Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air

Oliver flew across the Free State’s lines, the Whisperer’s steed hard-pressed to keep up. Nathaniel Harwood could convince the troops he was a six-foot fighting god — even convince his steed — but the illusion of a horseman’s skill was not the actuality.

Commodore Black watched the two riders disappear through the ranks of steammen auxiliaries, swallowed by snow and the swirling flags of the army.

‘That shootist has spirit,’ said Hoggstone.

‘He’s riding with the devil,’ said the commodore. ‘I’m just glad he’s riding for us.’

Black pulled his undersized greatcoat in tighter — it had belonged to old Loade before he pulled it off its peg back in Middlesteel and the blessed fellow must have been a grasper of a man. But it was warm Jackelian wool and helped shield a poor fellow from the biting cold of this perverse summer. On the command table the maps started shaking, a brass telescope rattling until it fell over. Gun-boxes jolted forward on their stubby legs. The house-sized artillery pieces had abandoned their position on the high ground and were settling down alongside the steammen formations. Rolling the strange-looking shells onto loading cradles, steammen conscripts heaved them into the loading position behind the gun-boxes. Sucked into the breach, the shells vanished, followed by the clank-clank-clank of crystal charges of blow-barrel sap being lowered into position to propel the missiles on their way. Commodore Black covered his ears. Their barrage had been deafening enough when they had been in the hills duelling with the Third Brigade’s artillery.

With the crack of a titan’s hammer on the earth the barrels of the gun-boxes flowered flame and flung their shells towards the chequerboard hulls of the aerostats. Some of the shells struck the airship’s gondola structures, smashing wood and metal, others tore holes in the hulls, the fabric of their catenary curtains left flapping in the wind. A few ballonets spilled into the air, the gas cells floating out of sight. Not even slowed, the aerostats continued to glide across the fields of Rivermarsh.

Black nodded sadly. History was repeating itself. It was just the same as when the RAN had raided his fleet of royalist privateers. You could pierce their hulls with ball, with shrapnel, hit them with fire, but the cursed vessels were almost indestructible. Celgas did not burn, and each aerostat was filled with thousands of ballonets, each man-sized canvas sphere swelled fat with the precious lighter-than-air substance. Puncture one with shrapnel and they still had a hundred more to lift them out of the range of enemy guns.

King Steam’s monster shells had failed and now their forces would be flattened, crushed without the option of slipping away beneath the deep waters of the ocean. The Duke of Ferniethian cursed his luck.

On the bridge of the RAN Hotspur , the revolutionary commander of the vessel pointed a discipline rod accusingly at the metal-flesher who had once been a first mate of the Royal Aerostatical Navy. ‘It is as I said, we should be running higher, Compatriot Ewart. We should be dropping our fin-bombs from a greater altitude.’

Ewart flinched as the pain stick passed his iron chest. ‘We need line of sight for the fin bay crew. A turn of the wind and we would be dropping fins on your people — this snow is working against us.’

‘This is more of your defeatist whining and sabotage. I do not want to listen to excuses, compatriot. I have had a bellyful of them from your crew.’ The revolutionary officer turned to one of his soldiers. There were as many shiftie marines and brilliant men on the RAN Hotspur as equalized sailors, getting in the way and issuing contradictory orders. It was a wonder the aerostat could hold a true course with the skeleton crew that had been assigned to each ship, let alone clear for action. ‘Take Compatriot Ewart and a crew of patchers to the larboard hull. I want full lift — any damage from the Free State’s gun-boxes must be repaired at once or there will be consequences.’

With four shiftie marines in tow, wet navy lubbers who didn’t know one end of a stat from another, Ewart followed the howl of the wind to the breech in the aerostat’s curtain. He tethered a holding line around his iron waist so he could climb securely around the ballonets and inspect the damage.

‘How many patchers are needed?’ shouted up one of the marines.

‘The netting is torn,’ said Ewart. ‘We need to-’ he stopped as he found the shell still buried in the ballonets, its metal buckled against one of the larboard girder stays.

It had not detonated and Ewart tapped it. This was his chance . If he could detonate it he could bring down the Hotspur and take some of these dirty shifties down with him. But it was not crystal-fashioned, so how could it be filled with blow-barrel sap? As Ewart felt the lines of the weld on the shell, metal plates sprung out and he fell back towards the torn curtain flapping in the gust from outside, a garbled cry issuing from his voicebox as he jerked on his support line and hung helplessly in the air.

The Quatershiftian marines laughed at him, thinking he had tumbled clumsily off the aerostat’s hull frame, still unused to the quirks of his new equalized body. Their laughter was cut short when the steamman dropped down to the repair gantry, a round sphere sporting six pincer-sharp legs and an armoured dome for a head with a pressure repeater protruding from it like a mosquito proboscis. With their rifles slung around their shoulders the marines did not stand a chance — the six barrels of the steamman’s nose spun around and a whining blizzard of small iron balls tore the soldiers to pieces, their corpses flopping off the gantry and into the ballonets. The steamman turned its attention to the ballonets, unleashing a wave of fire into the leather gas sacks. The lift bags exploded, deflating and leaking sweet-smelling gas into the cold air of the airship’s interior. Then the steamman — actually a mu-body of one of the slipthinkers below — swivelled its pressure repeater in the direction of the laughing metal-flesher.

‘Sharply done, mate,’ said Ewart. ‘I don’t mean to knock the gilt off the gingerbread, but you’ll be here all day if you’re trying to sink the Hotspur that way.’

On the ground the steamman slipthinker evaluated the facts in a fraction of a second. Equalized Jackelians were heavy, weight an aerostat could ill afford. Their presence indicated sailors captured at Shadowclock rather than revolutionaries. The slipthinker translated what the metal-flesher had said — knock the gilt off the gingerbread, an expression of nautical origin meaning to cut a tale short. The slipthinker controlling the mu-body made a snap decision and a pincer snaked out and cut down the iron body.

‘That’s it, mate. Now let me give you a black dog for a white monkey and show you where the Hotspur’s rudder lines are,’ said Ewart, picking himself up from the gantry. ‘And then we can visit the fin bay and drop a few shifties down onto their friends below.’

The information raced across the slipthinker council, fleeting from mind to mind like lightning before passing back into the mu-bodies already on the airships as well as those being loaded into the gun-boxes.

Metal-flesher and steamman warrior vanished together into the bowels of the aerostat. There was work to be done.

Earth and flame spouted across the snowy plain as Oliver’s sixer held to the direction he was urging her; the new steed he had stolen was raised in a Jackelian cavalry regiment and thought little of the thunder and chaos of war, while the Whisperer’s gypsy horse just followed because there was a friendly tail in front.

Riding through the confusion of the aerostat bombardment it was hard to tell which way to head. It was only the press of the fey — the concentration of the Special Guard — that allowed him to home in on the eastern flank of the battlefield.