Something was on fire.
Skylark must have something to do with it.
“Come on, girls,” Skylark said. “Our job isn’t over yet.”
“So what’s next, Chieftainess?” Kotuku asked.
“It’s time for our mission to split up,” Skylark answered. “We’re going to attack the two nursery islands. You, Kotuku, take four of your troopers, set fire to the nests you’re carrying and drop them onto the first of the outer islands, the one where mollymawks raise their young in the cliffs. I’ll take the other troopers with me to the second island where the seabird mothers nest on the plateau. You must make the drops strategically.”
“Strategically?”
“Drop the nests wherever there is dry grass or straw, where they have the maximum opportunity to catch fire and spread. We want both islands to catch fire.”
“What about the nests you’re carrying?” Kotuku asked. “You’ve always got to leave the best for the last,” Skylark grinned. “They’re for the fortress island.”
Kotuku wheeled with her squad and, with the oil-soaked nests in their clawed feet, made for the first of the two nursery islands. Galvanised, Skylark led her own squad to the second island. As they approached, female gulls rose up in clouds. Territorial as ever, they had a lot to defend. The entire plateau was dotted with mothers and recently hatched chicks.
“Oh no, all those baby chicks,” Skylark said and, for a moment, her resolve wavered. “I don’t want to harm you, darlings. All I want is for your daddy seabirds to come flying back to rescue you.”
Then she found herself in a birdfight with seven attacking prions. She looked into their dark, furious eyes, and saw their beaks snapping at her. That changed her attitude. “It’s either you or us,” Skylark decided.
Battling desperately, Skylark and her troopers pushed through the attacking gulls. They were still over the ocean, but gradually they were able to make it to the edge of the plateau.
“Quick,” Skylark yelled at the troopers. She struck a match against her claws and set fire to the nests they were carrying. “Make the drop —”
The troopers closed their wings, descended through the gulls and aimed the nests at a patch of dry grass on the plateau. “Bombs away!” A puff, the grass caught fire and began to spread. The flames drove the seabird mothers into an absolute frenzy of anxiety.
Suddenly, there was a dull crack and a flash as a sheet of fire flickered in the sky above the other nursery island.
“How did Kotuku manage that?” Skylark asked herself. Then, “It’s the guano,” she gasped. “It’s a powder keg. The ammonia from the guano creates an inflammable gas. It fuels the fire, reaches flash point and everything goes up.” In panic she looked at the flames dancing beneath her. “We’ve got to get out of here,” Skylark cried. “The same thing’s going to happen to this island.” She took to the sky, urging her troopers to follow quickly after her. Higher and higher they soared.
Flash point.
The air cracked apart. A white sheet of fire leapt through it. The flames and heat sizzled and crackled around Skylark as she flipped and rolled out of danger.
“Well, Skylark dear,” Kotuku said when she rejoined the mission, “if the seabird army doesn’t hear that and see the flames and smoke, they would have to be deaf as well as blind.”
“And we haven’t finished yet,” Skylark said.
“What the heck —”
Arnie and Kawanatanga had been sky dancing and Arnie was blinded by two bright flashes cracking across the sky. “No!” Kawanatanga cried. Clouds of mother gulls were fluttering above two of the offshore islands. Their wailing rolled inland on the wind.
Arnie tilted his head and, when his sight returned, focused his gaze seaward. What was happening there? Sure enough, he saw a little brown bird and nine white-winged cranes skimming the crystal sea. So it was Skylark after all.
“Brilliant, Skylark,” he yelled. “Just awe-some!”
She had caused the seabird army’s drive to the inlet to falter. Attracted by the flames and smoke and the screams of seabird mothers, they began breaking off from the cut and thrust of the attack.
“Something else has happened,” Arnie realised. A loud chorus of horror and consternation came from the battlefield; it was followed by a tidal wave of air flowing inward from the ocean and up the Manu Valley, as if some huge hole had opened up which needed to be filled. More seabirds fled in terror back to the sea.
“I must return to my army,” Kawanatanga said to himself. “My fight with the falcon from the future will have to wait for another day.” He sensed an upward ascending wind and turned into it.
Arnie, however, was not about to let him go so easily. He flew into Kawanatanga’s path, blocking him. “Going somewhere?” he asked.
“The gods favour you today,” Kawanatanga sneered. “Let me pass.”
“Like hell I will,” Arnie answered. “My elemental mission is to defend to the death, to the last sinew and feather, the manu whenua. You’re going nowhere.”
“Then die,” Kawanatanga said.
He attacked, his eyes alert and feral. But his impatience to return to the battle acted to Arnie’s advantage. When he stretched for the kill, his wings dipped and he dropped below his foe. Parrying with finesse, Arnie lifted, mantled, and dropped on Kawanatanga’s back.
“Who’s going to their god?” Arnie cried. He thrust his legs down and forward, and the talons of his right leg bit, dug, flexed and hooked. Holding on with that leg, Arnie manoeuvred the penknife that Skylark had tied onto his left leg into a strike position.
“Mess with the best,” Arnie yelled, “die like the rest.”
Too late. Kawanatanga, in a reflex action, lunged forward. He tore away from Arnie’s talons — and as he did so, pulled the penknife out of its binding. Arnie watched helplessly as it spiralled toward the sea.
Kawanatanga could only see red. “I have the upper hand now.”
Arnie spilled air. His only hope was to put enough space between him and Kawanatanga and, in the interim, think of some strategy to change the balance of power. Alternating gliding with bursts of powered level flight, Arnie made a desperate bid for sea level.
“We’d better hurry,” Te Arikinui Kotuku said. They were fast approaching the late Karuhiruhi’s fortress island. Already the jagged crown was spearing into the sky, the ramparts rushing up like spears to meet them.
What was it that had happened on the battlefield? Skylark asked herself. She had felt a sudden lurch and kick in the dynamic of the world when the two outer nursery islands had reached flashpoint and dazzled the sky with blinding white light. She wracked her brains for an answer.
“Prepare to repel the royal guard,” Kotuku warned. Areta’s crack squad of prion marines had taken to the air and were planing across to meet them.
“Keep them busy, will you?” Skylark asked. “I have the two remaining nests. I can do this job on my own.”
“Okay,” Kotuku nodded. “But don’t take too long, will you?” With a cry she and the troopers engaged the prions.
Skylark dived for the ramparts. She was following a hunch of hers that somewhere there’d be a main shaft going right through the middle of the fortress.
“If I plant the burning nests there, I’ll be able to bring the castle down — and its Queen and new King with it.”
But where was the entrance? She heard a scream and saw one of her troopers fall from the sky. She was wasting time —
Then Skylark saw it. A grand hallway, just behind a tall balcony from which the late Karuhiruhi had saluted his military.
Skylark dropped, and before Areta’s bodyguards could stop her, she was in. Three doorways appeared before her. Unsure which one to take, she flew through the left doorway and found herself in the army barracks. Oops. She backed out and, this time, chose the doorway in the middle.