Ventus by Karl Schroeder (leveled readers .txt) 📕

Lavin nodded. “Is it safe?”

“Uh… not my department…”

“Find out. We will use it if we have to. Report back to me in an hour—and tell Hesty about this right away. Now excuse me.”

He rounded the tent in time to see them lower a body from the scaffold. Two soldiers heaved it up between them and carried it to a low pile of corpses nearby.

The rope had already been put around Enneas’ neck. The other end went up over the arm of the scaffold and to the halter of a bored horse. To hang Enneas, all they would have to do was walk the horse a few meters.

The thief’s eyes were closed. He seemed to be praying. But he didn’t beg, and he stayed on his feet, though he tottered.

Lavin was angry about the sabotage. It would cost him lives if the steam cannon were inoperable. He nearly turned and marched back his tent. Maybe though, just maybe, this man could make up for those potential casualties.

Still, he waited until the horse began to walk, just to see if the thief would break down. The rope tightened around his neck, but he didn’t struggle as he was lifted skyward.

“Stop! Cut him down!” Lavin strode over to the scaffold. Surprised soldiers jumped to untie the rope from the horse’s harness. Enneas fell to the ground, choking, dirt grinding into his bloody back.

They hauled him to his feet and unwound the rope. He coughed and gasped, and blinked at Lavin with his good eye.

“You have your life,” Lavin told him, “if you tell me what you know, and if I judge that it will be of use to me.”

Enneas’ knees buckled. He managed to croak, “Done!” before he fainted.

Through dusty, unventful days the passenger carriage had trundled its way south. Calandria May knew the shape of the seats intimately now; she felt her body had become moulded to conform to them, it certainly wasn’t the other way around. The primitive suspension of the vehicle sent every jolt and rattle of the wheels up her spine and into her throbbing head. And the thing was slow, stopping frequently at mail drops or to exchange horses.

Still, it was all they’d been able to afford with the last of their funds. This route would take them unobtrusively into Iapysia, where hopefully they could acquire some faster transportation. The country was in enough chaos that hopefully a couple of stolen horses wouldn’t be missed.

“My, you’ve become a paragon of caution,” Axel had said to her when she told him of this plan. “What happened to ‘get the hell down and find Armiger at all costs?’”

She’d shrugged. “What’s the point? We don’t have the weapons necessary to destroy him anymore. All we can do is observe until we can contact a passing ship and call in a strike.”

Their last reliable information had Armiger on his way to visit Queen Galas, who was either dead now, or still holed up in her palace, depending on who you talked to. Either way, it seemed unlikely that Armiger would still be going there, because her cause was doomed. They were rattling along in this carriage because the queen was their only lead. But there was no urgency to the journey now.

Axel was mostly recovered now, though you wouldn’t know it from the way he slept most of the day away. Without action to sustain him, he folded in on himself and became a dead weight. Calandria didn’t have the fight left herself to try to bring him out of his lethargy.

Consequently, when on a completely typical evening of jolting over rutted tracks, her skull computer said without warning Incoming transmission, Calandria May sat up straight and said, “Thank the gods!”

The passengers seated opposite them in the carriage didn’t look up; all three of them were nodding drowsily. They would have found it hard to hear Calandria over the noise of the wheels anyway.

She turned to find Axel staring back at her. She was just opening her mouth to ask him to please tell her he’d heard it to, when a different voice spoke in her mind.

“This is Marya Mounce of the research vessel Pan-Hellenia_. Can anyone hear me?“_

Axel’s face split in a wide grin. “A ride!” he said.

The other passenger on their side of the carriage mumbled something, and butted Axel with his shoulder.

The voice continued. “_I’m on a reentry trajectory. The Winds are after me. The Diadem Swans went berserk a couple of days ago and they’ve either captured or driven away all ships in the system. I tried to ride it out but they’re on to me now. I’m going to try to land at the coordinates of the last transmission we received from our agent on the surface._”

“Agent?” whispered Calandria. “So there really are some researchers down here right now?”

Axel looked uncomfortable. “Well, yes, but maybe not like you think,” he said.

It took her a minute to catch on. “You’re the agent she’s referring to?” Calandria said to him.

“Yeah, yeah. Look, I didn’t see any reason why I couldn’t make some money on the side, so when those galactic researchers asked whether I could feed them regular observations while I was here, I jumped at it. Why not? I didn’t think the Winds would be jumping down our throats quite so enthusiastically.”

She had to laugh. “You are full of surprises, you know that?” Usually they were unpleasant, but if this Mounce person was on her way to this part of the continent…

Calandria reached out and rapped on the top of the doorframe. “Driver. You can let us out here, please.”

*

An hour later they paused in the center of a darkening field in the very middle of nowhere. The milky way made a broad swath of light across the sky. Diadem was setting, its light glittering darkly off a lake near the horizon. There were no houses visible anywhere; other than the road, the nearest feature to the landscape was a dark row of trees along a nearby escarpment.

“There she is.” Calandria pointed to a slowly falling star at the zenith. “We’re going to have to break radio silence.”

Axel nodded. If Mounce’s ship landed back at the Boros manor, it would take them a week to reach it, and by then she would surely have lifted off again. Particularly if the Diadem Swans came down after her.

They watched the little spark overhead grow. Chill autumn wind teased at Axel’s long black hair. Neither spoke. Axel wasn’t sure what Calandria was feeling, but that dot of light represented escape to him, if they could get aboard it and evade the things that were chasing it.

“We may have to act quickly,” Calandria said. “Where would be a good spot?”

“Nowhere’s a good spot,” he said. “So we might as well flag her down right here. At least it’s level and open.”

“Here goes,” said Calandria. Then her voice spoke in his mind. “This is Calandria May calling the Pan-Hellenia_. Can you hear me?“_

They waited in tense silence. The brightening star had begun to drift away over the lake, following Diadem.

_”Hello! Yes, it’s me, Marya. Are you with Axel chan?“_

_”Yes.“_

_”They’re behind me, so I’m coming down at your last location—“_

_”No! Can you find us from this signal? We’re a couple hundred kilometers south of where he last contacted you.“_

_”Oh. I don’t know if I can… Yes, it says it can do that. Do you have shelter?_”

Axel and Calandria exchanged a glance. He squatted down and began pulling stalks of grass out of the ground. “Shit. Shit, shit shit.”

“Why do you need shelter?” asked Calandria. “Are you trying to pick us up, or—”

“Pick you up? I’m trying to stay alive! The Swans are behind me, they’re closing in. They’ve picked off every ship that’s tried to get past Diadem. I’ve stayed ahead of them this far by skimming the top of the atmosphere, but they’re all over. Everywhere! I— hang on—”

Axel could see his shadow on the grass. He glanced up, in time to see the star brighten again to brilliant whiteness, and swerve quickly in their direction. Around and above it, a coruscating glow had sprung up, like an aurora.

All over, thought Axel. Great.

“The forest,” said Calandria. “Come on!” She began sprinting. He looked up again, then followed.

Low rumbles like thunder began. Instead of fading, they grew. The sound was familiar to Axel, and unmistakable: something was coming in to land. The sound had a ragged edge to it. Years of exposure to spacecraft told him it was a small ship. The big ones sang basso profundo all the way down.

Their shadows sharpened as they ran. Axel began to feel heat on his face. The roar became a steady, deafening thunder. On the shoreline below, the crescent of sand lit amber under a midnight dawn. Axel knew better than to look directly at the spear of light settling towards them, though it seemed as though Mounce was going to bring her ship down right on top of them.

The sky was starting to glow from horizon to horizon. He’d never seen that effect accompany the arrival of a starship.

Axel redoubled his effort, though he had twisted his ankle and it spiked pain up his leg with every step. Calandria was pulling ahead, but he didn’t have the breath to spare to tell her to slow down.

Suddenly spokes of light like heat lightning washed across the sky. Their center was the approaching ship.

A blinding flash staggered Axel. Childhood memory took hold: he counted. One, two, three, four— Ca-rack! The concussion knocked him off his feet. He came up tasting grass and dirt.

Whatever that flash had been, it had happened less than a kilometer away. He blinked away lozenges of afterglow in time to see the brilliant tongue of fire overhead waver, and cut out.

A dark form fell with majestic slowness into the forest. As it disappeared a white dome of light silhouetted the treetops, and Axel felt the deep crump of impact through his feet.

Calandria was waiting at the edge of the forest. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he said through gritted teeth. “Let’s go.” They waded into the underbrush. The darkness would have been total under the trees, except that a fire had started somewhere ahead, and the sky was alive with rainbow swirls. Axel would have found them beautiful if he hadn’t been so frightened.

Of course, if there were any witnesses to this within fifty kilometers, they’d all be cowering under their beds by now. No sane person would want to be caught in the open when the swans touched ground.

It was dark enough that Axel couldn’t spot branches and twigs fast enough to prevent himself getting thoroughly whipped as they went. Stinging, his feet somehow finding every hidden root and rock, he soon lost sight of Calandria, who as usual moved through the underbrush like a ghost. He could hear his breath rattling in his lungs, and somewhere nearby the crackling of the fire. Above that, though, a kind of trilling hiss was building up. It seemed sourceless, but he knew it must be coming from the sky. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end; so did those on his arms. He might have preferred it if they were doing that from fright, but he knew it must be the effect of a million-volt charge accumulating in the forest.

“Axel!” He hurried in the direction of the voice. Past a wall of snapped tree trunks and smouldering loam, Calandria stood on the lip of the crater Marya Mounce’s ship had