Ahead, the airship had regained some measure of stability. The capture net was still deployed. Merlin pushed harder, giving the aircraft more altitude in readiness for its approach glide. At the last moment he judged it safe to disengage. He steered Tyrant away and left the aircraft to blunder into the net.
This time there were no gusts. The net wrapped itself around the aircraft, the soft impact nudging down the nose of the airship. Then the net began to be winched back towards the gondola like a haul of fish. At the same time the airship swung around and began to climb.
'No other planes?' Merlin asked.
'That was the only one.'
They followed the airship in. It rose over the cliff, over the ice-capped rim of the aerial land mass, then settled down towards the shielded region in the bowl, where water and greenery had gathered. There was even a wispy layer of cloud, arranged in a broken ring around the shore of the lake. Merlin presumed that the concave shape of the land mass was sufficient to trap a stable microclimate.
By now Merlin had an audience. People had gathered on the gondola's rear observation platform. They wore goggles and gloves and heavy brown overcoats. Merlin caught the shine of glass lenses being pointed at him. He was being studied, sketched, perhaps even photographed.
'Do you think they look grateful,' he asked, 'or pissed off?'
Tyrant declined to answer.
Merlin kept his distance, conserving fuel as best he could as the airship crossed tens of kilometres of arid, gently sloping land. Occasionally they overflew a little hamlet of huts or the scratch of a minor track. Presently the ground became soil-covered, and then fertile. They traversed swathes of bleak grey-green grass, intermingled with boulders and assorted uplifted debris. Then there were trees and woods. The communities became more than just hamlets. Small ponds fed rivers that ambled down to the single lake that occupied the land mass's lowest point. Merlin spied waterwheels and rustic-looking bridges. There were fields with grazing animals, and evidence of some tall-chimneyed industrial structures on the far side of the lake. The lake itself was an easy fifty or sixty kilometres wide. Nestled around a natural harbour on its southern shore was the largest community Merlin had seen so far. It was a haphazard jumble of several hundred mostly white, mostly single-storey buildings, arranged with the randomness of toy blocks littering a floor.
The airship skirted the edge of the town and then descended quickly. It approached what was clearly some kind of secure compound, judging by the guarded fence that encircled it. There was a pair of airstrips arranged in a cross-formation, and a dozen or so aircraft parked around a painted copy of the crescent emblem. Four skeletal docking towers rose from another area of the compound, stayed by guy-lines. A battle-weary pair of partially deflated airships was already tethered. Merlin pulled back to allow the incoming craft enough space to complete its docking. The net was lowered back down from the gondola, depositing the aeroplane - its wings now crumpled, its fuselage buckled - on the apron below. Service staff rushed out of bunkers to untangle the mess and free the pilot. Merlin brought his ship down on a clear part of the apron and doused the engines as soon as the landing skids touched the ground.
It wasn't long before a wary crowd had gathered around Tyrant. Most of them wore long leather coats, heavily belted, with the crescent emblem sewn into the right breast. They had scarves wrapped around their lower faces, almost to the nose. Their helmets were leather caps, with long flaps covering the sides of the face and the back of the neck. Most of them wore goggles; a few wore some kind of breathing apparatus. At least half the number were aiming barrelled weapons at the ship, some of which needed to be set up on tripods, while some even larger wheeled cannons were being propelled across the apron by teams of well-drilled soldiers. One figure was gesticulating, directing the armed squads to take up specific positions.
'Can you understand what he's saying?' Merlin asked, knowing that Tyrant would be picking up any external sounds.
'I'm going to need more than a few minutes to crack their language, Merlin, even if it is related to something in my database, of which there's no guarantee.'
'Fine. I'll improvise. Can you spin me some flowers?'
'Where exactly are you going? What do you mean, flowers?'
Merlin paused at the airlock. He wore long boots, tight black leather trousers, a billowing white shirt and brocaded brown leather waistcoat, accented with scarlet trim. He'd tied back his hair and made a point of trimming his beard. 'Where do you think? Outside. And I want some flowers. Flowers are good. Spin me some indigo hyacinths, the kind they used to grow on Springhaven, before the Mentality Wars. They always go down well.'
'You're insane. They'll shoot you.'
'Not if I smile and come bearing exotic alien flowers. Remember, I did just save one of their planes.'
'You're not even wearing armour.'
'Armour would really scare them. Trust me, ship: this is the quickest way for them to understand I'm not a threat.'
'It's been a pleasure having you aboard,' Tyrant said acidly. 'I'll be sure to pass on your regards to my next owner.'
'Just make the flowers and stop complaining.'
Five minutes later Merlin steeled himself as the lock sequenced and the ramp lowered to kiss the ground. The cold hit him like a lover's slap. He heard an order from the soldiers' leader, and the massed ranks adjusted their aim. They'd been pointing at the ship before. Now it was only Merlin they were interested in.
He raised his right hand palm open, the newly spun flowers in his left.
'Hello. My name's Merlin.' He thumped his chest for emphasis and said the name again, slower this time. 'Mer-lin. I don't think there's much chance of you being able to understand me, but just in case . . . I'm not here to cause trouble.' He forced a smile, which probably looked more feral than reassuring. 'Now. Who's in charge?'
The leader shouted another order. He heard a rattle of a hundred safety catches being released. Suddenly, the ship's idea of sending out a proctor first sounded splendidly sensible. Merlin felt a cold line of sweat trickle down his back. After all that he had survived so far, both during his time with the Cohort and since he had become an adventuring free agent, it would be something of a let-down to die by being shot with a chemically propelled projectile. That was only one step above being mauled and eaten by a wild animal.
Merlin walked down the ramp, one cautious step at a time. 'No weapons, ' he said. 'Just flowers. If I wanted to hurt you, I could have hit you from space with charm-torps.'
When he reached the apron, the leader gave another order and a trio of soldiers broke formation to cover Merlin from three angles, with the barrels of their weapons almost touching him. The leader - a cruel-looking young man with a scar down the right side of his face - shouted something in Merlin's direction, a word that sounded vaguely like 'distal', but which was in no language Merlin recognised. When Merlin didn't move, he felt a rifle jab into the small of his back. 'Distal,' the man said again, this time with an emphasis bordering on the hysterical.
Then another voice boomed across the apron, one that belonged to a much older man. There was something instantly commanding about the voice. Looking to the source of the exclamation, Merlin saw the wrecked aircraft entangled in its capture net, and the pilot in the process of crawling out from the tangle, with a wooden box in his hands. The rifle stopped jabbing Merlin's back, and the cruel-looking young man fell silent while the pilot made his way over to them.