“That way,” the youngster shouted in response, pointing to another blaze burning a few streets ahead. Clay and Kriz ran on, dodging past fleeing townsfolk who as yet failed to recognise the fact that their deliverance had arrived.
They rounded a corner into a small square where Clay’s gaze immediately alighted on Hilemore’s unmistakable form. The captain stood over a large Red, surrounded by bodies in various states of burnt dismemberment. A girl of about eighteen knelt close by, face frozen and expressionless despite the tears streaming from her eyes. As he drew closer, Clay saw that the Red was still alive despite the numerous bullet-holes in its hide. Its wings flapped feebly and its claws dug into the cobbles as it sought to raise itself, and might have done so had Hilemore not raised a revolver and put a bullet through its skull.
“Captain,” Clay called out, running to his side.
Hilemore’s face was grim as he glanced at Clay and offered a muttered greeting. “Mr. Torcreek. I had hoped to see you earlier in the evening.”
“Blacks can only fly so fast.” Watching Hilemore’s gaze track over the surrounding corpses, rich in guilt, he asked, “Friends of yours, huh?”
“The Wash Lane Defence Volunteers,” Hilemore replied. He went to the kneeling girl, crouching to gently pull her to her feet, murmuring, “It’s done, Jillett. We won.”
The girl closed her eyes and stepped away from him, hugging herself tight. “What did they win?” she asked in a sob, jerking her head at the bodies. Hilemore had no answer for her and she sagged a little in mingled sorrow and exhaustion.
“Here,” Kriz said, coming forward to take hold of the girl, offering a vial of Green. “This will help.”
Jillett made a faint effort to shrug her off, but allowed herself to be guided to a near by bench where she drank down the Green.
“We killed the first one we found easily enough,” Hilemore was saying in a faint distant voice, his gaze now fixed on the Red he had shot. “This one was different. Jillett tried to hold it with Black but it was just too fast, too strong . . .”
Clay coughed, finding he didn’t particularly care for this version of the captain. Much as they grated on each other the man’s unerring will and discipline had long been a source of reassurance.
Hilemore blinked and straightened, turning back to him. “There are still Greens on the other side of the falls and in the harbour,” he said, holstering his revolver. “They’ll need to be dealt with.”
“Our friends’ll take care of it,” Clay assured him. “Gonna need you to make sure the folks here don’t shoot at them. Think you can do that?”
Hilemore’s expression hardened into a gratifyingly familiar frown. “Of course,” he snapped and marched off, heading south to the harbour. “We’ll need help fighting these fires,” he added over his shoulder. “If you don’t mind.”
The battle between Red and Black raged in the skies over Stockcombe for nearly an hour, swift moonlit shapes soaring and diving against a back-drop of stars. Occasionally the struggle would be illuminated by a concordance of flame. Human spectators were briefly presented with the sight of a dozen or more drakes assailing each other in a whirling knot of lashing tails and stabbing claws, before the flames died and all became confusion once more. Drakes fell into the harbour throughout it all, trailing smoke as they plummeted down. Most were dead but a few struggled on the surface for a time, screaming out distress calls until the water pulled them down.
By dawn all the Reds appeared to have either fled or fallen and the Blacks turned their attention to the Greens still prowling the western side of the city. They swooped down in successive relays, plucking Greens from the streets, crushing them with claws and teeth before casting the bodies away and diving down for more. When sunlight crested the edge of the crater Clay saw a steady stream of Greens fleeing over the western wall. Apparently the unseen hand that commanded them had finally allowed a retreat.
In the aftermath Stockcombe lay silent under a pall of smoke. The ships sat in harbour waters painted a dull red in the meagre light. There was no celebration amongst the townsfolk, no upsurge of joy in victory. Many stood or huddled together, soot-stained faces blank with shock whilst others wandered aimlessly, staring at the blackened ruins of homes or businesses. The children were an exception, clustering around the many drake corpses and chattering in excitement as they poked them with sticks, sometimes scurrying back in delighted alarm when they twitched in response.
The Blacks continued to patrol the skies above the city, drawing many a concerned and wary eye. Clay had communicated to Lutharon the need to keep out of rifle-range along with a stern warning against perching in the city itself. Instead the Blacks came to rest on the walls along the crater rim, bodies turned towards the rising sun and wings spread to catch the warmth.
Captain Hilemore, seemingly immune to fatigue, organised working parties from the Superior and the merchant ships to assist in clearing the worst of the rubble from the streets and extinguishing the few remaining fires. He also enlisted the large number of harvesters in the port to extract product from the bountiful supply of corpses littering the streets and the surrounding country, raising a somewhat problematic question in the process.
“We’ll need it,” Hilemore said. “This war isn’t over, Mr. Torcreek. As you well know.”
Clay looked at the corpse of the Black lying on the eastern quayside. It was an adult female some twenty feet long, congealed blood covering the wounds in her hide from numerous Red tail strikes. There were others to be found in the city and the harbour waters, a valuable resource to Hilemore’s eyes.
In truth Clay wasn’t sure how the Blacks would react to the harvesting of their dead. Whilst he was well aware of their capacity for grief, unlike humans they didn’t seem inclined to keen over the corpses of their kin. Perhaps they don’t need to, he thought. The memories get passed on, leaving the flesh behind, empty and dead. Lutharon seemed indifferent to the matter, his mind preoccupied with scouring the surrounding country for more enemies. Even so, Clay thought it best not to risk antagonising their allies unnecessarily.
“Do it under cover,” he told Hilemore. “And tonight, lessen the chance of their seeing.”
Hilemore called a conference aboard the Superior that evening where he gave a reckoning of the losses suffered and damage done. Altogether, over four hundred people had perished in the fighting with double that number injured, most of the casualties having been inflicted by the Reds. Although Hilemore spoke with his usual brisk authority, Clay could see the guilt behind his eyes.
“Could’ve been a lot worse, Captain,” he told him, heralding a murmur of muted agreement from the others present. Captain Okanas had come, along with Captain Tidelow, as representative of the merchant fleet. There was also the Blood-blessed girl from the square, still somewhat pale of face, and a chunky youth in a Contractor’s duster Clay doubted he had any right to wear. These two represented the Voter rebels who had apparently been engaged in a minor civil war with the young woman in a partially scorched military uniform facing them across the ward-room table. To Clay’s eyes it didn’t appear that the previous night’s events had done much to heal the rift betwixt the two groups.
“With the danger averted,” the young woman, Kulvetch, said when Hilemore fell silent, “my people are keen to return to their homes.”