Penult (34 page)

Various fragments of condors and
falcons were strewn about—a shattered cage here, a talon, a severed
wingtip.

Olivier led me up to a column lying
horizontal across some massive saw horses. It was intricately
carved and resembled a totem pole though its designs were more
abstract than naturalistic.

“
This here is a cracker.
The Hashmals tried deploying it at the base of this very mesa,
hoping to take the whole thing down. But the Dusters pounced before
they could initiate it. We have others as well, but they’re
generally trashed. This one’s in the best shape. It’s just a bundle
of tiny hollow fibers as far as we can tell. No levers or switches.
It’s just a goddamn telephone pole, basically.”

“
Why not just destroy
it?”

“
Why waste it? Why not use
it? Turn the tables on the bastards. Yaqob and Zhang want us to
make a bunch and drop them into their formations. Give them a taste
of their own medicine.”

“
An eye for an
eye?”

“
And more. We want to make
them to run back wherever they came from with their tail between
their legs. Punish the fuckers! Make them wish they never came
here.”

“
You think …? Is that
possible?”

“
Listen. Before Penult came
and fucked everything up, we had peace on the surface. Yaqob was
already meeting with Zhang. And believe it or not, Luther was the
grease. He’s the one who made it happen. Before the invasion we had
a chance to make something really great here, and we can do it
again. If anything, the war has brought us even closer together. We
just need to get these damned Lords to take their toys and go
home.”

“
So … what do you want from
me?”

“
Same thing you did with
the wings. Help us figure these things out. We don’t even know how
to turn the damned thing on. There’s no … switch … or plunger or
trigger. It’s just … a lumpy pole.”

I sighed. “I can’t promise anything.
But … sure. I’ll give it a shot.”

“
Of course not. But you
have a better chance of sussing these out than any other soul I
know. Believe me, Zhang has had his best Weavers look these over
inside and out. But they’re not James Moody.”

“
Whatever that’s supposed
to mean.”

I went over and examined a cracker
column that lay in pieces on the ground. It interior seemed to be a
mass of hollow channels and tubes of various sizes, twisting and
spiraling around a solid core. The device had no moving parts that
I could see, no control panel or anything of the sort.

Over on the side, I spotted a pair of
wings—Kitt’s—from the looks of them. They had a mottled salmon and
turquoise pattern on the membranes, a flourish she had added to
make them prettier than the generic grey Luther had initially
devised.

“
These Kitt’s?”

“
Yup,” said
Olivier.

“
She okay?”

“
As far as I know. She
faded back last night. She’s a Hemisoul too, you know.”

“
I figured. Think she would
mind if I borrowed these?”

“
Borrow them? What
for?”

“
I need to check on
something.”

“
What about the
cracker?”

“
I’ll be right back. I
promise.”

“
This is about that girl
you saw, isn’t it? The one you thought was Karla?”

“
Yup,” I said, as I
adjusted straps meant for a more petite frame.

My heart was pounding like a demon as
I ran towards the opening of the grotto, wincing as my squeezed my
shoulder blades together to get those wings pumping. They burst
into action with a flurry of wing beats. My feet left the
ground.

Chapter 34: The
Assault

I burst out of the grotto like a
crazed moth, all six wings churning. A bunch of Duster warriors
gathered in the clearing paused their conference to watch me careen
about. A mantid roosting in a huge tree flicked its head my way,
feasting on one of the overgrown leafhoppers that foraged high in
the treetops. It looked like it was considering me for
dessert.

I didn’t stick around to tempt it. I
looped around and caught an updraft that billowed up against the
cliffs. I clenched my shoulders, rising, following the up
staircase, where knots of souls laden with belongings trudged up
the steep stairway to join the burgeoning population of New Axum. I
buzzed the uppermost reaches, searching for the girl I had seen
earlier.

People flinched and ducked at the
sight of me, mistaking me for a Seraph despite Kitt’s gaudily
decorated wings. I didn’t mean to freak them out. Surely, they
could see that a soul as scruffy as me was no citizen of
Penult.

A Frelsian guarding one of the
landings glared at me.

“
Go away! You’re
frightening them.”

I hovered close. “Can you help me? I’m
... looking for someone. A girl about twenty. Dark hair. Kind of
skinny. She was just here a little while ago.”

The guard gave me a look like I was
daft.

“
Hundreds have already
passed this morning. We’re evacuating the valleys. The Cherubim are
challenging our lines.”

“
Maybe she spoke to you?
Her name is Karla. She’s Italian, sort of, but she lives in
Scotland and her family is Austrian and Swiss.”

The guard shook her head
impatiently.

I floated up and over the rim where
groups of new arrivals had stopped to catch their breath before
wandering the ruins to find a place fix up and call
home.

My sudden appearance almost got me
blown out of the sky by a patrol as I flew up and down the
promenade, scouring every side alley for the girl with the graceful
gait. She had better not already faded back.

The warren made a lot more sense from
a hundred feet up. I could see its pattern of concentric circles
and spokes. The place was bustling with settlers, but Karla or her
lookalike were nowhere to be found.

It took a while for me to accept the
futility of my search. I had only managed to make a spectacle of
myself.

Now I felt bad for ditching Olivier. I
flew back to the promenade, straight over the brink, and let myself
drop straight down, the wings tilting just enough to kill most of
the lift, but controlling my fall like a parachute.

There was way more going on in those
wing engines than mere flapping. The things were somehow attuned to
the nervous systems of their wearers, anticipating maneuvers and
executing them before we even had to think about them. My problem
earlier, was trying to force it. All you had to do was to let it
happen.

The way I descended kind of matched my
mood. I felt deflated. Defeated. If this had been another realm,
roots would have been clamoring for my soul. But I was already in
their realm. In Root, there was no escape from the
blues.

The Dusters I had seen hanging out in
the clearing outside the grotto were now frantic, saddling up the
mantids they had called down from their perches. One mantid rider
kept watch from the treetops, sitting tall, staring across the
terrace, his mount’s spiky forelegs raised and ready for
battle.

I nearly shit my pants when I spun
around to see what had prompted all this activity. A flight of
seven condors flying high was heading straight for the mountain. We
were about to be raided.

A pair of Dusters on dragonflies
screamed past us, one zooming off to the upper terrace, the other
taking a bee line to a larger camp in another clearing.

I glided just above the canopy,
passing across the entire mile-wide shelf. When I reached the edge
of the lower set of cliffs, I freaked.

Down below, a column of Cherubim was
advancing on the outermost barricade of one of the side valleys
that embraced the terraced mountain holding New Axum. The barricade
looked daunting and deep and well defended by Frelsians and their
armored Reapers. I thought for sure that the narrow column of
Cherubim would be easily repulsed.

And most of this vanguard did indeed
fall, but the mixed column kept coming, bashers bashing, slingers
slinging, until it had been used up like a candle burning down past
a nub.

I hovered just beyond the edge of the
cliff, watching as a second column followed up the initial attack,
trampled the remains of its predecessor, attacking the barricade in
exactly the same spot and meeting pretty much the same fate. But
then a third column came up and a fourth and they both punched
through the center of the barricade like a dagger through a melon,
penetrating deep behind the Frelsian lines before turning and
broadening their line of attack against the flanks. Their fervor
for battle never flagged despite losing more than half their
strength.

The Frelsians manning the barricade
had no choice but to abandon the wall or be exterminated. A
squadron of ant riders charging down the valley to reinforce
arrived too late and found themselves caught up in the mad retreat.
Some managed to filter through to screen the fleeing Frelsians from
being picked off by surviving Cherubim who continued to fan out to
span the valley bottom as yet more columns advanced unopposed
through the outer barricade.

The retreating Frelsians reached the
second line of barricades with most of their force intact, but the
Cherubim now had access to the cliffs and to my disbelief, began to
climb straight up the sheer slides. New Axum had felt so safe. I
couldn’t stand the thought of these Cherubim marching on and
slaughtering all those unsuspecting refugees.

Without even thinking, I dove and
buzzed them, drawing a barrage from a bunch of slingers arrayed
across the valley bottom to protect the climbers from air attacks.
Projectiles ripped through my wing membranes, but I was able to
keep on flying, this time keeping my distance.

The climbers were yet another category
of Cherub with special limbs adapted for climbing, with bony blades
and wedges that could be jammed into cracks, securing themselves to
the cliff wall. Another type of mutant lashed onto their comrades
with tentacle-like limbs. Together they made a broad human scaffold
that the other Cherubim could climb. The top of this ladder was
already halfway up the cliff wall and climbing.

Like an idiot, I had left my sword in
the grotto, so I had nothing to focus my energy but my fingers. I
tried summoning a blast, and while I had no trouble generating that
churning feeling in my midsection, what came out was diffuse,
buffeting the climbers with no more than a gentle gust of
wind.

I squeezed my shoulders so hard it
hurt and soared back up to the lower terrace. Duster warriors were
racing along the forest paths to reach the rim, but they were so
few. Once the scaffold reached the cliff rim, Cherubs would pour
onto the lower terrace and overwhelm it.

The seven condors, meanwhile, were
still closing in. It was clear now that they were aiming straight
for the open ledges directly above the climbers.

Indecision and panic froze me into
inaction. I wanted to go back to the grotto to fetch my sword, but
I didn’t want to leave the scene with the condors about to
strike.

Frustrated, I landed on the ledge,
unstrapped the wings, and snapped off a bleached and grey branch
from a gnarled and stunted tree that clung to life on the bleak
stone. If it worked for Urszula, why not me? Why did I even need a
sword? We all knew that the power that made these weapons work came
from within each of us.

With the condors coming right at me, I
raised that stick, pointing it at the center of the formation and
waited for my stomach to churn. Again, I had no trouble conjuring
the feeling. In fact, this was going to be a good one. Question
was, could I focus it?

The band of Dusters I had seen running
along the paths burst out of the forest and joined me. They smiled
broadly at the sight of me, forming a line along the ledge and
raising their own scepters.

The condors were coming in fast. It
was now or never. But just as I was ready to release a blast, an
array of hands with bony hooks latched onto the ledge. The scaffold
had reached the top of the cliffs.

The Dusters were already unleashing
balls of plasma at this threat, allowing the condors to approach
unscathed. I kept my focus on the lead condor, and with the most
certainty I had ever felt, unleashed a tight ball of plasma from
the end of that stick that arced right into the central cage of the
lead condor, taking out the pilot. The condor dropped and veered
right into the path of the one beside it, talons tangling and
hauling the second condor straight down into the valley.

The remaining five condors came in
unscathed, stalling and touching down lightly on the ledges in a
widely dispersed row. Cherubim—bashers all—boiled out of the cargo
cages, six per condor and came charging at us.

Three mounted mantids bounded in
beside us and pounced on the bashers, raking at their limbs. We
advanced behind the mantids. I was too caught up in the moment to
even think about the risk.

One of the mantids snatched up a
basher in its forelimbs and tossed it off the cliff. I wash able to
conjure a blast every few seconds, though I had lost some of my
focus. My force could knock a basher off his feet but could not
cripple him.