George and Sophie had already piled into the back of the ornithopter, so Aubrey sprinted around to his side and sprang inside, finding, after some fumbling, a place for his rifle. Caroline adjusted her helmet, acknowledged the flag holder with a nod – and was rewarded with a grin, Aubrey noted – and slipped into her seat. ‘Buckle up,’ she said needlessly and, before she had any further comment, they were all driven back into their seats by the violence of their take-off.
THE CLAMOURING OF THE WINGS AND THE HAMMERING of the engine was always at its greatest during climbing, so Aubrey sat as mutely as his friends, and prepared himself.
All the other ornithopter crews were under the same orders: to do what they could to stop Dr Tremaine using magical and more direct means. To most of the pilots, that meant engaging in aerial combat. Some were determined to board the skyfleet ships and wreak enough havoc to destroy them. Aubrey was happy for them to attempt all this and more but, having been close to the skyfleet and seen how large each of the ships was, he wondered if they could be brought down by conventional means. Their aborted inspection of the ships suggested that they had many of the qualities of regular vessels, but he was keen to get nearer to see if assuming concrete substance had left the cloudstuff skyfleet vulnerable.
He shook his head. Dr Tremaine’s goal wouldn’t be thwarted by scuttling his fleet. His magic had to be stopped.
But if the other crews could distract Dr Tremaine and keep him occupied, it might give Aubrey and his friends time to find the rogue sorcerer. Then it was up to Aubrey and his magic bullet.
The Armourer at Darnleigh House had enough Symons rifles for Aubrey to take his pick. All of them had been well fired-in and were perfectly maintained, in much better condition than the unfortunate Oberndorf that von Stralick had purloined from that farmhouse. Aubrey had taken a handful of .303 shells and, as Caroline herded the shuddering aircraft skyward, he plucked one of them from his pocket.
It had been the rifle that had let him down at Dr Tremaine’s retreat, bursting like that. He was confident that the principle – and his spellwork – was sound. Now that he had good equipment, all he needed was a decent opportunity and he could trap the master sorcerer. He’d be rendered harmless and could be brought to justice, and the people of Trinovant would be safe.
All Aubrey had to do was to concentrate amid the noise and movement of an ascending ornithopter, then cast a series of fiendishly difficult spells, and make a magic bullet.
THE RUBBERY NATURE OF TIME WAS ALWAYS BROUGHT home to Aubrey when he worked on magic. The intensity of his focus and the intellectual effort needed to shape magic meant that time either slipped past or ground to a halt. This time, when he was done and the Symons had the powerful spell in its breech, he became aware of his surroundings again just as the sound of the wings changed. Instead of all his weight being on his back, pressing him into his seat, he found himself leaning forward. They were levelling off. ‘That’s our ceiling,’ Caroline announced. ‘The Merlin won’t go any higher.’
Aubrey peered out of the window. The earth was far away, Trinovant spread out in all directions from the heart of the city to the faraway outskirts blending into countryside. He could see the other ornithopters labouring upward, all trying to gain altitude.
He tilted his head. Dr Tremaine’s skyfleet was still thousands of feet overhead and maintaining its steady course: a great circle taking it right around the city of Trinovant, from Lambshome in the south to Parmenter in the east, Mayfield in the north and Marbury in the west.
The skyfleet was a daunting sight, clearly visible to all the inhabitants of the city. Having already experienced bombing from dirigibles, Aubrey knew the skyfleet would be bringing dread to the population as Dr Tremaine went about his magical preparation.
The thought gave him pause, and once again he wondered at the complexity of Dr Tremaine’s spellwork. Could the sense of dismay and fear that the skyfleet was imposing be useful in some way? If the consciousnesses he was harvesting were in a state of horror, could this also improve the efficacy of his bid for immortality? This could explain the outrageousness of the skyfleet, the size and the impressiveness of the assault. It was designed to daunt.
‘Time to put the altitude enhancer to work.’ He’d been conscious of the magical field emanated by the box to the rear of the aircraft, a node of magical brightness among many throughout the complex machine. It was quiescent, though, waiting for his spell to activate and control it.
He consulted the tech specs and tried to put aside the effects of casting his magic bullet projectile spell. It was a fourth generation carbon copy, blurry and difficult to read. Someone had scrawled out a series of suggestions but the more Aubrey looked at it, the more it looked like a list of hopeful ideas than a definitive guide to operation. The gist was that an amplification spell needed to be overlaid on the box, one that could be ratcheted up by degrees. Choice of language, duration and – apparently – chance of success was up to him.
Caroline glanced at him – a brief, flashing look that was enough to spur him on. He took out his notebook and pencil and he scrawled out a well-practised standby: a Mycenaean amplification spell he’d used many times before.
‘I’m not sure exactly how this is going to work,’ he said after he pencilled in a reminder to append his signature element, ‘so hold on.’
‘Forewarned is forearmed,’ she said and her hands danced across the control panel. ‘When you’re ready.’
Aubrey gave the spell his best and immediately the Merlin shot upward like a rocket. Feeling somewhat like an earwig caught in a hosepipe at the worst possible moment, Aubrey craned his neck and saw, miles away to the south, Dr Tremaine’s skyfleet.
‘Over there!’ Aubrey cried. ‘The flagship!’
Caroline leaned into the controls. George groaned as the ornithopter tilted, then righted itself, and suddenly they were screaming upward at an angle. Aubrey was pressed against the door and he hoped that the mechanic in charge of door latches had been in top form when putting this one together.
‘We’re close, Aubrey!’ Caroline cried.
The hulls of the skyfleet were growing larger and larger as they neared, flanked by the storm clouds that escorted the fleet like well-built bodyguards helping rich patrons on a night on the town. Around them, other ornithopters were shooting upward erratically, some immediately plunging back down again.
Aubrey hastened to cut off the spell before they rose too far and brought themselves into a direct line with the guns of the fleet.
Instantly, their upward surge halted. The gigantic shape of Tremaine’s flagship cut off the sun and they were plunged into shadow while they bobbed like a balloon a few hundred feet below it.
Satisfied, and unwilling to trust to the altitude enhancer again, Aubrey started the other spell he’d prepared as his part in getting them close to Dr Tremaine’s location without being seen, all of which made his initial plan of bringing magic suppressors to neutralise Dr Tremaine’s magic impossible.
Like most of his outlandish schemes, this one had seemed reasonable when it had first come to him. He’d prepared a spell derived from the Law of Sympathy (‘Like affects like’) to encourage a link between the hull of the warship and the steel of the ornithopter. An attractive link wouldn’t be difficult to propagate, he reasoned, since even though the hull was made of cloudstuff, it was aspiring to steelhood, no doubt aping the form and qualities of steel through an application of the Law of Propinquity. The Law of Attraction provided a backbone to the spell, made all the easier by this propensity of ferrous materials to attract each other.
Awfully exposed, bobbing in the air as they were solely due to the altitude-enhancing device, Aubrey hurried out the spell. They rose, quickly, and before he had time to make any adjustments, they struck the hull with a resounding clang.
They hung there, silently looking at each other, and the whole ornithopter vibrated as if it had decided, on a whim, to become a bell. The cabin shook, the frame vibrated, ev
ery single piece of steel or iron around them hummed.
Caroline turned to him, a needless question on her lips. Aubrey wanted to slap himself on the forehead, but decided that fixing the spell would be a better use of his time. He hadn’t anticipated that it would be making every iron-based component of the ornithopter want to embrace the overwhelming iron-like presence just above them. Hurriedly, before the ornithopter could shake itself apart in its eagerness, Aubrey eased back on the attraction spell. Not enough to disengage them, but enough to stop the ornithopter from disassembling itself.
When the quivering all about them diminished and then vanished, Aubrey relaxed the death grip he had on his pencil and notebook. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Just as planned.’
Sophie tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Aubrey, how are we going to get onto the ship?’
‘DON’T WORRY,’ AUBREY SAID, AS REASSURINGLY AS someone could when he and his friends were hanging from the belly of an enemy battleship made from magically wrought cloudstuff. ‘I have this part under control.’
He paused and waited for a chorus of disbelief at this notion, but it was a measure of the situation that a serious-looking George merely nodded, while Caroline locked eyes with him. ‘Go on.’
‘I think it’s fair to say that you’ll have to trust me here.’
A brace of Albion ornithopters swooped along what would have been the waterline of the flagship, if the craft had been afloat. One of them was buffeted by a blast before it climbed rapidly and disappeared from view.
‘Aubrey,’ Caroline said, ‘none of us would be here if we didn’t trust you. At the moment, I’m sure we’d follow even if you asked us to step outside.’
‘I’m glad, because that’s just what I’m looking for.’
AUBREY HAD ALWAYS APPRECIATED SILK. HE LIKED ITS texture, the sheen, the touch of the exotic about it and the way that it was the only clothing fibre made by insects – locust leather, in his opinion, not being a legitimate garment material.
So the rope with which his friends and he were tied together being silk was a lovely touch, if unnecessarily luxurious. He would have settled for good old manila hemp, but silk was lighter and easier on the hands.
Leading the way, with his rifle slung across his back, Aubrey shuffled his hands along the hull of the Sylvia, propelling himself forward, and grimaced as he fumbled around a rivet. He uttered a small spell adjustment to ensure that his friends and he were constantly being buoyed upward, rising strongly enough that they had to hold their hands over their heads in order to avoid painful cranial-battleship collisions.
Their progress once they’d left the relative safety of the ornithopter had been a peculiar bobbing accompanied by what could be described as an inverted walking on hands. He’d been assisted by the surprisingly thick and warm air – part of Dr Tremaine’s magic, Aubrey assumed, enclosing the Sylvia in a bubble of comfort for whoever was on board – so moving air about was something he didn’t have to organise.
The experience was disorienting, with the massive bulk of the magically created warship directly overhead while Albion streamed by far, far below. Steadfastly, Aubrey didn’t look down after that initial, nervous glance, for the spiralling drop was only too easy to imagine – and imagination, in this instance, wouldn’t do him any good. He kept his attention doggedly on their destination: the point at which the hull curved upward to become the sides of the Sylvia. To their right, in the distance, the enormous propellers rotated, churning away at the air. To their left, the bow crested the non-existent waves. Pressing against their hands were rivets, bolts and seams.
The cloudstuff hull was peculiar to the touch. At close quarters, it looked as if the surface were swirling but, to the fingers, it was as solid as the steel it was imitating. Dr Tremaine had gone to some pains to make the ship as real as possible. Aubrey could only attribute such a rigorous approach to Dr Tremaine’s general spell-casting excellence. If he was going to conjure up a battleship, it was going to be a very fine battleship indeed.
Aubrey was jarred out of his contemplation by a thunder stroke that made the hull ring. Quickly, it was followed by a series of equally appalling blows. A rapid flickering flare of orange-white light to starboard threw a nearby battleship into high contrast, enough to see the storm clouds to the north.
The aerial battle had begun.
A few hundred yards away, an ornithopter plunged, dropping below the level of the skyfleet with an ominous plume of black smoke billowing from its tail section. Its wings were beating frantically and Aubrey had some hope that the pilot would bring the stricken craft safely to the ground. He wished them well.
Aubrey scanned the skies. Around them, the attack force of ornithopters was doing its best, but the pilots were having trouble with their altitude enhancers. He could clearly see a dozen or more ornithopters struggling for control. A handful were relatively stable and were firing at the battleships with machine guns, sending tracers flashing through the skies, bright streaks like wasps on fire. Some were descending, aiming to swoop under the skyfleet ships and away from their guns. This left vulnerable hulls exposed and several ornithopters were streaming along the lengths of the enemy ships, directing their weapons upward and raking the hulls with fire.
Naturally, this made their own position under the hull of the enemy flagship extremely precarious. Aubrey wasn’t in favour of the prospect of coming under enemy fire and coming under friendly fire was an even less attractive option. He looked over his shoulder and urged his friends onward.
The closer they came to the upward curve, the more of the sky they were able to see. Aubrey soon had a view of half the skyfleet as it continued in its stately progress, terrifying all of Trinovant. The skyfleet’s ships were firing, the unmanned guns magically aiming at the few ornithopters that had managed to control the altitude enhancers enough to climb above the plane of the vessels. Turrets rotated, barrels adjusted elevation with horrible speed, then orange and black clouds burst along the flanks of the ships as the mighty armaments let loose to bring down their attackers. Other ornithopters completed their attack on the belly of the ships and immediately came under fire as they swung out from underneath and sought to find another target. The noise was deafening, vast and painful, with the giant flagship shivering every time it let loose a broadside.
Off to the east, one of the ornithopters had a pilot more capable or more daring than most. Its wings thrashed, striving for altitude, and were having some effect. The aircraft yawed, canting sideways but still buoyed by the altitude enhancer. It flailed like a drowning man, but kept climbing slowly, and Aubrey could only think that the pilot was bringing the craft into position for an attacking dive.
Aubrey measured distances by eye. The skyfleet was steaming in a great curve to the north-west. If it kept on that heading, one of the destroyer escorts would soon cross directly underneath the struggling ornithopter, which would be in the perfect position to do some damage, if it were carrying bombs.
Without warning, the wings of the ornithopter folded back. It trembled for a moment, floating on the power of the altitude enhancer, then it plummeted.
The ornithopter struck the deck of the destroyer, just aft of the superstructure. A huge explosion rocked the enemy ship. Fire and smoke fanned outward in a huge, demented spray. The destroyer ploughed on and soon the smoke was unrolling along its sides in black waves.
Aubrey’s friends had drawn up close alongside him. They stared, shocked as he was, at the destroyer. ‘They couldn’t have survived being shot down like that, could they?’ Sophie asked, her eyes wide with horror. She had one hand over her head, holding her away from the hull of the Sylvia. The other was firmly in George’s grasp.
‘I don’t think they were shot down,’ George replied slowly.
‘They weren’t hit by anything I saw,’ Aubrey agreed. ‘I think they turned off their altitude enhancer.’
No-one spoke for a moment. ‘They must have been desperate,’ George said, finally.
The sm
oke from the destroyer had diminished. Aubrey could see no sign of fire from the deck. It steamed on, barely touched by the assault. ‘They did their best.’
And it wasn’t enough was unspoken, but hung in the air next to them, ignored but only too obvious, like an off-colour speech at a wedding.
Caroline nudged him from behind. ‘We’re in a position to do something,’ she said. ‘Let’s not waste it.’
Aubrey wondered if that was what the pilot of the crushed ornithopter had thought.
Soon, the hull began to trend upward. He stopped, flexing his arms and resting his head against the hull, and waited for his friends to catch up.
Caroline was immediately behind him, followed by Sophie, with George determinedly bringing up the rear. Aubrey dangled until they came close. ‘The next stage is a little tricky,’ he announced.
George cast an eye back at the Merlin, forlorn and lonely in the middle of the ship’s hull. ‘Trickier than that little hand-over-hand jaunt?’
‘A few more yards and we’ll have the starboard stabiliser to get around. Then we won’t have anything overhead any more,’ Aubrey said.
Caroline cocked an eye at the hull. ‘So, if you keep the levitation spell active, we’ll simply float straight up?’
‘That’s it. Straight up the side of the ship. Once over the stabiliser, we’ll need to find the gangway so we can enter.’
‘Or we could simply drift right up to the rail. Over that, and we’re on the deck,’ Caroline suggested.
‘In plain view of anyone on the bridge,’ Aubrey said. ‘Let’s not go that way unless we have to.’
He paused and gazed outward. The skyfleet owned the sky. Even if Dr Tremaine had no other plan in mind, no ambition for personal immortality, this advance in warfare was a fearful thing. He had created a weapons base that could cruise, aloof and undisturbed, and then simply pulverise anything below it. Looking down from such a height, it wouldn’t be like attacking people at all – people would be nothing but ants. It was a world away from the intensity of the trenches, where the enemy had a face – and a sound and a smell. Fighting hand to hand was wretched but at least it impressed on the combatants that they were engaged in battle, not unconnected from it all. Far too easy to feel no responsibility that way.
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