Terry Brooks - Witch Wraith

He stared at her. “How do you know this?”

She gave him a sly smile. “I just do. Answer my question.”

“Commander March is senior officer.”

“I’m asking you. You are still commander of First Response, aren’t you?”

Keeton somehow managed to keep his face expressionless. “Right now, I am taking a squad of flits back out to bring in those soldiers still in the watchtowers.” He turned to March. “With your permission, of course, Commander?”

He didn’t need that permission, and they all knew it. He was simply making Tinnen March complicit in his plans. The commander was still staring at him speechlessly when he turned and hurried off.

Edinja watched him go without comment, her mind already working through the choices she would have when he returned. Without glancing at Tinnen March, she said, “Hadn’t you better get working on a plan for defense of the city, now that you know what we are up against?”

March and his adjutants moved quickly away.

Keeton caught up with Wint as he was speaking with another two-man pilot from First Response. “What have you found out about those soldiers in the watchtowers?” he asked his second.

The other shrugged. “March gave no order for their return, so they’re still out there. I have a transport and five flits standing by to go get them. Unless you want to let them try it on their own. They might have time for that. That army doesn’t seem in any hurry to do anything.”

“Maybe. But they were quick enough to send someone after us when we left the protection of the city walls. I don’t like the idea of those people trying to get back here on an open road. It’s two miles front to back, and that’s too far.”

“A transport then?”

Keeton shook his head. “Too cumbersome. Speed and maneuverability are important. Let’s use sleds. Hook them to the flits, fly them out, load them up, and make a run for it.”

Wint grinned. “Sleds, huh? Can I drive?”

The sleds were wooden platforms with rings and loops for tying down ropes and chains. The platforms rested on steel rails filed and sanded down until their surfaces were so hard and smooth, they could skim over rocks and hardpan and not shatter. Mostly, the sleds were used for quick supply transport rather than for conveying soldiers, but they would serve the latter purpose here just as well.

Wint was already ordering a team of First Response soldiers to the storage lockers to haul out four of the sleds to hook up to the flits. Keeton went to help, deciding to switch the rail slings in favor of fire launchers. Rail slings might not be enough against whatever was out there. The effort took less than twenty minutes, and when everything was ready he called pilots and weapons officers together.

“This is the plan. We have four flits with sleds to rescue the men and women in the twelve towers bracketing the approach road. We’ll start with the ones that are farthest away and work our way back. Fly out, swing around so we’re facing toward the city, land on the road, load everyone aboard, then pull for the city. When the soldiers in the towers closest to the city see what we’re about, they’ll come down to ground level right away and we’ll load them, too. They might even start out on their own.”

He paused. “The second and I will be in the last flit, flying interference against anything that gets too close.”

“It won’t be easy getting everyone aboard the sleds,” Wint said. “There are a lot of people in those towers.”

Keeton gave him a look and then directed it toward the others. “Everyone comes back. No one gets left behind.”

He beckoned them close. “No heroics. No unnecessary risks. We don’t know exactly what we are up against, and that’s part of what we’re going out there to discover. But let’s not make that discovery the hard way.”

They murmured their acquiescence. Eight soldiers—five men and three women. He knew them all. None of them had combat experience of the sort they were about to encounter. Nor had he. It was a definitive moment for all of them. Training and character would be tested. The Prime Minister and the military high command would be watching.

But he didn’t tell them that. They didn’t need to know any of it to do their jobs. They just needed to remember who they were and what they were about.

“Wint, assign the towers for each two-man and let’s fly.”

He broke the circle, and the eight members of the First Response team caught the Second’s quick orders and raced to board their vessels.

Atop the walls above the west gates, Edinja Orle was watching them. She saw Keeton speaking to his team, watched as he dispatched them to their flits and then boarded his own with his second. Quick and efficient, no hesitation, no delay. The flits powered up, then one by one they rose into the golden light of late afternoon. She squinted at the sky for a moment. It was a clear, cloudless day, but the sun was sinking fast over the western horizon, its rays lancing into the eyes of the fliers as they raced toward their targets. What must that be like, flying half blind at an unknown enemy?

She kept watching as the flits crossed above the wall and sped toward the watchtowers, towing the sleds behind them. Clever of Keeton to think of using sleds instead of transports. She didn’t like the man, but she admired his intelligence. His manners could be improved but she couldn’t find fault with his military skills.

She glanced down the wall to where Tinnen March was conferring with his officers in a heated discussion. She saw them all gesturing at him, saw him shake his head and walk away.

She had an uncomfortable feeling about the man.

And she might have to do something about it.

At first, everything went smoothly.

With Wint and Keeton in the lead flit, the squad flew out from the walls of Arishaig shadowing the line of the road toward the grasslands beyond. The light might have been against them, but they were experienced fliers, on their home turf. They were formed up two abreast behind the commander’s aircraft, with the sleds tethered behind them and a safe distance between each pair. On the ground, nothing moved. The men and women in the towers—who must have seen them approaching—stayed where they were.

On the ridgeline farther out, the invading army bunched close to the precipice, howling and screaming with such fury that Keeton could hear it even over the rush of the wind in his ears.

“Such beautiful music,” Wint said over his shoulder.

Keeton was readying the fire launcher, using his trigger finger to press the lever that would charge the diapson crystals embedded in the weapon’s stock, drawing energy from a line connected through the flit’s walls to the light sheath that powered it. A strong pull on the trigger would send the launcher’s deadly beam toward whatever target it was centered on. Keeton could narrow or widen the beam using a slide on the launcher’s barrel. He had fired the weapon many times, and he was very good with it.

He thought he would probably need to be better than good today.

The formation reached the outermost towers, passed out over the grasslands, and swung back around, following Keeton and Wint’s flit as it swooped down toward the approach road. One by one, pairs of flits broke away from the formation to drop onto the road between the towers. In some instances, the doors opened immediately and the men and women within came rushing out to board the sleds. In some instances, it took longer—an unfortunate delay caused by a failure to anticipate what the flits were trying to do. But within minutes of the landings, all of the towers were emptying out and the sleds were filling up.

Wint brought the flit in which he and Keeton were riding back around again to face whatever response the rescue effort might have triggered in the invading army. The commander and his second didn’t need more than a moment to discover the answer. Even before the flit had cleared the middle towers on its return run, they saw a swarm of cat creatures pour over the edge of the ridgeline and bound after the escaping soldiers. They split into packs, dozens of them, strange feline faces twisted with something that Keeton could only describe as hunger as the gap between them narrowed.