Karl Schroeder - Ventus

"...Came at me like that out of nowhere. Why? What did I do to deserve this?" He gestured at his leg, which lay exposed above the bedding. It was thickly wrapped in bloody bandages.

"How many did you say there were?" asked a man wearing the crimson ribbons of a priest.

"Five, six. I don't know! It all happened so fast."

"Well, you must have done something to offend them."

"Not necessarily," said another man. "Maybe someone else did. Matthew was passing by. He was a handy target."

"I don't understand," whined the man in the bed. "How am I going to work now?"

"Don't worry. We'll help you."

Armiger left this perspective for the next.

Still on her back. Cold stone and pebbles ground against her hips. Her legs were wrapped around the broad torso of the man who moved against her. Past his shoulder, Armiger could see bright stars.

He moved to the next remote.

Stumbling in the blackness, he went down on all fours. His own breath was a rasping rattle in his ears. This man stood, staggering now from a broad scrape down his leg, and ran.

Through leaves and dancing branches he ran—down a hillside, recklessly, barely keeping to his feet above prancing stones—and into an orchard. The limbs of the well-tended trees stretched skyward like supplicants' arms to heaven. He barely glanced up at them. After weaving his way down an alley between the trees, he allowed himself to slow, then to pause, and look behind him.

Nothing pursued him in the darkness. He looked up.

The night here was overcast, making the darkness near total. But past the crest of the hill he had just come down, above the clouds, light shone as though men with lanterns rode some causeway there. The lights were coming closer, with apparent slowness.

He gave a cry that was more a painful gasp, and turned to run again. A cottage was visible now at the end of the rows of trees. Low, stone, with a goat-pen attached, it glowed with internal firelight, warm and inviting. He renewed his run, breathing harshly.

Armiger felt the boards under him dip as Megan came out onto the porch. She said something. He raised one hand to still her.

The runner had reached the cottage. "Lena!" he cried, then flung himself to hang on the fence around the goatpen. He shuddered.

"Perce?" A young woman appeared in the cottage's doorway—uncannily silhouetted as Megan had been earlier. "Perce! What's wrong?"

"They're coming! Just like the old man said they were."

"No. That can't be. He's crazy, we all know it—"

"Look!" He reeled around, and pointed at the glowing sky.

She screamed.

"What's going on here?" An older man and woman appeared behind the girl.

"Perce!" She ran to him. Perce reached over the fence as she threw her arms around him. "What's going to happen?"

"The old man said they wanted to take me away." Perce laughed giddily. "We never believed he really spoke to them, remember? All those years... He said they'll take me. And I'll never see you again."

She buried her face in his neck, crying. He could see her parents standing in awkward confusion nearby. They were staring at the sky.

"I came to say goodbye."

"No," she said, muffled. "You can hide here. We'll take care of you. They'll go away."

"I tried hiding," he said. "They found me—started to pull the stables down around me! I ran to the river—dove in and let the rapids take me awhile. That's the only way I got as far ahead as I did. If I stay they'll kill you to get at me. But I couldn't go without saying goodbye."

She shook her head.

"There's so much I want to say," he mumbled. "Something—I wanted to say something to let you know how much you mean to me."

He pulled away, leaving her reaching for him over the fence. "All I could think of was when we were twelve. Remember when we played hide-and-seek in the orchard? That day? I dream about it all the time. Have, ever since."

Turning away to face the darkness, he said, "That's all—I remember that day. Goodbye, Lena."

She screamed after him but he ran with renewed energy. Armiger deduced he wanted to get as far from the cottage as he could before whatever was coming found him.

Perce ran around the goat pen and down a laneway that led between more orchards. Low fieldstone walls lined the laneway, and in the darkness they closed in claustrophobically. Perce's eyes stayed down though; he seemed to know what in the dark he was afraid of, and it was nothing that might lurk behind those walls.

He had gone perhaps half a kilometer, and was beginning to stagger desperately, when he heard a ripping sound overhead. It was a sound almost like a flag in the wind, almost like the blurred noise of a sword on the downstroke, but it went on and on, rising to a deafening crescendo. Dust leapt from the laneway around Perce, and he coughed, and stopped helplessly.

Giant claws crushed him. He shouted blood as they spun him around and pulled him into the sky.

Perce saw his hands reaching down to the receding lines of the laneway, then he saw the jewel-box perfection of Lena's cottage glowing below him. It was intact. Drops of blood trailed off his fingertips and fell toward it.

Darkness fell over him like a cloak.

Armiger cursed, and opened his eyes. Megan stood above him, her expression quizzical.

Something had severed his link to the remote.

"What is going on here?" he asked himself.

Megan laughed lightly. "I was about to ask you that myself. What are you doing?"

He shook his head, scowling into the night. Suddenly the shadows Diadem cast across the clearing didn't look so benign.

I have to leave , he thought. But, looking up at Megan, he found he didn't want to say that to her. In its own way, that was as disturbing as the vision he had just had.

He pushed the heel of one hand against his forehead, a gesture one of his lieutenants had favored.

"You're a mess," Megan said sympathetically.

Armiger thought about it. Then he squinted up at her. "Dear lady," he said, "I believe you are right."

Returning from exploring the local town, Axel found the road to the Boros estate blocked by a number of wagons. They sat listlessly in the hot sun, waiting for some obstruction ahead to clear.

His horse snorted and turned to look at him. Axel stretched and grinned. "You hate to wait, don't you?" he said to her. She swung her head away again.

He had gone into town to look for discrete lodgings for August, and to buy a good pair of horses for Calandria and Jordan. He'd found the lodgings, but not the horses. It was a good start.

He cantered over to the wagons. "Making camp?" he inquired of the driver of the wagon that sat square in the middle of the gateway. The man looked at him wearily.

"Everybody's a comedian. Sir," he added, noting the way Axel was dressed.

"Seriously, what's the hold-up?" One very large wagon blocked the wrought-iron gates to the estate. Axel supposed he could ride around through the underbrush. He didn't, but leaned forward as the other man pointed down the road.

"Breakdown up ahead."

Axel laughed. "Some things never change. Any chance you can move that cart a meter or two and let me by?"

"Yes, sir." The driver urged his horses forward a bit. Axel's own steed balked at the narrow opening between the stone gate post and the side of the wagon, so he dismounted and led it through.

Six or seven wagons waited on the roadway ahead. He didn't bother to mount again as he passed them.

Funny, he thought, but these wagons looked awfully familiar. Then he looked past them, and understood why.

Turcaret's steam car sat wreathed by smoke and mist a little down the road. The controller himself stood next to it talking to a pot-belled man in greasy velvet robes. Axel passed the lead wagon and walked up the center of the road to meet Turcaret.