The Scarlet Tides by David Hair

Author:David Hair [Hair, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Jo Fletcher Books
Published: 2013-10-23T23:00:00+00:00

18

Across Kesh

Windship Travel

One of the magi’s first and most valuable discoveries was how to imbue wood with residual gnosis so that it could be made to support large weights. The next step, to build a hold around the enchanted timber and then add sails to capture the wind, came gradually, but by 420, forty years after the Ascendancy of the Blessed Three Hundred, air travel was a reality in Yuros, and it immediately proved its value both militarily and commercially. After observing sailing craft on Lac Siberne, more efficient sail and hull designs were designed, and superior airmanship followed. Rule of the air has been the cornerstone of the empire.

ANNALS OF PALLAS

Hebusalim, Dhassa, Antiopia

Rami (Septinon) to Shawwal (Octen) 928

3rd and 4th months of the Moontide

Pallacios XIII marched into the Hebb Valley under the full moon in the third week of Augeite. Mater-Lune’s face was the same pockmarked expanse as in Yuros, but little else was the same. The lands were brown and arid, almost lifeless, or so it looked at first glance. The few riverbeds were dry, not even muddy, and even the most spindly tree had been hacked down for fuel. The villages they marched through were empty, the local people long gone. The buildings were quite unlike those of Yuros; they were often entirely open on one side, to admit the air, and few windows or doorways had shutters or even doors. It made them look half-finished, just dried-mud shelters with roofs of straw. It was five days before they saw a Dhassan, a black-skinned old man hobbling along the road with cloth-wrapped feet. Bondeau hurled the old man off the road with a hand gesture, making the column laugh. The old man just sat there and watched them tramp past, his eyes defiant.

At night the temperature plummeted, but it was still hotter than sultry summer in Silacia. Thankfully, the air was so dry it did not overwhelm the senses the way a heat wave in Yuros could; it was somehow a little more bearable, so long as you had enough water. Many of the wagons were massive water barrels on wheels, so heavy only a hulka could pull them.

‘Look at them,’ Kip marvelled. ‘How many steaks would you get from one of them?’

‘We may find that out before the end of this journey,’ Baltus Prenton commented.

‘I don’t like them,’ Ramon said. ‘Animals that can understand verbal commands? That’s creepy.’

‘I don’t disagree.’ Baltus looked at Ramon. ‘You have some air-affinity, don’t you? Ever flown a skiff?’

‘Si, of course – at Turm Zauberin. It is fun.’

‘Excellent. You and Severine are going to be my back-ups. We’re getting two skiffs when we arrive in Hebusalim. I need to know you can handle one if you have to.’

Ramon grinned. ‘I’ll be fine. It was my old friend Alaron you’d need to worry about. He flew a skiff into his own house once. Wish I’d been there.’ He grinned at the thought of his earnest friend, wondering as he did where he was, and if he’d found Cym yet, and the Scytale.

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