by Terry Brooks
He glanced back at them as he pushed the flit’s thrusters forward to gain speed. Were those women’s faces on those giant birds?
Then Wint used the rail slings, and several of the birds went down in a tangle of nets and metal weights.
Seconds later they were in the clear, heading back toward the watchtowers and the approach road. The winged creatures had broken off their attack, apparently satisfied simply with driving the flit away. On the ridgeline, the invaders howled and screamed, and Keeton felt a chill go down his spine in spite of himself.
“Have those sentries in the watchtowers evacuated as soon as we get back, Wint,” he shouted to his second.
The other made a gesture of acquiescence, his eyes watching for fresh attackers, not persuaded that some sort of reprisal for their decision to come so close to the invaders wasn’t still possible.
Keeton sped toward Arishaig’s walls. He did not like how what he had just witnessed made him feel.
Edinja Orle had broken off her vigil on hearing of the approaching army and made her way to the walls above the west gate, where she had found and confronted Tinnen March.
Her words were laced with iron. “I want the army assembled and I want it ready to counterattack if the city is further threatened,” she snapped at him.
March nodded. “I have already ordered all soldiers to form up right here. We have placed units at all of the city gates and sent everyone not in the military to their homes to wait this out. If we are attacked, we will be ready.”
“Have you sent scouts to find out what these creatures are and where they come from?”
She had been seeking an answer to that question from everyone she encountered since arriving at the wall, but no one seemed to know. Not that it mattered. She knew. She had pretty much known from the moment she heard mention of the word demons. What Arling Elessedil and her Druid sister had been trying to prevent was already happening. It was inconceivable, but at the same time inescapable. The demons inside the Forbidding were breaking out, and for some unknown reason they had come to Arishaig.
Tinnen March was speaking. “We are waiting on Commander Keeton who is doing a flyover. Protocol dictates that First Response makes the initial determination in situations such as these. It won’t take long. He will be back soon.”
Situations such as these. What would you know about it? Edinja cocked her beautiful face as if studying an odd insect and smiled with pure malice. “Then we’ll wait, won’t we?”
She didn’t like Keeton. She had tried to win him over early, had invited him up to her rooms in an effort to show him the benefits of becoming an ally, and had worked hard at persuading him of her interest in him. But Keeton was cut from a different cloth than most. Military through and through, he was suspicious of politicians and their motives. He wasn’t stupid, but he was troublesome.
She turned and walked away from Tinnen March, unwilling to spend another moment with such an idiot. She doubted he could lace his own boots without help. How had such a man ever risen to his present rank? Drust Chazhul had made him commander of the army after dispensing with Lehan Arodian, and that was proof enough that he was a servile dupe. Of course, she had left him in command for the same reasons; no effort was needed to get him to comply with her wishes. Now with the city under attack, she regretted not appointing someone stronger. But it was too late. Changing horses at this point would only frighten people and irritate the members of the Coalition Council.
Her thoughts drifted momentarily to Arling Elessedil, wandering about somewhere in the city streets. Cinla might still be tracking her, but she doubted it. Given the size of the crowds, the big moor cat would have had to turn back. Cinla could make herself invisible in situations where she had space and time to move, but she didn’t have either today. Edinja experienced a fresh twinge of rage. This whole business was ruining her plans for tracking the girl and finding her sister. At least she could take some comfort from knowing she had placed her marker on Arling and could always find her at some point. Nor did she have to worry about the girl getting out of the city. All exits were shut down, and an attempt to flee at this point would be foolhardy.
Demons! She said the word in the cool silence of her mind, but the venom it aroused burned like fire.
The sound of a returning flit drew her attention, and she watched the two-man slide into view and settle onto the landing platform at the corner of the battlement. Tinnen March was already striding over, accompanied by his adjutants. She waited until she saw Keeton climb from the cockpit and then walked over to join them.
“… can’t be sure of the number,” Keeton was saying. He glanced over at her approach, but only for a second. “They’re stretched out along the ridgeline for miles.”
“But what are they, Commander?” she interrupted, moving close to him. “Can you tell us that?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what they are. They’re not human. They’re nothing of what we know in the Four Lands.”
“They are demons,” she said simply. “The Forbidding has broken down, and now those imprisoned are coming out. What are you going to do about it?”
He stared at her. “How do you know this?”
She gave him a sly smile. “I just do. Answer my question.”
“Commander March is senior officer.”
“I’m asking you. You are still commander of First Response, aren’t you?”
Keeton somehow managed to keep his face expressionless. “Right now, I am taking a squad of flits back out to bring in those soldiers still in the watchtowers.” He turned to March. “With your permission, of course, Commander?”
He didn’t need that permission, and they all knew it. He was simply making Tinnen March complicit in his plans. The commander was still staring at him speechlessly when he turned and hurried off.
Edinja watched him go without comment, her mind already working through the choices she would have when he returned. Without glancing at Tinnen March, she said, “Hadn’t you better get working on a plan for defense of the city, now that you know what we are up against?”
March and his adjutants moved quickly away.
Keeton caught up with Wint as he was speaking with another two-man pilot from First Response. “What have you found out about those soldiers in the watchtowers?” he asked his second.
The other shrugged. “March gave no order for their return, so they’re still out there. I have a transport and five flits standing by to go get them. Unless you want to let them try it on their own. They might have time for that. That army doesn’t seem in any hurry to do anything.”
“Maybe. But they were quick enough to send someone after us when we left the protection of the city walls. I don’t like the idea of those people trying to get back here on an open road. It’s two miles front to back, and that’s too far.”
“A transport then?”
Keeton shook his head. “Too cumbersome. Speed and maneuverability are important. Let’s use sleds. Hook them to the flits, fly them out, load them up, and make a run for it.”
Wint grinned. “Sleds, huh? Can I drive?”
The sleds were wooden platforms with rings and loops for tying down ropes and chains. The platforms rested on steel rails filed and sanded down until their surfaces were so hard and smooth, they could skim over rocks and hardpan and not shatter. Mostly, the sleds were used for quick supply transport rather than for conveying soldiers, but they would serve the latter purpose here just as well.
Wint was already ordering a team of First Response soldiers to the storage lockers to haul out four of the sleds to hook up to the flits. Keeton went to help, deciding to switch the rail slings in favor of fire launchers. Rail slings might not be enough against whatever was out there. The effort took less than twenty minutes, and when everything was ready he called pilots and weapons officers together.
“This is the plan. We have four flits with sleds to rescue the men and women in the twelve towers bracketing the approach road. We’ll start
with the ones that are farthest away and work our way back. Fly out, swing around so we’re facing toward the city, land on the road, load everyone aboard, then pull for the city. When the soldiers in the towers closest to the city see what we’re about, they’ll come down to ground level right away and we’ll load them, too. They might even start out on their own.”
He paused. “The second and I will be in the last flit, flying interference against anything that gets too close.”
“It won’t be easy getting everyone aboard the sleds,” Wint said. “There are a lot of people in those towers.”
Keeton gave him a look and then directed it toward the others. “Everyone comes back. No one gets left behind.”
He beckoned them close. “No heroics. No unnecessary risks. We don’t know exactly what we are up against, and that’s part of what we’re going out there to discover. But let’s not make that discovery the hard way.”
They murmured their acquiescence. Eight soldiers—five men and three women. He knew them all. None of them had combat experience of the sort they were about to encounter. Nor had he. It was a definitive moment for all of them. Training and character would be tested. The Prime Minister and the military high command would be watching.
But he didn’t tell them that. They didn’t need to know any of it to do their jobs. They just needed to remember who they were and what they were about.
“Wint, assign the towers for each two-man and let’s fly.”
He broke the circle, and the eight members of the First Response team caught the second’s quick orders and raced to board their vessels.
Atop the walls above the west gates, Edinja Orle was watching them. She saw Keeton speaking to his team, watched as he dispatched them to their flits and then boarded his own with his second. Quick and efficient, no hesitation, no delay. The flits powered up, then one by one they rose into the golden light of late afternoon. She squinted at the sky for a moment. It was a clear, cloudless day, but the sun was sinking fast over the western horizon, its rays lancing into the eyes of the fliers as they raced toward their targets. What must that be like, flying half blind at an unknown enemy?
She kept watching as the flits crossed above the wall and sped toward the watchtowers, towing the sleds behind them. Clever of Keeton to think of using sleds instead of transports. She didn’t like the man, but she admired his intelligence. His manners could be improved but she couldn’t find fault with his military skills.
She glanced down the wall to where Tinnen March was conferring with his officers in a heated discussion. She saw them all gesturing at him, saw him shake his head and walk away.
She had an uncomfortable feeling about the man.
And she might have to do something about it.
12
At first, everything went smoothly.
With Wint and Keeton in the lead flit, the squad flew out from the walls of Arishaig, shadowing the line of the road toward the grasslands beyond. The light might have been against them, but they were experienced fliers, on their home turf. They were formed up two abreast behind the commander’s aircraft, with the sleds tethered behind them and a safe distance between each pair. On the ground, nothing moved. The men and women in the towers—who must have seen them approaching—stayed where they were.
On the ridgeline farther out, the invading army bunched close to the precipice, howling and screaming with such fury that Keeton could hear it even over the rush of the wind in his ears.
“Such beautiful music,” Wint said over his shoulder.
Keeton was readying the fire launcher, using his trigger finger to press the lever that would charge the diapson crystals embedded in the weapon’s stock, drawing energy from a line connected through the flit’s walls to the light sheath that powered it. A strong pull on the trigger would send the launcher’s deadly beam toward whatever target it was centered on. Keeton could narrow or widen the beam using a slide on the launcher’s barrel. He had fired the weapon many times, and he was very good with it.
He thought he would probably need to be better than good today.
The formation reached the outermost towers, passed out over the grasslands, and swung back around, following Keeton and Wint’s flit as it swooped down toward the approach road. One by one, pairs of flits broke away from the formation to drop onto the road between the towers. In some instances, the doors opened immediately and the men and women within came rushing out to board the sleds. In some instances, it took longer—an unfortunate delay caused by a failure to anticipate what the flits were trying to do. But within minutes of the landings, all of the towers were emptying out and the sleds were filling up.
Wint brought the flit in which he and Keeton were riding back around again to face whatever response the rescue effort might have triggered in the invading army. The commander and his second didn’t need more than a moment to discover the answer. Even before the flit had cleared the middle towers on its return run, they saw a swarm of cat creatures pour over the edge of the ridgeline and bound after the escaping soldiers. They split into packs, dozens of them, strange feline faces twisted with something that Keeton could only describe as hunger as the gap between them narrowed.
“Hold steady!” he shouted to Wint.
He brought the barrel of the fire launcher around, sighted down its length, and pulled the trigger all the way back. The light beam shot out of the barrel’s end in an explosion that caused the weapon to recoil sharply. The charge arced into the forefront of the attacking pack and incinerated the leaders. Keeton moved the weapon’s barrel from one pack to the next, trying to stay calm, to keep his aim steady and accurate.
But the motion of the flit made it difficult for him to be as effective as he would have liked against the very swift and elusive wildcats. They veered left and right after the first strikes, zigzagging across the grasslands toward the towers, spreading out to widen the distances among themselves. Now there were hundreds of targets, and even if Keeton had been more effective with the launcher than he was, he couldn’t have stopped all of them.
Wint, seeing the problem and knowing that the flits and their sleds were too slow to escape the pursuit, acted swiftly. Yelling at the commander to cease fire, he brought the nose of their two-man around sharply, flew directly at the foremost attackers, dropped down as if to land atop them, and then spun around so that the exhaust was exploding into their front ranks as he guided it down the front wave of the attackers in a long slow expulsion of fire. It took a pilot with Wint’s skills to perform this maneuver, but it turned aside a sizable portion of the attack and left the savage cats further scattered and in some disarray.
Still, they kept coming. They leapt onto the flit, trying to find a grip to climb aboard. Two did so, and one raked Wint from neck to hip with its claws before being dislodged. The second got to Keeton, but he thrust it away quickly and sent it tumbling off the craft.
Below, all of the towers were emptied out and all of the rescue flits and sleds were racing for the safety of the city. But a handful of the wildcats had reached the rearmost of the sleds and leapt aboard, shrieking and clawing at the soldiers clinging to the grips. Keeton could see clearly the struggle taking place, the soldiers kicking and punching at their attackers, trying to use their weapons without killing or maiming their own people. But a handful of each tumbled off. Sprawled on the approach road like rag dolls, the soldiers were quickly torn apart. Chaos ensued as the trailing sleds tried to go faster, to get away from their pursuers, until at last one of them lost its balance and went over completely. The flit pulling it was dragged down with the sled, and then it flipped, crushing the First Response members who manned it.
There was nothing Keeton or Wint could do to save any of them. By the time their flit was winging toward the gates, its fire launcher scattering the savage felines that had gotten close enough to provide a further threat, all those toppled with the sled or pulled down as stragglers were beyond help.
Still, the rescue effort was a success. Mo
st of those in the watchtowers had been saved. Only one of the sleds had been lost; the other three were now nearing the gates and safety.
Keeton glanced back at the army on the ridge, and his blood turned to ice.
A huge wave of creatures was coming down off the heights and swarming across the grasslands toward the walls of Arishaig. These attackers were different—larger in number by far, encompassing all sizes and shapes, and all manner of appearances and movements. Some had the agility of jackrabbits and deer; some lumbered like great Kodens. There were flying things and crawling things. He could make out huge jaws with teeth each the size of his hand. Coats of thick hide rippled next to those of coarse hair. Eyes flared scarlet and emerald out of heads that were triangular and bony. Claws ripped at the earth and hooves tore at the grasses.
Above them all, a huge mottled red-and-brown dragon swept across the sky.
Wint saw something else, too. “We’re in trouble,” he shouted.
He was pointing ahead, and now Keeton saw what he meant. The flits and their loaded sleds were nearing the west gates, ready to enter the city.
But the gates were still closed.
Atop the city walls, Edinja Orle watched the chase unfold, saw one of the four sleds and its flit brought down, and saw the others continue unimpeded as Keeton’s flit fought back against the attackers and burned away those close enough to cause trouble. She watched as a mass of attackers—too many for most armies to stop, let alone the handful of men and women seeking the sanctuary of the city—streamed down off the bluff. She felt the desperation in the hearts of the pursued, knowing that only moments separated them from either safety or death.
She waited for the gates to open.