Battle Hymn (23 page)

Jack saw the diminutive gunner assigned to the new top position.

"Sergeant Stefan Zharoff reporting, sir." The gunner saluted eagerly as Jack eyed him up and down.

"How old are you, boy?"

"Eighteen, sir."

He couldn't weigh more than a hundred pounds, Jack thought, and that was for weight on this world, not even on Earth. He vaguely remembered interviewing him along with the dozen other candidates selected for the newly created position. It was the eager, toothy grin and freckles he remembered the most. The thought of having the gunner's assignment all but made Jack's stomach turn over. He would spend most of the trip on top of the airship in a lonely turret manning one of the new breech-loading two-pound guns. His job, as well, was to actually get out and if need be attempt to patch any holes, while holding on to the web of light silk ropes wrapped around the outside of the ship.

Stefan was looking up eagerly at the ship, his eyes burning with excitement.

"All right then, boy. Up you go."

"Aye, sir!"

For some reason, naval phrases had crept into the air service, something Jack couldn't quite figure out but had come to tolerate.

Stefan scrambled up the rope, the ship above them dropping ever so slightly as it bore the additional weight.

"All right, Feyodor, you next."

"Good luck, laddie."

Jack looked angrily at Pat, knowing that Pat understood the superstition among flyers that one never wished another luck before a flight. Jack was just about to climb aboard when he saw Hawthorne approaching.

Smiling, Hawthorne took his hand. "Thanks for getting her off early," he said. "Andrew will be furious, but I'll just argue you had a fair wind and took it."

Pat chuckled and shook his head. "The supplies on the Petersburg, did they arrive yet?"

"We just got the message an hour ago, they're in and waiting for you."

"Maybe we won't need them, but if we run into trouble it's three hundred miles closer."

Giving a curt salute to Pat and then Hawthorne, he scrambled up the ladder, his stomach twitching when the ship bobbed down several feet and then bucked slightly as the evening breeze pushed broadside against it, causing it to turn slowly like a vast weather vane.

Jack climbed in through the bottom hatch of the cabin and pulled it shut. Crouching low, he went forward to sit down in the captain's chair. He strapped the leather seat belt in place and then unbuckled the restraining straps on the brass elevator and rudder control. He eased the stick back and forth, then up and down, looking over his shoulder through the open rear port to check that the controls were functioning correctly.

"All engines ready," Feyodor announced.

Jack studied the two engines mounted forty feet forward of the cab, their ten-foot propeller blades slowly turning over, and then he checked aft for the two engines mounted forty feet astern.

"Stefan, are you ready?"

The boy, sitting on the floor behind Yuri, grinned, "Aye, aye, sir!"

Jack shook his head in disgust.

"Ready to cast off."

Jack slid the left side window open, stuck his head out, and looked down at his ground crew chief. He held a clenched fist up and then snapped off a salute. The chief saluted in reply and then extended his arms, holding red pennants in either hand. He waved both of the pennants, signaling for the port and starboard crews to cast off.

"Full up helm!" Jack announced as he pulled the stick into his stomach. "One half throttle, all engines."

"One half throttle, all engines!" Feyodor shouted. Jack watched the duplicate engine controls directly in front of him as the four brass levers to the four fuel tanks clicked open. Several seconds later the propellers began to spin faster, blurring, and he felt the first slight surge of power as the nose of the ship began to edge upward. Easing in rudder, he pointed the ship straight into the flicker of a breeze coming out of the west, northwest.

"All engines running smooth, temperatures within range," Feyodor announced.

Thiat little piece of technical engineering still amazed him. Somehow Ferguson had figured out a way to run some hot air back from the four caloric engines into gauges set into the cab, figuring out as well how much heat would be lost in transit. The gauges weren't as accurate as those set on the engines and Feyodor would still have to leave the cab on a regular basis to go out on the catwalk to check and, if necessary, repair the engines in flight.

The nose of the ship continued to pitch upward, and Jack leveled out the climb at forty-five degrees, checking to make sure the tail didn't drag. He saw the ground dropping away rapidly, and Pat raised a flask of vodka in salute.

The ship surged up slightly, and he felt his stomach drop and then flutter, beads of sweat breaking out on his face. He cranked open the forward windows to let the backwash from the engines swirl in. Using more left rudder, he swung the ship around to a southerly heading. The course would take him down southeast, across the Great Sea.

The ship surged yet again, buffeted by a shift in the wind. Unable to hold back any longer, he stuck his head out the side window and vomited. As he gasped for breath, he saw Pat waving from the ground, obviously laughing, holding up his flask and then taking a drink.

"Wish I'd hit you, you bastard," he groaned. He wiped the sweat from his face and set Flying Cloud on course, trying to block out his fears of all that could go wrong.

Dale Hinsen gazed intently at the terrified worker who stood trembling before him.

"And you say the escape is ready to go?"

"Yes, Gakka."

"How will they do it?"

"I don't know, Gakka. Just that there is an escape planned for tonight. The black men, I heard two of the black men speak while I was relieving myself behind the charcoal pile. They did not know I was there."

Dale smiled inwardly at the honorific normally used when speaking to one of the Horde.

"You know the Moon Feast is tomorrow. If you are lying to me I promise that you will be delivered not to the table of the Qarth but to that of Karga."

The Chin worker trembled. The barbarities that Karga performed went far beyond the slow death by fire.

"Who is the leader of this?"

The worker hesitated.

"Who?"

"The Yankee."

"Schuder?"

The worker looked at him, confused.

"The one man said, 'The Yankee has given the order.' That's all I know, Gakka."

Hinsen smiled. A decade-long dream of vengeance was finally at hand.

"If this is true, you'll be removed from the treadmill. If not …" He left the sentence unfinished as he motioned for the worker to withdraw.

Hinsen carefully considered his options. He could not just send a message to Karga. If he did that, and the rumor was false, he would pay. If the rumor was true, Karga would take the credit for unmasking the plot and leave him out. Nor could he go to Ha'ark, especially if the report should prove to be false.

The one alternative was to go to the factory. The freedom that he enjoyed allowed him to do that, but his mere presence would arouse comment. If some sort of escape were being planned, his arrival could tip Hans off, and again he would have nothing. No, it was best to wait, wait until dark. There would be time enough then to act.

Ha'ark stirred, breaking away from the sleeping embrace of his concubine. It was nearly time for the setting of the sun, and he sat up. But there was something else, something in his dreams, a troubled warning, a vague uneasiness. As he dressed, the warning continued to float in his mind.

"Pull the hatch."

Gregory glanced at the watcher standing by the side of the furnace, who nodded reassuringly. The one guard was still alone, halfway down the length of the foundry.

Ketswana stood silent beside him, his eyes bright with tension. One of the diggers set the crowbar into the comer of the flagstone cover and pried the rock up. Hands from down in the tunnel reached up, pushing the flagstone back, and Gregory knelt down.

"Everything secure?'׳

"We're ready to cut the last couple of feet."

Gregory took a deep breath. "All right, then."

He nodded at Lin to follow, and they scrambled down the ladder. Crawling on hands and knees, Gregory led the way, warning Lin not to brush against any of the supports. When he reached the inclined shaft leading up to the warehouse, he came up behind a digger who was looking back down the tunnel, illuminated by the flickering light of a lamp strapped to his forehead.

"How far?"

"Only a foot or two. You could hear them up there earlier. I think they just left for the day."

Gregory looked back at Lin's face, barely visible behind him. "We're going to punch through. As soon as we're in, you get yourself up there, and if anyone's inside you better start talking real quick. If one of them panics, it's all over."

Gregory looked up at the digger and said, "Go ahead."

He winced as the man reached up and with powerful jabs hacked his way through the clay. Anyone inside the warehouse would have to be deaf not to hear the noise. He could imagine cutting through only to find himself staring into the face of a Bantag. The digger continued to cut, a rain of clay cascading down. The man paused occasionally to scoop the loose earth back with his bare hands, grunting to move forward another couple of inches and then cutting again.

"Through the clay. Sand now." And even as he announced the change, a cascade of sand tumbled into Gregory's eyes, blinding him, followed a few seconds later by something different, small hard pellets that rained down with a dry, rustling sound.

"Rice," Lin whispered. "It's rice."

Gregory opened his eyes and looked up. The digger was reaching up, tearing at the strawlike fabric of a rice bag, the precious granules flooding down on them like a river.

"How many bags were in there?" Gregory hissed.

"Nearly a thousand, but on the far side of the warehouse. I made sure this side was cleared."

If they've moved the pile we're doomed, Gregory thought.

Cursing, the digger reached up and tore at the bag. Gregory wanted to tell him to be cautious but knew that was ridiculous. This was the moment he had dreaded since the start of it all, the fear that their calculations were off and that they would come up outside the warehouse or that someone would be inside the warehouse when they broke through. The digger, swearing incessantly, tore into the next bag, and another river of rice poured down into the tunnel. Gregory scooped it up as the cascade all but buried the man struggling above him and tried to push it back down the slope. The irony suddenly struck him that he was cursing at a supply of food that would have moved him to tears of joy under any other circumstances.

The flow of rice continued as the digger cut into yet another bag and then another. There was no way to tell how much time passed, but Gregory sensed that they were already behind schedule and that their intricate timetable was falling apart. He could well imagine the tension back in the foundry as the first escapees moved into position in the charcoal pile but then were forced to wait.

"I think I'm through!"

Gregory felt a cool burst of fresh air. The digger struggled upward and suddenly his feet disappeared. Seconds later a hand reached back through and Gregory grasped it. Pulled up through the hole, he breathed a sigh of relief. He saw that they had come out on the side of a pile of rice bags that must have been laid down during the day. If the tunnel had emerged only a few feet more to the right they would have come up in the middle and been trapped for hours. Lin popped up out of the hole, muttering a soft curse, and Gregory held up his hand for silence … someone was opening the warehouse door.

Crouching low, he waited, feeling for the knife blade strapped to his right leg. The digger squatted beside him, his hands wrapped around the handle of his shovel.

The door slid open.

"
Jakgarth, jakgarth?
"

It was a Bantag guard.

Gregory waited. The guard stood silhouetted in the doorway, holding a lantern and peering into the building. Gregory saw the glint of a barrel in his right hand … a double-barreled shotgun.

He waited, praying. The guard stood silent, his head cocked, as if listening. Suddenly a trickle of rice slithered out of a cut bag, pouring down into the tunneL "
Jakgarth!
"

The guard stepped into the warehouse, and the distinctive click of a gun being cocked echoed through the cavernous building.

Gregory waited, slipping the blade out of its scabbard. The lantern cast flickering shadows against the walls. Gregory looked over at the digger, who was coiled like a spring. The guard continued to advance, moving slowly, raising and lowering the lantern. Stopping now less than ten feet away.

Why doesn't he see us? Gregory wondered.

He took another step and stopped.

"
Baktu!
" The word was a drawn-out hiss.

Gregory sprang up over the bags of rice, leaping straight at him, blade raised high. Startled, the guard stepped back, trying to swing his shotgun around, dropping the lantern.

Gregory slammed into his chest, the blade scraping against the Bantag's leather jerkin, the guard grunting in surprise. Gregory fell to one side and tried desperately to scramble back to his feet. The shotgun continued to swing around, and even in the shadows Gregory knew the barrel was poised only inches from his head. He tried to spring back up with his blade, but he knew the race was lost.

A dull thump resounded in the warehouse, followed an instant later by a gasp of pain. The Bantag staggered to one side, his head snapping forward. Another blow resounded, and something warm and sticky splashed onto Gregory's face as the Bantag sagged to his knees, the shotgun clattering to the floor beside him.

The digger stood behind the Bantag, his shovel blade flashing in the dim light as it cut a deadly arc, slamming into the Bantag's neck and severing his head, which tumbled to the ground by Gregory's side. The body kicked spasmodically as it slowly crumpled into the sacks of rice.