We left at
nightfall. It’s a trick riding valkyries in darkness. The White Swarm helped,
of course, making us more visible to one another. And the gel of machines
beneath us phosphoresced after sunset, showing us the blue, green and golden
way.
My army of
the dead did not even hesitate. Ki had not been as obstinately idle as I had
been. She had built esprit de corps,
or perhaps the White Swarm had. No more division between veteran soldier and
long-time civilian. No friction between sergeant and platoon. We wove across
the water like a flock of fifty thousand birds.
Watches
rolled on. The seas remained so calm. I wondered if the powers of the machines
beneath us reached far above these waves. The settled worlds would have once
needed climate alteration, too. The sun swelled upwards into a cloudless sky.
We followed the gel south and east. Once, in the distance far off to the right,
I saw a few humped shapes on the horizon.
I looked at
Nogilian, who rode beside me, and he nodded. “The islands between the lands,”
he said, loudly enough to be heard over the whines of our machines. I raised an
eyebrow.
He shook
his head. “Augers would not be interested. No wells or citadels. No weapons or
Profusionist machinery. No humans, ever.”
“And
animals?” I asked, remembering chameleonic apes.
He
shrugged. No one had ever looked. Or whoever did never came back. I wondered
about the basic lack of curiosity on this world. But we did not stop at the
islands.
We rode through
the afternoon. Travel kit meant, among other things, rations consumable without
dismounting. Ki had had everyone empty bladders beforehand, and the White Swarm
was by this time controlling metabolism anyway. Normally, the greatest danger
of a journey of this kind would have been riders falling asleep and
engendering collision. But neither Ki nor Ash nor I felt sleepy. The Swarm
helped with measures beyond counting.
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