Land and Overland - Omnibus (67 page)

He urged the bluehorn forward as fast as he dared and in a few minutes was approaching the farmhouse. The very fact that Harro and Ennda were not outside and scanning the skies was a subtle indication that things were seriously amiss. Or was it? Perhaps he had been caught up in an essentially local disturbance of nature—after all, there were those who claimed that lightning sprang out of the ground, entirely contrary to the popular belief that it struck downwards from the heavens. He rode into the yard, dismounted and went to the farmhouse door. When he opened it the scene before him was a tableau of commonplace domesticity—Ennda doing her embroidery work on a sun hat, Harro in the act of tilting a demijohn to pour himself a cup of wine.

Bartan sighed with relief and then hesitated, his uneasiness returning, as he realised that the couple were indeed like part of a tableau. They were unmoving, rigid as statues. The only hint of animation in their features was a false one, due to the flickering of the lanterns in the draught from the open door.

"Harro? Ennda?" Bartan advanced uncertainly into the kitchen. "I … I'm sorry I'm so late."

Ennda's needle began to move on the instant, and wine gurgled into Harro's cup. "Don't fret yourself, Bartan," Ennda said. "The sun has hardly set, and…" She looked through the doorway into the blackness beyond and began to frown. "That's strange! How did it…?" Her words were lost in a dulled splintering of glass as the demijohn Harro had been holding crashed on the stone floor. Tentacles of dark wine raced outwards from the shattered vessel.

"Curses!" Harro grabbed at his right shoulder and massaged it. "My arm hurts! My arm is so tired that it …
hurts
!" He looked down at the floor and his eyes grew round in self-reproach. "I'm sorry, lad—I don't know what…"

"It doesn't matter," Bartan cut in. "What about the light? What do you think it was?"

"The light?"

"The blinding light. The
light,
for pity's sake! What do you think caused it?"

Harro glanced at his wife. "We didn't see any lights. Did you by any chance fall and knock your head?"

"I'm not drunk." Bartan was staring at the couple in perplexity when his gaze was drawn to the bedroom door. It was partially open, allowing a strip of light to slant across the bed, and from what he could see of it the bed appeared to be empty. He strode across the kitchen and pushed the bedroom door fully open. Sondeweere was not in the small square room beyond.

"Where is Sondy?" he said quietly.

"What?"
Harro and Ennda leapt to their feet and came to his side, their faces registering astonishment.

"Where is Sondy?" Bartan repeated. "Did you let her go outside alone?"

"Of course not! She's in there!" Ennda thrust her way past him and halted, confounded by the room's patent emptiness and lack of hiding places.

"You must have been asleep," Bartan said. "She must have gone out past you when you were asleep."

"I wasn't asleep. This is imposs—" Ennda paused and pressed a hand to her forehead. "There's no point in our standing around here arguing. We have to go out and find her."

"Take the lights." Bartan picked up a tubular lantern and hurried outside. Even after they had checked the lavatory hut and found it empty he was still only mildly concerned. Although Sondeweere had never strayed like this before, there were no predatory wild animals in the area, no cliffs or crevasses to threaten her safety. Her absence might even be a good omen, a sign that she was at last beginning to emerge from the shadow which had dimmed her mind and occulted her personality for so long.

It was not until they had been searching and calling her name for more than an hour that a different kind of premonition began to exercise its sway. Firstly, there had been the terrifying manifestation , the unbearable cascade of light; secondly, his wife had mysteriously vanished—and there had to be a connection between the two events. The Haunt—it had been naive and futile to rechristen it the Basket of Eggs—was going about its malign activities again, and Sondeweere had become its latest victim. He had been given ample opportunity to take her away from the place of evil, but in his stubbornness and intellectual arrogance he had continued to expose her to dangers that no man understood. And
this
was the inevitable outcome…

"This blundering about in the darkness will gain us little," Harro Phoratere said, tiredness and reason combining in his voice. "We should repair to the house and conserve our strength till daybreak. What do you say?"

"I think you're right," Bartan said dully.

The farmhouse had grown cold by the time they reached it, and while Bartan was preparing a fire in the hearth Harro busied himself by fetching a full demijohn from the cellar and pouring three cups of black wine. But, far from comforting Bartan, the cosy firelit ambience served only to remind him that he had no right to be enjoying the luxury while his wife was wandering somewhere in the night. At best she was cold and lost; at worst…

"How could a thing like this happen?" he said. "If I had known a thing like this could happen I would never have left her side."

"I suppose I could have fallen asleep," Harro said. "The wine…"

"But Ennda was with you."

Ennda, who had apparently been on the verge of sleep, turned on Bartan immediately, her face twisted with fury. "What are you trying to say, city boy? Are you hinting that I killed your young whore? Do you think I ate her face off? Is
that
what you are saying? But where is the blood? Do you see any blood on my person? Or on this?" She gripped the neck of her blue blouse with both hands and ripped it downwards, partially exposing her breasts.

Bartan was aghast. "Ennda!
Please!
I had no thought of…"

She silenced him by springing out of her chair and dashing her cup into the fireplace. "I keep the dream at bay! It can't devour me any more, and that's the truth!"

Harro stood up and embraced his wife, drawing her tortured face against his shoulder. She leaned into him, sobbing and trembling violently. The wine she had thrown hissed and sputtered in the fire.

"I…" Bartan stood up and set his drink aside. "I didn't know the dream persisted."

"This happens sometimes," Harro said, his eyes contrite, miserable and haunted. "It would be best if I took her home."

"Home?" Ennda, the manic energy having been drained from her, spoke like a child. "Yes, Harro, please take me home … away from this terrible land … back east to Ro-Amass. I can't live this way any longer. Let's go back to our
real
home, where we were happy."

"Perhaps you're right," Harro murmured, patting her on the back. "We'll talk about it in the morning."

Ennda turned her head and looked at Bartan with a tremulous smile. "And what have I done to you, Bartan? You're a good boy, and Sondy is a good girl. I didn't mean anything I said."

"I know that," Bartan said uncomfortably. "There is no need for you to leave."

Harro shook his head. "No, lad, we'll go now, but I'll come back in the morning with extra hands. If Sondy hasn't shown up by that time we'll soon find her. You'll see."

"Thanks, Harro." Bartan went outside with the couple and helped them harness their bluehorn to the wagon. Throughout the task he was unable to prevent himself from scanning his dimly seen surroundings, hoping to pick out a drifting patch of white which would betoken Sondeweere's safe return.

His vigilance went unrewarded.

Unknown to Bartan, he was entering the blackest phase of his life, one in which—over a period of several days—he would come to accept that his dumb, tranced wife had departed his world for ever.

There was nothing unusual about the fact that the enemy was coming out of the sun, but what surprised Toller was the size of the attack wave. It contained at least sixty ships laid out in a protective grid pattern.

His hope that the punishment inflicted on the first invasion fleet would have been enough to end the war had been unjustified, but subsequent attacks had been on a smaller scale. Many of them had seemed like suicide missions whose purpose was to test Overland's defences in new ways. The second force had tried to get through the weightless zone at night, but they had been betrayed by the sound of their exhausts, and had been forced to retreat with heavy casualties. Others had been equipped with varieties of ultra-powerful cannon, the recoil of which had destabilised and destroyed their own ships. And on two occasions the Landers had even deployed jet fighters of their own, launching them from the sides of gondolas. At first the enemy pilots had tried engaging the machines of the three squadrons in direct aerial combat, but they had been hopeless novices compared to Toller's skilled fliers and had been slaughtered, almost to a man. In a second experiment, they had attempted to make high-speed sorties into the Inner Defence Group, evidently with the intention of ramming the stations, but again had been driven off and destroyed.

With the passage of time it had become apparent to Toller that the establishment of a permanent base in the weightless zone had given the defenders an overwhelming advantage. It was a matter for surprise that King Rassamarden had not reached the same conclusion and abandoned the unequal struggle. The only explanation Toller could think of was contained in Colonel Gartasian's report of his meeting with the Lander scouting group. Gartasian had stated that they were overweeningly arrogant, proud and unamenable to reason. Perhaps the New Men of Land, their ruler included, were belated victims of pterthacosis in ways they did not even comprehend, destined to drown in their own irrational venom.

The only noticeable step they had taken towards self-preservation was that they had begun to wear parachutes, and thus could survive the destruction of their ships. It was impossible to say if they had invented the parachute independently, or if they had copied it after finding the body of Dinnitler, the pilot whose machine had made the runaway plunge towards Land. There was also a theory that they had arrived at the design of their own fighters by piecing together the wreckage of Dinnitler's jet.

But Toller's mind was occupied with more immediate conjectures—did the appearance of a large fleet at this stage of the war betoken nothing more than a massive venting of self-destructive passion on the part of the Landers?

Or was it a sign of confidence in a new type of weapon?

Toller mulled the question over as he rode down against the sunlight at the apex of Red Squadron's formation. The sloping glass screen, a recent modification to the fighter's design, was protecting him from the worst of the icy slipstream. A furlong away on either side he could see the Blues and Greens scoring their own white trails through the spangled heavens, and the old guilt-tinged excitement began to course through him.

Far below, outlined against the great painted curvature of Land, some of the enemy fleet were already turning on their sides. The Landers no longer sailed blindly into ambush. They had developed a method of observing the sky above, probably using look-outs at the end of long tethers, and at the first sign of the fighters' condensation trails rolled their ships into varying attitudes for mutual defence. For that reason the three squadrons now went into action separately, and the style of combat had become individualistic and opportunist. Spectacular individual victories and equally spectacular deaths had ensued; legends had proliferated.

What is going to happen this time?
Toller thought, his pulse quickening.
Is there a soldier down there whose destiny it is to end my life?

As the array of skyships expanded across the view the fighters broke away from their formations and began to weave a basket of vapour trails around their quarry. Toller was aware of Berise Narrinder curving away to his left. There came a spattering of fire from long-range muskets, but it seemed sporadic in comparison to the usual fierce volleying, and Toller's premonition about a radical new weapon returned to him in force. He shut down his engine and waited for the fighter to coast to a halt so that he could study the skyships better. Several of the other fighters were already darting through the grid in high-speed attack runs, and he could see the orange flecks of their arrows, though as yet no balloons were on fire.

Toller reached for his binoculars, but his gauntlets and the bow tied to his left wrist made him clumsy, and it was with still unaided vision that he saw some of the enemy gondolas become surrounded with brownish specks, as though the crews were hurling dozens of missiles towards their attackers. But the specks were fluttering and beginning to move of their own volition.

Birds!

Still untangling the strap of his binoculars, Toller had a moment to let his mind race ahead to the question of what kind of bird the Landers would have chosen to send against human opponents. The answer came immediately—the Rettser eagle. Found in the Rettser mountains in the north of Kolcorron, the eagle had a wingspan exceeding two yards, a speed which defied accurate measurement, and the ability to gut a deer—or a man—almost in the blink of an eye. In the past they had not been trained for hunting or warfare, even against ptertha, because of their unpredictability—but the New Men had shown themselves to have little regard for their own lives when bent on the destruction of an enemy.

Toller's first look through the glasses confirmed his fears, and a chill went through him as he waited to see what havoc the great birds, natural masters of the aerial element, would wreak among his pilots. The pattern of vapour trails abruptly changed as the pilots closest to the skyships perceived the new threat and took evasive action. Seconds dragged by, then it dawned on Toller that the battle situation was remaining strangely static. He had expected the eagles, with their incredibly fast reflexes, to begin their unstoppable attacks on the instant of sighting the human fliers—but they were remaining in the vicinity of the ships from which they had been launched.

The magnified image in the binoculars revealed a curious spectacle.

The eagles were vigorously beating their wings, but instead of being propelled forward by the action were spinning head over tail in tight circles, making little or no progress through the air. It was as though they were being held in place by some invisible agency. The more frantically they flapped their wings the faster they revolved without changing position.