The three fugitives were not the only ones to seek sanctuary here. There were at least a dozen mechanics caught out by the airborne invasion, several others who were most likely pilots on the same mission as Taki, and some who were simply ordinary people of Solarno who had hoped that the elevated field might prove safer than the city below.
There was at least a score of Wasps spiralling down outside. Taki paused, with the cockpit of the Esca half open, biting her lip.
Che called out to her. ‘Where do we go now?’
The Fly glanced back at them, and Che realized that, in the rush of relief at seeing her machine undamaged, Taki had almost forgotten about the people she was escorting to safety. The Fly boosted herself up onto the Esca’s hull and turned to look at the dozen other flying machines sheltering under the hangar’s roof.
‘That one!’ she pointed, and Che saw a squat, barrel-bodied machine, a four-vaned orthopter that could only be a cargo-hauler. It looked sturdier than the Stormcry had been, but also slower and surely destined for the same sorry fate.
‘Isn’t there something fleeter?’ Che demanded.
‘Just get in it!’ Taki ordered her. The first crackle of a Wasp sting sounded outside. The engineers and pilots, and whoever else was armed, had formed up on either side of the hangar door. Several of them had crossbows, and Che saw Taki reach into the Esca’s cockpit and come out with a little double-strung bow of her own. Nero had already unslung and tensioned his bow, and now hopped up onto the hood of a half-dismantled fixed-wing, so as to get a clear shot at the enemy. Che noticed him wince with the effort.
She hurried over to the heavy orthopter, on which the inspiring name Cleaver was painted in square, solid letters. It was fashioned of wood bound with iron hoops, just like a barrel, and it was bigger than she had first thought. The craft looked altogether too heavy to get off the ground. Doggedly she hauled herself up the metal rungs bolted into the side, and began to fumble at the catches.
The Wasps were trying to force their way into the hangar but they had not expected the resistance and the first volley of bolts had cut four of them down. An enterprising pilot had even brought his craft’s rotary piercer about and got a volley of bolts off into the Wasps as they began to muster. In response the soldiers tried a sudden charge, hands blazing. Che saw at least two of the defenders fall back, seared with smoking wounds. There followed a brief moment of close-combat fighting, short-swords against knives and the curved Solarnese blades, and then the Wasps had taken to the air again, repelled. A ragged cheer went up from the hangar’s defenders but, even as their cries still echoed, there were more Wasps gathering outside, the survivors of the first assault and now a dozen more. Che was grimly certain that an alert had already gone down into the city itself, as the Wasps would want to subdue the airfields most of all.
She had the round hatch open at last, and squeezed herself through, dropping abruptly into more space than she had expected. The Cleaver looked so heavy from outside, but it was almost entirely hollow, a dedicated freighter. A single wooden chair, looking like it had come from someone’s house, had been nailed into place behind the navigation stick, and Che saw that her only visibility would be the strips of sky viewed through two slots cut into the orthopter’s nose. She was no seasoned pilot but she had surely flown more elegant machines than this in her time.
And unarmed again. Taki doesn’t trust me to survive an air fight. Not that the Cleaver could have managed that anyway. It must move through the air like… Like a Beetle, I suppose.
She put her head out of the hatch to see where Nero was, and found him crouching atop the half-finished machine. At that moment he was loosing an arrow with great concentration, sending it winging out past the defenders, only to skip across the empty ground between two Wasps. An artist he might be, she realized, but an archer he was not.
If only Achaeos was here, she thought, and then, I hope he’s coping better than this.
Taki shot off her crossbow, and then crouched behind the Esca to crank the arms back. The Wasps were making progress into the building now. Too many of the Solarnese were dead or lying injured on the ground, and the remaining defenders had fallen back to take cover behind the flying machines, allowing the Wasps the shelter of the doorway. To Che’s horror she saw another Wasp orthopter fly past by the hangar mouth, turning slowly in a course that would bring it into land.
‘Nero, come on!’ she yelled. ‘Taki!’
‘No use,’ said the Fly girl, slotting a new bolt into place. ‘We can’t get out past them. They’d destroy the Esca, destroy any machine that tried to escape.’ She sounded fiercely bitter, thus denied the sky.
‘Hold your shot!’ shouted someone from immediately behind the Wasp lines. ‘The next man to loose will be put on a charge!’
Slowly the Wasps stopped shooting, still holding to the cover of the doorway. The defenders then cautiously followed suit.
‘Is Bella Taki-Amre within?’ yelled a voice, and Che recognized it as belonging to Axrad, the Wasp officer pilot. ‘What do you want?’ Taki called out.
‘I thought I might find you here. Here or in the air.’ Axrad appeared at the door, silhouetted against the lamps glowing outside. It was as if he was daring the defenders to shoot him. ‘We have unfinished business, you and I.’
Taki slowly released the tension on her crossbow. ‘Are you asking me to take this outside?’ she asked.
‘My thoughts exactly,’ Axrad replied.
‘And what about everyone else?’ she enquired.
‘What about them?’ His tone showed that he had not even considered this.
‘I have two non-combatants here who are not part of this fight,’ Taki said desperately. ‘I wish to get them safely out of the city.’
‘Then they will provide the stakes,’ Axrad suggested. ‘We two shall duel, and if you happen to defeat me, our soldiers here will let everyone depart where they will, either go to fight again or go to flee. Is that clear, Sergeant?’
Che did not hear the other man’s response but assumed it must have been positive.
Taki slipped the crossbow back into the Esca’s canopy. She headed around her machine’s wing as though to see Axrad better, but when she was passing nearest to Che she said, ‘They won’t keep their side. He means it, but I bet they don’t. Once I’m in the air, get going. They’ll be busy watching us, and not you.’
In a louder voice, intended to carry to Axrad, she announced, ‘I’m all yours. Let me wheel my Esca onto the field, and then we’ll finish our business.’
Twenty-Three
‘This must be Lowlander work,’ the Emperor Alvdan hissed. He stood in his nightshirt, a dozen guards gathered about him. One fist was pressed nervously into his chin. ‘This can be no coincidence.’
‘It seems likely, your Imperial Majesty,’ Maxin allowed. He was not going to tell the Emperor that his own agents had sensed no warning of this, nor caught any Lowlander spies. Let us hope the Emperor asks no questions about this, he thought. Today was not the greatest day for the Rekef and, whoever had failed in this, Maxin was the man standing here with the Emperor in the pre-dawn darkness.
The word received had been that urgent: Major Berdic had been emphatic and his messenger insistent. The sight of the Fly-kinden man marching into the palace, in order to rouse the Emperor and the master of the Rekef, would stay with Maxin for some time. The man’s face had exhibited blank fear, but he had witnessed the plight of Szar and he knew his duty. Maxin had been forced to commend him for it.