Penult (30 page)

“
Falcons incoming!” Tyler
shouted.

I maneuvered around to find a
formation of smaller flying craft, each equipped with a beak and
claws and manned by two Hashmallin—one controlling the wings and
the other handling the ballista.

“
What the fuck?”

The falcons came in fast and hard. Two
peeled away from the formation and went after Kitt. Detmar came
zooming up from the barricades to assist her.

She managed to dive away in time to
elude one’s grasp but the other slammed straight into Detmar,
shredding his wings and smashing its frame. Detmar went tumbling
straight down from a horrible height, his body slamming onto the
rocky riverbed.

Tyler came hurtling towards the Duster
lines as a third falcon came winging after him. This falcon was met
by a barrage of Duster plasma erupting from the barricade and went
crashing into the tangle of stumps.

I had a falcon on my tail as well but
it weaved as I swerved, anticipating my movements. I could not get
a clear shot off. I maneuvered erratically hoping to shake my
unseen pursuer.

The Dusters on their mantids, in the
meantime had joined the fray. All six of them, with Olivier riding
the back of one. All set their scepters blasting and forced two of
the falcons to retreat.

But the fourth remaining on my tail,
resisting my efforts to elude it. The condor, meanwhile, lifted
slowly like a crane down the river valley, it powerful wings
beating slowly, membranes stretching and filling like the sails of
a clipper ship.

Victoria stood atop the barricade and
placidly watched the battle unfold like some spectator at an air
show. She made no attempt to participate or intervene. A Duster had
to grab her arm and drag her towards safety. I wondered if she had
been drugged.

Something slammed into me hard. The
wing frame crunched. A talon pierced my shoulder and I was suddenly
hurtling perpendicular to my original direction. The fourth falcon
had found me, plucking me out of the sky with its powerful
talons.

Chapter 28: New
Axum

Blood poured down my arm and dribbled
off my fingertips. The falcon’s mechanical talons had crunched into
my shoulder, jutting between my bones, prying them apart. I
screamed like I had never screamed before.

The falcon veered away from the
friendly lines of the resistance, carrying me off towards the edge
of the basin where the main Cherub army had massed. A silvery blur
came flying up from below. Kitt! Dodging ballista spikes, she
swooped in close beside me. Latching on, she tried to pull me free
of the talons, but its grip was firm.

“
My wing’s cracked. Even if
you free me I’ll drop like a stone.”

“
I’ll hang onto you. We’ll
glide.”

“
No! Then they’ll get you
too!”

Another falcon came buzzing by,
holding its fire to avoid hitting its comrade.

“
Get the fuck away! Go! Get
out of here!

She released and flew alongside me.
The second falcon made another pass and this time unleashed a
barrage of spikes. They tore through her wings but somehow missed
her body. But then came another flurry and a spike tore into her
wing joint, partially jamming her hindmost set of wings.

It threw her off kilter and she veered
away. She shared one last sad and hopeless glance before she turned
around and fluttered back to the safety of the Duster
lines.

With Kitt gone, the falcon set down
behind the foremost line of Cherubim, a wide and sparse screen of
skirmishers. They dragged me across a patch of rocky ground before
coming to a halt.

A Hashmal clambered out of the
ballista cage. He barely glanced at me, more interested in the
wings. Puzzlement creased his face as he inspected them. Luther and
Olivier had not copied their membrane material precisely. Their
membrane was stiffer, more like Tyvek than skin, and was not
capable of spontaneous healing. Only the elastic engine of the
joints was a perfect copy. The Hashmal now knew what his Lords had
denied. Our wings were copied not stolen.

I wondered what they planned to do
with me. Did they even know who I was? Did it matter?

I dreaded being someone’s prisoner
again after my experience in that basement dungeon in Edmund’s
church. Maybe I had some value for some future prisoner swap. They
had returned Victoria in fairly good shape, physically at
least.

I wondered if I would be brought in
front of their mysterious Lords. Probably they would just make me
the responsibility of some underling Hashmallim. In any case, I was
about to learn a lot more about the Liminality. I felt no fear,
just a little uneasiness over what was to come next.

I gained solace in knowing that as a
Hemisoul, due to fade at any time. That gave me a good chance of
escaping since I doubted these fools would hang out and wait for me
to come back. And maybe, if I was lucky, I would never return to
this shit hole. God knows I had extra incentive now to stick around
the living world.

The Hashmal climbed back into his
cage. The talons retracted from my shoulder and regathered my wings
with me still harnessed in, but this time without impaling me.
Blood gushed freely from my wound, but not as much as I would have
expected if an artery had been slashed.

It took some vigorous beating to lift
off the ground with my dead weight dangling from the harness but
those six gangly wings were up to the task. We banked along the
wall of hills lining the basin, heading for the gorge leading down
into the lower valley.

In a panic, the pilot and gunner
shouted at each other in some unfamiliar and incomprehensible
language. A swarm of ballista spikes went spraying out. Something
thudded into the falcon, instantly blunting its forward momentum. I
squirmed around to see a giant dragonfly with a rider latched onto
the ballista cage. The rider left her saddle and clambered over the
dragonfly’s head to attack the ballista gunner, stabbing through
the gaps with the pointy end of her scepter. She wore the scaly
garb of a Duster but her face was far from gray.

The pilot struggled to keep the falcon
in the air while the dragonfly chomped and clawed at the cage and
framing, tearing away the ballista housing while helping keep the
falcon aloft with its own wing beats. The rider swung down onto the
talons that held me.

It was Urszula.

“
You strong enough to
climb?” she said, her expression calm and focused.

“
I think so.”

She pulled me free of the harness and
helped me maneuver back to the dragonfly. I knew those patchwork
wings, its cells and veins mended and spliced after many
battles.

Lalibela.

With the falcon skimming and scraping
along the hillside and about to flounder, we scrambled onto the
raised saddle mounted high on Lalibela’s thorax. With a tap of
Urszula’s foot, the dragonfly released and we soared away just as
the falcon smashed hard into a ledge, scattering wing fragments,
cages and crew across the scrubby slope.

***

I slumped forward in the saddle,
feeling all giddy and dizzy and weak. I hugged the front horn,
which carved from shimmery burl wood, mesmerized by the facets of
Lalibela’s compound eyes. It was like staring at a thousand
polished opals. Nothing about this moment felt real.

With a buzz and a rattle, Lalibela
accelerated across the basin, over ranks of Cherubim, advancing in
chevrons, obliquely approaching the terraced mountain. No longer
statuesque, this time they were quite alert and aware of our
presence and challenged us with barrages of projectiles that
Lalibela deftly avoided.

We passed over the defense berms. The
ants and mantids had returned to the barricades which were also
patrolled by rhinoceros and stag beetles armed with bifurcated
horns and saw toothed mandibles. I thought I saw Bern and Lille
standing with Tyler and other members of the ground party, but they
were all too pre-occupied to even notice us.

Lalibela veered hard left, angled
steeply upward and accelerated, making straight for the cliffs of
the terraced mountain. Just as we seemed about to collide with a
column of angular and jagged basalt, Lalibela flitted upward and we
were skimming the lower terrace of the mountain, scaring up a
dog-sized leaf hopper that Lalibela snatched up to snack on once we
landed.

Another abrupt and speedy rise and we
had attained the second terrace which held the bulk of the old city
of New Axum. What had been a mess of rubble and overgrown ruins was
now stripped of vegetation and partially rebuilt. Frelsians,
Dusters and reawakened Old Ones mingled in its avenues and
alleyways and squares.

Urszula brought her dragonfly down
gently on a broad grassy plain meadow had been fenced off for giant
insects. Cisterns of water and nectar lined its borders. Besides
the usual mantids and dragonflies, the paddock held several petite
and elegant damselflies and a strange looking fly with a tail like
a scorpion.

Urszula helped me out of the saddle,
frowning at the blood soaking my blue hoodie. She peeled away my
jacket and probed gently at the puncture wound in my shoulder which
had clotted nicely on its own.

“
You need to lie
down.”

“
Here?” I looked around at
all the giant bugs in the paddock with us. Several mantids had
clambered over to watch over us menacingly.

She pulled me down into the tall grass
and made me lie flat. Peeling back my T-shirt, she picked out bits
of debris with her fingernails. She then went to her saddlebag and
pulled out a handful of gelatinous brown goop that she pressed into
my wound. With a loop of broad, flat ribbon that adhered to itself
and shrank taut when she touched it with her scepter, she wrapped
my shoulder tight.

When she was done, she straddled my
chest and gazed down at me, a hint of a lip curl almost forming a
smile. She swooped down and kissed me on the lips.

“
Thank you,” I said,
gasping.

“
For what? The
kiss?”

“
For … saving me … mending
me.”

“
Not for the kiss? What?
You don’t like? My other boyfriends don’t complain.”

“
No … uh … I didn’t mean
to—”

“
Oh, shut up!”

She rolled off and helped me
up.

“
How you feel? Can you
walk?”

“
Yeah. I guess.”

“
So now we go. See Yaqob
and Zhang. They are expecting you.”

Chapter 29:
Zhang

Urszula saw how weak and wobbly I was
so she didn’t rush me. She steadied me with one arm as I strolled
up narrow, cobbled lanes lined with head-high stone walls, through
arches and gates across courtyards surrounded by squat and blocky
houses shingled with mossy slabs of slate.

At least half of the dwellings we
passed had their roofs bashed in. Although some of the damage was
ancient, some was clearly recent. Blood spattered some of the
ruins.

The courtyards bustled with Hemisouls,
Freesouls and Dusters working together all frantic, clearing brush,
weaving panels and awnings from sacks of root or simply piling up
stones.

“
So many people now,” said
Urszula. “Every day they come. We are not big enough to hold all
the refugees who want inside.”

“
Where are they all coming
from?”

“
Wide and far,” said
Urszula. “There is more place here than we knew in Liminality. More
souls on surface than just us and Frelsians. And the Penult Lords …
they want kill them all. We are their last hope.”

“
Holy crap. So place is
kind of like … the Alamo … of the afterlife.”

Urszula squinted back at me, not
comprehending.

“
This mission … in Texas.
The Mexican Army surrounded it. Famous last stand.”

“
Ah like …
Masada.”

“
The what?”

“
Jewish fortress in the
desert. Sinai. Romans put under siege.”

I just shrugged and we continued on up
yet another set of stairs to the uppermost tiers of the
settlement.

I wasn’t really ready to face this
Zhang guy. After all I had been through, I just wanted to lay down
somewhere cozy and quiet and catch my breath. A fade would have
been nice right about now. But Urszula insisted on bringing me up
to see the man and his council right away.

The steps led us to a building
constructed of huge blocks of stone, many of them chipped and
gouged and cracked from barrages both ancient and recent from the
differential weathering of the scars.

“
This is house for
council,” said Urszula. Her English had regressed since we were in
New Hampshire together.

The council house was a humble,
bunker-like space. A ring of simple rooms including kitchens and
privies lined its thick outer walls, surrounding a large central
chamber. Grooves in the stone—tiny aqueducts—delivered spring water
to each room.

The place was busy and crowded. Bees
flew in and out, delivering nectar. Aides, messengers and
lieutenants buzzed about. As we made our way through, I could see
the high mucky mucks of the resistance sitting on the floor around
a low table.