“No time for that. You two are light enough.” Lady Trevelyan looked at the Huntress’ lithe and muscular form and added something diffidently in Egyptian.
The Huntress gestured for Eluned and Eleri to climb onto the narrow saddles, and waited until the swallow’s wheels had touched the ground before releasing her hold on it. Then she flipped open the top of one of the panniers, resumed her caracal form, and looked thoroughly ridiculous trying to squeeze herself into the container. Still, she managed it, tufted ears poking above the rim.
“You’ll need a counterbalance,” Lady Trevelyan said, and pulled a large rock from the path border to place in the other pannier. “Good. I will send support after you as soon as I can find anyone to send.”
They started off simply by peddling, Eluned keeping them in a straight line until their bumpy progress became a smooth glide a few feet above the ground.
“Keep peddling, Ned,” Eleri said, and experimented with the wing controls, briefly gaining and then losing height. “Steering’s up to you. Try it out before I turn the engine on.”
This proved a fortunate recommendation, as Eluned immediately oversteered them into a flat spiral. But the natural buoyancy of the swallow’s frame meant the move was merely nerve-wracking, not deadly, and she could use careful touches to correct, grateful that the morning was very still. Then Eleri brought the engine to humming life, and they surged forward and up.
A warm blanket of night lay over most of the landscape, but the glow on the horizon was now touched with hints of gold, and the sky was paling above, enough that she could search the near distance for the airship. Then searched in the opposite direction when guided by Lila.
“What do we do if it’s faster than us?” she asked, as she gingerly swung the swallow into pursuit. The stolen airship was already a long way ahead.
“Go to France, by the looks.”
But they were gaining. Not as quickly as Eluned would like but steadily, so that the question became what would they do when they caught up. The automaton clearly no longer clung to the end of the rope, but there was no way to tell if it had managed to get into the gondola, or had fallen.
“Steer directly over it, Ned,” Eleri said, adjusting their height. “And…” She paused, then added: “Do it quick.”
It was only when the necessary adjustments had been made, and Eleri was preparing to cut the engine, that Eluned realised where the need for haste had come from. There was a rising wind. A familiar breath of heat, tickling at their heels. The morning windstorm, come hours too soon.
“Peddle to keep pace once we come overhead,” Eleri said, as their surging forward drive fell to a less relentless glide.
A violent wriggle nearly upset Eluned’s attempt, as the caracal surged out of the pannier and dropped without hesitation onto the ballonet of the airship. The swallow immediately began to bear to the right, and Eluned could not work out what she needed to do to break out of the spiral.
“Can you reach the counterbalance, Eleri?” she asked, trying to steer and still keep an eye on the gold and black caracal. Had it slid right off the top?
“Ned.”
Eleri’s attempts to fish the stone out of the pannier were doing odd things to their flight path, but after she succeeded in tossing it to the trees below, she pointed toward the increasingly bright horizon. Something was following them.
“It can’t be the Night Breezes.” Eleri squinted into the light, then turned her attention back to their target as the semi-rigid ballonet dimpled, and the airship began to rapidly descend.
THIRTY-THREE
Landing proved to be a great deal more difficult than taking off, mainly because of drystone walls and sheep. And a hedge of blackberries, which did interesting things to the swallow’s wings, and Eluned’s legs, and made her glad for the hand that did not feel when she used it to hook the anchor chain to the strongest-looking branches.
“So unprepared,” she said, hopping out of the thicket. “We didn’t even bring the wooden sword.”
“Could wait here. Leave it to the Huntress.”
“We could,” Eluned said, picking up the sturdiest stick she could see, and starting in the direction Lila was pointing. “But the sun’s well on the way to being up.”
Down on the ground, the Huntress would have more protection from the brightening dawn, and it was not as if she would turn to stone immediately, but Eluned was taking no chances. Whoever had stolen that airship surely knew something about the fulgite thefts. Eluned had a few important things to ask them.
They had not managed to land within immediate sight of the downed airship, but at least they could now see easily, and their hurried walk only involved startling the sheep and scrambling over the fences. Soon, they spotted pieces of the ballonet, strewn over the top of a grove of trees.
A high-pitched snarl made them quicken their pace, but they stopped dead at the rumbling growl that followed. Eluned had heard that sound before.
“Still want to go?” Eleri asked.
A thief was one thing, that hulking shape they’d seen on the grove wall another altogether.
Before Eluned could reply, a gunshot cracked above the sound of combat. Eluned and Eleri exchanged a glance, then moved forward, much more slowly.
The gondola had touched down not quite upright, a sapling crushed beneath it. The nose was facing Eluned, and the windows had shattered, but she could only see the door at a sharp angle. She had a much better view of the caracal, and a creature with a heavy snub head, weighted by wide, horizontal horns. Its shoulders bulged with muscle and its feet were great clawed plates. The thing Aunt Arianne called the bull-bear.
It clearly outmatched the much smaller caracal, even with the healing, speed and strength given to the Huntresses. It was only when a second shot rang out, scoring the caracal down one flank, that Eluned realised that part of the reason the Huntress was struggling was because she was using the bull-bear’s bulk to shield herself from the shots from the gondola.
At this angle, Eluned couldn’t see whoever was shooting, and sorted rapidly through their sparse options. A frontal approach through the clearing was out of the question: even if they did not draw the attention of the bull-bear, the shooter would easily see them and have a chance to fire before they reached the door.
Besides, no matter what they did about the person firing, there was not a thing they could do about the bull-bear. Intervening would get them killed as well.
“Stay here,” Eluned hissed to Eleri, and slipped away from the clearing to lessen the risk of being spotted as she circled to come up behind the gondola.
A glittering glass reef clung to the rim of the windows, telling Eluned that her initial plan of crossing the gondola to ambush the shooter wasn’t viable. She could see the person, though: a woman with light brown hair slipping from a loose braid, and with one sleeve of her tunic soaked with blood.
What now? If she couldn’t easily get close, could she distract the woman and then run? Or…
“Rocks.” Eleri had not stayed put, and now bent and collected a chunk of stone of the same grey as the walls they’d crossed.
Another shot added frantic speed to their efforts to gather enough ammunition, but it was difficult to gauge the progress of the battle over a rising roar that reduced even the bull-bear’s growl to an inconsequential undernote. The windstorm, giving the trees voice, thrashing branching, whipping the shreds of the ballonet’s skin into a flapping frenzy.
“On three,” Eluned said, cradling her armful of chunky stone.