After ten minutes, however, Ballard started to fall behind again. If he hadn’t claimed to know the quickest and safest route through the Painted Mountains, Pero might have simply gone on and left him to it. Coming to a fork in the canyon trail, he turned back.
“Which way?” he shouted.
Ballard meandered up to him, his eyes narrowing as he tried to focus. With trembling hands he reached into his saddlebag for his canteen.
Pero jabbed at the choice of routes ahead. “Left or right?”
Ballard fumbled the top off his canteen and took a long, desperate pull of water. From the way it sloshed when he lowered it from his mouth, Pero could tell there wasn’t much left, that he had drunk far more than he should have done by this stage of their journey.
“Which way?” Pero asked again.
Ballard peered at him, as if he didn’t understand the question, then he muttered, “What do you think?”
Pero rolled his eyes and spat on the ground in disgust. “What I think is that you should save your water.” Suddenly, losing his patience, he shouted, “Izquierda!” and slapped Ballard’s horse hard on the rump.
With a whinny of pain and surprise, it leaped forward, almost dislodging its rider, and began to gallop up the left hand path. Pero watched it go, then gave a satisfied nod.
“The left,” he muttered.
19
It was a massive operation, and incredibly risky. At five staging areas along the Wall, Strategist Wang’s desperate plan was coming to fruition.
Lin Mae stood with Wang at the main staging area, watching as a brazier was set above an airbox with a plunger on the side. As the brazier was ignited, the plunger was slowly pulled out, causing a measured amount of black powder to be blown up into the brazier. This in turn caused flames to surge up from the brazier, generating a large quantity of shimmering hot air.
Taking care not to burn themselves, a number of Tiger Corps soldiers, communicating in sharp, staccato phrases, manipulated a huge bag of stitched-together silk and canvas and sheep skin. Lin Mae knew that if they had had more time and more materials the bags would have been more meticulously crafted, the materials more carefully selected, and tests would have been carried out on the resulting constructions. But time had been very much of the essence, and so they had had to utilize what knowledge and materials they could. All she hoped was that the materials used would be good enough to do the job required of them, and that Wang’s theories would work in practice.
As the huge bag began to fill with hot air, so it began to bulge and rise, and to tug on the shroud ropes connecting it to the woven basket gondola below. The gondola contained four soldiers, and was equipped with weapons from the black powder armory, which were lashed to the sides.
When the bag was fat enough and round enough with hot air, it launched itself from the Wall and became airborne, tugging the gondola with its human cargo behind it. Just as the gondola began to lift itself from the ground, more Tiger Corps soldiers rushed forward, clipping nets containing yet more weapons to the base of the rising basket. The gondola, Wang had explained to Lin Mae, was equipped with a simple propulsion motor, which acted as a crude tiller. This, he said, would enable the occupants of the craft to steer it in the direction they wanted to go.
Lin Mae watched the first of Wang’s hot air balloons lift sedately into the sky, and then looked up and down the line, where more and more balloons were inflating, rising, launching themselves into the air. Propelled by fire and black powder and wind, her army was sailing forth. It was like watching the paper lanterns that had been launched to commemorate General Shao’s life, albeit on a massive scale.
She only hoped that the balloons, like the lanterns, would not burn out and die before they reached their destination.
Taking the left-hand fork may not have been the correct decision, after all. Pero and Ballard had followed the trail for a while, but it hadn’t seemed to lead to anywhere in particular, except deeper into the mountains.
Now the sun was going down, and the air was getting cooler, and they needed somewhere to camp for the night. With Ballard all but falling asleep on his horse, Pero had called a reluctant halt to their day’s progress, and had told Ballard that if he remained below and looked after the horses, he would trudge up the steep ridge on their right and try to work out where they were. Ballard had agreed with a tired waft of his hand and Pero had set off. Now he was nearing the crest of the ridge and his thighs were aching with exertion. Close to the top he paused and looked back.
Ballard and the horses were nothing but a group of dark smudges far below. From here the Painted Mountains looked spectacular, striped in vibrant colors. Pero took a swig from his canteen and saw Ballard’s stick-like figure doing the same at the foot of the valley. He felt a flash of irritation. Why did the idiot need yet more water when he was only sitting there, not doing anything? He’d regret it tomorrow when his canteen ran dry and there was no more water to be had. Putting his own canteen away, Pero ascended the last steep stretch of slope. When he got to the top he sighed.
The view, though spectacular, was not exactly encouraging. To the north were more mountains, marching away into the distance. To their south, beyond the great desert plain glowing gold and red in the light of the setting sun, was the seemingly never-ending black thread of the Great Wall, miles behind them now, but still not far enough away for Pero to feel entirely safe.
Squinting, he saw dozens of black dots in the sky above the Wall. What the hell were they? He couldn’t quite make them out. He shrugged. Ah well, they weren’t his concern. As long as they didn’t interfere with his business, he didn’t—
A sound from below cut in on his thoughts. He wasn’t sure what it was—movement of some kind—but it set alarm bells ringing in his head all the same. He spun quickly, looking down, half-expecting to see bandits converging on Ballard and the horses. But what he did see was even worse—and utterly unbelievable.
Ballard and the horses were riding away. Riding away fast. A great cloud of dust kicking up into the air behind them as they disappeared into the canyon.
“No!” Pero yelled, and started to scramble down the steep slope of the ridge, knowing it was already hopeless. Had Ballard played him along all this time? Pretended to be exhausted when in fact…
“No!” he shouted again as Ballard, the horses and the precious black powder disappeared from view. He raised his head to the sky and howled into the approaching night.
“Noooo!”
William, dozing, was woken by the sound of cheers rising from the top of the Wall. The stockade was located in one of the high towers of the fortress, which meant that the cheering was coming from somewhere below him.
Curious, he scrambled to his feet and crossed to the slit of a window, which overlooked the Wall, hoping to see what was going on. Had the Nameless Order achieved a major victory of some kind? But if the Tao Tei had launched another attack, surely he would have heard it?
His cell was darker than it had been when he’d entered it earlier, the thin beam of light now a deep reddish amber, which meant that the sun was going down. Soon he’d have nothing but the vague flicker of torchlight from outside to puncture the darkness. To all intents and purposes, it would be like being sealed inside a tomb.
For now, though, there was enough illumination to see by, though the window was so narrow, and set at such an angle, that he couldn’t see very much. He strained forward, pushing his head into the gap, hoping that it wouldn’t get stuck.