Cloud Castles

by Michael Scott Rohan

  Lutz laughed out loud now. There were slithering sounds from behind me. ‘And then you come along, you little small-time pedlar from your nation of shopkeepers, and you louse it up. You! And you know something, little pedlar? I never felt so degraded ever as I did associating with you!’

  My turn to laugh. ‘You should have spoken to Le Stryge. He says I have royal blood in me, German royal blood, descended from a princess at Charlemagne’s court, he said! Oh, a long time back, but better than a mere baron’s, don’t you think?’

  I didn’t expect that to have the effect it did. His blue eyes bulged, and he almost cowered away. ‘You? Fisher? Lieber Gott in Himmel!’

  I felt a flare of renewed fury. Katjka. Alison. Mall and Jyp, maybe. Myself, probably. ‘I wouldn’t bandy His name about, if I were you. If He exists, you’re going to have some pretty slick excuses to – naughty!’

  He’d made a sudden dive for the hatch, and the Graal and the door, no doubt. My sabre slashed the air between, and he skidded back, drawing his own heavy Schlager.

  ‘I’ve been promising myself this,’ he said tautly. ‘That fool Dragovic reported you were a good swordsman. Maybe you were, beside him; Dragovic was a passable competition sabreur. But I tell you this, little pedlar, whatever prophecies were made for you, whatever is predestined, a sharp sword always can cut it. You come into my hands too early, too inexperienced.’

  I laughed. ‘You’re going to tell me you’re the finest swordsman in all France?’

  He smirked. ‘France, no. On the other hand, I have been sabre champion of Thuringia!’

  And so he evidently was, from the moment he saluted and came on guard, left arm tucked comfortably in the small of his back, right arm high with the blade facing forward. I fell into the more modern stance, arm straight, blade angled up. Lutz chuckled. ‘I’m sorry, I have no little foils for us, pedlar. You will just have to learn the gentleman’s way of handling a weapon. Nun – fahren Sie fort!’

  Our blades kissed, scraped, clashed lightly at the tips – and suddenly his wasn’t there, whizzing by my head in a fierce lunge-cut. Barely in time I took it and launched a stabbing counter at his exposed forearm. But he disengaged as lightly as if we were using foils, and riposted fiercely. As rarely happens in real bloodletting swordplay, we fell into the fast shifting rhythms of a competition piste, moving little, hailing swift short moves in complex sequence at every close-range opening the other left. It was frenetic, dazzling play; and I was exhausted. Even if I hadn’t been, Lutz was far better at it than I was, conserving his energy, fighting mostly from the wrist, never launching a really vicious stroke but never, never letting the smallest opening go unchallenged. Playboy that he was, he’d had the time for this sort of thing, not just a few hours snatched from lunchtimes or evenings. I guessed I was the stronger, despite his tennis wrists, but that wouldn’t count much longer, the way he was wearing me down. And I kept hearing those noises—

  Something clattered beside me, as Lutz’s latest sequence of attacks backed me up a pace. For a minute I was afraid the lieutenant had revived somehow. Then, with all the peripheral vision I could spare, I saw Alison, upright, hanging onto the ladder with her face turned away from me, and the slather of blood on the rung she held. Lutz’s eyes widened in surprise, his attack slackened slightly and I lunged right into it, disengaging to deflect his blade past me. My point ripped into his right sleeve. He sprang back, swearing, but there wasn’t any blood.

  I bared my teeth. ‘Shouldn’t mix it with shopkeepers, Herr Baron! Too good at minding the store!’

  He snorted. ‘Your store, pedlar, is all but bankrupt!’

  Alison slid the last few steps, sagged down onto the gondola floor and didn’t move – and Lutz’s blade whirled so fast I never even saw it, only felt the jar against my own blade as it was driven down and his lunge seared at my guts. I turned it, just, but the effort left me staggering, and Lutz launched a savage slash at my throat. But that I did stop, and thoroughly, so that its momentum recoiled on him; he staggered back and our blades met and hissed in a quick side-to-side action, each trying to trap the other’s against the catwalk railing. His clanged free; but mine sheared through the light metal tubing with a tooth-grating screech and straight at his leg. Lutz jumped back, skidded in some blood, Alison’s or the lieutenant’s, crashed onto the broken railing and almost went over into the gas-holders. Only the airship’s sudden list saved him, and he fell flat.

  I couldn’t take advantage of it; I was too spent, hauling in air in great hoarse breaths. I peered down the hatchway, looking for Alison, but she wasn’t at the bottom of the ladder any more. She was crawling, slowly but steadily with her long limbs starfished, towards the cage that held the Graal. Lutz, on his knees, also saw, and sprang for the ladder. I kicked him on the shin. He rolled back with a curse then thrust, hard between the rungs of the ladder. It connected, and scraped against a rib. The pain was excruciating, but it didn’t do any major damage; it did wake up the little souvenir the captain left me, though, and threw me back, doubled up. Lutz cackled. ‘So much for your back-alley tactics!’

  ‘Thought street fighting was a Nazi speciality!’

  ‘Nazi?’ he panted, as we tried to struggle up. ‘You don’t understand the meaning of the word! The Nazis were a blind, a gaudy banner to please the peasants, nothing more! The Schutzstaffel was the home of my spirit, yet even of that, only a tiny core – honour, purity, courage – I have never ceased to fight.’

  The ship tilted again, and it was my turn to be slid away, down towards the stern and the shorting winch motor. But instead of getting up and coming after me, Lutz grabbed up the lieutenant’s sword and hurled it down the hatchway. Clumsily; it clattered. But I heard Alison scream with pain; and I went just a trace crazy. Not wild, very calm, very cold, seeing that I’d been fighting on Lutz’s terms, not mine. I had to force the advantage, what little I had. There were things I was used to, and he wasn’t; but how to get him into them?

  That was where the madness came in. He was about to jump down that hatch; he had to be stopped. I drew one deep painful breath, levered myself to my feet, and, struggling to ignore my shakiness, I ran at him. For one minute, two, I forced myself to do what Lutz had done, to delay the killing stroke and go for the advantage; only in my case that wasn’t skill. But it could be – it would be – ground. Though I wasn’t reaching through his guard, he was getting nowhere with me either; and that seemed to disturb him. I forced him in, then out again; I retreated, drawing him back with clumsy defences, then circled him, herded him with swift reckless attacks. It couldn’t last; I was tiring fast, and any minute now I’d leave the fatal opening. But Lutz was nonplussed, slackening his own barrage to figure out what I was doing. He found out when his heels teetered over the rim of the hatchway, and I suddenly pressed the attack home. In danger of losing his balance, free arm windmilling for support, he found the ladder at his back, parried to gain an instant and swung himself onto it.

  I could almost see his mind working, and I willed it on. It was swordplay that gave us the upper hand as an expression. Height lends weight and freedom to your attack – technically. If he tried to climb down the ladder, I’d have it. Even if he let go and dropped – risky enough in itself, with a body at the foot – I might well skewer him on the way down. So he climbed up a couple of steps, and I cringed a little under his cuts, which wasn’t at all hard. He laughed, tried a couple more and I swung around the hatch and slashed his leg wide open from thigh to calf. Or rather, the leg of his riding breeches, because there was hardly any blood; I’d only pinked him. But it took a fair-sized slice out of his boot-top, and it unnerved him. Instinctively he hopped up another step or two – and I’d won my ground. I ducked under his blow, and through the hatch I caught a glimpse of Alison as she slumped down over the cage, her hands clasped tight around its bars. I suppose I half expected her to spring up healed, but she didn’t. I gave her an encouraging shout, knocked the hatch-cover free and slammed it beneath Lutz; and
I slashed a sliver off his boot sole into the bargain.

  He should have risked jumping down and facing me on the level again; but his nerve was going. There was another hatch overhead; he launched a couple of wild slashes that nearly parted my hair, then turned away and began to climb frantically, faster than I could manage with my aching ribs. We were up among the balloons, now, the stuffy darkness aft lit by a flickering glow I didn’t want to think about. But it showed me Lutz frantically spinning the wheel of the next hatch, desperate for some level surface to fight on. He’d get one, all right; but I didn’t think he was going to like it.

  The hatch slammed right back, and the inrush of chill clear air was startling. I found it refreshing, but Lutz quailed and hesitated. I hauled myself up with an effort, and stabbed him in the calf, hard. He cried out and almost fell off the ladder, then hauled himself hastily up through the opening. I could see him kneeling, hanging on with one hand and scrabbling at the hatch, hoping to slam it on me, but I didn’t give him the time. I was at the top before he’d got the catch loose, and swinging up and out as he had, onto the open upper surface of the airship. But I stood up straight.

  ‘Never did go in for mountaineering, did you, Herr Baron? Not one of your sports, was it?’

  I padded around the hatch, and he shuffled away from me on all fours, fingers clawing at the hull fabric, drum-taut and unyielding. The wind ruffled our hair, and wafted up the unbelievable stench of the mountain below. I laughed a little at the way the moonlight sparkled on my sword. I jabbed it at him, and he yelped and almost lost his balance, seeing the flank of the airship curve away below him.

  ‘And you’ve never gone in for climbing mastheads, have you? You’d crewmen to do that, on your racing yachts, with tackle and harness, while you stuck to the helm, right? Nicht wahr?’ I jabbed at him again, he hunched back, slid a little and caught himself with frantic quickness.

  ‘This is not fair fighting!’ he blustered, but I hadn’t even the energy to laugh.

  ‘Don’t be a bloody fool! Who’d risk being fair with you? I’ll kill you any way I can.’ I hoped I could.

  Then the question was academic. I’d hesitated just too long. He had a better grip than he pretended; he clung tight, shot out a boot and hacked me on the shin again. Then, as I skidded back and grabbed the hatchway for support, he did something unexpectedly clever; he dug his sword hard into the fabric and hauled himself upright on it, testing the bounce like a drum skin. Careful not to look to starboard or port now, where the mountain-beast’s tentacles were sweeping alarmingly close, he advanced with short determined steps. I stood up too, feeling the anger and the futility of it all. There was red light flickering through the tail fabric, beneath the rudder; any moment it might reach one of the gas-holders, and that would be that. We were dead men already, squabbling over the right to snuff out each other’s last few seconds; better, perhaps, to go by a sword thrust than by what was brewing below us. But I couldn’t help it, and neither could he; neither could countenance the least, unlikeliest chance that the other might live. We were in too deep.

  Again we squared up. Again the blades slithered against one another, like mating snakes, tapping, edging – and again Lutz was faster. A fiery torch dug into me above the heart, burning through pectoral meat and grating horribly against my left collarbone. My knees gave, and I sank down. It was his kind of stroke, a swift conclusive competition point, a touch, not a killer – at first. The moon showed me the glint of his teeth as he leaned his weight on the blade to drive it home, preparing the swift wrist twist that would tear ligaments and open veins beyond hope of staunching.

  But in that agonized instant I remembered the great Wolf captain, Rooke, and how I’d finished him. With a start like that, just scoring points was something I’d never really learned. I gave before the stroke, sagged back, so that Lutz’s own force brought him staggering forward—

  Right onto my own last lunge.

  His arms flew out, his sword fell away from my wound and down into the dark. I forgot the pain, snarling like a Wolf myself, slamming my own blow home till the hilt clanked against the breast-buttons of his tunic, and the blade stood out scarlet behind his neck. Then I tore it loose, and he doubled up and fell to all fours again, gasping, coughing. His feet scrabbled for purchase, found none, and he began to slide. His hands found the tear in the fabric and clung hard; but it tore wider now under his weight, he slid faster and it tore still faster, the coarse doped silk ripping away in a great triangular patch that sent him sliding helplessly down the side.

  ‘Zu Hiller,’ he screamed, between coughs of blood. ‘Rette mir doch! Um Gottes Name! Steve!’

  But I was already turning away, hardly listening, shoving the sword back in my belt. I scarcely cared about him now, or about anything else. There was red light shimmering up through the hatch, and only one place I wanted to be. One-handed, head singing with the pain, I scrambled back down the ladder into the smoky cauldron below, and saw, to my utter astonishment, the hatch thrown back, and Alison, swaying and chalk-faced, a swathe of her jacket wrapped around her side, staring up at me.

  ‘I thought you were dead!’

  We both wheezed it at once, and Alison managed a dry croak of a laugh.

  ‘Not … completely.’

  ‘Ditto. Why …’

  She swallowed, with nothing to swallow. ‘Get to … Spear. Mustn’t lose … keep together, even in crash … so can be found …’

  ‘Ri’ … I’ll go.’ We sounded like a couple of drunks. I almost fell, but managed to slither the rest of the way down to the catwalk, and retrieve the Spear. Fighting for breath, I looked up and saw that the tear in the fabric had widened, and the flames were roaring out through it; that was what had saved us this long, keeping them from the gas-holders. But it was fanning them higher, too. If Lutz was still hanging on, he must be roasting alive; and we’d be joining him any minute. I thrust the smooth cool shaft into my belt, but no sooner had I swung painfully back onto the ladder than there was a brilliant flash and a thudding, jarring concussion. I ducked down hastily, just in time. A wall of flame roared down the catwalk and across the hatch, so close it scorched the hair on my hands. The fire-proofing treatment was starting to go. I slid down in a heap beside Alison, seized her hand, knowing this was the end.

  There was another explosion, even louder. Flame spewed down through the hatchway, knocked the cover off the catch and slammed it down. The airship rocked sickeningly, the motors laboured and stuttered; but the gondola was untouched.

  ‘Why’re we still here?’ she demanded, almost angrily.

  ‘The Hindenburg!’ I yelled. ‘Haven’t you seen the film? People got out of that – hydrogen burns upwards!’

  I slid along the floor, and hauled myself up by the control panel. We were still circling, but losing altitude fast. I hated to think of the inferno developing overhead. Another minute, another couple of bags going off, and we’d come down somewhere in the rocky lower slopes. The rudder was broken, but the control surfaces might still do something. I slammed up the port surface, hard, and gunned the faltering motors on that side. The ship lurched, swung around and went sliding on in.

  Suddenly something brushed at the window, and it smashed. For an instant I thought it was one of the tentacles. It wasn’t; it was a tree-top. And with it an awful burden weighed down on my heart; because when you’ve already abandoned hope, it can be the most agonizing thing of all.

  We had seconds, no more, to reach that door. And that cage was too much for us now. Angrily I tore it open, hesitated an instant before touching the thing it held. Alison baulked at the Spear. We giggled idiotically. What had we to lose?

  We grabbed them both. Nothing happened, except that the rough granite scraped my fingers. The ship lurched violently as another gasbag went, and we crawled for the door. I moaned a bit; even sliding it along, the weight of that lump of stone tore at my lacerated shoulder. But Alison wrapped her free arm around my waist, and suddenly, for all the pain that crea
sed her face, she was grinning.

  ‘Out of the frying-pan—’

  The gondola bumped and squeaked across another tree-top, another blast of orange flame blossomed above us, and because jumping was beyond us, clutching our swords and our burdens to us, we rolled out.

  The next instants were a blur; lashing branches, stinging pains, rushing air and sudden sickening impact. I must have lingered a moment awake, because I have one last memory of the blazing airship lurching by overhead, a grasping tentacle blasting apart as another gas-holder exploded, and another, leaving the ship an arrow of leaping flames falling right as I’d aimed it.

  Onto that barren mountain crest, and right into that awful face.

  The sound was fearsome, louder far than the airship exploding. It had too many components, as I heard them; volcanic rumbles, liquid sizzlings and spittings, mindless yelling and in amidst it all, yet somehow audible, one anguished but articulated, all too human cry. The whole ground juddered, those demonic tentacles flew up, fell inward, fragmented in mid-air into a cascading rain—

  Then blackness, abrupt and stifling.

  But the blackness wasn’t empty. I was condemned to death, and I was asking why why, why. I was tapping it out on a computer keyboard because that was all they’d given me. If I could just get through to somebody important with my plea it might help – Alison, if not me. But all I kept getting was that bloody error message:

  **URGENT**IN IMMINENT EVENT SYSTEM WIPEOUT*INTERFACE PORT S WITH PORTG**URGENT**

  **URGENT**IN IMMINENT EVENT SYSTEM WIPEOUT*INTERFACE PORT S WITH PORT G**URGENT**

  **URGENT**IN IMMINENT EVENT SYSTEM WIPEOUT*INTERFACE PORT S WITH PORT G**URGENT**

  – over and over and over until I wanted to scream.

  It couldn’t have lasted long, though – seconds, according to Jyp, because they were already running towards us as we fell. ‘If it was the Baron,’ he explained, ‘we kind of wanted to get our hands on him. Where is he, anyhow?’