Terry Brooks: Wards of Faerie

“We’ve been given no choice,” he told her. “If there had been another way, you would have been the first to recognize it.”

“There is no other way. I know that.”

“You didn’t want to be the one to do this,” he added.

“I didn’t want any part of it.”

His arms tightened about her. “Nor I. But here we are. And we can’t change things, no matter how much we might wish we could. Which reminds me.”

He picked her up without a word, hushing her when she started to object, and carried her down the hallway, cradling her in his arms. Knowing he had his mind made up about whatever it was he intended, she pressed her head into his shoulder and let him go.

When they reached her sleeping chamber, he set her on her feet and disappeared into her room. When he came out again, he was holding Aleia Omarosian’s diary. “You almost left this behind,” he said, handing it to her.

In truth, she had. In the rush to make preparations for leaving, she had forgotten it completely. She leaned forward and kissed him hard. “Thank you so much.”

He shrugged. “I don’t think we’re quite done with it. Do you?”

She smiled and hugged him. “Not quite.” She leaned away so she could look at him. “But you didn’t need to carry me all the way back here to retrieve it. You could have just brought it to me.”

“And missed having you all to myself, even if just for a few minutes? Do you think I’m crazy?”

Then he picked her up again and carried her back down the hallway to where the others were waiting.

Everything happened quickly after that.

Bombax and Cymrian, the former stripped of encumbering clothing and weapons and the latter armed with a dozen blades strapped to his arms and legs and torso like body armor, left the other defenders at the doors leading out to the airship landing platform and went down through a utility hatch into the crawl space that led to the catwalk.

“Wait until you know the barricades are down and the way to the airship is clear before you open these,” Bombax instructed Krolling, pointing to the huge ironbound doors with their massive slide bars and multiple bolt locks. “Don’t open them otherwise. Not to try to help us out, not for anything. If we don’t make it to the airships, take as many as you can and go into the tunnels and do your best to find a way out.”

Aphenglow, standing close, listened and felt something clench in her stomach. That Bombax and Cymrian would fail, that they should be killed, was unthinkable. Even in the abstract, she rejected it out of hand. “We’ll be ready when you are,” she assured him, looking him in the eye in a way that left no doubt as to how she expected this to go.

Bombax smiled. “You should be the one going instead of me, as fierce as you are.”

She blushed, leaned in, and kissed him hard on the mouth. “I’ll come after you if I have to.” She glanced at Cymrian, who was looking away. “You, too. I need my protectors.”

“You don’t need anyone,” Cymrian declared, giving her a momentary glance before looking away again.

They moved into an adjacent hallway, to where the hatch cover stood ajar, slipped through the opening, and were gone.

“Come on, Arling,” Aphenglow said at once, taking her sister’s hand, telling Woostra and the Trolls she would be right back.

She had been thinking about this since she knew what the Borderman and the Elf intended to do, wondering how she could put herself in a place where she could watch over them even if going out onto the catwalk was not possible. Even if she couldn’t go with them, she reasoned, perhaps she could find another way to help.

At the very least, she would be able to see what happened.

She took Arling up to the next floor, fueled by a rush of adrenaline that masked the pain in her leg and the weariness that flooded through her body. At the bottom of the stairs, she led her sister into a small anteroom adjacent to the Outer Wall and from there through a doorway that opened onto a raised ledge warded by a half wall. She motioned for her sister to crouch down, and together they climbed four steps to what was no more than a ten-foot-long observation balcony that overlooked the landing platform and the airships.

From this vantage point, they might be able to see what happened once Bombax and Cymrian traversed the catwalk and came up behind the barricade.

Aphen put a finger to her lips. No talking. There were slits cut into the stone blocks of the half wall, and the sisters peered through these at what lay below. The Druid airships moored to a series of locking rings numbered six, and while none of them was the size of the Walker Boh , midsize vessels like Arrow and Wend-A-Way were large enough to carry all of the defenders in the Keep. Two airships would have been better than one, but they could make do with one if they got away quickly enough to put some distance between themselves and their pursuers. Flits were fast enough to catch up to them no matter what, but flits lacked sufficient firepower to bring down ships the size of Arrow and Wend-A-Way —and Federation airmen lacked the flying skills of Gnome raiders in any event.

That’s what she told herself, even though she had her doubts and could not entirely banish them.

The barricade constructed by the Federation to block the rampway was a makeshift affair of logs and crates and hunks of metal plating. A pair of rail slings and a fire launcher had been mounted on portable swivel stands and faced toward the Keep. Torches wedged in crevices and set in iron stanchions burned in bright patches in the darkness. Perhaps twenty soldiers loitered about, a few of them watching the Keep, most visiting with one another and throwing dice. There were no guards at all back where the airships were moored. The soldiers did not look as if they expected anything to happen soon and certainly not where they had been stationed.

Aphen smiled grimly. It would be a very unpleasant surprise indeed when Bombax and Cymrian appeared.

Farther away, out on the battlements of the Outer Wall, a handful of Federation guards were hiding behind half walls and bulkheads where they undoubtedly hoped they were at least marginally protected from the uncanny bowman who had killed Deek Trink.

Aphenglow scooted along the stone-block wall to where she had a slightly better vantage point. Arling came right behind her. From where they were situated above the rampway, they could see nothing of the catwalk or the progress of the Druid and the Elf who by now were navigating it. It was supremely frustrating.

The sisters waited, huddled together behind the wall, eyes on each other, listening to the voices of the Federation soldiers clustered below.

Then Aphenglow heard the sound of radian draws being snapped in place and diapson crystals powering up. She had just enough time to peer through the slits in the half wall before Arrow had shed her mooring lines and lifted off. Bombax had chosen to take back his own airship, as she had suspected he would—familiar with its weaponry and operation, comfortable behind its controls. She could see him situated in the pilot box, already swinging the airship around so that its starboard rail slings were turned toward the barricades where the Federation soldiers were scrambling in every direction. Cymrian had cocked all of the slings, and now he was racing back the way he had come from one sling to the next, releasing their triggers.

Shards of metal flew everywhere, tearing into the barricades, shredding them. The Federation soldiers not caught in the firestorm and dispatched had flattened themselves against the decking to either side, finding cover wherever they could.

Then abruptly Cymrian disappeared.