The Natpol on the scene shot him a glance of respect for the quick analysis.
“Yes, Mr. President, that’s my estimate. We caught one of the staff—the others are scattered, we’re contacting them as we can—and she said dozens and dozens. You know how civilians are, I thought she might be exaggerating.”
He nodded his head to a sobbing older woman who was sitting in a chair, talking and wiping at her eyes and nose with a handkerchief while two of the police took notes.
Martin went on absently: “Sixty or so from the wagons, and the size of the escort of fake infantry that others mentioned, and the way they overran eighty men of the Sixth so quickly, even with the advantage of surprise. Having surprise is a force multiplier but there are limits.”
“I’ve got the men who tried to rush the staircase, sir. It, ah, didn’t turn out well.”
Another stretcher; the Natpol on it had an arrow in one shoulder, and a bandage around it. The bleeding wasn’t very bad, and it made more sense to get him to a hospital here in the city than to try to extract it in the field. The policeman stopped cursing the enemy and the pain when he saw who was standing over him.
“Report,” Martin said.
“Sir, as soon as they evacuated the ground floor my patrol tried to push up the stairs. It’s a stairwell built around a solid rectangular core and they’re barricading the stairs two times per flight, at least. They’ve got bows and lots of arrows and pila as well. You have to go uphill at them . . . sir, we tried.”
“Carry on,” Martin said to the stretcher-bearers.
The Natpol officer began an apology. Martin cut off the useless blather with a motion of his hand.
“Your men are lightly equipped and mostly past prime fighting age,” he said. “Don’t waste my time. Now, you got at least one of the staff, that woman there, and she was here all through the attack, correct?”
“Yes sir. But she’s not very coherent. Shock, I think.”
Martin walked over to the witness. “Ma’am,” he said.
Something crept into his voice. Her tears stopped, and she stared at him with her mouth a little open, the pupils of her eyes expanding as they met his.
“How many staircases?” he asked.
“One, Mr. President. There was another one but it was salvaged and the floors sealed. The one we use, it’s over there.”
She pointed. He nodded and went on: “The elevator shaft?”
Another pointing gesture. “It was sealed off.”
“You think there were how many of the terrorists?”
“It seemed like a lot but”—her face went blank for a moment, as if her brain was accessing information without the personality getting in the way—“fifty or sixty or a few more.”
“Some of them were Mormons?”
“Most of them, sir. I think. The ones in American uniforms. They were shouting Arise, ye Saints, I know Mormons do that. It was . . . it was all so fast, and there was so much noise and then the blood, blood everywhere, and the ladies were screaming and I didn’t know what to do—”
“Thank you.”
He turned to Koburn, the legate of the Sixth, as she began to sob again.
“Get the elevator shaft open.”
“Sir, the cables will be gone, it’ll be bare.”
Wire cable was prime salvage, with a dozen high-priority uses. It was absolutely certain that they would have been stripped from a building inside the city wall decades ago.
“And it would be a deathtrap if they caught on.”
“It might be useful anyway, if they don’t think of it or don’t have enough men to guard against low-probability risks. The stairs are going to be a deathtrap for sure. Do it, the auxiliaries have the gear needed. Fall the men in.”
More and more files of the Sixth had been coming in behind him. Some of them had been roughly shoving things out of the way to clear space, including the bodies of the enemy. Martin walked over to one, a woman, young and dark, and slighter than he’d have thought passable for rough work. The pommel of her sword rested at the base of her throat, with her hands crossed on the hilt and the blade point-down along her body, like the sculpted image of a Crusader on an ancient tomb. The outfit was all matte black, except for the silver tree and stars and crown on the front of a leather jerkin whose rivets showed it was lined with mail; they’d evidently switched to full uniform for this, bravado or some sense of the rules or both. The wound in her side would have killed her, but someone had hurried the process along. Someone with a good eye, a strong wrist and a knowledge of anatomy.
“Dúnedain, definitely,” he said, using a toe to point to the symbol.
“The woot-woots who think they’re elves?”
“They think they’re Numenoreans, in fact. Friends of the elves.”
“Ah, the Arrowshirt son of Arrowroot bunch with the invisible companions. Totally fucking insane.”
“It makes as much sense as most myths and they don’t have to come up with an explanation of why they’re not immortal. And consider what they just pulled off right under our noses.”
He turned to the ranked mass filling the great room. “Men of the Sixth Battalion!” he called.
They braced to attention; there was a thunder-crack sound as they all rammed the butts of their pila down on the stone floor.
“My family’s held hostage on the roof, and we can’t assault the roof directly because we can’t use fire support. The only other way up is the staircase and it’s held by fanatical terrorists. Clearing it’s going to be ugly, and I can’t lead you in person, that would be dereliction of duty. I won’t order anyone to go where I’m not going. All volunteers, take a step forward.”
There was a second for men to sense the comrades on either side, and the entire unit paced to the front and snapped to a halt again. Again emotion stirred; it would have been an iron pride, a few months ago. Now it flopped somewhere in the emptiness of his skull, nothing in nothing in nothing, like a dying fish in the vacuum of the Moon.
“And I wish I could come with you.”
That was even true; some part of him wanted very much to die. That was out of the question just now if it could be avoided.
“Attack by files. Rotate every five minutes; the enemy can’t face relays of fresh men. Legate, lead your troops!”
“We’re going to make it,” Ian said.
“I mean, probably! If nothing goes wrong!” he added frantically, as Ritva and several Dúnedain spat or made the sign of the Horns or other gestures against ill luck.
The rattle-bang-thump sound of combat was continuous from the doors of the stairwell; they’d barricaded the exit with everything they could find, but the sound of sword-blades and the flat snap of bowstrings sound, the battle cries and the screams of pain . . . they were all getting closer. Ritva didn’t like to think of what it must be like in there, fighting in the near dark.
And out of the north, a long orca-shape was coming. Still a tiny dot, but unmistakable; in this Fifth Age of the world, what else flew like that?
Well, Windlords and dragons. But we don’t have those. At least not yet, I suppose anything’s possible. I wouldn’t have believed the Sword of the Lady if I hadn’t seen it or what happened on Nantucket if I hadn’t been there.
She pulled a monocular out of its case on her belt and looked. The ship of the air was just as she remembered it, three hundred feet of blunt-pointed teardrop with cruciform stabilizer fins, and an aluminum-truss keel along the bottom anchoring a spiderweb net of light cables that distributed its weight over the great gasbag. The gondola was slung beneath like a stylized Viking longboat sans dragon’s head; it was taut fabric over an aluminum frame as well, with the captain’s post and wheel at the front and a propeller and rudder at the rear. You couldn’t see it from here, but the slender hull held twelve units made from recliner cycles on each side of the central walkway to power the propeller shaft.
That was the power source. Unfortunately it was a rather feeble one, and the stiff wind
was far more than it could handle. That was why Lawrence Thurston hadn’t built more of them. Curtis LeMay was extremely useful in a dead calm, and nearly helpless as an ordinary balloon in anything else. Gliders had far lower payload and endurance, but you really could steer them in most weathers.
“One pass,” she said. “And that’s it. They can’t turn back against the wind, just steer a little across it . . . yes, they’ve spotted our smoke flares.”
The great shape became more nearly circular as the nose turned towards this building.
“Why are they coming in so low?” Ian asked.
“Something . . . about conserving ballast and gas, Hanks said,” Ritva said; she wasn’t sure what those meant. “I didn’t follow it but evidently if they go up and down they eventually run out and wouldn’t be able to go up and down anymore . . . oh, trastad!”
The towers on the northern wall were shooting at the blimp. Smoke and yellow flame trailed from some of the catapults; globes of napalm wrapped in burning cord fuse. One struck . . . and then bounced away from the soft resilient surface of the gasbag, to trail down into the city and splash into a spot of scarlet. She thought she saw someone crawling up the netting and spraying something; then the airship pitched sideways for a moment and headed back towards them.
“Eyes on the streets!” John Hordle shouted in his Hampshire-yokel version of Sindarin, as everyone turned to look. “You dim thick gits want a scaling ladder up yor bum?”
Ritva was supposed to be looking north, but she did a quick check to make sure that no storming parties were forming up. The enemy couldn’t shoot up at them; that would endanger their leader’s family. And if the Dúnedain were alert, they could shoot down and throw globes of fire. But the other side might think it worthwhile, if they were pushed.
“They’re a little west of where they should be,” Ian said quietly.
The shark shape of the Curtis LeMay grew closer; probably they were only pedaling to keep steerage on her. Suddenly a dozen cords dropped down, whipping in the wind.
“Rhaich,” Ritva said dully.
Will anyone remember our heroic last stand? Or will we be just a footnote in a report on terrorist attacks?
The airship came on, rushing, suddenly huge. It would recede just as quickly, and just a bit too far to the westward despite the rudder and the frantic pedaling that drove the propeller. The wind was blowing harder . . .
John Hordle was up and across, running with a speed astonishing in a man seven inches over six feet and broad enough to seem squat. One of the tethering ropes was blowing beyond the northwest corner of the building, just out of reach. John reached the corner and leapt out into space.
He disappeared bellowing beyond the edge of the roof. Ritva felt her mouth drop open and her eyes go wide; Ian was goggling too, and a couple of other people looked just the same. The huge bulk of the airship bobbled in flight, its tail starting to pivot inward a little; it made you realize how light and fragile it was, not the solid sky-filling thing it seemed—
“Rhaaaaich!” she screamed.
What John Hordle was trying to do suddenly flashed into her mind, not a chain of logic but something you saw in an instant blaze of light. And what she had to do was equally obvious.
It involved jumping off a four-story building.
She was up and running before Ian’s question had time to get started. The thought of dropping her sword belt or quiver was rejected as she went, building speed; the heavier she was for this the better and there was not a fractional second to spare.
Unless a couple of extra pounds makes me miss and go crunch! Rhaich! Rhaich! Tulkas the Mighty, give John strength! Nessa, Dancer of Stars, give my feet wings! Dulu! Help, help! Mom!
Her feet hit the coping and she was soaring out over emptiness, only the thin-thread line ahead of her. Her gloved hands reached, grabbed for knotted rope, touched, slipped, she was scrabbling downward, falling . . .
An ape-long arm snagged at her and caught in her sword belt for an instant. That gave her time to clamp on with arms and legs, and a crazed memory of scrambling up his form as a child and swinging on his arms as if they were the tree limbs they resembled went through the memory that remained in muscle and nerve. A ham-broad hand boosted her up, and she stood on his shoulders and clamped her hands on the rough surface of the rope. A shock went through it, and she looked up to see Astrid clinging above her, legs neatly wrapped around the cable and one hand waving back at the roof.
“Show-off!” Ritva screamed. “Sometimes I just hate you, Auntie!”
The nose of the Curtis LeMay was down at a thirty-degree angle. It was still moving southward at a brisk clip, but it was also pivoting around the weight attached to the prow of the gondola, and the gondola was under the forward quarter of the gasbag. A three-hundred-foot length covered a lot of ground when it pivoted; the dangling lines swept across the roof, and frantic hands made them fast to old rusted stanchions and framework even as they were dragged across the gravel and crumbling asphalt. The blimp heeled far over as its broadside caught the wind, but the line to which Ritva clung swung back towards the building.
“—innocent!” Martin heard, in his mother’s voice. “Frederick is innocent! Martin killed his father to seize power! Frederick sent these people to rescue us, and we’re going willingly. Martin is a traitor who betrayed America and killed my husband. Cast him off, cast him down!”
The scaling ladders up the inside of the elevator shaft had chain sides and light metal batons for rungs. They’d fastened them to whatever projected, or in a couple of instances driven pitons into the concrete; the light infantry unit had mountaineering equipment in their packs. They’d simply ignored his attempts to lead them up the dark vertical rectangle.
Now he ignored them, kicking free of a clutching hand to swing across and clamp a hand on the ledge of the uppermost opening, then two, then chin himself and climb up. The first troops through had pried the rustbound elevator doors open with swords and boots; a broken gladius rested there. He pushed his way through the little antechamber, and out on the roof where a double file of crossbowmen waited, kneeling and standing with their weapons leveled.
The Curtis LeMay was tethered at nose and tail to the eastern side of the building, shuddering in the wind. The gusts of rain made a tattoo on its fabric, unfortunately not enough to drown the speaking-trumpet from the gondola.
“It’s true!”
That was his wife’s voice. Rage flowed through him, cold as treacle, like living clouds drifting in a universe without stars.
“I heard him confess it. He threatened to kill me if I talked!”
The shouts were directed down at the street, but they were perfectly audible on the rooftop as well. The men were listening. And they were intimidated by the huge bulk that towered over them, paralyzed into a perfectly receptive frame of mind. Calculations of the least-bad course of action flowed through him, pinning inevitability.
“Shoot,” he said, loud but not forced. “Both ranks, fire at the gondola. Now!”
Silence stretched for a moment. Heads turned to look at him, eyes wide with horror under the rims of their helmets.
A centurion spoke, his voice shaking: “Sir, it’s your family. Your son is on board there!”
“I said shoot! I’ll have anyone who refuses executed for cowardice in the face of the enemy!”
He grabbed a crossbow and backhanded the man away when he tried to cling to it. Snuggle the weapon into his shoulder, breath in, breath out, hold it halfway and squeeze at the trigger, with the shouting face and the blowing blond hair in the aperture of the sights—
Tung.
The butt punched at him and the bolt whipped out. Even as it did, something covered Juliet, taking her out of the sights. Instants later the cables were released. Weights fell from the keel of the gondola, the emergency ballast, plummeting down into the street. The airship jerked upward as if wrenched by an invisible hand, dwindling southward under a sky dark with thunder. A few bolts fell
back, and Martin stood impassive, with the rain sluicing down his face like tears.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
COUNTY OF THE EASTERMARK
CHARTERED CITY OF WALLA WALLA
PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION
(FORMERLY EASTERN WASHINGTON)
HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL
(FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA)
AUGUST 23, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD
Grand Constable Tiphaine d’Ath nodded and looked at her watch once more, eyes narrowing with calculation as her mind returned to business after the brief family digressions:
“Now he is due. Let’s see if we can get this crowd of cow-country yokels organized. The Count should be—”
A harsh chorus of trumpets from the city’s gate-towers made her look up.
“Speak of the Devil and—” Rigobert murmured.
The north gate of the city was open, though heavily guarded. Wagons were pouring in over the patched, faded asphalt, mostly loaded with grain and produce; livestock on the hoof added its own pungencies. The crossbowmen were diverting refugees who couldn’t work or fight or who had young children in tow, off to holding camps where they’d be shuttled east, and sometimes that required explanations. Occasionally of the sort that you administered via a smack with the metal-shod butt of the weapon, but not too many. Even the peasants knew how highly relative the safety of Walla Walla was and were unwillingly willing to see their most vulnerable moved farther from the path of the invasion.
“—and de Aguirre appears,” Tiphaine finished.
The brassy scream came again from the gatehouse, and a file of foot soldiers double-timed out to make a lane by holding their pole arms horizontally and pushing. Everyone who could moved off the double-lane roadway. The lord of Walla Walla rode out from under the teeth of the portcullis and across the drawbridge in a rumbling drumbeat of hooves, threading his way through with a mercifully small entourage of household men-at-arms and hangers-on. They spurred over to the command group by the railway siding at a round canter and reined in a respectful fifteen paces away before they dismounted.
Emberverse 08: The Tears of the Sun Page 40