Excerpt - Chapter 83

Epee was still running. Her previous sprints had been short, from house to house or more commonly from body to body. At first the Harlequin aircraft had just flown straight over the city of Raggle. Again and again various craft would skim overhead, some lower and slower than others. Suddenly, about ten minutes ago, they had stopped. People had come out of their houses and looked to the sky in sudden hope. Cruelly, this meant that more people were outside than should have been when they finally did open fire. A whole wing of aircraft of had passed over shooting everyone still on the street and any buildings that looked like they could be used as a rally point. On the second flypast they had decided that the grain mill had been one of those possible rally points. They had punctured it with so many holes that flour poured out onto the street below. The last ship to go over had dropped an incendiary bomb to finish the job.  As the mill exploded Epee had had just enough time to weave herself a protecting fibril to before she was struck by the expanding mess of fire, dust and broken bricks. She had run towards a slightly more residential area after that, only slowing down as she came across many more bodies. Her first fibril identified those people still alive; three, although one of her markers vanished as the half-buried lump passed from person to body. The first person she got to was conscious but in shock; two broken legs. She removed the pain with her second fibril, repaired his legs with her third and used the fourth to remove all the other shrapnel wounds. Her fifth removed the shock and as she briefly explained what she had done, she wove a sixth to give the man good luck. Epee moved swiftly towards the remaining survivor. His injuries were a lot more serious, surprising to see that he had survived. It took her several minutes of steady going to undo the damage wrought on his body and to leave him ready to go again. She swiftly wove another fibril to find the next nearest person who needed help, only jogging towards them as the constant running and weaving took their toll. This was a young woman was trapped under the remnants of a partially collapsed house. Epee dug her out with her hands; using warp only to move a bean she couldn’t lift, remove her minor contusions and to pass on some good luck. As she moved away the young woman pulled on her arm, begging her to rescue her baby also trapped beneath the rubble. She screamed and pleaded but Epee knew that there was no life remaining in the broken building. She shook her head sadly and pulled the woman into her arms.

 

            “I’m so sorry,” were, by her own admission, the only futile words that she could find.

 

            Epee sat the woman down in the shadows of where she had once lived and moved on again. She didn’t want to reflect on whether her efforts were really worthwhile. She stooped to remove the damage from an old man’s body but no longer had the energy to replace his arm. Weaving was exhausting work; still he would survive. At the end of the street, two people lay huddled in a doorway. One was protecting the other with his body without realising she was already dead. Using her last reserves of energy she calmly healed the wounds on the man’s legs. At that point the Harlequin aircraft passed over for a third time and as Epee was smashed sideways into the doorway across the street she realised that she didn’t have the energy to weave a fibril for herself.

 

            She would wake a week later on a slaver ship heading towards the Harlequin fleet.

DR