Of Bone and Thunder (27 page)

With much grunting and sweating, Carny crawled backward through the tunnel, tugging and pulling on the slyt. It seemed like it took forever, but suddenly strong hands had ahold of his ankles and he was whisked out of the tunnel and into the relative brightness of the setting sun.

The slyt followed with Wraith right behind him. Carny spit out the lantern handle and rolled over onto his back and gasped for air. Someone put a
water skin to his lips and he gulped down a mouthful before choking and having to sit up.

“We thought you'd been stabbed in the balls,” Big Hog said, helping Carny to his feet.

Several soldiers stood around the slyt, peering down at him. Instead of the typical peasant garb of green cotton short pants and simple beige tunic, he wore what was clearly a uniform. It was a matching set of reed-green pants and tunic with red stitching on each shoulder in the shape of a crane. A canvas belt, sturdy leather sandals, and a woven bamboo quill with several arrows in it completed his attire. For all of that, he was wisp thin and tiny. He was half Carny's weight at most.

“Is he dead?” Carny asked. His knees refused to lock and only Big Hog's arm around his waist kept him upright.

“He's not long for this world, that's for damn sure,” Listowk said, lifting the slyt up into a sitting position. He grabbed the slyt by the hair and pulled up his head. It was like watching a puppeteer at work. Blood poured freely down the slyt's face. Several soldiers gasped.

“He has the pox!”

“It's just their coloring,” Listowk said. “They come in several shades. My guess is this lad is from the far west. Never seen color patterns like his before. Maybe they change when they grow up. Doesn't look to be more than thirteen.”

Carny was able to clearly see the slyt's face for the first time. Streaks of blood only partially covered the many vertical striations of brown and black shades running down his face. Mixed with the blood, it was a gruesome sight.

“Thirteen?” Carny asked.

“If that,” Listowk said. The slyt groaned again and his eyes fluttered.

“So you got one of the bastards,” SL Sinte said, striding into the gathering. He walked up to the slyt and kicked him in the thigh. The slyt groaned.

“Back to your posts, all of you,” Sinte said, looking around at the group. “Listowk, assign troops to cover these tunnel entrances.”

Listowk nodded. “Right away, SL.” He motioned to Carny to come over.

Carny did, wobbling before he thankfully sank to his knees beside the
slyt. “Keep him propped up,” Listowk said, patting Carny on the shoulder. “Good job, Carny. You, too, Wraith.”

“What's down there?” Sinte asked, not bothering with praise.

“Tunnels, lots of them,” Wraith said. “I passed five offshoots.”

“You?” Sinte asked, turning to Carny.

“I was busy with him,” Carny said, motioning with his head to the slyt. He cradled the boy's torso in his arms. It felt like holding a fawn, he was so light. “Shot him, but he kept on coming.”
He must have been terrified
, Carny realized. Alone in the darkness, two big soldiers from the Kingdom closing in on him, nowhere to run.

“There's blood on your helm,” Sinte said, apparently noticing it for the first time.

“Not a lot of room to move down there so I used what was available,” Carny said, suddenly feeling ashamed of his violence. He could have just reached out and grabbed the slyt.

Sinte harrumphed. “Well, make sure you get your helm cleaned.” He bent down and slapped the slyt across the face. “How many more of you are around here? Where's your unit?”

The slyt's head jerked and his eyes opened. The irises were a deep green with gold flecks. He opened his mouth, but whatever he tried to say was lost as he spit up blood. Carny grabbed a handful of palm fronds and tried to wipe the blood off the slyt's face, but Sinte knocked his hand away.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Sinte leaned in closer. “Where's your unit?” Sinte asked again.

The slyt blinked and seemed to become aware of his surroundings for the first time. His eyes went wide and he started to struggle in Carny's grasp. Carny had no trouble holding on to him. A flash of steel caught Carny's eye and the slyt held a small dagger in his hand. He was trying to raise it to strike Carny in the face, but he wasn't strong enough to lift his arm, let alone break Carny's grasp.

Sinte snarled, grabbed the bolt in the slyt's collarbone, and shook it back and forth. The slyt dropped the dagger and let out a pitiful scream, his mouth quivering as tears poured down his face.

“Sneaky little fuck!” Sinte shouted.

“He doesn't understand you!” Carny shouted.

“The fuck he doesn't,” Sinte said, shaking the bolt again. “These fuckers understand us just fine. Where's your unit? How many are there?”

The slyt started babbling, but it didn't sound like Luitoxese to Carny . . . more like gibberish.

“We should get Wiz over here to take a look at him,” Carny said. “He's hurt bad.”

“At this garbage?” Sinte asked. “He's the enemy, Carny, or did you damage your own head as well? He just tried to kill you! This is why we're here. This is what we're fighting.”

Carny looked down at the boy in his arms. This wasn't right. He was just a boy.

“Maybe,” Carny said, “but right now he needs our help.”

“I suppose he does at that,” Sinte said. He gripped the bolt in the slyt's collarbone with both hands and plunged it deeper into the slyt's chest. The boy began convulsing. Carny wrapped his arms around him tighter and tried to calm him down, but the convulsions continued as the slyt's eyes rolled back in his head and his mouth fell slack. A moment later his entire body went limp. Carny tried lifting his head back up, but as soon as he let go it flopped forward and didn't move.

Sinte stood up and savagely ripped the bolt out and threw it onto the slyt's crumpled legs. He glared down at the slyt.

“Get me a live one next time,” Sinte said, turning and walking away.

Carny sat there, holding the slyt upright, looking from the departing Sinte to the bloody bolt in the slyt's lap. He'd done this. He'd killed him.

“You can let him go,” Big Hog said. “C'mon, I'll get you cleaned up.”

“He's the enemy,” Carny said, “he wanted to kill me.”

Big Hog crouched down beside him. “Yeah, ain't that just all kinds of fucked up? You think they're going to be big, scary monsters and then you see them and realize they aren't.”

“So this is our enemy?” Carny said, trying and failing to make sense of it.

“Let's get away from here,” Big Hog said, pulling Carny to his feet.

The slyt slipped out of Carny's grasp and lay in a heap on the ground. He looked so damn small.

Big Hog gently turned Carny away and started walking. Carny took a
couple of steps before a burning rage welled up in his chest and he twisted out of Big Hog's grasp.

“Where's my crossbow? Where's my fucking crossbow?”

Listowk appeared and pinned his arms to his sides.

“Easy, my boy,” he said softly while holding Carny in an iron grip.

Carny's entire body shook. “I'll kill Sinte, I'll put a bolt right in his black heart. Did you see what he did?” Carny asked.

Listowk offered him a sad smile but didn't loosen his grip. “It's done. Let it go. The poor bugger would have died one way or the other. Let it go.”

Carny tried to wriggle free, but now Big Hog was beside him again with a meaty paw on his shoulder. “The LC's right. It ain't worth it.”

“Is any of it?” Carny asked, his rage melting into a despair so deep he gasped. “This is what we're fighting? Destroying villages, killing livestock? Why? How does this make the Kingdom safe? How does any of this matter?”

“The days of knights on horseback are long gone,” Listowk said. “Even then though, war wasn't any better. People die. They die for noble reasons and for no damn reason at all. In the end, they're just as dead.”

“It's not right,” Carny said, knowing it was futile to struggle anymore. He was one man against a world.

Listowk loosened his grip. Carny just stood there. He barely had enough energy to breathe. Listowk let go.

“You go lie down. I don't want to see you on your feet, got that? Big Hog, you make sure,” Listowk said.

“I'm not a newborn,” Carny said. “You don't have to treat me like one.”

“Listowk, what the fuck is going on?” Sinte shouted, striding over to them. He'd had time to polish his helm so that the setting sun made it glow.

Carny's anger came roaring back, but Big Hog clamped a meaty paw on his shoulder and kept him rooted to the spot. Listowk muttered a curse and stepped in front of Carny and faced Sinte.

“Just getting the boys squared away,” Listowk said, his voice lacking its normal laconic lilt.

“They'd better be good to go,” Sinte said, coming to a stop with his hands on his hips. “We got reports that a group of FnC hard chargers from Western Luitox have set up camp on the outskirts of a village west of here.
The Luitoxese Royal Army was going to take the lead, but that's changed. So we're going to go clear out the FnCs.”

Carny blinked. “Are you fucking kidding?”

“What did you say?” Sinte shouted.

Listowk held up his hands. “He's just surprised, we all are. How far away?”

“Fifteen miles,” Sinte said.

Groans greeted his statement. Carny shook his head. After everything that happened they were now expected to march fifteen miles in the dark?

“Transportation has been arranged,” Sinte said, staring past Listowk at Carny.

Carny held his stare.

“What kind?” Listowk asked, shifting his body to block Carny's view.

“Get this rabble in shape—we fly in the morning,” Sinte said, moving his head to give Carny one more stare before turning and stomping away.

Carny's right arm was numb. “Big Hog, you can let go, I'm not going after him.”

Big Hog kept his hand in place until Listowk turned and nodded.

“He said fly, right?” Carny asked, rubbing feeling back into this arm.

Listowk tried to smile, but couldn't manage it. “Yes, he did.”

OBSIDIAN FLOCK LEADER VORLY
Astol squinted through the small aperture of his sextant. “Altitude . . . one thousand four hundred yards. Scratch that, three hundred and ninety yards,” he said, adjusting the frame in relation to the index bar.

“Confirming, one thousand three hundred and ninety,” Breeze said, her voice clipped and precise.

As far as the Lux went, it was a beautiful morning. Clear sky, bit of a headwind from the north giving the rags of Obsidian Flock something their wings could grab on to, and best of all, they had a mission. Vorly tucked his sextant back into its pocket on his jacket and buttoned it up. Attention to detail was what kept you alive.

“Give me a crystal pathway check, Breeze,” Vorly ordered, not bothering to turn around. He kept his eyes on the horizon, doing his best not to
accidentally
knock the crystal sheet perched on its wood easel by his right thigh.

“By your command, Sky Horse Leader,” Breeze said. Ever since that disastrous training flight, Breeze said nothing that wasn't absolutely necessary when they were in the air. It was almost like flying solo again.

Vorly should have been pleased, but he wasn't. As much as he hated to admit it, the crystals were here to stay. That meant the RATs were, too. Gone were the days when a ragger flew alone. Accepting that meant he had to form a relationship with Breeze that worked. He'd said as much to the drivers and RATs after their recent brawl, but it only dawned on him now that he hadn't followed his own orders. He couldn't afford his damn pride up here and Breeze would have to get over her hurt feelings or whatever the hell was wrong with her. If they didn't, they'd wind up dead, like Jate and his RAT. Vorly shook his head to get the image out of his mind.
The fuck if I'm going to be charked.

“Okay to ground myself in?” Vorly asked, placing both of Carduus's reins in his left hand and raising his right so Breeze could see it before dropping it back down and placing it on his right thigh. It was one of several new measures they had added. A second braided copper cable had also been attached to the crystal sheet. The original still ran back to the RAT's sheet, connecting the two crystals together, while the new cable snaked all the way out onto Carduus's right wing, where it ended in a foot-long iron spike. The cable was held in place by U-shaped copper nails punched through the wing, while the spike had been forged directly into Carduus's metal-rich bones by the flock smithy.

“You are clear to engage, Sky Horse Leader,” she said. Flat and lifeless.

“Grounding in,” Vorly said, lifting his hand from his thigh and slowly placing it on the first copper braid. When nothing happened, he slid his hand up to the crystal sheet and placed his fingertips on it. Despite the midmorning sun and the heat coming through Carduus, the sheet was cold.

“Our sheets are linked, Sky Horse Leader,” Breeze said, her fingertips brushing his through whatever magicks made the thing work.

He looked down at the sheet, still amazed. By sheer force of will, he was making himself come to terms with the things. It helped that he'd seen what happened to Jate. It helped less that Legion Flock Commander Modelar was keen on seeing it done yesterday. Still, they were finding a way.

“Pathway confirmed, we are on the aether,” Breeze said.

“On the aether, aye,” Vorly confirmed, removing his hand. Since the accident, Vorly had done his best to understand how the sheets worked. It was like trying to scoop water with a fork. No sooner would he get his mind around a concept than it would become hopelessly tangled with the next one. He finally gave up on the thaumics of it and focused instead on what it could do, and most of all, what he could do with it.