“Hopefully, what they don’t expect!” He had to shout to be heard above the roar of the wind as they gained speed, the thrusters shoved all the way forward, the ship bucking as it was struck by wicked gusts of wind.
“It’s the wrong direction!”
“Not if we want to find cover. If we reach the mountains, we can disappear—lose them in the peaks and valleys, or even hide in the forests. Don’t you see, Zia? They might come after us. If they have airships close at hand, they can be airborne pretty quickly, and maybe we won’t be fast enough to outrun them. If they have weapons like ours, they can bring us down.”
“If, if, if!” she muttered, her bitter words almost lost in the wind. “What a mistake this was.”
She went silent then, glancing back over her shoulder, watching the land behind them rapidly disappear into shadows and memory. Was it a mistake? Dar grimaced. Sending Ruis Quince had been unfortunate. He had completely misread the situation and was dead as a result. Balronen had misread it, too. He was the one who had sent them on this fool’s errand—he and his sycophantic allies, thinking the enemy could be turned to their own purposes, thinking they would be manipulated.
Everyone had been so wrong. But was it simply a mistake?
He wondered. The intrigues at Paranor were like spiderwebs these days, with everyone scuffling about to avoid being ensnared while trying improve their standing in the order. Cooperation was a thing of the past; all that mattered was getting close to Balronen and his inner circle. Drisker had said as much on leaving all those months ago, almost his final words to Dar.
Do what you must, young man, he had whispered. But watch your back. In the scramble that lies ahead, I fear there will be few you can trust.
So nothing had been achieved in this outing. All they had to show for it was the senseless deaths of a Druid and the Trolls who had tried to protect him. The pointlessness of it all was stunning. Dar had not even been allowed to put himself in a place where he could help save them, and if it weren’t for his compulsive insistence on taking any risk necessary to fulfill his pledge to protect the Druids placed in his charge they would have lost Zia, too. Now they were in flight, and whatever opportunities there might have been for peaceful negotiation were lost. All that was left for them was to get back to Paranor and warn the Druids what was coming.
“So we tack into the mountains and make our way home from there?” Zia pressed him.
He nodded. “Fly low, stay out of sight, get home as quickly as we can and report what’s happened. Then prepare for the worst. That army is coming for us.”
“Ruis should have seen it. He should have recognized the danger. He just disregarded it.”
“It was strange to see him so strident and aggressive. He isn’t usually like that. What happened back there?”
She nodded vaguely, looking away. “Ruis didn’t even try to be cautious. He just started threatening. Said the Druids would smash them if threatened. Bragged that no one could stand against the Druids, and that they should beg forgiveness for their intrusion into Druid country. Demanded to know what they intended. Insisted they explain themselves. Half of it didn’t even make sense. It was ridiculous. The one in the white cloak mostly just listened. Then White Cloak motioned his soldiers forward to surround us, seemed to be indicating we were all his prisoners. Ruis just stared at him; he didn’t seem to know what to do. Then we were attacked.”
“What in the name of sanity was Ruis thinking?” Dar muttered.
Zia shook her head, glancing back again. “That wasn’t Ruis Quince back there. That was someone else entirely.”
They didn’t speak for a while after that, although Zia stayed with him in the pilot box. The Trolls who remained aboard had stationed themselves at the rail slings and flash rips in readiness for whatever might come against them. They were Trolls, and so their faces showed nothing of their feelings. But Dar knew them well enough that he could recognize the tension in their posture and movements. They were stunned by what had happened back on the flats, not sure how they could have changed things but wishing they had. They cast their eyes back frequently, waiting for what might be coming, uncertain if they could escape.
“We need to eat,” Dar said finally. “Will you take the helm while I get us something?”
She was no skilled flier but perfectly capable of keeping the airship on a straight course toward the mountains. Around them, the world was a gray, forbidding place. Clouds hung low across the sky. Shadows painted the land in broad swaths. A storm chased them in a dark line, running north to south on the horizon. They would be into it within the hour.
Dar disappeared below and searched their stores for food and drink, settling on an aleskin and half a loaf of bread. He was thinking they were ill equipped to withstand a sustained pursuit. Their stores were minimal and their craft, while capable enough, was less than suitable for effecting an escape. He kept seeing the white-cloaked leader of the enemy army. He saw him killing Quince all over again, a nasty piece of work for which he showed no emotion. He kept hearing Zia cry out in dismay. He kept thinking about how he would have felt if it had been her instead of Quince.
He paused at the ladder leading up. Perhaps he had been wrong to doubt their relationship. Perhaps he should have given it another chance, a longer chance, to see if things might work. He had been so cautious; he had miscalculated how strongly she felt about him. Immersed in his job as Blade, given over to fulfilling his pledge to protect the Druids, he had failed to protect what mattered.
How much they meant to each other. How fragile the ties that bound them actually were. It was said love could not live in a vacuum. It might be said it could not live in a whirlwind, either.
He went up with the bread and ale and took back the controls. The mountains were growing closer. He glanced over his shoulder and found the horizons west empty of airships but thick with rain clouds. Yet he judged the approaching storm too far back to catch them. Another thirty minutes and they would be into the Charnals, where pursuit of any kind would become much more difficult.
“Did you love Ruis?” he asked Zia, unable to help himself.
“I loved you.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you asking about Ruis? Had you been paying better attention earlier in our relationship, you wouldn’t have to ask me that question now.”
Her long hair flew back in the wind, tendrils of honey-colored softness whipping against his face. She was standing very close now, pressing up against him. “Were you worried I might love him?” she asked.
“I guess I was. He wasn’t right for you.”
“Maybe not. But then it seemed you weren’t right for me, either. Or I for you.”
“I misjudged. I missed seeing the truth. I was too wrapped up in other concerns.”
She looked at him. “Don’t expect that to change, Dar. It might not be possible. It would mean you would have to change, and I don’t think you can.”
He left it there, thinking instead about how he would convince Balronen to seek the aid of either the Federation or the Elves in the coming battle. It seemed more likely than not that the enemy army had bad intentions toward Paranor, and there were serious questions about whether the Druids could stand against them. Balronen would pull out the same tired argument as always, the same old disclaimer. The Druids needed no one. Their magic was sufficient to protect them, their power greater than any combination of human-made weapons. Asking for help compromised their position as negotiators for all the Races. It diminished their standing with the other governments and lands.
It demeaned them. It revealed them as weak.
Such foolish posturing. Such unnecessary pride. But Ober Balronen never saw it that way.
So now Dar must find a way to persuade him to change his thinking. If he failed, the Ard Rhys by his stubbornness risked the destruction of the entire Druid order.
And then suddenly, from astern, a chilling cry arose. “Airships!”
They had been fou
nd.
SIXTEEN
Dar turned at once to look, Zia with him, and together they watched as three dots appeared from out of the mists behind them. Fast cruisers, the highlander realized. Built for speed and maneuverability. Warships much more suited for battle than was his.
So the enemy had the use of airships, too.
He stared back at them for long moments, wanting to be sure. Then he turned away again.
The distance between them was diminishing all too quickly.
They were in for a fight.
Pursuer and pursued closed when they were within five hundred yards of the lower ranges of the Charnals, the cruisers coming on fast, the Druid warship backed against the peaks and searching for a way to slip through. Dar was at the helm, with Zia gone to the stern to employ her magic to protect them. He was angling toward Rausk Break, a deep split in the peaks where a narrowing not far within opened into a wider space beyond. Once through, they could turn the airship sideways and bring the entirety of their starboard or port weapons to bear while they confronted the enemy airships in the narrow opening one by one. It was a faint hope, but at this point faint hope was all they had.
Below them, the forests were a rolling green carpet along the lower slopes of the towering peaks, clusters of boulders and dead trees tumbled and turned silver with weather and time poking out like burrowing creatures come up for air. Darkness was descending quickly as the eastern horizon filled with clouds. They had found a fresh rainstorm into which to fly, little more than a squall.
Ahead, a much worse storm waited, a black maelstrom churning within the peaks of the mountains.
As if to signal its ferocity, lightning flashed and thunder rumbled in a long, steady peal, and the weapons of the approaching cruisers began to fire. Ropes of diapson-crystal-generated fire flashed all about the Druid ship, some of which appeared certain to strike the vessel directly. Zia had used her magic to put up a protective screen, and any potential damage was deflected. Even so, the force of the blows rocked the airship, and Dar had to work hard to hold her steady. Aft weapons fired into the enemy, a steady stream of fiery explosions, but the damage was minimal. Too much shifting about as Zia’s shield was raised and lowered to allow for any real retaliation. Dar saw how this would go as Zia tired and knew they had to gain the protection of Rausk Break swiftly.
He took their vessel sharply right and downward, then up again in a stomach-churning heave that threw off the charges being fired by their pursuers. Then another surge as a final blow struck their stern, and they were through the gap and into the peaks, their pursuers now forced to follow in single file.
By the time the first of the three enemy airships hove into view, Dar had swung their own vessel broadside, and all of their flash rips discharged at once. Multiple strikes filled the air with fire and smoke, and the stricken cruiser erupted in flames and began to drop toward the rocks below. But the enemy flagship had come in low and quick behind it and was firing its weapons into the exposed belly of the Druid vessel, which bucked and lurched wildly with each blow it absorbed.
Another few hits and she would go down.
Dar pushed the thruster levers all the way forward and shot deeper into the canyon, fast enough to evade further damage from cannon fire but not smoothly enough to evade the ragged cliff walls, striking rocky outcroppings twice, each time tearing holes in the side of the ship’s hull. Then they were away again, through the Rausk and into the interior of the Charnals. Dar wheeled their airship left down a long canyon, not even bothering to look back for the pursuit he knew would be there.
“Dar!” Zia was beside him, her face blackened with ash and her eyes wild. “The last two members of the Druid Guard were lost over the side. We’re down to Stow and the crew. We have to get out of range of those flash rips!”
“Try to keep them off us for another few minutes,” he shouted back. “I have an idea!”
She stared at him, leaned in suddenly, and kissed him full on the lips. “You and me. When we’re safe again.”
Hope seared through him, and then she was gone, rushing for the back of the airship, already beginning to spin out her protective magic. Dar glanced upward to the airship rigging. Damage everywhere, light sheaths in tatters, spars turned to kindling. Even the masts were splintered and cracked, the smallest almost sheared through about a third of the way up. The deck was littered with debris, and the hull was holed in a dozen places. That the lines to the parse tubes were still intact was nothing short of a miracle.
He stared ahead at the wall of the approaching storm. Faster, he thought, trying to urge the ship to greater speed, feeling the nearness of their pursuers. Fly, you lumbering sloth!
Then he sensed Zia’s magic filling the air behind them, the heat and light of it, the sound of power rising. A quick glance back to confirm one of the fast cruisers was almost on top of them, and then a final push. Flash rip fire lanced all about, but the blows that would have struck were deflected.
Zia staying strong, keeping them safe.
He found the defile he was looking for, a wicked jagged gap with protrusions like teeth, and began to maneuver their airship into its confines. A few feet away, Stow Chutin stood watching the jaws tighten about their craft.
“Zia!” Dar called to her.
She came at once, speeding across the decking, leaping debris as she hurried to reach him. Behind them, their pursuers were momentarily out of sight as they sought to catch up to their quarry without overexposing themselves.
“Can you conjure up a screen of mist so they can’t see us until they’re right on top of us?”
He was already turning the ship about, pointing the bow back the way they had come. Zia stared at him. “You’re going to ram them?”
“The one advantage we have. We weigh a lot more. If we catch them right, they’ll go down and we might live to see another day. Can you do it?”
Lips tight, she nodded, hurrying toward the bow as it swung about. Without slowing, she began weaving her hands to summon the elements, turning them to her use and molding them into a heavy mist that rose in front of them and spread outward into the canyon. Dar found a resting point for the airship and held her steady. No movement, no sounds, a predator waiting for prey.
For long moments, nothing happened. Then a shadow appeared in the mists, so vague it almost wasn’t there. Dar jammed the thruster levers forward and the big warship began to move. By the time the enemy cruiser was clearly visible they were right on top of it and moving too fast to be avoided. Shouts and cries of warning rose from the other vessel, and Dar could see figures trying to turn the rail slings and flash rips into position to fire on them. But they barely got off a scattering of shots before the fortified bow of the Druid warship slammed into their midsection.
Straight through the center of the cruiser it lurched, splintering decking and hull, staving in masts, scattering soldiers and crew everywhere. With a terrible rending sound, the ship split in two and fell away, taking everyone on board with her.
Dar kept their own ship flying forward, navigating the spiky entrance in an effort to get free again, ignoring the danger to his own vessel, searching everywhere for the enemy flagship.
He couldn’t find it.
“Zia!” he called forward. “Can you see…?”
Wham!
It felt as if the world had collapsed atop them. Dar went to his knees, barely clinging to consciousness. Fire rained down, lines of flames exploding everywhere as the enemy flagship swung down from the rocks where it had been waiting and hammered their helpless vessel with strike after strike from its cannons. Smoke and ash and fire were everywhere, and Dar was at the center of the maelstrom. He fell away from the controls, knowing instinctively they were useless. He stumbled from what remained of the pilot box, trying to keep his feet as the warship tilted and started down. He scanned the decks, searching for the others.
“Zia!” he screamed.
No answer. No sign of Chutin, the big Captain of the Druid G
uard. No sign of the crew. No sign of anyone.
Overhead, the cruiser was maneuvering into position to finish what it had started. Flash rips were being swung into position and leveled for firing.
Dar Leah hesitated only a moment. Longer, and he would have been incinerated. Racing to the starboard side of the doomed vessel, the Sword of Leah strapped tightly across his back, he snatched up the loose end of the closest mooring line, locked the brake on the spindle, wrapped the line tightly about his arm, and threw himself over the railing and into the misty gloom.
—
It was an impulsive, reckless, suicidal act, one born of an instinctive need to try to stay alive. In less desperate moments, he would never have even considered it, let alone done it. But desperate moments were all that were left him, so he did it without thinking.
He fell for a long time as he clung to the mooring line—long enough that he began to wonder if he had been mistaken in believing the other end was secured. He tumbled through endless mist and gloom into a void that seemed to have no bottom. To either side, the jagged cliffs flew by, stark and empty and sharp-edged. Birds circled about him, screaming their shrill, mournful cries, engaged in their own pursuits, unmindful of his frightening descent.
Overhead, the Druid airship was ablaze and breaking up, pieces of it already spinning away like shooting stars, barely missing him as they hurtled past, almost as if deliberately intent on seeing him dead before the rope caught. Tears streamed from his wind-whipped eyes. The cliff face drew steadily closer the farther he fell. Much closer, and he would slam into it, but there was nothing he could do to prevent that from happening. He tightened his grip on the mooring rope and waited for the inevitable.
Then the rope played out all the way, and his fall was arrested with such force that it felt as if his arms had been torn out of their sockets. For a moment, he hung there swinging and spinning, gasping for breath and struggling to keep his hold, fighting off the shock to his body. When finally he could manage it, he steadied himself and began to swing toward the cliff face like a pendulum. After several tries his maneuvering brought him close enough to see the jagged surface clearly, and he realized the place he wanted was twenty feet higher up.