Ken Liu - The Wall of Storms

“Your Highness, stay down!” one of the palace guards warned. “We don’t want them to pay attention to you, especially not now, given your—”

Before he could finish or Théra could answer, the deafening cheers of the defenders on the beach washed over them like a wave.

The great bamboo bolts were the creation of Miza Crun, the street magician and itinerant healer of Boama.

Each of the hollow bamboo shafts held an Ogé jar inside, just behind the diamond-enhanced tip. Made of the thinnest glass coated with silver inside and out, the jars were intended to present the largest possible channeling surfaces to hold silkmotic power.

To imbue the embedded Ogé jars with as much silkmotic force as possible, Miza Crun designed a massive silkmotic generator whose centerpiece was a disk of glass about ten feet across—this was probably the largest piece of glass ever created in the history of Dara, and the best glassworkers of the Islands had to make multiple attempts and deal with many cracked and broken prototypes before succeeding. The disk was fixed upon an axis of ironwood and spun by a system of belts and gears powered by windmills. Rubbers made of thick layers of silk wound tightly were then pressed against the glass to generate the silkmotic force, which was channeled by thick silver chains into the Ogé jars.

Once the bolts penetrated the thick bodies of the garinafins, the bamboo bolts flexed and bent until the Ogé jars broke, causing the silkmotic force to discharge.

Tests done by Miza Crun showed that the jolt from the discharge of one of these large Ogé jars was sufficient to stop the heart of a small animal. However, unless the bolt managed to embed itself in the heart of the great garinafin, killing by silkmotic arrow alone was at best a low-probability event. Not the sort of gamble that the marshal would take.

But Zomi Kidosu, with the help of Miza Crun, had come up with an enhancement to the silkmotic arrows.

Right behind the Ogé jar in each bolt, the hollow cane of the bamboo was packed with firework powder. One of the most visually impressive effects of a silkmotic discharge was the lightning-like spark it generated. This spark, the two engineers realized, could be used to set off an explosion.

The use of firework powder bombs wasn’t unknown in the annals of Dara warfare. Torulu Pering, for example, had devised floating lanterns packed with explosives and coated with tar that would stick to the hulls of airships, where they were set off by a slow-burning fuse. Other scholars had proposed adopting the design against the garinafins, but multiple difficulties aborted this plan. A tar-based attachment bomb was useless as explosions on the skin of the beasts would only cause superficial damage. A slow-burning fuse attached to a deep-penetrating bolt, on the other hand, would give the garinafin enough time to pull the shaft out.

But the silkmotic spark was the perfect trigger. Not only would the discharge shock the garinafin, temporarily paralyzing it, but it happened at the precise moment when the bomb was deeply embedded inside the garinafin.

Even so, it was hard to imagine a bamboo cane could be packed with enough firework powder to cause fatal injury. However, Atharo Ye, by now one of Dara’s foremost authorities on garinafin anatomy, devised yet another way to enhance the destructive power of the silkmotic bolts.

The garinafins, he pointed out, were simply thick layers of flesh wrapped around flammable bags of fermented gas. If the explosion caused by the discharge of the Ogé jar could be channeled to the gas sacs…

That was why the silkmotic arrows were also made with hollow tips and packed with thin nails that, upon the explosion of the firework powder, would burrow hundreds of channels into the viscera of the struck garinafin, maximizing the chance that one of the internal gas sacs would be breached to begin a chain reaction of fiery explosions inside their bodies.

The marshal had expressed great admiration for the ingenuity of Théra’s engineering team.

“Zomi deserves most of the credit,” the princess said.

“How did you come up with such inventive weapons in such a short time?” asked the marshal.

“Necessity,” said Zomi. Then she added, by way of explanation, “Engineering is a lot like the evolution of Ano logograms. We put existing components together to achieve a new purpose, recycle old ideas to express something new.”

“That sounds like the sentiments of an old friend,” said Gin.

Zomi nodded as they both thought about Luan Zyaji, who had taught Zomi to see the beauty of both engineering and Classical Ano in these terms.

“I know he would be very proud of you,” said Gin.

“And he would admire what you’ve done,” said Zomi. “Just as we’ve assembled a collection of odds and ends into a new weapon system, you’ve assembled a collection of individuals who no one thought belonged together—street magician, princess, failed rebel, renowned scholar, disgraced official, just to name a few—into a real team.”

Tanvanaki watched in disbelief as five garinafins were destroyed in an instant. She immediately placed her speaking trumpet against the back of the neck of Korva and started to order a retreat.

But a long, piercing bone trumpet blast blared from the deck of Pride of Ukyu , far below her on the surface of the sea: It was the call for the garinafin riders to press their assault, regardless of cost.

Tanvanaki looked down, and even in the crowd milling about on the ship, she easily picked out the eyes of her father: cold, determined, and relentless.

Wherever I point, you must attack.

Tanvanaki sighed, pressed her speaking tube into Korva’s neck, and ordered another assault. But once again, she told Korva to hang back.

Even the cheering crew on the airships had to admire the courage of the garinafin riders. Despite the death of so many of their comrades, they didn’t even hesitate as they rallied their stunned mounts, swooped around, and rushed to attack the airships a second time. The airship crews had expected the Lyucu would at least be temporarily demoralized by the shocking power of the silkmotic bolts.

Only Marshal Mazoti did not find the response surprising. An immediate follow-up assault was actually very sound tactics. The machinery for launching the silkmotic bolts was so cumbersome that reloading the giant crossbow would take some time. The lull right after a volley of bolts was the perfect time to attack, when the airships would be defenseless.

But the marshal had one more trick up her sleeves.

“Gaggers, get in position!” she ordered.

Dafiro Miro banged on the gong to pass the order on to the other ships.

Crew members scrambled over the sheer, billowing cliffs of the floating fortress, climbing into arrow slits placed in strategic locations in the hulls. They waited, ready for the assault.

The garinafins were within range.

The crossbows remained empty.

The jaws of the garinafins gaped wide, ready to snap shut for the sparks that would start the fire breath.

And a barrage of arrows—shot from regular longbows—streaked at them from the arrow slits, aiming for the wide-open mouths of the garinafins.

The garinafins ignored them. From experience, the beasts knew that ordinary arrows had no effect on them. Even the inner lining of the mouths of the garinafins, who were used to a diet of thorny, tough scrubland vegetation, was practically immune to most Dara weaponry. They beat their wings even faster, the gap between them and the airships rapidly closing.