I said something intelligent like, “Urk?!”
“I want you to see it.”
“We might be recognized.”
Taken circled the long, skinny boat-carpets. Soldiers were aboard them, in the second and third seats. The men facing aft checked their ballistae, munitions, cranked a spring-powered device apparently meant to help restretch bowstrings after missiles were discharged. I could see no apparent task assigned the men in the middle seats. “What’s the cagework for?”
“You’ll learn soon enough.”
“But...”
“Come to it fresh. Croaker. Without preconceptions.”
I followed her around our carpet. I do not know what she checked, but she seemed satisfied. The men who had prepared it were pleased by her nod.
“Up, Croaker. Into the second seat. Fasten yourself securely. It’ll get exciting before it’s over.”
Oh yeah.
“We’re the pathfinders,” she said as she buckled into the front seat. A grizzled old sergeant took the rear position. He looked at me doubtfully, but said nothing. The Taken assumed the front seat aboard every carpet. The bigs, as the Lady called them, had crews of four. Benefice rode the carpet at the center point of the W.
“Ready?” the Lady shouted.
“Right.”
“Aye,” the sergeant said.
Our carpet began to move.
Lumbering is the only word to describe the first few seconds. The carpet was heavy and, till it managed some forward motion, did not want to lift.
The Lady looked back and grinned as the earth dropped away. She was enjoying herself. She began shouting instructions which explained the bewildering bunch of pedals and levers surrounding me.
Push and pull on these two in combination and the carpet began to roll around its long axis. Twist those and it turned right or left. The idea was to use combinations somehow to guide the craft.
“What for?” I shouted into the wind. The words ripped away. We had donned goggles which protected our eyes but did nothing for the rest of our faces. I expected a case of windburn before the game was played out.
We were two thousand feet up, five miles from Horse, well ahead of the Taken. I could see traces of dust raised by Darling’s army. Again I shouted, “What for?”
The bottom fell out.
The Lady had extinguished the spells which made the carpet go. “That’s why. You’ll fly the boat when we hit the null.”
What the hell?
She gave me a half dozen shots at getting the hang of it, and I did see the theory, before she whipped toward the Rebel army.
We circled once, at screaming speed, well outside the null. I was astounded at what Darling had put together. About fifty windwhales, including some monsters over a thousand feet long. Manias by the hundred. A vast wedge of walking trees. Battalions of human soldiers. Menhirs by the hundred, flickering around the walking trees, shielding them. Thousands of things that leaped and hopped and glided and flopped and flew. So gruesome and wondrous a sight.
On the westward leg of our circle I spied the imperial force, two thousand men in a phalanx on the foreslope of a ridge a mile ahead of the Rebel. A joke, them standing against Darling.
A few bold mantas cruised the edge of the null, sniping with bolts that fell short or just missed. I judged Darling herself to be aboard a wind whale about a thousand feet up. She had grown stronger, for her null’s diameter had expanded since my departure from the Plain. All that bewildering Rebel array marched within its protection.
The Lady had called us pathfinders. Our carpet was not equipped like the others, but I did not know what she meant. Till she did it.
We climbed straight up. Little black balls trailing streamers of red or blue smoke scattered behind us, shoveled overboard hastily by the old sergeant. Must have been three hundred. The smoke balls scattered, hovered just feet short of the null. So. Markers by which the Taken could navigate.
And here they came. Way up, the smaller surrounding the W formation of bigs.
The men on the bigs began releasing the giant pots. Down, down, down went a score. We followed, sliding along outside the smudge pots. As they plummeted, the flowerpots turned pole-downward. Mantas and whales slid out of their way.
When the pole hit ground it drove a plunger. The paraffin seals burst. Liquid squirted. The plunger hit a striker. The fluid ignited. Gouts of fire. And when that fire reached something inside the pots, they exploded. Shards cut down men and monsters.
I watched the blooming of those flowers of fire, aghast.
Above, the Taken wheeled for a second pass. There was no magic in this. The null was useless.
The second fall drew lightning from whales and mantas. Their first few successes cured them, though, for the pots they hit exploded in the air. Mantas went down. One whale was in grave trouble till others maneuvered overhead and sprayed it with ballast water.
The Taken made a third pass, again dropping pots. They would hammer Darling’s troops into slime unless she did something.
She went up after the Taken.
The smoke pots slid around the flanks of the null, outlining it completely.
The Lady climbed at shrieking speed.
The W of bigs went away. The smaller carpets took on more altitude. The Lady brought us into position behind Whisper and The Limper. Clearly, she had anticipated Darling’s response.
My emotions were mixed, to say the least.
Whisper’s carpet tipped its nose downward. Limper followed. Then the Lady. Others of the Taken followed us.
Whisper dove toward one especially monstrous windwhale. Faster and faster she flew. Three hundred yards from the null two thirty-foot spears ripped away from her carpet, impelled by sorcery. When they hit the null they continued on in a normal ballistic trajectory.
Whisper made no effort to avoid the null. Into it she plunged, the man in her second seal guiding the carpel’s fall wilh those fish fins.
Whisper’s spears struck near the windwhale’s head. Both burst into flames.
Fire is anathema to those monsters, for the gas that lifts them is violently explosive.
The Limper trailed Whisper with elan. He loosed two spears outside the null and another two inside, just dropped as his second-seat man took the carpet within inches of the windwhale.
Only one lance failed to strike home.
The whale had five fires burning upon its back.
Storms of lightning crackled round Whisper and Limper.
Then we hit the null. Our buoying spells failed. Panic snatched at me. Up to me?...
We were headed for the burning whale. I jerked and banged and kicked levers.
“Not so violently!” the Lady yelled. “Smoothly. Gently.”
I got it in hand as the whale roared upward past us.
Lightning crackled. We passed between two smaller whales. They missed us. The Lady discharged her little ballista. Its bolt struck one of those monsters. What the hell was the point? I wondered. That was not a bee sting to one of them.
But that quarrel had a wire attached, running off a reel...
Wham!
I was blinded momenlarily. My hair crackled. Direct hit from a manta bolt... We’re dead, I Thought.
The metal cage surrounding us absorbed the lightning’s energy and passed it along the unwinding wire.
A manta was on our tail, only yards behind. The sergeant ripped off a shaft. It look our pursuer under The wing. The beast began to slide and flutter like a one-winged butterfly.
“Watch where we’re going!” the Lady yelled. I turned around. A windwhale back rushed toward us. Fledgling mantas scurried in panic. Rebel bowmen threw up a barrage of arrows.
I hit and yanked every damned lever and pedal, and pissed my pants. Maybe that did it. We scraped the thing’s flank, but did not crash.