Alexius brought out another long sigh. The other men were silent. Michael swallowed and took the weapon back from Jennifer. “Then there must be something else we can do,” he said defiantly. “There must be some way of adapting this device to our own abilities. I’ve told you many times that we aren’t painted savages.”
She waited, a grim smile on her face, till it was clear that Michael had nothing more to say. “Oh, but I think I can help you with something,” she said, now in Latin. “I’d give up on trying to copy this. But, in the days before The Break, my father obtained a great deal of information about weapons from a web of knowledge that covered the whole world. After The Break, this allowed us to survive the looting of houses. Even then, we used water pipes of more solid metal than you can easily make. But, if size doesn’t matter, I’m sure I can explain how to make tubes of iron and brass that can shoot stone balls or lengths of chain. On a battlefield, or on city walls, these can smash up any attack that doesn’t involve flying machines.” She continued with a discussion of ignition powders that her Latin wasn’t good enough to explain clearly.
“Then we’re in business!” Michael said quickly in Latin. This was a double relief. The matters raised by Jennifer had been continually at the back of his own mind. Also, he had seen the looks on her face when she thought he wasn’t watching, and heard the inflections in her voice when they spoke of their future life together. He smiled and sat back. He switched into slow and simple Greek. “In view of what assistance she can give the Empire in its defence, my wife is dispensed from the usual formalities of her sex and of her station in society.” One of the men opened his mouth in shock. Alexius allowed himself to look doubtful. But the Lord Michael had spoken. And the Lord Michael’s father would somehow be cajoled into standing behind his words.
“Jennifer,” he said, back in Latin, “do go to bed. We have a long ride tomorrow, and, whatever you may be in my own heart, you are now the most important subject in the Empire.” He looked at his wooden beer cup. “Yes, go to bed,” he repeated. “We have an early start. In the meantime, we do have further talk of politics that is for men alone.”
Michael looked out again from the arched gateway of the fort. “Keep the horses under cover,” he ordered. He put a hand on Jennifer’s arm. “Are you sure they can’t see us here?” She nodded. She said they might be safe even under the dense covering of trees. But she was convinced no one in the floating machine could detect motion or body heat through courses of Roman brick. “Then we are safe,” he answered. He laughed easily and patted one of the nervous guards. “Don’t worry,” he said. “My Lady knows their machinery and their ways. They will hover a while overhead, then be off to look somewhere else.”
Jennifer tried to believe him. It was weeks since they’d crossed the Rhine. Except when puzzling out names everyone else might understand for things like potassium nitrate, and trying to describe the extraction of phosphor from urine, she’d been thinking as much in Greek as in English. Constantinople was still far away. But England and the evil it represented seemed farther still. And now England had reached out with its airships and thermal imaging equipment, and was hovering not a hundred feet above them.
Michael took her by the shoulder and moved towards the other side of the gateway, where they wouldn’t be speaking in front of everyone else. “How far from home can these things get?” he asked in Latin. Before she could confirm that she didn’t know, he went on, more for himself than for her. “How many of these things are there? Do they always float singly? Or do they operate in fleets?” He watched her shrug. “Can I take it that everyone up there is in immediate contact with England?” Jennifer did nod yes to that question. Michael pursed his lips. By comparison, the other questions bordered on the unimportant.
“We’ll have to see what it represents,” he said. “Depending on how long that propelling screw can be kept turning without fresh supplies of its fuel, it might be no more dangerous than a fish that has poked its head out of water.” He looked carefully out again. The floating machine had moved a few degrees to the west. It was now on the other side of the ruined wall. Still keeping under cover of what brickwork remained, he drew Jennifer behind him and tried to see if anyone was looking down from the gigantic bag of air that held steady in the breeze.
Alone with his wife, he could try to pull himself together. If the English were up to extended operations all the way along the Danube, his plan was madness after all. Still worse, if the English were willing to show themselves so far from home, would Constantinople itself be safe from an armed raid?
He led Jennifer back within the undoubted safety of the gateway. He sat on a stone lintel that had fallen down and pretended to mop his brow. He looked at a broken inscription that must have been a thousand years old. It recorded how the fort had been built by an unnamed military governor, for a Legion whose number was missing, and was part of the fortifications in depth for the two hundred mile gap between Rhine and Danube that was the weakest point in the Empire’s northern frontier.
He noticed that everyone was silently watching him. He sat up and smiled. Time to show some leadership. The men would follow him to their death—so long, that is, as he led them there. He took out and unfolded the now tattered map. It showed how any movement away from the river course would take them straight into mountains. The numbers printed beside their contour lines showed that many of these were thousands of feet high. The map was too general to indicate the kind of passes they would need through the mountains. How long would their gold last on a wider circuit? More important, how long would their luck hold? The few bandits they’d so far come across had taken one look at their horses and armed men, before going off in search of easier throats to cut. Trying to feel their way through narrow passes without tree cover would expose them to more than one danger from above.
He’d take it as read that anyone looking down from the machine would be able to see in the dark. It was an added complication. He pointed at the map. If his navigation had been correct—and he had no idea if it had been—they were close by a town called Ulm. “This looks fairly substantial,” he said, squinting at the round dot beside the name. He moved his finger north and south and east and west, and noted the contours and the line of the river. “I’d say it was a trading centre. You’ll have cut timbers floated downstream from here, and perhaps a little spinning and weaving.” Michael stared again at the broken inscription. “We need reasonable numbers of people,” he thought aloud. “If we can lose ourselves in a crowd, we’re in with a chance. That thing can’t be carrying more than a dozen armed men—perhaps not half that. If Hooper is behind the chase, they’ll have orders not to risk harming me. Unlike in London, they won’t be able to use their weapons indiscriminately. They might even be under orders not to make themselves too obvious.” He looked down again at the map. Everything said Ulm. It was all a question of what the directors of that floating machine had in mind.
He fell silent, racking his brains for a scheme that would keep them heading towards the Empire. Ulm was a diversion. Two days it might take to get there—longer if they had to travel under cover. He looked up. The gentle throbbing of the machine had became louder and more insistent, and it began to move west. Jennifer gave him a trusting smile, as if he knew more than she did. “Perhaps it does need to go back,” she said. “It might be running short of fuel to let it move about.”
Michael hoped she was right. Everything worked better without that thing overhead. Keeping out of sight, they all watched the floating machine pick up speed. It continued west until its throbbing had faded into the distance. They waited under shelter of the gateway until Jennifer’s watch had shown the passing of half an hour. Michael got up and stepped cautiously inside the ruined fort. He forced his way through the bushes that covered the old parade ground, until he had an unbroken view to the west. The floating machine had gone completely out of sight.