“Just get in the bloody plane!” shouted Khuwelsa. “You’re going to die if you don’t!”
The mother finally made up her mind while the man and others who were gathering still prevaricated. She collected her children and, lifting them with an effort, pushed past the man. Khuwelsa held out her hands, and after a moment’s hesitation the woman gave over the older one. A boy of about three, he silently stared around in awe. He latched on to Khuwelsa so tightly she barely even needed to hold him.
Together she and the woman ran back to the Pegasus. Once the dam of obstinacy and fear had been broken, everyone followed. Looking ahead, Khuwelsa saw a small group of five men running around from the other side. Khuwelsa hoped Bakari had not been too pushy.
She stopped at the hatch and handed the child into the plane while the people hurried up the steps.
Of course, thought Khuwelsa, there’s no way she’s lifting with this weight on board. Even if we had the steam, which we don’t.
The last of the refugees climbed aboard and she was left with Bakari and his men. “Thank you,” she said.
“They did not wish to move,” said Bakari with a grin. “We persuaded them.”
Khuwelsa smiled but inside she felt empty. How could they possibly lift off?
She looked around at the burning buildings.
Burning buildings.
Her heart leapt. “Bakari, we need wood to put in the fire.”
“What wood?”
“That wood.” She pointed at the burning buildings.
He nodded and with his men trotted towards the piles of burning timbers.
“Small pieces!” she shouted after him.
She climbed inside the ship and pushed past the crammed-in people to stand beside Harry’s chair. “Can you tell the men to help get the wood, Harry?”
Harry seemed pensive but she turned in her chair and kneeled on the seat to give herself some height. “We need fuel to get out of here. You need to go and help the natives collect wood.”
There was no rush for the door, for which Khuwelsa did not blame them. The Pegasus at least gave the impression of safety. Finally, though, the men left.
The heat from the burning buildings was intense but they soon had a system going, and blacks worked with whites to fill the furnace with wood. The pressure began to build.
Harry touched Khuwelsa’s arm. When Sellie looked at her Harry glanced up and to the left. Khuwelsa followed her gaze. Above the ship was a building with a four-storey tower. It had not been burning very intensely when they landed but now flames licked around its base and up to the second floor. It had developed a pronounced lean—in their direction.
Khuwelsa squeezed through the crowd and checked the furnace. It would not hold any more wood; coal was far more compact. She shut and latched the furnace door. The pressure was high. It would not last, but they just needed to get out of here. Harry just needed to get them out of here, somehow.
She climbed out of the ship and gestured for the men to stop. They got the message and headed back at a run. More than one of them glanced up at the leaning tower. None of them mentioned it.
Bakari and his men were the last to squeeze in. There were one or two glances at them but there was no space, so physical contact was inevitable. Khuwelsa shut the hatch and clambered to Harry’s side. She glanced at the tower as a flaming timber broke free and crashed onto the front of the Pegasus. There were gasps and a scream, very loud in such a tight place.
Harry put all the power into the propeller and its roar drowned out all other noise. Khuwelsa could almost feel the Pegasus trying to move even though the Faraday was not engaged, such was the propeller’s power.
Harry engaged the Faraday without any warning. There were more gasps and screams. Another timber crashed down but this time with far less force. Harry beat the wings hard. The Pegasus jumped forward a short distance but there was no impression it was going to lift.
Using the technique she had developed back in the German-controlled town, Harry dug the wings into the ground, first left, then right. She walked the Pegasus laboriously forwards and then turned towards the base of the tower. The burning wall of buildings was directly ahead.
xv
Khuwelsa trusted Harry, but she had no idea what her sister was doing. Unfortunately, neither did their passengers—and they did not trust Harry. A woman screamed as they moved inexorably towards the fire.
“She’s going to kill us!” shouted a man. “Stop her!” Khuwelsa slammed into the display panels as someone behind heaved forwards. Then the pressure stopped, and she glanced behind. A man with a face full of anger was directly behind her, with the blade of a spear at his neck. He was no longer pushing.
At that moment they reached the tower with flames all around them. Harry killed the propeller and lashed out with the port wing. Khuwelsa cringed at the thought of the potential damage to the feathers. With a snatching motion, Harry brought the wings in around the fuselage.
For a moment there was nothing; then all sound was drowned out by the screeching, snapping, and crashing of the tower collapsing on top of them. It went dark.
Harry paused for only a moment. The Faraday remained engaged so the power was still available. Using the wings like legs again, Harry pushed the fuselage up and broke through, back into the sunlight. The collapsing tower had smothered the worst of the flames around them and the upper section, which had not been burning, now made a path through the buildings ahead.
Working the controls with a delicate efficiency Harry walked the Pegasus across the bridge she had created. There were flames on either side, and as they moved the wood of the tower beneath them began to burn. Despite the odds, they reached the highest point and could see a street ahead of them. The buildings were burning all along it but the road was wide and people could move to safety.
Harry brought them down to the other side and stopped. Khuwelsa opened the door and let down the steps. The people poured out.
Eventually only Harry and Khuwelsa remained on the ship.
Khuwelsa put her arms around her sister’s shoulders. “You did it.”
Harry put her hand on Khuwelsa’s wrist. “That was close, Sellie,” she said. “If it hadn’t worked …”
“But it did.”
Harry sighed. “The wing struts seemed stronger.”
“After last time I thought I’d improve them a bit.”
Harry gripped her arm tighter. “I think I’m going to cry.”
Something rapped against the metal of the door. They both turned. It was the woman with the two children, her face streaked with soot. She shooed her older child up the steps and came in carrying the smaller one.
Her gaze darted around the interior of the ship and finally came to rest on Khuwelsa’s face. “I, um …” she faltered. “I just wanted to say thank you. Both of you.”
Khuwelsa glanced round at Harry who climbed out of her chair, wiping her cheek. Neither of them spoke; it was difficult to know what to say.
The woman looked embarrassed at their silence. “What are your names?”
“Edgbaston,” said Khuwelsa. “This is Harriet Edgbaston.”
The woman smiled and nodded to the red-haired girl.
“And this is my sister, Khuwelsa,” said Harry.
A flicker of confusion crossed the woman’s forehead.
“Khuwelsa Edgbaston.”
She regained her composure. “Say thank you to Harriet and Khuselwa.”
Khuwelsa said nothing about the mispronunciation of her name, it happened all the time. Even her nickname came from Harry’s original misunderstanding when they were six years old. Instead Khuwelsa knelt down to the three-year-old. “Harry,” she said pointing at Harry. “And Sellie.”
“Thank you for saving us,” said the child with great seriousness. “Harry and Sellie.”
“Our pleasure,” said Sellie.
The woman grabbed the child’s hand and led him down the steps. She paused when she saw the five warriors stan
ding outside but did not quite run to get past them.
Bakari climbed inside and stood straight in front of the sisters, his spear at his side.
“You and your sister are great warriors,” he said in Bantu. There was no hint of insincerity in his voice.
“Thank you,” Sellie said.
“My spear is your spear,” he said. “All the spears at my command are your spears. If you need them, ask and you shall have them.”
“What’s he saying?” asked Harry. “He seems pretty serious.”
“Um, well, apparently if we want an army, he’ll supply it.”
“That’s nice.”
“Yes, though I’m not sure ‘nice’ is entirely the right word,” said Khuwelsa.
There was a commotion outside. Lots of talking. Through the door they saw a number of townspeople congregating.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said Harry. “Now what?”
Bakari stood aside and the two of them climbed wearily out into the sun. The Pegasus was streaked with soot and showed some curious discolouration on lower areas of the fuselage.
It was a deputation of half a dozen men: none of them clean, most with soot marks and some wearing fire-damaged clothes. The cleanest of them was a rotund man with a large moustache. Khuwelsa had seen enough bureaucrats around her father to recognise the type. This was going to be a job for Harry; they wouldn’t talk to a black girl, even if she had saved people’s lives.
“Good afternoon,” said Harry with a smile. “I am Harriet Edgbaston, pilot and owner of the Pegasus. I am daughter of Jonathan Edgbaston, of her Majesty’s Foreign Office based in Mombasa.”
She held out her hand to the man, who seemed taken aback.
“Frank Danby, mayor of Ndungu,” he said as he shook her hand. He appeared uncertain, and Khuwelsa smiled inwardly. Harry was good at making people ill-at-ease. He looked past her at the Bantu warriors now ranged around the ship. “Who are they?”
“Passengers.”
“And her?” he looked pointedly at Khuwelsa.
“That’s my sister, Khuwelsa Edgbaston, the ship’s engineer.”
Khuwelsa was slightly shocked; Harry did not usually do that. Both of them usually went for the “possibly a servant but not precisely defined” approach when introducing her. She was surprised at how unsettling she found it to be thrust into the limelight.
“I believe I must thank you for your assistance,” he said.
“We did what any decent person would have done,” said Harry. “Would I be right in thinking you’ve been attacked by a Zeppelin crewed by German airmen?”
The entire group looked astonished. “How did you know?” said the mayor.
“We’ve been on their tail for a while.”
Khuwelsa put her hand over her face to hide her smile at Harry’s exaggerated account of the situation.
The mayor looked at Harry, then Khuwelsa, then the Pegasus. “You’re chasing them?”
“That’s right,” said Harry. “Unfortunately for us, though luckily for your people, we ran out of coal. Have you got any?”
xvi
“It’s going to take a couple of days to check everything,” said Khuwelsa.
The sun was going down behind the high plateau to the west. The town, at least what was left of it, was situated in a wide and green river valley surrounded on three sides by mountains and high ground.
Where they’d been allowed to continue, fires had burnt themselves out. A few buildings had been deliberately brought down to prevent the spread, while the important structures that could be saved had been hosed down with steam-powered pumps.
The main warehouses, factory buildings, and shops had been saved where possible since they provided the town’s wealth and ensured its survival.
Once the emergency had passed, the mayor gave them a tour. He almost had tears in his eyes when they reached a large wooden building with several bomb craters visible in the interior.
“Our copper smelting plant,” he said waving his hand—at which action Harry exchanged significant looks with Khuwelsa. “They took all our stock.”
“They didn’t pay?”
“They violated my town,” he said. “They arrived and offered friendship, but it was all lies. Once they had ascertained the locations of what they wanted, they simply took it.”
“What form was the copper in?” asked Khuwelsa.
“Form?”
“Wire? Ingots? Rods?”
“Oh, we do not manufacture wire here,” he said. “Just ingots.” He paused and then added with interest. “Do you think we should?”
Harry noticed a sign from the original building now lying partially burnt on the ground: “F. Danby & Sons”. The factory belonged to the mayor.
“There is great demand for copper in the world,” he continued. “If we supplied it made into wire would we get a better price, do you think?”
Harry looked at the sky. Khuwelsa sighed. “It would not be as compact. You would not be able to transport it as efficiently.”
“True, true.” He looked thoughtful.
As they wandered on, the mayor pointed out the school next to the church, both of which had survived the bombardment though all the windows were shattered.
“Did they say anything?”
“Their lies.”
“I mean anything about why they needed the copper?”
The mayor stopped stock-still in the street and made a great show of rubbing his head as if he were thinking hard.
“Well, of course,” he said eventually. “It was considered odd that a German warship should float down into our town. There was nervousness at first; we sent up our own flyer to intercept them.”
“You have a plane?” interrupted Khuwelsa.
He shook his head. “Not a plane, no. We have an armed launch. Alas, no more. They disabled it before their attack.”
“Disabled how?”
“Why?”
“We may need some spare parts for our plane,” said Harry.
The mayor spread out his arms as if he wanted to embrace them both. “Ask for whatever you need, if we can supply it then we will be happy to do so—at no charge!”
* * *
Harry was fairly sure that had the town not been in such a pitiable condition the mayor would have ordered a feast in their honour, which they would have been forced to endure.
“Is there anything you can do tonight?” asked Harry as the two of them returned through the rapidly cooling streets towards the Pegasus.
“Not really.”
They walked past a collapsed building and felt the heat coming from it. Hopefully the night would cool it enough that it would not combust again.
“That airship must be very heavily laden by now,” said Harry. “They might be using their thrusters to help keep them aloft. They’ll be going more slowly.”
“We don’t know that.”
“But it’s likely.”
Khuwelsa bowed to the inevitable. “Yes, it’s likely.” Once Harry got a thought stuck in her medulla oblongata it was impossible to shift, short of a blow to the head.
They approached the Pegasus. Flames still flickered in the smoking ruins nearby. “Perhaps we should have named her Phoenix,” said Harry.
In the fast-deepening gloom they caught sight of their passengers sitting round a small fire of their own.
“You were amazing, Harry,” said Khuwelsa. “We could all have died if you hadn’t got us out of there.”
Harry made a small groaning sound. “And if I hadn’t landed at all, I wouldn’t have put you at risk. What’s Dad going to say when he finds out?”
“If you hadn’t done it, knowing those people were trapped, how would you feel?”
“He’s going to shout at me again.”
“Probably,” said Khuwelsa.
“Thanks.”
“Then he’ll tell you how proud he is you did the right thing.”
The warriors did not stand as the girls reached the ship. Harry foun
d it odd; men were supposed to stand when women approached. But they had different customs.
Instead Bakari spoke to Khuwelsa, apparently asking a question. She shook her head in response. He asked something else and she gave a long answer with the occasional hesitation. He spoke again in reply and Khuwelsa finished with a short response. She followed Harry towards the ship.
“He wanted to know if we wanted to sit at the fire.”
“You said no.”
“I did, although I think it’s an honour to be asked,” said Khuwelsa. “Then he wanted to know when we would be on our way.”
They climbed aboard the Pegasus and pulled the hatch shut behind them with a firm clang. Harry threw the bolt. They sighed simultaneously as they cut off the world.
“What did you tell him?”
“I explained that Pegasus is hurt and needs to be mended.”
“Hurt?”
“I don’t know the right words, or whether they even if they have them at all,” said Khuwelsa. “But he got the idea.”
They made a bed alongside the furnace, forming pillows from their outer clothes; they shared the blanket.
“I hope things are better in the morning, Sellie.”
But Khuwelsa was already asleep.
xvii
Breakfast had been supplied by their passengers, who must have risen at first light and gone hunting. They had returned with what had probably been a goat but had been skinned, gutted, and cooked by the time the sisters appeared.
Khuwelsa had drained some water from the boiler, still warm, for them to wash and they had spent some time brushing each other’s hair. Their clothes were dirty but there was nothing they could do about that. Khuwelsa muttered something about keeping some spares on board in future if this gallivanting at the drop of a hat was going to continue.
Still, when they finally opened the hatch and the delicious smell of cooked goat wafted in, Harry felt ready to face the day with a renewed energy.
Bakari handed them crispy cuts of meat inside pouches of unleavened bread. Harry thought the addition of butter would make them almost perfect, perhaps some brown sauce too. Realising she was ravenous, she ate with gusto—she could not recall exactly when she had last eaten. Khuwelsa was the same and polished off three in the time Harry took for two.
Harry in the Wild: Astounding Stories of Adventure (Iron Pegasus Book 2) Page 6