Swords of Waar (45 page)

I leaned way forward to see if there was some other control hidden between the two bars, and all of a sudden we were plunging down like we were doing a bombing run. Lhan yelped in surprise and clung on as both of us lifted up off our seats. And as we did, we leveled off, and thumped down on the seat again, all wobbly and scared shitless, and about fifty feet below the other bikes.

Lhan clung to me, gasping. “That was… precipitous.”

“Yeah. But why did it…?”

I looked at the bench under our makeshift saddle as I floored it again, and saw it was built like a wah-wah pedal. If I leaned far enough forward I’d press down the front of the bench and the nose would go down. If I leaned far enough back, I’d press the back down and the nose would go up, and the priests had built the bottom of the booster seat like a rocking chair so it would all still work. Talk about flying by the seat of your pants! Or no pants, in my case.

“Jae-En. They come.”

A burst of wand fire carved a black line in the skin of the boat-bike, nearly cutting off one corner. The two fliers were angling down at us, and the guy riding bitch on the second one was firing over the driver’s head.

I leaned forward hard and plunged straight for the ground, but this time I meant it. “Hang on, Lhan! We gotta ditch this thing, and fast.”

I banked right around the burning temple, hugging the wall and trying to put it between us and that wand, but as we skimmed down the curve of the thing Lhan gripped my shoulder and pointed south.

“Jae-En! Look!”

I looked. Us and the priests weren’t the only things in the sky that night. Off in the distance a bunch of airships were coming our way, and I thought I recognized Ku-Rho’s warship, and Kai-La’s repainted church ship among ’em.

I got a little thrill as I realized our friends were coming to rescue us, but a second later it turned to dread. Off to the east, more airships were rising into the sky from Ormolu’s naval base.

“Holy shit! It’s the whole fuckin’ Oran navy!”

Lhan’s fingers dug into my shoulder. “We must return to Kai-La. She has come for us and will die for it if we tarry.”

I gritted my teeth and looked back. The boat-bikes were screaming down around the temple after us. They were zeroing in. “We gotta take these guys out first. That blue wand could bring down the whole fleet.”

Lhan pulled his crossbow off his back and loaded it, then tried to twist in the saddle. “I will attempt a shot.”

“Not yet, Lhan. We need the high ground. Lean back. Now!”

I pulled back hard on the handlebars and threw myself back. Lhan did the same, and we almost went off the back as the boat jerked up out of its power dive, then got thrown forward again as it jerked to a stop with a roar of reverse thrust. The stop was so fast it felt like we’d bounced off the ground and into a brick wall. The ski-doos had to veer left and right to avoid us, and one fishtailed right into the temple wall, smashing to pieces like a bike hitting a semi, and sending its riders flying as shattered cowling and smashed engine parts spun down toward the ground.

I angled after the other one, or tried to anyway. I felt like a kid trying to learn how to use a stick shift for the first time. I kept jerking forward, dropping, jerking forward, rising, stopping dead, swerving. It probably saved our lives. The guy on the back kept shooting at us, but I don’t think even a targeting computer could have tracked us the way I was driving.

We couldn’t keep playing dodgeball forever, though. We had to get going.

“Shoot ’im, Lhan! Shoot ’im!”

Lhan grunted. “Were you to hold steady for but a moment…”

“He’ll kill us.”

I swerved again and Lhan fell against me, banging my head with the stock of the crossbow.

“Ah, better. If I may lean on you?”

“Do it! Shoot!”

Lhan braced on my shoulders and fired over my head. There was a TWANG in my ear and the gunner on the last bike toppled off, a bolt sticking out of his back, and his wand falling with him.

“Yee-haw!”

The driver started taking evasive action, but I ignored him and floored it straight for Kai-La’s fleet, screaming over the orange and black city like a hornet and keeping one eye on the Oran ships, which were all up in the air now, and slowly turning our way.

“Come on. Come on.”

Pretty soon I could see people on the decks of Kai-La’s ship, all standing at the rails and armed to the teeth, with more up in the rigging. Ku-Rho’s ship was right beside Kai-La’s.

“Hang on, Lhan. Almost there.”

A sharp-tipped bolt like a fence post shot out from Ku-Rho’s ship and nearly punched us out of the sky. I flinched aside and swerved all over the place in surprise. A bunch of crossbow bolts whizzed out after the flying stake, but all fell short.

“What the fuck? What are they doing?”

“They know us not.”

I reined to a stop and stood up on the saddle, waving my arms. “Hey! It’s Jane! And Lhan! It’s us!”

There was a tense silence, and I was afraid they didn’t believe me, or couldn’t hear, but then I saw a little figure in red hop up on the rail of Kai-La’s ship and put a megaphone to her mouth.

“Stand down, all! Stand down, Ku-Rho! These are friends. I’d recognize those tits anywhere. Come ahead, Mistress Jae-En!”

I breathed a sigh of relief and glided in easy, and saw Shal-Hau and Sei-Sien waiting for us at the rail in the middle of the crew. Well, Shal-Hau was waiting for us. Sei-Sien was staring past us at the burning tower with his face hanging out.

Shal-Hau spread his arms. “Welcome, pupil! Welcome, Mistress! I am overjoyed to see you alive. We thought the worst.”

Lhan bowed, but was so wiped out he nearly fell off the bike. “Th-thank you, master. It is a joy to see you as well.”

I bumped the rail beside them and reached out to hold steady. The crew stared at the boat-bike and edged back, but Burly whipped them into action.

“Don’t stand there with yer gobs hangin’ open. Bring our friends aboard. Can you not see they are hurt?”

The sailors were too weirded out to actually step out on the boat-bike, but they reached out to us and hauled us over the rail, then laid us down on the deck.

Shal-Hau stepped through them, and called for bandages so he could see to our wounds, but Sei-Sien kept staring out at the Temple of Ormolu, which was now bent at the top like a stubbed-out cigarette and still burning like a torch. Amazingly, it was also still shooting its stream of water up into the sky, but with the tip at an angle, it looked even more like a pissing dick.

Sei-Sien mumbled like a street crazy as he watched it burn. “They did it. ’Tis impossible, but they did it. The church is done.”

I hadn’t realized until then just how much I needed to stop moving, but as soon as I was on my back and Shal-Hau stuck a canteen in my hand, all I wanted to do was sleep. But not yet. I looked around for Kai-La, who was telling her crew to tie the boat-bike to the rail.

“You gotta get out of here, Kai-La. The navy—”

She smiled down at me. “Aye, we saw ’em. And we’re away already. Not to worry. The she-skelsha can outrun anything in the sky, except maybe that little toy you brought with you.”

She looked out at the temple, and the orange of the fire showed up the bones in her face. “I suppose that’s your doing?”

“We didn’t mean to set it on fire.”

“A happy accident then.”

Lhan lifted his head. “But the water has been freed. And not only here. All seven temples have given back what they stole.”

Burly looked skeptical. “To the sky? It was the ground that needed it.”

I was going to explain, but all of a sudden my head was drooping and I had to lay back again.

“Answered prayer,” I mumbled. “Answered prayer.”

Shal-Hau shook his head. “The poor thing is babbling. She must rest.”

Kai-La gave me a sad smile, then waved to her crew. “Take them below and put them to bed, they’re cluttering up my deck.” She started back to the aft deck. “More sail, friends! Helmsman! Another point to the south!”

The last thing I saw as we were carried into the underdeck was the sailors scrambling up into the rigging and the sails on either side of the canopy creaking out to catch more wind.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

RENEWED!

I
woke up to trumpets blowing and for a second thought I was back in boot camp, with those asshole buglers blasting me out of my cot at oh-my-god thirty. Then I looked up at the curved wooden ceiling and remembered where I was. I groaned. It felt like my arms and legs had been tied in knots, then set in concrete. The real pain came when I moved, and every cut and scrape and burn I’d got from fighting naked for sixty or so floors started itching like I was covered in fire ants.

I looked over at Lhan and laughed. He looked like I felt, hissing and grimacing as he lifted his head at the horns.

“You find my pain amusing?”

“I’m just laughing to keep my mind off my own.”

We were in Kai-La’s cabin, set up on two little cots on the floor behind her dinner table. There was a lantern glowing on a hook above us, and the windows at the stern end of the cabin were dark. I was confused.

“Is it still night? Or is it night again?”

“I know not. I feel I have slept a full year.”

The horns came again and we looked up.

“That is the call to battle.”

“Ugh. I’ve always hated that tune.”

We picked ourselves up and limped and groaned our way over to the window bench to push open the back windows. It wasn’t night, just dark. The light was a weird grayish green, and as dim as a twenty-watt bulb, but it was still enough to see that the sky behind Kai-La’s galleon was wall to wall airships. My heart sank. It looked like she hadn’t outrun the Oran navy after all. They were right on our tail, less than two miles back.

I sighed. “Well, we won’t be getting away from that.”

“At least we will die knowing that our efforts have borne fruit after all.”

I looked at him. “How do you mean?”

He pointed above the Oran ships. I looked up, then gaped. The sky was all clouds, heavy and gray and bulging down like the underside of a mattress with a fat guy sleeping on it.

“Holy shit. Did we do that?”

“I can think of no other explanation.”

“Well, goddamn.”

Kai-La’s voice came from above, shouting orders, and I pushed to my feet.

“Come on, we better go up and help.”

Lhan nodded, but didn’t get up. He just kept looking out the window.

“Mistress.”

“Yeah?”

“Mistress, I would not fight again beside you before we have resolved what lies between us.”

I sighed. “Lhan, I thought we went through this. I thought you were okay with what happened.”

He turned away from the window, as grim as a hanging judge. “With your actions, I have no complaint. It is my behavior, from the moment of your return, with which I am not, as you say, ‘okay.’”

I blinked as I worked that one through. “Huh? What are you saying?”

“I say that I have been a fool, and have made a fool’s error. I have mistaken pride for honor, and it has divided me from she who I truly love.”

I took a step toward him. “Lhan, don’t—”

He held up a hand. “Let me finish, Mistress. Please.”

I stopped and waited, though all I wanted to do was fold him up in my arms and squeeze him.

“In the tower, nay, in every place and every battle, you have shown me that honor has nothing to do with pride, but everything to do with defending the weak against the strong and protecting one’s friends against one’s enemies. I, by contrast, have named my vanities honor and demanded you give them the respect of law.”

I shrugged, uncomfortable. “Forget it, Lhan. People stick to what they grow up with. You grew up in Ora, you’re gonna have Oran values. You can’t help it.”

“Can I not?” He laughed. “Have I not flouted them in all else? Have I not spurned the path chosen for me by my father? Have I not slept on both sides of the bed? Am I not branded heretic? Have I not killed the priests and paladins of the Seven? Why then have I clung so fiercely to that particular part of Oran law which states that a dhan is sworn to defend his dhanshai’s honor and protect her person against all dangers? Because I believed in it? I—”

He cut off in mid-flow, then frowned. “Well, in all fact, I do believe in it. That has not changed. What
has
changed, what
you
have changed in me, is that I now believe a dhanshai need not abandon her strength and valor in order to abide by her part of the sacred vow, or for her dhan to abide by his. Indeed, be their prowess equal, it should be right and proper that both defend and protect the other.”

I stared at him. “Wait. So you believe we’re equals now?”

Lhan laughed. “Equals? Hardly. You are so much my better in all the chivalric virtues that I would not allow myself to be mentioned in the same breath as—”

“Aw, can it, Lhan. Now you’re just kissing my ass.”

“I speak only truth, Mistress. You are stronger, braver, more noble—”

“Not to mention dumber, clumsier, uglier, and you can still kick my ass in a straight-up fight.”

Lhan waved that away. “Do not make mock of yourself. You are a hero in every way that I am not—in the most important way. You do not permit your fears to turn you from doing what should be done.”

I sat down next to him. “Lhan. I know you fucked up once. I know you let that boy be taken. But how many times have you made up for it?”

“Not enough.”

“Okay, fine. Not enough. The point is, have you ever let fear stop you since?”

“I could not live were I to allow that again.”

“Right. Exactly. You’re handling it. You fucked up, and then you fixed it. You’re never gonna do that again. I—” I stopped as a drawerful of Polaroids spilled across my brain. “I’m here because I can’t handle my shit. I get mad and… and bad things happen. I go to jail. I kill some poor bastard. I… You know, I should be in the army right now. I should be off in Afghanistan being a
real
hero—I sure as hell trained hard enough to get there—but then I went and lost my temper and broke my CO’s nose on my first week of deployment. Never saw action. Not once. Instead, I got sent home and dishonorably discharged, and ended up riding around on a Harley and gettin’ into bar fights with other losers—all because I got no control. How fucking heroic is that? You tell me!”