“Not in this weather—not with all those airships chasing us. We’d be slowed down, even using her parse tubes to help.”
The big man nodded. “Better get her off there, then! When that storm catches up, chances are pretty good she won’t be able to stay aloft. If she starts to go down then, we won’t be able to help her.”
Redden Alt Mer had already come to that conclusion. He wasn’t even sure he could manage to keep the Jerle Shannara flying. He toyed briefly with the prospect of changing over to Black Moclips and sailing her instead, since she was in better condition. But the Jerle Shannara was the faster, more maneuverable vessel, and he didn’t want to give her up when it was speed and maneuverability that were likely to make the difference in a confrontation with their pursuers. The matter was moot in any case because there wasn’t any real chance that he could get everyone off his ship and onto Little Red’s with the weather this bad.
He pursed his lips. Rue was going to be furious if he told her to give up her prize. She might not do it, even knowing how much trouble she was in.
He looked back again at Black Moclips and beyond to the enemy airships, black dots against the roiling darkness of the storm.
“How do they keep finding us?” he snapped at Spanner Frew, suddenly angry at how impossible things had gotten.
The shipwright shook his head and didn’t answer. A new level of frustration crept through Big Red. It was bad enough that they had lost Walker and all those who had gone inland to the ruins. It was bad enough that they had nothing to show for having come all this way and might well return home empty-handed—if they were able to get home at all. But it was intolerable that these phantom airships continued to harass them like hunting dogs would a fleeing, wounded animal, finding their tracks or their scent where there should be no trace of their passing at all.
There was nothing he could do about it just now. But he could do something about Little Red. She was not yet recovered from her wounds and couldn’t have had much more sleep than they had. She must be near exhaustion from flying Black Moclips alone, trying to manage everything from the pilot box, the wind howling past her like a demon set loose to tear her from the skies. She was a good pilot, almost as good as he was—and a better navigator. But it wouldn’t be enough to save her from this.
“I’m taking her off, Black Beard!” he yelled over to the shipwright. “Drop our speed one quarter and hold steady toward that split in the peaks ahead.”
“You want to take her off in a grapple?” Spanner Frew yelled back.
Redden Alt Mer shook his head. “It would take too long. She has to come to us. I’ll send one of the Wing Riders in.”
He jumped down to the main deck, shouting orders at the crew, telling them to find their places at the working parse tubes, to monitor the draws while he ran aft. At the railing, he dug through a wooden box and found the emerald pennant that meant he needed one of them to fly to him.
Of course, the signal wouldn’t work if no one was looking. And in a bad storm like this one, they might not be.
He fastened the pennant’s clips to a line and ran the piece of cloth up into the wind, where it snapped and cracked like ice breaking free in the Squirm. Facing back, he watched Black Moclips lurch and buck. Several of her draws had broken loose, and one of her sails was in tatters. She was flying on her pilot’s skill and sheer luck.
Even as he watched, she faded farther back in the haze of clouds and mist. The Wing Riders were barely visible, still flying to either side. Their pursuers had disappeared entirely.
Redden Alt Mer pounded his fist on the railing cap. Neither Hunter Predd nor Po Kelles had seen the pennant.
“Look at me!” he screamed in frustration.
Lost in the howl of the wind, the words blew away from him.
A thousand yards back, so fatigued that she was near collapse, Rue Meridian fought to keep the Jerle Shannara in sight. Her world had narrowed down to this single purpose. Forgotten were her plans for coming inland to the ruins, for finding and rescuing Bek and the others of the company, for trying to salvage something from the disaster this voyage had become, for doing anything but keeping her vessel flying. Though her thoughts were clouded and her mind numb from concentrating on working the controls, she knew she was in trouble. The Jerle Shannara was drawing farther away and the airships pursuing her were drawing closer. Soon, any chance for escape would be lost.
Black Moclips shuddered anew as the winds preceding the storm buffeted her. The airship lurched sideways and down. The problem was simple enough to diagnose if not to solve. The ambientlight sails had been kept furled during the past few days, and no new power had been gathered for the diapson crystals. No new power was being collected now because she couldn’t put up the sails in this storm—couldn’t put them up at all, for that matter, storm or not, by herself. The limited power that remained was being exhausted. Personal attention at the various parse tubes was needed to distribute it more efficiently, but she couldn’t leave the controls long enough to attempt that. The best she would do was to try to manipulate things from the pilot box, and while that was possible, it was never intended that an airship be flown by a single person.
She had a crew, but they were locked up belowdecks, and once she set them free she might as well lock herself up in their place.
The first flurries of snow blew past her face, and she was reminded again of how far the temperature had fallen. Winter seemed to be descending into a land that hadn’t seen such weather in more than a thousand years.
She tried to coax more speed from the crystals, forcing herself to try a different combination of power allocations, feeling Black Moclips slew and skid on the wind from her efforts, fighting off her growing certainty that nothing she could do would make any difference.
She was so absorbed in her efforts that she failed to see Hunter Predd soar ahead into the misty gray toward the Jerle Shannara. Po Kelles kept pace with her off to the port side, but she didn’t even glance at him. In her struggle to fly Black Moclips, she had all but forgotten the Wing Riders. Then Hunter Predd flew Obsidian right over her bow to catch her attention. She ducked in response to the unexpected movement, then turned as the Roc swung around and settled in off her starboard railing, almost close enough to touch, rocking back and forth with the force of the wind.
“Little Red!” Hunter Predd shouted into the wind, his words barely audible.
She glanced over and waved to let him know she heard.
“I’m taking you off the ship!” He waited a moment to let the impact of the words sink in. “Your brother says you have to come with me. That’s an order!”
Angry that Big Red would even suggest such a thing, she shook her head no at once.
“You can’t stay!” Hunter Predd shouted, bringing Obsidian in closer. “Look behind you! They’re right on top of you!”
She didn’t have to look; she knew they were there, the airships chasing her. She knew they were so close that if she turned, she could make out the blank faces of the dead men who flew them. She knew they would have her in less than an hour if something didn’t happen to change her situation. She knew if they didn’t catch her by then, it was only because she had gone down.
She knew, in short, that her situation was hopeless.
She just didn’t want to admit it. She couldn’t bear it, in fact.
“Little Red!” the Wing Rider called again. “Did you hear me?”
She looked over at him. He was hunched close to Obsidian’s dark neck, arms and legs gripping the harness, safety lines tethering rider and bird. He looked like a burr stuck in the great Roc’s feathers.
“I heard!” she shouted back.
“Then get off that ship! Now!”
He said it with an insistence that brooked no argument, an insistence buttressed by the knowledge that she must realize the precariousness of her situation as surely as her brother and he did. He stared at her from astride his bird, weathered features scrunched and angry, daring her to
contradict him. She understood what he was thinking: if he didn’t convince her here and now, it would be too late; already, the Jerle Shannara was nearly out of sight ahead and the storm upon her. She could still do what she chose, but not for very much longer.
She stared through the tangled, windblown strands of her hair to the airship’s controls. Dampness ran down the smooth metal and gleaming wood in twisting rivulets. She studied the way her hands fit on the levers and wheel. She owned Black Moclips now; it belonged to her. She had snatched it away from the thieves who had stolen her own ship. She had claimed it at no small risk to herself, and she was entitled to keep it. No one had a right to take it away from her.
But that didn’t mean she was wedded to it. That didn’t mean she couldn’t give it up, if she chose. If it was her idea. After all, it was just something made out of wood and metal, not out of flesh and blood. It wasn’t possessed of a heart and mind and soul. It was only a tool.
She looked back at Hunter Predd. The Wing Rider was waiting. She pointed aft and down, then at herself. He nodded and swung away from the ship.
She snatched up the steering bands and lashed the wheels and levers in place, then hurried down the steps and across the slippery surface of the decking to the main hatchway. She went down in a rush, before she had time to think better of it. She was curiously at peace. The anger she had felt moments earlier was gone. Black Moclips was a fine airship, but it was only that and nothing more.
She reached the storeroom door where Aden Kett and his Federation crew were locked away and banged on the door. “Aden, can you hear me?”
“I hear you, Little Red,” the Commander replied.
“I’m letting you out and giving you back your ship. She’s struggling in this storm and needs a full crew to keep her flying. I can’t manage it alone. I own her, but I won’t let her die needlessly. So that’s that. You do what you can for her. All right?”
“All right.” She could tell from the sound of his voice that he was pressed up against the door on the other side.
“You’ll understand if I don’t stay around to see how this turns out.” She wiped at the moisture beading her forehead and dripping into her eyes. “You might have trouble doing the right thing by me afterwards. I’d hate to see you make a fool of yourself. So after I open this door, I’ll be leaving. Do you think you and the others can refrain from giving in to your worst impulses and coming after me?”
She heard him laugh. “Come after you? We’ve had enough of you, Little Red. We’ll all feel better knowing you’re off the ship. Just let us out of here.”
She paused then, leaning into the door, her face close to the cracks in the boards that formed it. “Listen to me, Aden. Don’t stay around afterwards. Don’t try to do the right thing. Forget about your orders and your sense of duty and your Federation training. Take Black Moclips and sail her home as quickly as you can manage it. Take your chances back there.”
She heard his boots shift on the flooring. “Who’s out there? We saw the other ships.”
“I don’t know. No one does, but it isn’t anyone you want anything to do with. More than a dozen airships, Aden, but no flags, no insignia, nothing human aboard. Just rets and men who look like they’re dead. I don’t know who sent them. I don’t care. You remember what I said. Fly out of here. Leave all this. It’s good advice. Are you listening?”
“I’m listening,” he answered quietly.
She didn’t know what else to say. “Tell Donell that I’m sorry I hit him so hard.”
“He knows.”
She pushed away from the door and stood facing it again. “See you down the road, Aden.”
“Down the road, Little Red.”
She reached for the latch and threw it clear, then turned and bolted up the stairs without looking back. In seconds she was topside again, surprised to find sleet had turned the world white. She ducked her head against the bitter sting of the wind and slush and moved to the aft railing. The rope Hunter Predd had used earlier to climb down to Obsidian was still tied in place and coiled on the deck. She threw the loose end overboard and watched it tumble away into the haze. She could just barely make out the dark contours of the Roc’s wings as it lifted into place below.
She looked back once at Black Moclips. “You’re a good girl,” she told her. “Stay safe.”
Then she was gone into the gloom.
Minutes later, Redden Alt Mer stood at the port railing of the Jerle Shannara and watched his sister pause in her climb up the rope ladder. She had gotten off the Roc all right, taken firm hold of the ladder and started up. But now she hung there with her head lowered and her long red hair falling all around her face, swaying in the wind.
He thought he might have to go down the ladder and get her.
Thinking that, he was reminded suddenly of a time when they were children, and he had gone high up into the top branches of an old tree. Rue, only five years old, had tried to follow, working her way up the trunk, using the limbs of the tree as rungs. But she wasn’t strong yet, and she tired quickly. Halfway up, she lost her momentum completely and stopped moving, hanging from the branches of that tree the way she was hanging from the rope ladder now. She was something of a nuisance back then, always tagging along after him, trying to do everything he was doing. He was four years older than she was and irritated by her most of the time. He could have left her where she was on the tree—had thought he might, actually. Instead, he had turned back and yelled down to her. “Come on, Rue! Keep going! Don’t quit! You can do it!”
He could yell those same words down to her now, to the little sister who was still trying to do everything he did. But even as he considered it, she lifted her head, saw him looking at her, and began to climb again at once. He smiled to himself. She came on now without slowing, and he reached out to take her arm, helping her climb over the railing and onto the ship.
Impulsively, he gave her a hug and was surprised when she hugged him back.
He shook his head at her. “Sometimes you scare me.” He looked into her wet face, reading the exhaustion in her eyes. “Actually, most of the time.”
She grinned. “That’s real praise, coming from you.”
“Flying Black Moclips all by yourself in a bad piece of weather like you did would scare anyone. It should have scared you, but I suppose it didn’t.”
“Not much.” She grinned some more, like the little kid she was inside. “I took her away from the witch, big brother. Crew and all. It was hard to give her up again. I didn’t want to lose her, though.”
“Better her than you. We don’t need her anyway. It’s enough if the witch doesn’t have her.” He gave his sister a small shove. “Go below and put on some dry clothes.”
She shook her head stubbornly. “I don’t need to change clothes just yet.”
“Rue,” he said, a hint of irritation creeping into his voice. “Don’t argue with me about this. You argue with me about everything. Just do it. You’re soaked through; you need dry clothes. Go change.”
She hesitated a moment, and he was afraid she was going to press the matter. But then she turned around and went down through the main hatch to the lower cabins, water dripping from her across the decking.
He watched her disappear from sight, thinking as she did that no matter how old they grew or what happened to them down the road, they would never feel any differently about each other. He would still be her big brother; she would still be his little sister. Mostly, they would still be best friends.
He couldn’t ask for anything better.
When she reemerged, the wind was blowing so hard it knocked her sideways. The rain and sleet had stopped, but the air was cold enough to freeze the tiny hairs in her nostrils. She wrapped her great cloak more tightly about her, warm again in dry clothes and boots, and pushed across the deck unsteadily to where her brother and Spanner Frew stood in the pilot box. Ahead, the mountains loomed huge and craggy against the skyline, a massing of jagged peaks and rugged cliffs piled one
on top of the other until they faded away into the brume-shrouded distance.
She climbed into the pilot box, and her brother said at once, “Put on your safety harness.”
She did so, noting that all of the Rover crew on the decks below were strapped in as well, hunched down against the weather, stationed at the parse tubes and connecting draws.
When she glanced over her shoulder, she found the world behind had disappeared in a thick, dark haze, taking with it any sign of the pursuing airships.
Big Red glanced over. “They disappeared sometime back. I don’t know if they broke it off because of the weather or to go after Black Moclips. Doesn’t matter. They’re gone, and that’s enough. We’ve got bigger problems to deal with.”
Spanner Frew yelled something down to one of the Rovers amidships, and the crewman waved back, moving to tighten a radian draw. Big Red had stripped back all the sails, and the Jerle Shannara was riding bare-masted in the teeth of winds that side-swiped her as badly as they had Black Moclips. Rue saw that the radian draws had been reconfigured, strung away from two of the six parse tubes to feed power to the remaining four. Even those were singing with the vibration of the wind, straining to break free of their fastenings.
“I left a ship in better shape than this one,” she declared, half to herself.
“She’d be in better shape if we hadn’t had to leave quite so suddenly to find you!” Big Red grunted.
That wasn’t true, of course. They would have had to leave in any case to flee the enemy airships, no matter whether or not they were searching for her. Repairs of the sort needed by the Jerle Shannara required that the airship be stationary, and that wasn’t going to happen until they could set down somewhere.
“Any place we can land?” she asked hopefully.
Spanner Frew laughed. “You mean in an upright position? Or will a severe slant do?” His hands worked the steering levers with quick, anxious movements. “First things first. See those mountains ahead of us, Little Red? The ones that look like a big wall? The ones we’re in danger of smashing into?”