A Darkling Plain (33 page)

"Just a few bruises, some broken bones."

"I got home just in time, it seems."

"What do you mean?"

"Great Thatcher! The Mossies tried to kill you, father! It was an act of war! We must retaliate immediately!"

"Just what I've been telling him!" boomed Adlai Browne, with the air of a man who had been waiting impatiently to resume an interrupted conversation. "We mustn't let them get away with it!"

"Nonsense, Browne," snapped von Kobold, wincing with the pain as he slumped back down in his chair. "It was one of
your
drunken louts who shot me!"

"Youthful exuberance," protested Browne. "If you'd not been so keen to keep the prisoner for yourself ..." He appealed to Wolf. "Have you heard the news? Naga's missus herself was loose on Airhaven, with a gang of Stalkers to protect her. Hatching some plot with that renegade Pennyroyal, apparently."

"I see." Usually Wolf would have scoffed at such talk, the panicky, exaggerated stuff that flew about whenever fat city men got a whiff of real war. But tonight a little panic suited him. The sooner war broke out, the sooner Harrowbarrow could begin its journey to London. "They got away alive, I take it?"

Browne turned to the aviatrix at his side. "You tell him, lass."

Orla Twombley bowed and said, "The airship was met over no-man's-land by more Stalker-birds than I've ever seen in one place. There must have been someone or something of value aboard. There was nothing I could do to stop it escaping."

It seemed to Wolf that there was plenty she could have done, had she not valued her life more than her duty. But he simply nodded and said, "This sounds bad. Who knows what plots the Mossies have set in motion, or what they've learned about our plans? There's only one thing for it."

"You mean--attack?" asked Adlai Browne hopefully.

"It's the best form of defense. The Mossies struck first. We must retaliate. Attack at once, all along the line."

Von Kobold rubbed his eyes. "Surely there must be another way...."

"If you don't feel up to commanding this place--" said Browne, all mock solicitude.

"I shall do my part," the old man promised wearily. "You'll not call me a coward, Browne. If the other cities advance, Murnau will come too, and I'll command her. Unless my son would care to take his place on the bridge?"

He looked at Wolf, who shook his head firmly. "Sorry, Father. I must get back to Harrowbarrow. When the attack begins, I'll gnaw a nice big hole for you in the Mossies' defenses."

He shook his father's hand, bowed to Browne and Ms. Twombley, and went out of the room, leaving silence behind

him, and a feeling of sadness, like a lingering smell.

"Well," said Adlai Browne, clapping his hands together. "I must inform the other mayors and kriegsmarschalls. Ms. Twombley, you'll need to get your machines aloft. The obliteration of the Green Storm starts at dawn!"

***

FULFILL THE VISION OF the Wind-Flower Airfield was an oblong of flat ground bulldozed out of the mud a few miles behind the Storm's front line. It was ringed with landing lights and bunkers and big, whale-backed barns of airship hangars. Anti-aircraft cannon squatted watchfully in emplacements made from earth-packed wicker barrels. Searchlights stretched out their colorless fingers to brush the
Shadow Aspect's
envelope as the cloud of birds steered her toward her docking pan.

Soldiers came running as she touched down, and crowded into the gondola when Theo opened the hatch. White uniforms; crab-shell helmets; guns. Oenone emerged from behind the curtain at the back of the flight deck, and they recoiled from her and raised their weapons, alarmed by her filthy, bloodstained clothes and the Stalker who stood

behind her. She held out her hand, letting the light glint on her signet ring. "Before you shoot me," she said politely, "I would like you to take care of my companions. Mr. Ngoni and Professor Pennyroyal are not enemies of the Storm."

The subofficer at the head of the boarding party bowed low, placing his right fist against the palm of his left hand in the old League salute. "You are safe now, Lady Naga."

Oenone returned the bow, nervous, still not quite trusting him. "There is a woman in the cabin who needs care. Is there a field hospital here?"

The soldier pointed toward a hummock of camouflaged bunkers on the horizon. "Shall I call stretcher bearers?"

"I WILL CARRY HER," said Grike. He pulled the curtain aside and lifted Hester easily and carefully in his arms. Theo and the others made to follow him as he carried her to the open hatch, but the subofficer, feeling things sliding out of his control, moved quickly to stop them, barring their way with a raised hand.

"She will be well looked after, Ladyship," he promised Oenone. "But you and these other foreigners must come with me. I have orders to bring you before the sector commander."

The part of the line where the
Shadow Aspect
had landed was commanded by the motherly General Xao. Sleepy eyed but smiling, she welcomed Oenone and her followers to the dugout where she had her headquarters. It was a pleasant place, as dugouts went; not too damp, the floor flagged with slate, the wooden walls whitewashed and hung with pictures. In the general's private quarters photographs of her dead family stood among the statues of her household gods on an

elaborate shrine. A potbellied stove gave out a dry heat that made Pennyroyal's soggy clothes steam so much, the general suggested he take them off, and made one of her plumper staff officers lend him a spare uniform and an elegant gray cloak. Oenone had also changed into Green Storm uniform, and had washed her face and hair; she still did not look like an empress, but at least she looked less like a street urchin.

The general's servants brought rice wine, steamed rolls, tea. Theo pulled off his flying jacket and tried to stop himself from falling asleep on the folding chair that another servant set out for him. After the things they had been through that night, it all seemed impossibly luxurious. Although he had grown to hate the Green Storm, he had never doubted the strength or courage of their army, and it was a relief to think of all those brave soldiers and powerful guns standing between him and the cityfolk. He was not even worried about Hester, now that she was safe in the field hospital.

The general said, "My people are preparing a ship to carry you home to Tienjing, my lady. Her captain is a friend of mine, a supporter of General Naga; her crew can all be trusted. A Stalker-bird has gone east already to take the good news to your husband. I hope that it will restore his spirits."

"He is ill?" asked Oenone, alarmed.

General Xao looked glum. "There have been no clear orders from Tienjing for weeks. We have warned your honored husband about the buildup on the other side of the line, and the harvester suburb that raided Track Mark 16 last month. We have told him that we cannot hold these positions if the cities attack; he does not seem to care. It is as if, when he heard word of your death, he gave up all hope."

Oenone looked for a moment as if she would cry. She said hoarsely, "Can't we contact him more quickly? I could talk to him by long-range radio...."

Xao shook her head. "I dare not risk it, Lady Naga. The barbarians could intercept your message, and try again to kill you."

"It was not the barbarians who tried to kill me the first time," said Oenone. "It was barbarians who saved me, with Theo's help."

"Indeed." The general nodded, smiling at Theo and then at Pennyroyal. "We have heard of Professor Pennyroyal's bravery."

"Professor Pennyroyal's
bravery?" Theo almost choked on the roll he was munching. He wondered if the general was slightly drunk. First her defeatist talk about not being able to hold the line and now this!
"What
have you heard?" he asked.

"We have listening posts deep in no-man's-land that eavesdrop on the townies' radio transmissions," explained the general. She reached for some papers on her desk. "This is a news bulletin that went out on Murnau's public screens a few hours ago." She skimmed the transcript's first two paragraphs, then cleared her throat and read, "The raiders were helped by an agent within Airhaven, the notorious author, charlatan, and former mayor of Brighton, Nimrod B. Pennyroyal. As the Green Storm spy ship left, several eyewitnesses saw the traitor Pennyroyal running after it, shouting, "What about my money?""'

"A traitor? Me?" Pennyroyal looked outraged.

"Only to the Tractionist barbarians," said General Xao. "To our people you will be a hero."

"But--gosh! Will I?"

"To think that the mayor of a barbaric raft town could come to see the error of his ways so clearly that he would risk his own life to free a Green Storm prisoner," the general went on. "Your statue will stand in the Hall of Matchless Immortals in Tienjing. Naga will reward you richly. He--"

A junior officer entered, bowing nervously and murmuring something in Shan Guonese. The general frowned, standing up. "Forgive me; I am needed outside."

"What is happening?" asked Oenone.

"Our sound mirrors are detecting engine noise from the cities.... We have been expecting an attack, but not so soon. Great Gods, I've still not had the reinforcements I asked for last month!" A bell began to ring on the bank of field telephones in the next room; then another and another. General Xao snapped an order at her underling and said to Oenone, "Excellency, you must take ship at once. I will not risk--"

An enormous roll of thunder drowned out the remainder of her words. The floor shook, and dust sifted down between the planks of the low roof. Pennyroyal started to call on his peculiar gods again. Theo looked at the table where he had set down his teacup, and the cup was dancing, dancing to the
boom, boom, boom
of the thunder. A soldier came scrambling into the bunker, and although he was shouting his report in Shan Guonese, Theo and his companions knew what it meant, even before General Xao turned to them and said, "It is beginning! All their cities are on the move! Dozens of cities! Hundreds of suburbs!"

They stood up, indignant at being plunged into another adventure before they'd had a chance to recover from the

last. "What about Hester and Mr. Grike?"

"I will have your friends meet you at the airfield," shouted General Xao. "Now go quickly, and gods preserve us all...."

They followed a subofficer out of the headquarters and through trenches where hundreds of soldiers were hurrying to their positions. The thunder from the west was shockingly loud. The sky above the front-line trenches pulsed with light. Pennyroyal looked terrified. Theo, wincing at the noise of the blasts, kept reminding himself that most of it was probably the Green Storm's artillery firing at the cities; any attack would soon be beaten off.

Only Oenone had been in the front line before. She recognized the complex shudderings of the earth in the same way a city person would understand what each movement in the deck plates meant. She knew that somewhere, not far away, fighting suburbs were advancing at high speed behind a rolling barrage of snout-gun shells. She prayed as she ran, wondering if even God would be able to hear her above all the din.

They zigzagged through a communications trench, and there ahead of them was the airfield. A corvette was waiting on a central pan while pods of Fox Spirits went snarling into the primrose sky from hangars dug into the hillsides behind her. She was called the
Fury,
and her engines were already in take-off position, the propellers a blaze of silver. As they crossed the muddy docking pan, a half-track marked with the caduceus symbol of the medical corps came speeding up, slewing to a halt near the foot of the
Fury's
gangplank. Grike swung down out of its belly and reached back to help the

bearers bring Hester's stretcher out.

The subofficer started urging Oenone toward the ship, and Pennyroyal, needing no encouragement, trotted alongside. Theo was about to follow them when he remembered Wren's letter, which was still in the pocket of his flying jacket, on the chair by the stove in Xao's headquarters.

"I have to go back!" he shouted.

Only Grike heard him as he carried Hester up the gangplank. He looked around to see Theo plunge back into the maze of trenches. "THEO NGONI!" he shouted. Sometimes he could barely believe the folly of the Once-Born.

"Stalker! Get her aboard!" called an aviator from the
Fury's
open hatchway.

"WE MUST WAIT," Grike insisted. "THE ONCE-BORN THEO NGONI IS NOT WITH US."

A snout-gun shell burst near the western perimeter of the field, crumpling a rising Fox Spirit and spraying mud and gravel against the
Fury's
envelope. Grike looked toward the trenches but could see nothing but smoke. Explosions were going off steadily, and he made out another noise beneath and between the slamming of the guns--the deep note of city engines and the high, squealing counterpoint of rolling tracks.

"Come aboard, Stalker, or we take off without you!" yelled the frightened aviator, holding his helmet in place as blast waves chased one another across the docking pans.

Grike bellowed, "THEO NGONI!" once more into the storm of sound, then turned reluctantly, carrying Hester up the gangplank and through the hatch. Oenone ran to meet him in the corridor. "Where is Theo? I thought he was with us?"

The
Fury
jolted and leaped quickly into the air. Grike carried Hester to the medical bay and laid her on a bunk, " look after this once-born," he told the orderlies, and strode across the cabin to a window. Flying machines were swerving through the air outside, bullets from their machine guns pummeling the
Fury's
armor. Below, shell bursts speckled the ground. All up and down the Green Storm's line the heavy guns were firing, while steam trebuchets flung up their long arms and lobbed their bombs into the screens of drifting smoke that curtained no-man's-land.