by Robyn Bennis
“Up ten degrees!” Josette ordered. The hurricane deck was already receiving a peppering from the reserve companies, assembled a hundred yards from the wall.
In the few seconds it took for the members of the stricken ladder party to sort themselves out and get moving, Mistral’s riflemen and the militia on the wall took advantage of the stationary targets they presented and shot four more of them.
The ground disappeared as the hurricane deck rose into cloud cover, though the musket balls continued to hit farther aft for several seconds, until the whole ship was hidden.
“Level off elevators, left rudder,” Josette ordered, beginning the wide turn that would bring them around to come in from the rear of the attackers. She estimated that the ship had taken something like fifty musket balls. She could hear the riggers above, already climbing through the superstructure and groping in the dark for the holes. Mistral could handle this sort of damage for a while—with the reinforcements made to her stern, she was proving to be a tough ship—but too many passes like that and they’d have to stop and put all their efforts into repairs.
Mistral completed her turn and, at Josette’s order, slashed downward. The clouds swept aft to reveal all three Vin ladders now propped against Durum’s south wall, men packed onto them. Except … the ladders weren’t quite high enough. They came just short of the top of the wall, forcing the man at the top of each ladder to stand on the shoulders of the man below and look for handholds in the uneven stone. And while they searched for someplace to hold on to, the militiamen atop the wall stabbed down with bayonets and smashed at their fingers with musket butts.
Josette was uplifted by the sight—not only because it greatly improved the odds, but because it meant the Vin army was as capable as her own at making a complete cock-up of a job that ought to be trivial.
Mistral approached the Vin reserve ranks, which were now giving fire to support the men going up the ladders. Many of them adjusted their aim when Mistral passed overhead, and the peppering began again in earnest. It increased as the ship dove lower and lower, until most of the deck crew were crouched with their heads below the rail.
But behind the bref gun, Kember was unfazed, her hand indicating the minutest course corrections to the steersmen. She dragged it out for so long that Josette was near to ordering her to just fire the damn thing already, when finally she pulled the lanyard.
“Up ten degrees!” Josette ordered, then stepped through the smoke to see the canister shot’s effect.
It was worth the wait. Mistral rose over a score of dead and wounded Vins, all piled around a broken ladder at the base of the wall. Four attackers who’d already made it onto the wall were left orphaned there. They fought bravely on, but were hopelessly outnumbered.
Only two ladders remained. Josette could see Kadi Halphin, sword in hand and truly dashing in his colonel’s uniform, right in the thick of the fight at the next ladder over. As Mistral slipped into the clouds and began her next turn, it seemed the odds had shifted and were now stacked impossibly against the Vins. Durum’s militia needed only to press in around the Vins as they came up the other two ladders, and wait for Mistral to dispatch them. As long as that press held, the militiamen who were not so engaged could pour leaden death into the attackers as they filed up the ladders, and into the axemen who chipped away at the south gate.
But when Mistral next descended out of the clouds, Josette saw a changed battle. Atop the wall, the attackers were being cut down in ones and twos. It should have been encouraging, for most of the Vins who came up the ladders fell to the defenders’ bayonets. But the men waiting on the ladders couldn’t see that, couldn’t tell what the odds were—not until they were up and over, and by then they had no choice but to fight or die.
And so the Vins kept coming, man after man, in that pathetically slow trickle. But they came over the top faster than they fell to the defenders, and now the small nucleus of Vin attackers on the wall had swelled until there were half a dozen around the top of each ladder.
As she watched, Josette saw the attack reach that critical inflection point, that moment when the next soldier cresting the wall met not the bayonets of the defenders, but the backs of his friends. And while his friends were still outnumbered and might be bayoneted at any moment, even by their deaths they kept the defenders occupied long enough for another man to scramble onto the wall without resistance, thus making room for the man behind him, who in his turn had enough time to lend his hand and help the next man up. And so the attackers came up faster and faster, and soon it would be the defenders who were outnumbered.
“Aim carefully,” Josette said to Ensign Kember. There was still hope. If the defenders only kept their heads, held the wall long enough for Mistral to take out the remaining ladders, then Durum would remain Garnian—at least until the main column arrived.
The peppering of musketry was lighter now as the reserve companies went forward to go up the ladder themselves. Kember sighted and fired.
If anything, her shot was more perfectly aimed than the one before it. As the smoke passed astern, Josette could see a cluster of pockmarks on the wall behind the ladder. The destructive wedge of the canister shot hit it dead center, turning the men there to butcher’s meat. But the ladder itself held.
When the defenders on the wall realized that it still stood fast, and that the Vins were still coming at them from two intact ladders, fear began to take hold of the militia. It started with a few men at the back, farthest from the fighting. For, unlike the defenders in the thick of it, hemmed in by their comrades behind them and a fifty-foot drop to either side, the men in the back had space to run.
It began, as it almost always did, with only a few of them. But their flight spread fear and panic, unhinging a few more, who ran after them. And now that it had started, it couldn’t be stopped. Men who would not otherwise have run suddenly imagined themselves abandoned by their comrades and fighting alone, and they, too, fled. Soon, even the most stalwart militiamen had no choice but to run or be pushed off the wall by the press of their comrades.
And so the Durum militia dissolved into a stream of terrified men, pouring down the steps and into the streets. Mistral passed over the wall, where Kadi Halphin alone fought on, surrounded by a score of attackers, still alive only because they hesitated to finish him.
Josette was too stunned to order Mistral up into the safety of the clouds. Not that it mattered. The attackers were ignoring her airship in their enthusiasm for the hands-on slaughter in front of them.
Beyond the wall, the nearest granary was flamed, and then the guards joined the rest of the militia in their rout. The city’s other granaries went up almost at once.
“At least Durum’s grain won’t feed the Vins,” Bernat said. She looked at him, but he didn’t take his eyes off the city.
Mistral outran the spreading wave of Vins, and then outran the militiamen they were driving in front of them. The ship slid over Durum, the sound of her steamjack and airscrews echoing back from the empty cobblestone streets below. The ship passed the north wall and only then turned west, into darkness.
Josette was not at her post, not standing upon that mystical spot on the deck that made her a captain. She was standing at the taffrail, staring back at a tiny brick-and-stone house at the end of a narrow lane until it receded into a single point and disappeared behind a mist of cloud.
12
BERNAT SLEPT WITH a bottle cradled in his arms, but all the wine in Garnia couldn’t have kept him asleep for more than a couple of hours. He woke before dawn and lay quietly in his bunk, staring into darkness and listening to the sounds of the airship. The steamjack and the airscrews made a continuous din, but one that he hardly even noticed by now.
Instead, his ears were occupied with the snoring of three of the sleeping crewmen, and the occasional emanations from Ensign Kember. Air scoops were drawing a breeze forward, and open ports releasing it aft, so Kember’s contribution to the olfactory bouquet aboard ship was always transien
t, but somehow that made it even more offensive. If the smell were constant, he thought, he might eventually become accustomed to it.
Kember wasn’t alone, either. She was merely the worst of them. They all did their part, and after a week aboard, Bernat could already tell the crew members apart by the unique character of their gas. He couldn’t even remember all their names, but he’d know any one of them in the dark if they’d only oblige him by breaking wind.
He tried to remember why he’d embarked aboard this ship. In his hazy, half-awake state, he couldn’t think of anything to justify the decision.
Presently, the watch changed and the crew stirred from their bunks. Despite the increased bustle aboard, Bernat managed to catch half an hour’s sleep before something altered in the nature of the activity and drew him back to consciousness. After a few minutes listening to men drag equipment over the narrow catwalk and back to the tail, he rose to investigate the matter himself.
He ran into Josette coming the other way, and asked, “Something the matter?”
“Nothing at all,” she said, not stopping.
He followed her forward, past anxious-looking crewmen. “It’s only … I sense a bit of tension.”
Without looking back or slowing at all, she said, “We’re in the middle of a night landing in a village with no mooring mast or ground crew. It’s an operation that falls somewhere between ‘extremely dangerous’ and ‘impossible,’ depending on which reference you consult. The village is in the way of the Vin advance, so it will certainly be occupied by enemy dragoons within the next few hours. If we’re still tethered when they get here, we’ll all be captured or killed. Besides which, the sun rises in an hour and the vanguard of the Vin airship escort will be hunting us. If they find us on the ground, that’s the end of us. Even if we survive all that, we plan to transfer gunpowder from ship to ground with the airscrews turning, which means static, which means sparks, which could blow us all to hell. Then, of course, there are still tens of thousands of angry Vins less than fifty miles away, coming to destroy all we hold dear, and rape our cows, and suchlike. I’d say a certain amount of tension is justified.”
By this time they were nearly to the companionway. “But there’s nothing the matter?” Bernat asked.
At the head of the companionway, she paused and turned to him. “Of course not. Why would there be?”
He shrugged. “Only asking.” He followed her down the companionway to the hurricane deck. “Though we did leave your mother stranded in occupied territory not eight hours ago. That’s liable to make a person, even a person as ascetic and bitter as yourself…” At the bottom of the companionway, she whirled to stare at him, eyes hard and lips pulling back into a sneer. “… worried,” he finished. “Understandably worried.”
She held him there, staring with such intensity that he wanted to shy away and drop the subject. But as much as he wished to retreat, he held his ground and returned her stare, glower for glower.
“That particular matter is not on my mind right now,” she said, and walked aft along the hurricane deck. He followed her to the taffrail and, as his eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw that Mistral was dragging a canvas bucket through the river below, tethered by a long line. It seemed, as far as he could deduce, to work on the same principle as a drogue anchor on a naval vessel, slowing the ship to a crawl while maintaining its maneuverability.
“How in hell can it not be on your mind?” he said, after the distraction of this odd sight wore off. “She’s your mother.”
“She’s only one person,” Josette said, watching the drogue line carefully. “By now, the Vins are scouring Durum, flushing out surviving militiamen from their bolt-holes and bayoneting them. By lunchtime, tempers just might cool enough to merely take them prisoner, steal their boots, and send them on a forced march over fifty miles of trampled road to Kamenka. By evening, the same story will be playing out in this village, and will soon happen in every other settlement along the Vin line of march. Thousands of people will be killed, forced from their homes, or left to starve in a countryside stripped bare by Vin foraging parties. By the end of the week, the column will reach Arle, and tens of thousands will be trapped inside the siege lines, without food or hope of rescue, and under artillery fire.” She turned from her examination of the drogue to look at him. “Amid such chaos, I haven’t the right to worry about one woman.”
Bernat looked back, his hard expression softening as he said, “Yes, you do.”
“That is your opinion, Lord Hinkal.” She pushed back from the taffrail with both arms and spun about to stride forward.
Again, he followed. He could see a settlement ahead, hazy amid the light fog. Four cottages were clustered near a water mill and granary. In what passed for the village square, men were gathered with torches. Bernat would hardly even call it a village, though it did possess a sturdy stone bridge. Too sturdy, he thought, with its single arch spanning the entire river in one graceful curve. Though he didn’t wish to be sidetracked, he was too curious not to ask, “Is that a Tellurian bridge?”
“I suppose it is,” Josette said, her eyes on the village. “I don’t imagine the locals built it. Not many first-rate architects around here, you know.”
He gasped. “Amazing. I’ve always wanted to see such a bridge. My God, it must be at least two thousand years old. Imagine what skill the Tellurian architects and stoneworkers must have possessed, that their work still stands after all this time.”
“Indeed,” Josette said. “It’s a damn shame we’re here to blow it up.”
His eyes nearly shot out of his skull. “What?”
She looked at him as if he were an idiot. “What the hell did you think we were doing here? Dropping in to purchase some rustic handmade quilts?”
“But … but … you can’t do this! You’re just going to blow it up—all that history—without a second thought?”
“Yes,” she said. “Welcome to the army.”
“That little bridge? What good could it possibly be to the Vins?”
“It’s a bridge,” she said, as if that were explanation enough. “It’s wide and sturdy enough to send cannons across.”
He slumped down, more dejected than ever. “What will the villagers say about that?”
She snorted. “I should think they’d be rather displeased. One of the local quirks in these parts: the people don’t like having their bridges destroyed and their homes showered with rocks. You’d know that if you read more. It’s in all the guidebooks.”
“Are you lashing out at me or are you—”
“Yes,” she said, quickly. “Yes, I am. Because you’re a truly phenomenal annoyance, in answer to your next question.”
In spite of it all, he smiled at her. “Now you sound like my mother.”
Josette’s eyes were still on the village. “She seems an insightful woman. I hope I’ll have a chance to visit her in exile, after the Vins take over.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Bernat said. “I’m sure destroying this treasure of the ancient world will stop the Dumpling hordes in their tracks.”
Her hard façade cracked, just a bit. “No,” she said. “There’s a fording point west of here.”
His jaw dropped. “So this will slow them down by…”
“Perhaps two hours.”
He looked out at the bridge, where villagers and farmers from the surrounding country were gathering to watch the airship, then back at Josette. “Don’t blow it up, then.”
She didn’t meet his gaze. “Two hours is two hours,” she said. “And it’s not just that. The attitude of a defender, as much as their force of arms, may check an invasion, if the invader is cowed by their ruthlessness.”
“So you think this will cow them?”
He could already see the answer in her posture. “No,” she said, confirming it.
“Then don’t blow up the goddamn bridge!” He spoke loudly enough for everyone on deck to hear.
“Pray control your voice,” she said, her own
voice calm and mild.
He leaned in and spoke in a harsh whisper. “You don’t have to blow up this goddamn bridge to avenge your mother, who is in all likelihood sitting safe and sound in her house at this very moment. Probably the worst thing that’s happened to her is that the soldiers have stolen all her lingerie, and that only if Corporal Lupien is correct about the habits of the men in the Vin army.”
“A point starboard, and pass the word to ease back on steamjack power,” Josette ordered. And then she spoke to Bernat. “I thought I made it clear that this has nothing to do with my mother.”
“And I thought I made it clear that you’re a terrible liar.”
She ignored him, watching the bridge come up. When it was under the bow, she ordered, “Power to station keeping! Break out pistols and sabers for the landing party!”
“Pistols and sabers, yes, sir,” Jutes called back from the keel.
“Are you expecting the bridge to put up a fight?” Bernat asked.
Keeping a keen eye on the river and the ground, she said, “The villagers will. These people don’t care who rules over them. It doesn’t matter to them whether Leon or Yuslan is their king. They’ll still live in filth, moan about the grain levy, and die having never once seen a two-story building. If any man in this village actually gave a damn about king and country, he’d have run off to volunteer a long time ago.”
“The other side of that coin,” Bernat said, “is that they’re innocents in this affair, but you plan to punish them, regardless.”
“Not punish,” she said, with a sharpness that made him jump. She quieted herself when Jutes came by, handing out weapons to the landing party. He handed Josette two pistols, a sword, and a waist sash to tuck them into. When he was clear, she went on. “I have nothing against these people. They happen to depend upon a strategically important bridge, which is unfortunate for them. The Vins would blow it up too, if they were in my position, not because they’re monsters but because they’re soldiers. They loot because they’re greedy, they shoot because they’re trained to, they bayonet fleeing miliamen because they’ve just watched their friends die, and they storm the walls because those are their goddamn orders. It isn’t personal.” She spoke softly now. “Whatever they may have done to Durum, or to my mother, it wasn’t personal.”
