Robert Appleton - Prehistoric Clock

Maybe not so lucky.

“My apologies,” he stuttered.

The woman’s pursed lips held venom. “Well?” she snapped. “You were saying? You would deign to forgive my wholly warranted affront on one condition?”

“Yes, one condition. That you shuffle up and down the deck on your arse whilst singing ‘Burlington Bertie From Bow.’” He stood tall, glared back with interest. “What’s wrong? Feel like hitting me again?” Offering his chin felt a tad much, but Jesus, she was infuriating.

“How about throwing you over the side, fop?” Several crewmen and the two statuesque women now stood behind her, meaning she couldn’t possibly back down.

Neither would he.

“You talk a good game, Red. How does the rest of it go? ‘I flap my lips and you drown in spit’? Pathetic. You’re a pantomime king in petticoats-the least you can do is wear them.”

“One more word and you’ll dangle from the keel. Follow in your father’s footsteps…or should I say his last dance.”

“ Whore!”

“Bastard.”

He drew both his pistols and thrust them at her heart. “Say that again.”

She reached nonchalantly over her shoulder and kept her hand there until a crewman passed her a revolver. Without even breaking her stare, she cocked the hammer with her thumb and pointed the gun at his forehead. “This is getting tiresome. Djimon, Tangeni, lock this traitor in the brig.”

“ Eembu?”

“Don’t argue with me. He’s not about to shoot. He doesn’t have it in him. His sort whispers treason from the shadows, sends others to do his dirty work. The rich only stay rich because they don’t get involved in the fighting they start. Look, you can see it in his yellow eyes. Like father, like-”

“Enough!” Embrey sidestepped quickly. In one fluid motion he dropped one of his own pistols, dragged her flush against him and disarmed the bitch. Back to the bulwark, he held a pistol barrel to her temple and yelled, “Back off! All of you.”

“Do it. But he’s bluffing,” she advised her crew-correctly. Unbearably. Did nothing faze her?

His situation was impossible and he had nowhere to go. Better to live and fight another day than force the crew’s hand. Okay, Garrett, you lose this round. His pulse hacked at his right shoulder, leaving him breathless. He lowered his sidearm and the bitch eased herself free.

An overhead cable snapped and the airship lurched to port, hurling Verity into him again. Her momentum threw them both over the rail. Embrey tossed his weapon onto the deck and snatched for the bulwark. Too late! His fingers slipped and he plummeted.

Verity’s arms wrenched tight around his solar plexus, mashed up against his rib cage. The jolt of her catch punched the breath from his lungs. A million flecks of diamond dust from the waves below blinded him. Somewhere inside the shock, distant bird caws competed with a close, intermittent hiss.

“Swallow it,” she demanded into his ear hole. “I can’t hold you much longer. My legs…they’re wrapped round…the rail. Embrey, do you hear me? You need to…climb up me.”

The Empress lurched again. Verity’s grasp slipped to crooked fingertips. They shook with the strain, and Embrey felt as though his invisible lifebelt was ripping loose. The diamond grave called imperceptibly. The soft fabric of her blouse caressed his cheek. It stayed death with a tickle, beckoning him from his daze.

“Verity?” The airship listed badly and seemed to be in freefall. He anchored his arms around her bare waist, then reached up and hoisted himself up by her jodhpurs. “Hold on,” he told her, “I’m almost there.”

Tangeni and Reardon gripped her half chaps. High above, a formation of five enormous birds scythed between the balloons. Their bites at the canopies rocked the entire ship. They were piercing the ballonets. Embrey heaved himself up into Reardon’s grasp, and two more aeronauts arrived to haul him aboard.

“Look out!” a cry came from above-from Philomena perched in the bough nest, fending off the monstrous birds with her grappling pole.

Embrey followed her gaze low to the port bow, where a rogue flier had begun its unstoppable climb for Verity. Its wingspan had to be around forty feet-more like a dragon’s than a bird’s-but the flapping membrane was translucent and wafer thin.

Pterosaurs!

Several aeronauts emerged from B-deck toting rifles, but the Empress’s violent shudder spilled them into each other. A familiar hiss-crack sounded from somewhere aft. Immediately the pterosaur flinched as a fresh hole appeared in the middle of its right wing. Someone had had the right idea. My steam-pistol? He scanned the deck and spotted the second weapon right away. It was teetering on the brink several feet from him, beneath the bulwark. The bird opened its long beak and gave a gutteral caw. Christ. Why hadn’t Tangeni pulled Verity up yet? She had to be snagged on something.

Embrey dove for the pistol and fired a snapshot. Hiss-crack! The bullet clipped the pterosaur’s snout but didn’t stop it. He could almost drop something onto it at this range. Instead, he took aim and pipped the creature right between its eyes. More shots rang out aft. Some hit. The pterosaur folded its wings, gave a spastic flutter, and then writhed as it fell.

He helped Tangeni and Reardon free the buckle of Verity’s half chaps from a twisted rivet she’d ripped loose from the bulwark post. She was lightheaded when they hauled her aboard. Embrey and Tangeni steadied her while she regained her bearings. The blood had rushed to her head. Her face was almost purple.

“Will you be all right?” he shouted above the pterosaur shrieks and volleys of gunfire. “I need to join the fight.”

She nodded blankly. Tangeni reassured him. “I’ll take it from here. You try and pick them off as they clear the balloons. And get Reardon to take Billy below. This no place for a boy.”

Embrey dashed aft to the quarterdeck. Reardon was already escorting young Billy below-one less problem to solve, at least. All around the ship’s hindmost section, riflemen ducked in sequence to avoid passing pterosaurs and then leapt up in the same order to unleash a volley. He couldn’t speak for their marksmanship, but these African aeronauts were stalwarts. He climbed to the poop deck and took the place of a man who’d bled to death. The three fatal gouges in his chest suggested monstrous talons had gored him. Embrey fired his remaining bullets and then used the dead man’s rifle to pick off the last pterosaur. The other three fliers fled eastward above the geyser clouds, regrettably in perfect formation.

As he helped his injured brothers-in-arms down to sick bay-five were wounded, though not seriously-he met Verity’s gaze on the quarterdeck. Blouse torn and hanging loose, fiery hair licking the breeze, she looked a fright. Yet, unkempt, she was also insanely beautiful, more unreal and more desirable than ever.

The urge to gush his relief pressed hard against the cork in his heart. Surely they couldn’t be enemies after this. Their mutual gaze held. An insensible longing to take her in his arms threatened to overpower him. Then he remembered his name.

They exchanged brief nods instead.

What was it with everyone vouching for Lord Embrey like he was some kind of Nelson or Wellington? Yes, he had a knack for being in the right place at the right time, and he was handy with a rifle, but in case they’d all forgotten, she had saved his life over the side of the ship that afternoon.

“Either you admit him or I say precisely nothing on the subject of time travel,” Reardon protested, arms folded as he sank back in his chair. Her new cabin barely had enough room to seat two guests, so Tangeni had emptied most of Captain Naismith’s belongings and replaced them with three more chairs from the officers’ mess.