He’d heard she’d gone ironsides, but he was close enough to see the nails in her hull, and knew it wasn’t true. Wasn’t a man who had found a way to put wings on an ironside and get it off the ground.
Still, she was a beast of a ship, and likely carried fifty crew members. But that didn’t mean she was slow.
Or that she was a bad shot.
The Swift shuddered and rocked as arrows shattered against her skin. The tin-coated canvas wouldn’t easily catch fire, but if they shot for her underbelly, here where the cabin was made of wood, they’d be smoking like a ham in a smokehouse.
And if they let loose those cannons, the Swift would be in a world of hurt. She couldn’t hold up to many direct hits.
Captain Hink ran her straight for the Bickern, fast as she would fly. And the Swift was the fastest ship in the western sky.
“Mr. Seldom, Mr. Hunt,” Captain Hink yelled. “Ready the fire.”
Hink pulled hard back and the Swift’s nose shot straight up, exposing her belly to the hawk as he yelled, “Guffin, Ansell, hard to port!”
Guffin threw the levers, pulling in the wing sails, and Ansell hammered gears and valves to change the speed of the fans.
A blast of cannons cracked apart the night.
Hink hollered out a whoop. The Swift was still in one piece, still flying, turning such a sharp angle toward port that everything not strapped down slid hard across the floor and slammed into the walls.
“Mr. Seldom!” he called. “Fire!”
The ear-breaking racket of the twelve-pound Napoleon filled the ship.
“Hard starboard, hard starboard,” Hink yelled as Guffin and Ansell hurried the levers and gears and Hink muscled the wheel.
The Swift, that beautiful, graceful ship, spun like a ballerina on toe-tip, cresting the top of the Bickern, and leaning down to put the port-side cannon in range.
“Fire, Mr. Hunt!”
The captain glanced toward the man to see if he would follow orders, but needn’t have worried. Mr. Hunt handled the gun like a veteran of the field, and the blast and roll of smoke that filled the cabin proved it.
“Right on target,” Guffin yelled. “Two direct hits.”
“That’s all we have time for, boys. Let’s bat the stack off her.” Captain Hink shot the Swift straight up again, counting on speed to get her out of the Bickern’s reach.
But the ship rocked like she’d been slapped.
“We’re hit!” Hink yelled. “Seldom?”
Seldom was already running, his breathing gear in place as he took the mid-ladder to the top hatch. The slim man scampered out for a climb to get the best look at where the damage was done and if the envelope of air and steam above them would hold.
Hink had his hands full keeping her out of a free fall. “Losing power to the port fans,” he yelled. He hit the bell for Molly to beat her on the back—they needed to slow, and slow fast. The ship stuttered as the starboard fans stalled.
“Sails, Mr. Ansell!”
Mr. Ansell had moved from humming to singing. He had a deep, operatic quality to his voice, which Hink would have appreciated if they weren’t plummeting to their deaths.
The ship shook as the sails unfurled. Hink clenched his teeth, waiting for the horrifying sound of the sails ripping under the strain of their fall.
Another cannon blast roared out.
Not what they needed. Not at all what they needed.
The Bickern pounded up behind them. And so did the Saginaw.
The sails held. They could glide her down, but they’d be dead under the other ships’ guns before they touched earth.
There had to be a way out of this, a card he hadn’t played.
“Looks like we’re going to have to finish this fight on land, ladies and gents. Strap in tight, and I’ll try to put our back to a wall.”
The hills were coming on fast, darkness in the darkness, as he struggled to keep the Swift’s nose up and into the wind. He’d come out of worse situations with his bones in order.
Okay, maybe not.
The trees were rushing up awful fast now.
“We need lift,” he yelled.
Seldom squirreled down the ladder and hooked gear to the overhead. “Envelope’s torn up, so’s the rudder and port engine.”
“What does that mean?” Cedar Hunt asked.
“It means you’d better start praying for miracles.” Captain Hink didn’t have time to say more. The ship was making a pained wail, her voice mingling with Ansell’s song as she dove toward her final meeting with the Almighty Himself, hot enough to burn feathers.
Cannons shot off again, searing the sky with an explosive round. The Bickern didn’t want to scrap them, she wanted to end them.
And then the woman, Mae Lindson, stood right up beside Captain Hink, boots spread to take the tilt of the ship, no harness, and not holding on to anything. Just standing there like a copilot looking out across a calm sea.
She was glassy-eyed, as if caught in a fever, half whispering, half singing some kind of prayer as she stared out the windows.
Folks all have a different way to say howdy to death, he supposed, but he’d rather kick death in the eye than go out singing a little ditty.
“Mrs. Lindson, you’d better hold on—”
She reached up and clamped her hand on his shoulder. With a harsh word that wasn’t made of the King’s English, she wrapped her other hand around the overhead bar. A shock of lightning whipped through him.
Then, all he could hear was the woman’s prayer, lifted and harmonized by a dozen women’s voices. All he could see was her eyes, soft, brown, warm as the earth turned on a summer day. He tasted wildflower nectar on his tongue, smelled rich honey.
And then he somehow fell all apart and was strung back together by that prayer. He found himself stretched out in a familiar shape, wearing wings and an engine with tin skin that feared no storm nor sky. He wore the Swift as if he were a part of it, as if he were the beating heart to a machine that trod the air.
Hink was a questioning sort of man, but he was not going to question this.
She was dying, his ship. Plummeting to her death. He wasn’t going to let that happen. Mae Lindson’s song that echoed through his veins wasn’t going to let that happen.
Captain Hink knew how to trim the wings, he understood the wind as if he had been born to it. And he knew he called out commands to his men. He knew that they answered, just as his own hands fell to the wheel and steered her steady, over a landside he could see beneath him as if he had eyes in his feet.
The gunshots didn’t mean anything. He could flick the tip of a wing, and never be touched. But there was only so much the wind could give him. He needed a place to land, a safe place, a hidden place. Somewhere nearby that the other birds wouldn’t see.
There was a crack through the mountains that led to a canyon. Most ships didn’t bother with it, being too narrow to land in, and nothing in the canyon worth landing for.
It would be perfect. A safe place to make repairs. A safe place to rest.
Hink steered toward the narrow slit in the mountainside, an act of suicide on a bright and sunny day, and a handshake with death at night with a crippled ship.
“You won’t make it, Captain,” Guffin shouted from somewhere behind the woman’s song.
“Like hell I won’t.” Hink laughed.
The Swift pushed her way on, the wind laying the sky on her back, and pushing her belly up, up. Foothills, trees, scraping the hull. Hink gritted his teeth. There’d be more to repair, landing gear fouled. But he could make it. She could make it. All he needed was one good gust of tailwind.