Penult (35 page)

Meanwhile, our right flank was
crumbling. Three Dusters had already fallen and were pummeled to a
pulp by the basher’s club-like limbs. The first wave of climbers
came over the rim of the cliff, slashing with their blades of
serrated bone.

The condors turned and took off,
abandoning their human cargo to the battle. They plunged off the
cliff to gain velocity and lift as a flight of dragonflies came
screaming down on them, blasts from their riders taking out two
more.

A large band of Frelsians joined the
fray, shoring up the right flank, felling bashers with arrows and
blades driving them back to the brink of the cliff.

The bashers got the better of one of
the mantids, cracking its limbs, bringing it down, bludgeoning it
till the exoskeleton was cracked like a hard-boiled egg. But two
more mantids arrived emerged from the treetops joined by a horde of
angry ants.

Together we managed to work our way to
the cliff face where we could send blasts into the scaffold,
peeling off climbers several at a time until only a narrow ladder
connected the mass of Cherubim trying to climb up from below. With
the bottleneck thus created, we gained the upper hand, and a
well-aimed blast from a dragonfly rider finally broke the scaffold,
disconnecting the ladder from the rest.

Down in the valley, the Frelsians who
had been driven back to the second line of barricades
counterattacked with a force of armored Reapers, each bearing
several warriors on a fighting platform. They assaulted the base of
the scaffold, cutting it off from the main force, causing much of
the scaffold to tumble, leaving only a mass of disconnected
climbers clinging to the cliff face. Harrying dragonfly riders
picked them off one by one.

The Hashmallim guiding the main
Cherubim force below called off the assault. What remained of the
attack columns retreated behind the main barricade, which was
already defended by a reserve force of Cherubim.

One of the mantid riders hopped off
his mount and approached me, beaming.

“
You are the James?” he
said.

“
The James,
yup.”

He grabbed me and hugged me, a little
too long and hard for my comfort.

“
It is good to have you.”
He stepped back and stared at me like he wanted to kiss
me.

I didn’t feel like I had done much,
actually. But if he was happy, I was happy. I went back and found
my wings, strapping them on, while the Dusters attended to their
fallen.

More dragonflies had shown up in the
meantime and helped polish off the last of the climbers dangling
from the cliff face. A team of Frelsians went to work dismantling
the crashed condor, extracting the precious wing mechanisms for
recycling.

I fluttered off back to the grotto,
whose defenses had been bolstered by another half dozen beetles,
each of which it seemed had to come up and give me a sniff before
they would let me through. Olivier stood at the entrance looking a
little annoyed.

“
There was an attack! I
helped fight—“

“
I heard,” said Olivier.
“Good going. Now … can we get back to business?”

Chapter 35:
Retaliation

When I peeled myself out of Kitt's
wings, I noticed all the rips caused by those slingers'
projectiles. Kitt was going to kill me if I didn't get them fixed.
I tried fusing the ragged ends together with a little weaving, but
my repairs ended up turning large patches of the colorful membranes
gray. I hope she wouldn't be too pissed, once I explained the
circumstances. Of course, I would have to leave out the part about
me borrowing them to chase after Karla.

“
Nice weapon,” said
Olivier, admiring at my scraggly twig of a scepter.

I shrugged. “Had to make do. I forgot
my sword. Again.”

“
You don't really need that
sword. You realize that, don't you?”

“
I know, but … it’s got
sentimental value. And this spell craft stuff seems to go better
for me if I have something solid and metal in my hand.”

“
That's all in your head,”
said Olivier. “It's a matter of confidence.”

“
Not to mention, sometimes
it's nice to be able to hack and stab at things.”

“
True.”

He stood at the entrance to the
grotto, staring out across the lower terrace where flights of
dragonfly riders were patrolling the rim.

“
Things are about to get
interesting in New Axum, now that the Cherubim have access to this
mesa.”

“
Does this mean we're
officially under siege?”

“
Not quite. We still hold
the gulches on either side. And as long as we do we have an escape
route and a way to get things in and out. But it’s probably only a
matter of time before we get cut off.”

He sighed and pushed through the heavy
draperies that now enclosed the entrance. The interior was now
illuminated by glowing balls of root held in sconces. He sauntered
over to the cracker laying propped over two sawhorses.

“
I've been studying these
and I think it’s the same concept as those wing joints … just more
complicated.”

I couldn't help smirking. “So it's the
same, but different?”

“
Don't be a wise ass.” He
ran his finger down a groove down the length. “I'm not sure what
makes it go, but somehow it plugs into the root structure,
manipulates it in a broad and expanding arc, three hundred sixty
degrees all around.”

“
That's supposed to help
me?”

“
Just saying. If we can
even figure out how to turn the damned thing on, that would be a
big step forward. Of course, we don't actually want to turn it on
just yet. Not here.”

“
Well, duh.”

I ran my own fingers over the knobby
surface of the column. It was engraved with ridges and grooves,
curling and twining like Celtic knots. Several protuberances were
covered with small bumps no larger than goose pimples. The base of
the column bore many indentations lined with millions of tiny
pores.

I had no idea where to start. There
was nothing on the device that looked like an obvious
control.

Olivier clapped his hand on my
shoulder.

“
You take your time with
it. Meditate. Do whatever you need to do. I can arrange to have
some meals brought down to you. We can even set up a little nap
space for you if that helps.”

I started to feel a little
panicky.

“
Olivier. I'm not so sure I
can help you out with this one. This might be a little out of my
league.”

“
That's what we thought
with the wing joints, but you came through, didn't you? C'mon, all
we ask is that you just give it a shot. Let the Singularity help
you like before. Even if you can't make a working copy, figuring
out how the damned things work will go a long way in helping us
fight back. I'm sure we can capture more. Just imagine if we could
deploy these down in the basin with all those Cherubim lined up
like ducks in a row. Of course, we would need to figure out how to
do that without taking down the mesa.”

I just stood there with my hands on my
hips feeling foolish. The wing joint design had pretty much come to
me in a dream. Perpetual motion notwithstanding, the joints were
nothing more that fancy springs with a simple repetitive structure
at the molecular level. There was a lot more going on with these
crackers. Even if the Singularity could show me how they worked,
I'm not sure I was capable of comprehending it.

Olivier squinted at me. “I can tell
you need your space. Too much pressure ain't gonna help you grok.
How about you hang out down here the rest of the day and I come
back to fetch you? You cool with that?”

I didn't know what to say. I just
stared back at him, befuddled over what he expected me to
do.

Shouts echoed through the grotto from
the clearing outside. I strolled over to the entrance and peeked
around the heavy, canvas-like drapery.

A mantid with a shredded wing case
came crashing through the treetops and landed hard in a patch of
tree stumps. Its rider drooped limp in her saddle, long hair
trailing down the mantids thorax. A group of Dusters rushed to her
aid as a column of Old Ones crossed the clearing single file and
passed into the forest. This was the first substantial force of
awakened souls I had yet seen in New Axum.

A nervous-looking pair of Frelsians in
fresh armor came rushing up to the grotto from the base of the
stairway.

“
Master James? Olivier?
Your presence is requested at the war council.”

“
Tell them we're busy right
now.”

“
Master Zhang requires your
attendance. He insists.”

Olivier sighed. “Fine.”

***

We made our way back to the upper
terrace on foot as we had only one pair of wings in the armory. I
wondered what had happened to mine and what would they planned to
do with the joints that had been salvaged from the wrecked
condors.

As we walked the stairs, we now walked
among refugees headed up to the upper terrace. I had no reason to
expect to find Karla in this crowd. It was not rational, especially
if it was really her I had spotted earlier. But I looked for her
anyway, not surprisingly without success.

We were lucky we reached the stairs
when we did because a whole flood of new arrivals swarmed the base
of the cliffs right after we started to ascend, convinced by the
morning's events that the side valleys were no longer
havens.

When we reached the upper terrace and
the bunker at its heart, the war council was already convening. The
chamber was packed. Many lesser officers were in attendance along
with the big shots like Zhang and Yaqob.

Three old ones sat at the main table,
a different bunch than were there last time.

“
Who are
they
? What happened to the
other guys?”

“
Doesn't matter,” said
Olivier. “The Old Ones share leadership. Whoever's awake at the
moment is who shows up. They're nameless, the whole lot of them. I
guess communing with the Singularity doesn't do much for your
individuality.”

“
I'm ready to ditch my
name,” I muttered.

“
Too late. Too many people
know you in these parts.”

I looked around for Kitt and Tyler but
they were nowhere to be seen. They were either out scouting or had
yet to return from their fades.

“
Where's Victoria?” said
Olivier, noticing the empty spot at the table next to
Zhang.

“
We can't seem to locate
her,” said Zhang, shrugging. “She's probably exhausted and settled
in somewhere to rest. Understandable.”

“
We need her … here,” said
Hailay, a sharp-eyed young Duster and one of Yaqob's
lieutenants.

“
We have a patrol out
looking,” said one of the Frelsian junior officers—a Freesoul—based
in his perfectly sculpted and unblemished face.

“
Bah. Let us talk on our
own,” said Yaqob. “She is gone a month and we do fine without her.
Your right flank, does it hold?”

“
For now,” said Zhang. “But
the Cherubim now control the main barricade.”

“
We cannot hold back what's
coming,” said one of the younger Frelsians. “We will be evacuating
the ravine. We will leave behind some skirmishers to delay them,
but we're moving most of our force up to the lower rim.”

“
This is bad news,” said
Yaqob. “They own us.”

“
We can beef up our
defenses on the lower rim,” said the pretty-faced Frelsian. “We
have the necessary forces.”

“
We can continue to harass
them from the other ravine,” said Hailay. “Our wall is strong and
we are making it stronger. They have not yet dared to take us
on.”

“
They're gonna pick away at
us,” said Olivier. “Bit by bit. They're gonna keep hammering till
they can come up here and get us.”

“
Our forces continue to
grow,” said Zhang. “Many of the new refugees are volunteering for
service.”

“
How will you feed them
once we're cut off?” said Olivier. “As far as I can tell you don't
have any significant stores. Your root supply is limited and once
they chase us out of both valleys there goes all access to new
stocks. We can't handle a full-blown siege.”

“
Ah, but we have the bees,”
said Yaqob. “The bees will keep us fed.”

Hailay seemed less sanguine about the
situation. “They are already preparing new columns in the basin for
the next assault, including hundreds of newly modified climbers.
Condors and falcons are amassing in the far hills. And more
Cherubim have been spotted crossing the plains from the
beaches.”

“
Their capacity to mobilize
reserves seems unlimited,” said Olivier. “How can we win a war of
attrition?”

“
Mr. Moody?” said
Zhang.

“
Yeah?” The mention of my
name startled me. I had been hanging back behind Olivier,
observing. I didn't consider myself part of this
council.