Kindling (Flame of Evil)

by Mick Farren

  “You want to try running?”

  Cordelia was becoming less and less impressed with Phelan’s leadership skills. He might be a master of the skies, but on solid ground he was starting to seem seriously out of his element. She rolled her eyes, but he was not close enough to see her exasperation. “Why else would I have made the suggestion?”

  “Hold on.”

  Phelan crawled from one tree to the next so he was closer to Keats. No Mosul took a shot at him, and he seemed to be explaining Cordelia’s plan to Keats. Keats rolled closer to Seck to pass the orders down the line. Seck told Hodding and so on. Now Phelan moved back to near Cordelia. “When I give the order, fire a couple of shots into the Mosul position and run like hell. We’ll obviously be scattered, so we’ll have to find each other again after we’ve given them the slip.”

  “You really want to do this?”

  “I can’t think of anything better.”

  Cordelia was not encouraged that the men were so willing to go along with any scheme of hers just because they had no better idea. Why the hell were they open to her suggestion? What did Cordelia know? She was no combat veteran. She had spent her entire war on a modification of the same social whirl she had frequented in peacetime. “On your order, then?”

  Phelan sounded anguished. “One more thing, Cordelia…”

  Cordelia sighed. “I know, I know, save the last round for myself.”

  The megaphone began to set time limits. “Airmen of the Norse Union, we have been patient, but we are not about to wait all day for your answer. You have invaded our airspace and must surrender to our custody to give an account of yourselves. If you continue to refuse, we will have no alternative but to take you by force.”

  Phelan sprang to his feet, and, pointing his revolver with both hands, started blazing away at where he imagined the Mosul to be. Cordelia, still believing it was madness to be listening to her, followed suit. She fired two shots and then turned and fled. At first she did not look back. She simply ran, one pace in front of panic. Shots rang out, and the hissing was in the air again. One of their number cried out, but still Cordelia did not look back. She expected a rifle bullet or musket ball to smash into her own spine with the same force with which they slammed into the trees around her. The muscles of her back cringed in anticipation of the pain. How much would it hurt? She only turned when she heard a sound that was even more threatening than gunfire. The drumming of hoofbeats on the forest floor meant that her plan would come to nothing. They could not outrun cavalry.

  The first thing she saw was that cavalry was perhaps a slight exaggeration. Just eight riders were galloping full tilt between the trees, whooping and yelling and either waving sabers or brandishing long-barreled revolvers. Infantry men raced behind them, rifles held high, and sprinting to be in at the kill. They seemed to be treating the capture of the fugitives as nothing more than a fine day’s sport. They could just as easily have been hunting deer or wild boar. Keats was running slightly behind and to the left of Cordelia, and one of the leading horsemen had picked him as a target. Keats tripped and fell, but recovered and started running again. Unfortunately, the delay was enough for the horseman to catch up with him. A saber flashed, and Keats was knocked from his feet, but he scrambled up again, with blood pouring down his face, and staggered as though stunned. He appeared to be alive, however, and the cavalryman must have been using the flat of his sword. Two foot soldiers ran up to him and seized the wireless operator by the arms. The obvious intent of the Mosul seemed to be to take them alive, but Cordelia didn’t have time to speculate. A rider was coming hard, and directly at her.

  She resigned herself to the fact that she was as good as dead already and aimed her revolver. As she looked down the barrel of the pistol, she saw more clearly than she had ever done before. The horse was a heavyset bay with a dark mane and tail. It’s nostrils flared with the shared excitement of the gallop. The whites of its otherwise black eyes were just visible, and foam flecked the corners of its mouth where the bit cut in. The rider’s uniform was dark blue with silver buttons and red tabs at the collar and cuffs. His pale, elated face beneath the peak of his busby told her immediately that he was Teuton and not Mamaluke. A long-barreled cavalry pistol was in his right hand, but he was making no effort to aim at her. Maybe they really were to be taken alive.

  Cordelia squeezed the trigger of her revolver just as she had always been taught. The gun bucked in her hand, but she had missed, and horse and rider were almost on her. She pulled back the hammer and fired again, but still could not hit the moving target. Did she have two shots left, or only the one? She was damned if she could remember, but, whatever else might happen, she was not about to blow her own brains out here in this dreary, wet forest in front of so many onlookers. She did not feel that unlucky. At the last minute, she tried to sidestep the horse, but the rider skillfully swerved his mount so its flank struck Cordelia and sent her flying. The gun was jarred out of her hand, and with it went the last chance to preserve her maiden’s honor. Now she would have to take the chances of the living and not settle for the certainties of the dead. She lay winded for a few moments and then attempted to scramble to her feet but immediately found that this was not possible. A circle of Mosul infantry surrounded her, with cheap uniforms, flat, stupid faces under ugly cooking-pot helmets, and sharp bayonets pointed at her chest, the points too close for her to do anything but give up.

  Cordelia moved to a sitting position and spread her hands to show she was unarmed. “Well, boys, it looks like you’ve got me. I give up. I surrender.”

  One of the Mosul nudged his comrade and smirked. They had only just realized that they had captured a woman.

  FOUR

  ARGO

  “Follow the sound of gunfire, Captain?”

  “Follow the sound of gunfire, lads. It’s some ways off, though, and I doubt we’ll be in time to do any good.”

  “But head for the thick of it anyway?”

  Hooker nodded. “Head for the thick of it anyway.”

  The first flurry of shooting ceased and was replaced by some indistinct shouting. The Rangers called it as they saw it, knowing that this was a situation where every man’s expertise was respected. As was so often the case, Steuben offered his opinion first. “Sounds like it’s our Norse boys, and they’ve got themselves pinned down.”

  Barnabas listened as best he could while they were still on the move. “I can’t make out the words, but that sure sounds like negotiating to me.”

  Hooker cut the conversation short with an order. “Step it up, lads. If there’s a standoff, we might just make the difference.”

  Despite having walked all night, the column of Rangers quickened pace. Day had dawned and the rain had stopped, and all that remained was a dawn pall of mist that would almost certainly disperse as the sun climbed in the sky. Argo felt dead on his feet but was determined to keep up, come what may. The column had been climbing for some time, winding round the contours of an undulating landscape of woods and fields in cautious, well-spaced single file until they entered a stand of pines that seemed to go on for many acres and found themselves crossing a forest floor almost devoid of undergrowth save for a scattering of ferns.

  Another flurry of ragged small arms’ fire bounced among the muffling trees, making it hard to pinpoint the exact direction. This firing was more protracted and then fell away into short and scattered volleys and then stretches of silence punctuated by ominous, isolated pistol shots. The Rangers exchanged grim looks. Even Argo could understand that such a pattern of firing had to indicate that one side in the fight had been overrun and was being finished off. Hooker clearly concurred with the majority. “Hold up, men. I think we just missed being in the nick of time. Take one minute.”

  The entire column dropped to a crouch, breathing hard and saying nothing. The silence was complete. No more shots reverberated through the pines, and Hooker shook his head. “I think we can assume that our Norse boys are either killed or captured.”r />
  Penhaligon, the Ranger with the aw-shucks face of a farm boy, drank from his canteen and spat among the fallen pine needles. “We still have to take a look, Captain.”

  “I know still we have to take a look, but we’re not going rushing in there willy-nilly after all indications of resistance have ceased. We’re going to go in with all care. We have no idea of what we’re walking into, so we’re going to take another minute. Then we’re going to lock and load and move in, but dispersed and ready. Like I said, take another minute, and then, gentlemen, the Rangers will become really invisible.”

  They all rested for thirty seconds, but then Ranger hands went, almost unconsciously, to their weapons, compulsively checking. At the full minute, Hooker rose to his feet. “Madden, are you okay to take the point?”

  Madden still looked like a psychopath to Argo, maybe more so in the field, where he carried his razor-sharp Jones knife in an inverted sheath strapped to the right side of his chest so he could pull it in an instant. He grinned, nodded, and moved forward. “I got it covered, Captain.”

  “Okay, the rest of you fan out and use the terrain to the full. Like I said, invisible.” Hooker turned his attention to Slide. “Yancey, hang back with Bonnie and the kid. Cover our rear with your pistols.”

  “It won’t be the first time.”

  Hooker took a last look round. “I figure if the fight’s over, the Mosul will be pulling out. They could come at us from anywhere. There’s nothing I hate worse than stumbling into the opposition by accident.”

  Slide’s grin was not unlike Madden’s. “I’ll be watching. I’ve done this before, Jeb.”

  The Rangers moved forward, adopting the formation of a ragged, line-abreast curve, with Madden out in front of them. When Hooker had said that they were about to become invisible, Argo had thought that he was exaggerating. He had been, but it had not by very much. The way the Rangers slipped from tree to tree and used every gully, hummock, depression, or patch of ferns to their advantage made it impossible to see any one man for a protracted length of time. A sniper would be hard-pressed to acquire a target, and any enemy force not expecting them would be overrun without warning. Now that confrontation was possible, and perhaps even near, the Rangers had the poise of men who knew their business.

  After two or three minutes, Madden dropped to a crouch with one arm raised. The other Rangers froze. “I smell smoke.”

  Beside Argo, Slide also sniffed the air and then quietly exhaled. “Smoke, indeed, plus gunpowder, horse shit, and death.”

  Hooker moved quickly up to Madden, and the two conducted a fast, low-voiced conversation, after which the captain gestured to Barnabas, who was kneeling in the cover of a spread of ferns, indicating that he and Madden should scout what lay immediately ahead while the rest waited. The short, dark man nodded, and he and Madden moved forward, leaving Hooker in the point position. Madden came back after maybe five minutes and waved the whole squad forward.

  Even though Argo was one of the last to arrive, he saw no less than anyone else of what remained of the encounter between the Mosul and the Norse Union airmen. The Mosul had left the scene maybe as recently as ten or fifteen minutes before, leaving just nine bodies and an expanse of churned-up muddy ground in a clearing. Argo headed for where Slide and Hooker were looking down at the dead. He wanted to see if the red-haired Lady Blakeney, supposedly one of the alleged Four, was among the fallen. He half expected someone to stop him, but no one did, even when he was right there staring into the blank, open-mouthed faces and staring eyes of death. Seven of the bodies were laid out in a neat row, as though ready for transportation. Two Mosul sentries, with their throats recently cut, were less tidily sprawled where they had fallen in their own blood. This unlucky pair had been caught unawares by Madden and Barnabas as they had presumably guarded the bodies, waiting for some kind of transport to be sent to cart the corpses away while the rest of the Mosul force moved out about its business. Madden was still carefully, almost religiously, cleaning blood from his Jones knife. Argo was relieved to find that all of the dead were exclusively male. Of the original seven, three were dressed in Norse Air Corps blue and four in Mosul brown. Lady Blakeney was either a Mosul prisoner or still loose in the forest.

  From their overheard conversation, Argo learned that Slide and Hooker shared a similar theory. Slide pointed to the tracks that led away down a forested hillside. “I figure about ten horsemen and maybe twenty infantry, and, since they appear to have gone due west, I’d say that they have a rendezvous on the Continental Highway. Whoever was in charge of this search probably came south from the camp by Alexandria and dropped off search parties at regular intervals. If, as he had rightly assumed, the survivors would head north to friendly territory, all his men would have had to do was to set up lines of intercept that ran east to west, across the possible routes the Norse might take, and the odds were, sooner or later, in the course of their travels, the survivors would stumble into one of them. Whoever’s running this show is no fool. It’s probably a Teuton engineer who wants the airship to study and the crew to interrogate.”

  “Poor bastards.”

  Slide looked bleak. “I guess being a prisoner of the Teutons is marginally better than being a prisoner of the Zhaithan, but not by very much. As you say, Jeb, poor bastards. They might well have been better off dying in the crash.”

  Hooker noticed Argo looking at the bodies and spoke without thinking. “First time you’ve seen a corpse, Weaver?”

  For once, Argo was able to look at Hooker with a degree of contempt. “I’ve seen plenty of corpses, Captain Hooker. There were more than enough to look upon once the Mosul came to Thakenham, although most of those were hanged or burned alive.”

  Hooker sighed at his oversight. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

  Argo considered enquiring if a commander of Rangers was not surely required to be thinking all the time, but Slide seemed to sense this and headed him off. “This boy should be outfitted with a weapon, Jeb. He can’t be running around behind enemy lines with a squad of Rangers and only a toting a two-shot G and J Bolton to cover his ass.” Before Hooker could respond, Slide pointed to a small pile of captured weapons at a short distance from the line of bodies. “I see a smart Norse light carbine down there that would suit the kid. Why don’t you have Steuben clean it up and then show the boy how to use it?”

  Hooker, who could hardly deny him anything so soon after his blunder, turned to Argo. “You want the carbine?”

  “I certainly do, Captain. It would also seem to make sense.”

  “You have no problem with a dead man’s gun?”

  Argo shook his head. He had no problems with a dead man’s gun.

  CORDELIA

  Manacled, helpless, and half-naked, Cordelia found herself lifted bodily and dumped in the back of a Mosul army truck. Her shirt was torn, her stockings gone, her skirt ripped at the outer seams, and she had lost her shoes. She should probably have been grateful that she was still alive and had not been raped, but Cordelia was in no mood for gratitude. She was terrified but keeping her fear in check by also being outraged. In another part of the Mosul turmoil beside the Continental Highway, she could hear Phelan loudly protesting as he was pushed into a steam car, yelling that he was a citizen of a neutral nation, damn it, and should be treated as such. Then three Teuton officers climbed into the conveyance after him, and the doors slammed. Of Keats and Hodding she had seen no sign since they’d been marched away from the scene of their capture. She had expected, perhaps a little foolishly, that a short respite might ensue after the long and dreary hike from the woods where they had been caught. Unfortunately, this was not the case. They had reached the highway to find their arrival a source of great excitement in the chaotic temporary camp of more than three hundred foot soldiers, and maybe fifty horsemen, that could only be the temporary field headquarters from which the search for the fugitives from the crash of the NU98 was being conducted. It was commanded by a welcoming committee of impatient
officers—mostly Teuton, and, if she read their insignia correctly, mostly from a regiment of engineers—who seemed to have been there all day and most of the previous night, screaming at underlings and waiting anxiously for news. The captives were brought in to such a level of undisguised jubilation that they could not mistake how their capture had become a very big deal to the Mosul and Teutons. They acted as though they had been waiting forever to capture a downed Norse airship and its crew. Which, although Cordelia did not know it, was the absolute truth.

  The two Mosul grunts who had dumped Cordelia in the truck climbed in behind. For a moment she thought the anticipated rape had come. The Goddess knew it would not be difficult. Her hands were pinned at her sides by manacles attached to a thick leather belt that had been strapped round her waist and cinched impossibly tight almost immediately she’d been led into the camp. A collar was buckled round her neck and locked to a light steel chain that was being used like a leash. After all she had been through, she had no reserves of strength with which to fight and could only defend herself with passivity and compliance. Come on you sons of bitches. Cordelia Blakeney will be an easy lay tonight. She’s half-dead but intends to survive. She had turned down her chance to kill herself when the pistol was in her hand. She had, by definition, opted to live at all costs, and the myths of a lady’s honor were reduced to nothing more than that: just pretty myths.

  To her surprise and relief, however, the two soldiers only lifted her by the shoulders and pulled her into a sitting position with her back to the driver’s cab of the truck. One of them clipped the end of her chain to a steel ring set in the floor of the truck and looked at her warningly. “You jump out, you hang. You understand?”

  Cordelia had simply nodded. She understood not only what they said, but that it was quite the wrong time to be talkative or clever. The brace of Mosul hunkered down on either side of her, indicating that they would be her escort for this leg of a journey that seemed to have unspecified but reputed horror at the end of it. From the wear on their uniforms, belts, and rifles, and their generally businesslike attitude, the pair were veterans, who had maybe been in the Americas since the start of the invasion, and their flat, high-cheekboned faces and narrow, unknowable eyes marked them as heartland Mosul from beyond the Black Sea, although Cordelia had noticed that many of the rank and file in the search parties that had been hunting for them had looked Frankish or Hispanian, raw recruits to the Provincial Levies who had only just been shipped in as replacements and looked fresh off the troopships from Cadiz and Lisbon. She found she was unable to stop herself from assessing the men and machines around her. It seemed, even though she had not been aware of it, and had even resisted at the time, that some of what they tried to teach her in RWA officer school, and all that paperwork she had handled in the War Office, had rubbed off. She could only hope that, when she arrived wherever she was being taken, such knowledge might, in some desperate moment, give her an edge.