Steph Swainston - No Present Like Time

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.