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Betrayals: eighteenby Steve Bowers |
She was beginning to regret this enterprise; the rumours from the
tent-camp were probably false, in any case. Now the attack on the
Mummer keep was about to begin, she really wanted to change her mind,
go back to the tents, and continue with the long wait there.
By the Sky, but the camps were not an easy option; the strongest ruled
the weaker, and the newcomers had a rough time. Many empty sets of
clothes were created
to patch the roofs of the tent-city these days.
But the Keep had food, and weapons; if this assault could overcome it
the Mummers would be torn from power. And some of the prisoners in this
keep were important to the people of the camps, in one way or another.
Gusta didn't really believe all the stories were true, but a few broken
wrecks were occasionally set free from the dungeons of this keep, and
brought tales with them. A fierce rage was burning in her about these
stories; and the endless wait for the tardy Sky Merchants grated on her
as well. If she had to kill the defenders of the keep, she was more
than ready to do it.
Now the action started; with long pikes and stabbing swords they rushed
the guards at the entrance to the outer walkway. In the dim light of
the night sky she couldn't see the enemy, but she engaged with a
surprised guard, who had lost his weapon, and was not wearing a
mask.
A stab in his side slowed him down, but made him shout; with difficulty
she silenced him with a number of untidy cuts to the throat. Too much
noise already; the Mummers within would be surely roused.
They ran through the defeated picket line onto the outer walkway;
no-one really knew the layout up here, but from the ground it looked
like the top of the wall was no more than two fathoms high in places.
They carried ladders longer than that. But now defenders appeared on
the wall-top; a few spears thrown down and the attackers had
casualties, not least among the ladder carriers. Gusta grabbed one end
of a ladder and scrambled toward the lowest point of the wall, and saw
the outlines of several defenders appear against the dim sky.
Metal struck the stones near her feet. The situation suddenly looked
hopeless.
The ladder she was carrying raised up behind her, as if the person at
the other end was getting taller; then it dropped. Gusta swung round;
the man on the other end was flying away, carried by a ghostly
Blood-beast mothdragon. Another fluttered nearby, pinning down the rest
of her party.
By the Sky, this is just what we did not need, Gusta thought, in
despair for her mission. The Mummers above us on the wall, and the
dragons in the
sky, picking off the survivors. Ach! She spat.
She had a small group of seven fighters who were supposed to follow her
orders, one of several such groups; at least two of her own group were
no longer around.
Lyss, the only other woman had vanished with an arrow in her eye, and
the man callled Dag or
Dak seemed to have run away in the confusion (although he might
have been vanished too). Curse, there was so much confusion; how could
she lead her remaining men in this assault if she did not know what was
going on? The concealing night and the terror of the blood-beasts was
making this fight far more difficult than she had expected.
Now one of the dragons flew up and snatched a Mummer off the top of the
wall; too heavy, it dropped him; but it tried again. Soon the Mummers
were rushing toward the dragon with pikes, and firing muskets; both
seemed to merely annoy the dusty, insubstantial flying wraiths. Seeing
her opportunity, Gusta dragged her ladder up against the wall at a
deserted point; some of her party scrambled up and started to
attack the musketeers from behind.
On top of the wall, the defenders did not seem so impressive; half of
them had fled the Blood-beasts, two or three had been dragged over the
wall, the musketeers were too busy reloading to fight, and the pikemen
were distracted by the dragons.
Olave, a grim mountain man that had come with Gusta from the camps,
took the musket from the hands of the man he had killed just before
that man vanished away. He finished tamping the ball down, and fired,
bringing down a pikeman; startled, the next pikeman swung round to look
for the source of the gunfire, and was plucked off the wall himself.
As more and more attackers from the camps came up the ladder, the other
pikemen fled; We can do this! Gusta realised with a surge of
something like elation.
Extract from Encyclopaedia Galactica Human (Anglic) Revised 299th
edition
The Merpeople of The Kingdom of Eyre and the Mer-diaspora
The first new species of human created by Inheritable Gene-line
Modification was the Merpeople, developed by Nikolaus Vassiliou in 156
a.t. (2125 c.e.) The entire species remained on Earth after the Great
Expulsion, under the protection of the caretaker god GAIA.
During the First federation, merpeople were confined to Recovered
Earth, but a small group of merpeople were allowed by GAIA to visit the
nearby system of Tau Ceti, via the newly constructed Einstein Gate, at
the invitation of King Stanley III, in 2491. The oceanographic
institute of the Kingdom of Eyre decided to secretly replicate the
genome of their visitors, assisted by genetic samples taken from the
water in the accommodation they were allocated. From this small
beginning a new species Homo Novaquaticus was developed, and a new
diaspora of merpeople occurred, as the Novan merpeople were free to
emigrate and join the exploration of the galaxy.
A major settlement of merpeople can be found at Zennor system in Libra,
where several clades of merpeople have developed on the worlds of
Lamorna, Sennen and Gweek, including the huge whale-like Megaptera
species and the Zennorian mermen, famous for their impressive
appearance and a common sight at ceremonial aquatic displays throughout
the Terragen sphere.
