Terrible Swift Sword

by William R. Forstchen

  "Now!"

  Feyodor lit the taper and dropped it onto the nose of the enemy ship a hundred feet below. The jar hit the air bag and rolled slowly down the side, tumbling off and plummeting to the ground.

  "God damn it, there's got to be a better way!" Jack screamed. In frustration he unholstered one of the revolvers and pumped six rounds straight into the enemy ship.

  Feyodor aimed the blunderbuss down and fired into the ship, peppering it with dozens of holes.

  He pulled out two more jars and lit them. Leaning far over, he hurled them down. One bounced off as if it hit a loose blanket. The second one cracked open but the fuse sputtered out, and the ship was astern.

  Jack screamed every imprecation he could imagine, as the enemy ship moved forward while they continued to drift astern.

  "Half-power!"

  He started to turn, the second ship drifting by

  fifty yards to his right and low, the Merki underneath unable to shoot up. The third ship was nearly up to his level, nose-high. The two Merki in the cabin were working to reload their small cannon.

  They were back over Vyzima, drifting north with the wind. The hangers were off to his right. A mile away the Yankee Clipper and the three enemy ships were running in a circle, like lumbering giants unable to strike each other.

  Jack was mad with frustration.

  The enemy ship drifted by to his left, the Merki abandoning their cannon. One of them lifted up a bow and sent arrow after arrow toward him. He pulled out another revolver and blazed away, while Feyodor, cursing foully, pointed the second blunderbuss and let fly, without results.

  "Full power, Feyodor! Pour it on!"

  Jack pointed the nose up again, sensing that they were slowly starting to lose a little lift, then pushed over to an easterly course, running straight toward the melee with the Yankee Clipper. The enemy ships were still turning behind him.

  He looked back to the south. The enemy bomb-ships were still waiting out of range. There was no way he could catch them with the wind in their favor, so he pressed in to the east. If the enemy damaged the hangers now, there'd be no possible hope of landing and getting repaired in time to escape to Kev.

  One of the Merki ships engaged with Yankee Clipper swung in alongside the ship, firing its light cannon straight in at the cabin. Jack cursed bitterly as he saw the engineer slump forward in his chair, the ship continue blindly on. The assistant engineer unstrapped himself from his rear chair and, climbing over to grab the controls, pushed the aero-steamer straight east.

  A second Merki ship was now above Yankee Clipper, moving to drop down and fire from astern.

  "You better hang on, Feyodor."

  "What the hell are you going to do?"

  "Ram the son of a bitch!"

  Jack grabbed hold of the controls and eased out a little hot air, then dropped the nose slightly. The enemy ship, intent on its prey, continued to turn in, its tail swinging around.

  Jack nosed over, their speed increasing.

  "You're mad!" Feyodor cried, wide-eyed and looking over Jack's shoulder.

  "Shut up and grab hold!"

  He pointed the nose straight in at the enemy's tail. The range closed to fifty yards and then twenty, the enemy ship moving slowly to line up a shot.

  The nose of the Flying Cloud slammed into the rear of the Merki ship, and the gas bag undulated and quivered. Jack felt the forward spars of his own ship cracking as he pulled up at the last second and drove a glancing blow in, raking across the top of the enemy ship. The shattered forward spar sliced into the enemy vessel.

  He pushed the nose hard up, shouting with glee as he looked down on the jagged hole in the enemy vessel.

  "Bomb the bastard now!

  "We'll burn!"

  "Bomb it!"

  Feyodor pulled out another five-gallon jar, stuck the wick into the furnace, and quickly pulled the flaming taper back out. They passed above the jagged tear, not thirty feet below.

  "Drop it!" Jack shouted.

  The jar tumbled down, striking near the hole. The jar didn't break, and the container seemed to balance atop the enemy aerosteamer, the wick still

  flickering brightly. A nearly invisible fringe of blue flame ignited around the hole, spreading outward. The jar tumbled into the flaming gap and disappeared, blue flame surging up. Within seconds it seemed as if the entire top of the ship had been ripped open by a blue razor of fire.

  The Flying Cloud surged up on the column of heat, shreds of burning fabric flaring up around them.

  The enemy ship collapsed, and started its death-plummet.

  "Get us down!" Feyodor screamed.

  Jack looked back to the tail. A section of flaming silk, a dozen feet across, was pressed up against his ship, burning fiercely.

  Jack yanked the exhaust vent open even as he turned to run with the wind.

  It was like a nightmare: the flaming silk from the enemy ship pressed up against his own vessel, burning, with him watching it and unable to do anything.

  The vent was full open, and, nose-down, he went into a dive. Off to his right he saw the Merki ship impact in a fireball of flame, and he remembered the body tumbling out of the last ship he had destroyed.

  "I think she's catching!" Feyodor screamed.

  Jack looked back over his shoulder. A thin section of fabric was fraying back, revealing a wooden spar underneath.

  "Hydrogen rises! If it was on top, we'd be gone already!" Jack shouted, even as he watched the flames lick out, fringed in blue. Chuck had told him that you could strike a match inside a ship and it wouldn't burn, because it needed to have air mixed in. But that was small consolation now, for some of the gas had to be leaking out. The fabric continued to burn.

  In a flash, the flame started to race up the side.

  He looked down. It was still a long way. Behind him the enemy ships were pressing in, while off to his right the Yankee Clipper was running east, getting out of the fight and heading toward Kev. At least he had saved that ship.

  What the hell am I doing? he wondered. It's my ass that's about to get burned, the devil with the other ship! I'm going to burn!

  He started to scream, even as he guided the Flying Cloud into a steeper and yet steeper dive. Feyodor was openly calling on the Saints, reciting his sins and begging for forgiveness.

  "What the hell do you mean, you slept with Svetlana?" Jack suddenly shouted. "I thought she wanted me!"

  "I'm sorry!" Feyodor wailed. "Oh Kesus, it's burning."

  "You'll burn, god damn it!" Jack cried. He felt a shudder run through the vessel as the lift dropped away and the ground came up faster. The flame was racing toward the tail and over the top of the ship, but the forward bag was still intact. The ground was racing up, trees scattered through an upland pasture rising up like spears to impale the dying beast.

  Jack pushed the rudder hard up. For a brief second he thought they would drive straight in, but then the controls responded and the nose began to rise.

  But they were coming down fast, far too fast, as he raised the nose higher and yet higher.

  The shadow of the ship moved rapidly across the ground. Yet more trees were just ahead.

  Jack felt heat licking around him, heard Feyodor screaming.

  He pulled back hard, and the ground leaped up to meet him.

  Pat stood on the hill, cursing silently as the fireball of flame rose up from the distant woods.

  "It was one of ours," somebody whispered.

  Pat nodded.

  "At least he took a bastard with him," another sighed.

  "They can afford it, we can't."

  The other six aerosteamers now started in, swooping down out of the sky, engines humming. Along the open stretch of rail back in the town, thousands of troops raised their weapons, volley fire slashing out. The first bombs dropped away, and seconds later explosions rippled through the station area and marched on into the city.

  A second ship and a third dropped in. The third lined up slightly south of the track an
d came in low, only several hundred feet off the ground.

  Up forward, a locomotive exploded up into the air, a direct hit. Pat groaned and looked away.

  The ship that hit it continued on, rising up lazily and drifting off to the north. It rose slowly, turned through a circle, then turned yet again.

  "Must have killed the crew!" someone shouted.

  The rest of the ships swooped, staying far higher, their bombs far wide of their targets.

  The enemy ships made their slow, ponderous turns, then headed off to the east. Far off in the distance the lone Rus ship struggled to climb, still pursued by its tormentors, while the Merki vessel with the dead crew slowly continued to turn, drifting farther and farther away with the wind.

  "A hell of a mess, gentlemen," Pat snarled. "We'll be lucky to get out of here now."

  "What do you mean, the country is empty?" Jubadi snarled.

  On either side of him columns were racing down the road, heading south at a gallop. He looked back to the river. Two of the Yankee iron ships were anchored just below the crossing, and they were spraying the river with shot, forcing the umens to go farther upstream. Even then they had to time their crossing to get between the shots of the heavy enemy pieces.

  A message dropped from one of the cloud-flyers heading to the spot where the Yankee army was boarding their iron-riders had revealed the news. Suzdal was empty, the countryside around it empty. They were gone. Jubadi had not believed it. New the messenger had come with confirmed word.

  He looked down the river road, where a column of warriors was riding fast. A scythe of canister swept out from a ship anchored farther down the river, dropping dozens. The warriors pushed through the tangle and galloped on.

  "Find some trails further back from the road!" Jubadi shouted. "We can't advance to Suzdal and be shot at like this!"

  "There are no other trails," Muzta announced quietly.

  Jubadi turned to look at him angrily.

  "Then by the ancestors, we'll cut a damned trail! Bring up the Cartha prisoners, get a umen to work on it. We're moving too slow."

  "What will the umen cut with?" Muzta said, a trace of bemusement in his voice.

  "With their swords, if need be!" Jubadi snarled.

  He looked back at Tamuka and Hulagar.

  "What kind of people are these?" he roared. "They know they're beaten. We offered them terms, a return to the old ways. Isn't that enough? Now they run, all of them, leaving their land. I thought land was life to these cattle."

  "Obviously not," Tamuka said quietly.

  "As I already learned," Muzta said.

  "Yet we've beaten them in every battle. I thought we'd take Suzdal and it would be over."

  "Why?" Vuka snapped, dropping his usual veil of disdain and looking over at Tamuka.

  "They want the death of all of us and nothing less," Tamuka said sharply.

  Jubadi looked at him with cold rage, and then back at the messenger.

  "You saw the city?"

  "I entered it. It is empty, my Qarth. The last of their cannon crews were pulling out and moving south, down toward the sea."

  "Empty," Jubadi hissed.

  He had thought of the moment of triumph, his host arrayed, charging in through the breach for the kill. Or, overawed, the enemy would show their obeisance and surrender, to their own humiliation and that of Muzta. Now neither scene was likely to occur.

  He looked back up the road. Hundreds of his best were dead all along it, riddled by the iron ships that had harassed them all day as they rode south.

  "Damn them all!" Jubadi roared. He kicked his horse around, lashing it into a gallop. He pushed through his staff and set off for the south.

  The pass was cleared and he rode on, oblivious to the iron ships, which ignored him in his ride. They were aiming at the heavy clusters of troops further back.

  "Come on, the hell with the guns, run for it!" Pat shouted.

  The city of Vyzima was in flames behind him, illuminating the nightmarish scene.

  The long line of trains was finally ready to move, the wreckage cleared, the track repaired farther up the line where several Merki had been dropped off from an aerosteamer in a vain attempt to cut the rail.

  Behind him twenty guns were drawn up in a arc across the tracks, Merki cavalry moving in on all sides. A mile farther out a column was racing parallel to the line.

  The gunners fired all their pieces at once and the crews turned, running frantically.

  Pat stood atop the armored car positioned at the rear of the last train. The gunners ran past him, the guns beneath him firing their sprays of canister over the retreating men.

  Shots were echoing out from all sides, bullets hissing past, arrows streaking in.

  "Go, go, go!" Pat screamed, running down the length of the car, waving a lantern.

  The engine forward cut loose with a high shriek. As he leaped from the last armored car to the next one, the train lurched forward so that he almost lost his footing. He continued to run down the length of the car. Gaining the far side he leaped down to the flatcar, crowded with men, who were reaching over the side to pull up the last of the fleeing gunners.

  "Out there!" somebody shouted.

  Pat looked up to see two men coming out of the lengthening shadows, one dragging the other.

  "Jack, come on!"

  Petracci picked up his pace, limping hard, and Feyodor moved along beside him. Both were struggling to hold the other up.

  Pat looked up forward, but there was no way to signal the train to stop.

  "Let's go!" he shouted, leaping down from the train, stumbling, and getting up to run.

  "God damn it, general, we can't lose you too!" somebody shouted.

  "Then help me, you bloody fools!"

  Several more men leaped off, running down the grading. They grabbed hold of Feyodor, while Pat came in and nearly lifted the diminutive engineer right off the ground. He ran hard up the embankment, slipping on the loose ballasts.

  The train was slowly picking up speed.

  "Run, damn it, run!" It was like a chant, shouted by the hundreds who were leaning out of the boxcars and standing on the flatcars to watch the drama, oblivious to the Merki cavalry who were starting to range in from the other side.

  Pat felt his breath coming short, his stomach knotting from the effort. Hands reached out and grabbed Jack, pulling him up. More hands grabbed Pat, lifting him. His heavy body dragged dangerously close to the wheels, but then he was back up on the flatcar, gasping for breath.

  "I told you we shouldn't throw the firebomb," Feyodor gasped, looking over angrily at Jack.

  "Well, I should have left you out there!" he roared back. "You were doing Svetlana behind my back!"

  "She wanted it!" Feyodor snarled. "And I'll be damned to fly with you again—you almost killed me with that damned ramming."

  Pat started to laugh between his gasps for breath.

  "Anybody got a drink?" Jack asked, too weary to argue anymore.

  Half a dozen men pressed forward, offering canteens of vodka.

  Jack smiled and looked around at his admirers, word already racing through the train that the aerosteamer engineers were on board.

  "A hell of a show," Pat said, coming to squat by Jack and take the canteen. He belted back a drink.

  "Thanks for saving me. Thought we'd never make it."

  "Was worth it," Pat replied.

  Jack offered the canteen to Feyodor, who, though still grimacing, nodded his thanks and patted Jack on the shoulder.

  "Thanks for pulling me out of the wreck," he sighed.

  "Couldn't leave you behind—it'd look bad," Jack replied, gingerly taking the canteen back and cupping it between blistered hands.

  "Emil will get you two patched up, and you'll be back up in no time," Pat said, the men around him nodding and grinning.

  Jack looked around at his admirers, and swallowed hard. Back up there? he thought. Not on your life, not for anything. He lay back on the rumbling car and tri
ed to block out the terror of falling, falling in the flames of Hell. Try as he might, the shaking would not go away.

  Pat touched him lightly on the shoulder and stood back up to look off to the west.

  They'd gotten out, just barely. The last train out of Vyzima, and he felt sick at the thought of it. The bastards had taken all the country for barely nothing—a fraction of the casualties suffered by the Tugars—and over fifteen thousand of their own army dead, missing, or wounded.

  The troops on board were talking excitedly about their escape, breathing easy again after the last tense hours of holding till the line had been cleared. Pat knew that once the excitement of the escape had worn off, the colder reality would settle in.

  They were now an entire race in exile.

  As the train moved through a gentle curve, Pat looked forward. All the way to the horizon, moving off into the evening, was train after train, showering sparks. Nearly thirty thousand men riding east, escaping at least temporarily the death closing in around them. The men around him, lightened by Jack's presence, were behaving almost as if they had somehow pulled off a victory.

  If this is victory, Pat thought quietly, looking back to the west, I sure as hell would hate to see defeat.

  Jubadi Qar Qarth reined in his mount, his heart pounding with superstitious dread.

  The goal was before him. The home of the Yankees, the center of their power, all that threatened his people and all the races of the Everlasting Ride. It was before him. But they had left something else. How had they known?

  A rider came galloping out of the city, the gold pennant of a Qar Qarth rider fluttering from a pole behind his back. Those on the wooden footbridge over the Vina cleared the way as he lashed his mount on.

  He pressed up the slope, the silver bells tied to his saddle ringing out a warning, the long column of the advance guard parting.

  He reined in hard and bowed low in the saddle, the dirt-encrusted pennant dipping down over his head.

  "Empty, my Qar Qarth. Entirely empty, as first reported."

  Jubadi looked away.

  They were gone.

  How could cattle do this? It was foreordained that cattle were to be qufa ga huth, those in one place— only the Chosen were to ride forever. Had an entire land of them become like the accursed wanderers?