by Jon Kiln
Taria remained hidden in the top of the tree, swaying in the breeze at a dizzying height as the airships passed overhead one by one, almost near enough to touch. She counted them as they hummed over her, and as the evening light began to fade, she knew that there was only one ship remaining. Straining to hear over the growing wind, she could hear the contraption droning ever nearer.
She peered down again at the ground, seeing nothing. She could no longer even make out the speck that was her horse on the forest floor. Where were the others?
Looking back to the east, the dark shape of the airship was beginning to materialize above the canopy, which glowed golden against the sunset. Taria began to ready herself. She would have to go ahead with the plan and hope against hope that the others arrived in time. She found the end of the rope that she had coiled around herself and unwound several feet from her body. Tying a large slipknot in the end of the rope, Taria checked again to see that the airship was now very near. She could begin to make out the shapes of men standing in the wooden cockpit.
Taria ducked down and held the knotted end of the rope easily in one hand, clutching the tree tightly with the other, she steadied herself. The airship was over her, blocking out any remaining rays from the sinking sun. She twirled the rope twice and tossed it upwards, aiming for the landing apparatus on the bottom of the cockpit. She missed. Hurriedly, Taria gathered up the rope, holding onto the tree with the crook of her elbow in order that she might use both hands to retrieve the noose.
Again, she threw the knotted rope at the underside of the long wooden box, again, she missed. Taria let out a frustrated breath. Scrambling to gather the rope, she knew she only had one more chance. By the time she had a hold of the knot once more, the airship had completely passed over her. She twisted her body around the flexing tree limb in order to face the rear of the machine and flung out the rope desperately. This time, the knot settled perfectly around a large wooden knob at the back of the cockpit. Taria tugged at the rope and watched the knot shrink and disappear, tightening around the knob.
Taria smiled triumphantly, but she knew there was no time to celebrate, she was rapidly running out of slack. Frantically, she began to unwind the rope from around her body. A gust of wind kicked up from the west and pushed the airship along faster. Taria could not uncoil the rope quickly enough and was pulled from her perch at the top of the tree.
Airborne, it was all Taria could do not to scream in terror. She knew that if she screamed she would be detected, and the Reapers in the airship would either cut her loose or, worse yet, reel her in.
Clinging desperately to the rope, Taria watched the Banewood rushing by beneath her, the tops of trees brushing against her legs. She held tight and did not allow any more of the rope to unwind until she saw the edge of the Banewood approaching. There was a narrow meadow separating the Banewood from the craggy beginnings of the Andrelicas Mountain range. If she did not reach the ground before the airship began it’s ascent to clear the mountains, she would be lifted beyond the reach of her rope, and likely be dashed against the frozen mountain cliffs.
Taria loosened her grip on the rope and allowed her body to twist once, twice, three times, the rope unwinding from around her torso, lowering her a foot at a time. The rope pinched and burned against her flesh, but she twisted faster and faster as the airship crossed the meadow.
Looking up, she estimated that she was only halfway between the airship and the earth, and the mountains were fast approaching. Taria took a deep breath and let go of the rope. She began to spin rapidly through the air, and she had to fight to keep track of which way was up and which was down.
Each time she glimpsed the earth, it was a little nearer, and when she was able to make out the individual blades of grass that blew in the evening breeze, she reached out to again snag her tether. The rope tore horribly at her hands as she desperately gripped the rough braid. She could not help but let out a pained cry as she came to a stop - not eight feet off the ground.
Taria let loose of the rope and tumbled into the soft grass, rolling as the end of the rope unwound from her. She wanted nothing more than to lay still until her world stopped spinning, but she forced herself to get to her feet and chase after the trailing end of the rope. Reaching it, she frantically looked around for an anchor. Ahead, the meadow was dotted with boulders where the mountain began to claim the land from the field, but these would not do.
The only other thing nearby was one small, scraggly larch tree. It would have to suffice.
Taria raced to the little tree with the quickly diminishing slack of the rope in her hands. She was barely able to tie a suitable knot around the base of the tree before the line went taught.
High overhead, men’s voices shouted in surprise as the airship jerked about in the sky. Taria collapsed to the ground and gazed up at the bobbing contraption, then over at the little tree, struggling to retain it’s hold on the earth.
“You will not hold for long,” she said aloud.
“He won’t have to,” came Rothar’s voice from behind her. In all the tumult, she had not noticed Rothar, Harwin and the huntsmen, riding along behind her as she made her impressive descent from the heavens.
“I can honestly say,” said Rothar, “I have never felt such fear in my life.”
“And that is coming from a man who has battled the devil himself,” added Peregrin, and the whole lot of them began to laugh with relief.
Even Taria managed to laugh a little, lying flat on her back and wondering if her heart would ever again cease to race. Rothar dismounted Stormbringer and helped her to her feet. At the rear of the group of riders, she could see that Bedlam had been found and brought along.
The rest of the group busied themselves securing the rope to a team of their collective horses. The horses would drag the airship back to the edge of the Banewood. There they would run the rope around a more stout tree and start to head back to the east, in turn pulling the airship down and to the west.
A handful of arrows sailed down from the captured airship, but Peregrin and his brethren quickly extinguished that threat with a hail of arrows of there own. By the time the ship was on the ground, only two Reapers inside remained alive. Rothar immediately beheaded one of them. “It only takes one man to fly this contraption,” he said.
And he was right. At the point of his sword, the lone surviving Reaper guided the machine into the evening sky, and the mysterious airship began it’s cold, but restful, journey across the Andrelicas range, carrying a cargo of death and vengeance to the red desert.
Chapter 47
“Sit,” Esme said to the bedraggled boy once they had returned to her chambers.
The servants assigned to her and Allette regarded him with some alarm and suspicion, but Esme insisted that he was her personal guest and asked that some food be brought for him. One of the servants asked what had become of Allette. Esme looked down and said nothing. The servant, a wise old woman, understood and simply laid a hand on her shoulder. Esme smiled sadly at the woman, hoping that her appreciation was felt, and then headed over to where the pot steamed and bubbled over the low flame.
She looked inside the satchel that contained the yellow blossoms, wondering how much to add to the remedy. Allette had said that the flower was supposed to take away pain. Esme looked at the addicted boy. He sat in the opposite corner, hugging himself tightly and rocking back and forth. At intervals he would whimper pathetically, either with pain or with fear. Esme decided that no amount of pain relief could be too much, and dumped the entire contents of the satchel into the pot.
She stirred and stirred the mixture, calling for more wood to be brought to raise the flame. Allette had read aloud to her about how more heat helped break down solid elements when making a liquid potion. After as much time as she could stand to wait, Esme dolled a small cupful of the concoction into a tin cup and carried it to the boy, blowing on it to cool it off.
“Here,” she said. “Take this, I hope that it will make you feel better.”
“No,” she said sternly, almost motherly. “You need this, drink it up.”
Placing the cup back into the boy’s hands, she gave him a look to tell him that she would not be defeated. The boy seemed to understand, and reluctantly took a drink from the steaming vessel.
At first, the boy only made a face of disgust. Esme could not really blame him, if the mixture tasted anything like it smelled, it must be truly awful. After a moment or two, however, a change seemed to come over the lad.
He blinked hard a couple of times, and his eyes seemed to focus on something far off. His heavy breathing slowed and he ceased trembling. It was an odd thing to watch, and it made Esme feel a strange combination of satisfaction and sadness. She could see the pain melting away, and the boy even seemed to smile in a twisted sort of way. He no longer seemed threatening or depraved, but was now so utterly complacent and detached, it was as if he were not a boy at all.
The remedy seemed to work, it mimicked the effects of Obscura and may be able to quell the violent mob outside the castle walls, but Esme sensed the work would not be finished there. People had to be rehabilitated, or the city would never rebuild itself.
None the less, she took up a pen and added the words “Arapithia: 100 blossoms” to the ledger in which Allette had been recording the ingredients for the remedy. She called for the cookstaff, and the entirety of the King’s kitchen was to be used to produce as much of the mixture as they could, and use it to infuse the smoking tobacco.
When the head cook blustered in and asked what exactly it was that he was being tasked to make in his kitchen, Esme answered him without hesitation. “Allette’s Tonic.”
***
By midnight, the sentries along the wall ceased to fire arrows or stab spears into the raging mob. All along the edges of the castle grounds, guards dropped parcels of tobacco to the seething villagers.
At first, many of the rioters threw them back, thinking them to be ordinary smoking tobacco. But somewhere, in all of the confusion, someone broke down and lit a pipeful. After that, it was not long until word spread and the people began snatching up the parcels and running off, back to Witherington, back to the lavish homes built into the hillside.
Within two hours, the streets around the castle and throughout the noble grounds were empty, and the only sound that the lonesome wind bore to Castle Staghorn was the maniacal, twittering laughter of a city full of ladder climbers.
Chapter 48
Morning came just as Rothar and his companions were hovering out of the cold mist that enshrouded the Andrelicas. The night had been deathly cold and the airship had been battered by harsh winds. At one point during the night, the Reaper who was controlling the machine had decided it would be better to die in the mountains than to return to his city with the enemy onboard, so he began steering the ship downward and into the sheer cliffs of the icy mountains. Harwin had clubbed the scoundrel in the head, knocking him unconscious.
“I have been watching him handle this machine for long enough,” Harwin said. “There is nothing to it, we don’t need him.”
Harwin had then proceeded to fly the airship with relative ease. Seeing how proficient the blacksmith was at piloting the craft, Dewitt and Trevitt tossed the former pilot over the side of the cockpit.
“Less weight that way,” Dewitt had explained. He may have had a point. The riders had all brought along their horses, for there was ample room in the cockpit, but in the tossing and turning of the windswept night, weight had begun to be a concern.
Now, as the ship broke through the wall of white fog, the night’s chill dissipated all at once and the desert heat immediately set in. The occupants of the cockpit began shedding their heavy clothing as the red sun heated the dry air through which they sailed.
Rothar was pleased to see that they were not far behind the other airships, the nearest one being no more than two hundred yards ahead, the farthest being less than a mile away. The night’s storms seemed to have pushed them even closer to the rest of the caravan than they had been when they pirated the ship the evening before.
“When do you want me to take it down?” asked Harwin.
“As soon as we can see the walls of their infernal city,” replied Rothar.
At the back of the cockpit, Taria and the huntsmen were readying their weapons. Arrow shafts were checked once more and jars of lamp oil were passed around. The horses were fed and rested, for the war party would not be flying home.
After two hours of gliding over the featureless, red desert floor, the horizon began to change. At first, it seemed as though there was simply a long rise in the desert floor, a plateau perhaps, but as they drew nearer, the city wall began to take shape.
Even Rothar had never seen the city in the daylight before, and he was surprised at the sheer expanse of the wall, and by the detail of it. Every two hundred feet or so, the wall was supported with stone pillars that were carved in the shapes of stacked animal heads, with the occasional human head thrown in for good measure. Arrow slots were cut into the wall at intervals, but only the single gate was visible from this side of the city.
“Should we be expecting archers?” asked Stone, coming to the front of the cockpit to stand by Rothars side.
“I am sure,” Rothar answered. “But we will barely be coming into their range. I am not worried about them.”
“Not coming into their range?” asked Stone, his brow creasing in confusion. “How do you propose to take a city without getting within range of it’s archers?”
Rothar turned to look Stone squarely in the face. “I have no intention of taking this city. There is nothing there that anyone should want.” He turned back to face the approaching wall. “We are merely here to destroy it, and for that we need not get much closer.”
Rothar put a hand on Harwin’s shoulder. “We shall land here, old friend.”
Harwin began the process of lowering the machine to the desert floor, working as though he had been trained in the impossible art of flying from the time he was a boy.
Rothar kept his eyes on the next airship in the line as they came down to land. As he had expected, the Reapers in the other ship noticed their descent and began to turn around to see what was the matter.
“Ready yourselves,” Rothar called back to his warriors and his woman, “Our first quarry approaches.”
As soon as the airship touched the sand, the war party spurred their horses out of the cockpit and urged them towards the approaching ship. Even Harwin abandoned his post at the helm and rode out with the others. As soon as they were clear of their stolen contraption, Rothar lit the end of an oil soaked arrow and fired it back at the bulbous top of the machine. The instant the arrow pierced the canvas, the entire airship exploded in a terrible orange and red fireball.
The approaching ship began a slow turn to flee back towards the city. Peregrin notched a flaming arrow, but Rothar called out to him over the roaring flames and thundering hoofbeats.
“Not yet!” he yelled. “Let them get over the wall!”
At Rothar’s command, the riders halted their horses. Tiny black lines streaked through the air towards them as the archers in the wall opened fire. The arrows arched though the blistering sunlight and stuck into the sand before them. They were just out of range.
Rothar held a hand in the air. “Wait,” he commanded.
Silently, the caravan of airships floated over the red city, spreading out in all directions once they were over the wall. Rothar could not have hoped for anything better. The massive machines needed to be landed in different locations about the city.
“Now!” Rothar shouted.
The riders surged forwards as one, riding at angles towards the wall to make themselves difficult targets. Once they were within range of the airships, every rider lit an arrow and let fly. The first of the airships caught fire and exploded with a whistle and a gr
owl. From outside the city, men could be seen raining out of the cockpit, flaming bodies falling out of sight beyond the upper lip of the wall.
As the riders spread out along the wall, other airships roared to life and brought death to the hellish people beyond the fortification. Rothar, Taria, Stone and Peregrin had stationed themselves outside of the lone gate in the wall, and when it opened, they let loose a hail of arrows upon the portal, felling a dozen people and damming up the flood of humanity that was trying to pour out through the narrow opening. Behind the writhing wall of men, there was nothing but flame. The burning canvas and wooden skeletons were scattered by the wind and draped about everything in the city. Rothar and his companions had brought hell to the Reapers.
Something caught Rothar’s attention, and he glanced up to the top of the wall, high above the now useless gateway. Even at such a great distance, Rothar could not mistake the form of the man who had tortured him, drugged him and dropped him into the desert.
The man stared down at Rothar with a palpable rage, the fury in his eyes was perceivable from afar. Rothar nodded and gestured towards the dark man, just as the wall collapsed beneath him.
Chapter 49
The red city of Haval was burned to ash on that day. Not every person within the walls died, but that was never Rothar’s intention anyhow. The Reapers who ruled Haval had brought death, disorder and peril to the people in the King’s City, to the people of Witherington. It was Rothar’s ingrained duty, a part of his spirit, to avenge the people. The mourners left alive inside the walls would serve to warn the enemies of King Heldar what would happen if anyone dared to wound the good people of the kingdom.
The riders were silent, but not solemn. Exhaustion was the ailment of the day, and to a man, each had done their duty ten fold, and was feeling the strain as well as the glory of victory.
Taria rode alongside him as the war party headed back west, taking their time in crossing the scorched desert, saving the horses for the perilous climb through the mountains. Peregrin and Harwin rode behind. The two men, who had never met before they helped Rothar defeat the Southland devils in Miranda’s Manor, had endured much peril together and were now fast friends.
