Терри Брукс - Tanequil

Pied Sanderling sprinted the length of the Elven encampment, bumping aside anyone who got in his way, knocking over equipment and stores, leaving in his wake a string of angry shouts and curses. His mind was already far ahead of his body, thinking of what he must do and how he must do it, aware of how futile his efforts were likely to be. A terrible certainty gripped him. He was going to be too late. No matter how quick he was, he wasn't going to be quick enough. The disaster he had feared had come to pass, and all the failed warnings in the world would not be enough to persuade him it was not his fault. Run faster!

He reached the airfield winded and flushed, and as he tore down the embankment toward the airships, he searched frantically for someone he recognized among the few who hadn't gone with Kellen Elessedil. He found only a lone commander of a railgun sloop, a grizzled veteran named Markenstall. He barely knew the man, knew more of his reputation than of him. A brave man, dependable in a fight, a solid presence in the pilot box—that would suffice.

«Captain!» he shouted, rushing up to the older man. «Is your sloop fitted and ready?» He glanced at her name, carved into the stern.Asashiel.

Markenstall stared at him with a mix of surprise and doubt. Gray whiskers stuck out from the sides of his jaw, deep lines furrowed his weathered face, and his ears were tattered and scarred. He had the look of a man who had been in more than a few fights.

«Answer me, Captain!» Pied shouted at him.

The older man started sharply. «Ready and fitted as she can be, Captain Sanderling," he growled.

«Good. We're taking her up. Cast off.»

Markenstall hesitated. «Captain, I'm not authorized to—"

«Listen carefully to me," Pied interrupted. «The King flies into a trap. One of my Home Guard nearly lost her life getting that news to me, — another lies dead somewhere beyond our lines. I'm not about to let that be for nothing! There isn't time to seek authorization of any sort. If you want to save the King and those who went with him, we must leave at once!»

He cast a quick glance south, where the sky had turned deep blue in the twilight haze and the airships his gaze had followed earlier had disappeared from view. The dusk was thickening, the last of the sunlight a dim glow below the horizon west, the first stars beginning to brighten in the sky north. East, the moon was a silvery crescent lifting out of the Lower Anar.

His eyes flicked back to Markenstall. «Captain, please!»

The veteran studied him a moment longer, then nodded. «Very well. Get aboard.» He turned to a pair of sailors sitting nearby. «Pon! Cresck! Off your duffs and get aboard! Take in the lines and anchors! Prepare to cast off!»

The two crewmen and the grizzled Captain were skilled at making quick departures, and theAsashiel was airborne in minutes, swinging south with the wind, tacking swiftly out across the flats and beyond the Free–born lines. Pied stood in the pilot box with Markenstall while the crewmen manned the railguns to either side, breeches opened and loaded, triggers unlocked. No one mistook the foray for anything but what Pied was certain it was going to turn out to be.

«Mind if I ask what it is you intend to do with a sloop and two railguns?» Markenstall asked once they were winging out over the desolate front, a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

Pied shook his head. «Whatever I can.»

Ahead, the Federation lines were so dark they were virtually indistinguishable from the surrounding land. Pied thought he heard shouting, the sounds of sudden activity, but it was hard to tell with the rush of the wind and the whine of the rigging in his ears.

Then lightning split the darkness, brilliant and piercing, the bolt a horizontal rope stretched low and taut against the horizon. The bolt struck something that exploded instantly into a fiery ball, burning fragments pinwheeling into the darkness to fall like tiny firebrands to the earth. For just an instant, a cluster of airships was silhouetted against the brightness, masts and hulls stark and black.

«Shades!» Markenstall hissed. «What was that?»

Pied swiftly amended his earlier conclusion. It wasn't lightning after all. Not riding that low and that straight.

Then it flashed again, and there was another explosion, this one more violent than the first, and again the airships were revealed, scattering in all directions now, angling away from the fireball like frightened animals. An earth–shattering boom reverberated through the night, the shock waves so powerful that Pied could feel them even through the deck of the sloop.

He knew then what it was. It was the weapon Acrolace and Parn had discovered in the Federation camp. The trap had been sprung; Kellen Elessedil's airships were being destroyed, one by one. Pied was too late to give warning. He was too late to do anything but witness the consequences of the King's ill–considered, rash behavior.

«Faster, Captain," he said, catching hold of Markenstall's wiry arm. «We have to try to help.»

It was a faint hope at best. There was little one airship could do to help another in the best of situations, which this most assuredly wasn't, and his was likely the weakest airship aloft. But he had to get a closer look. He had to know what the Elves and their allies were up against. If the King didn't get safely back, if none of them managed to get back …

He forced the thought away, hating himself for allowing it to surface. But another firebolt erupted and another airship caught fire, the flames turning masts and rigging into torches that illuminated the whole of the night sky. Stricken, the airship wheeled away from the attack, trying to stay aloft, to seek cover. But there was no cover in the skies and no place to hide when you were burning. A second strike turned it into a massive fireball. It blazed brightly for a moment, then fell apart and disappeared into the dark.

«Shades!» Markenstall whispered again in shocked disbelief.

They were close enough by then that Pied could make out the vague shapes of the Elven airships as they wheeled this way and that to avoid the huge Federation airship that was in pursuit. Her name, emblazoned across her upswept bow, was theDechtera. The terrible weapon was affixed to her decking; Pied could just make out its armored bulk. Even as the shape of it registered, the man–made lightning exploded out of it again, crackling with energy and power, a terrible bright lance through the enfolding night, burning everything in its path. It caught pieces of two ships this time, nicking the hull of one, boring holes through the sails of another. It was firing blindly, Pied saw, unable to distinguish its targets clearly in the darkness. The moon was behind a bank of clouds, and the starlight was still too thin.

The Elven airships might have a chance if they fled now, if they turned around, if they raced for the safety of their own lines.

Incredibly, they did not. Instead, they attacked. It was suicide, but it was exactly what Kellen Elessedil would do, refusing to quit a battle, ready to die first.He will get bis wish here, Pied thought in horror. The Federation weapon was firing into the Elven airships as they drew near enough to distinguish, and they were exploding one after the other. The King was trying to ram the Federation ship, to damage it sufficiently that it could be forced down, perhaps even made to crash. He was intent on salvaging something out of this disaster, but he could not seem to recognize that it was already too late for that.

«What in the name of everything sane is he doing?» Markenstall whispered in disbelief, recognizing at once the futility of the effort.

Committing suicide,Pied thought. Trying to ram the bigger ship in the mistaken belief that by doing so he could still save his fleet. But he wasn't even going to get close. Already, theDechtera was firing at the Ellenroh, a series of short, sharp bursts that set theElven flagship on fire in several places and brought down the foremast. Still, Kellen came on, his railguns raking the enemy's decks. But the weapon that was destroying his fleet was protected behind heavy metal shields that the railguns could barely scratch. Another burst set theEllenroh's mainsail afire, and now the airship was lurching badly, her sails gone and one or more of her parse tubes damaged or blown away.