Foul Tide's Turning

by Stephen Hunt

  ‘And there we were stuck until a party of us dug an escape tunnel, slipped our leg-irons, and escaped under the stockade one night,’ said Thomas. ‘Reached the skyguard field outside Greealamie and Miss Fetterman here stole us a plane. Sadly, one of the loyalist skyguards patrolling the waters of the Spotswood proved less than cordial about letting us pass.’

  The pilot shrugged sadly, looking back at the wreckage of the aircraft. ‘Any landing you can walk away from …’

  ‘Saints, but it is good to see you again, Tom’ said Carter. ‘Do you know what happened to my father?’

  ‘Marcus has him tight as a tick in the palace dungeons,’ explained Thomas. ‘I thought you were rotting with him. I heard that straight from your Willow.’

  Willow! ‘She came to see you? How, when—?’

  ‘Willow came a-visiting when we were on burial detail,’ cried Gimlette. ‘Along with that wicked-minded harpy who married Benner and turned the man against me, his oldest most loyal friend in the capital! I won’t talk of her evil; she as good as wished me dead, said I was useless to her, party and parliament dissolved, with no home for Charles T. Gimlette save a loyalist prison.’

  ‘It’s true,’ sighed Thomas. ‘I got the feeling Leyla Landor’s using your father’s captivity as leverage to keep Willow in line.’

  ‘Poor young woman,’ wept the politician. ‘Willow and her impending babe both hostages in the hands of the mad king.’

  ‘Babe?’

  Thomas glared at the assemblyman. ‘I had hoped to give it you gentler, Carter. Willow’s husband, the viscount, he’s …’

  Carter held on to Peppercorn’s reins, his world spinning. But what had he expected? Benner had finally gotten his way. Carter had been driven away from the Landor’s precious daughter, the woman given a patrician marriage the family approved of, and marriage not the only thing forced unwillingly on her. ‘He has his heir.’ It came out as half a sob.

  ‘At least Willow’s safe from the fighting, man,’ said Thomas, but even those words seemed uncertain. It was the same platitude Prince Owen had offered before they’d fled the capital, and as true as it was, Carter’s failure still felt like a knife filleting his soul. I let you down, Willow. You were relying on me to protect you. All those times you helped save my life in the sky mines, and I couldn’t even protect you from a marriage forced upon you by your own family.

  ‘And there’s still plenty of food in the south,’ added the sergeant, kindly. ‘The League might not allow arms shipments in from the Lanca, but Bad Marcus won’t let his court go hungry while he can ship up steak and potatoes.’ Densen stared at Thomas, the politician and two artillerymen from his horse. ‘Four more mouths to feed at Midsburg. Well, if we can scare up a cannon, you boys’ll be needed soon enough.’

  ‘We didn’t just escape to add four extra backs to the cause,’ said Thomas. He pulled out a sheaf of crumpled, snow-stained papers secured together with leather twine. ‘This is a sworn list of names compiled by the prisoners at our stockade. Every man and woman the camp’s captives had to watch hung, buried or bayoneted in Arcadia by Bad Marcus’s forces. Assembly staff and councillors murdered, army officers and constables who refused to bend the knee during the coup, small guild officials that stood against the new indentured labour laws, editors too friendly to Prince Owen’s claim to the throne. There’s enough blood here for even a false king to drown in.’

  ‘It was a wicked terrible risk we took,’ moaned Gimlette. ‘If we’d been discovered, the usurper’s soldiers would have hung the lot of us for treason and added our bodies to our tally with a grin. But we found some bravery in our bones, even behind the stockade, freezing in our tents with no fuel for a fire and the water rationed to us frozen in barrels.’

  ‘We’re lucky they didn’t hang us for rebels,’ murmured the captured pilot.

  Carter ignored her. ‘The assembly’s never executed a king before.’

  ‘This is all you need to make it legal,’ said Thomas, flourishing the document.

  ‘Might be it is,’ said Densen, thoughtfully. ‘What do you say, Captain?’

  ‘That I hope the Frontier Mounted is riding a long way from here,’ said Carter. Because his company was striking out for Midsburg, now. Battles could be won with words and hope and legitimacy for a cause as well as by bullets, and the saints know, the north had few enough rounds. The prince and the assembly needed to see this. Carter remounted Peppercorn.

  He didn’t catch the sly, imperceptibly quick glance exchanged between Tom Purdell and his pilot. Just as they had known.

  ‘My gun’s as empty as our fuel tank,’ cursed Cassandra, watching the pair of Rodalian flying wings break patrol formation and curve away to intercept the Lightning Gull from two directions simultaneously. Alexamir answered with an apprehensive grunt and she didn’t dare take time to check the look on his face, probably not much different to hers. So, what are the pilots’ orders? Talatala’s citizenry would have found the remains of the nomad’s primitive incendiary device in the burnt-out shop by now. Sheplar wanted her taken alive, but the rest of the town would want her— Tracer rounds cut through the dawn air, a dull staccato thud of shells flickering out seeking the Gull. But they were still too far from each other for the rounds to find their mark. There’s my answer. Cassandra could almost taste her desperation, a hard breakfast to stomach; that she should have made it this far only to fail now. Focus. Focus on the enemy, not your fears and fate’s poor draw. Should she attempt a landing? Cassandra glanced down. Whatever passed for ground lay cloaked by a mixture of cloud and early morning mist. She couldn’t see mountain peaks breaking through like rocky islands anymore, so were they above the steppes? She fancied risking Rodal’s mad mountain winds even less than the thought of having to abandon their plane in some valley while being strafed by vengeful pilots.

  ‘I’ll try and lose them inside the clouds,’ announced Cassandra. She checked the fuel reservoir and made a quick calculation inside her head. Perhaps ten minutes’ more flying time. They’ll still be scouring the clouds for us while the Lightning Gull’s sucking on vapours. But it was the only way. Maybe she’d get lucky. Run them into a concealed peak. Cassandra would play hide and seek and land when she had no other choice. She began gliding lower, using the remaining force of the faltering trade wind to drive them down, the two wheeling birds of the skyguard having to push against the headwind. They’d stopped firing, saving their ammunition for when they drew closer in a minute or so. That opening burst was just to clear their guns. It didn’t bode well. Cassandra remembered her flying lessons well. Every ace shared a common trait. They closed almost to ramming distance before opening fire. It was a sure-fire way to bring an enemy down, as long as you were certain of your manoeuvring skills. Only fools treated kites as aerial snipers, wasting shells on long distance fire and hoping for a lucky shot to find their mark. Skill beats luck. Hold your nerve and hold your fire. These weren’t fresh-faced pilots straight out of the temple, then.

  ‘Our pigeon passes over the steppes,’ said Alexamir, his voice crackling hopefully in her ears. ‘Their spirits cannot protect them here.’

  ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘Can you not smell the earth below the mist, green grass fit to feed your steed?’

  She could smell the rich leather of her air mask. Her own fear, maybe, but no dirt. ‘Are your people below?’

  ‘Those left to guard our party’s horses, perhaps. These borderlands are within range of the rice eaters’ wooden pigeons, and there is nothing their patrols love so much as diving down to show their claws to fine horsemen. They fight like cowards, little golden fox. Only raiders as courageous as Alexamir dare to pass so close to the mountains.’

  Cassandra doubted a few arrowheads would prove much deterrence to their pursuers, even if she could draw the skyguard close to any nomads. She remembered the jealous glances Nurai had thrown her way after she had been taken by the raiders. The witch rider was as like to aim an arrow shaft into the Gull�
��s pilot. But then, the woman had told Alexamir where to find her in Talatala. Perhaps the need to return with a prize was greater than the acerbic seer’s jealousy of her?

  She encountered no turbulence gradient as they dropped towards the white sea below, the heat of high altitude replaced by gravity’s salutation and a cold touch of cloud vapour. In front, the two flying wings had marked what she was attempting and one pilot dived into the clouds to seek her within and below, while the other stayed steady, maintaining a bird’s-eye view of the duel, ready to put a burst into her cockpit if she tried to climb for height. Are they aware the plane I stole has no ammunition? There was a good chance that information had been radioed through. Ammunition was clearly carefully accounted for in every barbarian army and skyguard, the lands at the far-called end of the caravan routes doubly so.

  They were sinking like a submarine below the white vapour when the climbing plane finally found the range for a burst of fire. Cassandra felt a shudder at the back of her flying wing, a sudden unresponsiveness to the stick. One of the Lightning Gull’s two elevator rudders had been half shredded by the stream of bullets, pieces of fabric left flapping loudly behind them, and Cassandra was suddenly left flying a tractor rather than a scout craft, every move sticky and reluctant.

  ‘That is not good,’ said Alexamir.

  ‘Thank you for the mechanic’s report!’

  She could hear the drone of the ascending fighter growing louder even if she could no longer see it, a triumphant tone to its roaring engine. No sign of slowing, it sounded as though it was still climbing. I know what you’re doing. The pilot had marked their position in the cloud and was preparing to turn and swoop in a high-side gun pass, looking to place a second, fatal burst into the Gull’s rear quarter. She pulled the leather mask off her face, breathing hard in the thin air. She needed to hear what was coming next. Alexamir’s muffled yells came in reaction to her seemingly insane decision, but they were no longer clear enough to understand without the ear-phones of her breathing apparatus. The enemy fighter’s engine pitch changed into a scream as it began its dive and she counted the seconds down in her mind, before pulling the stick back hard and early, giving the Gull’s damaged elevator the time it needed to commence the first half of a loop. Her engine screamed in protest at the turn, not the healthy sound of a fully working engine and she prayed that it hadn’t taken damage in the initial volley. Come on, Lightning Gull, see me clear.

  Suddenly they broke free of the cloud’s chill, pulling up and over in the open blue sky, Cassandra waited for her stolen plane to hang inverted in a half-loop before throwing the stick and stealing momentum, rolling the Gull into an upright position and leaving them facing the diving fighter head-on. She could see the skyguard pilot’s surprised face, shocked that she should dare to pull such a manoeuvre – meaningless without a gun to unload into her rapidly closing attacker. The skyguard’s features grew even more surprised as he dived past and her hurled dagger found its mark in his chest under his throat. As the flying wing was absorbed by the cloud it began to spin uncontrollably, telling Cassandra that the pilot had more important matters on his mind than shooting her down. Choking for breath she tugged her air mask back on.

  ‘My knife!’ Alexamir sounded indignant. ‘That belonged to my grandfather!’

  Cassandra turned them back into the cloud, before the second fighter realized the broken, corkscrewing plane fleeting past him was his wing-man, not the Lightning Gull. ‘A stolen Rodalian blade … and now it has found its way home. Have you another dagger on you?’

  ‘No! And you are very careless with my gifts.’

  She could hear the drone of the remaining fighter, muffled by the clouds and seeking them out. A break manoeuvre might see them safe once or twice from its weapons, but they had nothing left to fight with, and time was on the enemy pilot’s side, not to mention a fighter’s swiftness and pair of working wing guns. ‘That was the gift of life, for the both of us.’

  ‘You are a worthy sky rider,’ said Alexamir, grudgingly. ‘Do you ride a horse so well?’

  Cassandra remembered the largely ceremonial training she had received from a foreign cavalryman called Kele. Vandians valued practical, modern fighting skills, as well as the unarmed combat expertise needed for duels and the arena. But she’d yet to witness a duel fought on horseback. ‘I won’t fall off.’ Too often.

  ‘That is good to hear. Silence your engine,’ said Alexamir.

  Glide right past the enemy fighter inside the clouds? No engine noise for its pilot to track. It might work, but there was a fatal risk. ‘If I switch the engine off, I might be unable to start it without someone to turn the propeller on ignition.’

  ‘Restart the engine on a dive,’ said Alexamir. ‘The force of passing air should rotate the wooden blade on this pigeon’s beak well enough and breathe life back into her.’

  How the hell do you know that? He was suspiciously well informed about aerial tactics for a barbarian. Such advice would never have worked on a decently modern rocket craft, but on this rickety, hand-crafted hunk of carpentry? It just might. She reached out to the control panel and felt a shiver of apprehension as she switched the engine off, the reassuring vibration replaced by the hissing passage of wind across the flying wing’s body. Apart from the flapping of their shattered elevator rudder, there was only the enemy fighter’s whirr, buzzing louder as it drew close.

  ‘Glide above him,’ said Alexamir, whispering through the communication tube, even though there was little chance any pilot could overhear them in the air. ‘He will be looking down, not up, seeing if our silence betokens the wooden pigeon remade as cruel wreckage on the ground.’

  Cassandra took his suggestion and started a gentle climb. The erratic warm updrafts made for a choppy rise, especially on a single elevator flap, pulling the Gull over at an angle.

  ‘There is only one rice eater’s neck for me to break,’ announced Alexamir, before ripping his mask off and standing up inside the spotter’s cockpit. Cassandra barely had time to register that he’d strapped his parachute on, and then she was watching the insane nomad leap into the white ocean towards the passing shadow below. His final battle yell faded into the clouds. ‘Not too much for Alexamir!’

  Judging by the unexpected pitch-turn the shadow executed as it vanished with a throaty engine growl, the single-man fighter had unexpectedly found itself flying with a dangerously deranged stowaway. This had been Alexamir’s real plan all along. Climb for height. Leap across and kill the enemy with his bare hands. How often had he made such a leap from a horse? Idiot man. Is this my fault? Did I shame him into suicide by taking down the first skyguard? But she felt nagging doubts. Alexamir’s clever scheme for killing the engine and gliding past. And someone had trained him how to use a parachute, and that someone wasn’t any blue-skinned savage expert in breaking unridden foals. She pushed the puzzle out of her mind. I need to restart the Gull; follow him down and hope his mystery tutor showed him what the chute’s ripcord is for. She heard a chatter of wing guns. A dying skyguard accidentally kicking the trigger in his final death throes, or a vengeful pilot opening up on a lone descending parachute? Cassandra tilted the plane down, wind rushing fast past her head in a roar. She fired the ignition switch, checking the rear of the Gull. Windflow turned the single rotor fast and it spun back into life, but her engine’s reassuring hum was replaced by a coughing rumble and then a thick black cloud trailing like a banner behind her, flames leaping along the broken elevator’s loose fabric. Oh my sweet ancestors, that first burst did find more than an elevator flap. She killed the engine before the fire spread any further, reaching under her chair and locating the canvas pouch for the pilot’s parachute, the empty pouch. Her only means of escape was resting on some bench back in Talatala, probably awaiting a safety inspection for tears and rent in the silk. A safety check that had just killed her. She burst out of the clouds, scattering a flight of kestrels, a view of green plains and endless rolling hills with a few stands of larch jo
lting beyond the nosecone, her broken flying wing trembling with turbulence. Rodal’s mountains stood like a row of black rotten teeth far behind her, sharp and cannibal. She tried to ignore the heat at her back, the crackling flames fanned by the wind of her diving aircraft. No sign of downed debris from her enemies or Alexamir’s floating chute. Cassandra attempted to level up in the glide, but her remaining functional elevator flap hung jouncing in the wind, become a fiery, useless mass. Prayers in elaborate temple script burned black along the length of the wing around her, Rodal’s spirits casting their final curse. If the engine’s fuel reservoir hadn’t already been drained, her poor wounded Gull would have been a blazing ball of wreckage scratched across the sky by now. I escaped. I escaped, and I did it on my own. How proud her father would have been of her. I’ll know for sure when I meet him. She finally lost command of the plane, not enough of her rudders, flaps and control pulleys left to influence the gliding Lightning Gull.

  The wild grassland rose up to welcome her uncontrolled and spiralling dive.

  ELEVEN

  FAMILY REUNIONS

  Willow was about to walk into an expensive restaurant high on the hill overlooking the capital when Nocks grabbed her arm; the odious man’s fingers biting into her flesh. ‘You remember the mistress’s commands, girly. Give your brother honey and spread it on thick. I’ll be standing behind old man Benner and listening to every word you say; his loyal old sergeant watching his back. One word against us or the king, one word for the rebels, and I’ll finish the job on your precious Carter Carnehan that I started in Hawkland Park. A whipping will be the best of it for him.’

  ‘Your mistress will have her words,’ spat Willow. May she choke on them in childbirth. Willow chided herself for her malice. At least, let the witch perish in childbirth after her poor baby’s delivered. Another innocent was about to enter the world; Holten had been confined in her rooms and surrounded by experienced midwives and the finest doctors the Landor fortune could command. Willow had a greater appreciation of the fragility of life since her own condition had made itself known. She could no longer read the stories of fighting in the newspapers without weeping until the sheets were soaked through. Combat fiercest in the contested central prefectures split between Owen and Marcus, Humont, Chicola and Bolesland. Each soldier – rebel or royalist – was the child of some mother somewhere, praying for her child’s safe, unwounded return. Nocks conversed with the coach driver and the coach rattling away down the street, then the odious little manservant ventured inside the restaurant to check their reservation. Willow stared at the view. She was close to the top of the hill where the cathedral stood like a citadel, Arcadia spread out before her under a cold, clear sky. The canals’ concentric rings dotted with flat boats, smoke from hundreds of chimneys rising up above the city, a couple of tri-wing aircraft patrolling over the harbour and the sea beyond, the sound of engines lost on the slope. Across from Willow on Assembly Hill, the domed parliament building sat empty and silent. Most of the honest assemblymen had fled north while the remainder languished in jail or prison camps. No, from up here you wouldn’t know the deep trouble the realm was in.