by Robyn Bennis
“Perhaps if I could find a way to send your message directly to my uncle…”
She rolled her eyes. “He’d ignore it outright, not coming through the proper chain of command. Even if he did read it, do you think he’d trust me? Didn’t you know, he put a spy on my ship to keep an eye on me?”
Bernat fidgeted and said, “Really, a spy? I’d hate to be him right now.” He gave her a moment to simmer, then stepped to the other side of the table, where he could look across at her even when she retreated to the cold comfort of staring at her maps. He was waiting for the question that he knew she must ask. He’d seen it coming from the moment he stepped inside the shed.
She suddenly looked up and asked it in a sharp whisper. “Did you sleep with my mother?”
He laughed very softly and spread his arms. “The moment you left,” he said. “In every corner of the house, with particular care taken to defile the places where you have fond childhood memories. They were the most scandalous and, dare I say, the most imaginative sexual escapades ever envisioned. It was a carnal adventure the likes of which I’ve never before experienced.”
Josette stared at him, obviously trying to find the truth in his face, but Bernat was too good at cards for that. Finally, she resorted to something near pleading. “Truthfully,” she said, her voice quiet and low.
He looked back, impassive. “I don’t suppose it’s really any of your business.”
“Good God,” she muttered. “She’s my mother.”
He shrugged. “Then ask her yourself.”
She put her hands on the table and stared down into the mess of papers and maps. After several long breaths, she asked, “Will you be remaining here?”
“Certainly not! If this mission of yours is so important, then I’m coming with you.” He suddenly felt very nervous, because he knew in his heart that he was doing a very stupid thing. “You need another rifleman, and perhaps I have a bit of trouble aiming at people, but that fellow shooting next to me, the one who was hit in the foot? Well, he didn’t hit anyone, as far as I could tell, so … I’m at least as useful as he was.”
She looked skeptically at him. “You can’t even load a rifle.”
He smiled. “Actually, I can. Your mother taught me.” He knew instantly that revealing this was a mistake, and his smile turned into a foreboding frown.
But she only sighed and asked, “Does this sudden fervor for duty mean that you’ll perform your service as a rifleman, or will you continue to conspire against me whenever the opportunity arises?”
He smirked. “My dear captain, I couldn’t possibly conspire against someone who sprang from the most magnificent set of loins I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
“Don’t push your luck, my lord.”
“Oh, don’t say ‘my lord.’ That sounds so formal. Perhaps you should just call me ‘Dad.’”
“Perhaps I should allow you on my ship for just long enough to drop you from half a mile up?”
He held his hands up and said, “Just ‘Bernie’ for now, then?”
10
MISTRAL ROSE THROUGH the morning fog. As she slid back from Durum’s mast, the wind clawed at Bernat’s eyes and he fumbled with his goggles. The wash from Mistral’s new airscrews—four of them, each with four relatively stubby blades—had turned the hurricane deck into a roiling tempest worthy of its name. The fog streamed in turbulent rivers past the deck.
“Is it just me, or is it a bit windier than last time?” he asked, shouting over the noise.
“You have a true talent for detecting the obvious,” Josette said. She looked up the companionway and called, “Pass the word to Gears: full power forward.”
The whine of the steamjack grew higher and louder, and Mistral leapt forward in a lurch that made Bernat stumble. When he regained his footing, he shot Josette a sour look and said, “If that was retaliation for my insightful comments, then perhaps I’ll just stop making them.”
Her eyes were jumping back and forth between the foggy view forward and the kinemeter above her head, but she spoke without looking at him. “It was retaliation.”
Amid the cluster of instruments above the captain’s station, Bernat saw the kinemeter needle climb through fifteen knots. “Did you get a chance to see your mother last night?” he asked.
That comment took her attention away from the instruments, if only for a moment. “I was too busy seeing to the refit.”
“Did you get any sleep?” he asked.
“Thank you for your concern,” she said, “but I have a mother too many as it is.” The airspeed rose above twenty knots. The corners of Josette’s mouth twitched upward, threatening an actual smile. Her eyes were now locked on the instruments.
Bernat watched the airspeed reach twenty-five knots and keep going. In this soup of fog, though, the acceleration didn’t seem real. The instruments and the blast of air whipping across the hurricane deck were the only indications of speed, for now the deck underneath felt perfectly stable under this steady acceleration.
As they passed through twenty-seven knots, Mistral burst from the cloud cover into a vast, empty dome of purple and blue. Ahead of them, the morning sun was still below the clouds, visible only as a ruddy brightness on the horizon that shot a dozen beams of sunlight into the heavens. Below them, a carpet of clouds stretched to the ends of the world.
“My God,” Bernat said. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Josette grinned—actually grinned. “Isn’t it, though?” she asked, but her eyes were not on the sky or the clouds. She hadn’t taken them off the instruments.
Bernat tore his eyes from the heavenly sight outside to look at the kinemeter. It was twitching past thirty knots and somehow still increasing. It stopped at thirty-two.
“Level her off,” Josette ordered.
As the steersman brought Mistral out of her climb and into flat, level flight, the airspeed needle slid even further, to settle down at thirty-three knots.
“Six knots faster than her old speed at full power,” Josette said. She let out a little laugh and shook Bernat so hard it made him dizzy. “She’s a charger! I knew those airscrews were holding her back. Sergeant Jutes, pass the word. She’s a charger!”
* * *
SOMEONE WAS SHAKING Josette’s shoulder. Someone thoughtless and unkind.
Josette told them how she felt, in a colorful manner.
But then one of the thoughtless, unkind person’s words stuck in her mind. “Kamenka.” Kamenka was important somehow.
Her eyes snapped open and she was instantly awake, alert, and ready. “Thank you, Ensign,” she said.
Kember saluted unsteadily, her face drained of blood.
“Oh, and Ensign?” Josette said, before the girl left. “That request for you to throw yourself over the side and fall straight to hell was not a formal order. You may feel free to disregard it.”
Kember nodded and swallowed. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
Josette put on her jacket and harness, stowed her suspended cot in the girders overhead, and went down to the hurricane deck to find a bright, clear day. With the morning haze burned off and not a cloud in the sky, Mistral had a clear view for scouting, but everything else in the sky or on the ground had an equally clear view of her.
“Ah, Captain,” Martel said, vacating the commander’s spot on deck. “We’re still well to the north of Kamenka, but I thought you’d want to see that.” He pointed.
Josette looked out. Ahead of Mistral, winding through the Vinzhalian countryside, was a single-track railway, where the map said there should only be a road. It was a spindly little rail, but the Vins could move three or four regiments a day on that track, given sufficient trains and half-decent coordination. It was a direct connection between the Quahnic front to the north and the new second front on Garnia’s eastern border. “Send a bird,” she said.
Martel nodded and went up the companionway.
“Watch for Vin airships,” she said. “With the cloud cover this
sparse, we may as well trail a banner that says, ‘We’re spying on you. Please come and kill us.’”
Bernat looked up from his customary spot on the starboard rail and said, “They’ll have to catch us first.”
That comment seemed to please the deck crew, who chuckled and nodded to each other. But he was wrong. As fast as Mistral now was, Josette had no intention of deviating from the mission until she found the army she knew was out there—an army watched and shepherded by Vin chasseurs.
They wouldn’t have to catch Mistral. Mistral was coming to them.
* * *
MISTRAL WAS JUST north of Kamenka now, so close that they had come within range of the city’s high-angle guns. Josette assured Bernat that they were perfectly safe at this altitude, and that the guns weren’t accurate enough to kill a ship a mile up; so far, the Vinzhalian cannoneers were proving her right.
“There’s a camp down there!” Martel said. “That’s one hell of an army.”
Josette and Ensign Kember crowded to the forward rail, looking down with their telescopes. Bernat followed and leaned over. He thought he must be looking in the wrong place, for all he saw was a flat field. Martel handed him a telescope, but Bernat still saw only a rail yard, and beyond that, only green fields with rows of yellow squares in them.
“The yellow patches are tents, my lord,” Martel said, noticing his confusion. “Or, rather, where the tents were. The army’s already marched.”
“Good God,” Bernat said. “There are thousands of them.”
“Turn us west, Corporal Lupien,” Josette said. Her telescope was already turned that way, toward the old arterial road that led from Kamenka to Durum.
Bernat trained his glass onto it. Even he could see that an army had marched here, trampling the road to muck under the boots of the infantry and cutting deep ruts under the wheels of the wagons.
“Mr. Martel,” Josette said, “send another bird to Arle. Message reads, ‘Army bivouac in Kamenka. Estimate fifty thousand men, now decamped. Composition unknown. Disposition unknown. Marching on Durum.’ Can you fit all that on one roll?”
“I’ll write small, sir,” Martel said, and went up the companionway.
Bernat asked Josette, “Shouldn’t we send a bird to Durum as well?”
She lowered her telescope. “Carrier pigeons only fly back to their roosts, and our pigeons all come from Arle. They’ll relay the message to Durum.”
“How long will that take?”
She didn’t quite look at him as she answered, “We’ll get there before it does. Which may be for the best, in any event.”
“Oh, indeed.” Bernat nodded his head. “When telling someone their home is about to be overrun by fifty thousand bloodthirsty Vins, one ought to convey that personal touch you just don’t get in a letter.”
* * *
SHE KNEW THE Vin column was close. She could smell it. Quite literally, she could smell it, as fifty thousand men don’t march hard for days, eating questionable food and drinking even more questionable water, without leaving an odor in their wake.
Jutes shouted down the companionway, “Crow’s nest reports airship ahead! Bearing one point starboard at ten thousand feet. Range, thirty miles. She’s turning. Lookout can’t tell if it’s toward us or away.”
“That’ll be their high altitude scout,” Martel said. “If we’ve seen them…”
Josette nodded. “Then they’ve certainly seen us. Up angle three degrees. Bring us to three thousand feet.” She noticed the disappointed looks from the steersmen. The crew, over the past couple hours of hunting for the column, had somehow gotten the impression that their captain planned to overfly the Vins at low altitude, strafing and bombing as she went. She had to admit that such a course would be very cathartic, right up to the moment the Vin escort ships closed in around them. After that, it would become notably less cathartic.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Bernat asked.
“We can always use another set of eyes in the crow’s nest,” Josette said. “If you think you can make it up there, that is.”
“Of course I can,” he said with a smile, and pranced up the companionway.
As they gained altitude, the horizon widened. A little under a thousand feet up, she spotted the cloud of dust kicked up by the column. Word came from the lookout of a second airship ahead, just coming over the horizon. That would be the Vin’s rearguard escort.
At two and a half thousand feet, she could see the column itself, seven miles long and marching for Durum. She lowered her telescope and said, “There’s still a chance they’ll turn back when they get to Mother’s house.”
“Sir?” It was Martel. She’d forgotten he was there.
“Nothing,” she said. “We should have spotted the vanguard airship by now.” Ahead of the column, a bank of afternoon clouds was forming. It was already thick enough to conceal an airship or two, which it surely did.
Martel seemed to read her thoughts. “If we run fifty miles north or south, then make a run for the cloud bank, we can get around whatever’s lying in wait in those clouds.”
But it would mean getting no closer to the column. That meant no composition or disposition reports—no regiments identified, no count of cannons, horses, and wagons. She looked at Martel, who was already grinning, having read her mind again.
“Send another bird,” she said. “Message reads: ‘Column sighted, marching west. Mistral will close and develop target.’ And give our position.” She looked at him. “The fastest way home is straight ahead.”
* * *
“KIND OF COZY up here, isn’t it?”
Bernat nodded sheepishly. Mistral’s crow’s nest was indeed cozy. Before he’d experienced it for himself, Bernat had imagined a platform large enough for three or four people, but this was merely a wind-blasted hole in the top of the ship and a rope ladder barely wide enough for one person. Two people simply couldn’t fit on it without their hips rubbing together.
Grey had taken great advantage of the narrow space, pressing her body to his and “accidentally” brushing her cheek against his on no fewer than four occasions in the past fifteen minutes.
As he turned his head to scan the cloud line, she did it again. “Sorry, my lord,” she said, but with mirth in her voice.
He sighed. This was surely God’s punishment for some particularly vile sin. He only wished he knew which one.
Grey put her telescope to her eye. “My lord,” she said, “will you look at this and tell me what you see?”
He saw nothing but clouds. Then she shifted, and he felt one of her breasts pressing against his chest. “Private,” he said, “I don’t think the officers would appreciate your…” And then he saw it. It was the same white color as the clouds, but once he saw it, he couldn’t believe he’d missed it before; it was so obvious. “That’s an airship,” he said.
“I thought so,” she said. She yelled down the keel. “Airship in the cloud bank! Four points to starboard at four thousand feet. Range, twenty miles.”
She waited and listened for a few seconds before Jutes’s voice came back. “Cap’n says to look for another one, four points to port on the other side of the column.”
“Acknowledged,” Grey said. She pointed. “That’ll be right about there, my lord.”
* * *
DESPITE THE HUNTERS closing in on them, Josette’s eyes were on the ground. She had her telescope steadied on the starboard rail and was studying the column. Martel was next to her, doing the same. They were only three miles away from it now, close enough to distinguish individual men through the ship’s best spyglass.
“Not as many wagons as I expected,” Josette said. “They’re putting a lot of faith in their supply lines.”
She counted the artillery pieces. There were over two hundred guns of various calibers, but no large siege guns. The Vins might be planning to move them up later, once they had Arle encircled. Or perhaps they didn’t intend to capture Arle at all. Perhaps, angry at Vinzhalia’s r
ecent defeat, they were content to shell it into oblivion. Armies had done worse, and with less cause for bitterness.
She turned her attention to the infantry. Most of them were conscripts or ordinary fusilier regiments, judging by their blue trousers with white jackets and vests. But there were half a dozen fully manned battalions, at least six thousand men in total, wearing blue jackets with yellow vests and trousers trimmed with red—the uniform of the elite Vinzhalian Royal Guard. As the name implied, their primary occupation was protecting the royal family, but they could be detached as need or opportunity dictated, and what an opportunity this was. These men, so hardened and experienced that the king of Vinzhalia trusted his life to them, would smash the garrison at Arle on their own. Bolstered as they were by ten times their number of regular infantry, they wouldn’t even have to stop to reinforce afterward, but could march right on to Kuchin.
Josette looked back to the cloud cover, now fifteen miles away. It was midafternoon and, though the sun was not in her eyes, it was reflecting off the tops of the clouds with dazzling intensity.
She walked to the aft end of the hurricane deck and looked out. Now that Mistral was past the column’s trailing supply wagons, the Vins’ rearguard airship had left its protective position and was sweeping around to come in behind Mistral. It wasn’t angling to attack, though. It was cutting off their retreat, closing the circle.
She stepped into the captain’s spot and said, “Mr. Martel, would you say that we’ve done just about enough of this horseshit reconnoitering?”
Martel was stunned for a second, but then he grinned and said, “Captain, I was just about to suggest that we’ve done about enough of this horseshit reconnoitering, though not half as eloquently as that.”
She looked out into the clouds, where the hunters were surely waiting for them. “Then be a dear and rig for battle.”
* * *
AT THE SERGEANT’S whistle, Grey closed the crow’s-nest opening and said, “My station’s at the engine. Captain’ll probably want you on rifles.”
