Steph Swainston - No Present Like Time

“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.

Ifollowed the Eske Road in, a gray line ruled through the woods. If I had to rely on my compass, then the crosswind, gentle as it was, would have pushed me northward kilometers off course.

By dawn, the Castle was a dark smudge on the horizon. Even at this distance I could sense the tension: something was wrong. Dozens of tiny fires were scattered just inside the forest’s fringe where it ended at the clear grass of the demesne surrounding the Castle.

Hundreds of specks fanned out from under the trees-running men who purposefully converged on a few sites and set to work. I approached watching timber being felled, ranks formed out of thronging mobs. They abandoned carts to choke the final approach of the road, and at the forest’s edge they were winding back the huge wooden arms of trebuchets. I counted six machines of the largest class. Men with shovels were rapidly topping up their counterweight boxes with earth, while another team systematically dismantled the last watchtower on the Eske Road, carting blocks back and distributing them, stacking a pile beside each catapult.

Just forward from the trebuchet line, Gio’s rebels drew up into a long ragged crescent in front of the Castle’s east wall, centered on the Dace Gate. Facing them across the open ground, with their backs to the Castle and the outer moat, was a much smaller formation, the Castle’s defense.

They were framed between the Northeast and Southeast towers: Fescue Select, Shivel Select in front of Fescue General, Shivel General-the full fyrd of two Plainslands manors, but only two. Either the rebellion was very widespread or the manors could not marshal men in time. Their banners cracked in the breeze, a sound that always filled me with dread. The center was a solid block of heavily armored hastai-veteran Select infantry-and a figure so huge that as I angled over them I easily recognized Tornado. To either side ranked pikemen raised a forest of jostling pikes. Cavalry pawed restlessly at the flanks, Hayl’s white horse pennant above the larger group. All the loyal fyrd were unusually well equipped and their armor shone-they were offering a deliberate contrast to the ragged rebels.

Hundreds of helmets glinted as they looked up to see me flying over. I waved my arms in acknowledgment. Don’t look at me, I thought; watch the rebels! I passed above the curtain wall, reassured by its bulk. Along the east wall, longbowmen of the Imperial Fyrd were stationed between the crenellations-I suddenly realized that the toothed tops of the towers were not just for decoration; the defenders on the parapet could shelter from missiles behind each merlon tooth. But the Castle was the only fortress to have crenellations-the Insect forts, like Lowespass, didn’t have or need them. The Castle was a fortress designed for protection against people as well as against Insects. “Shit,” I said aloud in astonishment. “How long ago had San anticipated this?”

The two forces faced each other, hearing the clacking as six trebuchet arms wound tight and still tighter. Each side waited for the other to move first. I banked around the Southeast Tower thinking that I couldn’t tell Tawny anything that he couldn’t see from the ground, so I circled up two hundred meters in the dawn air, wary of more arrows.

Archers detached from the main crescent of rebels and advanced slowly, their line like a loose screen. Tornado’s infantry responded by locking their hooked square shields together into an unbroken wall. A second later the ranks raised their shields over their heads, forming a makeshift roof against the arrows. The odd formation was unlike anything I had seen before, but I admired Tawny’s ingenuity.

With a crash of counterweights, the arms of all six trebuchets jerked up. I was far above them and saw, in plan, six stones arc out. One smashed down just in front of the machine-the stone had been too light; the middle two fell short, ripping up turf swaths; a fourth crunched through the canopy of the farthest plane tree in the paddock and dropped into the moat in a white water spout. Two rocks seemed to grow in size as they came up under me, shrank on their descending trajectories and struck the crenellations. Bowmen dived out of the way as chips flew off the facing stone.