by S. J. Ryan
Both women looked puzzled.
“Well . . . it's too low to be scouting,” Carrot said.
A frown joined Mirian's squint. “Carrot, it seems to be trailing smoke. No, not smoke – the puffs are descending, not rising. Dust maybe?” Before an answer could come, she exclaimed, “Carrot! A bird flew into the dust and – it dropped!”
“What do you mean, 'dropped?'”
“The bird was flying level and then it passed into the cloud that trails beneath the boat and dropped – like this!” Mirian made a swooping, crashing motion. “Like it was shot with an arrow!”
Bok watched the women as their eyes turned from east to north. Mirian's posture showed tension, but Carrot . . . it was as if she were about to curl into a ball.
“It's too late to evacuate,” she said listlessly. “The circle is closed.”
“Carrot!” Mirian shouted, breaking the trance. “What do you know?”
Carrot spoke haltingly: “Perhaps not anything, but . . . in the library of Archimedes, there was a report on experiments that the Romans did with different kinds of catapult loads. Once, they tried powdered spores of a poisonous mushroom. It was effective on the animals they tested, but the method was never used in battle, for no catapult has enough range to protect the crew if the wind blows back. But with an airship . . . . “
“You think it is dropping poison?”
“It might be. And faster than any army could, that craft has encircled us in its snare.”
Bok's eyes had adjusted to the dark, and by following their lines of their gaze, he too saw the oblong shape moving just above the trees. From north it arched west, making another circle.
“It seems to be nearing,” Mirian said.
“An inward spiral,” Carrot said. “When it finishes, the entire base will be dusted with poison.”
“If we go through the poison ring, we die. If we stay here, we die. Do you have a plan?”
Carrot's pause was heart-achingly long. “I – I don't know what to do. If Matt were here – “
Bok interrupted: “The glider can destroy it!”
Carrot shook her head. “But Bok, the glider needs a hill for launching. There's none in Ravencall.”
The idea came instantly to Bok's mind, for he'd thought of it often in the time since Geth had mentioned it. “Archimedes said he had a means to gain altitude, with neither hill nor ascendal.”
“How could that be?”
“I don't know. He was going to show me, but things happened too much. But if we find where he is kept prisoner, he could tell us.”
Carrot said softly, “Bok, the first thing I asked of Letos was where is Archimedes. He is not here. He was sent to the Romans.”
Archimedes . . . in the hands of the Romans! Bok whimpered and teetered, Mirian reached out and steadied. He told himself that he had to focus on the now. What to do? The glider could stop the airboat if it could fly above it, but how was that to be done? He had no idea.
That was the difference between him and Archimedes. Archimedes always had ideas. He had so many ideas, he was always writing them down . . . Bok's eyes brightened. Of course!
Bok saw Carrot's stare and explained, “He makes notes of everything. They will be in his hut.”
Carrot read the conviction in Bok's eyes. “Mirian, go with him. Help as you can. I will have Letos order the men to avoid the poison.”
Without waiting, Bok shimmied and plopped onto the ground and dodged through the grousing soldiers, flinging wide the gate into the airship compound. There was a lock on the door to Archimedes' hut, with a stern Do Not Enter By Order of the Leaf notice. Bok jimmied the window shutters apart, climbed through the window and opened the door for Mirian. He lit the lantern, placed it on the desk, opened the topmost sketchbook, and started flipping backward through blank pages.
“What are we looking for?” Mirian asked.
Bok pointed to the penciled sketch on the final scrawled page. “That!”
“A circle with a line beneath it, and beneath that an X. And alongside, the world's worst handwriting. How does this save us?”
Bok silently deciphered the writing. Without commenting, he grabbed the sketchbook and lantern and sprinted to the open doors of the barn.
“Yes, they brought it here!” he exclaimed with relief.
He rushed to the glider and set down the lantern and sketchbook. He inspected the wings, nodding to himself. In moving the glider from abandoned cart to hangar, the workers hadn't mucked the makeshift repair. They hadn't gotten to fixing the wheelbase, but that would hardly matter for this flight.
Mirian circled the fuselage, pursing lips. “It looks like a bird, and you call it a 'glider.' As in 'glides like a bird?'”
“Yes. On the shelf there – yes, there's a spare cell.”
“A what?”
“The cells are bags that go inside the envelope of the airship.”
“If you say.”
Bok grabbed the roll on the shelf and attempted to tug it over by himself. Mirian pitched in, and they dragged it to the side of the glider. Bok unrolled the bundle into the shape of a flattened balloon, then attached the pressure hose, then opened the valve on the pressurized tank. Gas hissed as it traveled from tank, through hose and into cell.
Mirian watched the balloon begin to bulge and rise. “I get it, you're going to make it float!”
“Take the rope on the bench there and tie it the eyelet on the cell and on the glider – “ he consulted the illustration in the sketchbook and patted the front of the cockpit “ – here.”
Bok scrounged through the storage closet. In the back, hidden beneath nondescript layers of burlap, he located a metal cylinder, two meters long by twenty centimeters in diameter. He dragged it to the glider, where Mirian had finished attaching the rope between balloon-cell and glider.
“What is that?”
“The weapon. A 'fireworks,' Archimedes called it. Help me attach it.”
He lay on his back and scooted under the fuselage. Mirian knelt and held the cylinder in place while Bok aligned the clips and locked it into place, then snaked the fuse cord up into the cockpit.
“Hold onto the body,” Bok said. “I'll need your weight to keep me down until we're ready to go.”
It was just in time. The five-meter wide bag inflated into a limp sphere and rose from the floor. Drawn upward by the balloon, the connecting rope became vertical and taut. The glider creaked as weight shifted. Bok climbed into the cockpit and fastened on the crude goggles.
“You're really going to do this,” Mirian said. “Bok, you are just a child. You should not have come on this mission at all. And now you're going to fly this – thing?”
“I've done it many times,” he said. He stood on the seat, reached to the underbelly of the balloon-cell and closed the hose connector valve, then began unscrewing the fitting to disconnect the hose from the cell.
“Bok, I should be the one to do this. I see better than you. That weapon even looks like an arrow – “
“It's not an arrow. You don't know how to fly.”
“Then tell me what to do.”
“It's not something that can be taught only by words.” The disconnected hose dropped to the floor. Bok slipped into the cockpit seat, tested the feel of the controls, gazed levelly at Mirian. He was struck by how much in the pale moonlight she looked like his mother. “You may let go of the glider now.”
“Bok – “
A cry came from outside, in the direction of the field. Not one voice but thousands. The trample of feet, frantic shouts and screams to chill the soul.
Very coolly but also very loudly, Bok shouted: “LET GO!”
Mirian's face contorted. Then she let go and stepped back, seeming to sink as she did.
Bok and the glider ascended through the open roof to the stars. He heard himself laugh. Odd, he thought, as on the inside he was scared to death. Scared, yet excited. The time of proving had come!
His exaltation was dampened by roars an
d cries from below. On the field, like the wake of a boat in a fierce wind, soldiers and civilians scattered. The airboat on its inward spiral had cleared the trees and was passing over the field, spraying its deadly cargo from a higher altitude. Too far below, archers fired in a hail that fell short.
Seen from this distance, its underbelly lit by the fires of the encampment, the airboat was clearly much smaller than their own airship, with a gondola large enough to provide only two seats. Yet Bok was impressed with the aerodynamic sleekness of the envelope and the smooth hum of the engine. He had spent many hours in the hangar with the old airship, and knew this one had to be a much better design. He wished he could study it. Instead, he had to destroy it.
The glider ascended higher. Bok lost sight of the airboat gondola beneath the bulge of its envelope, which became an ovoid silhouette creeping against the fire-lit meadow. Two hundred meters below, in the wake of the airboat, several men had collapsed and were writhing upon the grass. There was nothing to do but wait.
He raised his eyes to the surrounding lands as the glider twisted in the breeze on its tether beneath the rising balloon. East was the glimmer of the moon upon Fish Lake, west were the fires of Geth's army combined with those of the yet-unseen trolls. He wished he had asked Mirian what trolls were like.
What if I die without knowing? He thought of all the things he could die without knowing about and found that disturbed him more than the thought of death itself. Death would have its benefits too – it would be good to be again with Mother and Father – but all the things he would never know about this world!
He looked straight down. The field seemed as small as the floor of a hut. The camp fires were sparks. The huts were like chips of sawdust. The people – well, to be honest, not to be insulting – they looked like ants. He tried to pick out a speck of glowing orange hair among all the torches, but the pendulum-like rocking of the glider precluded making such a visual distinction.
He tested the play of the ailerons and rudder. He lightly tapped the button on the firing control.
The inward spiral of the airboat's path tightened around the field, forcing the men to abandon their campsites and pack themselves into a tight spot in the center. Not all had done so quickly enough; there were more bodies sprawled and flinching on the grass that had been dusted. Bok decided that it did not seem like the best way to die. He decided then that death by glider crash would be the best way to die, as it would be fast and glorious. Not that he wanted to die, but if he had to – fast and glorious!
At last he was high enough. Bok drew his sword and cocked his arm. He contemplated the rope that connected glider to balloon, and thought, This is it.
Bok hacked the rope.
It was by conscious effort that a few fleeting images flashed through his mind, scenes of a world that had been his life until last summer: his mother singing, his father laughing, the wind flapping the sails of their boat. And then the bad times: the coming of the plague, the villages of the dead, the lonely journey to Fish Lake. Then he recalled what he thought of good times again: meeting Archimedes and the Lady Carrot, flights in the glider.
And that was it, his entire life, over before it had hardly begun. It didn't seem fair, even to him.
The rope snapped apart and the aircraft dropped, Bok's stomach with it. The nose of the glider lurched up, threatening what Archimedes had called a 'flat spin.' Bok shoved the control yoke forward, pushing the nose down. The aircraft was rotating so he kicked the rudder. He was in a straight glide. He regained his bearings – sky up and land down and moon ahead.
He sighted the airboat, directly under the moon. He was heading south and the airboat was heading north. Bok steered the approach into a collision course.
Bok had lost too much altitude in his spin recovery and had descended below the altitude of his target. Still he retained velocity and that could be traded for altitude. Bok pulled on the yoke. Not too much, not too little. Momentum carried him through the dip and he ascended above the airboat – but not enough. The nose tilted downward and he started descending again. He pulled up again, but knew this time he couldn't even make the altitude of the airboat.
He was too far for an accurate shot, but had run out of time.
One last time he pulled up the nose. He took aim and jabbed hard on the button on the controller in his hand, closing the simple electrical circuit between the crude battery and the igniter. Beneath his feet the igniter sparked at the rear end of the rocket tube. The glider jolted as the rocket leaped from its tube, spraying Bok with a plume of smoke that stabbed upward toward the airboat.
Bok never saw the impact. Before the rocket reached its target, an arm emerged from a window on the gondola. It pointed something at the glider that spat flames like tiny rockets of its own. Bok heard the rip of glider fabric and felt splinters of wood cut his exposed skin.
He felt a jab in his abdomen, as if he'd been stabbed by a blunt knife. He glanced down and saw the front of his shirt was slicked with blood emanating from a thumb-sized hole in his belly that was the source of pain worse than all his previous bruises and fractures combined.
He cried out and flailed his hands, but they were numb and seemed as far as the moon. He could not control himself, let alone the aircraft. And the ground was coming too fast. He was too scared to think of glory.
Mother and father – Lady Carrot – Archimedes –
His ears filled with the sound of his gushing blood, and the world spun end over end and the ground was a tumbling wall and then silence, darkness.
13.
From hundreds of meters below on the field, Carrot watched the rocket's smoking plume as it stabbed from glider to airboat. The rocket struck the airboat envelope in mid-section and penetrated the skin. It lodged up to its fins and stuck. There was a puff of fire out of the puncture. The spike of the rocket's exhaust flame sputtered.
One second, two. The rocket payload detonated, blooming chrysanthemum streams of sparks from the point of impact. Only half the effect was visible outside the airboat envelope. Inside, the shards that produced the sparks were driven by explosive charges and pierced the skin of sarkassian silk in a hundred places. Each rip was a point of contact between the hydrogen of the envelope and the oxygen in the atmosphere, and the heat of the shards ignited combustion. In a hundred places, the surface of the envelope burned and the stresses shredded it.
The miniature explosions combined into one big fireball. Losing pressure, the envelope no longer supported the mass of the airboat and the vehicle sank with increasing speed, the engine wailing. Flaming wreckage scattered as the airboat smacked the field.
Fluttering like a leaf from a tree, the glider crashed midway between Carrot and the airboat. The noise of its impact was drowned by the roar of the airboat's fire and Carrot's screaming.
“Bok! BOK!”
She rushed to the glider. It was a mess of canvas and beams. Summoning strength, she ripped apart the bolted components, slashed away the sheets of fabric. Bok was still strapped into the cockpit, hanging upside down. His goggles had slipped off and his eyes were closed. His face was smooth and unstrained, but the blood dripping from the growing spot of moist redness on his abdomen belied the innocence of a child asleep.
Gingerly, Carrot reached in and undid the straps, gently easing the limp body from the wreckage, setting the boy upon the grass, her healing-sense guiding her to avoid causing spinal damage. In the blazing light of the airboat fire, she examined the wound. She had learned about guns from the Wizard and had seen the one fired from the airboat and knew there was a projectile embedded in Bok's flesh. Fortunately it was nowhere near the heart. She would have wanted to die if it had been.
From the hidden compartment in her boot she extracted the small slender knife and inserted the blade into the wound. She closed her eyes and sensed the position of the metals of knife and projectile within the tissue. Bok stirred as she probed. Numb, she willed, pressing fingers around the wound.
Slowly she tease
d the projectile out of the body, taking care not to cause more damage. A blood-covered lump of metal emerged and plopped onto the ground. Carrot wanted to examine it, but that would have to wait. She pressed her palms against the puncture and willed: heal.
Bok's eyes fluttered open and stared dully at her face.
“Lady Carrot,” he murmured. “I'm sorry. I ruined your aircraft.“
“Oh, Bok! You did everything perfectly! You saved us!”
His eyes fluttered shut.
Carrot felt a touch at her shoulder. It was Senti. The healer knelt alongside and sorted through her satchel of wizard-supplied nanotechnological potions. She examined the boy, unstoppered a vial, and poured liquid upon the wound. It fizzed upon contact. Bok's face contorted and his body arched. Then he relaxed and his breathing became regular.
Wiping her tears, Carrot arose. She turned toward the airboat wreck. The gondola lay sideways, crumpled and bent, half covered with tatters of burning structure. The door abruptly flew open and a woman in a long coat climbed out. She was bearing a basket.
Overwhelmed by the glare of the fire, Carrot saw only silhouettes as the woman reached inside and pulled with her free hand the figure of a man. The man's clothing was covered with flames and his legs must have caught on something inside the gondola, for despite the strength she demonstrated in lifting him out of the gondola up to his chest, the woman could lift him no farther. Fire and smoke drove her away as the man shrieked from his burns.
The woman retreated a few paces from the conflagration, reached into her coat and withdrew the boot-sized device. She extended her arm, pointing toward the man. The device spat a tongue of flame and Carrot heard the noise like a hammer furiously striking. The man's flailing and screaming abruptly ceased. He slumped onto the door frame, limp and silent.
During the fight in the air, Norian had returned Carrot's kedana and she had strapped it to her waist. She unsheathed it as she marched toward the woman by the flames. When Carrot was within ten meters, the woman turned and Carrot made out her features. It apparently was yet another version of Inoldia. If there was anything that could no longer surprise Carrot, it was that.