Still running, Dazza glanced back. “Let her come,” she called. Then she disappeared into the bird’s throat.
The instant the healer released her, Kamoj took off. She had no time to consider the consequences of running into the mouth of a giant metal bird. Its jaw was already closing. She barely had time to race inside before it snapped shut behind her. Two more steps took her through the throat—and into a nightmare.
The bird’s stomach was a demon’s nest of tubes and metal curves, surfaces that gleamed, light panels, other things she had no names for, looping coils and projections like clawed hands.
Suddenly the bird lurched. Kamoj lost her balance and slid to one knee, her shoulder hitting the metal “wall” that lined the beast’s gut. A roaring filled the air and the bird vibrated around her. As it grumbled and boomed, a great invisible hand shoved her against the wall of its stomach.
The Lionstar stagman who had knocked out the Ironbridge archer knelt on one knee at her side, his presence both reassurance and an offer of protection. She managed to incline her head in gratitude. He nodded back, his face as pale as a white-skeeted snowlizard. She suspected he had no more love of riding in the innards of giant metal birds than did she.
A few paces away from them, Vyrl lay on a pallet enmeshed in coils and jointed metal arms. The siren coming from his body abruptly cut off, leaving a calm broken only by the muted clinks and hissing of the bird’s guts. The Ironbridge man lay on another pallet, surrounded by healers. Kamoj couldn’t tell what was happening with him, or even if he still lived.
Vyrl, however, was very much alive. He had ripped the mask off his face and was grabbing at a tube Dazza kept trying to press against his arm.
“I won’t be put to sleep like some wild animal!” he told her.
“Stop fighting,” Dazza said. “It will drive the arrows deeper into your body.”
Either he didn’t hear or didn’t care. He kept struggling, until finally the healers fastened down his limbs with straps. Still he fought, his face flushed as he strained against his bonds. It terrified Kamoj to see him that way, like a man possessed.
“Prince Havyrl, you have to hold still,” a man said. “We can’t get the arrows out.” In almost the same instant, Dazza said, “The sedative isn’t working,” and another man said, “I’ll try Perital.” As the man pressed a tube against Vyrl’s arm, Vyrl swore, the tendons in his necks as taut as cords. His eyes rolled back into his head and his body went rigid—no, not rigid, it was jerking—
Someone yelled, “What the—?” and a new siren went off. In the same instant, Dazza shouted, “Give me an air-syringe!” while a woman said, “Saints almighty, what kind of neural map is that?”
Vyrl’s entire body spasmed against the restraints, convulsing back and forth. As Dazza slapped another tube against his arm, someone else said, “I’m reading discharges all over his brain,” and another healer shouted, “We have to clear-damn! The arrow punctured his lung.”
Kamoj rocked back and forth, agonized. Vyrl was dying and she was helpless to do anything. Even his healers couldn’t stop the demon that wracked him like a stick-man made of twigs.
“Give him more meds!” Dazza said. “Double-dose the chest wound.”
“He’s got too many in his body already,” a man said.
“Do it!” Dazza ordered.
A woman said, “Heartbeat and blood pressure dropping below critical levels. Colonel, we’re losing him.”
“No. Gods, no.” Dazza gripped the pallet. “Vyrl, come back! Don’t let go. Not now. Not after you’ve come so far.”
“The nanomed concentration in his blood is too high,” a man said. “They’re starting to break down his tissues.”
“Clean them out,” Dazza said. “Neutralize now!”
Vyrl stopped jerking. As his body went limp, a healer said, “Neural inhibition working. Neurons fatiguing.” Riding on the tail end of her words, a man said, “His right lung collapsed,” and another said, “Med concentration decreasing.”
Dazza glanced at a man bent over a panel of lights. “Can we save the lung?”
“The meds got to the puncture site before we flushed,” he said. “I’ve got the pneumothorax under control and regeneration around the wound is taking.”
The colonel nodded, then turned to a woman who was studying a collection of ghosts above a silver platform. “What happened to him?” Dazza asked.
“That was a grand mal seizure,” the woman said. “A generalized tonic-clonic attack, like an epileptic convulsion. I haven’t tracked down the cause yet.”
“There!” a man said. He held up the arrow that had been in Vyrl’s chest. When Kamoj saw blood gush out of Vyrl’s wound, bile rose in her throat. It wasn’t the blood; she had tended injured farm hands with wounds just as serious. But it had never been her husband before, bleeding away his life. His lung had collapsed. How could he survive such wounds?
Someone said, “We have the second one,” and held up part of another bloody arrow. Kamoj hadn’t even realized part of that one had stayed in Vyrl’s body. Other healers attached patches to the inside of his elbows while a man pressed a tube against his neck.
“Colonel, I’ve got what caused his seizure.” That came from the woman bent over the silver ghosts. “The last sedative, the Perital, interacted with the alcohol in his bloodstream. It set off a reaction in the series-N nanomeds he carries, which acted on the psiamine receptors in his brain. With all those extra neural structures he has up there, it was too much. His neurons started firing like mad and the excitation spread.” She glanced at the doctor. “His brain went into overload.”
Dazza nodded tiredly. “Log the whole cycle, Lieutenant. Next time we’ll know.”
A man’s voice came out of the air. “Colonel Pacal, shall I take the shuttle up to the Ascendant?”
“Yes,” Dazza said.
“No,” Vyrl whispered.
Dazza leaned over him, two tears running down her cheeks. “Holy saints, Vyrl, don’t you ever stop arguing?”
Opening his eyes, he looked up at her. “Never want… see that medical bay again.”
Her voice gentled. “We need its equipment.”
“Everything you need… at palace.”
“I’ll feel better with you on the ship.”
“Won’t go back there.”
“I can have Jak Tager meet us at the docking bay—”
“No! Told you. Don’t need him.”
“Vyrl, I’m sorry. But I want you on the cruiser.”
His eyes closed. “Then the hell with you.”
“Doctor-Colonel,” Kamoj said.
Dazza looked up. “Kamoj? Are you hurt?”
“No, ma’am.” She tried to make her voice calm, so Dazza would listen to her, but it made the words come out stilted. “If you break the spirit of a greenglass, you can still force it to serve you. But it will serve neither willingly nor well. Break the king of the stags and the entire herd dies.”
“What the hell?” a healer said. Another said, “She’s just a kid. She’s probably scared.”
“No.” Dazza was watching Kamoj. “I know what she means.” She pushed her hand through the silver tendrils of her hair. Then she said, “Major, change of orders. Take us to the palace.”
The disembodied voice said, “Will do, ma’am.”
Kamoj closed her eyes with relief. When she opened them, Azander was watching her from the other side of the bird, where he stood against a wall. He nodded as if to thank her for intervening on Vyrl’s behalf. Then he dropped his gaze to indicate respect. She swallowed, grateful he saw her as an ally now instead of an enemy.