Dragonfly Falling

seer.

‘That you will find something,’ the girl said. ‘You will find what you seek, perhaps.’

‘Does he know you’re telling me all this?’

‘He wanted me to,’ she said. She was close to his own age, thin and pale, with her white hair cut short and ragged. She was pretty, though, and she looked at Phalmes with a smile that he did not know what to do with. In that moment of awkwardness, Salma saw him as though he had known the man all his life. A solid working man, ripped from his trade, his family, his life, only to be driven further and further as he fled the rolling borders of the Empire, and yet here he was, still trying.

‘They made you an officer in the Auxillians,’ he guessed.

‘So you’re a magician as well now, are you?’ Phalmes demanded. ‘I was Sergeant-Auxillian, if you must know.’

‘And you’re still trying to look after your men.’

‘Just like you are,’ Phalmes confirmed, ‘but what of it? A man’s got to have some purpose in his life.’

‘Yes, he does,’ Salma agreed.

‘Why not come with us?’ the Roach girl asked Phalmes again.

He merely shook his head tiredly.

But the next morning, as the refugees set off westwards, Phalmes and his bandits were riding uncertainly alongside them. They were far enough apart to maintain their sovereignty, but they rode a parallel path, and took care not to get ahead.

Something was happening, Salma was aware, though he was not sure just what. In the meantime, as he waited for it to happen, his little band of fugitives lived day-to-day and relied on one another. When they were hungry, the land or the leavings of others sustained them. When they were weary they stopped and scavenged wood for a fire.

Then, one afternoon when they were in sore need of food and shelter, one of Phalmes’s scouts reported back that there was a small village ahead. They had been following the Sarn-Helleron railroad, and it was some little hamlet built around a rail siding. Passenger trains had stopped here, so there would be inns, farmland, an engineer’s workshop with a single enterprising artificer. But there had been little traffic of late, and most of the opportunists had headed away, looking for fatter pastures, leaving only a skeleton of a place, inhabited by those that could not or would not leave.

Phalmes gave a signal and the bandits began to ready their weapons.

‘What are you doing?’ Salma asked him.

‘We need food,’ Phalmes said. ‘What’s more, there are roofs out there that we can make use of.’

‘There will be no pillaging here,’ Salma told him. ‘There’s no need for that.’

‘You’re right, so long as the locals there are sensible.’ The Mynan gave him a hard smile. ‘So long as they understand that we have the power to take, all we need to do is ask.’

‘Let me at least talk to them first,’ Salma insisted.

‘Whatever you want,’ said Phalmes with a shrug. ‘But those around you now are your people. They’re looking to you to provide, like my men look to me. They’re short of everything and hungry each evening. What are you going to do about that?’

Salma looked out at the village and thought, Was it Cosgren that brought me to this? It had to be something more, but he could not put his finger on the moment when he had shouldered this responsibility. It was now on his shoulders, nonetheless.

It did not turn out as Salma had planned, none of it.

They had gone to the village, all of his ragged band: the farmwife and her child, the Fly gangsters and the escaped slaves, Sfayot and his daughters and — like a dark and brooding tail — Phalmes’s deserters and brigands. The village would have no wish to play host to such a pack of vagabonds, and yet the numbers Salma led in were great enough that they could hardly resist.

Taking Phalmes and Nero along with him, Salma had met with the village headman and bartered for food. Some of his barter had been in coin, some in promised labour, or services. He was aware that he had desperately little to offer and that, even with Nero’s practised haggling, they should have been turned away immediately. Instead, the headman made an offer that was generous by any means, and Salma understood then how he was participating in banditry. Banditry of a civilized sort, but Phalmes’s men were all well armed, and this village was small.

They would camp within the village boundaries, Salma explained. They would chop the promised wood, draw the promised water, all the other meaningless tokens of their agreement. The headman tried to wave it away, but Salma had insisted.

He had not intended to become a brigand, but it seemed that it was easier than he had guessed to slip into that trade.

He had not intended to defend the village, either, but nevertheless it had happened. He had less control over his fate than he had ever imagined.

The real brigands had come thundering down on the settlement at night, with swords and burning brands. There were a score and a half of them and they were not here to make deals, or even to threaten or intimidate. They came for quick loot, a handful of whatever they could grab.

Instead they found Salma and his followers. Even while the villagers were putting their children out of the way, reaching for their staves and spears, Salma was rousing his band, sending them out with blades and sticks and bows. He went out himself, too, seeing by the slice of moon far better than the attackers, making savage work with the staff that Sfayot had made for him, and then ultimately just with the claws of his thumbs.

He discovered he was strong enough to fly again, using his wings to leap into his enemies, kicking and raking, and then jump back before they realized what was happening.

These were the sort of mixed ruffians he remembered from Helleron: Beetles and rogue Ants and halfbreeds, driven but disorganized. The fighting was fierce.

When they were finally chased away, at least half their number struck down, Salma walked amongst his own people to assess the damage. Two of Phalmes’s men were dead, and one of the Fly-kinden youths. Others were wounded, and Sfayot and his daughters did what they could with charms and herbs and bandages made from torn and boiled cloth.

Then Salma went to face the headman.

‘We did not bring them down on you,’ he said because, all through the fight, that had been his thought, of what the villagers must surely believe.

‘I did not believe you had,’ said the headman, a Beetle-kinden, like most of the villagers. There was a cut across his balding scalp that one of his own people had bandaged. ‘Why did you come here?’

Salma shrugged. He was feeling haggard and worn down and his wound ached. ‘We saw your houses and we were hungry.’

‘Take the food,’ the headman said. ‘I have some money, too. We have done well here until the troubles.’

Salma wanted to refuse, but he thought of Phalmes and knew that he had at least that much responsibility — even to bandits and deserters.

The dawn brought a sight that made him shiver. Without ever discussing it, his followers had taken the arms and armour of the slain bandits. The Fly-kinden had swords and daggers now, and the Beetle-kinden farmwife had a crossbow. The three slaves had covered their tunics with studded leather hauberks. Sfayot’s eldest daughter had a short-hafted axe thrust through her belt. She had accounted for herself well with slung stones, the previous night.

Phalmes approached Salma and held a shortsword out to him, hilt first.

‘I saved this one,’ he said. ‘I know a bit about swords and here’s a good one. Helleron-made, and they know their business there.’

Salma accepted it gratefully. The balance was good, better than the Wasp-kinden weapon he had carried for so long. It felt good to have a proper sword in his hand again.

Two nights after the village he dreamt of home: riding out of the elegant palace of Suon Ren in the Principality of Roh, and seeing the landscape spread out before him in gentle tiers that centuries of careful cultivation had made into a picture of perfect beauty: the green and gold of the fields under the blue of the sky. It was autumn, near harvest, and the cold breeze that was blowing promised an early end to those warm days. The