Shoggoths in Traffic and Other Stories by Tobias S. Buckell

Author:Tobias S. Buckell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, General, Short Stories (Single Author)
Google: lw-LzgEACAAJ
Publisher: Fairwood Press
Published: 2021-11-09T05:00:00+00:00

I took Gar, Lain, and Silv with me. They met me at the rookery, all of us in our fur-trimmed flying leathers and smoked glasses.

“Again into the air?” Gar asked.

“For the Heron lands.”

Lain pulled the skydoors open on the balanced weights. The vets had already left to fly the other rocs off to Riket. That left only the four meanest, strongest birds for us.

“Skyknights,” I said, “every league counts, every minute matters. Okland lives or dies by our wings in the days ahead.”

“It’s five days around the Spine to get to Heron,” Silv said as she snapped on her gloves. Rumor said she lost her three fingers to the ice in the clouds. It wasn’t true. That only happened to balloonists or crew on a skyhawk. A roc would die, or freeze, just like a human.

I knew Silv lost her fingers to knife fights. One reason I’d chosen her for this. Silv had ridden tailfeather with me in a battle against a pirate over Fallen Gorge. I’d dropped her onto the ship’s balloon, and she’d cut it from stem to stern, and when she slid off the side I’d flung my roc into a dive to catch her.

We’d thrown each other into our beds for nights after that, young and invincible, lords of the sky. Now she’d married an elector, wore an emerald rank necklace, and slept in an eerie with running water supplied by a spring.

I’d never go on a mission without her.

We slapped our forearms together. Looked at each other with a warrior’s grin. Okland called for us, and we would answer that call again.

What retirement? We would save our country yet again.

“We go over the Spine,” I said. “I’ll find the Widow’s Cut. I won’t say you must do it with me. You can fly around.”

Silv nodded. “I’ll fly it.”

Gar and Lain nodded as well. My youngest instructors, they’d flown with me through the trickiest rising winds. Steady men, with the slight build needed to be a skynight. Gar, in particular, an almost child-like sized man with a vicious mind for flying. And Lain could hit a target with a bow and arrow while in a swooping dive, leading a roc with just nudges from his knees.

The other reason I liked Gar was that he didn’t speak much, but he was a calm flyer.

The massive rocs snarled and shrieked at us as we crawled up into our wicker saddles. We waddled them over to the balcony and they leapt off into the air. My stomach plunged, as it always did, from that inevitable moment of weightlessness.

Then came the steady beat of the vast, feathered wings.

The spires of the Elector’s Castle hung off to my right as the roc found rising air, then spiraled up. Then I adjusted the reins until the compass on my pommel showed due east.

I glanced once more behind me, right before it all disappeared behind the clouds that always fetched up against the mountains the castle nestled up to.

We called them the Spine because they ran down the center of Okland.

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