“What about the refugees?”
“If there are any, well, they’ll be in for a nasty surprise. Though, if they survived Chapman this little misadventure will be nothing to them. Gentlemen, we are all refugees now. Every one of us.”
Outside, it had stopped raining. Already the clouds were clearing. Yes, the end would come swiftly.
He looked to his Council and laughed, a hollow petulant sound that widened their eyes with shock. Stade glared at his councillors. Every single one of them would shoulder this burden. They had fought tooth and claw to reach these positions. Well, they had their power, now they would face, as he had faced, the consequences.
Responsibility.
Roil take them all. Roil take them all and him.
And, at that moment, he was almost certain it would.
Chapter 48
One of history’s great surprises is that so many survived the hasty evacuation of Chapman. Such had been the violence of the city’s conquest that all previous plans of escape had been discarded. Though some reflect that the absence of Buchan and Whig had much to do with this, it is undeniable that there was no slow and steady progress, but mad flight.
Yet again, the Roil revealed hitherto unknown resources. No one expected to be pursued and so rapidly.
THE SKY ABOVE SHALE, DISTANCE FROM ROIL INDETERMINATE
The wind struck David as a capricious creature. No matter that it was driving them all north, it also seemed intent of taking each airship and Aerokin a slightly different way north. It scattered the escapees of the Festival of Float, and carried them on separate breaths and eddies. Within a few hours, he could no longer see any of the other craft, except one. Blake’s Aerokin, the Arrogant Spice. It was oddly comforting to know the great pilot and his craft were so close, not to mention the heavier armoury it contained.
Storm clouds scudded in, and Kara Jade warmed the interior of the Roslyn Dawn, dropped some ballast (David didn’t ask how this was done, but it stank) and lifted them above the storm. But not by much, it was as though they skimmed the surface of some angry conflict of electrical giants.
Watching lightning beneath his feet was an eerie experience, and one not at all comforting, particularly after the sun had set. It seemed as though they sailed a storm-tossed sea, and in a way they did, only it was a sea seeded with dynamite. They drifted over and through odd cloudscapes, visible only when the lightning flashed below; dark columns of cloud; weird weightless grottoes through which Kara and the Dawn navigated.
David had never seen such things nor imagined that they would ever exist above the mundane slab of drizzling grey that roofed his city. His discomfort soon faded. The beautiful sky enchanted him, almost enough that he could momentarily forget everything that had happened to bring him here. Cadell and Margaret were trapped in their own thoughts – in fact both looked like they were trying to sleep – certainly not intent on the world outside.
Which was why he saw the dark shape first.
For a moment, he wasn’t sure what it was he saw. Perhaps another airship, only it moved too quickly. He watched it a while, until he realised that it was getting closer.
“What’s that?” he asked Margaret, who sat nearest him, nudging her with an elbow.
Margaret moaned and elbowed him back. She opened her eyes so slowly that David was frightened she would miss it.
She blinked at him. “What?”
David pointed. “That,” he said. “Just west of the Arrogant Spice .” Margaret peered into the darkening sky.
“Ah, I see it! I don’t know, but it’s approaching quickly. Very quickly.”
David called Kara Jade over. She brought with her a brass telescope, which proved hardly necessary, for when she arrived it was clearly visible.
“Some kind of metal airship,” she said. “I’ve not seen its kind before. The Roslyn Dawn is new bred, but this is something else altogether. And rocket powered.” She breathed out enviously. “What I wouldn’t give to possess that speed.”
David was almost tempted to say something about new bred Aerokin but decided the better of it because, as they watched, the ship raced towards the Arrogant Spice. Blake had obviously seen it; his Aerokin had begun to descend towards the cloudbank. The iron ship immediately changed its angle of approach.
“Or that sort of manoeuvrability,” Kara Jade said.
A brief exchange of fire followed. The Spice’s heavy guns boomed followed by the spat, spat, spat of the smaller iron ship’s weaponry. The iron ship drew first blood.
Flames ran up the Spice’s skin a blazing sheath that drove their shadows hard against the interior of the Roslyn Dawn. The Arrogant Spice’s screams echoed over to them.
But this was not the end of the exchange.
The iron ship fired once more, and the Spice’s bioengines ignited with a bloody rupturing. The Aerokin began at once to tilt, nose down towards the ground.
The Roslyn Dawn groaned in sympathy.
The iron ship looped around and rammed into the Spice’s control gondola. It paused there for a moment, or hovered, as though inspecting the contents of the airship, or feasting upon them.
When it was done, it pulled away in a burst of fire: blood and flame jetting from the wound.
Blake – it had to be Blake, his beard flaming, wielding a steel bar or a sword – had clambered onto the iron ship’s nose. He swung his weapon against the cockpit window once, twice, the distant cracking of the blows followed moments later.
The sight was at once absurd and terrible.
Blake got in two or three hard blows, cracking the windscreen but not breaking it. He took another swing, the iron ship dipped and looped. Unbalanced, he slid from its edge, his legs flipping up as he tumbled away into the clouds.
The Arrogant Spice was ablaze, all four engine nacelles ruined and its control gondola torn open. The beast had lost all its grandeur, its tilt deepened and its flagella hung limp and still, smoke streaming from its gondola and bioengines.
The iron ship rushed towards it. At the last moment, the Spice’s Flagella stiffened and lashed out. It grabbed the iron ship and together they fell.
“She’s going out fighting,” Kara said, pride and horror fighting for dominance in her voice.
But there was all too little fight left.
Fire flashed from the rear of the iron craft and it tore free of the Spice’s grip. The ship looped up and around lightning quick and crashed through the skin of the Spice. The explosion hit them like a thunderclap.
The Dawn howled.
Little remained of the Arrogant Spice but a dark cloud of flaming fragments tumbling down, down into the storm below.
Out of that dark cloud burst the iron ship.
Kara sobbed and howled and shook her fist at the ship. “No… that’s not right. There’s nothing in the sky that can do that.”
“Until now,” Margaret said, pulling free her rifle and sighting along it. The weapon hummed, the muzzle remained unwarped. Not that it would be enough.
She activated one of her rime blades, tested the edge with her breath and watched it freeze. Margaret knew who they were looking for, and she would sooner die than let them take her. “Where will we fight the ship? Because you can’t outrun it.”
Kara Jade ran from the rear window to the cockpit controls, and began her consultation with the Dawn. “Can’t outrun it, but I’m damned if I’m going to make it easy.”