by Stephen Hunt
‘Look, Father!’ called Carter. He pointed out the diminutive dart vectoring in against the storm of raiders discharged by the carrier.
‘Sweet saints,’ whispered Jacob as he unlocked the bell tower. ‘There goes the unluckiest man in the whole Rodalian nation.’
‘Or the bravest,’ said Carter.
‘Won’t make any difference,’ said his father. ‘A single flying wing against twenty bandit squadrons.’
‘Have the element of surprise, though.’
‘Surely will have that. Let’s get it done, boy. Fill the streets with our people.’
Carter entered the gloom of the belfry and grabbed one of the bell-pulls, putting his back into the work as counterpoint to his father – two peels to every three his father was pulling, sounding the fire warning until the ropes were practically lifting him off his feet. They went at it for a good few minutes, raising hell fit to wake the dead in the graveyard out back, ringing the bells until Carter’s skull throbbed from the sound. Their fire warning was to prove prophetic. Carter and his father traded the bell tower’s twilight for the churchyard, finding the first fighters from the bandit carrier diving down, trailed by banshee screams as they descended. Dark packages unlocked from under the planes’ wings and continued plummeting as the aircraft pulled up. Geysers of flame erupted as each bomb struck, columns of burning embers settling and sparking fires across the timber roofs. Carter recognised the ordnance, remembering the day the old territorial sergeant had brought along a variety of cannon rounds to show the cadets. One cannonball in particular, packed with tar and cloth fuses trailing like mouse-tails. Incendiary shot.
‘We’ve rung our alarm true,’ said Carter, watching people gathering in the street beyond the church’s walls.
‘They’re landing bombs on the new town, not inside the battlements,’ noted his father, looking up at the screaming gull-winged dive-bombers, ‘where the buildings are stone and won’t catch alight so quickly. That’s where we need to be… up the hill. Find your mother!’
Two fighters zoomed overhead, hardly higher than the bell tower; a couple of seconds in the air above and then they were gone. Carter ducked at the low pass, the propellers on each nose a circular blur. Just enough time for Carter to see them passing as gaudy as a traveller’s caravan. Not neat and uniform like the Rodalian Skyguard’s flying wings. These aircraft had been painted with bands of rainbow colour, unfamiliar animals pictured on the fuselage as elaborate as a sailor’s tattoos. Their engines reverberated louder than any machine Carter had heard before, the deep roar of beasts, throaty and powerful. Any other day, Carter would have loved to watch such aeroplanes passing over their backwater. Don’t look half so wondrous when they’re raining destruction down on you, though. In the distant sky a handful of their brethren twisted, dogfighting with the Rodalian flying wing, planes rolling and barrelling around each other. The battle was fought like crows mobbing a hawk, the small swift triangle falling through the flock whirling around it, seemingly too tiny to be torn out of the sky. Carter could just hear the distant thud of guns mounted along their side, bullets traded invisibly at this distance. Plaintive fingers of black smoke from the burning town reached up towards the duelling aircraft, black spirals blown into shreds by passing bandit fighters. Higher still, the massive carrier circled, extra waves of gliders launching from its hangars. When the carrier’s shadow fell on the edge of town, it was as though a stormfront was passing over; sunlight cut off, the only illumination from the fires spreading and raging across the new town.
Chaos reigned in the streets. Almost everyone had come out to see why the bells were sounding, finding not a single fire but dozens burning across the houses and shops and mills of the new town. Some of the Northhaven citizens had formed fire lines, buckets passed from wells and troughs and public fountains. Others dragged panicking horses out from stables; attempting to load up with as many personal possessions and family members as their beasts could bear. A few people fled along the roads out of town, even as the circuit of the huge bandit aircraft passed directly over the woods and fields beyond, bandit gliders drifting down towards the cornfields and river landing. In front of Carter, the balance of the town surged for the old city and the relative safety of the hill’s battlements, streets congested by people. They jostled an exodus in the opposite direction as wagons and carts full of goods tried to head away from town. Northhaven wasn’t home for the travellers and peddlers – they’d only feel safe on the open road or concealing their trading caravans under a forest canopy. Northhaven’s market day would be one to remember. Now local historians would have something to record to liven up their journals. Northhaven, a town where dropping a cornhusk was an event most years.
‘Get moving into the old town!’ yelled Jacob, shepherding people up the hill and towards the battlements. ‘When you pass the gate, head for basements and storm cellars!’ He began shouting at families desperately loading up carts, wheelbarrows, horses – anything that moved – with as many of their belongings as they could lay their hands on. ‘This is your wife’s lucky day, Rufus, she’s getting new plates this year. Dump your cart and haul your family through the western keep while it’s still open. Mary Frances, you planning on moving house this afternoon? Then leave now. Cole, you born in a sheep pen? No? Then quit wandering around the street like a lost lamb and move with a purpose!’
Carter’s mother appeared, pushing old man Littimer, the gnarled invalid cursing and hollering in his three-wheeled hospital chair, its pine frame bumping over the cobbles set in the road. Mary Carnehan steered it around abandoned wagons and through the scared jostling mass of townspeople. She had Carter helping in a second, the wailing Littimer grandchildren – no more than three years old – one under each of his muscular arms, thrashing about as they fled up the slope for the battlements. It got more and more crowded as roads narrowed towards the wall and the old town. Occasionally the bandit fighters overshot him, colourful streamers on their wings angrily flapping as they roared over low. The raiders appeared empty of incendiary bombs to release and didn’t seem inclined to waste expensive wing-gun ammunition on the panicked mobs below. The fires in the new town grew worse higher up the rise. Maybe due to the buildings being packed in tighter, maybe because the high sheriff’s men manned the wall, heavy rifles mounted on iron stands tracking planes and loosing off the odd shot, and the raiders retaliated by smoking the defenders’ aim. Barrage balloons bobbed at intervals along the ramparts, big brown canvas bags shaped like cigars. They had each been stitched with the royal crest of Weyland, the black boar, as if to tell the bandits which nation was doing the defending in this town. Hell, if they had heard the corn oil harvest had just been collected, they knew that much already. Probably didn’t care either way. Just pockets that need picking, and easier to steal from someone already kicked down to the floor. Up above, the mismatched aerial defence of the town finally ended, the remains of the Rodalian flying wing corkscrewing towards the woodland leaving a black coil of burning smoke in its wake. There was a nest of contrail tentacles where the brief combat had been fought. He hadn’t gone alone. In his wake he’d left half a dozen bandits scratched out of the sky, as many more fighters desperately limping back towards the carrier streaming smoke and flames. The Rodalian pilot had experienced one small piece of luck, anyhow… surviving for now. A white parachute drifting towards the town, caught by the suction of fires raging across the town in the chilly breezeless morning. Bandit planes arrowed past the chute, not bothering to plug the Rodalian pilot with cannon fire. A display of gallantry between fellow pilots? Doubtful. The bandit fliers were probably running light on ammunition after their aerial duel. Carter could see where the parachute was heading – a couple of streets over and lower down the hill’s slope. The Magnus Brewery, burning brighter than any of the surrounding rooftops, green-painted boards spewing flames from its high windows. Down the chute floated, catching on a loading beam poking out a third storey warehouse door. The pilot was left hanging li
ke a puppet with cut strings, boots thrashing. Can’t cut the chute from that height. It’s a choice between plummeting to death or staying put and being roasted alive.
Carter pointed the pilot’s predicament out to his parents.
‘He’s still alive,’ said his mother.
‘That flier risked his life to help the town,’ said Carter. ‘I’m not going to leave him strung up there like a chicken dangling on the spit.’
‘Don’t suppose there’s any point asking you to stay here?’ Jacob asked his son.
Carter shrugged. His father already knew the answer to that question.
Mary Carnehan pushed the wheelchair over to one of their neighbours, Carter passing the care of the children tucked under his arms to the same family. His mother returned to stand in front of his father. ‘You fixing to head over there and pray him down, Mister Carnehan?’
‘Not if I’ve got you to nag him down, Mrs Carnehan.’
Trying to head back down the hill was like wading against a tide. People were desperate now, shoving and shouldering each other as the fear of fire became panic. Some yelled angrily at Carter and his family as they pushed through, others not even seeing him, eyes fixed on the safety of the old town. Carter and his parents had to avoid the smaller passageways between buildings; many already blocked by burning debris. Taking one of the larger cobbled roads that circled the hill, they came back on the brewery, flames lapping around Ale Hill. Street lamps were still burning, too early in the morning for the lamplighters to have finished their circuit extinguishing the previous night’s work. Little fire risk from those lamps now, not with the windows of the brewery building crackling and exploding. Something about the scene put Carter in mind of sitting in the stalls of the town’s theatre. Maybe it was the back of the street hollowed out so just the frontage was left standing, like a flat piece of scenery in the wings. He gazed at the surreal sight of Northhaven burning and imagined the leaping blaze as red tissue paper waving from windows, an actor struggling and twisting in the tangled remains of his parachute.
There he is. The pilot looked to be male; stranded three storeys up and suspended from a gantry crane, its wooden arm creaking as the rest of the brewery crumbled. One of the building-fronts came tumbling down ahead of Carter, landing across the street in an outrush of burning timbers and sparks. Carter glanced inside the brewery entrance. Too much fire and smoke to even begin to see the staircase inside. No way up to the roof to try and release the pilot. The interior of the brewery was a death trap.
‘I don’t think we can get to the roof to bring him down,’ said Carter.
His father gazed up at the figure. Carter could watch the pilot’s kicking legs growing weaker, enveloped in waves of black smoke from the burning brewery. Brave devil’s going to suffocate from smoke inhalation before he burns.
Jacob pointed to the drainpipe fixed to the brewery wall. ‘Could climb up that. But how to bring him down safe?’
Mary Carnehan was rifling through the contents of an overturned wagon, someone’s hastily packed possessions strewn over the street in their dash to safety. She emerged from the mess with a blanket roll and a small hand-axe. ‘Isn’t that just like men? Yakking when you should be doing. We’ll cut him down with the axe, slow his fall with the blanket, just as if the three of us were the real fire service.’
Jacob took the axe and passed it to Carter. ‘Can you make the throw? Seen you practising out in the trees when you think I’m not around, tossing those three throwing knives you bought last summer.’
Carter was briefly astonished. His father actually trusted his son to do something by himself. The old man had seen him throwing at targets on the trees and rated his aim?
‘If I thought I could make the throw better than you, I’d do it,’ said Jacob. ‘But I’ve never been much of a one for throwing cutlery about.’
Carter tucked the axe’s wooden handle under his trouser belt and started to shin up the drainpipe. The boards the drainpipe was nailed to felt scalding hot, the back of his fingers burning as they scraped the wall. Wouldn’t take much to buckle now, bury you and your parents, both.
Coughing from the acrid backwash of smoke crackling inside the building, Carter halted, dangling two storeys above ground. Down below, his mother and father had spread the blanket out wide, holding it drum-tight at chest level, waiting below the Rodalian pilot. Could have done with a few more hands to catch the flier, but just his parents would have to do. The pilot was wearing a purple-dyed sheepskin aviator’s jacket edged with golden fur and he was getting smoked pretty good. You could cure bacon in less than that. His head lolled to one side, covered by a leather pilot’s helmet with the Rodalian’s Asiatic features partially hidden by wide flying goggles. Carter got the impression, though, that the flier might just be conscious enough to be aware of the suicidal young man clinging onto the drainpipe across from him.
Carter tugged out the hand-axe, his right palm so sweaty that it nearly slipped out of his grip. His left hand clung to the gutter’s increasingly hot surface. Here goes nothing. His eyes focused on the parachute cords wrapped along the loading arm. The flier’s line had become tangled with the warehouse pulley’s ropes. Carter let his mind clear, trying to forget the precariousness of his situation. The ridiculousness of it. His town ablaze around him. A bird’s eye view of townspeople fleeing up the hill along parallel streets. The thunder of bandit planes strafing the town. Just focus on the parachute lines. That’s how you strike bark with a throwing knife. Nothing else. Just you and the target, not even thinking about it. The thinking only gets in the way. The throw was made. The hand-axe left Carter’s hand before he was aware it had gone, its head rotating lazily before thudding into the tangle of pulley rope and chute lines, the whole mess exploding like a nest of kicked snakes. The pilot was suddenly freed from the loading arm. A loud ripping noise as what was left of the pilot’s chute took wing in the hot draught, flapping away as if the fabric were alive. The Rodalian plunged down, arrow-straight, taking the tension out of the waiting blanket below. After he’d slapped into it, the pilot was left lying in the middle of the street while Carter’s parents made a stretcher out of the blanket. Then they dragged the Rodalian away inside the roll to the other side of the road. They were both shouting something at Carter that he couldn’t hear. But he heard the smash of exploding glass in the surviving windows, the roar of collapsing floors giving way inside the brewery. He was getting good at shinning his way down the wall, sliding and slithering towards the ground. A spooked lizard couldn’t do it any better. The wall Carter had descended collapsed behind him even as he was throwing himself to the ground. He rolled once, then came up in a cloud of dust to sprint for the side-street his parents were retreating down, dragging the Rodalian flier with them. How Carter escaped was a pure-born miracle, the lick of burning timbers and rubble a wave of surf chasing him every step of the way. It was as though he outpaced a storm, the heat of burning dust and wooden cinders stinging the back of his neck. Carter barrelled in front of his parents. His father had the flier up, limping and leaning against his shoulder. Dazed, the man’s yellow cheeks covered in soot, the Rodalian hacked his guts out.
‘Ankle’s twisted with the fall,’ said his mother, ‘maybe broken.’
‘Take the man’s weight on the other side,’ Jacob ordered his son. ‘He’s not climbing up to the old town by himself.’ Not a word of admiration for my aim, not a word of thanks for what I’ve just done.
‘Surviving’s the only medal worth being pinned with,’ said Jacob, reading his son’s face. ‘And that was forty or fifty people’s livelihoods that just went crashing down. Nothing worth celebrating. Now, let’s move.’
Well, stick them, anyway. He’d have something to tell his friends, now, something more than just running and hiding in old town cellars. Bravest man to ever take to the air, and he was only alive thanks to Carter.
‘You did okay,’ his mother whispered across to Carter as they hauled the flier away. The pilot wasn�
��t taller than five and a half feet, but he sure did weigh some for such a diminutive figure. It was like dragging bricks up the hill. She wagged a finger at her son. ‘But the only thing knife throwing is good for is a circus act, and I haven’t raised a Carnehan boy to turn circus tricks for pennies, you hear me?’
‘They’re good for other things too… I can draw them pretty fast.’
‘The other things I’m not even going to pass comment on,’ she warned.
The flier mumbled, but it didn’t sound like anything Carter understood. Maybe some local mountain dialect. The pilot had been concussed pretty hard, cuts and bruises all across his face. Must have taken a mouthful of fuselage bailing out of his flying wing.
There was no sign of refugee numbers abating on West Hill Road, a whole street full of hysterical townspeople throwing themselves onto the cobbles every time a bandit plane buzzed by. The town was full with visitors in from the countryside for the market, every hotel and guesthouse already packed. Seemed like the raiders had run out of incendiary bombs to drop and were relying on the screaming sirens built into their engines to inflict terror on the people. Robbers softening up the householders before looting their property, that’s all they are. Just give Carter a rifle and he’d show the bastards what you got for attacking good Northhaven folk. Gunfire rippled along the ramparts, heavy rifles bucking on tripods with the recoil from large-bore shells. If one of the bandit planes had taken damage from the defenders along the parapet, Carter had yet to glimpse it.