Terry Brooks - Ilse Witch

He walked on, barely giving them a glance. The banter that had passed between himself and the foot soldiers was absent here. The officers and crews of the Federation airships despised him. Rovers were mercenaries, not career soldiers. Rovers fought only for money and left when they chose. Rovers cared nothing for the Federation cause or the lives of the men that had been expended on its behalf. But the worst of it was the knowledge that the Rover officers and crews were so much better than the Federation crews were. In the air, faith in a cause did little to keep you alive.

A few taunting remarks were tossed at him from behind the anonymity of metal-clad hulls, but he ignored them. No one would make those same remarks to his face. Not these days. Not since he had killed the last man who’d dared to do so.

The sleeker, trimmer Rover airships came into view as he neared the far end of the field. Black Moclips sat foremost, polished wood-and-metal hull gleaming in the sunlight. She was the best ship he had ever flown, a cruiser built for battle, quick and responsive to the tack of her ambient-light sails and the tightening and loosening of her radian draws. Just a shade under 110 feet long and 35 feet wide, she resembled a big black ray. Her low, flat fighting cabin sat amidships on a decking braced by cross beams and warded by twin pontoons curved into battering rams fore and aft. Twin sets of diapson crystals converted to raw energy the light funneled from the collector sails through the radian draws. Parse tubes expelled the converted energy to propel the ship. The bridge sat aft with the pilot box front and center on the decking, its controls carefully shielded from harm. Three masts flew the ambient-light sails, one each fore, aft, and center. The sails themselves were strangely shaped, broad and straight at the lower end, where they were fastened to the booms, but curved where spars drew them high above to a triangle’s point. The design allowed for minimal slack in a retack and minimal drag from the wind. Speed and power kept you alive in the air, and both were measured in seconds.

Furl Hawken came racing down the field from the ship, long blond beard whipping from side to side. “We’re ready to lift off, Captain,” he shouted, slowing as he reached Alt Mer and swung into step beside him. “Got a good day for it, don’t we?”

“Smooth sailing ahead.” Redden Alt Mer put his hand on his Second Officer’s broad shoulder. “Any sign of Little Red?”

Furl Hawken’s mouth worked on whatever it was he was chewing, his eyes cast down. “Sick in bed, Captain. Flu, maybe. You know her. She’d come if she was able.”

“I know you’re the worst liar for a hundred miles in any direction. She’s in a tavern somewhere, or worse.”

The big man looked hurt. “Well, maybe that’s so, but you’d better let it pass for now, ’cause we got a more immediate problem.” He shook his head. “Like we don’t have one every time we turn around these days. Like every single oink doesn’t come from the same pig’s house.”

“Ah, our friends in Federation Command?”

“A full line Commander is aboard for the flight with two of his flunkies. Observation purposes, he tells me. Reconnaissance. A day in the skies. Shades! I nod and smile like a sailor’s wife at news of his plans to give up sailing.”

Redden Alt Mer nodded absently. “Best thing to do with these people, Hawk.”

They had reached Black Moclips , and he swung onto the rope ladder and climbed to the bridge where the Federation Commander and his adjutants were waiting.

“Commander,” he greeted pleasantly. “Welcome aboard.”

“My compliments, Captain Alt Mer,” the other replied. He did not offer his own name, which told the Rover something right away about how he viewed their relationship. He was a thin, pinch-faced man with sallow skin. If he’d spent a day on the line in the last twelve months, it would come as a surprise to the Rover. “Are we ready to go?”

“Ready and able, Commander.”

“Your First Officer?”

“Indisposed.” Or she would wish as much once he got his hands on her. “Mr. Hawken can take up the slack. Gentlemen, is this your first time in the air?”

The look that passed between the adjutants gave him his answer.

“It is our first,” the Commander confirmed with a dismissive shrug. “Your job is to make the experience educational. Ours is to learn whatever it is you have to teach.”

“Run ’em up, Hawk.” He gestured his Second Officer forward to oversee lofting the sails. “We’ll be seeing action today, Commander,” he cautioned. “It could get a little rough.”

The Commander smiled condescendingly. “We’re soldiers, Captain. We’ll be fine.”

Pompous fathead, Alt Mer thought. You’ll be fine if I keep you that way and not otherwise.

He watched his Rover crew scramble up the masts, lofting the sails and fastening the radian draws in place. Airships were marvelous things, but operating them required a mindset that was sorely lacking in most Federation soldiers. The Southlanders were fine on solid ground executing infantry tactics. They were comfortable with throwing bodies into breaches, like sandbags, and relying on the sheer weight of their numbers to crush an enemy. But put them in the air and they couldn’t seem to decide what to do next. Their intuition vanished. Everything they knew about warfare dried up and blew away with the first breath of wind to fill the sails.

Rovers, on the other hand, were born to the life. It was in their blood, in their history, and in the way they had lived their lives for two thousand years. Rovers did not respond well to regimentation and drill. They responded to freedom. Flying the big airships gave them that. Migratory by nature and tradition, they were always on the move anyway. Staying put was unthinkable. The Federation was still trying to figure that out, and they were constantly sending observers aloft with the Rover crews to discover what it was their mercenaries knew that they didn’t.

Trouble was, it wasn’t something that could be taught. The Bordermen who fought for the Free-born weren’t any better. Or the Dwarves. Only the Elves seemed to have mastered sailing the wind currents with the same ease as the Rovers.

One day, that would change. Airships were still new to the Four Lands. The first had been built and flown barely two dozen years earlier. They had been in service as fighting vessels for less than five years. Only a handful of shipwrights understood the mechanics of ambient-light sails, radian draws, and diapson crystals well enough to build the vessels that could utilize them. Using light as energy was an old dream, only occasionally realized, as in the case of airships. It was one thing to build them, another to make them fly. It took skill and intelligence and instinct to keep them in the air. More were lost through poor navigation, loss of control, and panic than through damage from battle.

Rovers had sailed the seas in trading ships and pirate vessels longer than anyone had, and the jump to airships was easier for them. As mercenaries, they were invaluable to the Federation. But the Southlanders continued to believe that if they could just learn how the Rovers managed to make it all look so easy, they wouldn’t need them as Captains and crews.

Hence, his passengers, three more in a long line of Federation hopefuls.

Resigned, he sighed. There was nothing he could do about it. Hawk would fuss enough for the both of them. He took his station in the pilot box, watching his men as they finished tying down the draws and securing the sails. Other ships were preparing to lift off, as well, their crews performing similar tasks in preparation. On the airfield, ground crews were preparing to release the mooring lines.