The Tears of the Sun (54 page)

“And I wish I
could
come with you.”

That was even true; some part of him wanted very much to die. That was out of the question just now if it could be avoided.

“Attack by files. Rotate every five minutes; the enemy can't face relays of fresh men. Legate, lead your troops!”

 

“We're going to make it,” Ian said.

“I mean, probably! If nothing goes wrong!” he added frantically, as Ritva and several Dúnedain spat or made the sign of the Horns or other gestures against ill luck.

The rattle-bang-thump sound of combat was continuous from the doors of the stairwell; they'd barricaded the exit with everything they could find, but the sound of sword-blades and the flat snap of bowstrings sound, the battle cries and the screams of pain . . . they were all getting closer. Ritva didn't like to think of what it must be like in there, fighting in the near dark.

And out of the north, a long orca-shape was coming. Still a tiny dot, but unmistakable; in this Fifth Age of the world, what else flew like that?

She pulled a monocular out of its case on her belt and looked. The ship of the air was just as she remembered it, three hundred feet of blunt-pointed teardrop with cruciform stabilizer fins, and an aluminum-truss keel along the bottom anchoring a spiderweb net of light cables that distributed its weight over the great gasbag. The gondola was slung beneath like a stylized Viking longboat sans dragon's head; it was taut fabric over an aluminum frame as well, with the captain's post and wheel at the front and a propeller and rudder at the rear. You couldn't see it from here, but the slender hull held twelve units made from recliner cycles on each side of the central walkway to power the propeller shaft.

That was the power source. Unfortunately it was a rather feeble one, and the stiff wind was far more than it could handle. That was why Lawrence Thurston hadn't built more of them.
Curtis LeMay
was extremely useful in a dead calm, and nearly helpless as an ordinary balloon in anything else. Gliders had far lower payload and endurance, but you really
could
steer them in most weathers.

“One pass,” she said. “And that's
it
. They can't turn back against the wind, just steer a little across it . . . yes, they've spotted our smoke flares.”

The great shape became more nearly circular as the nose turned towards this building.

“Why are they coming in so low?” Ian asked.

“Something . . . about conserving ballast and gas, Hanks said,” Ritva said; she wasn't sure what those meant. “I didn't follow it but evidently if they go up and down they eventually run out and wouldn't be able to go up and down anymore . . . oh,
trastad
!”

The towers on the northern wall were shooting at the blimp. Smoke and yellow flame trailed from some of the catapults; globes of napalm wrapped in burning cord fuse. One struck . . . and then bounced away from the soft resilient surface of the gasbag, to trail down into the city and splash into a spot of scarlet. She thought she saw someone crawling up the netting and spraying something; then the airship pitched sideways for a moment and headed back towards them.

“Eyes on the streets!” John Hordle shouted in his Hampshire-yokel version of Sindarin, as everyone turned to look. “You dim thick gits
want
a scaling ladder up yor bum?”

Ritva was
supposed
to be looking north, but she did a quick check to make sure that no storming parties were forming up. The enemy couldn't shoot up at them; that would endanger their leader's family. And if the Dúnedain were alert, they could shoot
down
and throw globes of fire. But the other side might think it worthwhile, if they were pushed.

“They're a little west of where they should be,” Ian said quietly.

The shark shape of the
Curtis LeMay
grew closer; probably they were only pedaling to keep steerage on her. Suddenly a dozen cords dropped down, whipping in the wind.

“Rhaich,”
Ritva said dully.

The airship came on, rushing, suddenly huge. It would recede just as quickly, and just a bit too far to the westward despite the rudder and the frantic pedaling that drove the propeller. The wind was blowing harder . . .

John Hordle was up and across, running with a speed astonishing in a man seven inches over six feet and broad enough to seem squat. One of the tethering ropes was blowing beyond the northwest corner of the building, just out of reach. John reached the corner and
leapt
out into space.

He disappeared bellowing beyond the edge of the roof. Ritva felt her mouth drop open and her eyes go wide; Ian was goggling too, and a couple of other people looked just the same. The huge bulk of the airship bobbled in flight, its tail starting to pivot inward a little; it made you realize how light and fragile it was, not the solid sky-filling thing it seemed—

“Rhaaaaich!”
she screamed.

What John Hordle was trying to do suddenly flashed into her mind, not a chain of logic but something you saw in an instant blaze of light. And what
she
had to do was equally obvious.

It involved jumping off a four-story building.

She was up and running before Ian's question had time to get started. The thought of dropping her sword belt or quiver was rejected as she went, building speed; the heavier she was for this the better and there was not a fractional second to spare.

Unless a couple of extra pounds makes me miss and go
crunch
! Rhaich! Rhaich! Tulkas the Mighty, give John strength! Nessa, Dancer of Stars, give my feet wings! Dulu! Help, help! Mom!

Her feet hit the coping and she was soaring out over emptiness, only the thin-thread line ahead of her. Her gloved hands reached, grabbed for knotted rope, touched, slipped, she was scrabbling downward, falling . . .

An ape-long arm snagged at her and caught in her sword belt for an instant. That gave her time to clamp on with arms and legs, and a crazed memory of scrambling up his form as a child and swinging on his arms as if they were the tree limbs they resembled went through the memory that remained in muscle and nerve. A ham-broad hand boosted her up, and she stood on his shoulders and clamped her hands on the rough surface of the rope. A shock went through it, and she looked up to see Astrid clinging above her, legs neatly wrapped around the cable and one hand waving back at the roof.

“Show-off!” Ritva screamed. “Sometimes I just
hate
you, Auntie!”

The nose of the
Curtis LeMay
was down at a thirty-degree angle. It was still moving southward at a brisk clip, but it was also pivoting around the weight attached to the prow of the gondola, and the gondola was under the forward quarter of the gasbag. A three-hundred-foot length covered a lot of ground when it pivoted; the dangling lines swept across the roof, and frantic hands made them fast to old rusted stanchions and framework even as they were dragged across the gravel and crumbling asphalt. The blimp heeled far over as its broadside caught the wind, but the line to which Ritva clung swung back towards the building.

 

“—innocent!” Martin heard, in his mother's voice. “Frederick is innocent! Martin killed his father to seize power! Frederick sent these people to rescue us, and we're going willingly. Martin is a traitor who betrayed America and killed my husband. Cast him off, cast him down!”

The scaling ladders up the inside of the elevator shaft had chain sides and light metal batons for rungs. They'd fastened them to whatever projected, or in a couple of instances driven pitons into the concrete; the light infantry unit had mountaineering equipment in their packs. They'd simply ignored his attempts to lead them up the dark vertical rectangle.

Now he ignored them, kicking free of a clutching hand to swing across and clamp a hand on the ledge of the uppermost opening, then two, then chin himself and climb up. The first troops through had pried the rustbound elevator doors open with swords and boots; a broken
gladius
rested there. He pushed his way through the little antechamber, and out on the roof where a double file of crossbowmen waited, kneeling and standing with their weapons leveled.

The
Curtis LeMay
was tethered at nose and tail to the eastern side of the building, shuddering in the wind. The gusts of rain made a tattoo on its fabric, unfortunately not enough to drown the speaking-trumpet from the gondola.

“It's true!”

That was his wife's voice. Rage flowed through him, cold as treacle, like living clouds drifting in a universe without stars.

“I heard him confess it. He threatened to kill me if I talked!”

The shouts were directed down at the street, but they were perfectly audible on the rooftop as well. The men were
listening
. And they were intimidated by the huge bulk that towered over them, paralyzed into a perfectly receptive frame of mind. Calculations of the least-bad course of action flowed through him, pinning inevitability.

“Shoot,” he said, loud but not forced. “Both ranks, fire at the gondola.
Now!
”

Silence stretched for a moment. Heads turned to look at him, eyes wide with horror under the rims of their helmets.

A centurion spoke, his voice shaking: “Sir, it's your
family
. Your
son
is on board there!”

“I said shoot! I'll have anyone who refuses executed for cowardice in the face of the enemy!”

He grabbed a crossbow and backhanded the man away when he tried to cling to it. Snuggle the weapon into his shoulder, breath in, breath out, hold it halfway and squeeze at the trigger, with the shouting face and the blowing blond hair in the aperture of the sights—

Tung
.

The butt punched at him and the bolt whipped out. Even as it did, something covered Juliet, taking her out of the sights. Instants later the cables were released. Weights fell from the keel of the gondola, the emergency ballast, plummeting down into the street. The airship jerked upward as if wrenched by an invisible hand, dwindling southward under a sky dark with thunder. A few bolts fell back, and Martin stood impassive, with the rain sluicing down his face like tears.

COUNTY OF THE EASTERMARK
CHARTERED CITY OF WALLA WALLA
PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION
(FORMERLY EASTERN WASHINGTON)
HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL
(FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA)
AUGUST 23, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD

 

 

G
rand Constable Tiphaine d'Ath nodded and looked at her watch once more, eyes narrowing with calculation as her mind returned to business after the brief family digressions:

“Now he
is
due. Let's see if we can get this crowd of cow-country yokels organized. The Count should be—”

A harsh chorus of trumpets from the city's gate-towers made her look up.

“Speak of the Devil and—” Rigobert murmured.

The north gate of the city was open, though heavily guarded. Wagons were pouring in over the patched, faded asphalt, mostly loaded with grain and produce; livestock on the hoof added its own pungencies. The crossbowmen were diverting refugees who couldn't work or fight or who had young children in tow, off to holding camps where they'd be shuttled east, and sometimes that required explanations. Occasionally of the sort that you administered via a smack with the metal-shod butt of the weapon, but not too many. Even the peasants knew how highly relative the safety of Walla Walla was and were unwillingly willing to see their most vulnerable moved farther from the path of the invasion.

“—and de Aguirre appears,” Tiphaine finished.

The brassy scream came again from the gatehouse, and a file of foot soldiers double-timed out to make a lane by holding their pole arms horizontally and pushing. Everyone who could moved off the double-lane roadway. The lord of Walla Walla rode out from under the teeth of the portcullis and across the drawbridge in a rumbling drumbeat of hooves, threading his way through with a mercifully small entourage of household men-at-arms and hangers-on. They spurred over to the command group by the railway siding at a round canter and reined in a respectful fifteen paces away before they dismounted.

Spraying dust and gravel on someone afoot was bad manners.

Felipe de Aguirre Smith, the current Baron Walla Walla and Count Palatine of the Eastermark was in his early twenties. His father had been one of Norman Arminger's recruits from the rougher side of society. A gangbanger, in fact, what the euphemistic family histories churned out by tame troubadours and the College of Heralds called a
freelance man-at-arms
—but he'd adjusted well.

It had helped that he was more than intelligent enough to realize that when you
were
the government you sheared the sheep rather than skinning it; Norman hadn't promoted many
stupid
hard cases to high positions and those few hadn't lived long enough to breed for the most part, given the high turnover in those days. And he'd married a prominent local woman too, named Smith of course, which had eased matters considerably. Like others in their position they'd both taken up Society customs, at first to curry Norman's favor and then with a convert's zeal. The world right after the Change had been gruesome enough that pretending the previous eight hundred years hadn't happened or didn't matter had real and broad-based appeal.