Mitchell Smith: Kingdom River

"Safer, too," her Uncle Niles had said. "But you will go the difficult way, and air-walk – or, by Frozen Jesus, ground-walk – every mile south. It'll be good for you, Patience, knock some of the Lodge-Riley hoity-toity out of you."

Her Uncle Niles loved her, just the same. She was his favorite niece.

And it had been good for her, those weeks of air-walking. The first weeks were on the ice-sheet, then off it and down over warmer snowfields and sedge willow, past caribou ranches and little towns. Air-walking, and when her mind grew tired, ground-walking. Then, the occa, too baggage-burdened for her to ride, had circled overhead, hooting and honking as she strode along.

She'd hunted for herself and the occa when the smoked seal was eaten up, swooping – while remaining mindful of the ground she kept away – to snip the heads off wild turkeys or ptarmigan with her scimitar, to hack the necks of deer. Then landing, settling into snowy woods, she'd gathered dry branches for her fire, started it with her flint and steel… then butchered the meat out while the occa landed, loomed beside her, hobbling on knees – and what would have been elbows, otherwise – and poked at her with its long jaw, whining for bird or venison bones and bowels.

In all those weeks, Patience had been troubled only three times. An ice-fisher had refused to exchange her smallest silver coin for a meal, so she'd had to take two char from him – but only sliced him lightly, so as not to cripple, since property rights were sacred.

Later, while ground-walking through lower Map-Pennsylvania, well south of the ice-wall, she'd been chased up a tree by a hungry black bear. Too startled, too suddenly set upon, to push the ground away for rising in the air, she'd risen from the tree limbs soon enough and left the bear snuffling, clinging halfway up its climb to reach her.

Patience had been troubled those two times, and one time more. Deep in Map-Alabama, almost to the Gulf, she'd fluttered down to kill a woman who'd thrown a stone and almost struck her as she sailed over a hedge of holly.

… The hill ridge thumped beneath her in her mind, and Patience thought-stepped… thought-stepped down the western slope, the wind chilly at her hat's brim, lightly buffeting her face. Her face, charming, absolutely pretty by the judgment of everyone who knew her, was reddened, roughened by the weather of travel. But the inherited bit in the brain, that with training allowed a talented few New Englanders – and the very rare exceptions from other places – to air-walk and also keep warm on the ice, was no use in smoothing one's complexion. It seemed unfair.

Before her, across a wide valley to the west, rose mountains harsher than the Map-Smokies had been. The Sierra. A cold wind flowed down from them, and Patience thought heat and caused it to warm her ears, her gloved fingers… the tip of her nose.

She sailed on, out over the valley – sitting properly upright, her sheathed scimitar held across her lap. It was her joy, a present from her mother on her sixteenth birthday – two years ago, now – and a true Peabody of a thousand doublings and hammerings. She called it 'Merriment,' since it had antic curling patterns flowing in the surface of its steel, and also a modest, amusing style of slicing. She'd killed Teresa Bondi with it in a duel, and Tessie's parents had never forgiven her, said she was cruel, a spoiled brat, and bad.

Patience looked back and saw the occa laboring far behind. It appeared to be holding something in its long jaw.

She stopped in the air – a difficult thing to do – and sat waiting for it, rocking slightly in the mountains' breeze. The occa shied and swung on great leathery wings, with the foot-long toothed jaw and bald knob of its idiot head turned away as if not to see her. It did have something in its mouth.

Patience, impatient, whistled it over, and it slowly sidled toward her through the air, its long bat arms and long bat fingers – supporting a skin-membrane's wingspan of almost thirty Warm-time feet – fiddling with wind currents as it came.

Patience whistled again, made a furious face – and the creature came swiftly flapping through the air to her, wind-burned and whining, its wings buffeting alongside. Her baggage duffels and Webster's basket were strapped to its humped back. A sheep's leg hung bleeding from its jaws.

Patience leaned to rap it sharply on the head with her scab-barded sword, and dipped a sudden few feet as her concentration faltered, so she had to recover. "Drop!… Drop!" The creature was getting too fat for good flying as it was.

The occa muttered what was almost a word.

"Drop it!"

The sheep's leg fell away through the air. The occa bent its awkward head to watch it go.

"Now," Patience said, "you fucking fly. And keep up!"

"Signals say company's coming!" Margaret Mosten's round pleasant face appeared beside the tent flap. "From the Say-so mirror, far south slope."

Sam sat up. "What sort of company?"

"Wings." Margaret seemed not to notice the leather vodka flask lying on the floor beside the cot, the squeezed rind of lime from far south. "Some Boston flier, presumably. With winged item following.".

"From McAllen."

"Likely; they've been wanting to send someone down." Margaret watched him with concern. She'd never mentioned his drinking, never would. But twice – when traveling, not on campaign – he'd drunk from his saddle-flask to find the vodka and lime juice gone, replaced with water.

Sam swung off the cot. "What a pain in the ass." It was a Warm-time phrase out of copied books almost five hundred years old, a phrase that had become popular in the army. Too popular, so rankers were now forbidden to use it in reference to orders.

Sam stooped to pick up his sword belt… and had to steady himself, which Margaret appeared not to notice. "Where?"

"Michael Sergeant-Major is waving the thing in to the football pitch."

"Alright." Looping the belted sword over his right shoulder to rest aslant down his back, he followed Margaret out into an afternoon he found too bright for comfort, and cold with Lady Weather's commencing fall into Lord Winter's arms.

The camp was seething like cooking Brunswick at the flier's coming, but soldiers settled down along Sam's way, sensitive as girls to their commander's mood – many recalling duty elsewhere.

Football, the army's sport even in marching camps of war – though some said it was old Warm-time rugby, really – had been marked to be played just south of horse-lines on a stretch of meadow softened by cold-killed grass. The field, already enclosed by dismounted heavy cavalry, had been cleared of all except Michael Sergeant-Major, Margaret Mosten's man, who stood in the center of it waving a troop banner for a landing mark.

Sam saw a formed file of the Heavies' horse-archer squadron had arrows to their longbows. The bows, their lower arms curved short for horseback shooting, were half-raised, arrows nocked. He nodded that way. "Whose orders?"

"Mine," Margaret Mosten said.

"Quiver those arrows." He walked out onto the football field, looked up, and saw a figure high against the blaze of the sun. Didn't have to come out of the sun. Making an entrance.

"The thing's above." Margaret had come out to him. She was carrying one of the Heavy Infantry's crossbows, wound, cocked, and quarreled. "My privilege, sir," she said, as he noticed it. "Look there…"

High above the small human figure sailing down to them in silhouette – perhaps a woman, perhaps not – a larger thing wheeled and flapped.

Soldiers murmured at the edges of the field.

"Silence!"

Their commander's mood confirmed, murmuring ceased.