by Anna Butler
“Mmmn. All right.” She nodded and yawned. “Heavens, I am tired.”
“Long day.” Good Lord, if I didn’t move I’d probably fall asleep where I stood. Her yawning was contagious, and mine tensed my neck and jaw until I worried something would break.
“I’ll come with you.” Ned struggled to his feet. “I need some fresh air, too.”
We waited for Sam’s protest, but when we looked at the narrow cot to which he’d been confined since the crash, he was sound asleep.
Ned smirked. “I’ll escape while I can, then. That doesn’t often happen.”
“His leg was paining him. I gave him a little something to ease it.” George glanced up from the screen and scowled. “It shouldn’t have knocked him out like that, though.”
“Let him sleep.” And now Ned showed more anxiety. “We need to get him and Hugh to a doctor.”
“Sooner the better.” George passed his hand over his eyes and bent his head to the screen again.
Tatlock didn’t appear to want to deputise for Sam. He merely gave me his patented Look and told me not to go too far.
“I’ll be just outside the door, mother, I promise you.”
“Please don’t go too far, sir.” Jim, the Gallowglass guard on duty at the tent entrance, put aside his bowl, the stew barely touched. Eating at his post, poor fellow, and, from his expression of distaste, he wasn’t convinced of Günter’s culinary prowess. “I don’t want to face Mr Hawkins if anything happens.”
“We won’t,” Ned promised.
It was a ruddy conspiracy on the guards’ part to nag at us. How did Ned keep the impatience from his tone at the twentieth time of being scolded, however gently, about straying? He’d had a lifetime’s training of being a First Heir, of course. Perhaps the curb bit on the reins grew less irksome with familiarity. I’d reconsider in about twenty years and see if I’d learned to be more patient under duress. It wasn’t the least likely, but one never knew.
The cooler night air had some effect on my thick head. I stopped lurching about like a drunkard after a spree and managed to walk a little more like the sober, upright character I am. But no matter how much I stood face on into the cool breeze and pulled it deep into my chest, I couldn’t stop yawning. I was in danger of imitating Perrault’s sleeping beauty. If I was lucky, Ned might wake me with a kiss.
“I cannot believe how tired I am.” Ned tucked his arm through mine. “Shall we walk to the Brunel to collect what you need?”
The Brunel was about thirty yards away. “We can totter there together and hold each other up. It will be good practice for when we’re ninety.”
We did indeed wobble off into the darkness. At the Brunel, I eyed the short access stairs with disfavour. More ruddy steps.
“You know, Ned, I don’t think we should be quite this exhausted. The fresh air isn’t helping as much as I hoped.”
“I know. I feel as though my head’s stuffed with cotton. Let’s take a walk and get your things from the Brunel on the way back.”
I perked up. What an excellent idea! So much potential for dalliance. If I stayed awake long enough.
“If Jim yells admonishments after us, I may not be responsible for my actions.” I turned Ned to walk into the breeze in the hope the cold air flowing from the surrounding hillsides would clear our muzzy heads.
It didn’t. It made me shiver like billy-o, because it was bloody cold, but it didn’t do much to clear the cobwebs out of my brain. At least the guard remained mute.
“I don’t like this,” Ned said. “I don’t feel right.”
“No.” I stopped and turned to look back at the pyramid, but the tent and the entrance to the Deliberation Chamber seemed all too far away.
“Five minutes,” I suggested, “during which I intend to kiss you senseless. Then we’d better be sensible and go back. Somewhere less chilly would be good.”
We were close to one of those shallow depressions I’d noticed that morning when moving the Brunel. I tugged Ned through a low screen of myrrh bushes and ducked under the branches of stunted acacia trees. Down in the hollow, the breeze slid over our heads, singing its songs in the acacia and myrrh branches and using their rustling, moving leaves to voice its music. We were out of reach of the wind’s chill fingers creeping under our collars at least, though the hollow wasn’t exactly warm and cosy. We made the best of it with coarse grasses for a couch and resting up against the boles of the myrrh bushes. The bark was rough with patches of resin, too hardened to scent the night air, but the prickly branches with their small leaves, in perpetual motion with the wind, went some way to forming a roof over our heads.
“Five minutes.” And as promised, I kissed Ned.
He murmured approbation and kissed me back before settling beside me, his face pressed against my neck, his breath warm enough on my skin to send flutters down my spine.
Ah. There it was. The quiet time I’d craved earlier.
We couldn’t stay long, we both knew that. But it was quiet, peaceful, the windsong soporific.
“I can’t keep my eyes open.” Ned’s voice slurred and dragged. “We should go back.”
Of course we should. Soon. Anytime now. After I closed my eyes for a moment or two.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The voices woke me.
I had a faint recollection of hearing someone calling us earlier. Günter? But this wasn’t Günter now. Didn’t sound like him.
Didn’t sound like Hugh, either, with his polite, cheerful “Morning, sir. It’s gone seven and here’s your coffee” that usually greeted my first attempt of the day to pretend I was sentient rather than an insensible sluggard. My eyelids felt glued down. Coffee. That’s what would get me going, but Hugh obviously hadn’t put it on yet. I couldn’t smell it, anyway. I rolled my head to one side on a bloody hard pillow. Earth. It smelled earthy, with the tang of liquorice.
I wasn’t looking at my ceiling, either, when I forced my eyes open. Instead, a filigree of interlaced branches formed the roof, black against a sky scudding with dark clouds.
“Immer noch keine Spur?”
That jerked me awake. Günter? It must be Günter—
I wasn’t in bed. Nor on some makeshift cot in the Brunel with Tatlock snoring to one side of me and Nell’s soft breathing on the other side of the cabin. I lay on the ground, and when I moved, a tree root or something dug into the small of my back. The little pain was enough to wake me.
On the ground? What on earth? I pushed myself up on one elbow.
Voices. Over by the Brunel. Two of them, loud and unfamiliar, calling to each other.
In German.
God’s whirligigs. God’s bloody, bloody whirligigs!
Ned stirred beside me. I clapped my hand over his mouth. His entire body jerked against me, the flash of his eyes reflecting the faint light. I spoke in less than a whisper, a mere breath against his ear.
“Prussians. Close.”
He jerked again but nodded. I took my hand away, and we stared at each other. Ned’s eyes were wide as saucers. He was alert now, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand and rolling his shoulders. I nodded towards the top of the depression, and slowly, carefully, we inched our way up on our bellies to the edge and looked over.
The dark of a new moon smothered the landscape. The pyramid, so black it was a triangular hole cut into the night, wore a glittering starry diadem. I couldn’t see the men speaking. But I heard them.
Oh, yes. I heard them.
“Hier ist auch nichts. Die könnten überall auf diesem Plateau sein.”
“Das is Mist. Aber wir können auch noch später weitersuchen, wenn es hell ist.”
Ned’s German was much better than mine. He spoke against my ear, breath hot and moist. “They’re looking for us. One said we could be anywhere on the plateau. The other says they’ll look later, when it’s light.”
Not willing to search for us in the dark, even with brimstones? When they had every advantage? Hen-hearted of them.
; Lancaster’s Luck smiled on me again.
But damn them. Damn them all to hell.
The Prussians were there, clambering all over my Brunel. They were bloody there. And in control. That much was obvious. They weren’t moving in furtive fashion, reconnoitring before assailing the guards. Those voices were confident, bold. The voices of men who’d overcome the opposition and had no need to sneak and hide.
We slid back into the depression and put our heads together. Literally, to make the least possible noise.
Ned’s eyes were nothing but a pained gleam. “How the hell?”
“We were all too tired. All of us.”
Ned winced. He squeezed his eyes shut in a silent grimace. “Yes. Something in the stew.”
Nothing more to be said. No time to waste repining our past mistakes. We must get inside the pyramid, and we both knew it. I would give anything for a bucket of water to stick my stupid head in, to clear it. I needed my best game. We both did.
Think, man!
I grasped Ned’s hands in mine, to anchor me. God knew, I needed to still the whirl of thoughts, cool the heat rushing through me. A deep breath to steady me, and I released one of Ned’s hands to fish my watch free of its pocket. The phosphorescent numbers glowed their faint, sickly green. “It’s just on one. They must have crossed the river in the dark.”
“We’re assuming they’ve breached the pyramid?”
Nell.
Nell was in there. I’d tear every one of those men to pieces, bare-handed, if so much as one hair of her head was harmed. Some thoughts were clichés for damn good reasons. No other promise, no other words, could describe the rage and guilt as well as the promise to commit murderous mayhem in revenge.
“Yes. Nothing to stop them.” My mouth was set in a line so hard my jaw ached. I had my pistol in its holster. Ned had his. We needed more if we were to go up against Altenfeld and his men. “First, we need to get more weapons from the Brunel.”
“Two men are sitting outside it.”
“Who don’t know we’re here. We’ll have to take them down. Can you move quietly?”
He nodded.
“Good. Second, there’s no holding back. They have Nell.”
“Theo. Sam,” Ned said in a fierce whisper.
And Hugh. George Todd. Banger Bill. Tatlock.
I didn’t care much about many people in the world, not in the abstract. But those few I did care about? I’d kill to protect them.
“They won’t risk word getting back to the Imperium. The Kaiser’s ambitious, but I doubt he’s ready for war with us yet. So they’ll kill every last one of us and hide the traces, then argue we died somewhere else, somewhere out in the Highlands that’s impossible to find. They won’t hesitate, Ned. We can’t either.”
Ned squeezed his eyes shut for an instant, then nodded. This was a fight to the death, because Altenfeld wouldn’t, couldn’t, spare us. Not with the likelihood of war as soon as the Imperium learned of this debacle: no empire would permit such a loss of face. Günter had been right about that, at least. When Germany and the Imperium went to war, they’d tear asunder the world we knew and leave nothing but ash behind.
I repeated what Jim had said earlier while standing on the plateau edge and watching for danger. “No quarter given.”
Not if we were going to survive this. Kill or be killed. Eat or be eaten.
“Damn right. None.” He moved his head as he spoke. Even in the dark, his flaxen hair was all too visible.
“Hang on.”
I scrabbled around in the loose soil under the roots of the nearest acacia. It was barely damp, but it would do. Rubbed into Ned’s hair, and over our faces and hands, it would go a long way towards making us harder to see. Our breeches and jackets, the latter buttoned down hard to hide our lighter coloured shirts, were khaki. Handfuls of dirt rubbed here and there over them, not in uniform patterns but in blotches, would help break up the outlines. Not perfect, but it would all help to reduce our visibility.
“We must keep low to the ground and go very slowly. Crawling, to keep below lines of sight. Brush everything out of your way before you move—one dry twig snapping could give us away.” I threw out one arm in a sweeping gesture.
“Understood.”
I hoped we’d be able to pull this off and Ned could play his part. He had been guarded his entire life. He wasn’t helpless, but he was no soldier. This would be no sinecure for either of us.
“When we reach it, we’ll split up and come on each side of them. Stay back until they see me, then you come at them from behind. Hopefully you’ll be able to get the drop on them, as our American cousins say.”
Ned said, sombre, “I will kill if I have to, Rafe.”
We had a dragon by the tail. I rather thought we would both have to.
One last look at each other. One last earthy-tasting kiss, the mere touch of lips to lips, and we were ready.
We went over the rim of the hollow on our bellies, creeping like the worms and serpents cursed by God to eat dust. For a few yards we had a reasonable amount of cover, with the dwarfed, scrubby acacias casting deep shadows we could use. We slipped through the bushes, crawling.
Ned touched my sleeve, tugging me out of a direct line to the Brunel. He was right. I followed him, swinging to the west to bring us around to the other side of the aeroship, reaching ahead all the time to brush aside twigs that might creak and crackle under me. We were—I hoped—no more than the blur of two shadows amongst the deeper shades of night. We took our time to reach the Brunel’s stern, and there we paused.
I touched Ned’s arm to get his attention. I tapped my own chest and then pointed to the right, to the starboard side of the Brunel where the access stairs were, then at him and the port side. He nodded, and I watched him go until he melted into the gloom and murk, before working my way around the stern and along the hull. Deep shadows cloaked the aeroship, queer distorted shapes cast in the lee of the short wings and the side-paddles, allowing me to sneak up on our unsuspecting guests. A few yards from the staircase, still in the protective darkness offered by the Brunel’s body, I got to my feet. Bad form it might be, to pay calls looking like a tatterdemalion, but I wasted no time on brushing the dirt away. Instead I took a deep breath, drew my pistol, and held it against my knee.
Two dark shapes. One sat on the access stairs, talking to a second man who stood before him. My German wasn’t good enough to follow the low-voiced conversation, but I could parse nuances and tone. They talked with ease, with a lack of the tension they’d feel if they thought they faced any kind of threat. One laughed, a low, cheerful sound.
Let’s see how long that lasted.
The rising wind brought the scent of tobacco smoke. The seated man coughed, and the butt of his cigarette drew a scarlet arc through the night as he tossed it away. His companion said something, with another of those cheerful laughs, and threw aside his own cigarette butt.
I tightened my grip on my pistol and waited, making a slow mental count to fifty. Ned should be in place at the Brunel’s nose.
The wind wove tendrils of a colder air around me. The seated man coughed again, drawing his coat tighter around himself. A lucifer flared and the smell of sulphur and tobacco bloomed in the darkness. Those men smoked far too much. Very unhealthy habit.
Time to move, while their sight was still affected by the lucifer’s flare. I walked out of the shadows, no longer careful about the noise I made, bold as the veriest brass.
The man sitting on the stairs saw me and tried to jump to his feet, encumbered by the coat he’d pulled around himself a moment earlier. He dropped his cigarette and his “Was zum Teufel!” came in unwitting echo of Günter, hours earlier. The other man spun on his heel, his jaw dropping.
I nodded. “I believe you gentlemen are looking for me?”
They stared.
I brought up the aether pistol. “I do suggest you remain quiet.”
A muttered curse, and the seated man surged up, bringing his pistol to be
ar on me, just as the other man, disregarding my advice, threw himself at me.
He cannoned into me, hands grasping at my wrist, trying to grab the pistol. I clung on hard, swung the weapon away, out of reach, and half-turned to shoulder-block him.
“Uuuuhh.”
The impact forced a grunt out of me and pushed me back a step. I swung my arm back, my whole weight behind it, and slammed the pistol butt into the side of the man’s head. He flopped down, arms and legs all over the place, as if something had whisked out all the bones.
One down.
The other faced me. The expression on his face was constricted and squeezed, as if his head were unexpectedly caught in a carpenter’s vice. His mouth worked, the bottom jaw wagging, a thin mewl whining out between his teeth.
Ned jumped up, close behind him, and clamped his hand over the man’s mouth.
The Prussian folded up, concertina-like, at knees and waist. His pistol dropped out of his hand and bounced away into the dark as Ned lowered him to the ground. A thin tendril of smoke meandered up from the charred hole in his shoulder.
Two down.
But we’d made too much noise, and a voice called us from the tent, thirty yards away.
“Haben Sie was gefunden?”
Ned didn’t take his eyes off me, or his hand from the Prussian’s mouth. “Nein. Ich dachte da wäre eine Schlange, aber doch nicht.”
He kept his tone light and cheerful, and the man over at the tent laughed, called something that was probably rude, and after a moment all was still and silent. Ned gingerly took his hand away, releasing his hold on the Prussian, who moaned softly but otherwise didn’t stir. Ned grimaced. “Now it’s war.”
“It’s been war for hours,” I said. “Now we’re fighting back.”
We hauled the two men up the steps into the Brunel, out of the way and out of sight, dragging them to the hold, where we could risk a little light from a brimstone to examine them. The man I’d hit wasn’t going anywhere. His temple had purpled, and his face swelled up until he looked not unlike a distorted jack-o-lantern. His breathing was stertorous, grunty, and loud. I’d hit him hard.
