by Terry Brooks
“We can’t outrun them?” Ahren asked.
Gar Hatch shook his head. “I don’t think so. If we get far enough ahead of them, they might lose interest. If they know the ship, they might fall off. If not …”
He shrugged. “Still, there’s other ways.”
He yelled at the crewmen to make certain they were ready, then shoved the thruster levers all the way forward. The Skatelow shuddered with the sudden input of power from the radian draws and shot ahead, lifting skyward at the same time. Hatch worked the controls with swiftness and precision, and Pen could see that he had been down that road before. Even so, the flits were getting closer, growing larger and beginning to take shape. Pen saw the Gnomes who were crouched in their tiny frames, faces wizened and burnt by wind and sun. Gloved hands worked the levers that changed the direction of the single-mast sail, a billowing square that could be partially reefed or let out to change direction and thrust. At present, all sails were wind-filled, catching the light, powering the flits ahead at full speed.
Pen could already see that the Skatelow had no chance of outrunning them. The angle of attack and her injuries from the storm didn’t allow for it. The flits would be on them in moments.
“Penderrin, lad,” Gar Hatch said almost calmly. “Do you think you know enough by now to take the helm and keep her running full out?”
The boy nodded at once. “I think so.”
“She’s yours, then,” the Rover said, stepping aside. “You look like you might have fought a battle or two in your time,” he said to Ahren. “How are you with rail slings?”
They went out of the pilot box, safety harnesses trailing after them, and worked their way across the deck to either side of the mainmast. A Rover crewman joined each of them, and in teams they began to set up the rail slings, pulling the catapults out of storage bins and setting the pivot ends into slots cut into the deck. Pen had never seen a rail sling before, but he understood their function right away. Built like heavy crossbows, they sat on swivels that could be pointed in any direction over the railings. A hand winch cranked back a sling in which sat a missile the size of a fist. When the sling was released, the missile hurtled out into the void, hopefully striking something in the process.
Hitting a moving target with one of those weapons while flying in an airship was virtually impossible, unless the target was huge, in which case no damage was likely to occur. But used against a swarm of targets, like the flits, a rail sling might have some success. Miss one flit and you still had a chance at half a dozen more.
The rail slings were barely in place and loaded when the first of the flits reached them. The flits by themselves were useless as weapons, too small and fragile to ram a larger vessel or to shear off a mast. The Gnomes’ intent was to sever the radian draws or rigging or to shred the ambient-light sheaths. They did this by using poles with razor-sharp blades bound about the business end.
In seconds, the flits were everywhere, coming at the Skatelow from every direction. Pen kept the airship steady and straight, knowing that this offered Gar Hatch and Ahren Elessedil their best chance at bringing down their attackers. The rail slings were firing by then, and a few of the tiny ships went down, sails holed or masts shattered, plummeting earthward like stricken birds. One either miscalculated or failed for some other reason and crashed into the Skatelow’s hull, shattering on impact. Another became tangled in the bigger ship’s rigging and crashed to the deck, where its pilot was seized by one of the Rovers and thrown overboard.
But the flits were inflicting damage on the Skatelow, as well. Several of her rigging lines had already been severed, and one radian draw was frayed almost to the breaking point. The mainsail had a dozen rents in the canvas, and the flit that had become tangled in the rigging had brought down several spars. The Skatelow was still flying, but Pen felt the unevenness of her effort.
When the frayed draw finally snapped, he switched off power to the crystal it fed and transferred what remained to the others. But the airship was shaking and bucking and no longer responded smoothly.
“Hold her steady!” Gar Hatch bellowed angrily.
Another flit whipped past Pen, the pole and blade sweeping down at his head, and he barely managed to duck away from it. Sensing the ship was in trouble and its crew unable to do any more to help her or themselves, the raiders were growing bolder. One good strike on one more essential component, and the vessel would not be able to stay in the air. She would fail quickly, and then she would be theirs.
They were deep into Northland country by that time, flying close to the Malg, and mist had closed about them in a heavy curtain that reduced their vision to almost nothing. The flit attacks seemed to materialize from nowhere as they winged out of the haze and then disappeared back into it again. How the Gnome pilots could find their way under such conditions was beyond Pen. He was struggling to see anything.
“Take her up!” Hatch shouted at him.
He did so, lifting her nose into the soup just as a Gnome raider came right across the bow. The flit simply disintegrated, but pieces of it ricocheted everywhere, severing lines forward and starboard and cutting loose the flying jib. The Skatelow slewed sideways in response, and Pen could no longer make her do anything. Gar Hatch abandoned his rail sling and clawed his way back across the deck to regain the controls.
In the midst of that chaos, with the Skatelow beginning to fall and the flits attacking like hornets, Ahren Elessedil stepped away from his rail sling, stood at the center of the airship’s deck, and raised his arms skyward, his robes billowing like dark sails. For a moment he stood without moving, a statue at rest, eyes closed, head lifted. His face was calm and relaxed, as if he had found peace within himself and left the madness behind.
Then his hands began to weave like snakes and his voice to chant, the sound low and guttural and unrecognizable as his.
Gar Hatch had hauled himself into the pilot box and taken over the controls from Pen with an angry grunt. His hands were flying over the levers and wheels, but when he looked up long enough to catch sight of Ahren Elessedil, he froze. “What in the name of sea salt and common sense is the man doing?” he demanded.
The boy shook his head. He knew. “Saving us,” he answered.
Behind them, Khyber had come out on deck, grasping the hatchway frame to hold herself steady, and was shouting at her uncle in disbelief.
Gnome raiders, bladed poles lowered to skewer him, were darting at the Druid from all directions. But try as they might, they could not get close enough to do so. Mist obscured their vision and gusts of wind knocked them aside, the mix roiling faster and faster, taking on the shape of a massive funnel. Heads began to turn in response. Aboard the Skatelow, the Rovers were shouting. Astride the flits, there wasn’t the time or energy to spare for it. The mist and wind had become a deadly whirlpool surrounding the airships and then closing on them.
Ahren Elessedil’s arms were stretched above his head, as if he sought to grasp something that was just out of reach. The funnel cloud of mist and wind continued to tighten. It caught the outermost flits and engulfed them. One minute they were there, fighting to stay aloft, and the next they were gone. The rest tried to flee, banking their tiny ships in all directions, seeking a means of escape. Some came right at the Skatelow and Ahren Elessedil, but they could not get close enough to strike at either. One by one, they were plucked from the sky by the funnel. One by one, they disappeared until all were gone.
The Druid lowered his arms, the mist dissipated, the winds died, and the whirlwind vanished, as well. Not a flit remained in the sky. Everything was the way it had been before the attack, the air hazy and gray but calm. The Skatelow sailed on, wounded but able to continue. In the distance, a sliver of sunlight broke through the clouds.
Ahren Elessedil walked back over to the pilot box and beckoned to Pen. “Let’s help clear the decks and put away the rail slings,” he said. He glanced at Gar Hatch. “Odd weather we’re having, isn’t it? No one would ever believe such strange
things could happen. A man would be crazy even to suggest it.”
Pen smiled inwardly. The Druid knew something about giving warnings, as well. Which was a good thing, he supposed, since now everyone aboard knew what he was.
NINETEEN
Late in the morning of the following day, they arrived at Anatcherae, the inland port on the Lazareen that serviced all traffic passing north along the corridor formed by the Charnal Mountains to the east and the Knife Edge Mountains to the west. They reached their destination more quickly than anticipated because tailwinds filled and sunshine fed the sails and because Gar Hatch had been able to complete repairs to the damaged radian draw before nightfall of the previous day. It was a smooth flight the entire way after their escape from the flits, with no further trouble arising to impede their passage.
Anatcherae was an old city built by a mix of Trolls and Bordermen following the Second War of the Races, when Southlanders were mostly keeping to themselves below Callahorn but trade was flourishing everywhere else. A sprawling, ramshackle outpost in its early days, it grew quickly, the principal port servicing trappers and traders coming out of the Anar, Callahorn, and everywhere the Troll nations made their homes. It had become a major city, though still with the look and feel of a frontier town, its buildings spread out along the southwest shore of the lake, timber and shingle structures that were torn down and replaced as the need arose and without much thought to permanency. Even though the greater part of the populace lived in the city, most did not intend to make Anatcherae their final stop along life’s road and so did not build for the long term.
The Skatelow set down at the waterfront docks, where warehouses and barns loomed like low, squat beasts bent down for a drink at the Lazareen’s dark waters, their mouths open to receive what the lake would deliver. Airships crowded the waterfront, most of them large freighters and warships. Traffic leaving the docks passed down roads flanked by ale houses, pleasure dens, and inns of various descriptions. Shops and homes lay farther inland, away from the bustle and din of the docks, back from the raw edge of seaport life.
Standing on deck while the harbormaster towed the Skatelow to her assigned slip, Pen took a moment to glance over his shoulder in the other direction, back across the lake. The Lazareen was legendary. A broad, slate-gray body of water that seldom changed color in any weather, it was believed to run several thousand feet deep. Rumor had it that in some places it reached all the way to the netherworld and thereby provided the souls of the dead a doorway to the domain of the living. Mountains framed its rugged banks to the east and south, walls of stone that kept those souls contained. Dozens of rivers had their origins in snowmelt glaciers thousands of feet higher up, the confluence of their waters tumbling through canyons and defiles to feed the lake. Cold winds blew down out of snowy heights to mix with the warmer air of the flats and create a swirling mist that clung to the shorelines like gray moss. Pen did not like the Lazareen, he decided. It had the look and feel of the Mist Marsh, a place the boy was all too familiar with and wished never to visit again.
The Skatelow eased up against the dock, and the Rovers set about securing her. When Gar Hatch came over to speak with Ahren, Pen listened in.
“I’ll be needing several days to make repairs before we continue on,” the Rover Captain advised in a gruff voice, hitching up his pants to emphasize that work lay ahead. “Maybe more. Once that’s done, we’ll continue on to where you need to go, and then I’ll be dropping you off and saying good-bye.”
“I don’t think we discussed being dropped, Captain,” the Druid said, frowning. “I think the agreement was that you would wait until we came out again from our search.”
“That was then, this is now. The agreement is changed.” Gar Hatch spit over the side. “Others need a little business done, as well, and rely on me to conduct it for them. I require my ship to do so. I can’t make a living while she sits idle. You don’t pay enough for that. Give me a time and a place, and I’ll come back for you. My Captain’s word on it.”
“There isn’t any way of knowing when we’ll be finished. We can increase your purse, if it’s a matter of money.”
The Rover shook his head. “Sorry, mate. This isn’t about money.”
Ahren Elessedil smiled. “You are a Rover, Gar Hatch. It’s always about money.”
The big man laughed and glanced over at Pen. “You listening close, young Penderrin? Here’s a man who knows the way of the world. He’s right, too. Everything is about money, one way or the other.” He looked back at the Druid. “Still, I can’t let myself be tied down for so long. You might not even come back from wherever it is you’re going. I’ve seen already the sort of business you do, and it isn’t reassuring to puzzle on. So I’m dropping you and that’s the end of it.”
The Druid nodded. “I could find other passage and cancel our agreement here and now, Captain Hatch. I would be justified.”
“You could try,” the big man amended. “But you won’t find anyone else to take you where you want to go that knows the ways of that country like I do. You won’t find anyone who can sail the mists and the night like I can. Maybe most important of all, you won’t find anyone who can keep his mouth shut about who you are and what you’re doing. You might want to bear that in mind.”
“But can I trust you? I find I have serious doubts.”
Gar Hatch smiled and inclined his head. “Put aside your doubts, sir. My word is good.”
The irony of that statement probably did not escape the Druid, but he let it pass. “Three days, Captain. That’s as long as I’ll give you to do your business here. We leave on the fourth. We’ll find lodgings ashore and check back with you. I won’t press for you to wait on us, if you’ve decided against it. But there will be no further changes to our agreement, and I expect a close watch on the tongues of your people. Don’t disappoint me.”
He went down the hatchway to his cabin to bring up Tagwen. Khyber was already on the dock, looking around eagerly.
Pen sensed Gar Hatch staring at him and met his stare, refusing to look away when it lingered too long. The big man laughed. “You’ve been a revelation for me, Penderrin. A treasure and a find.”
“Can I say good-bye to Cinnaminson?” Pen asked.
He hadn’t seen her since the attack of the flits. Gar Hatch had kept her shut away in his cabin, not even allowing her to come on deck at night, advising his passengers that she was ill. Pen had thought several times to sneak down and see for himself, but each time he thought to try, Gar Hatch was somewhere close, watching.
It was his last chance until they reboarded in three days’ time, and anything could happen between now and then. Hatch could promise what he wished, but that didn’t mean it was likely to happen.
The Rover Captain smiled. “Better you don’t, lad. What she’s got might be catching. Wouldn’t do to have you come down with a fever while you’re resting in port. Your uncle is mad enough at me already. You’ll see her when you come back aboard.”
I’ll never see her again, Pen thought. But he could do nothing about it short of forcing a confrontation, and he was aware how much trouble that would cause.
He turned away without a word, shouldered his pack, and started down the ladder. He was halfway to the pier when he heard his name called.
“Pen, wait!”
Cinnaminson appeared at the railing, blind eyes staring downward without finding him. He started back up the ladder and stopped when he was close enough to see Gar Hatch glaring at him in the background.
“I’m feeling better now, Pen,” she said, giving him a small wave and a smaller smile. “I just wanted to say good-bye.” Then she whispered so softly that only he could hear, “Come back tonight.”
She turned away quickly and went to her father, who took her by the arm and steered her below again, not bothering with even a glance at Pen. The boy stood watching until they were out of sight, then went down the ladder with his heart in his throat.
With Ahren Elessedil leading, the
four companions walked down through the center of the city, mingling with the crowds as they searched for a likely place to secure lodging for the days ahead. Pen could barely make himself concentrate on the task at hand, his mind still on Cinnaminson and her whispered words. Come back tonight. He was intoxicated by them, made light-headed at the prospect of what they meant, chilled by the prospect of the danger at which they hinted. He wasn’t afraid, though. He was fearless when it came to her. He understood that by even considering a secret return, he was risking not only his own safety but also the success of his undertaking. Yet he couldn’t help himself. He had to go to her.
It took them the better part of an hour to find what Ahren was looking for, a small, prosperous inn just off one of the main roadways, one that was better kept than those closer to the docks, one frequented by other travelers than sailors. It was called Fisherman’s Lie. It sat on a corner that opened onto a small plaza and was wrapped by a veranda that fronted both streets. Broad double doors opened into the common room, where travelers sat to visit and drink glasses of ale. Tables and benches and a long serving bar took up most of the available space. Flowers grew in boxes under the windowsills, and baskets hung from the veranda and eaves, splashes of color to brighten the clapboard facade.
Ahren left the other three on the porch while he went inside to take rooms. The less they were all seen together, the less likely it was that anyone would make the connection to the four the Druids were hunting. Since Khyber had cut Pen’s hair short and bound his head in a scarf, none of them was particularly noticeable. But there was no point in taking chances. Those tempted by the money the Druids offered would be looking hard.