by Stephen Hunt
There was a series of hollow metallic thuds as the mortars erupted along the length of their airship’s spine, followed by a trembling whine as the tubes back-filled with the cold air from outside, then an answering series of explosions from above them, a line of fire stitched along the belly of the Cassarabian airship hanging above their vessel. Seconds later Jack clung onto his station as a wrenching impact slammed him forward, the remains of a decapitated enemy engine car spinning down on top of the Iron Partridge, the rest of the ruined airship just visible through the crack in the skylight. It glanced off their armoured hull with another harsh jolt before continuing downwards on its fiery descent.
From the doorway there came a second explosion. Not a debris strike, but a blast of tumbling Cassarabian marines as Henry Tempest, their recently released captain of marines, erupted into the transaction-engine chamber. His rifle now discharged and empty, the giant soldier was using the weapon like a fighting staff, its butt lashing out and caving in skulls and ribs. The black and silver figures wearing Cassarabian marines’ uniforms were sent flying around him, as though they were kites launched into the air, while Tempest’s crimson features were distorted into a yell. ‘Get off my ship! Get off my perishing ship!’
There were others fighting in the corridor outside, its confines echoing to the clash of hatchets, knives, bayonets and cutlasses. Firearms took too long to reload at close quarters and Jack caught a glimpse of First Lieutenant Westwick entangled in the deadly melee of Cassarabian marines and short Benzari tribesmen.
One of the Cassarabian marines came at Jack from the edge of the tumult and Jack grabbed the empty bandolier from the station at his side, swinging it like a whip and catching the Cassarabian marine in the face, dislodging the man’s beak-like mask. Propelled by fear and fury, Jack ran at the marine and shoved him over the rail, watching him crumple onto the machinery of the transaction-engine pit below. As Jack turned, a rifle butt slammed into his gut and winded him. He collapsed back; the rifle’s barrel fell across his throat and forced him choking down against the rail. It was Henry Tempest, his eyes glinting like tiny marbles as his sweating face bore down on Jack. ‘Get off my ship!’
Jack could only snort, his fingers trying to find purchase on the rifle as the seemingly unstoppable force of the soldier crushed his larynx. It was true, then, what the sailors had been whispering about Tempest: that he had been left half-deranged by an addiction to opiate poppies. That he had to regularly slake his thirst on a mixture of drugs and rum just to stay sane.
‘He’s one of ours, Henry,’ the female voice spun out of the darkness that was beginning to envelop Jack.
Jack croaked desperately for air as the pressure eased.
‘Drink from your green flask, Henry.’
There was a grunting like a pig feeding and Jack focused on a green-lidded canteen being slugged back by the marine officer before being clipped down on his belt next to an identical red-lidded canteen. And there, next to him, was First Lieutenant Westwick, severe and proud, a pair of blooded cutlasses gripped tight in her hands.
‘Sorry, boy,’ said the brute, extending a giant hand and enveloping Jack’s trembling arm. ‘I was stuck in one of my rising rages, so I was.’
Well, that makes everything okay then.
Jack’s eyes slipped across the transaction-engine chamber, dead bodies littering the deck. Benzari tribesmen moved across the room with their short curved swords out, checking for any in the enemy boarding party that might be faking their demise.
‘Your leg,’ said Jack, pointing to a knife embedded in the captain of marine’s limb.
‘It’s not mine,’ said the brute, as if that explained everything, pulling the knife out as though removing an inconvenient thorn.
By his side, First Lieutenant Westwick turned at the sound of Coss Shaftcrank’s voicebox, the steamman kneeling over the corpses while he chanted prayers to his ancestors and the Steamo Loas. ‘Belay that racket. Pile them up and roll them out the nearest hatch.’
‘Wreck my relays, but their people have established burial rites,’ protested Coss.
‘Those are my rites, and those are your orders, skyman. Their god can clean them up from the ground below using the vultures as his divine instrument.’ First Lieutenant Westwick angrily spun Jack around, jabbing one of her fingers at his face. ‘That was a synchronized volley from our mortars. An automated volley.’
‘The mortars weren’t accepting manual control,’ protested Jack.
‘Do you know how many sailors died in the last voyage this malfunctioning metal hulk made under full automation? If those mortar shells had been loaded fin up and warhead down, you would have caused a full salvo detonating right above the ship’s magazine! You, sir, would have blown our bloody remains all the way back to the Kingdom.’
‘The lad saved the ship, first lieutenant,’ called John Oldcastle, still checking his pistols. ‘The Cassarabians were swarming over our top side like ants across a blessed picnic blanket.’
‘He gambled our ship and our mission and he got lucky,’ spat the woman.
Outside the ship a ripple of fire sounded — not the oak-sawing sound of their cannons, but the whoosh of landing rockets blasting out and the rattle of anchor lines running behind them, then the Iron Partridge started to shake from stem to stern.
‘Ah,’ said John Oldcastle admiringly. ‘There’s the wild genius of Jericho at work. He’s fired our anchors straight into the Cassarabian airship. That one’s not in the admiralty rulebook. He’s pulling them in. You’ve got your ship, Maya, if you’ve got the taste for another game of tickle-my-sabre with their crew.’
‘Open the hatches along the engine car repair gantry,’ Westwick ordered her hulking captain of marines. ‘We’ll board them at the broadside.’ She seized Jack by the scruff of his striped navy shirt, wiping off the blood on one of her cutlasses against his shoulder. ‘I’ll deal with you later, Mister Keats.’
‘You did the right thing, lad,’ said John Oldcastle, watching the first lieutenant sprint out with her Benzari warriors in tow. ‘Remember that. Not by the book, but the right thing, nevertheless.’
Jack felt a knot of fear tightening in his stomach.
Back in the unforgiving slums of Middlesteel, doing the right thing was often as costly a mistake as you could make. You only looked out for yourself, and at a push, for your family. Jack’s decision, would, he expected, end just as badly. In his world, no good deed went unpunished.
Jack watched the binds being tightened around his wrists, his face pressed between the frame of a fin-bomb rack, the closed bomb-bay doors locked beneath his boots.
‘For disobeying a standing order when pressed by the enemy,’ intoned the first lieutenant as she read out the charges. ‘For cowardice in the face of enemy fire and imperilling the Royal Aerostatical Navy vessel Iron Partridge while on active duty.’
‘Take this lad,’ said John Oldcastle from behind Jack, pressing a cloth-wrapped wooden handle between his teeth. ‘Bite down on it, it’ll help save your tongue.’
‘Skyman Jack Keats is sentenced to ninety lashes.’
‘What is this?’ the voice boomed from behind the crewmen lined up along the side of the bomb bay, Captain Jericho pushing his way through the press of sailors.
‘The maintaining of discipline,’ said First Lieutenant Westwick.
‘I did not order this!’
‘Under the articles of war, I have the authority to-’
‘It is customary to inform the captain before ordering a flogging,’ barked Jericho. ‘And those articles you are suddenly so familiar with allow me to set the number of lashes.’ He pointed to the Benzari marine holding the cat-o’-nine-tails, the knotted lines of the whip dangling dangerously by his side. ‘The minimum. Ten lashes only.’
‘That’s far too soft a sentence,’ objected the first lieutenant.
Not for my bloody spine, it isn’t.
‘This is not a flogging ship. You have duties to attend to, first l
ieutenant. The officers we took prisoner have been made ready on the prize vessel.’
‘I see no prize vessel.’
‘You will find her firmly tied off against our starboard side, first lieutenant.’
‘Read your orders again, captain. We have a very specific objective to accomplish and it does not include losing weeks we cannot afford on a round trip to tow a Cassarabian airship all the way back to the border just so you and your crew can line your pockets with Admiralty House’s bounty money.’
That drew furious murmurs from the crew. It was the greatest bugbear of any airship crew that the only time they got to claim prize money was when they helped the Fleet Sea Arm capture enemy u-boats and frigates on the surface of the ocean. Now the skymen finally had an enemy their equal in the air and they had shed their blood to capture one of the foe’s vessels. That share of the admiralty’s prize money was their right!
‘That is not our tradition, d’you see?’ said the captain.
‘Damn your bloody tradition, sir,’ said Westwick. ‘Orders trump tradition and the articles of war, both. We’ll learn what we can from the prisoners and take what we need from the captured Cassarabian aerostat and then you’ll mine her and you’ll blow her.’
Her words drew a collective growl from the crew. Whether it was seeing their captain treated like a pet hunting hound by the first lieutenant, or the prospect of losing a sailor’s share of a thousand guineas’ prize money, Jack couldn’t say.
‘Master Engineer Pasco,’ barked the first lieutenant, ‘I don’t believe our marine has the height to make a mere ten lashes count. Step forward and take the cat-o’-nine-tails from him.’
Jack groaned as the mean bullying officer did as he had been ordered.
‘This is your fault, thief,’ whispered Pasco, pulling Jack’s shirt up. ‘She’s only doing this out of spite because you wouldn’t take your ninety licks like a man. You’ve stolen six month’s extra salary out of the pockets of every Jack Cloudie on board the ship.’
The marine drummers started the rattle of their instruments and the count began. Pasco had the size to make the lashes count alright. Jack got to seven numbing lashes before he passed out, the biting taste of the saliva-soaked cloth fading from his mouth.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘Where is your mind today?’ demanded the cadet master, cutting left and right with the practice sabre as if he was punishing the air rather than Omar.
‘It is the day for the womb mages to sample his flesh for a new drak to be grown for him,’ called Boulous from the other side of the fencing mat.
The cadet master snorted at Omar. ‘Pray you can honour your sword when your drak is ready for you. It is not a womb mage’s ritual that is on your mind, cadet. Command. Tell.’
‘I was thinking of a girl,’ growled Omar, dripping in sweat from the exercise. ‘A girl I know who was taken by brigands.’
‘Well then,’ said the old swordsman, flicking Omar’s sword up to guard readiness with the tip of his sabre, the position called third tierce. ‘Brigands and guardsmen often meet, and when we do, the business is not much different from ours this morning. Except these brigands will not have Farris Uddin quite so angry at them for running a sword through a cadet’s foolish, mooning guts.’
Omar felt anger rise in him at the old man’s scorn and disrespect for his feelings towards Shadisa. Not taking his eyes off the old swordsman, Omar raised his free hand towards the weapons racked by the practice hall’s walls — swords of all shapes and sizes: sabres, rapiers, longswords, fencing foils, foreign blades. ‘I have mastered your weapons.’
‘Have you then, young fool?’ sneered the cadet master. ‘You are as blind as one of the snake charmers’ nobbled pythons down in the bazaar. Those aren’t weapons in that rack. Your sword is not the weapon. You are the weapon.’ Casting his own sword to the floor, the cadet master went over to the rack and pulled away what Omar had initially taken for part of the frame. He came back with two tall polished wooden sticks just shy of his own height, and tossed one to Boulous, throwing the other one to Omar.
‘What is this?’ demanded Omar. ‘Something for the palace gardeners to grow their beans around?’
‘A lesson,’ said the cadet master. ‘My father was a jinn trader and I grew up travelling with him across the infidel lands. Those bean sticks are what you get when you make duelling with edged weapons a crime for hundreds of years. The Jackelians call them debating sticks, and any Kingdom street rat would be able to stick one right up your sorry arse and make you twist around it as though it was one of their Maypoles.’
Omar felt the heft of the thing, deceptively heavy. Had it been weighted inside with lead?
‘Come on, boy. It’s not a real weapon, is it?’ said the cadet master. ‘Just a little stick. See what you can do against the commander’s retainer. Boulous’s blood runs Kingdom-red, even if his heart is as true a guardsman’s as ever walked this fortress. Have a little prod at each other. Show me your great mastery of my arts.’
Omar struck out at Boulous with the staff, but the retainer was as quick with it as he was with a practice scimitar, ducking back and not even needing to block Omar’s strike. Angered, Omar tried to windmill the staff, turning it and jabbing from multiple angles and directions, but Boulous was able to step around each strike, his boots flowing as though he were dancing. They hadn’t even touched wood yet.
‘Enough, Boulous,’ spat the cadet master. ‘Plant the cadet’s beans for him.’
Boulous swept his staff around, tripping Omar onto the floor before he could attempt to jump or manoeuvre, the flat end of the staff hovering an inch away from his nose.
‘That staff isn’t a weapon,’ the cadet master shouted at Omar on the floor. ‘A sword isn’t a weapon, nor a stick nor a stone. The guardsman is the weapon, and in his hands, so is anything he touches.’ He waved at Boulous. ‘Do I need to press my point, retainer? Shall I show this young fool how to take that staff away from you and give you a few lumps in payment for it?’
Boulous smiled thinly and shook his head. ‘I still remember you laughing at me during our empty hand sessions, cadet master.’
‘A little shame worked well as a spur with you, retainer.’ The cadet master shook his head sadly at Omar. ‘But you learn well enough without it, cadet. I don’t know why, but being a guardsman seems to run in your lazy, skiving blood. Have nothing on your mind when you train with me. Bring me some foolishness about a woman again and I’ll show you where the flat end of the length of infidel wood is meant to be inserted.’
Omar and Boulous bowed and left as the next cadet entered to receive his punishment.
Omar had imagined that his first visit outside the environs of the guardsmen’s towering fortress, venturing into the Jahan Palace below, would have been an occasion to partake of the legendary sensual pleasures of the Caliph Eternal’s bounty. Instead, Omar’s passage down the monstrous granite staircase that had been carved into the rock face in the shadow of the fortress was filled with dread. It was the retainer’s warning that had done it for Omar — that the womb mages who would sample his flesh to create a drak for him were bound up with the Sect of Razat. Omar had escaped the extermination of his house using the last of his slave’s luck, and now he had none left to protect him from the dark sorceries of his enemies.
What if the womb mages gave him a deadly disease when they sampled his flesh? Something to leave him gasping and rolling around the cells of the fortress in a week’s time, when the sect’s involvement in his murder could be denied? Or they might twist and warp his body in revenge for escaping the sack of Haffa. He remembered the work of the womb mages back in his hometown: creating changeling viruses to heal and cure, or curse and kill, depending on whose coin had been taken in payment. How welcome would Omar be among the ranks of the guardsmen if they found him growing a third leg or an extra set of arms one morning?
Omar felt a fraud every step of the way down to the great domes below, the wind whipping his cloak
about his black leather armour. Even the presence of the retainer Boulous to lead the way and lend authority to his presence seemed only a salve to the situation.
‘A cadet is still invested with the authority of the order,’ said Boulous, as if sensing Omar’s mood. ‘You are a custodian of the Caliph Eternal’s law inside the palace.’
‘I will be quick to sever the hands of any courtiers I find fighting unlicensed duels,’ said Omar. ‘What did Master Uddin mean up on the walls when he warned you not to repeat what you said about the grand marshal? It is clear the grand marshal has lived a long life. Who would object to hearing that?’
‘It is not his age,’ said Boulous. ‘It is how the grand marshal came by it — or rather the speed by which he came by it. Until two years ago, the grand marshal was subject to the caliph’s bounty, you understand? He was given the drug that blesses a man with eternal youth. The grand marshal might have lived to be three hundred years old, but now its blessing is his no more and his true years advance fast on him.’
‘More politics,’ said Omar.
