By Fire Above_A Signal Airship Novel

by Robyn Bennis

  Bernat laughed. “And they’d probably just muck it up?”

  She couldn’t help but laugh with him. “Yes. Unless it was me.”

  “Oh, without doubt.” He looked again at the card game, his eyes settling on Josette’s mother. “And if it had been you, do you think she’d ever forgive you?”

  “For this? I don’t imagine she’d see anything that called for forgiveness. She knew as well as any of us the necessity of silencing that man.”

  “It’s only that she hasn’t spoken to me since.”

  “I’m sure she’s just a little rattled. My father was in the army, remember.” Josette took a deep breath. “How she screamed at him, the day he got his conscription notice, saying we all ought to run away together somewhere, instead of letting him be pulled into ‘someone else’s war.’ She forgave him in the end, though. She understands, even if she doesn’t show it.”

  Bernat sat higher against the wall. “You’ve never told me what he did in the army. Was he in the infantry?”

  Shaking her head, Josette said with a proud little smile, “Aerial Signal Corps, as a balloonist. They wouldn’t put him on an airship, because his luck was so bad. Three times, he lost his tether and crash-landed behind enemy lines. Got the Spear of Garnia for bravery, though I’ve always wondered whether he didn’t cut his own tether, so he could sell liquor to the Vins.”

  At half past nine, the trapdoor opened and Heny brought the announcement, “Won’t be able to do anything about that body for a while. The Vins are out in force tonight. The silver lining is, you won’t hardly notice the smell of it, seeing as how I can’t risk emptying your chamber pots. The other bad news is, we ain’t had a chance to sneak any extra food in, so tonight it’s gonna be dinner for two, split eleven ways.”

  As the rest groaned, Josette jumped up and asked, “Did we get the signal off?”

  “We did,” Heny said, taking the last few steps down to the basement. “Which is a big part of why the Vins are in such a stir.”

  “It couldn’t be helped,” Josette said.

  “Aye, everything you lot did here couldn’t be helped and had the best goddamn intentions, I’m sure, but that don’t mean it’s caused any less trouble for us, and for what?”

  Josette didn’t shy away from Heny’s scowl, but neither did she offer an argument. “Has the battalion signaled in return?”

  “One blue rocket, just a few minutes ago.”

  Josette eyeballed her. “That can’t be right. Who’d you hear it from?”

  “Hear it, hell, we could see it from here.” She turned to shout up the stairs, “Pesha, what color was that rocket just now?”

  “Blue!” came the answer.

  “One blue rocket?” Josette asked. “And Mistral still missing?”

  “Still missing,” Heny said.

  “You’re sure of that?”

  Heny gave her a scornful glance. She took a deep breath, apparently ready to shout up the stairs again, until Josette held up a hand to stop her.

  “So what the hell’s it mean?” Heny asked. “They gonna leave the plague behind when they go? Oh wait, I forgot. You are stayin’.”

  And as much as Josette worried that the 132nd was making a terrible mistake, she took some pleasure in Heny’s startled response when she announced, “One blue rocket means they’ll attack at dawn.”

  Now Josette had everyone’s attention, and most particularly her mother’s. Cards scattered in her wake as she ran to the stairs. “Dawn tomorrow?” she asked.

  “Dawn tomorrow,” Josette said, “and it’s unlikely we’ll get muskets from Mistral.”

  By now, Pesha had come down the stairs, drawn by the commotion. “We should get someone making pikes,” she said, “for anyone who doesn’t have a weapon of their own.”

  “That’s a hell of a lot of pikes,” Josette said.

  “Then we’ll get a hell of a lot of people working on them,” Heny said.

  She nodded. “Good. Who gets the message out? It’ll be a dangerous job, with the Vins alert and on edge.”

  “I can manage that,” Josette’s mother said, taking a step forward as she spoke. “And I’d best start now. Only so many hours before dawn.”

  Josette’s first impulse was to stop her, and she had her arm halfway to barring the way when she realized there was no point. Even knowing it would do no good, she said, “It doesn’t have to be you.”

  “It does, actually,” her mother said, but not harshly. “Anyone else would caught on the way. And hardly anyone else knows who can be trusted, and who might still be spyin’ for the Vins. Send anyone but me and you’re doin’ worse than sending no one at all.”

  Josette shared a look with Bernat, then said to her mother, “As soon as the battalion masses to attack in the morning, the Vins will all go to the wall. The streets should be clear of patrols and guards. That’ll be the signal for the mob to gather in the square. And tell them to get a hearty breakfast and empty their bowels.”

  Her mother’s eyes opened wide, and she said at a whisper, “I can’t tell them that, Josie.”

  “Trust me, you’ll be doing them a favor if you do.”

  Bernat managed a smile and said, “And do come back safe.”

  Josette’s mother looked at him, seemed on the brink of throwing her arms around him, but in the end only turned her head away and went up the stairs without another word.

  *   *   *

  THE SUN HAD been down for hours, but a clear sky left faint starlight as Mistral went dark and altered course, coming into a sweeping curve which, if followed to its end, would bring her around behind the Ayezderhau. Mistral’s sharpest lookout, carrying the best night glass they had, said she thought she’d seen the Ayezderhau adjusting course in response. She thought, but she wasn’t sure in the faint light.

  The moon would rise in a few more hours, illuminating both ships, so Ensign Kember had a decision to make. Her intention had not been to carry through with the ambush, but only to give the appearance, and so bait the Ayezderhau’s cautious captain into countering the maneuver, and in doing so allow Mistral to keep ahead of them.

  But what if the Vins hadn’t taken the bait? What if she’d overestimated the night vision of their lookouts? If the Ayezderhau flew straight on, she’d pass them in the night, and the rising sun might find her bombing Garnian infantry, with Mistral lagging hopelessly behind. In that case, Kember’s only chance was to follow the feint through, lie silently across the Ayezderhau’s path, and put two into her steamjack as she went past.

  What would Captain Dupre do?

  “Sir,” a crewman said, whispering despite the mile or more of sky between them and the Vins. “Private Grey thinks we need to shut down the steamjack for at least half an hour, to repair damage to the manifold pipes.”

  She wanted to scream, but she swallowed it down and said, “I’m going up there. Lupien, you have the deck.”

  She made her way in the dark by rote, climbing the companionway steps, dodging around the relayman, and heading straight for the steamjack. She found Private Grey lying under an oiled tarp, only the faintest light peeking out from under it.

  Kember wriggled under the tarp, and once her eyes adjusted to the lantern light underneath, she shot Grey a nervous look and began to inspect the solder joints of the manifold, looking for the damage.

  “Are you okay, Sabrine?” Private Grey asked, just loud enough to be heard.

  As always, it took her several seconds to figure out who the hell this “Sabrine” was, and remember it was her. It took her even longer, so long that her face flushed hot with embarrassment, to realize that there was nothing wrong with the steam manifold.

  “No,” she said, and wanted very much to cry, to start blubbering right there in front of a subordinate. The rush of despair came on so suddenly that it was all she could do to keep her voice down. “I’m not sure I’ll ever be okay.” While the space beneath the steamjack of a signal corps chasseur is not in any aspect ideal for the giv
ing or receiving of hugs, Private Grey did her best, putting a supporting arm around Kember and squeezing.

  “Thank you, Miriam,” Kember said, and wiped at the snot dribbling from her nose.

  “You’ll be okay,” Miriam said. “You’ll be okay as soon as you convince yourself that you saved everyone aboard this ship. The ledger comes out in your favor, by a big margin.”

  “Sure, but … I just don’t know if I’m cut out for this. Look at me, cowering under the steamjack and whimpering.”

  Unlike the case with hugging, the space under a steamjack is ideal for punching, if only because the victim can’t get out of the way. Miriam demonstrated this by hitting her in the arm. “Are you kidding? You’re one of the toughest people I know. You got shot in the neck and went back on duty! The only other people I know who could do that are the captain, Sergeant Jutes, and maybe my mom.”

  “Yeah, but how many of them have killed in cold blood?”

  “If I had to guess, two out of three, but I bet Sergeant Jutes is capable of it, too.” She put a hand on Kember’s shoulder. “Listen, I may not know much about killing, but I’m pretty sure it’s not supposed to be easy, so there’s no shame in having a hard time of it. No shame in finding someone to talk to, either. About that, or anything else that’s eating at you.”

  Kember smiled. “Hey, Miriam. I have to pick between trying to ambush the Vins, or making a beeline to Durum. What do you think Captain Dupre would do?”

  “She’d try to ambush them,” Miriam said, without hesitation.

  Kember sighed. “Yeah. She would, wouldn’t she?”

  Miriam grinned, the lamplight bright in her eyes. “Undoubtedly, but what would Captain Kember do?”

  Kember frowned. “First, she’d blubber under the steamjack.”

  Miriam nodded. “Check.”

  Staring into the pipes just over her head, Sabrine Kember thought for a moment and said, “And then she’d head for Durum.”

  “There you have it.”

  15

  IT WAS BEFORE dawn on the day of battle, and Durum had overslept.

  Or so it seemed. Josette entered the town square at a trot, and came to a clomping halt when she saw it empty, save for a brigade of decaying bodies hanging from nooses.

  “Where in hell is everyone?” Heny asked, as they picked their way through the dark forest of gallows.

  “Perhaps ‘fashionably late’ has finally made it out here?” Bernat answered. Josette could just hear his cane clicking against the paving stones as he slowed to a walk.

  Heny made some reply, but her whispering voice was drowned out by another furious cannonade from the west. The artillery, Vin and Garnian alike, had been going at it hammer and tongs for the last half hour. The square was clear of Vin fusiliers—presumably they were all at the wall, staring into the dark in anticipation of an assault.

  Which was fortunate for Josette’s war party, for at their current strength they’d be hard-pressed to fight off a pack of stray dogs, let alone a detachment of infantry. The sum total of the resistance forces consisted of Heny, Pesha, and the people who’d been living in their basement, less Private Kiffer.

  “You don’t suppose Elise was captured, do you?” Bernat asked privately, as he came forward to stand next to Josette.

  She couldn’t make out his expression in the pre-dawn gloom, but she heard the worried tremor in his voice. Indeed, she heard it in her own when she answered, “Maybe not. Maybe the Durum resistance simply isn’t quite what was advertised.”

  They advanced toward the stone pond at the center of the square, whose population of frogs was unusually silent this morning. The party clustered there, at least two sets of eyes watching every approach, and waited.

  In a minute, shapes loomed out of the shadows at the edge of the square. They came near, were challenged, and one of them replied in Garnian, “We ain’t early, are we?”

  “Early?” Josette asked. “We ought to be assembled and moving by now!”

  “Josie?” the voice asked, quite pleasantly. “Your mum told us to come here after the airship showed up.”

  Josette sighed. Her instructions had been misunderstood. There was no point in getting mad about it now, but that had never stopped her. “Mistral is delayed, but we have to start on our own, or the men going into the breach will be slaughtered. I need each of you to run and gather more people. Anyone with a gun or a pitchfork or a goddamn sharpened stick, understand? And anyone with crowbars and tools for getting into the magazine.”

  In the next quarter of an hour, the resistance began to trickle into the square in varied states of preparedness, until there were two or three score gathered under the lightening sky. About a quarter of them had hunting rifles, another quarter fowling pieces, and the rest were armed with makeshift pikes and a diverse array of firearms. One had a great hand mortar, which was as apt to kill its user as the enemy. Another had a pair of tiny pocket pistols that might penetrate skin if the target didn’t have too many layers of clothing on. Two men had arquebuses, both with broken flintlocks, so they could only be fired by touching a burning match to the pan. One man even had an ancient blunderbuss whose muzzle flared open at the end, as wide as a bell. Until that moment, Josette had half-believed such firearms to be the fanciful invention of engravers and illustrators, rather than actual weapons of war.

  “Doesn’t anyone in this town have a musket?” she asked. “Something that doesn’t take an age to reload?” Between all of them, the only musket she could see was the demonstration piece now wielded by Sergeant Jutes.

  “What the hell has this town ever needed muskets for?” a man answered. It was Mr. Turel. “Ain’t no damn use for hunting, and nobody ever warned us we’d be on the front lines of the damn war. We weren’t prepared for this!”

  Mr. Turel was not the least prepared of the townsfolk, however, for he did have a pistol and was fully dressed. Some of Josette’s impromptu army had been roused straight from their beds, and ran into the square dressed in nightshirts, with clothes and boots tucked under their arms.

  Her mother was still missing. The last time anyone had seen her was three in the morning. She asked everyone entering the square, until enough resistance fighters were now gathered that Josette began dividing them into their own little platoons of half a dozen or so. She gave one platoon each to Heny, Bernat, Jutes, and the surviving men from the signal base.

  Private Corne cast angry, troubled eyes on her when she didn’t give him a platoon, and for a moment she wished she’d left him behind with Kiffer. A glance at his mangled hand softened her attitude. He’d been brave enough to come along, when he might have stayed back without anyone thinking less of him. “I bear some responsibility for your injuries,” she said, stepping up to him. “Perhaps I even bear as much as you think I do. But that’s the way of the army. We all have to eat shit and pretend we like it, you understand?”

  Corne didn’t say anything.

  “Here are some more coming,” she said, looking to the edge of the square, where another group of ill-armed, half-dressed rabble were running toward them. “Take command and get them organized.”

  “Yes, sir,” Corne said, and now all but a small residue of the hate was gone. “You can count on me.”

  She nodded, and once the little platoons were in some semblance of order, she gathered their leaders together and gave them their instructions. “But your most important job,” she added last, “is not just to give your platoon commands, but to remain steady before them. If you’re ever in doubt, you can’t go far wrong if you keep advancing on the magazine by any street that’s open to you. That will give our boys the best chance in the breach. Above all, remain steady. There’s going to be a lot of smoke, and a lot of noise, and people you know are going to die, but you must remain calm. Is everyone ready?”

  The question was answered with a cheer, which spread instantly to the townsfolk, and grew into a roaring war cry.

  *   *   *

  BERNAT HAD ON
CE been offered command of a thousand fighting men, that he might have the honor of leading them in pitched battle. Now he was leading half a dozen irregulars down dirty side streets, toward an enemy of unknown force, emplaced behind unknown fortifications. But for all that, he would have only just traded these half dozen for the thousand—which is to say, he was sentimental but not a goddamn idiot.

  Though, now that he approached his target and looked back at his little band of amateur warriors, he saw that it was closer to a full dozen now, its numbers swelled by men who’d joined along the way. There were three more a block behind, running to catch up. And when they came even with the rest, Bernat saw that they were not men, but women. It shouldn’t have surprised him, he knew. When the women of Durum saw that something needed doing, they came out and did it, whether it was expected of them or not.

  It made him think of Elise, who might even now be locked in a jail cell, or tied to a chair in some barracks house, watching the morning light grow brighter as she listened for evidence of the insurrection that would liberate her. That thought drove, if not the fear, then at least the doubt from his mind. He would fight, and he would command his party well, for to do otherwise was to take an unacceptable risk with his lover’s life.

  He rounded the last corner, facing a long, narrow street leading to the magazine. There were at least eight fusiliers guarding it, formed up in a disciplined line behind a movable barrier. This barrier was no makeshift obstacle, but a sheer-faced wall made of sturdy wooden planks blockading the street.

  His directions were to charge headlong into whatever defenses he found, but considering how well the Vins had prepared, he considered ordering the riflemen among his company to pick the Vin fusiliers off from here, beyond the range of their muskets.

  No, it would never do. The Vins would simply duck below their barricade, hide behind its heavy planks, and perhaps amuse themselves with a game of cards until Bernat’s rabble expended their ammunition.

  If he wanted to take the barricade, he would have to charge it. To charge that obstacle, with those skilled musketmen behind it, was true stupidity, but at this moment it was Bernat’s assigned task to be stupid, and to inspire his war party to equal heights of idiocy. And when he put it like that, he knew the feat was well within the scope of his talents.