Conor moved hand over fist across the steering bar, turning the glider in a wide arc. Time to concentrate on his work or he would overshoot Little Saltee. Two more salsa beds, two more bags. Then Otto could buy his freedom and there would be plenty left for a secure life in America.
Great Saltee
Billtoe and Pike lay behind the ridge above Sebber Bridge, a series of soot-blackened blades arranged in the long grass around them.
‘That cleaver is my special favourite,’ said Pike fondly. ‘Does for any sort of flesh. Fish, fowl or human. It will put a fair fracture in a bone too, it will.’
Billtoe begged to differ. ‘Your common cleaver is clumsy, you gotter swing yer arm too high. Plenty of time for me to nip in and tickle a lung with this beauty.’ He dinged a long and deadly ice pick with his nail.
‘I favours my beloved sabre, name of Mary Ann,’ said a husky Irish voice behind them.
‘Quiet, you dolt,’ hissed Billtoe. ‘The airman could be here any moment.’
‘You was talking,’ said the man, wounded.
‘I was whispering,’ corrected Billtoe, and then to Pike. ‘Why did you bring this scatterfool?’
‘I could only shave three men from the prison guard,’ said Pike. ‘And you said it would take the half-dozen to knobble the airman. So I picked Rosy up in the pub. He hasn’t had more than a quart of ale.’
Billtoe was not pleased. ‘You saw the airman. He was a six footer at the very least and armed to the gills. We need sharp eyes and quick hands to take him, not drunken red nosed Paddies.’
Rosy snorted. ‘You is a Paddy yerself, Arthur. And I can chop down any man you point me at. Let’s face it – this airman of yours, he’s no more real than the banshee; he’s just one of those yokeybobs, ain’t he?’
Billtoe chewed his bottom lip, causing his chin stubble to quiver. ‘A yokeybob?’
‘You know. In yer brain. A phantom cos of you in that barrel.’
‘You told him, Pikey,’ said Billtoe reproachfully.
‘You told me yourself in the tavern,’ laughed Rosy. ‘You told anyone who would listen all about the devil and poor little Billtoe in the barrel. There ain’t no airman. I’m only here for the five shillings’ payment. Why all the blades anywise? One bullet would do the trick.’
‘We need the blades, you beer-brained beetroot face,’ fumed Billtoe, ‘because a gunshot would have the Wall guard on us like flies on a cow biscuit. And that would lose us any bounty our airman might be carrying.’
‘If there was an airman.’
Billtoe wrapped his fingers around the hilt. ‘Well, Rosy, if there ain’t an airman, why don’t you tell that there fellow in the sky above you that he’s just a yokeybob sprung from my brain.’
Rosy glanced up fully expecting to see nothing but stars. What he did see had him pawing the grass for his beloved sabre.
‘God preserve us,’ he breathed, crossing himself with his weaponless hand. ‘A man with wings.’
‘Yokeybob, my eye,’ snorted Billtoe, then talked no more as his teeth were clenched on a dagger blade.
Conor had succeeded in unearthing the final pouches, but they had cost him dearly. The silver moonbeams lit his wings like Chinese lanterns.
A guard had seen him glide over Little Saltee’s outer wall, and being one of the few stout chaps on the island had decided to chase what he took for an albatross. He stalked his prey to the salsa beds where he realized his mistake and put a round through one of the glider’s wings, just as the strange airman bent low to retrieve some kind of pouch. Only a slight nervous shake to the guard’s hand spared Conor a bullet in the brain gourd.
The shot split a stone at Conor’s feet, throwing up a shard that scored a lightning flash on the left lens of his goggles.
He reacted quickly, ditching the glider with two yanks on the harness belts, then spinning towards his attacker, pistols drawn.
‘Yield or die, monsieur,’ he called, cocking the revolvers.
The guard could not decide whether he wished to yield or die, or something in between. Yielding was not something he was comfortable with, but neither did he relish a midnight battle with a flying Frenchy. Those fellows were dangerous enough without wings, as his grandfather had learned at Waterloo.
By the time he had considered his options and thought to cock his firearm, the black-clad airman was upon him, leaping from rock to stone with the speed of a cat, the guard would later swear. And growling too, like a hungry wolf. A cat-dog Frenchy, twirling guns and with blades clanking on his thighs.
‘Bonsoir, monsieur,’ said the airman, then clocked the surprised guard on the crown.
Conor was examining his glider almost before the guard fell. The upper port section had been punctured, but there were no rips radiating from the hole and the heat of the bullet had sealed the edges well enough. It would hold to Sebber Bridge if he could get himself into the air.
Conor threaded his arms through the straps then rolled both shoulders into the harness, cinched it tight and ran for the nearest stairwell. His wingtips scraped the walls on both sides, and he chided himself for not binding them in leather. The stairwell funnelled wind from above and it rattled his wings, pushing him down, but Conor struggled against it, forcing his way head first to the top step.
The gunshot had woken every guard in the billet, and they converged on the stairwell in ragged formation, clutching at rifles and trousers, shaking dreams from their heads. The sight of Conor had half of them convinced that they still slept.
One loosed a shot, but it was wild and high. The rest stared stupidly, mindless of each other until they tangled and fell in a bundle. Conor took advantage of the confusion to mount the parapet and leap into the sky, catching as much air as he could.
A wind, he prayed. One tiny draught.
Jupiter heard his prayer and sent a gift. An uplifting breath that filled his wings and threw him high above the heads of the watching guards. They scowled and screamed and stared in silence. Two thought to aim their weapons but the one who might have hit the target was accidentally shot by the other who pulled his trigger too early. In the blink of a crow’s eye, the airman had disappeared into the night. Swallowed by black, like a stone sinking in the night sea.
For a long moment, nobody on the wall uttered a syllable. Then they began to jabber furiously, each man telling his own version of what he had seen. Even the wounded man gabbed with the rest, mindless of the blood pooling at his foot. This was a story they would tell many times and it needed to be made solid now. Wrap words around the bone before daylight made the whole thing seem unlikely.
It was an airman, they decided. The Airman. Hadn’t there been a whisper of something like this on Great Saltee?
We saw the Airman. Seven feet tall with fiery, circular eyes.
The story was started. The word was spreading.
Word spreading is not what a man wants when he is a smuggler and a thief.
Conor rode the fair wind to Great Saltee, heart pounding in his chest. His blood was up, and he knew that was dangerous.
A man takes risks when the battle fever controls him, Victor had once told him. I have seen too many clever men die stupidly.
Be calm. Calm.
There was not time for calm. The air grew suddenly choppy and Conor was forced to wrestle with his craft simply to stay aloft. Great Saltee loomed below him, as though the earth had revolved to meet him. Conor pointed the nose down, holding it there against the tug of air resistance. Wind pulled at his goggles and poked fingers through the bullet hole in his wing.