Highlords of Phaer (Empire of Masks Book 1)

by Brock Deskins

  “This is the Celestial out of Nibbenar,” Atin said as they entered the ship through the ramp that extended out of the airship’s hull.

  The Celestial, as well as the airships from Nibbenar, Glisteran, and Thuum, were freighters, so they needed less refitting than the Voulge did. Their lower decks were already largely open to accommodate cargo whereas the workers were going to have to remove many of the Voulge’s non-load-bearing bulkheads. Hammocks now occupied most of the vessel’s interior.

  Atin saw Jareen mentally taking count. “Each airship will carry approximately five hundred men, not counting the crew, but the real surprise is above us.”

  The mine foreman took his guests two decks higher. Pushing past more hammocks, Jareen stopped and stared.

  Atin smiled and nodded, obviously pleased with himself. “The Celestial, Deliverer, and Drake all carry twenty guns, ten per side. I figure on mounting thirty on the Voulge.”

  Jareen ran his hand over the cannon’s rough exterior. “They are enormous.”

  “Aye, nine pounders, much bigger than the three-pound field guns.”

  “What about the Bastion, how many guns is she carrying?”

  Atin’s grin grew even broader. “Forty twelve-pound tower wreckers. The highlords won’t know what hit them.”

  “And you have managed to make enough muskets for all our men as well as the forces set to take the cities?”

  “Every man we field is armed with muskets. On your advice, I’ve even had them equipped with bayonets for close-quarters combat. I have shipped more than fifteen hundred muskets and a dozen field guns to each of the five primary cities. The few reports I’ve gotten indicate that we have an average of twice that number ready to fight, four times as many in Thuum. Those ornery buggers have been waiting to rise up for centuries.”

  “How did you manage to get the cannons on board without the guards seeing and reporting it back to the overlord?”

  Atin slapped the cannon’s breach. “We didn’t. These beasts weigh sixteen hundred pounds each, half again as much for the behemoths on the Bastion. We rolled them right past the guards, and when they asked what they were, I told them they were launching tubes for Sah Auberon’s fireworks display.” He leaned back and laughed. “Stupid bastards.”

  Jareen smiled. Everything was set. It was going to happen, and nothing could stop them now. “How long until we are ready to depart?”

  “I figure it will take two days of round-the-clock labor before the Voulge is ready. Assuming we don’t hit any foul weather and keep a favorable wind, we’re on schedule to reach Phaer on Tribute Day. I assume that Auberon is no longer able to cause us any trouble.”

  “He is not. I had to accelerate his declining condition to make sure he could not protest my departure. If he is not dead by now, he is well beyond being able to do anything.”

  Atin clapped Jareen on the shoulder. “Excellent, let us go oversee getting your airship battleworthy.”

  ***

  Jareen was unsure of what was worse, the two days standing idle while Atin’s workers refitted and armed the Voulge, or the seven hours he stood on deck waiting for Overlord Caelen’s yacht to join their little armada. He finally breathed a sigh of relief when the sleek airship floated alongside the imposing Bastion. Half as long as the Voulge and one third its width, the yacht still only carried a dozen passengers, a score of crewmen, three innervators, and two pilots.

  Dawn’s Glory was a luxury airship with spacious berths and a well-appointed galley. Despite its beauty, Jareen knew that all eyes were on the Bastion, that hulking, black airship unlike any ever flown. If only those watching in wonderment of it were aware of its awesome secret. They would find out soon enough. In less than a fortnight, the entire empire would know.

  The flotilla sailed away from Vulcrad as fast as the wind would carry them. Due to the Bastion’s size and weight, the wooden vessels had to trim their sails to keep pace with their leader. Jareen’s feelings were mixed. On one hand, as the man who initiated the uprising and formulated the plan to bring down the highlords, allowing Atin Cienne to take command left him feeling jealous. On the other, letting someone else take control was an enormous weight off his shoulders.

  Jareen tried to purge his body of all emotions other than his desire to crush the highlords, and Atin was far better suited to lead the charge. Their destruction was all that mattered.

  Three days out of Vulcrad, Jareen saw the signal they had all been waiting for. The dissident airships maneuvered around the overlord’s yacht as inconspicuously as they could over the next several minutes. Once in position, the gun doors hiding the cannons dropped open and the black barrels rolled into view. A minute later, another flag waved from atop the Bastion’s mainmast, and all five airships fired on the doomed Dawn’s Glory.

  While more shots missed than struck home, the yacht shattered under the overwhelming barrage and fell from the sky in multiple pieces like a bird torn to shreds by daggerwings. It was a display that was as awesome as it was terrifying. The airships fired two more volleys despite the fact that Dawn’s Glory was dead and gone. Their next target would not fall so easily, and the crews needed to be proficient in loading.

  A solitary shot erupted from one of the guns aboard the Deliverer, the airship from Nibbenar. Jareen suspected what had happened and the signal flags he read moments later confirmed it. Someone had forgotten to sponge the barrel before ramming home the next load of powder. Two men were dead and three severely injured before their battle had even begun. Jareen accepted the loss as it was better to make mistakes now and learn from them before they made them in the face of battling the most powerful people to ever walk this world.

  He turned his eyes back to the bow and imagined Phaer, still two weeks away, its buildings crumbled and the city aflame.

  ***

  “Sails off the starboard quarter!” the lookout cried.

  Jareen raised a spyglass and searched the sky. “Looks like we have company.”

  Irna locked the wheel and looked behind her. She warped the air in front of her with her magic and enlarged the image of the ships. “Those are warships. Someone knows what we are up to.”

  “Can you magnify the image further?”

  Irna gestured with her hands and the lead ship grew until Jareen clearly recognized two of the faces aboard the airship. “That is Quinlan and Auberon’s brother Driscoll. How could they know?”

  “My guess is that you did not incapacitate Auberon as much as you thought you did. Sorcerers are a crafty bunch.”

  Jareen nodded. “I bet Quinlan’s sudden re-emergence is not a coincidence either. Well, they are not the only ones capable of new surprises. Have your signaler order the Bastion to maintain its heading while the rest of us turn back to deal with those airships.”

  Irna relayed the order to her signaler as she turned the Voulge about. The other three airships adjusted their heading moments later and matched the intercept course.

  “They’re closing fast. They have to be running under power, which means they must have a hold full of innervators, and I count at least half a dozen battle sorcerers just on the lead vessel. That’s a lot of arcane might they can bring to bear,” Irna remarked.

  “How close do you think we can get before they start hurling magic at us?”

  “Depends on if they know about our cannons. Potentially, they can inflict damage or even bring us down from a greater range than our guns can manage. If they are ignorant of them, they will probably wait until we are closer in order to hit us with definitive strikes.”

  Jareen considered his options. “Signal our airships to try and keep above them to maximize our range and to wait for my signal to fire.”

  ***

  “We found them, and with two days to spare!” Driscoll crowed as he gazed upon the airships ahead of them.

  “Excellent job, Sah Driscoll,” Quinlan said. “They are turning about, all but the black beast.”

  “I imagine the metal behemoth is slower th
an the others. At least we won’t have to chase them all the way to Phaer. It’s rather considerate of them.”

  “Do not be too joyous, sah. Jareen would not risk everything if he did not think he had a chance to defeat us.”

  Driscoll studied the magnified image before his face. “They have one warship. The others are freighters, and I see no ballistae or catapults on the decks of any of them. They must be putting all of their faith in these new weapons of theirs. If so, they are in for a surprise. Even if they can penetrate my sorcerers’ wards, they won’t live long enough to defeat us before we bring them down.”

  The scar above Quinlan’s useless eye throbbed as if to challenge Driscoll’s confidence, but the inquisitor remained silent. His knowledge of Jareen’s weapons was only slightly better than Driscoll’s, and the warlord knew naval warfare far better than he did. He just prayed that Driscoll’s skill and the sorcerers’ power were up to the task.

  “They are trying to take an elevated position,” Driscoll remarked. “Fools; that only gives my sorcerers a clear view of their bellies.” A look of confusion played across his face when small shutters opened up all along the enemy airships’ hulls and revealed the ends of thick-walled metal tubes. “What in the Tormented Plane is that?”

  Quinlan brought the image into clearer view. His heart raced and his blood ran cold at the sight. His brain replayed that terrifying moment when he stared down the barrel of Jareen’s pistol just before it stole away the world.

  “It is the death of an empire,” Quinlan whispered.

  The cannons belched fire and smoke. Cannonballs cut through the air around them with loud hisses of hate and promises of death. The mainmast shattered under a direct hit and toppled. The hull and railing burst into showers of flesh-rending shards as four-inch steel shot tore men in half without affecting their velocity in the slightest.

  Chaos ran rampant upon the decks as sorcerers erected their most powerful wards, but they were incapable of stopping objects with so much mass and speed. The cannonballs ripped through them just as easily as they did the airships’ wooden hulls. They retaliated with magical force, but fear of the unknown and the sight of death surrounding them fouled aims and made for a haphazard response.

  Men appeared all along the rail of the death-spewing vessels and unleashed a barrage of musket fire into the packed decks of the airships below them. Lightning answered, driving the shooters behind the rails and scorching the hulls of airships. A few ballistae hurled javelins at the enemy vessels, but they were a weak response in the face of so much destruction.

  Driscoll used his magic to amplify his voice. “Angle your wards! We cannot stop the larger weapons, but we may be able to deflect them. Pilot, take us down swiftly. Try to get beneath their line of sight.” He shouted into one of the speaking tubes leading down to the innervators’ station. “Do not spare your power! We will either succeed or die here. There is no going back.”

  He looked around and saw that his flotilla was disintegrating as three ships fell from the sky when vital rune-scribings were destroyed and their innervators died. The few airships farthest in the rear began to retreat. Only one other vessel stayed with him as they tried to outmaneuver the rebel squadron. Driscoll turned to have his signalman order the fleeing airships to return to the fight. The signaler affixed a series of flags to a line and began hoisting them up the aft mast, but a musket shot slipped between the sorcerous wards and struck him in the back of the head. Driscoll saw the pennants flutter down onto the deck but ignored them. Even if the other captains obeyed, which they likely would not even if they bothered to look back, there was little they could do to affect the battle’s outcome.

  The Voulge and her sister ships tried to match Driscoll’s wild maneuvers, but they lacked the resources to pour such raw power through their heart stones. Unlike the navy ships, this was far from their final mission.

  Driscoll locked his eyes on the underbelly of the Voulge’s enormous hull. The thought of his flagship being used as a cornerstone of this wretched rebellion infuriated him.

  “Someone signal the Sunburst to focus on the Voulge. Jareen is surely commanding her, and that traitor’s death is paramount.”

  A sailor darted to the signal line, affixed a series of pennants, and hoisted the streamer up the mast. Sorcerers aboard Driscoll’s Hydra struck at the Voulge’s vulnerable belly with concussive force and lightning. Wood cracked, charred, and was sundered in a dozen places, but the warship’s sturdy construction and Atin’s hasty structural reinforcements allowed it to withstand much of the punishing attack. Sunburst’s crew added to the onslaught a moment later, and the Voulge began to wither under the combined assault.

  The Voulge shook and rocked under the arcane impacts and smoke streamed up over the deck from below. Irna fought the controls as the ship bucked beneath her feet and began to lean as the rune-scribings took damage. All airships had redundant sigils so as to avoid a single point of failure, but the damage the sorcerers were inflicting was taking its toll. The Voulge could not take much more abuse before a strike proved fatal.

  Irna screamed into a speaking tube. “Anyone not actively keeping this tub afloat needs to ward our belly as best they can, or we aren’t going to be airborne much longer!”

  The wards her innervators erected were flimsy things considering how far they had to stretch them, but it was the best they could do.

  “Captain, we need to get our cannons in line!” Jareen shouted.

  “Tell me something I damn well don’t know!” The Voulge rocked once more from another powerful blast. “That’s it! Everyone brace yourselves for free fall. Innervators, cut lift for a three-count and then arrest our fall.” Irna spared a couple of seconds to glance around the deck. “Now!”

  The innervators blocked the heart stone’s power, and the airship plummeted like a stone. Irna counted under her breath while her feet sought to float skyward. Just as she was about to mouth Three, gravity brutally reasserted itself as energy flowed from the heart stone back through the rune-scribings, crushing the crew against the deck as they arrested their fall.

  The Voulge dropped between the Hydra and the Sunburst, nearly colliding with the former on its way down. Irna forced her vessel up and brought her so close alongside Driscoll’s ship that she could nearly make out the color in the terrified crew’s eyes.

  “Fire!” Irna’s amplified voice screamed across the deck.

  Sorcerers dived for cover as scores of muskets unleashed their volleys at point-blank range. Cannons added their cacophonous thunder to the sharp cracks, shredding the Hydra and Sunburst’s hulls. The Deliverer, Drake, and Celestial managed to bring their weapons to bear and removed any chance of survival for the doomed ships. Driscoll and a few other sorcerers struck out in a final but vain attempt to take some of their enemies with them as their ruined vessels fell from the sky.

  “Someone get me a damage report,” Irna ordered.

  Jareen forced his hands to release the death grip they had on the wheelhouse rail and stepped to Irna’s side. “How bad are we damaged?”

  “I don’t know the full extent, but we’re still airborne, so it’s unlikely we have suffered anything fatal.”

  A crewman raced to his captain’s side minutes later and relayed a message.

  Irna repeated his report to Jareen. “Our hull is breached in several places and we have damage to several rune-scribings, but we should be able to repair most of them before we reach Phaer. She won’t be pretty, but she’ll be battleworthy. We have scores of wounded and at least two dozen fatalities, but considering how many people we have packed into this tub, that’s pretty light.”

  Jareen looked grim but nodded. “Let’s catch back up to the Bastion. This was but a test of our skill and resolve. The true battle still lies ahead.

  ***

  Quinlan knew the Hydra, and their mission along with it, was doomed the moment the Voulge hove between the two airships even before the terrifying weapons unleashed death upon them. He was
about to suggest a retreat when a musket ball tore through Driscoll’s head and spattered him with its contents. The world exploded around him. Quinlan raced across the deck as the Hydra disintegrated beneath his feet. He leapt upon the rail, infused his body with magical strength, and hurled himself into the abyss.

  He watched the smoking wreckage plummeting below him as he marveled at the strange feeling of falling thousands of feet to his death. It felt more like swimming than falling, only there was a certain finality awaiting him at the bottom. Even blessed with sorcerous power, he could not fly nor even arrest his fall overmuch. Certainly not from this height. His mind furiously sought a solution as the ground raced up to meet him.

  The inquisitor spotted a tall sand dune and angled his fall to intercept it. He extended a ward as far as he was able and poured as much energy into it as he could, holding nothing back. His sight wavered and bright spots colored his vision as he reached into the very depths of his soul to power his only chance at salvation. He sensed his ward touch the dune’s crest when he was perhaps a hundred feet from the ground. Quinlan focused, redoubled his efforts, and felt his body slow, as if an invisible hand were reaching up and catching him. His final conscious thought was that it was not going to be enough.

  CHAPTER 32

  Atin Cienne stood on the deck of the most magnificent airship ever built. His eyes, as grey and hard as the iron chiseled from his mines, locked onto the horizon where the city of Phaer’s twelve towers poked over the world’s edge. It was almost as welcome a sight as seeing Jareen and the others return after turning back to engage the enemy.

  Dark as night, the airship stood out like a fleck of black soot against the sky as it glided toward the sorcerer king’s fabled city. The ship itself was not the weapon but merely the conveyance for the power that he and his fellow conspirators would unleash and hopefully bring about their freedom. Whether they succeeded or failed, today marked the last day of their oppression. They would triumph and live as free men, or they would perish beneath arcane flames. Either way, they would no longer be slaves, their lives dependent upon the whims of Emperor Arikhan and his fellow sorcerer highlords.