418 - The utter vastness of it

As I swear, Niku marches over to us in her flying harness, eyes suspicious. “Omores, what did you just agree to?”

“A second condition,” Shefenkas says quickly to me. “Agreement of the A-niah. If that doesn’t happen it erases the other condition, meaning you need not swear if we win.”

“Excuse us, Arkan,” she says to me acidly, and draws him away by the arm. They talk back and forth, with some arm-waving, while the bustle of flying preparation continues around them. Several other brown-skinned flyers are drawn into the discussion. Both Niah and Yeolis are gesticulatively-expressive people; they demonstrate it handily, so to speak, now.

Niku is a fascinating person: the only woman ever to fight in the Mezem, the commander of the flyers, the Niah who persuaded her people to share the secret of flight with other races, the only woman Shefenkas considers worthy of his marriage vow—as well as of the certain battale royale he will have with the Assembly of Yeola-e about allowing foreign blood into their royal line. I’ve never spoken with her, though. She scares too much shen out of me.

Shefenkas beckons me over. “They will take you up on one condition,” he tells me, as they all stride away, not looking entirely happy, with the exception of one, who scowls at me. “You have to go up in an execution harness.”

“Um… an—”

“What that means… when they execute people, they do it by flying them up to a great height and dropping them. They bind the person’s arms and put them in a harness that falls open when the flyer pulls a cord.”

I’m starting to think maybe this wasn’t such a great stroke of genius.

“It’s all right, Sinimas,” he says, in a soothing tone. “I talked her out of binding your arms, because you wouldn’t be able to take notes, so you will be able to. As long as you don’t say or do anything to piss off the flyer, you’ll be fine. Still game?”

I swallow. “Yes.” Well… it will add something to the story, won’t it?

The I’m-the-one-who’s-stuck-with-the-Arkan look on the remaining Niah’s face, I am not imagining. “Solu here will take you,” Shefenkas says. He keeps looking up, and out toward the battlefield. He twitches like a fresh young horse being reined. “Solu, be nice to the Arkan. Take him where he wants to go.” He sends a squire off running to find an extra pair of far-lookers, then goes off himself, almost running. The Niah stalks away and I follow after him.

Under his wing-harness, the man is wearing green-dyed leather, with pieces of that curious dull grey armour they wear over it. He has a helmet of the same stuff, hooked to his harness. His black hair is tied back with a scarlet tie, from which hangs a big carven bead. “You do what I say!” he snaps in rough Enchian, without even looking back over his shoulder. “Do all I say, not one thing other!” We come to a row of wings; he gets under one and lifts it on his shoulders. It is so light, he rises as if there were nothing there.

What is this thing, that looks like a giant pale blue kite of silk and wire, but with wings that are two-layer, so they have thickness? I reach toward it. “Don’t touch!” he snaps. I follow him as he carries it, like a giant bluebird with stiff wings and human legs. He is not so much hefting it as keeping the faint breeze from taking it off his shoulders. Other Niah say things to him, smiling; I keep hearing the word “Arkanu.” I think he is getting ribbed about me. It doesn’t look like it’s helping his mood.

We get to where they are doing the launches. There are six straightaways; each has a chariot with a giant spool of wire on it, drawn by one horse or two. I see a Yeoli woman get launched. The horse trots and she runs just for a few steps before she’s in the air, just like a kite being flown by a running child; then the rider yells the horse up to a gallop. In a moment, it seems, she’s tiny in the sky. The two-man wings are launched by two horses; the wing at first sits on a contraption of wooden bars with wheels that the horse tows; as soon as the wing goes up it is left behind, and runners fetch it back to the starting point.

My heart starts pounding. I am going to be the first Arkan who’s ever done this, I think to myself. Well… the first who ever lived to tell the tale. I hope. What is it like up there? What does it feel like? What does it loo—

A sheet of thick cloth is thrown around me and trussed tight, pinning my arms to my sides. “Wait! He said my arms would be free, so I could take notes!”, I protest. Two people grab me up like a package. “Enshachik! Enshachik!” is all they say, whatever the fik that means. They hang me up by many cords, under the blue wing, my knees still touching the earth. My flyer is similarly kneeling-hanging beside me, so close we’re almost cuddling. He has his helmet on now, with two tiny round windows for his eyes, and smells like too much patchouli. Curse it—a corner of my noteboard, in my satchel, is digging into my belly. Someone grabs the front point of the wing and pulls it down, yanking us off the earth so we hang by the cords alone, making the noteboard dig in worse. Great—I’m going to be in agony the whole time I’m up, and have to do the whole thing by memory.

The wrappings around me suddenly let go, rolling me out onto the earth. I look up. My flyer is holding the end of a cord in his hand and going “Hahahahahahahaha!” All the helpers join in. They’re just beside themselves with hilarity.

The second time they wrap me in the execution harness, they do leave my hands free, and let me have the satchel out so I can grab my pen and noteboard, and the far-lookers around my neck, double-strapped. My flyer walks, and I and the wing are carried half by him and half by another. We are placed onto the launch contraption, and lashed together somewhat. The horses and launch-chariot are already in place, a squire running to us with the end of the wire.

For something so huge, so significant, it seems as if there should be more ceremony, more liturgy, more ponderous delay; not this casual unhesitating efficiency. Maybe that’s my nervousness talking. My blood is pounding in my temples. “No touch chamir!” my flyer yells at me, meaning the triangular arrangement of rods before us. “No touch my sharkskin!” That’s what his armour is made of. “No touch anything! No squirm, no wiggle!” I resolve to keep myself still as the dead, other than my writing hand. They clip the end of the wire to a hook on his harness, the helpers jump clear, and someone yells a signal.

I can’t believe I’m doing this, I think, as the charioteer barks at the horses. Like runners out of the gate we burst forward, the ride rough like a badly-sprung carriage but only for a moment, before I feel myself yanked up hard.

My little professional God, I can’t believe this… The ground falls away. It happens so fast… Suddenly I am looking at the chariot from above, seeing the galloping horses in front of it. The sound of the launch-ground fades into distance; I hear only the rushing of air through the wires and past the silk. By his hands on the bar, he’s steering us, I see, by moving it in relation to us. “Slow down your breath!” he snaps. I’m panting like a dog. I slow it by will. I’m going to pass out otherwise, and drop my pen, which is an expensive one, and maybe he’ll execute me Niah-style out of exasperation… no, not here, we’re still over their camp.

We go higher, and higher, and higher. The land seems to fade to insignificance; the sky seems to envelop us. My ears pop, then hurt; the only relief is swallowing. I look down; the horses and chariot seem tinier than toys, the thread of wire pointing down at them before it fades out. The launch-ground is a tidy patch of mottled specks, the bigger ones wings. The horses slow. My flyer reaches down casually and detaches the clasp. The wire falls away. Now it’s just the air itself, keeping us up. I look straight down, into distance unimaginable. All that is between me and that stupendous amount of down is this bit of cloth, these threads of wires, this gossamer device. And not pissing off my flyer. “Don’t think about that!” he shouts at me, as if he can read my mind.

Right. I have a story to get. We are turning, the land tilting below; he’s doing it by leaning us to one side of that bar. He yells something else—in Niah. All around us, above, below, are other wings. The flyers are all yelling to each other in Niah—even the Yeolis. He heads us towards a place in the sky where there is a column of them, all circling, rising.

I look down at the battlefield. The two armies, each as populous as a reasonable-sized city, lie spread out below, tiny as miniature toy soldiers on a living map. They are both forming up. I watch order slowly grow out of chaos, blobs turn into sharp-edged blocks and lines and points, growing from the front lines backward. It is cool up here, but then it’s suddenly hot again, and I feel an upward pull. My flyer circles us, so I have to keep craning my neck, this way, then that, to keep my eye on the battlefield. I look straight down again, see more wings with brilliant devices in green and red and blue and yellow spiraling up below us.

Beside me my flyer flies silently, so close to me I could almost lean my head on his shoulder. His face is less scowly now, but he does not look at me. We fly into coolness again, coolness enough that I am glad of the wrapping. Suddenly he lets go the bar with both hands, bringing my heart to my throat, but nothing happens. He pulls something out of a pouch on the inside of his other arm, puts it in that hand. It’s a hand-sized mirror, held by a strap to his wrist. He turns us with one hand so that the morning sun hits us, then looks down as if he’s aiming, and does something with the mirror, quivering his hand.

“If you don’t mind me asking, most illustrious flyer,” I say in my most obsequious Enchian, when he’s finished, “what did you just do?”

“Signal,” he says gruffly. “Signal ‘I have stupid Arkan at start height, going where he says.’”

“Ah.” From below, near the mass of barbarians turning itself into neat ranks, I see a point of light, like a spark of sun on the ground, flash on and off.

“Irsha answer,” he says. “ ‘Stupid Arkan, I receive, fly on.’”

“He has a mirror and he’s reflecting it in the sun, too?”

“She. Irsha is she. Yes. They no longer use couriers for messages on the field, on a sunny day. Take too long, Vaimoy ask us to do this instead. Ground to sky to ground.” I have a feeling I shouldn’t take notes on this, at least not right now. If he thinks I’m spying, it’s splat. After a horribly long time to ponder what it will feel like.

“Vaimoy?” Who’s that, the Niah leader of… signalers?

“The Hakan,” he says. Well, that clears that right up. “You call him… hahaha. Iperaseye.”

Imperator. “Shefenkas,” I say.

“Ya, Shhhhhefffffennnnkas,” he says, mimicking my Arkan accent. He’s allowed to piss me off.

I swallow, blow it off, put the far-lookers to my eyes, to try to pick out unit banners. I follow the Yeoli vanguard. The tiny red-brown smudges, joined together with straight lines of something that looks like bristle, are the Lakan monsters, with the long-speared Yeoli units between them. Those spears stand three man-lengths high; the beasts, four. That brings it all into perspective. The utter vastness of it hits me. There are two hundred thousand warriors down there.

“Closer?” I say. He brings us so that we are circling almost over the Yeoli side. Through less haze and closer, I can almost pick out individual warriors without the lookers. I use them, to understand which kind of unit is placed where, on both sides. I make a sketch of it on my noteboard. The Arkan ranks curve, the wings forward, the centre held back; the barbarians are a jagged line, with three points like teeth, all made of mamokal and the long-spear-men.

I hear a yell from somewhere in the air below me, “Chen!” The Yeoli word for “Attention!” Swooping forward of the rest of the wings is the one coloured the same as the Yeoli national flag, blue sky over green mountains with seven stars. Shefen-kas. “Signal to all on the field, as per plan, enact!”

“Follow him,” I say. My flyer pulls back on the bar, putting himself and me part way through it, and we begin descending, the wind singing louder through the wires, blustering my hair. From far below, I hear the Yeoli gong, beating in the rhythm that means “Advance.”