Adrian Tchaikovsky - Blood of the Mantis

Achaeos rounded on him, fists clenched. Thalric raised an eyebrow.

‘What?’ he asked. ‘Remember, you brought me along as your imperial advisor. Don’t ask questions if you don’t want the answers.’

‘I hate to break up a pair of friends,’ Allanbridge told them, having come back abovedecks, ‘but we’ve got a problem.’ He had a telescope out now, and had been raking it across the distant airfleet. ‘They’ve spotted us sure enough.’ Seeing Achaeos’ expression he continued, ‘You forget we’ve got a real big balloon above us, and the dawn catches it just lovely. I count a couple of fixed-wings now coming to pay us a visit.’

‘Then make this machine go faster,’ Achaeos demanded.

‘It doesn’t work like that, boy. They’re just plain faster than we’ll ever be.’

‘But what will they do?’ Achaeos remembered flying machines duelling during the Battle of the Rails. ‘How can we fight them?’

‘Ah, well, that’s the real problem,’ Allanbridge replied. He opened up a locker and brought out a big repeating crossbow with a latched hook that he now rested on the gondola’s rail.

To Achaeos it seemed impossible that they should ever be caught. The airship was sculling along with a brisk wind, passing perilously close to the mountainside yet always being gusted past it. He himself would be hard-pressed to fly this fast for very long. So how fast could the Wasp machines be?

It was an agony of waiting, but soon he could see the fliers as twin dots against the sky, keeping close together, imperceptibly growing in size as they neared. But still the Buoyant Maiden clipped ahead, making more and more distance from Tharn, and yet not widening the gap at all.

Tisamon had gone down into the hold and now he reappeared with a bow, a proper Mantis longbow as tall as he was, and strong enough that he was forced to lean heavily into it to bring it to the string. On seeing this, Achaeos strung his own bow, which seemed pitiful in comparison. Nearby Tynisa stood with her hand on her rapier, looking angrily impotent.

She spoke to Achaeos but her eyes were on the growing specks. ‘What happened with your people?’ He sensed she merely wanted to blunt the edge of her frustration.

‘Precious little. They will not help us. They would prefer to cast me out. They are… they’re scared.’

‘Of the Wasps, you mean?’

‘Of the box.’

Her eyes widened. ‘I’d have thought that would be their very thing.’

‘I thought they would help – that they would appreciate what I’m trying to do. But no, they… they, who are wiser than I am, are afraid of it. They paint it as something that twists anything it touches. And…’ He stopped, suddenly uncomfortable.

‘And?’ she prompted.

‘And they may be right. I think it has begun to work on me already.’

Something zipped overhead, and they ducked simultaneously. Looking over the stern rail, Achaeos discovered the two flying machines were now close enough for him to see two men riding in each, one that must be directing it, while the other, sitting above and behind, was aiming some kind of big crossbow. The nearest of the two had begun loosing a few ranging shots.

Tisamon joined the pair of them at the stern, pulling his bowstring back level with his ear and waiting, his arm unflinching.

A crossbow bolt ploughed into the balloon above them, and then two more as the enemy repeater found its range. Tisamon loosed, sending an arrow flashing through the open air, but the shaft shattered against the hull of the enemy machine, and he cursed and reached for another.

‘Will the canopy hold?’ Gaved shouted.

‘I told you, it’s Spider silk and those bolts are just hanging in it. That’s not what I’m worried about,’ replied Allanbridge. He had repositioned his own repeating crossbow on the back rail, but then Gaved suggested, ‘You stay with the engine. I’ll do the shooting.’

‘Against your own folk?’

‘They won’t make any allowances for me if they catch us.’

The two fliers were diverging now to pass by the airship on either side. Tynisa saw that they had two sets of fixed wings and a rear-facing engine, not so different from a craft she had ridden in once, when escaping another airship. She ducked as a crossbow bolt clipped the rail beside her, and just then Tisamon let fly his second arrow. The distance was considerable, but the Wasps had pulled in close to be within crossbow range, and Tisamon’s great bow proved equal to it. The shaft flew true and the man handling the crossbow reeled back with its thin spine jutting from his shoulder.

Achaeos now loosed too, watching his shaft fall short and vanish into the air. On the other side, the second craft was drawing closer, the crossbowman tilting his weapon upwards, still engaged in pumping shots into the balloon, whilst the pilot stretched out a palm towards them. In the next moment the Wasp’s sting flashed at them, but it was nothing more than light by the time it reached them. They saw the flier pull in closer still.

The machine to port was falling further away but overtaking them, with the crossbowman trying to pull the arrow from his body. On the other side the flier was getting recklessly close, and when the sting lashed out again it charred the railing. Then Gaved was shooting back, exchanging shots with the crossbowman on the fixed wing. A bolt ploughed into the imperial flier’s hull up to the fletching, and the flier reeled with the impact, a fine spray of liquid misting from the hole. Then Gaved himself fell back with a cry as a bolt split the rail and peppered him with splinters.

Tisamon and Achaeos were both loosing arrows now but the Wasp pilot swung the flier in and out erratically, letting the curve and plate of the hull take their arrows.

Thalric stepped forwards, his jaw set, and threw an open hand out towards it. summoning the Art of his people.

With this step, I sever one more tie . His own sting lashed out, not at the men but at the machine itself, where the crossbow bolt had pierced the fuel tank. Instantly the flier was trailing fire. He had time enough to see the horror on the face of the pilot, his own kinsman, before the man pulled the fixed-wing into a dive, trying to get to land before the whole fuel tank caught. Thalric followed them with his eyes as far as he could, but the flier was soon out of sight beneath the airship.

Then the second machine was coming back, the cross-bowman trying to manage his weapon one-handed and shooting erratically. Tisamon ran to the prow and nocked another arrow.

The flying machine was speeding straight for them. Tisamon held his breath, string pulled back all the way, and then let fly.

The arrow almost clipped the lip of the pilot’s seat before piercing the man’s armour and burying itself in his chest. The flying machine suddenly went arcing upwards, performing an absurdly graceful loop before plummeting earthwards. The wounded crossbowman kicked out, letting his own wings carry him down. Soon they were both out of sight.

‘Will they send more?’ Tynisa asked Allanbridge. ‘If they’re so much faster than we are?’

‘Faster indeed,’ he said. ‘But they’ve got just the smallest tendency, those fancy fliers, to run out of fuel. My girl’s got a good westerly blowing her the right way, you see, and even if her engine winds down, well, we won’t drop from the sky. No, they’ve had their chance. They’ll not catch us now.’

I am so very far from home , was his thought now, so many days after their escape from the flying machines, as Achaeos felt the encroaching of the night that, for most of his life, had been a time for waking and doing, rather than trying to sleep. I am so very far from her.

Magic was a remedy for that – magic that shunned the waking, sunlit world, but whose chiefest currency was dreams and visions.