It was more like he was driving a boat than some strange aerial machine. The air seemed thick, the going sluggish, and the rumbling whine coming from the faux power plant was beginning to hurt his ears. But Annie was right beside him, as always. She was radiating both beauty and innocent vulnerability. This had the potential of being a very dangerous endeavor once they reached the castle. Why then was she here? There was no reason. Yet here she was. Just another part of the plot.
They were about halfway across the divide when Zoloff let out a cry.
"The Wingmen!" he bellowed, nose pressed against the ship's tiny porthole. "They are coming to attack us!"
Wingmen?
Hunter looked left to see that, yes indeed, there was a squadron of winged men heading right for them. They looked just about as ridiculous as the tin soldiers they'd battled during their escape from the cliff. It's just that they all had wings.
Now what?
"Use the smoke gun!" Zoloff cried.
Smoke gun?
Annie unclenched from Hunter just long enough to point to a lever on the control panel. He would have sworn it was not there just a moment ago.
"The smoke gun?" he asked her.
She clutched him again. "Yes — the Wingmen hate it!"
Hunter just shrugged and turned the ship to meet the incoming aerial attackers. They were firing some kind of weapons at them, but Hunter could see only tiny pebble-size shrapnel hitting the side of the spacecraft. The tin soldiers' spears had gone right through the craft's skin up on the cliff. That's how thin it was. Yet these BBs were bouncing off.
The attackers were now just one hundred feet off his bow. Hunter pulled the weapon lever. There was a burst of smoke from a muzzle that had suddenly appeared on the ship's nose. Though seemingly in defiance of physical law, the puffy smoke traveled faster than the craft itself and soon covered the dozen or so winged men. That was all it took.
Suddenly their tight formation was in great disarray. The Wingmen began streaking all over the sky, out of control, almost as if they were surprised to see this simple weapon used against them. They quickly regrouped, turned themselves 180 degrees, and beat a very haggard retreat.
"That was easy," Hunter muttered.
That's when the huge flaming arrow went by.
Hunter's highly advanced sixth sense detected the crude missile coming about a second before it would have nailed them. It was just enough time for him to spin the steering wheel and push the strange little craft enough to starboard to avoid getting hit.
Yet no sooner had he saved them from one arrow when another rose out of the palace, trailing smoke and weak flame, but heading right for them. Hunter stood on the brakes and spun the wheel at the same time. The craft fell off to the left; the missile just kept on going.
The palace was now just a few hundred feet below mem, but it was obvious their arrival had been detected.
"Fear not!" Zoloff cried. "We can defeat them because justice is on our side!"
The third flaming arrow hit them an instant later.
It came out of nowhere. Like the smoke gun and its muzzle, one moment it wasn't there, the next it was.
The arrow rammed them head-on. The flames and wimpy smoke spurted through the cracked windshield, making almost no noise but causing Annie to scream and her father to groan. By instinct, Hunter looked down at the controls. All six lightbulbs had blinked out.
We're screwed, he thought.
But then he realized that although they had a big flaming arrow stuck in their nose, the ship's flying integrity didn't seem to be affected. He floored the gas pedal and put the ship into a dive.
Their sudden increase in speed served to both put the fire out and dislodge the smoldering arrow from their bow. Trouble was, they were only about twenty feet away from the palace courtyard — and still heading nearly straight down.
Damn…
The slatternly dancers scattered as Hunter yanked back on the steering wheel and managed to hit both the gas and the brake at the same time. The corresponding jolt served to bring them to a stop a mere six feet from the surface. They hung here like this for just an instant; then the marionette strings above them finally snapped, and they crashed the last few feet to the ground.
Annie screamed, of course, but Hunter had grabbed her at the last moment and was able to cushion her from the worst of the blow. Zoloff was tossed about, but he, too, was unharmed.
The flimsy door fell off, and the three passengers tumbled out of the strange little craft. When they all looked up again, they were surrounded by tin soldiers.
Hunter got Zoloff and Annie to their feet as the circle of palace guards closed in on them. They were similar in dress to the tin soldiers they'd fought on the cliff, except they wore larger helmets, and the tips of their spears were spouting weak tongues of flame.
Hunter's priority at that moment was protecting Annie. She was stuck to him like glue as always, but he managed to put himself between her and the creaking guards. He didn't have time to think about what they should do next. Zoloff, however, was way ahead of him. The elderly scientist took a roundhouse swing at the nearest soldier, bitting him square in the face. The guy went over like a lead weight, hitting the man next to him, and the man next to him, setting off a chain reaction that toppled a dozen of the palace guards in a second's time.
The unexpected bulge sent several of the guards falling right into Hunter. He dispatched each one with a solid punch to the jaw. The most ridiculous aspect of their battlesuits was their buckethead-style helmet. It was a wonder that they could see anything out the two tiny slits provided for the eyes. Plus the helmets appeared to be very heavy, making the palace guards needlessly clumsy and slow.
Zoloff kept punching, and so did Hunter. The guards were easy to hit. One punch usually did the trick, flattening them. With heavy armor weighing them down, it was hard for them to get back up. The problem was, they just kept on coming. There seemed to be no end to the ridiculously armored soldiers pouring out of the palace gate. Zoloff was punching them two at a time. Hunter's hands were becoming numb simply because he'd hit so many of them. Yet their slow-motion onslaught was relentless.
This went on for more than fifteen minutes. The pile of incapacitated guards was soon twelve men high. Still the fistfight continued. Zoloff was very winded; Hunter's arms felt like they were going to fall off. It finally dawned on him that this was a fight they could not possibly win. Not when there was an endless supply of the tin men.
So he just stopped swinging, and so did Zoloff. Annie screamed. Two tin men picked her up by the shoulders and carried her away.
Hunter tried to get to her again, but the sheer weight of a dozen guards piling on top of him was too much even for him to handle. Subdued more from exhaustion than anything else, he and Zoloff were bound by the wrists and led through the palace gate to the throne room, prodded all the way by the weakly flaming spears.
No surprise, the throne room was ostentatious to the max. Very high ivory-like ceilings, gleaming golden walls. Shafts of bright light coming from no discernible source.
Hunter couldn't help be impressed by the tacky grandeur of it all — but oddly, it looked a little familiar, too. Almost like…
A guard shoved him forward, breaking his thoughts. "You must kneel before Ping!" was his muffled order.
But Hunter just turned around and head-butted the guy. He went over in a heap. Zoloff did the same with his guard. Like Hunter, he was too proud to bend to anyone. More guards rushed forward, but a flash of light from the center of the room froze them in place. Suddenly, where there had been nothing a moment before, a huge throne had appeared, complete with a hundred or so steps leading up to it and an accompanying bank of greenish fog. Behind it was a banner of sufficiently tacky red and yellow colors, boasting a cascade of crests and scrolls and icons, all proclaiming how great the person seated on the throne really must be.