Philip Reeve - A Darkling Plain

The deck plate heaved. An armored fist punched up through the quay from beneath; clawed fingers widened the hole, and Grike scrambled out. He flared with light as another flashbulb fired, silvering his armor, his fingertips, and his gruesome metal grin.

“Stalker!” screamed the Mancunian gunman, trying to hop away. Grike picked him up and flung him off the edge of the strut; he flailed at the empty air for a moment and then fell with a terrible shriek, and landed bouncing in the safety net. Grike hurled one of his friends after him; the rest turned to run, and collided with the first squad of Airhaven militia arriving from the High Street.

Hester fainted again and fell down on the hard quay, waking a few seconds later when the Airhaven fireboat swung overhead, dowsing everyone with freezing water. There seemed to be a general belief that whole squads of Stalkers had been landed on Strut 13. Dozens of alarm bells were ringing, making horrid discords. At the end of the strut the Mancunians were fighting with the Airhaven men, who had somehow got the idea that they were Green Storm raiders in disguise. “No, no, no!” Pennyroyal was yelling. Below the strut, the Mancunians Grike had thrown off it were scrambling up the mesh of the safety net to the neighboring quay, where aviators from a Florentine highliner leaned out to haul them to safety.

Below that, dark against the cloud layer, the plump shape of an airship moved, rising upward.

“The Jenny Haniver,” said Hester, looking down at it through the holes in the deck plate. Then she realized that it couldn’t be; it wasn’t Tom coming to her rescue this time, but Theo, in the Shadow Aspect.

Grike had seen it too, or heard the mutter of its engines. He picked Oenone up under one arm, as if she were a parcel.

He turned and reached for Hester, but Hester was dragging herself away from him toward von Kobold.

In the scrum at the far end of the strut one of the Mancunians was yelling, “It was Pennyroyal! Pennyroyal lured us here! Into the claws of the Storm’s Stalkers!”

“That’s not true!” Pennyroyal shouted, skipping backward as an Airhaven soldier made a grab at him. “I’m the victim here! What about my money?”

The Shadow Aspect came up like a surfacing whale at the end of Strut 13. Hester saw Theo inside the gondola as she turned von Kobold over. The fat Mancunian’s gun had made two charred holes in the front of von Kobold’s coat. But he was only winded. Beneath his coat she saw the dull sheen of Old Tech body armor. He raised a hand to cup her face. “They breed you brave in the Green Storm’s lands,” he whispered.

“I’m not …,” said Hester, but there wasn’t time to explain.

“Tell Naga that not all of us want this war,” she heard von Kobold say. Then she passed out, and Grike swept her up and loped toward the Shadow with the bolts from Airhaven crossbows rattling against his armored back.

Pennyroyal scurried away from the men at the end of the strut and ran into Spiney. The journalist had been directing Miss Kropotkin while she took the pictures that would appear on the front of the next day’s papers beneath the headline “Manchester Men Battle Bravely Against Naga’s Raiders!” He flung himself at Pennyroyal with a vulpine grin. “What’s your part in all this then, Nimrod? How long have you been working for the Green Storm?”

Pennyroyal shoved him aside. An airship was maneuvering away from the strut with a deafening howl of engines, and he had a sudden, terrible fear that it was the Humbug, taking off with his gold still aboard. “What about my money?” he shouted at it.

“How much have they paid you, Pennyroyal?” called Spiney, stepping into his path again and flapping at Miss Kropotkin to bring her camera.

Pennyroyal gave a feeble roar of rage and pushed Spiney hard with both hands. Spiney fought back, flailing at Pennyroyal’s face, grabbing him by the collar. So much was happening on Strut 13 that no one saw the two writers stumble across the quay and plunge off the edge. Their screams harmonized for a brief moment as they fell.

On the Shadow’s flight deck Theo pushed all the engines to full power, preparing to shove the airship out into the open sky beyond Airhaven’s shadow, but as he reached for the steering levers, a steel hand clamped his wrist.

“THERE ARE TWO ANTI-AIRCRAFT HARPOON BATTERIES ON AIRHAVEN HIGH STREET,” the Stalker Grike announced. “AS SOON AS WE CLEAR THEIR AIRSPACE, THEY WILL FIRE ON US.”

“But we can’t stay here!” shouted Theo, waving at the windows. The glass was already starred by hits from a dozen crossbow bolts, although no one had dared to fire anything more dangerous yet, for fear of igniting a blaze that might engulf the whole of Airhaven.

“GO DOWN,” said Grike. “DROP INTO THE CLOUDS. THEY WILL HIDE US.”

Theo nodded, angry that he’d not thought of that for himself. A moment later the Shadow swung its engine pods upright and forced itself down into the white billows beneath Airhaven.

“Aaaaaaaaah!” wailed Pennyroyal and Spiney, and then, “Oh!” as the safety net beneath Strut 13 caught them and held them safe. They bounced together, as if they had dropped into a giant’s hammock.

“Great Poskitt!” whimpered Pennyroyal, thrusting the journalist away from him and trying to stand upright. He had forgotten the net’s existence until its thick, yielding mesh broke his fall. “I thought we were done for!” he gasped.

“You’re done for all right, Nimrod!” Sampford Spiney cackled. He had been just as scared as Pennyroyal, but he wasn’t about to show it. “Consorting with the Storm; taking part in a brawl; accessory to the attempted murder of a kriegsmarschall—here, was that bint on the strut really Naga’s wife? That’s what your Manchester friends are saying…” Excited at the thought of all the startling reports that he would soon be filing, the journalist began to bounce happily up and down.

“Do stop doing that, old man,” pleaded Pennyroyal. “You’re making me feel all queasy.”

“Not half as queasy as you’ll be when you see the next edition of The Speculum.” Spiney chuckled, bouncing harder. Odd noises started to come from the net: faint creaks, small twanging sounds.

“Spiney, I really think you should stop! This net looks old, and it’s already taken the weight of a brace of fat Mancunians tonight…”

With a sound like plucked harpstrings the bolts that attached one edge of the net to the underside of Strut 14 started to come free. Spiney stopped bouncing, and let out a strangled yelp.

“Help!” shouted Pennyroyal, as loudly as he could, but although Strut 13 was crammed with people the only one who heard him was Spiney’s photographer, Miss Kropotkin. Her face appeared over the edge of the strut. She stretched down toward the stranded men with one hand, but she could not reach them. Pennyroyal started trying to claw his way up the steep net toward her, but only succeeded in pulling some of the bolts on that side free as well. “Oh, Poskitt!”

“Miss Kropotkin!” Spiney shrieked. “Fetch help! Fetch help at once, or I’ll make sure you end up photographing pet shows and garden parties for the rest of your worthless—”

And with a presence of mind that ensured she would never have to photograph another pet show as long as she lived, Miss Kropotkin raised her camera as the net gave way and took the picture that would appear on page 1 of the next edition of The Speculum beneath the headline “Writers Perish in Airhaven Death Plunge Horror.”

As the Shadow Aspect sank into the clouds, Grike strode aft. In the curtained-off cabin at the stern of the gondola Oenone was crouching over Hester, using her fingers to try to stop the blood that was pouring from the gash on Hester’s scalp. She looked up at Grike. “Is there a medicine chest? Just a first-aid kit even?”