“Yes,” Cage said, his voice flat.
“How do you know all this?” Smith asked.
“The Butcher may not take prisoners, but we did. We have some of his officers in custody. Many of his forces serve him under duress. He has their families and children held hostage, promising to kill them should they desert … or fail.”
Smith frowned, glanced at Mary, and then stared at the speaker with Cage’s voice. “What about Ancora and Dauschen? The other towns they have captured?”
“You haven’t heard?” Cage asked. “They’re putting their prisoners to death, declaring them traitors and spies and warmongers. They executed ten kids in Ancora this week.” Cage’s voice rose and sparked with rage, fracturing his calm demeanor. “Not more than ten years old. Ten-year-old spies?”
The Skysworn lurched to the side, slamming Smith into the wall as another volley of cannon fire streaked past the bow.
“Message received,” Smith said as he rubbed his forehead. “We are heading to Dauschen.”
George’s voice came back over the speaker. “The resistance is willing to invade Ancora, my friend. They will march on the Butcher with us. We will need your help to succeed.”
Smith looked down at Mary. She glanced up at him and nodded.
He clicked the transmitter and said, “You will have it.”
“T
hey’re breaking formation!”
Jacob watched two of the destroyers as the slow-moving airships drifted apart.
“The first one’s back,” Alice said, pointing off the stern, toward the starboard side.
The overwhelming sense of hope he’d felt when they’d damaged that destroyer left him. Seeing the monstrosity closing in on them—even from a distance, with that smoking crater in the top of the gas chambers—was disheartening at best.
“We knew we couldn’t bring them down,” Alice said. “We were only trying to damage what we could. Keep firing!”
She was right, of course, and he knew it. Jacob slid another Firebomb into his cannon, aimed, and fired. He cursed when the arc curved more than he expected, threatening to send it off into the void, but it caught the very front of the ship, shooting a cloud of fire and soot out all along the bow.
Alice’s next shot followed Jacob’s down and blew a hole into the structure by the largest cannon. The cannon had been moving in a steady arc, but now it stopped dead, the gun no longer tracking them.
Jacob reached out and squeezed her arm. “I don’t know if we broke the mechanism or killed the gunners, but that’s where we need to aim!” He pulled the slide back until the now-familiar ka-chunk sounded in the screaming wind. The sharp stench of burning rubber and superheated metal wafted up with the gusts.
The Skysworn dipped down until it flew nearly parallel with the destroyer. Small guns fired from the gaping, smoky ruin of the pilot’s cabin. Jacob grabbed Alice and pulled her to the deck as bullets pinged and ricocheted off the metal around them.
“What the hell is Mary doing!” Alice screamed. She wrapped her arms around Jacob and buried her head in his neck. Something else came to life, like the buzz of a swarm of Dragonwings. The high-pitched whine of bullets ricocheting off steel and brass continued, but now it was farther away.
Jacob and Alice scooted up beside the solid railing and barely poked their eyes over it. Jacob stared at the carnage as some invisible force cut through the men and women in the pilot’s cabin. Holes appeared in the destroyer’s glass, and the wooden floors, and the people, before Jacob realized what was happening.
“Someone’s on the chaingun!”
Alice pointed up. Jacob followed her gaze and cursed. One of the destroyers had risen above them and was swinging its lower cannons into position. They must not have been the only ones who noticed, because the Skysworn dove and slowed, drifting beneath the damaged destroyer.
“Mary’s going to do something crazy, isn’t she?” Alice asked.
“Probably,” Jacob said as he opened his arms. Alice wrapped herself around him and the railing an instant before the Skysworn zipped to one side, rocking the deck enough to send the bombs sliding away. Alice caught them with her foot, and then the deck angled back toward the stern as Mary punched the Skysworn into the clouds again.
The Skysworn shook as she leveled out and her cannons began firing again. Alice scrambled up to the railing and aimed her own cannon. Jacob prepped another Firebomb and slid it into the launcher. Alice fired.
Jacob squinted, trying to follow the path of the bomb, but it vanished by the smokestacks. His eyes snapped to Alice’s. “Did that just hit what I think it hit?”
She smiled.
The explosion below sent arcs of shrapnel out like the wilting branches of an ironwood tree.
Alice shouted and whooped as the destroyer’s gas chambers began collapsing, sending the warship into a limping spiral. The Skysworn pulled away, up into the cloud bank, as another destroyer opened fire. A hatch slammed against the wooden deck behind them and Samuel’s head popped up.
“Nice shot, kid!”
“It was me,” Alice said with a mad grin.
“Keep it up! The Porcupines are on the horizon. As soon as they engage the destroyers, Mary is taking us out of here. Be sure your safety lines are tight, because it’s going to be rough. We’re going to drop out of the clouds on the other side of the destroyers and sweep across the formation. Be ready with the bombs.”
Samuel gave Jacob and Alice a two-fingered salute before he vanished below decks again.
Alice glanced up as she prepped another bomb. “How much time do you think we’ll have to fire on each ship?”
“Not much, I’d guess. We need to reload faster. Let’s open the bombs up so they’re ready to go.” Jacob cracked the last layer of bombs open so they were ready to receive a Burner or a Banger. Then they’d only have to close the top, latch it, and fire it. It wasn’t much, but every second counted.
Jacob felt like his stomach had crawled up into his throat when the Skysworn dove out of the clouds. He clicked a Banger, locked it into a bomb, and took aim. There was a calamity off the starboard side, like two mountains colliding. The sound was awful, like the collapse of the cliffside base in Dauschen.
“Oh gods,” Alice said.
Jacob fired. He didn’t want to get caught with a live bomb in the breach, though he supposed he wouldn’t have to worry about it for long if one of the things went off. Once the bomb was on its way, he followed Alice’s gaze.
He blinked, trying to understand what the tower of smoke and fire floating in the air was. Two of the destroyers were nose-down, falling out of the sky. He couldn’t understand how it had happened until he saw the blown-out smokestack in a brief clearance of fire and chaos. The wounded destroyer had crashed into another, and they were both going down.
Alice snatched up another bomb, locked it, and fired. Jacob did the same as Mary strafed the Skysworn across the loosely formed line of destroyers. It took almost two full minutes before they ran out of the bombs in the crate. The cannons still fired from below decks, but they weren’t able to do much more than cause small leaks in the gas chambers.
There was a distant, thunderous boom. Jacob watched in awe as a series of fiery streaks lanced through the falling destroyers. The ships detonated. There was no other word for it. Whatever those lights had breached brought a fireball to life that could have swallowed a city. A charred rain of death sprayed out below, peppering the desert floor.
“Hold on!” Alice said as she threw her cannon to the deck and hunkered down against the railing.
Jacob did the same, and not a moment too soon. Mary punched the thrusters, and the Skysworn screamed to life, leaving behind two downed destroyers and a field of damaged warships.
The wind was beyond loud. Jacob and Alice held their hands over their ears while the sky screamed at them, smashing them into the railing. When the thrusters cut out, Jacob and Alice both rolled forward until their safety lines caught and wrenched them backwards by their vests.
The empty bomb crate spun toward Jacob’s head, and he threw his hand out to stop it. The wood cracked against his palm and splinters cut through his flesh. Alice caught both their cannons before they slid past.
Jacob scrambled back to the railing and looked out. The Porcupines loomed nearby, casting long shadows and shaking the skies with their cannon fire. Ballern’s fleet scattered, but not without purpose. They stayed in pairs, two going low and two going high. Each Porcupine would be faced with four destroyers until Warship Two caught up. At least it wasn’t five.
“Let’s get back to the cabin!” Alice shouted over the skull-rattling cannon fire.
Jacob nodded, retracted his foot plates, and scooped up the empty crate. Alice grabbed the cannons when an explosion off the starboard side rocked the Skysworn. Jacob stumbled but kept his feet. They followed the safety lines along the edge of the ship as far as they could. Ten feet from the cabin, Jacob unhooked the safety lines and they ran for the hatch.
Alice leaned on the lever and fell through the doorway.
“Get inside!” Mary screamed.
Jacob helped pull Alice in. She slammed the hatch behind them and tossed the cannons into the cabinet behind the jump seats. Jacob shoved the crate onto a shelf with a barred restraint, and then grabbed a seat beside Alice.
“The destroyers have a weakness at the base of the portside cannons,” Alice said.
“By the observation deck,” Jacob said.
“Good to know,” Mary said. “I’ll pass it on. Harness, now! Gunners, Smith, we’re making the jump.”
“Ready!” Drakkar and Smith shouted across the tinny horn, their voices distorted by a horrible whistling bleat.
Samuel didn’t answer.
Jacob’s eyes flicked from Mary to the horns, and over to Alice. “Samuel?”
Mary glanced back at Jacob. He clicked his harness into place after Alice, and Mary slammed the floor lever to the side and forward. The Skysworn’s thrusters fired, and the turbines screamed, slamming them into their seats.
“It is holding,” Smith said. “The patch is good.”
“Get to Samuel,” Mary said, her voice quiet. “Just … just get to Samuel.”
“On my way.”
“What happened?” Jacob asked. He wanted to help, but he didn’t even know what was wrong. “What happened to Samuel?”
“We got clipped by one of the destroyers. Samuel’s pod was damaged by small arms fire and partially blown out.”
“It hit him?” Alice said, her voice rising as her hand almost crushed Jacob’s.
“No,” Mary said. “It was just close enough to do damage.”
“Mary,” Smith said. “I am in the second gun pod. He is alive, but not unharmed.”
“How bad?”
“I am not sure. There is a wound on the head, and he is not responsive. I will get him bandaged and then I will know more.”
“How can I help?” Drakkar’s voice was faint over the horn, made even harder to hear by the rushing wind. He must have left his own gun pod to help Smith with Samuel.
“Grab his feet. I need to get him to the workshop. Mary, we are sealing the horn and the pod. Give us one minute, and you can increase altitude as needed.”
“Understood,” Mary said.
The whistling cut off when something clanged across the horn.
Mary glanced back. “We have word from Dauschen. I’ll explain on the way.”
Charles was gone. Jacob stared at the floor. Charles was gone. They couldn’t lose Samuel. They couldn’t. He ground his teeth and remembered who was truly at fault.
The Butcher. None of this would have happened if it weren’t for the Butcher. His parents would still have their home in the Lowlands. Dauschen would be thriving and the worst thing he’d have to fear would be getting caught pickpocketing … and Charles would still be alive.
Jacob’s hands curled into fists and his arms shook. Tears pricked at his eyes while rage churned in his gut. It was a bizarre feeling, those simultaneous, opposing emotions. Charles had once told him the biggest trick in war was keeping people motivated. If Jacob had any more motivation, he’d explode. It was time to return to Ancora and unleash that motivation on the Butcher.
G
ladys stared at
Cage across the fire in the pit at the center of the canvas tent. Cage didn’t have much of an army assembled, but it was better than nothing. Among the citizens of Dauschen were descendants of Midstream; Steamsworn and tinkers and brawlers. If what Cage said was true, they’d need every last man and woman, for all of their worst fears had already come to pass.
Gladys glanced at George, and then back to Cage. “It can’t be that bad.”
Cage nodded once. “I’m afraid it is. The Butcher all but owns Parliament. They’re loyal to Fel. And Fel has allied itself with Ballern.”
George tapped the hilt of his sword on the stone floor. “They mean to wipe out the Northlands, or enslave them.”
“I think their goals are broader,” Cage said. “It seems more likely they’re after the entire continent.”
“What would they gain by coming here?”
“We don’t know much of the lands across the sea, only that Ballern has attacked Belldorn with relative consistency.”
George blew out a breath and leaned back in a rickety old chair.
Gladys watched the two men casually discuss the rise and fall of what was essentially an empire. How did they stand against that? One warship, the Skysworn, and one broken detachment of soldiers? That was not what won wars.
The legend of Gareth Cave, the saga of the Butcher, what else could that monster bring about in their world? What else could they do but try?
“He has been stopped before, by politicians and farmers,” George said. “No negotiations will stop that madman now.”
Gladys knew how they handled mad beasts in Midstream. They slaughtered them. She looked up at George. “We cut off the head.”
A slow grin spread across his face. “It will not be a safe journey, Princess. We will lose the lives of our allies and our friends, and in the end we may yet fail.”
The story of Charles’s final, fatal act of defiance came screaming back into Gladys’s mind. Alice slaying a warlord, Smith cutting down half a dozen men with a chaingun, Drakkar forgiving the old tinker for the slaughter at Midstream. Those were her friends now too. She’d prove the blood of Midstream still ran strong.