Eric’s ears rung. Though he’d doubtless only been unconscious for a few seconds, it felt like it has been hours. The shadow of a gryphon reminded him: Savage Hunters, right. Escaping back to the Freeholds, not dozing under a tree in the college greens. Half their party was horseless; one gladiator and a pair of sailors, including Two-Tooth, were dead. Dust in the distance heralded the return of the Black Legion cavalry.
“That ledge!” Selva pointed to a drop several hundred meters away, lowlands and winding river visible beyond. “Their horses can’t follow us down there! Move!”
For a rider on a gryphon, the distance would take mere seconds. For a horse at full gallop, longer but still respectable. But for a human, reduced to running on foot? Painfully slow. The Black Legionnaires were still far away, but might yet catch them. Perhaps the Hunters thought likewise, the Red-Masked Man did not expend any more disks. Then the gryphons screeched, veered toward something in the distance.
Rising up from below the ledge came a volor, a relic Keeper airship. Eric’s jaw dropped as he beheld it: a magnificent craft whose boat-hull of white diamondoid sported an armored prow splitting two forward windows, and six short wings of intricate translucent sails. Its engines gave it an unearthly buzzing sound as it swung about its axis, housings for three gravity brakes along its side glowing Cherenkov blue. From the deck above the volor’s great cabin, a person spread his wings and leapt.
Sir Wotoc paused mid-stride, lifting an eyebrow. “A man with wings?”
An aven, Eric knew, like a rail-thin man with fifteen-foot slatted wings and smaller steering vanes on his lower legs. He wore a full-body jumpsuit with navy-blue and white colors—Star Patrol, and he carried no weapon. Eric’s heart rose. This was a rescue!
The aven swept his wings forward and touched down at a jog, pushing his goggles atop his forehead and dropping the mask over his nose and mouth. “You guys want to live?” he shouted in Americ. “Then come with me!”
From the great-cabin balcony, two grizzled men in bandana-caps and leather armor threw down a rope ladder. Professor Temerin rushed the remaining Argo sailors, all of three, to it. Men began to climb, several at a time, then Cobb and Sir Wotoc by himself.
The Black Legion cavalry drew closer. On the volor’s deck, men took aim with bows and loosed a volley. Arrows thudded off shields and armor, one Legionnaire got wounded in the shoulder. Selva clicked the stunner again, more flopped down.
“Go!” she shouted to Eric and Temerin. Eric let the Professor go first, then threw himself at the rope ladder and held fast. He felt Selva and the aven grab on below, then the volor’s engines thrummed to life and his body grew heavy.
He looked down at the ground receding away below him, and swore. Reaching the ladder’s top, he was helped aboard by the two crewmen. They clearly were not members of any organized military force; this was no Arztillan or even Freehold craft. What was it? A ship of sky-pirates? The cabin was ornate; as well-furnished as Meridian artistry could muster. A staircase, made of glossy-white diamondoid over which fur covering had been fastened, led two decks down to a curving hold. More volor crewmen, and the rest of the expedition’s group, was gathered there along with another aven, a woman, also in a Star Patrol flight suit. At the bow, behind a navigation station set before the great big windows, a man in red robes faced forward with his hands behind his back.
Professor Temerin took a deep breath, doffed his helmet. “To whom do we owe our thanks?”
The man in bright red robes turned around, revealing himself as lightly-built with a pointed goatee. “I am Prex, captain of this ship, and leader of this crew.”
“I take it you are no friends of Caesar Dulane?”
“We are free agents, knowing no permanent allegiance beyond the pact of our Articles.”
Pirates. Eric thought. “What about them?” he jabbed a thumb towards the first aven, who had walked over to stand with the other. “Where’d you find them?”
Prex answered, “They came to us, in fact.”
“Knocked out of orbit by the replicators?” Selva asked.
“We were serving in a survey station when they attacked,” the aven woman said. “We managed to get to a shuttle, escape that way. Turns out they don’t attack anything below a certain altitude.”
“Probably a hardware failsafe, so they can’t damage the planet. Where’s your shuttle now?”
“Sprinkled across a few fields in the Westlands,” the aven man replied. “I’m Felden, she’s my sister Zandra.”
“And just what, by the stars, are you?” Sir Wotoc reached out to touch his iridescent-green wings, folded up behind his back and head like a cape.
“Didn’t I tell you about avens?” Temerin asked.
“I admit I did not believe you.”
Temerin looked back to Felden and Zandra. “How did you find us?”
“We’ve been looking for other survivors who made it down from orbit,” replied Zandra. “There’s a classics professor and his students who’d gotten permission for an expedition, that must be you.”
The cover story, right. Eric started, “Uh, actually—” he waited for Selva to stop him, she did not. “—this is a mission to topple Dulane. We’re working for the Existential Risks Directorate.”
Selva added, “I’m a Special Agent.”
“Oh, shit,” Felden whispered, then pondered. “That would explain...that battle north of the Druza Freeholds, when the satellite telemetry went down.”
“And that recon ship that pulled into orbit and did absolutely nothing.” Zandra said. “How’s that been working out?”
“Not as well as we’d hoped,” replied Temerin. “But we’re not dead yet, so we got that going for us.”
“My apologies we did not arrive in time to save all your men,” Captain Prex said, then waved a hand at the avens. “They told me if we went looking for other stranded starmen, we could deliver them to their outpost at the other side of the world and be richly rewarded.”
“The island base, yes,” Selva said. “This craft is solar-powered; it should be reachable. Though perhaps with some difficulty. We can give you anything you want, within limitations: gold, medicines, equipment repairs.”
“Indeed,” Prex continued. “Unfortunately, I lied.”
