now you are trying hatred on for size.”
“You’re right,” she said softly.
“Eszai are supposed to work together; let’s earn our immortality. Damn it, Mist, god will show up, coffee mug in hand, before you bother cooperating. Go back to Awndyn, where I’ll bring you San’s directions as I should have done in the first place.”
Hours passed and Wrenn did not return. I watched over the Archer, straining to see by the insipid moonlight. Mist said little but glowered more and more until sometime in the early hours she burst out, “I should have gone instead!”
“Serein is a poor rider but nominally the best Swordsman,” I said shortly.
“Well, where has he got to? Has he been captured?”
“I hope not. Lightning’s condition is deteriorating, thankfully slowly because he’s strong. It’s imperative we get him out of this wilderness.”
Mist stomped around the clearing, cracking twigs underfoot and kicking dry leaves onto the hearth. I hissed, “Keep quiet! And keep listening; Gio might return. You islanders don’t realize how far your noise carries.”
Lightning woke up but only stayed conscious, unmoving, for a few minutes. I tried everything except scolopendium but I couldn’t bring him back.
I sighed. “Gio’s wrecked his chances of regaining the Circle, that’s for sure. He could have-one of my predecessors was displaced then rejoined it.”
Ata shook her head. “There was such a fast turnover of Messengers that they had a good attitude; they saw it as a temporary prize and a few more years of life. I remember one man, three or four Messengers back, who when he lost his Challenge joined the Imperial Fyrd. We saw him grow old. But most people who leave the Circle are too broken to try again.”
If I was displaced from the Castle as a Messenger, I would try to convince San to make me a new place in the Circle-an Eszai for reconnaissance. Somebody might one day be able to outpace me, but they would never manage a bird’s-eye view. It is theoretically possible for someone to hold two titles in the Circle but it has never happened because it’s so difficult to keep hold of even one title. Anyway, seeing as every Eszai has to be beaten on his own terms, I would change the requirements of my Challenge to favor my strengths no matter who I’m up against.
All I really fear is the advent of another hybrid like me who has taught himself to fly and appears out of the blue with a Challenge. As far as I know I am unique and I’m careful not to have any children. In mortal living memory, relations between the countries of Darkling and Awia have become appalling; Rhydanne and Awians are active enemies, at least in the Carniss area. I only know of one marriage between them, when Jay “Dara,” a fyrd captain from Rachiswater and man of rare tastes, climbed to Scree to find himself a wife.
Jay was my best soldier and after Pasquin’s Tower Battle nearly thirty years ago, when the governor of Lowespass was killed, I placed Jay and his wife Genya as governors in Lowespass fortress. I knew that I could check on them there, and especially on any of their off-spring that might have both a sprinter’s speed and long wings. But unfortunately for Jay running Lowespass fortress is a hazardous job, and twenty-one years later he died childless when Insects ambushed him by the Wall.
Gradually the sky paled; the darkness shrank away into the long shadows of the trees across the whole forest. The dawn chorus broke out; roosting birds roused and called from the branches above us. Mist listened to them with extreme suspicion as she chewed the last of the pan forte.
She paused, hearing the clop of hooves and the heavy whirring of ironbound coach wheels from the direction of the road. Between the trees a light glowed, faded. The din ceased. Wrenn’s voice called, “Comet? Hey!”
I raised my voice: “Hey, Serein! Over here!”
“Good morning. I’m sorry I took ages. It was a long way and there were rebels everywhere.” The young man’s voice swung toward us, obscured by the sound of hacking as he cut his way through dewy briars. He emerged from a thicket, grinned and pointed his rapier at the road. “But they’ve all passed by now.”
I motioned for Wrenn to help me lift the Archer. He said, “I feel as if I shouldn’t touch Lightning.”
“I understand. You heard tales of his exploits in history when you were a boy, right? Well, you take his legs and I’ll lift his arms.”
We struggled to carry Lightning out of the forest, over the uneven ground. He seemed even bigger limp and lifeless, and was a dead weight, although his bones were hollow. Wrenn climbed into the coach, reached down to grasp him under the arms and pull him up.
“It’s not as elegant a carriage as he might have wished,” Mist remarked dryly, but with obvious relief.
I laid Lightning on his side, on the floor because the seats were occupied by our sea chests. The wound in his back started bleeding again, dark and clotted blood. Mist stanched its sluggish flow with the last of the cloth. “What am I supposed to do?” she snapped. “I don’t have the faintest idea how to care for casualties. Jant, come with us to Awndyn. Tris is three thousand kilometers away, and at the moment your report is hardly San’s vital priority!”
“But I have to help San muster fyrd against Gio.”
Wrenn said, “You can’t stop Gio; you’re just a messenger…Shit, I’m sorry, Jant.”
I said, “Don’t you dare go after Gio! Sit up there with the driver.” Wrenn hopped onto the bench with the nervous obedience of a captain receiving direct orders. I took the opportunity to whisper, “I’ll accompany you to Awndyn and we won’t stop en route. But when I leave you, don’t trust Mist. She doesn’t fancy you, Wrenn; it’s all bluff. Ignore her seductive words and low-cut tops if you know what’s best. Without Lightning, you and I have little protection from her schemes. And-I never thought I’d say this, but-beware of Zascai. Too many are Gio’s devotees.”
“Jant, this is overcautious.”
“No. Do as I say. When I return with San’s orders I want to find you alive.” I climbed into the coach and thumped the ceiling. The driver cracked his reins, and we gathered speed down the straight road. The forest formed a block on both sides, a palisade of trees. The Remige Road was so silent that I found it hard to believe our desperate fight had actually occurred.
We reached the manor house after five hours and I ransacked it for medicines. I explained everything to Swallow Awndyn, who made sure that the Archer was given a clean bed. The manor’s resident sawbones was a sensible man, but seemed to be completely out of his depth.
I wrote a letter for Swallow’s courier to deliver posthaste to the Doctor at Hacilith University: “For the hand of Ella Rayne only. Follow the bearer to Awndyn manor where Lightning lies in a serious condition from rapier wounds. A single thrust pierced his wing twice and made a puncture lesion in his back near the kidneys which pours blood at the slightest provocation. Rapid pulse and dyspnea; the rapier blade was dirty. C.J.S.”
I caught a few hours of sleep but it was late on Monday evening, a full twenty-four hours after we were ambushed, when I felt able to leave Lightning and set out for the Castle.
I flew in a strikingly clear sky. A full moon gibbered over the forest. Above me, stars between stars; the familiar constellations could scarcely be distinguished among the litter of faint points of light. The immensity of what had happened began to weigh on me. “Saker,” I said aloud. Lightning was hurt. But why now? He had survived so long. I had never known him injured by Insects; he could only be hurt by people, now that the Empire was turning on itself. I flew, chilled by extreme loneliness. Tern has abandoned me and now Lightning was gone. I need to take a bit more scolopendium, I thought, and was suddenly terrified that I might. I was vastly more afraid of scolopendium now that I was alone.
Strange. I beat my wings, finding their strength reassuring. I can rely on no one. Whatever I am going to do is up to me now and I have to stay alert. We must trust the Emperor. My wingtips brushed the forest canopy as I flew low, throughout the night, back to the Castle.