by Martha Wells
Tremaine heard a bang and looked wildly around. She knew that noise too well; the airship had just fired its artillery. Florian pointed wordlessly and she saw two of the other big boats pulled up on the beach burst into flame.
A vibration ran through the deck and Tremaine heard a weird hollow booming noise. She thought, We‘ve been hit, but realized an instant later it was the oars being shipped.
Ander dragged her back and Gerard grabbed Florian to steady her as the bow struck the sloping sand beneath the waves. Tremaine staggered, the jolt nearly throwing her to the deck despite Ander’s support. Wood groaned as the ship shuddered to a halt. More of the crew boiled out from down below, leaping over the sides and landing in the surf. Ilias saw them and motioned wildly, shouting, then vaulted the rail himself.
Gerard began, “We’d better—”
“Jump!” Ander yelled.
Gerard helped Florian over the rail and Ander grabbed for Tremaine again. She wrenched away from him as he reached for her arm. “Go,” she told him, hefting the sphere, “I can’t risk dropping this.”
Ander hesitated, but then swung himself over the side and dropped. Leaning over the railing, Tremaine waited until Gerard had his balance again. She dropped the sphere into his outstretched hands, then clambered over the rail herself.
She landed awkwardly and the next wave knocked her flat. She dragged herself to her feet, spitting out salt water, and staggered after the others.
Up on the beach, Ander pulled Florian into cover behind a large flat-topped rock and Gerard paused to wait for Tremaine, motioning urgently for her. “I’m coming,” she gasped as she waded up onto the beach, her feet slipping on the loose sand. She saw the village’s inhabitants scattering in all directions; women grabbed children and hared off into the woods, men ran into the houses and came out with clubs, spears, swords, shields. Tremaine reached Gerard and he pulled her into the shelter of the rocks.
The airship fired again, this time into the ramshackle houses along the beach. They ducked back behind the rock as wood and debris rained down briefly and flames leapt up from the tumbled ruins. Ander’s right, they want us alive, Tremaine thought as she took the sphere back from Gerard. The Gardier were firing to cause confusion and panic, not to kill people. Not yet.
She saw Ilias and Giliead bolt across the beach, running toward a structure that stood on the flat ground above the high-tide line. It was covered with tarred leather cloth secured by ropes and they started to tear the wrappings off. Men she recognized from the ship’s crew ran to help and in moments the coverings fell down to reveal a large wooden apparatus.
“Is that a weapon?” Florian asked hopefully, peering cautiously over the top of the rock.
Tremaine nodded. It looked like some kind of catapult. There was a heavy wooden arm with a long lever to each side and it was strung with twisted skeins of rope. The whole thing was on some sort of revolving base that allowed them to turn it to aim. There was a sturdy rack in front with a thick pad of hay tied to it. As Giliead and the others pulled ropes and wrestled the firing arm into position, Ilias and two other men came out of a nearby shed lugging clay pots. Giliead steadied the sling as Ilias lifted in the first pot and Dyani ran up to stand ready with a torch. Halian stepped behind the apparatus, shading his eyes, then waved for them to move it to the left a little.
“It’s an onager,” Gerard said in startled realization, as everyone put their shoulders to the platform and forced it to turn. Tremaine heard the grating creak of stiff wooden gears. Gerard squinted up at the airship, a heavy dark shape looming even lower over the beach. “It’s low enough, but its wards will protect it.”
Tremaine shifted the sphere to her other hand, realizing it was getting hot. Smoke from the burning houses drifted over the beach and a burst of gunfire tore through the buildings above the shoreline. She shook her head, not understanding what Gerard had called the thing. Two men cranked the levers back as others hurried to pile rocks on the platform, apparently to help stabilize the rotating base. Giliead stuffed a rag into the top of the pot and lit it with the torch. “I thought that was a kind of horse.”
Gerard shook his head. “No, it’s like a catapult, only more—” There was a thunk as the arm slammed forward hard enough to stop a train, releasing the clay jug so fast she could spot it only by the trail of smoke. “Powerful,” Gerard finished.
Tremaine held her breath but as the missile neared the airship’s side it dissolved abruptly in a burst of white light. There was a shout of dismay from the crew. She saw Ilias and Giliead exchange an anguished look. It’s not fair, she thought. It’s never fair. Giliead shook his head grimly but motioned for the others to lift a second pot into the sling.
“They got the range on the first try, that’s impressive. But it is a pretty big target,” Ander was muttering to himself. “If it wasn’t for the damn wards, we’d have a fighting chance.”
Gunfire from the airship peppered the beach in response and two men near the catapult went down.
Tremaine swore under her breath. It was the same problem they had back home. If they could just find a way to disarm those wards, then spells, gunfire, artillery, catapults with funny names would all have a real chance against the Gardier. The sphere trembled suddenly and Gerard yelled in pain, jerking back away from the rock and clutching his side. “What is it?” Florian cried. “Are you shot?”
A dull metal clunk made Tremaine look back toward the catapult. Halian studied the base of the contraption, exchanged a shrug with Giliead, and motioned for the others to keep cranking. “It was the spell,” Tremaine guessed, “the spell they use to wreck mechanical things.”
“She’s right,” Gerard assured them hurriedly. He dug in his pocket and pulled out a handful of steaming metal fragments. “The spell destroyed my watch.” He sat up on his knees and looked toward the catapult, frowning. “But it missed the intended target.”
“Too much wood.” Ander swore bitterly. “If it could just get past the wards, we’d have a chance.”
The sphere trembled again, more violently. Tremaine looked down to see it sparkling with blue light, spitting and humming as if it had been stuffed with fireworks. It wants to do something, it wants to do a spell. “Gerard, help,” Tremaine breathed.
He turned toward her, stared down at the sphere in consternation. “What?”
“It’s doing a spell. Put your hand on my shoulder.”
He grasped her shoulder and she held up the sphere. The light boiled over and shot upward in one great pulse. It crackled through the air like lightning, striking the airship and streaming over it. The light blazed, forming or revealing a network of lines that made a patchwork pattern over the black hull’s entire surface.
“It’s mapping the wards,” Gerard said softly. “It knows the spell, the Gardier warding spell. It can’t possibly . . . but it does.”
Ander stared from the sphere up to the airship in growing amazement. “How the hell—”
“I just wish it would hurry.” Tremaine’s hands were starting to burn. Her grip on the sphere faltered and Florian edged up behind her, grabbing her arms to steady her. Tremaine felt the sphere reach out to touch her too. Florian gasped in alarm but didn’t let go.
“Try again!” Ander called to the men around the catapult. They were staring at the sphere, at Tremaine, at the light, transfixed in amazement. He pointed urgently at the catapult, trying to make them understand.
God, this would be easier if we could talk to them. Tremaine felt the sphere surge again and bit her lip, feeling light-headed. She heard a distant report and felt a vibration travel down the power connecting the sphere to the wards. The airship was firing again, the flash of the guns from the gondola hidden by the maze of blue light. Surely it was too close to the ground now to risk dropping its bombs, even to escape.
“Try again!” Gerard shouted, pointing urgently toward the catapult.
Giliead started, looking around for the next clay pot. Ilias scrambled to grab it, which g
alvanized the other men into motion, cranking the levers and shifting the device to take account of the airship’s lower elevation.
Giliead touched the torch to the clay missile and ducked out of the way. Halian released the catapult and the arm slammed forward again. Tremaine felt the sphere release the spell and the light vanished, an instant before the pot struck the airship’s hull.
Tremaine had expected it to puncture the skin but it broke across the surface, splashing its contents over the black hull. The men watching cheered wildly and scrambled to ready another missile.
“It didn’t go through,” Florian said, not understanding. “Did the wards stop it?”
The substance was still burning, crawling across the black surface of the hull like a living creature. “What is that?” Tremaine demanded. Not pitch, not oil, it burned too fast, too bright.
“It’s naphtha,” Ander said, laughing suddenly. He shook Gerard’s shoulder in delight. “It’s got to be.” He turned to the catapult crew and shouted, “Give ‘em another one!”
The airship’s engines buzzed as it tried to turn, heading back out to sea. It gained altitude but the next missile struck the underside of the hull. The third fell short, but the airship tipped suddenly, going nose down as flame leapt above the surface of the hull. Tremaine couldn’t hear the engines anymore and it was the wind driving the enormous bulk further out to sea. Fire raced along the length of it, trailing off the spiny fins as the ship drifted down toward the water.
“What’s naphtha?” Florian asked, looking up at Gerard.
Gerard began, “It’s a highly flammable substance composed of—”
Then they were all on the ground, scrambling to get behind the shelter of the rocks as noise, smoke and fire consumed the space the airship occupied. Tremaine cautiously lifted her head to look and saw the crew around the catapult had hit the sand too, some of them trying to burrow under it. She saw Ilias had tackled Dyani and pulled her behind the weapon’s base. Giliead was the only one half sitting up, watching the airship’s death throes.
“Must have reached the fuel tanks,” Ander said, stumbling to his feet. He wiped grime and sand off his forehead and grinned.
Tremaine climbed to her feet, shifting the sphere to her other arm and shading her eyes. Burning debris floating on the waves sent up columns of smoke. Down by the catapult, people were stirring, warily lifting their heads to look.
Ilias ran up to them, breathing hard. He looked at the doomed airship again as it drifted down toward the sea, then back to Tremaine. “How did you do that?” he demanded.
“I don’t—” Tremaine stared at him. “What?”
Chapter 12
“I understood you just then, how—” Tremaine halted in confusion. She wasn’t speaking Rienish. She shifted the sphere absently to her other arm, nonplussed.
“You’re speaking Syrnaic now,” Ilias said, as bewildered as she was. “You know our language?”
“No, but I do now.” The words were there in her head, in both languages. She knew it like she knew Aderassi and Bisran. She knew it better than she knew Aderassi and Bisran.
“Me too.” Equally perplexed, Florian tapped her ear and looked from Tremaine to Ilias. “I’m hearing ... I mean, I’m speaking . ..”
Ilias looked more upset than baffled. Tremaine felt that she was mostly baffled. She turned to Gerard and Ander for help. They were watching the villagers beating out the fires on the huts just above the beach. “Umm, we’ve had a development.”
“What?” Gerard asked, he and Ander both turning to her just as Giliead and Halian arrived.
The rest of the crew still gathered around the catapult, torn between watching the airship burn as it collapsed into the water and staring at the strangers. Like Ilias, Giliead and Halian seemed more shocked than puzzled. Halian threw a dismayed look at Giliead and demanded, “How did they do that?”
Still a good question, Tremaine thought. “We don’t know,” she told him. The foreign words were still sorting themselves out in her head.
Wearing the same baffled expression that was beginning to appear on everyone’s face, Ander said, “I understood that. How ...” He looked helplessly at Gerard. “I’m speaking . . .”
“Syrnaic,” Tremaine supplied.
“I know.” He turned to her impatiently, then stopped as he realized what he had said.
Gerard shook his head wonderingly. “I don’t. . . Am I speaking ... ? My God.”
Tremaine decided they couldn’t do worse than to start with the most basic piece of information. She turned back to Ilias and said, “It’s magic. I think. I mean, I know it was magic, but... You see, Gerard’s a sorcerer and ...” She let the sentence trail, unnerved by the reaction.
Ilias’s expression said he badly wanted to unhear what he had just heard. Giliead’s face had gone as still as if she had struck him. Halian looked at her as if he couldn’t understand her, as if she were speaking gibberish again. Ilias looked up at Giliead in appeal, obviously hoping he would respond. Seeing an answer wasn’t forthcoming, he turned back to her and said, “But he ... can’t be.”
Uh oh, Tremaine thought. She glanced at Gerard, who had an expression of dawning apprehension that didn’t inspire confidence. He nodded for her to go on. She asked Ilias carefully, “Why not?”
Ilias threw another helpless look at Giliead, whose face had darkened with some strong emotion. Halian was hanging on every word, his brows drawn together in consternation. Ilias took a sharp breath. “Because wizards are evil.”
“Oh, that’s all we need,” Ander muttered, throwing a worried look at Gerard.
That’s not good, Tremaine thought. If the only sorcerers they had had any experience with were Gardier, they couldn’t have a good opinion of magic. Somebody else definitely needed to handle diplomatic relations right now before she messed things up even worse. She leaned over to Florian. “All right, you talk now because I don’t think I’m doing a very good job.”
“All right, I’ll try.” Florian took a deep breath and pointed toward the burning remains of the dirigible. “Those wizards are evil. We’re not.”
Ilias looked at her, aghast. “You’re a wizard too?”
Florian hesitated. “No, but I’m studying to be one.”
Halian looked a little sick. Ilias covered his eyes for a moment, apparently trying to get a grip on himself.
Trying to help, Tremaine said, “I’m not a wizard.”
“Tremaine!” Gerard said sharply.
“Well, I’m not!” she protested, turning to him. “This is not my fault.”
Gerard took a calming breath, rubbed his brow and turned to the three men. “Where we come from, sorcerers help people,” he explained carefully. “They protect people from things like that.” He nodded toward the surf and the growing cloud of smoke above the airship.
Halian’s frown deepened and Ilias stared at Gerard as if he couldn’t quite get his mind around this idea, though his expression said he was trying. He looked up at Giliead for help again and, frustrated at the lack of response, thumped him in the shoulder.
Giliead twitched. His voice tight with tension, he asked, “Why are you here?”
Deliberately, Gerard said, “We came here from our home, by magic, to fight those wizards. That island is only one of their bases, the places they use to attack the land we come from, which is called Ile-Rien.”
“There’s more of them?” Halian glanced sharply at Giliead. “More than on the island already?”
“Thousands more,” Ander put in, eyeing them warily.
Halian swore softly, exchanging an appalled look with Ilias. Giliead looked out at the column of smoke rising from the sea. The breeze off the water carried the stink of burning oil, mingling with the woodsmoke from the smoldering wrecks of the boats on the beach and the huts under the trees.
“We’re not like them,” Gerard repeated, watching him intently. “Where we come from sorcerers are healers, scholars ...”
“Healers ... ?
” Ilias repeated blankly.
“We fixed your shoulder,” Florian admitted with a wince. “In the caves, when we were hiding, you had that big gash in it and I did a charm to make it heal faster. We didn’t think you’d mind. Nobody would, where we come from.”
Ilias stared at her, startled. Giliead grabbed his arm and turned him, yanking down his tattered shirt to look at the wound. Ilias craned his neck to see, telling him, “It doesn’t hurt.”
Ander swore under his breath and shook his head. Tremaine knew he thought Florian shouldn’t have said anything, but even she realized this was a time when nothing but the truth would do; leaving anything out would just look like deliberate deception. She folded her arms and waited, her shoulders tight with tension. They had all gotten along fine when they couldn’t talk to each other; it seemed absurd that they couldn’t manage it now.
Giliead shook his head slightly. “This looks more than a week old.” He fingered the bloody rip in Ilias’s shirt. Ilias pulled free, trying to reach back to probe at the wound. His eyes met Giliead’s and they just looked at each other. Ilias’s face was serious and determined and Giliead’s deeply troubled. They were making a decision.
The moment seemed to stretch, then Giliead let out his breath and turned to them. His expression was still wary but had lost some of that high color and unnerving intensity. He said, “Those other wizards will be back.”
“Yes.” Gerard nodded, his expression grave. “They know where this village is now; you should evacuate it immediately.”
“How will they know?” Halian demanded. He jerked his head toward the wreck. “No one survived that.”
“Before they began their attack, they would have used wireless—” Gerard hesitated. He had spoken the word “wireless” in Rienish; it didn’t exist in Syrnaic. “They would have communicated with their base and described their position. Another airship or a boat will come searching for them.”
Halian nodded slowly, seeing the sense of this. “I’ll tell Agis.” He looked at Giliead and Ilias. “You two . . . sort this out.”