Philip Reeve - A Darkling Plain

Oenone returned the bow, nervous, still not quite trusting him. “There is a woman in the cabin who needs care. Is there a field hospital here?”

The soldier pointed toward a hummock of camouflaged bunkers on the horizon. “Shall I call stretcher bearers?”

“I WILL CARRY HER,” said Grike. He pulled the curtain aside and lifted Hester easily and carefully in his arms. Theo and the others made to follow him as he carried her to the open hatch, but the subofficer, feeling things sliding out of his control, moved quickly to stop them, barring their way with a raised hand.

“She will be well looked after, Ladyship,” he promised Oenone. “But you and these other foreigners must come with me. I have orders to bring you before the sector commander.”

The part of the line where the Shadow Aspect had landed was commanded by the motherly General Xao. Sleepy eyed but smiling, she welcomed Oenone and her followers to the dugout where she had her headquarters. It was a pleasant place, as dugouts went; not too damp, the floor flagged with slate, the wooden walls whitewashed and hung with pictures. In the general’s private quarters photographs of her dead family stood among the statues of her household gods on an elaborate shrine. A potbellied stove gave out a dry heat that made Pennyroyal’s soggy clothes steam so much, the general suggested he take them off, and made one of her plumper staff officers lend him a spare uniform and an elegant gray cloak. Oenone had also changed into Green Storm uniform, and had washed her face and hair; she still did not look like an empress, but at least she looked less like a street urchin.

The general’s servants brought rice wine, steamed rolls, tea. Theo pulled off his flying jacket and tried to stop himself from falling asleep on the folding chair that another servant set out for him. After the things they had been through that night, it all seemed impossibly luxurious. Although he had grown to hate the Green Storm, he had never doubted the strength or courage of their army, and it was a relief to think of all those brave soldiers and powerful guns standing between him and the cityfolk. He was not even worried about Hester, now that she was safe in the field hospital.

The general said, “My people are preparing a ship to carry you home to Tienjing, my lady. Her captain is a friend of mine, a supporter of General Naga; her crew can all be trusted. A Stalker-bird has gone east already to take the good news to your husband. I hope that it will restore his spirits.”

“He is ill?” asked Oenone, alarmed.

General Xao looked glum. “There have been no clear orders from Tienjing for weeks. We have warned your honored husband about the buildup on the other side of the line, and the harvester suburb that raided Track Mark 16 last month. We have told him that we cannot hold these positions if the cities attack; he does not seem to care. It is as if, when he heard word of your death, he gave up all hope.”

Oenone looked for a moment as if she would cry. She said hoarsely, “Can’t we contact him more quickly? I could talk to him by long-range radio…”

Xao shook her head. “I dare not risk it, Lady Naga. The barbarians could intercept your message, and try again to kill you.”

“It was not the barbarians who tried to kill me the first time,” said Oenone. “It was barbarians who saved me, with Theo’s help.”

“Indeed.” The general nodded, smiling at Theo and then at Pennyroyal. “We have heard of Professor Pennyroyal’s bravery.”

“Professor Pennyroyal’s bravery?” Theo almost choked on the roll he was munching. He wondered if the general was slightly drunk. First her defeatist talk about not being able to hold the line and now this! “ What have you heard?” he asked.

“We have listening posts deep in no-man’s-land that eavesdrop on the townies’ radio transmissions,” explained the general. She reached for some papers on her desk. “This is a news bulletin that went out on Murnau’s public screens a few hours ago.” She skimmed the transcript’s first two paragraphs, then cleared her throat and read, “The raiders were helped by an agent within Airhaven, the notorious author, charlatan, and former mayor of Brighton, Nimrod B. Pennyroyal. As the Green Storm spy ship left, several eyewitnesses saw the traitor Pennyroyal running after it, shouting, “What about my money?”

“A traitor? Me?” Pennyroyal looked outraged.

“Only to the Tractionist barbarians,” said General Xao. “To our people you will be a hero.”

“But—gosh! Will I?”

“To think that the mayor of a barbaric raft town could come to see the error of his ways so clearly that he would risk his own life to free a Green Storm prisoner,” the general went on. “Your statue will stand in the Hall of Matchless Immortals in Tienjing. Naga will reward you richly. He—”

A junior officer entered, bowing nervously and murmuring something in Shan Guonese. The general frowned, standing up. “Forgive me; I am needed outside.”

“What is happening?” asked Oenone.

“Our sound mirrors are detecting engine noise from the cities… We have been expecting an attack, but not so soon. Great Gods, I’ve still not had the reinforcements I asked for last month!” A bell began to ring on the bank of field telephones in the next room; then another and another. General Xao snapped an order at her underling and said to Oenone, “Excellency, you must take ship at once. I will not risk—”

An enormous roll of thunder drowned out the remainder of her words. The floor shook, and dust sifted down between the planks of the low roof. Pennyroyal started to call on his peculiar gods again. Theo looked at the table where he had set down his teacup, and the cup was dancing, dancing to the boom, boom, boom of the thunder. A soldier came scrambling into the bunker, and although he was shouting his report in Shan Guonese, Theo and his companions knew what it meant, even before General Xao turned to them and said, “It is beginning! All their cities are on the move! Dozens of cities! Hundreds of suburbs!”

They stood up, indignant at being plunged into another adventure before they’d had a chance to recover from the last. “What about Hester and Mr. Grike?”

“I will have your friends meet you at the airfield,” shouted General Xao. “Now go quickly, and gods preserve us all…”

They followed a subofficer out of the headquarters and through trenches where hundreds of soldiers were hurrying to their positions. The thunder from the west was shockingly loud. The sky above the front-line trenches pulsed with light. Pennyroyal looked terrified. Theo, wincing at the noise of the blasts, kept reminding himself that most of it was probably the Green Storm’s artillery firing at the cities; any attack would soon be beaten off.

Only Oenone had been in the front line before. She recognized the complex shudderings of the earth in the same way a city person would understand what each movement in the deck plates meant. She knew that somewhere, not far away, fighting suburbs were advancing at high speed behind a rolling barrage of snout-gun shells. She prayed as she ran, wondering if even God would be able to hear her above all the din.

They zigzagged through a communications trench, and there ahead of them was the airfield. A corvette was waiting on a central pan while pods of Fox Spirits went snarling into the primrose sky from hangars dug into the hillsides behind her. She was called the Fury, and her engines were already in take-off position, the propellers a blaze of silver. As they crossed the muddy docking pan, a half-track marked with the caduceus symbol of the medical corps came speeding up, slewing to a halt near the foot of the Fury’s gangplank. Grike swung down out of its belly and reached back to help the bearers bring Hester’s stretcher out.