5.5 - Under the Ice Blades (7 page)

“See that smoke?” Zirkander asked. “Target it. We’ve got two fliers out here. Invisible.”

“Anyone want to tell me how that’s possible?” Ort growled, coming around.

“I’d be happy to discuss it in detail once the fight’s over, but I’m going to say magic right now.”

Their flier was about to pass the spot where Angulus had seen the flames. Zirkander was already banking to come back around and take another run at the invisible craft, but Angulus leaned over the side with his rifle. The flames had already burned out, and he couldn’t see much smoke in the darkness, but they were close enough that he was positive he could hear another propeller. He took his best guess and fired three times before they went too far for him to target the spot.

He did not expect to hit anything, or to be aware of it if he
did
hit something, but a man screamed, startling him.

“Nice shot, Sire,” Zirkander said, his voice subdued for the first time since the skirmish had begun, maybe because he was offering congratulations on possibly killing a man.

Angulus didn’t know how he felt about that himself. He had served in the military for several years in his early twenties, but nobody had ever entertained the notion of sending him out to Cofahre on a ship or dirigible, or even letting his unit wander off anywhere it might see real action. He’d signed plenty of orders that had condemned people to death, on both sides of the war, but he had never shot anyone.

“That one’s going down,” Zirkander announced. Angulus couldn’t guess how he knew for certain. “But there’s a second one out here. Don’t get cocky.” He muttered something else, the words too low for Angulus to pick up, but he thought he caught Sardelle’s name. Wishing they had some magic of their own out here?

Angulus wouldn’t have minded it, either. The idea of enemy aircraft more than a hundred miles inland was disturbing but not without precedent. Enemy
magic
was another matter.

“Nobody’s cockier than you, Ridge,” Troskar said. “We—”

A flaming orange ball the size of a steam wagon shot up from the ground, illuminating the night sky all around it. Before Angulus could start to guess how it had come to be and what it meant, it slammed into the belly of Colonel Troskar’s flier. Wood and bronze exploded like a bomb.

Angulus was so startled that his rifle almost tumbled free from his fingers. All he could do was gape at the sky where the other flier had been. Nothing but ash remained, clouding the air still burning from the fireball’s passing. No, there was one other thing that remained: the glowing yellow power crystal. Melted free from its casing, it fell a mile before disappearing into the trees far below.

Still gaping, Angulus watched its path. His mind refused to work, refused to grasp what had happened. Colonel Troskar and General Braksonoth had been there one second, and now were gone. Incinerated.

“Get me closer,” came Kaika’s shout through Ort’s communication crystal.

“No.” Ort sounded as dazed as Angulus felt. “We have to get the king out of here. This is—”

“Throw it, Kaika,” Zirkander ordered, his voice calm, devoid of all emotion now.

Angulus groped to find calm of his own, to kick his brain into function. He had handled emergencies before, but always from the detached safety of the castle, not from five thousand feet in the air while weaving and darting through the sky like a drunken hummingbird. And not while being fired at by... a sorcerer. Or sorceress. That was what it had to be. He remembered seeing fireballs being hurled at the fliers attacking the sky fortress, but they had been tiny blazes of light from his vantage point on the ground. This was—

“Three bombs away,” Kaika announced. “Tried to aim them toward wherever she is. Let’s see how well she attacks us with trees falling on her.”

“She?” Ort asked.

“Just assuming it’s the bitch from the fortress.”

“Look out, Ridge!” Ort yelled at the same time as Angulus was hurled sideways.

Once again, he would have been flung from the flier if not for his harness. How he managed to keep hold of his rifle, he didn’t know, but he clenched it—and the side of the seat well—as if his life depended on it.

The sky lit up from below, another orange fireball streaking upward—straight toward them. Zirkander had them flying on their side, veering away from it, but it moved as fast as a cannonball. It grew in Angulus’s vision, and it was even larger than he had realized. More like the size of a house than a wagon. He felt the heat, heard the crackling of the flames. The orange light, writhing like fire in an oven, grew so intense that he had to squint his eyes shut, waiting for it to engulf him, for his life to end in pain.

Instead, the fireball raced past five meters away. The heat was enough to sear Angulus’s face, but it didn’t damage him or Zirkander’s dancing flier.

Faint booms sounded from below. Angulus forced himself to tear his gaze from the fireball as it continued to streak toward the stars. He looked down in time to watch one of Kaika’s bombs lighting up the dark forest. From this height, he had no idea if the explosives had hit anywhere near the person throwing those fireballs. Would it matter, even if they had? Angulus knew that Sardelle could shield herself from bullets. Wouldn’t this other sorceress be able to do the same?

“Keep an eye out,” Zirkander said. “It’s not tough to dodge those fireballs if you see them coming.” His voice dropped to a barely audible mutter. “Not that that helps Chast.”

“We’re getting out of here before she throws more,” Ort said. “Head south, Ridge.”

“Wait. There’s the other flier. A two-seater, just one pilot. He’s visible now. Your three o’clock.” The flier engine surged as Zirkander headed in that direction, the dark silhouette of the mountain range looming ahead.

“I’ll get him,” Ort said. “Get the king out of here, away from that witch and away from anything else.”

Zirkander did not respond to the command. He arrowed straight toward the mountains.

There was no telltale glow of an energy crystal—the dragon blood that powered the Cofah aircraft was more subtle—but Angulus could finally see the outline of the other craft, now that they were pointed straight at it. Zirkander flew toward it relentlessly, like a charging boar.

Angulus did not object. He didn’t want to flee like a coward. He raised his rifle, hoping he would get a chance to shoot the pilot, to kill the people responsible for Braksonoth’s and Troskar’s deaths.

“Zirkander,” Ort barked.

Like a hound that had sighted its prey, Zirkander didn’t seem to hear the warning. He opened up with the machine guns, hammering rounds toward the other flier as they came in from behind and to the side.

The other pilot must have still believed he was invisible. Only when bullets streaked toward him did he start evasive maneuvers. He banked and flew closer toward the mountains while sweeping back and forth like a pendulum on a horizontal plane.

Zirkander, heading straight after him, closed ground quickly. Angulus kept his rifle ready, wanting that shot, but he would have had to shoot over Zirkander’s head, and that would have meant unbuckling himself so he could rise up in his seat. Given the general’s propensity for flipping upside down, that seemed unwise.

Besides, his rifle skills weren’t necessary. Zirkander anticipated the pilot’s path—the Cofah’s maneuvers weren’t nearly as gravity-defying as his—and caught him, tearing off the flier’s tail with his barrage of bullets.

The Cofah lost control immediately. He was probably doomed by then, but Zirkander stuck with him and continued to fire. The pilot slumped over in his seat. The nose of the Cofah craft dipped down, and it streaked toward the mountainside with smoke and flame flowing from its fuselage. In seconds, it crashed into the rocky ground, scattering pieces of the burning flier across the slope.

Only when Zirkander pulled up did Angulus realize how close their momentum had taken them to striking the mountain. For a moment, that fate seemed inevitable, as their belly nearly brushed boulders and shrubs before the engine overcame gravity and they soared toward the stars again.

For the first time since the battle had begun, Zirkander looked back at Angulus. “You all right, Sire?”

“I’m... uninjured.”
All right
was another matter. Angulus looked back toward where those fireballs had come from, toward where General Braksonoth had been incinerated. Braksonoth had worried about
him
being killed out here. It hadn’t occurred to either of them that he would be the one to die so quickly, so meaninglessly. As Angulus’s breaths returned to normal and his nerves settled, he could already feel the weight of responsibility—and regret—smothering him like a wet blanket. “Let’s get out of here.”

K
aika dropped her backpack and duffle bag to the ground and climbed out after them. General Zirkander and the king had landed first on the flat ledge, and they had already left their fliers. Nobody was talking yet. If the others were as stunned by the loss of General Braksonoth and his pilot, she could understand why. The air battle was only twenty minutes in the past. They had flown another fifteen or twenty miles and arrived at their destination. Wherever that was.

She tried to make herself look around and check for enemies, rather than dwelling on Braksonoth’s death, but that was hard. She couldn’t believe someone with such a long and accomplished record in the elite forces could disappear just like that. It wasn’t fair. He should have been given a chance to fight. If Kaika saw that damned sorceress, she was going to find a way to blow her into the farthest reaches of the deepest hell.

She ground her teeth as she stalked about, examining their ledge. As far as she could tell, which wasn’t very far thanks to the darkness, they were halfway up the side of a mountain toward the southern end of the Ice Blades. A cliff rose up to one side, one that didn’t seem to hold any caves or other openings, at least none that were visible in the night. On the other side of the ledge, which would have been large enough for a couple of modest houses to perch upon, the ground dropped away. It wasn’t a sheer drop, and Kaika had spotted a trail carving its way down the steep slope as they had landed. Trees rose up, perhaps three hundred feet below, and a coyote yipped somewhere in the forest. A pile of camouflage netting lay on one end of the ledge, but whatever it usually guarded wasn’t there now.

Ort was the last one to climb out of the fliers, his boots hitting the ground at the same time as Zirkander lit a lantern, the soft flame flaring to life. The king was already heading toward the cliff, as if he expected to find something there. A secret entrance? There must be. Nobody had mentioned an emergency landing, so this must be their destination.

Ort stalked toward Zirkander, his fists clenched at his sides.

“I gave you an order,” Ort growled, then surprised Kaika by grabbing Zirkander by the front of his jacket. She didn’t know the stolid general that well, but she had never seen Ort anything but calm, almost to the point of blandness. Now his face, visible by the lantern light, was flushed red.

Zirkander didn’t look surprised. He merely stood there as Ort gripped his jacket, his knuckles tight against his skin.

“I
told
you to get the king out of danger, and you went after that other flier,” Ort said. “Did you think that was one of your soldiers behind you, someone trained to die fighting if necessary?”

“No, sir,” Zirkander said, his tone more sedate than usual. “But he seemed to be enjoying himself. He shot a Cofah pilot.”

“
Enjoying
himself?” Ort glanced toward the king, who was touching the rock wall beyond the influence of the lantern’s light. “He just lost General Braksonoth. And we lost Chast, damn it.” Emotion thickened Ort’s voice, regret now mixing with the anger.

“I know that, sir.”

Kaika shifted her feet, uncomfortable watching the exchange. As Ort continued to chastise Zirkander, she plucked her rifle from her gear and walked the perimeter of the ledge. She peered into the darkness below more closely this time, searching for light or any sign that more trouble might be out there. Like that sorceress. Kaika couldn’t know for certain that it was the same person that she, Sardelle, and Tolemek had fought in the bowels of the sky fortress, but her gut told her it was. She had seen those fireballs before.

Aside from the coyotes, the forest was still, with no sign of humanity for as far as the eye could see. She walked over to join the king, who had now taken out a lantern of his own. He was still touching the cliff, a different spot now.

He looked at her. “There’s a rock that protrudes that you can twist. Somewhere around here. I’ve never been out here in the dark before.”

He sounded apologetic that he couldn’t wave his hand and open whatever secret door it was they were looking for. He appeared uninjured and none the worse for the battle, but he was wearing his royal mask, his thoughts impossible to discern. Braksonoth was someone who had reported directly to the castle at times. Angulus might have known the general better than Kaika had. He’d been responsible for her missions for the last few years, but they had never interacted outside of work. She’d rarely been back in the rear long enough to get to know any of her senior officers well. Still, she knew Braksonoth’s expertise had been vital to their military and his death was a tremendous loss to the kingdom.

“Sorry we lost the other team, Sire,” Kaika said. She was awful at condolences, but felt she should try. Maybe it would matter to him.

“So am I,” he said quietly and returned to grabbing rocks.

Kaika shouldered her rifle and joined him. The cliff was cool under her hands and damp from a recent rain. She tried to find protruding rocks by the dim light of the lantern, then looked toward the ground, wondering if there might be a path worn in the stone.

She spotted something light colored against the dark rock a few feet away and walked over to look more closely. It turned out to be a small strip of clothing caught in a crack in the rock. A piece of someone’s shirt torn free in a rush? She rubbed it between her fingers. Or maybe part of a dress. There was a hem on one side, and it wasn’t sturdy fabric, nothing like a military uniform.