"My girl!" One of the women pleaded as Kali dropped them off with the others. "Please, she was frightened, she ran, I couldn't reach her…"
"Where?" Kali said, already turning Horse.
"She ran beneath one of those things. Lord of All, please, you have to help her!"
Kali stared back into the chaos, seeing no sign of the girl but spotting instead another group of stranded victims, whose escape route was blocked by fallen trees. They were attempting to hack through the barrier of vegetation but their going was slow and all the while, behind them, the ground broken by the machines was growing ever larger.
Kali swallowed. She had no choice but to ride to help these people, and all she could do was hope she'd spot the youngster on route — the problem being, if she did, what the hells was she going to do then?
A second later, the dilemma became stark reality, a scream managing to make itself heard over the strange wailing of the machines. Kali stared hard and spotted a small figure struggling on the edge of the pit in the shadow of the first of them, and cursed. There was no way she could reach both the girl and the others in time, and for a moment she reined Horse's nose left and right, left and right, tortured by the decision to save the lives of a whole group or of one, however young. Thankfully, it was a decision she didn't have to make, the sound of further heavy hoofbeats signalling the arrival of a second horse by her side.
"You take the girl!" Its flame-haired rider shouted from her solid white mount. "I'll fetch Treave and the others!"
There was no time to think about who the woman was or where she had appeared from. Once more Kali booted Horse's flanks and steered him towards the girl. But if her chances of success had been precarious so far, they had just gotten a lot worse.
Kali found herself weaving Horse through the masses of soil that poured from the machine hanging above the girl in a deadly rain, at one point even having to turn him abruptly as a tree — crashed back to the ground directly in their path. It was a close run thing with far too many near misses and, the further in she rode, the thicker the falls became, leaving Kali with no choice but to ignore the painful hammering of falling detritus on Horse's hide and on her own, far less protected flesh. At last, though, she reached the girl and scooped the dishevelled, but miraculously unhurt, child up behind her, turning Horse for the return trip.
But again, she cursed. What seemed like a whole field by itself was falling in a solid curtain that would be impossible to pass without being crushed. Nevertheless, Kali spurred Horse on, leaning forward as she did to whisper in his ear, "If ever there was a time for you to do your thing, my friend, it's right now."
Horse was of the same mind, galloping straight ahead. One moment the bamfcat, Kali and the girl were heading into the roaring soilfall and the next they were heading away from it, on the other side.
Kali kept Horse at a gallop until they had reached the waiting farmers, slowed him to a trot, and stopped beside the anxious mother to swing her daughter down into her arms. She dismissed the woman's thanks, but not ungraciously, being more concerned with the fate of the one who had come to aid her in the rescue attempt. She stared back into the disaster area, a hopeless mass of uncontrollable landslides now, and bit her lip. Long, long seconds went by but then, bursting through a cloud of debris, a white, if somewhat soil-stained, horse appeared at full gallop. The farmers she had rescued clung to her saddle in much the same way Kali's had clung to Horse's horns, and a moment later they were with their own.
Kali watched the woman dismount, nodding modestly as the farmers thanked her for what she had done, but seemingly more interested in tending to the welfare of the animal she had ridden. Kali dismounted Horse and walked to the white horse, casually palming between its gravestone teeth one of the bacon lardons she kept for sentimental reasons, and then, without a word, the two women stood side by side to stare up at the strange, rotating machines which had come to dominate the whole sky.
All three of them now fully inverted — or perhaps the right way up, who was to tell? — their rotation appeared to be speeding up. The sound of their sirens faded to be replaced by a strange and very deep thrumming that seemed to be produced by the rotating eaves. The faster the machine turned, the more intrusive and painful the thrumming became, and all in the fields were forced to press their hands to their ears to block it out. The painful effects seemed to last no more than a minute, however, although both bamfcat and horse snorted in protest a little longer. As the animals calmed, Kali guessed the thrumming had passed beneath the range of anything's hearing, leaving the machines to rotate in apparent silence.
Kali glanced at the woman beside her. She still stared up at the machines with narrowed eyes and a steely set to her jaw, as if these things were an affront to her. There was also the same determination on her face that she felt herself — to find out just what these bastards were and what they would do next.
"Hells of a morning," Kali said.
"Not exactly what I expected when I got out of bed," the woman said.
"Kali Hooper."
"Gabriella DeZantez."
Kali studied her more closely. With her bone structure and fiery red hair she looked like a younger version of the Anointed Lord, Katherine Makennon. Kali didn't usually notice such things but it was also clear to her that the hair had been cut by her own hand rather than the prissy fingers of the primpers and preeners who'd begun to appear in the cities. She could tell immediately that Gabriella was different, like herself having little time for people's expectations or normal conventions. Her attitude was reflected in her clothing, too, the woman dressed for practicality rather than fashion, in a dusty surplice and working trews. Unfortunately it was the surplice of the Order of the Swords of Dawn, the Final Faith's warrior elite, bearing the faded crossed circle of the church. Kali had no idea what had caused Gabriella to end up as she was in a backwater such as this but she knew instinctively that she liked her. Which made it all that more of a shock when, with no preamble at all, the woman's next words were, "As the Enlightened One of the town of Solnos, I am placing you under arrest."
"What?" Kali protested. "Why?"
Gabriella DeZantez turned to face her directly for the first time, and Kali started slightly. Gabriella's eyes were unlike any she had ever seen, one a clear sapphire blue, the other a striking almond flecked with gold.
"I should have thought that was obvious," she said.
Kali surveyed the devastation. "You mean this? I had nothing to do with this."
"There is evidence to the contrary."
"Evidence? What evidence? Now wait one farking minute!"
But before she could argue her case further Gabriella DeZantez quickly unsheathed her twin blades, whirled them full circle and slammed their hilts into her temples.
Kali dropped to the ground like a stone.
"Treave, Maltus, bring her," the Enlightened One said as she strode by two of the farmers in the direction of what was left of the town. "As the Overseer has decreed, this 'Kali Hooper' must answer for her crimes."
Chapter Three
For the last hour the archer's aim had been unwavering, the tip of the arrow pointing precisely where it had pointed when his wait had begun. It had not moved a hair's breadth in any direction. In the hands of any normal bowman, the strain of holding it so would have long ago become too intense. The bow would have begun to shake and skew, the shaft unstable and tremulous between two crooked fingers of the right. The nock of the arrow would, by now, have begun to buck spastically on the bowstring, and the strain would have transformed the tendons of the arms into agonising webs of red hot wire. Under such circumstances the bow would have to have been relaxed, lowered, and the trembling, cramped limbs exercised and massaged. The intended target of the bow might, as a result, have been lost.