Ventus by Karl Schroeder (leveled readers .txt) 📕

much as a single man from running up the stairs that had been built to welcome visitors. They would all die in the end, of course, and they knew it. Lavin’s men would spill into the tower; they would force her duennas up against the walls and kick down her door. By then she would be dead. Everyone knew that too. But nothing in heaven or earth could alter the course of things.

Except one thing…

Galas’ breath caught in her throat. She nearly fell, and braced herself on the stone balustrade that she had slid down once as a girl—when she was merely the mad princess.

If she were to die now, the siege would end without further bloodshed. It was simple.

“Oh,” she said aloud. If she cast herself from the tower, in full view of both attackers and defenders, then Matthias would live, Armiger and his Megan would live, her maids and cooks and the refugees from the experimental towns would be spared. They would be so disappointed in her, of course; and no one would ever follow the teachings of a suicide.

They won’t understand, she thought, as she walked slowly up the flight that led to the audience chamber. “How could they?”

She had no one person to love. Of necessity, she had to love all those around her—her defenders, the naive and idealistic fools who had swallowed her half-truths knowing them for what they were but keeping faith that she reasons to lie, that she would lead them to earthly salvation. In the end, her written ideology, the philosophy and new morals she had preached, were all means to an end. That end could never be reached; Armiger had taught her that. If so, then what mattered their disappointment, their disillusionment? They would hate her for leaving them alive, but they would be alive, and a life lived in bitterness was still better than a death colored by useless fanaticism.

She entered the audience chamber. Three of her duennas stood about the room, looking aimless and scared. They rushed to her when she entered, but said nothing. Their eyes searched out hers.

“Every enlightened path can turn on itself, and become a new tyranny,” she said. “The process begins the moment you truly, in your heart, believe in yourself.”

“Your highness, are you all right?” Their hands touched her arms, her dress. Like everyone else, they were coping with the fear of death by displacing their concerns on her.

“Leave me!” She stepped out of their grasp. “I am as I have always been.”

Before they could answer or follow, she ran across to the side entrance that led to her apartments. Slamming the door behind her, she bolted it.

Two more of her maids stood here in the little chamber where she had met with Lavin. They were staring at her, openmouthed.

“Go away!” She swept past them.

Ah. The stairs to the roof. This was all too simple, really. She had done her best, but the majority of people would simply never understand her. Armiger was right—the only paths forward for humanity lay in the tyranny of some demagogue or an inflexible ideology, or worst of all the tyranny of condescension. There were no queens or kings in the great interstellar civilization of which Armiger spoke. There was no one who stood in a position to gaze down upon it all.

She was halfway up the steps when her legs gave out. She wasn’t winded; some force seemed to push her down against the stones.

It was like a black cloud on the edges of her vision—some thought she was denying herself. What had she been saying to herself just now? Tyranny—yes, the tyranny of condescension. Her reasons for this were—they were—

The world had narrowed to the grainy stones centimeters below her. She was gasping, unable to breathe. The kingdom—her plans—

Lavin.

She gave a shriek and lurched to her feet, stepping on the hem of her gown and tearing it. Zig-zagging, bouncing off the walls of the stairwell, she stumbled to the rooftop.

There were men here; catapults. They were staring out at the smoke. Distant thuds signalled incoming missiles from Lavin’s steam cannon.

There was an open coign, across an open span of roof. She only had seconds now to endure this certain knowledge that the one person whom she had loved had come to kill her.

There were no more defenses. The guardian thoughts, her plans, the abstract perfection of her self-built ideology, lay in ruins. Galas was alone with the unendurable pain of her own failure, and so she ran to the edge of the roof with one hope in mind, that the stones of the courtyard would raise a wall against the pain once and for all.

She flung herself forward, saw the stones below and knew release—

—and was pulled back from the brink by shouting men.

Galas screamed, and fought, and screamed again. Struggling, screaming, she was dragged back across the roof and down the stairs, to the waiting arms of her duennas.

*

Calandria May stood next to one of the steam cannon. She held her section of a long ladder over her head, and listened with the other men as their commander told them the riches awaiting those who had volunteered to be first to storm the palace walls.

The steam cannon hissed and bucked, distracting her with its raw primitive power. It was a simple device—just a boiler that aimed its steam at a crude turbine. The turbine turned a wooden wheel like a narrow mill wheel six meters across. Instead of scooping water, its vanes took up gravel and stones and white hunks of rock salt from a hopper underneath, swept it around and up through a covered section and released it at the top of the circle. A steady stream of gravel and stones spewed at the walls, bringing back a crackling sound like a distant rockfall.

Her force was one of ten taking up positions near the main gates of the palace. The steam cannon had swept the walls like brooms, knocking the defenders down or sending them scurrying for cover. Cannon inside the walls were firing back, but they were now firing blind. Every now and then a stream of falling stones would send one of the assault teams to ground. Some men were hit, and when they fell they often didn’t get up again.

Taking the main gates directly was impossible. The portcullis was sunken by about four meters, and the ceiling of the entranceway was full of murder holes. The defenders were waiting to pour molten lead on anyone who tried to enter that way.

Lavin’s army was on the move all across the valley. The long wall that surrounded the palace would be assaulted in at least ten places within her sight, and she had no doubt Lavin had forces coming in from the north as well. There was no way the besieged force could man the entire stretch of wall. They would have to pull back.

When they did it would be to the tower that loomed above the main gates. Everything important would happen there. The queen was there. Armiger would be there too.

A sword hung from Calandria’s belt. Over her back was slung a long, burlap-wrapped object that clanked when she moved. The microwave gun was heavy, but it was the only thing in the arsenal of nanotech seeds from Marya’s ship that stood a chance of knocking down Armiger. When flights of stones rained down from beyond the walls, Calandria moved to shelter it before covering her own head. Without it, she had no reason to be here.

A distant roar reached her ears. A kilometer down the valley, the first assault wave ran forward, carrying their ladders like gangs of ants. Figures on horseback gestured with swords. Behind them, the steam cannon inched closer to the walls.

Her heart was hammering. When she looked around, she saw the same expression of mindless fear in the eys of the men with her. They were all in the same boat—carried forward by habits of training, minds blank with fear hence too stupid to sensibly turn and run. It was this stupor of fear that would later be counted as courage.

A loud crack sounded from ahead; the sound echoed across the valley and back. Looking up she saw a section of the gate tower’s wall tumbling outward in a cloud of dust. The heavier cannon stationed a hundred meters behind her had found a weak point. Now a black hole became visible under the drifting grey pall.

“That’s it, lads! Our door!” The commander bellowed and windmilled his arms, and Calandria found herself running forward with the others, thinking nothing, looking everywhere for a place to hide, a foxhole, a barricade, anywhere out of sight of the men with her who would see her hide; and they too looked around with the same eyes, and continued to run.

For a while she had to concentrate on her footwork, chained as she was to her companions by the heavy ladder. When she next looked up they were under the walls, and dark smoke was pouring out of the hole in the gate tower.

Sand exploded where she’d been about to step. Nearby someone screamed. She heard heavy bangs tha must be musket fire. The ladder jiggled. Someone cursed monotonously over and over again; others coughed and over it all lay the rattle of falling rocks, the thud of footfalls and distant booming.

“Halt!” She halted. “Ladder up!” She hopped, pushing it as it miraculously lofted up onto the perspective-narrowed white wall of the tower. The rockfall noises had stopped, meaning the steam cannon had been turned away to let them climb; but that also meant the defenders could emerge from hiding.

Sure enough, more stones and musket balls were coming down. She reached back, feeling the burlap for any sign it had been hit. No.

The first men went up the ladder. Two promptly fell down again. Everyone had their shields up, grinning humorlessly at one another under their shadow as unidentifiable stuff thudded off the wood.

The mob pressed her forward, and suddenly Calandria was climbing, squashed between a man ahead and a man behind her.

Up twelve rungs, over a broken one, left hand closing on splinters, right on slick blood. The man above her stopped, began cursing wildly. Everyone below shouted at him. “I’m hurt, I’m hurt!” he cried; drops of blood hit Calandria’s arm as he struggled with his shattered shoulder.

“Get off! We don’t give a damn! Boy, cut his ham-strings! Get him off the ladder or we’re all done for!”

She glanced down. The fall would kill him. “Do it!” shouted Maenan, who was on the ladder behind her. “Do it or I’ll cut you down and do it myself.”

Something big fell by her left shoulder. Calandria drew the knife from her waist and reached up. “You’ve got to move,” she shouted at the injured man.

“I can’t jump,” he screamed. “I’ll die!”

Maenan stabbed Calandria in the ankle. She cursed and thrust upward herself.

“You bastard,” whimpered the injured man. “Bastard.” He shot her a deeply offended look. He was barely twenty-five if that, with black stubble, dark eyebrows and surprisingly long eyelashes above his blue eyes. “Bastard,” he said, blinking, and then he let go of the ladder.

Just climb. She did, but she was crying.

There was screaming above. Another dark shape plummeted past. Before she knew it Calandria was at the hole in the wall, sucking lungfulls of wood smoke. Blinded, she groped for the broken stones, and pulled herself into the breach.

It was hot here—burning hot. Somebody was crowding her from behind, so she had no choice but to go forward and suddenly realizing she was stepping into a fire she