Preview: Runefall

It was my privilege to be the editor on the first two novels in Chris Willrich’s brilliant fantasy trilogy, The Scroll of Years, The Silk Map, and The Chart of Tomorrows. His fantasy fiction, including the short stories and these novels featuring his duo of Guant and Bone, are just top notch literary sword and sorcery, full of action and inventiveness. He’s also written The Dagger of Trust, a Pathfinder Tales novel for Paizo, and many other wonderful things. For Tales from Stolki’s Hall, Chris writes a full-on novella, really a short novel in its own right, which sees a young woman serving aboard a ship in the airborne treasure fleet of the Empire of LongGuo in a danger-fraught encounter with a young man of Norrøngard. Here then is our last preview, an excerpt from Chris Willrich’s brilliant “Runefall.”

How did I come to tumble out of the sky? De-Zhen thought. For that matter, how did I come to tumble out of the sky over a land of smelly hot-headed barbarians? Yes, good question, Me, well done. Let’s think it over, as if writing for the Government Examination …

Junior Mapmaker Chen De-Zhen had signed onto the Foreign Expeditionary Aerial Armada out of duty, yes, and pride in her cartography, indeed, and to further her career as a sky-sailor, absolutely; but mostly she had come to see the clouds race over unfamiliar lands, like these evergreen-covered surges of craggy hills and plains like pale jade, all framed by the cold blue of rivers and inlets and the vast lake up ahead, looking, viewed from the west, like a huge turquoise tablet.

She had most assuredly not signed on in order to do battle with ghost-pale, black-clad, pointed-eared assailants like the ones who’d screeched aboard the sky-ship Changning riding nightmarish giant bats.

There were at least twenty of the boarders. The ship was in trouble. And hers was no Treasure Ship proper but a scout sent from the main fleet to overfly the less hospitable regions of this continent. They’d only a crew of fifty, and all were needed to repel boarders. De-Zhen, belowdecks in the many-windowed navigation room, had been startled by the alarm. She’d known they were on alert, seeking an auxiliary cloud incubation device stolen when they’d last landed. But the attack had come as a shock. She’d dropped her pen and hastily donned her furred armor, sword-belt, safety-line, land-kit, and parachute, knocking over her porcelain inkwell in the process, blotting out half her carefully-observed map of southwestern Norrøngard.

Senior Mapmaker Kang would have lots of words about that, if they made it out of this alive. So would De-Zhen’s mother, if they ever made it home. You could go far! Mother had shrieked in delight a year ago when De-Zhen had showed her the Government Service Examination score, with the honors for Penmanship. Then when De-Zhen had handed her the certificate for Fleet Training, she’d shrieked in dismay, I didn’t mean like that! You are only seventeen! Do it when you are twenty-seven! Or seventy! You are such a beautiful girl! A bit tall, to be sure, and a bit over-muscled, but such lustrous hair like a moonless night and eyes like autumn. Serve the Emperor at home, where you can find a good husband!

But there was no time to think about anything but battle now. It had raged what seemed like an hour as Changning shot at maximum speed away from the mountains where the bats had ambushed them. And a good thing too, De-Zhen thought as she drove away one of the short humanoids with her double-edged jiang longsword. There had been a whole cloud of the giant bats in the sky, twice again as many as the ones that had gotten close. Luckily Changning had outrun the bulk of the wave and shaken off most of the ones that had alighted. But there were still three of the winged monsters occupying the stern and they’d entered the fight beside their humanoid masters. Worse, many of their fellow bats had deposited riders on deck before falling back. De-Zhen’s group of defenders had needed to retreat once already, reattaching their safety lines at the rearward mast.

A few of the boarders were down, at least. The ship’s resistance was hardening, and standing beside two officers of the line, De-Zhen found her lackluster swordsmanship was less of a problem.

Then she saw something that was much more of a problem. One of the pale attackers had climbed back into the saddle of a bat and was readying to launch.

“Look!” she said between thrusts of her jiang. “We should stop him.”

“Don’t worry,” said the officer behind her, breathing hard and speaking between swipes of his dao saber. “Wind’ll knock them backward — as soon as they’re — airborne.”

But De-Zhen was a good observer. Her Examination scores showed that. Good at painting from life, excellent with cartography, superb with languages. But she didn’t need to know the bat-rider’s language to read the smug sardonic look on his face. He had a plan.

She followed his gaze and guessed his plan at the last moment. At their current speed the sails were bending backward, and maybe the bat could, with a combination of leg- and wing-power, reach a sail before the winds blew the animal clear. From there the bat-rider might claw and leap past the defensive line and wreak havoc, maybe even reaching the pilots at the bow.

There was no time to explain. It was easy to imagine her mother shouting curses at her as she detached her safety line and ran at the bat.

The pale pointed-eared folk seemed so startled by her charge that she made it past them just as the bat took off. She plunged the jian deep into its throat and its leap went wild. Bat, rider, and De-Zhen tumbled out past the stern as the wind caught them.

De-Zhen’s grip on the sword was all that prevented her from plunging into mid-air as the mortally wounded bat flapped futilely to regain the sky-ship and its rider swore venomous gibberish at her. He leaned over with his short sword.

Shoving against the bat with her legs, and tucking her feet into its saddle straps, she wrenched the jiang free and blocked the rider with a beautiful parry she wished her captain had seen.

Then momentum flipped her over and she stared down at the distant ground, suspended only because her feet were lightly twisted into the saddle straps of a wounded bat.

The rider cackled at her, scooted onto the bat’s neck, and loosed the saddle straps. De-Zhen tumbled free. The cackling grew louder as she fell but quickly tapered off as she and the bleeding bat spun away in different directions. Spinning in free-fall she clutched tight on the jiang and saw Changning once more, a distant wedge looking like a toy ship …

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