by Mick Farren
Phaall’s breathing changed, and he grunted. Jesamine repeated the process, this time also stroking his thigh with one soft hand. “There’s a wonderful surprise waiting for you.”
Phaall grunted again and opened his eyes. “Waaa?”
“Now, I know you’re probably still drunk and don’t feel so good, but listen carefully, because you’re going to like what I say.”
Phaall tried to clear his head. “What?”
“An airship crashed.”
“An airship.”
“That’s right, an airship.”
“What kind of airship?”
“An enemy airship.”
Phaall sat bolt upright. “Where?”
“About twenty-five miles down the Continental Highway.”
For one so recently drunk, Phaall was fast to his feet. “Twin fucking gods! Reinhardt? Where is the damned man hiding now that I want him?”
“I’m here, Colonel.”
Phaall was taken by surprise by the closeness of the response. “Where did you spring from?”
Reinhardt seemed about to blurt out that he’d been there all along, but Jesamine urgently shook her head. The colonel did not, however, have the patience for a reply. “Field uniform, boots, belt, sidearm. Then get out of here, tell Hartz and Waldheim to put the entire regiment on alert and ready to move out on my order.”
“Yes, Colonel.”
“Don’t stand there like a limp prick, man. Move! Move!”
In a state of near panic, Reinhardt fetched Phaall’s field kit and then hurried from the room. Jesamine pretended to luxuriate on the bed as Phaall quickly dressed, swaying a little from the booze still inside him. After he had pulled his pants up, he hurried to the schnapps locker and took out the same bottle from which Jesamine had helped herself. He looked at it, and for a moment she thought he was going to accuse her, but, true to prediction, he shook his head and then took a long pull. After which he wiped his mouth, belched, and glanced at Jesamine. “I’ll be gone for three or four days.”
Jesamine played devastated. “That long, my master?”
“Maybe longer. I’m going to have one of their bloody engines, and my career will be made. I will be out of this cursed swamp and back in the Ruhr inside of just three months if I can pull this off.”
Now Jesamine really had something to luxuriate about. Three days without Phaall was a divine blessing, and more would be a miracle. “I’m very happy for you.”
“Yes, well, happy or not, you can stop laying around like a whore in heat and get the hell out of here. My officers will be here in a minute, and I don’t need you distracting them.”
Without a word, Jesamine gathered up her scanty outfit from the night before and made her exit. Going back to the pavilion half-naked was a little humiliating, but that was more than compensated for by the knowledge that she would be left alone while Phaall lead the Mosul search for any serviceable parts of the aircraft that may have survived the crash. She had learned from Phaall just by eavesdropping how lamentably lacking the Mosul were in aviation technology and how much her colonel wanted to be the one to capture an aircraft engine complete and intact. He could be away for a week or more. Who knew what Jesamine might accomplish in a week? A week in war could sometimes be a lifetime.
ARGO
A large boulder was rolled into place, concealing the entrance to the Rangers’ cave hideout from all but the most intense scrutiny. The rain continued to fall, and although it was not coming down with the same drumming force as at the wild height of the thunderstorm, the downpour would also help conceal all signs of their secret occupancy and the tracks they might leave as they moved out into the forest. As they tramped through the waterlogged woodland, with Hooker right behind the point man, forcing the pace, Argo felt a little strange to be part of this single file of hard men and highly efficient killers. Not as strange, however, as he had felt when, back in the cave, Yancey Slide had started receiving the silent messages. Bonnie had been the first to notice that, beneath the black hat, Slide appeared to have vacated his body. She had quickly gestured to Jeb Hooker. “Slide seems to be out on the wind.”
Hooker had scowled. “I’ll lay odds that it’s something to do with that bloody airship.”
Bonnie nodded. “The Norse are probably shitting themselves. The last thing they want is the Mosul getting hold of the debris from the wreck and shipping it back to the Ruhr for back-engineering.”
Hooker stared at the limp and apparently lifeless Slide. “I dread it when he goes out like this.”
Bonnie smiled wearily. “At least he’s quiet.”
“It’s the return I dread. It usually means we go rushing out to find ourselves in a new circle of hell.”
Slide’s eyes suddenly opened. “A new circle of hell, Jeb? I think we can arrange one of those for you.”
As Argo watched, Slide’s body seemed to reinflate with life. While the Rangers looked on with expressions that were far from happy, he flexed his muscles as though reacquainting himself with his body’s fit. Finally he looked down at Bonnie. “Yes, young lady, you’re absolutely right. The talk in the wind was all about the bloody airship.”
Bonnie squirmed uncomfortably. “When you’re out there, you can hear us back here?”
Slide was dismissive. “Only at a distance. Like voices in another room.”
“I’ll have to remember that.”
Hooker interrupted. “What’s the story on the airship?”
Slide seated himself again. “Well, it’s down.”
“Where?”
“Near the Continental Highway, twenty or thirty miles south of what used to be Alexandria.”
“Relatively close to us?”
Slide did not answer. Instead, he looked round with an expression of fatigue at the assembled Rangers. “Does anyone have a drink? Walking the wind takes it out of a body. What about you, Steuben? You always have a bottle stashed.” Steuben sighed, rummaged in his kit, and handed Slide a flat flask. Slide took a pull on it and grimaced. “You’re down to drinking fucking ’shine, Steuben? I though you had better taste than that.”
Steuben shrugged, avoiding Hooker’s curious gaze. “I drink what I can find.”
Bonnie was sitting cross-legged, and she shifted her weight impatiently. “Are we going to discuss Steuben’s taste in booze all night, or are you going to fill us in about the damned airship, Yancey?”
Slide had recapped the flask and returned it to its owner. “The excursion seems to have been something of a mess from the very start. The NU98 took off from Grover’s Mill, bound for Manhattan down the Taconic Valley, which should have been simple enough. It was sunny, with little wind, and very little to worry about, except, along the way, they received new orders. They were to forget Manhattan and head for Baltimore, where they would rendezvous with a Norse cruiser called the Cromwell.”
Hooker frowned. “What was that all about?”
Slide spread his hands in a “search me” gesture. “No one knows. It seems to be the well-kept secret of the Norse delegation in Albany, and they aren’t telling.”
“And did they make the rendezvous?”
Slide shook his head. “No way. They set a new course and swung out across the Jersey Barrens and headed south to where, unknown to them, the storm was waiting for them like a set and loaded trap. The Cromwell tried to warn them by wireless, but by the time they did, it was too late.”
Steuben looked up. “What do you mean the storm was waiting for them?”
“It was not only waiting for them, but it performed some highly unorthodox and wholly inexplicable maneuvers, as if it was chasing the NU98.”
Now Hooker’s face had taken on a worried expression. “Are you telling us the Mosul have someone or something that can control the weather?”
Slide beckoned to Steuben for a second look at his flask. “Not the Mosul. More the high-echelon Zhaithan. Advanced telekinesis of a high order is really all it would require.”
He fumbled in his
pocket for a cigar, found one, held it up, and then let it go, allowing it to float unsuspended in midair. When he was sure everyone present had seen what he was doing, he retrieved the cigar, put it in his mouth, and lit it with a flame that he kindled on the very tip of his right index finger. Being used as an organic radio seemed to somehow energize Slide and even invest him with a certain reckless need to show off. Bonnie, on the other hand, was not impressed. “Do we have to sit through the magic act?”
Slide ignored her. “The principles behind kinetic weather control are the same as the ones that govern my little party trick. The only difference is that the energy needed to move a storm would be incalculable. I would not like to try it myself, and any entity that did would probably only do it once. The effort would be enough to kill both man and demon. As I told Bearclaw and the Lady Gretchen, I sense the hand of Quadaron-Ahrach in this business. Either Ahrach or a very close and highly trained disciple.”
Bonnie looked up in surprise. “You really talk to the Lady Gretchen and Bearclaw Manson?”
Slide seemed puzzled that she should even comment. “Of course. Why not? I always do if the importance warrants it. Go to the top has long been my motto. The king has made the two of them jointly responsible for paranormal operations, after all. And if I’m not paranormal, who the fuck is?” He puffed on his cigar and continued. “If Ahrach and his inner circle have come to the Americas, we need to prepare ourselves for a protracted show of highly unnatural warfare.”
Hooker exhaled unhappily. “I was afraid of that.”
Argo was confused and felt that he should admit it. “Who’s this Quadaron-Ahrach?”
Slide’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t recall inviting questions.”
Argo was too tired to be intimidated. “It’s the only way I get any answers.”
Slide bear-growled deep in his throat before he replied. “Well, Argo Weaver, this particular answer is that Quadaron-Ahrach is a disgustingly ancient, black-hearted hunchback, who also happens to be the High Zhaithan. I would have thought his reputation was such that he would even have been known in Thakenham.”
Argo swallowed hard. “The High Zhaithan?”
“The High Zhaithan, the one divine servant of Ignir and Aksura.”
“We weren’t even allowed to know his name.”
Had it not been suggested to Argo that Slide was a demon of some kind, he would have accepted him as an exceptional magician, frighteningly skilled but still essentially human, but once the idea had been planted that Slide was something other that a man, the possibility of his otherness became more and more plausible.
“There’s something else that might be of interest to you, Argo Weaver. The airship supposedly had a crew of eight, but also a unofficial passenger. An Albany RWA lieutenant called Lady Cordelia Blakeney. Seemingly she was enjoying a brief liaison with the NU98’s captain, a young aviator called Phelan Mallory, and went along for the ride.”
Argo was uneasy. “Why should that interest me?”
Slide smiled. “Because she has red hair and that pale skin that goes with it, the kind that freckles in the sun.”
“You’re suggesting that this Lady Blakeney is another one of the Four?”
“It’s a possibility we can’t rule out. Despite her title, she is only a few years older than you and a long way from being a virgin. If she somehow turns out to be the face in your dreams, we have to take the idea very seriously.”
Bonnie had been thinking. “Might that mean the Mosul were after her and not the airship?”
“That is something else to be considered. To expend all the effort it would have taken to conjure and direct such a massive storm just to obtain some airship parts is hardly the way of Quadaron-Ahrach. If, on the other hand, he had information on the existence of the Four, it would be exactly the thing to attract his attention and motivate him to bring his magickal big guns to bear.”
Silence reigned after Slide had finished speaking. The Rangers were avoiding looking at each other, aware they were not only in the presence of seriously wiggy shit, but also that it was becoming an increasing integral part of the mission. Bonnie pondered silently, and Argo tried to make sense of how what he was being told clashed so radically with the way he felt. In no way did he feel like one of a quartet so paranormally powerful and elevated that it was simply known as the Four. He was just a country boy, Mother Nature’s son and straight off the farm. About the only thing he felt right at that moment was totally out of his depth.
Finally Jeb Hooker treated Slide to a long and appraising look. “Why do I feel that we have yet to hear the punch line?”
Slide blew a perfect ring of cigar smoke. “That’s because I haven’t told it to you yet.”
“So let’s have it.”
Slide replaced the cigar in his mouth. “The long and the short of it is, we now have to saddle up and move out.”
Hooker’s face was bleak. “I was afraid of that. And where are we moving out to?”
“The first idea was that we should head for the wreck of the NU98, destroy it before the Mosul arrive. After that we would track the survivors, if there were any, and bring them across the river to safety.”
Hooker was already shaking his head. “That’s absurd. We’d never make it. The Mosul are right on top of the wreck. There’s no way we could get there first.”
Slide smiled. “I totally agree with you, Jeb. That’s why I vetoed the idea.”
“And instead of that?”
“We can assume the Mosul will throw a tight dragnet around the crash site. If there are walking survivors, the odds are that they will be picked up very quickly. There’s nothing we can do to help them in the early stages, but if they do manage to elude the first Mosul search, we might be able to intercept them and bring them in. Presuming that they are going to head north for the river and Albany, we should head for the estimated point at which our two paths would be most likely to cross.”
Hooker thought about this. “Suppose the Mosul get them straightaway and wind up with all the marbles: the survivors, this Lady Blakeney of yours, and the parts of the airship?”
Slide’s smile twisted. “You’re going to like this part.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“In that eventuality, our orders are to assess the viability of a raid to free the survivors and destroy the airship parts.”
“Did you think that one up?”
Slide smiled and shook his head. “That came from your own War Office.”
Hooker rolled his eyes. “Shit.”
“Who promised you it’d be easy?”
“All this is going down a stone’s throw from the big camp by Alexandria. In fact, that’s where both the parts and the prisoners would be taken.”
“Right.”
“So does anyone in the War Office know that’s not just a camp, that it’s the central supply and replacement depot for the whole of the Mosul front, and it’s a fucking city?”
Slide was unconcerned. “The bigger the place, the greater the confusion. If push came to shove, we could slip in and slip out of there without them even knowing about it.”
“Damn you, Slide.”
It was the first time that Argo had seen Slide grin. “And fuck you, Jeb, for acting like a timorous old woman. I know you love a challenge.”
Hooker exhaled noisily. “Okay, okay. You win. Let’s look at a map.” He turned to the Rangers. “The rest of you get packed up for a brisk walk in the country.”
Steuben was unable to leave it at that. “A walk of what duration, Captain?”
“Who the fuck knows, Steuben? Who the fuck knows? All I can say is you’d better bring all of your booze stash.”
Bonnie also had a question. “What about me and Weaver?”
Hooker was happy to pass that enquiry along to Slide. “That’s a good question, Yancey. What about Bonnie and Weaver?”
Slide was already unfolding a map. “They come with us.”
“All the way?”
“All t
he way.”
“Even if we have to go into the Mosul camp?”
Slide smoothed out the map. “All the way. I can’t be leaving them on their own.”
Thus Argo found himself hiking through the wet night, part of the same watchful single file as a crew of grimly determined Royal Albany Rangers armed to the teeth and even carrying a selection of their heavier equipment, including the mortar and the Bergman gun. The rain had eased off in comparison to the earlier downpour, but it still pattered on the overhead foliage, and the leaf mold underfoot squelched like a soaked sponge. Half-seen things inhabited the shadows of his peripheral vision, and Argo fancied that he sensed what he could only describe as a swirling of unfocused dark forces in the air around him. He could still dismiss it as his imagination, the combined product of fear and excitement, but the more he learned, the harder that became. He walked directly behind Yancey Slide. This was how Slide had ordered it. As they had emerged from the cave, a hard-claw hand in a leather glove had fallen on his shoulder. “You belong to me, Argo Weaver.”
“What?”
“Stick close to me whatever happens. You’re in the care of Yancey Slide now, boy, and woe to him who fucks with you. All I ask is that you don’t get in my way.”
Argo knew Slide was deadly serious, and he nodded accordingly. “I’ll do my best.” He turned and watched the Rangers loading up to move out. “You think we’ll run into the Mosul?”
Slide nodded as he checked his guns. “It’s highly in the cards.”
Argo pointed to the strange pistols. “What are those things.”
Slide smiled. “You noticed them, did you?”
“I’ve never seen anything like them.”
Slide replaced the first pistol in his shoulder holster and then spun the second before dropping it into the one on his hip. “That’s because they’re a pair of Colt 1911A1s and not really from this world. Over time, I’ve grown so used to them that I tend to bring them with me each new place I go.”
Slide seemed to enjoy tantalizing Argo with the idea that he was something other than human, but Argo tried not to rise to the psychological bait. Instead, he gestured toward his stepfather’s pistol stuck in his belt. “If we’re going to go up against the Mosul, I could use a better weapon than this old thing.”
