Tinker's War (The Tinkerer's Daughter Book 2) (33 page)

We raced ahead as fast as we dared in the dark. I didn’t need to turn back to know that the dragon ship was still bearing down on us. Halfway back to the wagon, Tinker joined us. He had removed the grab-bar on the front of the wagon and he was using it like a cane. “Hurry,” he called out as we got near. “Forget the wagon, it’s done for. We need to make for the mountains.”

Analyn and I turned to follow him, still dragging Kale along with us. I caught a glimpse of the dragon ship out of the corner of my eye and realized the Vangars had already closed much of the distance between us. We had ten, possibly fifteen minutes before they caught up. We were doomed. It would take us several hours to reach the mountains.

We lurched helplessly onward, scanning the darkened plains ahead for some shelter, for a hiding place that the Vangars might not find when they inevitably overcame us. There was nothing, of course. Even in the night, we were simply moving targets. I knew that the Vangars would take great pleasure in using us for practice.

Then I heard the buzz of a gyro in the distance and somehow I knew it was Robie. He had come back. I turned just in time to see flashes of muzzle fire in the sky again. The Vangars responded with flamethrowers. Brilliant orange light filled the sky, raining down over the earth as Robie pulled up out of reach. He was using the same tactic that had worked earlier, taunting the Vangars, trying to distract their attention away from us. Only this time he did something different.

Robie circled over their heads, winding back and forth as the Vangars struggled to train their cannons on his gyro. Then, without warning, he dropped the flight controls, setting the gyro on a direct collision course for the dragon ship.

“No,” I mumbled. I loosened my grip on Kale. Analyn lowered him to the ground as I stepped away. My heart froze in my chest as I watched the gyro plummeting straight toward the main deck. Behind me, I heard Analyn gasp.

“Robie, no!”

The gyro hurtled out of the sky like a falcon speeding towards its prey. The dragon ship loomed below, a massive black shadow, taunting him, luring Robie into its death trap. I broke into a run, screaming at the top of my lungs. “Robie, don’t do this! Robie, please! No!”

The words had barely crossed my lips before I heard the sick crashing sound of twisting metal and breaking lumber. I felt myself falling to my knees, only vaguely aware of the sharp-edged rocks driving through my flesh and the pungent aroma of earth and blood that filled my nostrils.

There was a moment of eerie silence, as if the entire universe had paused to take a breath. And then came the explosion. A massive ball of flame shot out across the deck of the dragon ship, instantly engulfing everyone aboard. Bits and pieces of shrapnel flew out into the sky, twisting and turning, flames
whooshing
out behind like glowing contrails. Then came the noise, like a clap of thunder that filled the entire sky all at once. It rolled out across the plain in a wave, and I flinched as it hit me. I felt the pressure moving through my body. Hot air washed over me, singing my hair and instantly evaporating the tears on my face.

I blinked against the light, tears streaming as I stared at the flames licking up into the air. In my peripheral vision, I saw dark shapes falling from the sky. All of the Vangars on the main deck had been thrown overboard by the explosion. The flames, creeping down from above, trapped the others inside.

The hull of the dragon ship groaned as the wooden beams snapped like twigs, and the entire ship split in two. The center parts of the ship dangled loosely in the air while the ropes tugged at the fore and aft, pulling them higher into the air. The heat of the fires and the reduced weight on the ship caused what was left of the vessel to rise rapidly.

Two massive fireballs ascended into the heavens, blinking in and out of sight as they passed through the heavy clouds. The Vangar warriors screamed as they faced a choice of hanging on and being burned to death, or dropping to a certain death. Most of them chose to jump. Then the flames finally reached the fuel tanks, ending the entire display in a spectacular explosion that lit up the entire sky.

I sat there on my knees, watching breathless and terrified. Waves of emotion washed over me. Tears streamed down my face. The cold hard earth bit into my skin and darkness lurked menacingly at the edges of my vision. One thought filled my mind, torturing me with its finality: Robie, my lover, my mate, the father of the unborn child in my womb… was dead.

I’ll never know if Robie heard my voice calling out to him that night. I can only look back on that moment and hope that he did. Sometimes, I pretend that he called out my name before the crash, that he swore he’d love me forever as the gyro smashed into the hull of the dragon ship and exploded like a bomb.

Chapter  31

That was what it was, of course. It was a bomb. Robie had returned to the airfield and loaded Cabol’s bomb onto his gyro. Then, as he prepared to use it against the Vangars, Robie had learned what Cabol and I had already known: the bomb was too heavy to drop from a gyro. One pilot couldn’t manage it alone.

So, Robie had decided to use the bomb in the only way possible. He’d rammed the Vangars with his gyro, setting off the bomb and destroying the dragon ship in one fatal crash. Robie had sacrificed himself for us all, but it turned out that he’d done it for our daughter, too.

Before the gyros took off that day, Analyn had told Robie my secret. Perhaps he’d even guessed it on his own before that. I suspect he may have, but that’s one more thing I’ll never know for certain. What I do know is that Robie gave up his life to secure our escape, and he knew full well what he was doing.

Without his sacrifice, I doubt any of us would have survived long, even as Vangars slaves. Tinker was too old to work and he was known to the Vangars as an informant. If they didn’t kill him outright, they would have worked him to death just for the pleasure of it. The Vangars probably wouldn’t have recognized Analyn for who she was right away, but sooner or later they would have learned, and then they would have killed her just to be sure she couldn’t lead another uprising.

And me? Who knows what they would have done with my child and me? I suppose that they would have learned who I was and then killed me, or forced me to work for them. My daughter would have been born never knowing a life other than that of a Vangar slave. That was why Robie had sacrificed himself, to save us all from that fate. And it worked, if only for a while.

We became outcasts, lone refugees struggling to survive in the wilderness with little hope for the future. We made it to the mountain camp, but it took us until dawn just to get through the foothills and reach the base of the mountains. Thankfully, Kale woke and we no longer needed to carry him, but he was nearly as weak as Tinker. We spent more time resting that day than we did walking.

We were fortunate to come across several berry bushes and some wild fruit trees as we traveled. These didn’t fill our bellies, but they kept our strength up and kept us hydrated as we trekked deeper into the mountains. We found a stream on the second day, and we camped there for the night. Tinker had no trouble starting a small campfire. We slept with our bellies mostly empty again, but we were grateful for what we had.

On the third day, we reached the abandoned camp and found it still mostly intact. Analyn and the other refugees had left in such a hurry that they hadn’t bothered to pack all of their supplies. They had left nearly a dozen tents still standing, as well as the large anvil that my team had found, and a good collection of tools.

It was eerie, entering into the ghostly remnants of that camp. I couldn’t help but think of all the people who had lived there, wondering what had become of them. It almost seemed too much to hope that the Vangars had taken them captive and not killed them outright. I only hoped, as Tinker had said, that they’d had the good sense to surrender quickly.

As the weeks passed, Tinker and Kale returned to health. Winter had set in by then and we couldn’t even entertain thoughts of moving. The blustery cold kept us locked in our tents most of the time, and the gloomy oppression was almost more than I could bear some nights.

Robie was never far from my thoughts. During those first weeks, I shed more tears than I care to remember. At times, I thought I’d been a fool to let myself fall in love with him. Other times, I chastised myself for denying him for so long. Either way, it often came down to blaming myself, and I carried more guilt than I knew how to handle. We all did. There wasn’t one of us who didn’t wish we were imprisoned back in Anora so that some other, more deserving person might have escaped.

At moments like that, Analyn would often eye my swollen belly and smilingly remind me, “All things happen for a reason.”

Perhaps she was right, though in all honesty I’ve never been able to make much sense of life. I think sometimes that this life is just a test, a treatment to prepare us for the next world. The humans and Tal’mar both believe in a better, more peaceful existence for the dead. As I age, I find myself often hoping they are right.

My daughter was born in the spring, with the rays of the sun kissing the mountainside and the snow melting into muddy rivers that swept away my memories, making the world clean and new again. Through the birth pangs, I saw a vision of Tinker’s little valley. Staring out over the plains, I saw the banks of the river overflowing, swollen with floodwaters, the muddy current red as the crimson sunset. As the vision passed, Analyn pulled the infant from my womb and laid her across my chest. I wept as I looked into her eyes and saw Robie staring back at me.

“You have a daughter,” Analyn said proudly. “What will you name her?”

I smiled, stroking the wet strands of hair on her scalp, touching her perfect face and her ears… slightly pointed, I noticed, but less so than mine. It was hard to say how she might look when she was grown, but I suspected she would fit in among the humans better than I had.

“The old tradition of the Tal’mar,” I said. “My mother named me
Bresha
, Breeze, after the summer wind that blew on the day I was born.” I looked into my child’s smiling eyes and immediately discerned her nature. “And you will be
River
.”

“A strong name,” Tinker said, pulling back the flap as he entered the tent. “Especially this time of year.”

I smiled proudly, twisting sideways to give him a good look at her.

“She is strong,” Analyn said. “She’s got her father’s bones. I think she might outgrow you, Breeze.”

I nodded, feeling the strength in her tiny hand as it wrapped around my finger. “I know she will,” I said. “I can feel it.”

River grew quickly like a Tal’mar child, and by the next winter, she was walking and talking already, though her vocabulary was limited. I knew that by the end of the year, she’d be talking my ear off. I spent every waking moment with her, watching over her, teaching her and loving her. Tinker and Analyn helped me with her, of course, but there was little need for that and mostly they just wanted to hold her and play with her, too. For a time, we were like a family. Even Kale accepted River as a sibling, which was important since his only living family –his father- had been taken captive in the siege of Anora.

It was summer when Tinker came to me with a new plan. We had received no word from Anora and it seemed none would ever come. Up until that point, the only one of us capable of sneaking back there to spy out the situation had been Kale, but Analyn wouldn’t hear of it. They argued over it more than once, he claiming that it should be his right to decide since his father was a prisoner there, her countering that sacrificing himself would do nothing for his father. I saw his restlessness growing day by day and I knew that he would eventually go, with or without her approval. Analyn and Tinker must have sensed this as well, because they decided it was time to do something.

Tinker asked me to travel south with him, back to our old homestead. Naturally, I had to leave River in the care of Analyn and Kale. I had no problem with this whatsoever. It saddened me that I would be without her for a week or two, but I knew she would be well cared for.

The real surprise came when we got to Tinker’s cottage.

Tinker had led me to believe we were going for some supplies and tools, but when we got there, his story changed. “I want to show you something,” he said.

I was too overwhelmed by the sight of the old place to think much of it. We had come across the mountainside to the property, and I followed him across the creek and up the broad lawn to the cottage. I hadn’t been back there in years. I was distressed to see the decaying state of the place. The old windmill at the far end of the property had all but collapsed, and the door to the barn had been ripped off the hinges, probably by Vangars scavenging for supplies.

I was wary as Tinker approached the cottage. It had burned down once and Tinker had rebuilt it, but now all of the windows had been broken and the roof weighed heavily inward as if it was about to collapse. I called out to him as he reached for the door. “Tinker, don’t! It’s not safe.”

“Just a few moments,” he said. “Come, just inside the doorway.”

Reluctantly, I followed him inside. Tinker brushed aside cobwebs as he stepped into the tiny kitchen. He reached for the switch on the wall and lifted it. Sparks shot out and the old glass bulb on the ceiling began to glow. I stared at the odd assortment of chemicals and other odds and ends strewn about the shelves.

The place smelled different. The grease and sulfur still lingered, but the scent of dust and mildew overwhelmed everything else. It was sad, seeing all of those things and reliving those childhood memories… seeing what had become of it all. I glanced at the bench where my father had set me on the day he left, and then the doorway to the back room that Tinker had built for me when I was but a frightened child. Suddenly the place seemed suffocating.