The mountainside ended without warning, and the Swordwing made a dangerously sharp turn, almost clipping the corner. Harkins followed out of reflex. The only safe place in this murk was where his target had already been.
An outcrop of black stone came at him like a thrown fist.
His reactions responded in place of conscious thought. He shoved the flight stick forward and the Firecrow dived, skimming under the jutting stone with barely a foot to spare. It thundered over him for a terrifying instant and was gone.
He pulled away from the mountainside, gibbering. That was too close, too close, too close! His legs had begun to tremble. This was insane! Insane! Who did that pilot think he was, anyway? Why was he putting Harkins through such torment?
But there it was: the Swordwing. Still visible through the bubble of windglass on the Firecrow’s snout. It was heading down, further into the dull blankness, a ghostly blur.
Harkins followed. Afraid as he was, he was also afraid to face the consequences of giving up. He couldn’t take Frey’s wrath if he let the Swordwing go. Death in the cockpit was one thing, but confrontation was quite another. Confrontation was a special kind of hell for Harkins, and he’d do just about anything to avoid it.
Dense, threatening shadows came into view on either side of them: mountains, pressing in close. Harkins bit his lip to stop his teeth chattering. The Firecrow’s engines cocooned him in warm sound, but he was acutely aware of how fragile this metal shell would be if it hit something at a hundred knots. He’d seen Firecrows shatter like eggs, some of them with his friends inside.
But that never happened to me! he told himself, firming his will, and he pushed harder on the throttle.
The mountains slid closer on either side, pushing together, and he realised they were heading into a defile. Then, suddenly, the Swordwing slowed. Harkins bore down on it. The blur took on form and shape, growing before him. He pressed down his guns just as the Swordwing went into a steep climb, and the tracers fell astern as it shot upwards and disappeared into the haze.
At that moment, Harkins realised what his opponent was doing. Panic clutched at him. He yanked back on the flight stick, hauling on the throttle and stamping the pedal that opened the flaps for emergency braking. The Firecrow’s blunt nose came up; the craft squealed in protest. Harkins felt a weight like a giant’s hand shoving him down into his seat.
A wall of grim stone filled his vision. Massive, immovable, racing towards him. The end of the defile. He screamed as the Firecrow clawed at the air, scrabbling to climb. Blood pounded in his thighs and feet. His vision dimmed and narrowed as he began to brown out.
You’re not gonna faint . . . you’re not gonna faint . . .
Then everything tilted, vertical became horizontal, and the wall that had been in front of him was rushing beneath his wings. He let off on the stick, blood thumping back into his head, and the Firecrow shot out of the defile and upwards. There were a few seconds of nothing but grey, then he burst out of the mist and into the clear air.
Stillness.
As if in a trance, he cut back the throttle and gently brought the Firecrow to a hover, letting it float in the air, resting on the buoyancy of its aerium tanks. A dozen kloms away, visible between the peaks, the Ketty Jay hung listlessly, waiting for his return. He looked down into the sea of mist, but his quarry was long gone.
His hands were quivering uncontrollably. He held one up before him and stared as it shook.
Seven
The eastern edge of the Hookhollows was full of hiding places. Secret valleys, sheltered ledges. There were folds in the crumpled landscape big enough to conceal a small fleet of aircraft. Freebooters treasured these bolt holes, and when they found a good one they guarded its location jealously.
Nightfall found the Ketty Jay and her outflyers in one of Frey’s favourite spots, a long tunnel-like cave he usually employed when he was running from something bigger than he was. It was wider than it was high, a slot in the plateau wall that ran far back into the mountainside. A tight fit for a craft the size of the Ketty Jay, but Frey had brought them in without a scratch. Now the Ketty Jay hunkered in the dark, its dim underbelly lights reflected by the shallow stream that ran along the floor of the cave. There was no sound but for a rhythmic dripping and the relentless chuckle of the water.
Inside the Ketty Jay, things were not so calm.
‘What in the name of the Allsoul’s veiny bollocks were you aiming at, you shit-wit?’ Pinn demanded of his captain, who punched him in response.
Slag, the Ketty Jay’s cat, watched the ensuing scuffle with feline disinterest from his vantage point atop a cabinet. The whole crew had gathered in the mess, crowding into one small room, and the comical jostle to separate Pinn and Frey involved a lot of bashing into things and knocking chairs over. The mess was a cheerless place, comprising a fixed central table, a set of metal cabinets for utensils and a compact stove, where Slag warmed himself when Silo chased him out of the engine room.
Slag was an ancient warrior, a grizzled slab of muscle held together by scar tissue and a hostile disposition. Frey had brought him on board as a kitten the day after he took ownership of the Ketty Jay, fourteen years ago. Slag had never known anything beyond the Ketty Jay, and never been tempted to find out. His life’s purpose was here, as the nemesis of the monstrous rats that bred in the air ducts and pipeways. For more than a decade the battle had been fought, generations of sharp-toothed rodents versus their indestructible antagonist. He’d seen off the best of them—their generals, their leaders—and hunted their mothers until they were near-extinct. But they always came back, and Slag was always waiting for them.
‘Will you two stop acting like a pair of idiots?’ Jez cried, as Malvery and Silo pulled Pinn from their captain. Pinn, red-faced with anger, assured Malvery he was calm so the doctor would release him, then made the obligatory second lunge at Frey. Malvery was ready for it, and punched him hard in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him.
‘What’d you do that for?’ Pinn rasped weakly, wide-eyed with the injustice of it all.
‘Fun,’ replied Malvery, with a broad grin. ‘Now calm down before I club your stupid block off. You ain’t helping.’
Frey shook Silo off with a baleful glare and dusted himself down. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Now we’ve got that out of the way, can I say something, nice and slow so everyone gets it? It—wasn’t—my—fault!
‘You did blow up the freighter, though,’ Crake pointed out.
‘If you knew anything about aircraft you’d know they always put the prothane tanks as deep inside as possible, well armoured. Otherwise people like us might be able to hit them and blow the whole thing to smithereens.’
‘The way you did,’ Crake persisted, out of malice. He hadn’t forgotten Frey’s behaviour when Lawsen Macarde had a gun to his head.
‘But I didn’t!’ Frey cried. ‘Machine guns couldn’t have penetrated deep enough to even get to the prothane tanks. Silo, tell them.’
The Murthian folded his arms. ‘Could happen, Cap’n. But it’s one in a million.’
‘See? It could happen!’ Pinn crowed, having recovered his breath.
‘But it’s one in a million!’ Frey said through gritted teeth. ‘About the same chance as you shutting up for five minutes so I can think.’
Slag unfurled from his spot on top of the cabinet and dropped down to the countertop with a thump. He thought little, if at all, of the other beings with whom he shared the craft, but he was feeling unaccountably piqued that nobody was paying any attention to him amid this puzzling furore. Harkins, who had been keeping his head down anyway, cringed into the corner as he caught sight of the cat. Slag gave him a stare of utter loathing, then leaped to the table so he could get into the middle of things.