by Col Buchanan
He had time enough to straighten in his fall – and to glimpse the peaks made black by twilight – before the slope of netting was rushing up at him, and then he crashed into it, trying to loop an arm around a cable, but his weight bounced from the netting and he felt the wrench of his arm popping from its socket.
Violet sparks seemed to be bursting all about him.
He didn’t bounce on his next landing, and with his good arm he clung on tight to the dripping wire and waited for the bobbing motion to settle. Rain and sparks blasted his eyes, though the yellow suit he was wearing seemed to be protecting him. Ash glanced between his feet perched on another thick bundle of wire, saw that he was about halfway down now, where the netting flared out like the skirts of a bell.
Juke, where are you, man!
Almost finished our circuit. We’re heading back now. Where are you?
Hanging onto the netting. Look for the sparks!
A growing orb of light drew his gaze upwards and Ash narrowed his eyes, taking in the far gantry he had just plummeted from. A tiny figure stood up there washed in brilliance, with a lone arm held high.
Oh no.
What is it?
Ash gritted his teeth and stared back at the distant Archon with all his will.
Forget about me. Turn away.
Don’t tempt me, old man.
Juke. Turn away!
Silence, while up there the figure was dropping his arm dramatically. At once a ripple appeared across the netting at the Archon’s feet and pulsed downwards, narrowing as it picked up momentum.
Wildly, Ash started to scramble to the side as best he could with his one working arm, but the descending wave shifted across to follow him.
He would have sworn his defiance to the wind and rain just then had something not struck him hard on the back. It was the rope ladder, swinging away from him even as he spotted it.
Ash swept around and pressed his back to the netting. As the ladder swung back towards him he grasped for it and stuck a boot onto the lowest rung, then stepped out into the air, glancing up at the underside of the craft with its wing thrusters blasting him with hot air.
Juke! I told you to stay clear!
Even as he spoke the craft pitched to one side and slid away from the Sky Bridge with its twisting wings roaring hard. Ash hung with his limbs dangling into space, his head turned to the distant speck of light that was the Archon.
A screech of metal over his head, one of the thrusters exploding in the wing of the craft. Flames and debris trailed from the gaping hole. The craft tilted some more, picking up speed as its nose pointed towards the ground. Wind smeared Ash’s face against his skull.
Ahead, below, all at once, the city was rushing up towards his feet.
It’s all right, it’s all right, I’ve got it! Juke yelled in his mind while the city swung at them with all its might.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Reese
The road was empty in both directions for as far as Reese could see, an eerie sight for this early time of day when normally carts and riders would be making their way to the markets of Bar-Khos.
Reese stared again at the bruises hanging in the sky to the northeast, still unable to tell whether they were rain clouds or columns of smoke rising from a fire.
Sweating from her exertions, she pulled the handcart as fast as she could, cursing herself now for having left it so long, this flight to the city; cursing Los too for taking Happy, her single draught animal. Only rarely did she glance to the white-capped sea on her left contained within the Bay of Squalls, for time and again her attention was drawn towards the north, where the Mannians’ slaver parties were said to be close.
Silence all about her, Reese noticed, save for the distant cries of gulls out in the bay and the rumbling of the handcart’s wheels on the stones of the road.
The cart was laden high with everything she had been able to fit onto it from the cottage, even her oldest cat, Solberry, a plump ginger creature perched on the chest of clothing at the very top of the load, watching everything around them with half-blind eyes, too old to be left behind to fend for herself. Reese was making good progress considering the heavy load she was hauling, for the southern coastal road was a relatively smooth surface of flat stones bedded in gravel, and much of it was downhill. Overheating already, she left her blue cloak hanging open to sweep about her in the wind.
Panting, wiping her forehead dry, Reese followed the road down through a vale of swaying yellow grasses framed by white cliffs ahead and a gentle grassy slope to the north, the cart rattling and bouncing behind her along the stones, the ginger cat gripping on with her claws gamely.
She knew the vale to be a good spot for a rest on the long journey to and from the city. A peaceful place to enjoy a quick bite to eat while watching the waves crashing against the foot of the cliffs, listening to the sighs of the grasses in the wind. Not now though, with the smoke hanging there beyond the solitary tree on the crest of the northern slope. Reese felt only trepidation in this place now, and her eyes danced for a sight of what she did not wish to see most of all, signs of Mannians.
She stopped dead, blinking up at the solitary tree on the hill.
Something moved up there, parting from the tree so she could see it clearly now: a rider watching her.
The breath hitched in Reese’s throat as more riders appeared over the crest, joining the first in a long line. Dark cloaks swirled in the offshore breeze. Steam rose from the snorts of their zels. They were armoured, their heads masked by helms that had slits for visors in a fashion not at all familiar to Khos.
‘Oh no.’
They were coming, picking their way down the slope in a meandering column, long poles held upright in their grasps with nooses dangling from the end of them.
Reese looked about for somewhere to run, but there was nothing except the sea and the empty road. She’d freeze out there in the water, and she would never outrun them on the road.
She could only stare frozen on the spot as the lead rider spurred his zel into a canter, and then suddenly they were jingling towards her, spreading out in a line once again and bringing their poles down at the ready, the ground trembling just as she trembled.
She had left it too late. Much too late.
‘Oh Sweet Mother, no!’
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Old Dogs
‘Nico?’
The longhunter’s voice croaked from all the shouting he had been doing, all the yelling in anger at the old farlander and the others since discovering his own son mixed up in their crazy scheming.
‘Nico,’ Cole tried again, from where he was perched next to the cot staring down at his son, but again there was no response, no indication even that the boy heard him.
Nico lay against the pillows with a heavy wool blanket pulled up to his chest, sipping from another mug of water, all he had been able to do since they had brought him here to the Falcon’s infirmary. The dark hair on his head was starting to curl once more as it dried. His wide blue eyes shone over the rim of the mug, observing them all without comprehension.
The boy had been dead, the old farlander had claimed, though Cole could hardly reckon it. Even Reese knew of the boy’s passing, he had said. She must be tearing her hair out in grief, his wife who Nico reminded him so much of now, the boy of his memories grown into a young man and looking even more like his mother than before.
Whatever it was they had done to him back in the Isles, during that frantic procedure in which he had been revived, Cole was beginning to suspect that it hadn’t truly worked.
Nico seemed barely there at all.
‘I can’t believe it’s really him,’ spoke the young man Aléas quietly from the doorway.
‘Nor I,’ replied Ash from the other side of the cot. The farlander sat with his arm cradled in a sling, black stitches running across a deep cut in his face. He looked tired but contented as he gazed at Nico lying there between them.
‘Can you hear me?’ tri
ed Ash, as though he would have any better luck than Cole, but still those eyes stared and blinked above the mug, the boy sipping quietly, not answering.
‘Give him time,’ advised the medico Shin from her small desk, where she was writing something in a notebook. ‘By the sounds of it he’s been through a tremendous amount.’
Haven’t we all.
A lantern over their heads was rattling lightly, and the soft roar of the thrusters filled the air like the rush of a nearby river as the ship sped across the sky. Hours had passed since the Falcon had taken off from the port of Guallo Town under cover of darkness and bird activity, lifting her nose to the sky while Alhazii soldiers ran at them firing their guns wildly but without effect.
It had been easy enough, the Falcon’s escape. Too easy in fact, and no one seemed in the mood for celebration just yet. Even now, hours clear of the Isles of Sky and heading north back to the known world, they seemed convinced that they were being pursued through the night by other skyships, and that messages were being sent ahead to cut them off.
But for now, in this moment at least, they appeared to be safe from harm. For now, Cole had time enough to take in a deep breath and fathom what all of this was supposed to mean.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said aloud. ‘How can something like this be down to coincidence?’
‘The Way often leads to strange and useful congruences,’ grumbled the farlander unhelpfully, and the old fellow even had the gall to shrug. ‘These things happen.’
Clearly Ash had little interest in the how or why of it, content to sit by the boy’s side watching the life shine from him.
‘But of all the people you could have chosen to guide you into the Hush, you chose me.’
In the doorway, the Rōshun apprentice Aléas reached down to stroke the cat between the ears, lying there curled against the wall watching Nico with her curious eyes.
‘Sometimes,’ said the young man casually, ‘it seems to me the Great Dream enjoys a good story, is all.’
‘Well that explains it perfectly then, doesn’t it?’
The cat looked to him then back again to Nico. She had seemed to recognize Nico when they had first brought him on board the ship, showing an interest in him as they laid him on the bed, though she had only known him briefly, back when Cole had brought her from the tunnels of the Shield on home leave, while he recovered from his wounds. For a month she had lived at the cottage with Nico and Reese and the family dog Boon, a month of peace and idle play in the sun where the tunnels faded to a faraway memory; before Cole had taken her away from it all by fleeing one night, deserting everyone that he knew for fear of what he had become.
Maybe the cat was recollecting that brief time again, some vague sense of it anyway, hoping to return to the peaceful farm even now.
Cole followed her stare back to the young man on the bed. Strange. The two childpox scars seemed to be gone from Nico’s forehead. As though he was some kind of copy of himself, not the real thing at all.
Hairs rose on the backs of Cole’s arms. For all the excitement of the others he felt unnerved by every aspect of this situation, like some kind of twisted joke was being played out at his expense.
He could still barely fathom any of it, least of all the thought of his son living as an apprenticing Rōshun, or so Ash would have him believe. What had Reese been thinking? Had she gone and lost her mind?
This is what happens when you run out and leave your family to fend for themselves in the midst of a war.
Cole pinched his brows into a scowl.
‘He’s coming with me when we return. Get used to the idea, both of you.’
Now the farlander pinched his brows.
‘And where is it you propose to take him?’
‘Back to his mother. Back to the family farm.’
‘As I already intended to do. I will accompany you there.’
‘Oh you will, will you?’
The two men stared at each other as though in challenge. Between them Nico lowered the mug from his mouth, but it was only so that he could look up at a scuff of boots in the doorway.
It was Captain Trench standing there in a rainslick and hat, looming over the shorter form of Aléas. The captain looked to Nico staring back at him, then nodded curtly to Ash.
‘You made it then.’
‘Of course,’ replied Ash. ‘Are we clear yet?’
‘Aye. If you don’t count the three skyships in pursuit.’
Heads turned in the direction of the captain.
‘Can we stay ahead of them?’
‘There’s nothing in the sky we can’t stay in front of. I’m more concerned with what might be waiting for us ahead. We need to talk.’
*
‘You see them?’
Cole and Ash were both squinting through mounted eyeglasses on the quarterdeck of the ship, past her trailing Alhazii flag to the moonlit night sky behind them, where distant bulbous clouds sailed against the stars, and where three yellow lights glimmered faintly from the skyships in pursuit.
‘Yes,’ they both said at the same time as they straightened from the lenses, Cole pulling down his hat once more. Far beyond the trio of lights, right at the edge of visibility, stood the mountains running into the sea, topped by the faint glow of Mashuppa and its Sky Bridge.
‘So,’ said Ash wearily to the captain, ‘what is there to discuss?’
‘We’re heading north for the Sea of Doubts. Crew decision. Faster than returning the way we came, even if we have to dodge a few Alhazii squadrons on the way.’
‘And?’
‘And a few of us can return even faster than that,’ spoke Meer the monk through the darkness.
Meer stood with his back to the rail and his hands buried in the sleeves of his burnoose, his freshly shaven head gleaming in the moonlight. ‘That craft Juke is flying alongside us,’ he continued, and they all looked over the port rail to see the winged craft that Juke had stolen flying alongside the Falcon, a ghostly green light bleeding from its forward windows, a dim form sitting at the controls.
After almost crashing into the city, Juke had wrestled the controls long enough to bring them down from the peaks of Mashuppa to the skyport of Guallo Town, where they had settled right beside the Falcon before any of the Alhazii soldiers on guard could react. With the rest of them scrambling across to the skyship, Juke had lifted off again to patrol the air for hostile craft, and then had accompanied them during their escape, not wishing to give up the vessel now.
‘The Vulture? What about it?’
‘It carries six people in all. And Juke told me he brought along enough charge coils to make it all the way back to the Midèrēs. We’d be home in no time.’
It was the first time Cole had seen the farlander betray his surprise.
‘Truly?’
‘Yes!’
‘It’s the fastest way to get those charts back to the Free Ports,’ added Trench. ‘And if we risked our lives for anything, it was for those charts.’
Ash was nodding his agreement.
‘When do we leave then?’
‘Soon as we can pack.’
‘Charts?’ exclaimed Cole suddenly, and they all looked at him. ‘I thought this was some noble mission to save my son?’
‘You thought wrong then,’ snapped Trench, turning back to the others. ‘Get packed, and I’ll tell the men to string across a line for you.’
‘Wait! I’m getting damn well tired of being the last person to know anything on this ship. I’ve earned a right to know. Or have you forgotten I just helped break your sorry asses out of a prison cell back there?’
At last he had their full attention.
The monk stepped closer to his side and spoke softly, not wishing to be overheard by the crew. ‘Full charts to the Isles of Sky and back. The greatest secret in the world, the location of the Isles, and now we have it.’
There was a sheen of fervour to the monk’s expression as he spoke. An intensity to his words as though what he sai
d meant saving the very world they were flying over.
‘You mean to save the Free Ports with these charts?’ Cole replied in surprise.
‘We do. They offer us great leverage with the Alhazii Caliphate, in return for keeping the location to ourselves. Maybe, with their aid, we can even end this war once and for all.’
Cole favoured each of them with a quick glance, somewhat shocked to realize that perhaps they were not so crazy after all. Their plan sounded a plausible one. With the location of the Isles they might indeed buy a bargaining position for his people in the war. He glanced to the winged craft flying alongside the ship, and thought of returning home to Reese and his son and the rest of his family back in Khos, and helping to save them from the Empire’s tightening grip, redeeming himself from his burden of guilt.
It was as though the pieces of his life fell into place at long last, every so-called coincidence leading him to a fate which had been there for him all along.
‘Well,’ chuffed Cole from beneath the tilt of his brim. ‘What are we waiting for?’
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Final Flight
‘Captain,’ called Ash, meaning to say farewell to the man after all these years of acquaintance, of hiring the Falcon in his work as Rōshun, while the others hurried off to grab their packs.
But Trench had time only for the three lights in the sky trailing behind the ship, and the trim of the sculls and the direction of the wind and the dozen other details that were always on a skyman’s mind when in the air. In his ringing voice he shouted down to the crewmen on the weatherdeck below, directing them to set up a line between the ship and the winged craft. The Anwi man Juke stood in the doorway of his stolen Vulture while the vessel somehow flew true and level by itself, grabbing the rope thrown across to him which he ran through a loop in the doorway before throwing the end back to the ship, so the crew could begin hauling a simple rope bridge between them.
‘Trench,’ Ash tried again, louder this time.