A Search for Starlight (The Firewall Trilogy) by James Maxwell

Author:James Maxwell [Maxwell, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: 47North
Published: 2021-02-04T05:00:00+00:00

21

Fiery heat seared the wasteland. Both suns were high in the sky and poured terrible brightness onto the plain below, where an immense column made up of all five races stretched for so long that its tail plunged between two cliffs and on to another plain altogether. To some it was an exodus; to others it was the birth of an army.

Selena blinked sweat out of her eyes. She was close to the head of the column, walking on dry red dirt that crunched beneath her boots. She passed cactuses on both sides, green and spiky with limbs arranged in a variety of poses. Boulders lay strewn over the landscape. Lizards scurried off when they sensed the approach of marching feet. Tall cliffs loomed in the distance.

She glanced at Dale, walking by her side. A sheet of moisture coated his forehead, but his expression was determined. Behind Dale she saw more humans, but also the stooped forms of bax in leather armor. Turning her head in the other direction she saw a powerfully built trull grumble something to a man nearby. Farther back, a group of mantoreans mingled with skalen, while more bax followed behind, and then a large number of marching humans.

As far as she could see, it was the same all the way to the column’s end. It was simply too difficult to stay in separate groups according to attributes like race or clan, settler or rover. Instead those up front were the strongest and fastest. The skalen hated bright sunlight and yet here they were, ready to throw their aurelium-tipped javelins at a moment’s notice. The mantoreans were renowned archers, nomadic by disposition, and more arrived as word of the column’s existence rippled throughout the wasteland. Most of the bax were from the Rift Valley, just as a great number of humans were from Zorn, but every day a band of human rovers or bax villagers joined the immense group, until Selena imagined that the entire population of the wasteland must be filling the plain.

“Do you think they know we’re here?” Dale watched the sky before he turned his attention to Selena. “I want us to survive long enough to build this,” he indicated the mass of figures, “into an army.”

“All I can promise is that we’ll have warning,” Selena said. “I know where I’m taking us. And we’ve made it this far.”

“Then lead on,” he said. The tension in his eyes relaxed; she liked it that she had reassured him.

Selena also took comfort from the fact that she wasn’t the only mystic looking out for danger. Among so many, there were inevitably dozens of mystics, with mantoreans like Rei-kika the most skilled of all. A voice sometimes spoke into Selena’s mind, telling her about what lay ahead. She returned the favor in turn. At any time she could farcast to the rear of the column and check on the wherries that trudged along, their sturdy backs packed high with supplies. The ability to communicate over distances meant that the column’s movements could be coordinated.

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