Bork appeared almost impressed. “If you are telling the truth, perhaps all will shine as a result of this plan. If you are lying, then I will have admitted a grave threat into the heart of the empire.”
“Lieutenant Commander Bork, have you ever heard of a Chinese warship commanded by an Englishwoman? Or indeed, any warship, anywhere, commanded by a woman? Spin whatever wild tales you will about me, but rest assured that I am not the mistress of some one-ship attack force from halfway around the Northern Earth bent on domination of the high seas.”
“She has a point, sir,” the laughing officer said from behind Bork’s shoulder. He seemed in full command of himself now. “There might be truth and truth, but this doesn’t stand or fall on an act of war.”
“You’ll be the Cairo squadron commander’s problem if I let you through,” Bork grumbled. “Passevoy always was half a fool, and I know which half. And I’m almost ready to believe you. You’ve a colonial accent, and a wretched Scotsman besides, for proof.” He turned back to the man who’d just spoken. “Lieutenant Ericks, you will remain here as observer. Take one of the men from the launch to watch over the torpedo bay of this benighted ship.”
Childress’ heart leapt until the officer’s next words. “In the meantime, I’ll take your man al-Wazir off for consultations. He’s such a highly placed fellow, I’m sure he won’t mind tea with my captain.” Bork’s eyes bored into hers. “You shan’t miss a one-handed petty officer, I can’t think.”
She opened her mouth, and closed it. Think, Childress told herself, and quickly. She’d already taken too long, lost the air of habitual assurance that she had so carefully cultivated.
“I shall require his services once we reach Port Said.”
“I am certain Captain Yalow will not mind a little trip up the canal on escort.” Now Bork was grinning. “This man is under oath to the Crown. We’ll hold a hearing, work through the details of his service to Admiralty behind closed doors. Chief, you will come to me.”
Childress could feel al-Wazir’s eyes boring into her shoulder. Leung’s gaze would be heavy and angry from above. What could she do but say yes? Any other answer doomed the ship.
“Chief al-Wazir, I shall expect you in Port Said,” she said crisply.
Lieutenant Commander Bork returned to his launch with a satisfied smirk, now that the exchange of hostages had been negotiated. Lieutenant Ericks approached Childress. “I’ll have Seaman Spradley with me, madam. Sir. Ma’am.” He seemed briefly lost in the honorifics.
“Mr. Leung will show you to your duty stations,” she said absently. Her stare was fixed on the wild red hair of the man even now being taken away. What had she just sold him into? How would he resolve the divide between loyalty to his oath and the very informal but real alliance formed here aboard the submarine?
One wrong answer from al-Wazir and Bork would have Five Lucky Winds at the bottom without a trace.
She sighed, and turned to face the wrath of the submarine’s real captain.
KITCHENS
Battle was joined in a rattle of rifle fire and the bark of the stern chasers. Obsolete weapons anywhere but in the air, he knew. Old habits died hard up here, and a good, solid bit of shelled shot was just the ticket for the predominantly wooden airships of both empires.
For these damnable winged savages, a Maxim gun would have been far more to the point, but they were quite difficult to keep cooled in aerial applications.
He crouched next to Tremblay, the old sailor at the helm, aware that at any moment the Chinese airships with their battle lanterns hung out could open up with their weapons. Two, both comparable to Notus’ class. Barring a miracle, Erinyes was done for, even without the killer angels.
McCurdy’s successor chivvied his men urgently, lining them up on the rail in firing parties while simultaneously shouting belowdecks. Boaz walked among them, giving orders.
The winged savages made several bloodless passes, just for the sake of terror, Kitchens realized. They certainly had that effect on him. A few lines parted at the flick of a blade, while the beat of their wings could be heard even over the drone of Erinyes’ engines.
Altitude. She was smaller and lighter than her pursuers. He had no illusions about this little airship outflying the savages, but perhaps the Chinese threat could be reduced. Kitchens studied the telegraph, then rang for nose-up, dump all ballast.
She lurched with a thunderous whoosh as the tanks along the keel were opened. The deck jumped, the masts and stays groaning violently. Many of the defenders were thrown down with violent shouts. Kitchens only kept his feet by clinging to the telegraph’s brass capstan.
“Usually they whistles that one around first,” the helmsman groused.
“Keep us up and circling away from the Chinese,” Kitchens snapped. “There’s no time for niceties.”
The sudden maneuver had done nothing to discourage the winged savages, but the airship was now visibly higher than the Chinese pursuers. The two airships were like dragons cruising the moonlit night, lazing after the desperate swallow that was Erinyes.
They’d circled far enough into their climb that the starboard battery could fire on the enemy. A ragged cheer went up from that rail, though Kitchens could not see what they celebrated—no sparks fountained, no flames erupted, and neither of the pursuing vessels staggered in their courses.
Then the winged savages came aboard in earnest.
Boaz was everywhere on the deck at once, laying to with a boathook. Sailors in their panic fired indiscriminately, both over the rail and across the deck to the mortal danger of their fellows. A dozen of the attackers pushed from the fore. Kitchens realized that he was unarmed, at least for this sort of work. If they’d come over the aft rail he’d already be dead.
He grabbed up a loose carbine with a fixed bayonet, dropped by whomever had also bled copiously on the oaken boards. Kitchens retreated back to the wheel only to discover Tremblay missing his head and one arm, while the helm spun free.
He grabbed at it once, twice, his blood-slicked hand stinging from the impact, before taking control.
Oh, Lord, heed a longtime apostate and show me Your mercy now. Kitchens brought the wheel back closer to true, to avoid bogging into a turn so tight Erinyes would waste all her momentum. He had no way to read the wind, no means to track the sky, so he steered away from the Wall. One way or the other they would all be dead soon.
Then the Chinese began to fire upon them. The dragons were gaining on the swallow, while killer angels bled her dry.
He willed them to more speed, to more altitude, wondering if airships slain in battle flew to a cloudless heaven of their own.
FIFTEEN
Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air. —I Thessalonians 4:17
BOAZ
When the airship jumped up, his boathook swung wildly and tore into a sailor’s jacket. Another three inches and he would have killed the man.
::we will make a fort of the clouds and slay even the rain with our spears of lightning::
Many fell cursing. Winged savages were over the rail in force now. They were stupidly fearless. They were also tough enough to take a bullet in the chest and continue their attack, where any monkey man would have either decently expired or at least moaned out his pain.
A seven-foot length of ironshod oak, on the other hand, these flying horrors definitely respected.
::so he shewed them their own lights upon a stick, and their ambassador agreed that another path should be found::
Shove.
Crack.
Tear.
Smash.
Yank.
Battle was full of short, sharp words, often repeated, never resolved, one death after another until eventually everyone fell.
He’d slain his own brothers, other selves of his self, defending Ottweill’s stockade, and now he’d slay the armies of Ophir to fight for another few minutes of life before Chinese shot claimed them
all.
A winged savaged loomed large, mouth bloody with someone’s scalp. Boaz fed it the iron end of the hook for a chaser; then his implement jammed on a prominence of the jaw. The Brass cursed, pushed forward, and shoved both the flier and his own weapon overboard together. He turned swiftly to see what other wild-eyed madness was afoot.
::then the Lord sent an angel with an inkhorn, and seven more of His host with swords of jet and chalcedony::
“Get out of my head!” Boaz shouted as he slapped away a bronze sword in midswing.
The fight was tumbling rough. The winged savages were not going directly for the kill, but rather worrying at their prey. That the Chinese continued their pursuit was only a bitter lagniappe.
Boaz experienced a moment’s respite as the attackers swirled away to regain their momentum. Erinyes’ pitifully small complement of cannon spoke from the ship’s waist, but they were little threat to the flying killers. He looked up at the gasbag and wondered when they would simply start slitting the cells. A few deft slices and a bit of flame would put paid to everyone’s ambition.
::flew he acrost the walls of the Garden with poison in his mouth::
“I don’t have any poison.” The Brass man braced himself for the next wave of screaming flesh and flashing eyes and bloody blades. They were all too happy to oblige.
Sometime later—minutes or hours, he could not say—quiet prevailed upon Erinyes. Smoke eddied from belowdecks, but no one seemed alarmed at the prospect of fire, so Boaz reasoned it was from the cannon. The survivors were ragged, bloody, wild-eyed. The airship’s engines shrilled. They ran so hot and hard he feared damage, but Kitchens had held the helm and was pushing them farther away from both the Wall and the pursuing Chinese.
::the King sent four men down from the mountains of spring to treat with the devils and their strange boats::
“You are a painful burden, my ancient friend,” he gasped.
It is not so unlike us, said the Paolina–al-Wazir voice inside him, audible now that the noise of battle had died.
With that thought, a round of Chinese cannonfire battered Erinyes, and they were back at war. How long had he rested? Thirty seconds, possibly a minute.
Boaz leapt to the poop in three bounds to stare aft, where the larger airships were gaining.
All people hear the voices in their heads. They just understand them as thoughts.
::the Lord is in all our thoughts, and His deeds cannot be disavowed::
“ ’Tis the hydrogen,” gasped the surviving petty officer, joining Boaz, Kitchens and the helmsman. It was the first time he’d spoken to Kitchens. Two other sailors readied the stern chasers—a pair of almost comically tiny breech-loading cannon. “We have lost too much, and the tension is out of the bag. We lift slowly, and we wallow.”
“What can be cut loose?” Boaz asked.
::all may be cast aside when the Holy Fire comes, save that the Temple itself be ringed by twice ten men blessed with wine and oil::
Kitchens shouted for rifles aft as a rocket blazed from their pursuers and churned through the air. Everyone on the poop watched in fascination. The missile passed just beneath the hull.
“A little higher and we’d have been a ball of flame,” the sullen petty officer said. “We are done for.”
“Your name, man!” the clerk demanded.
“Martins, sir.” He was breathing hard.
“This is your ship, Mr. Martins. I have just been minding it for you. I know nothing of aerial tactics.” Kitchens’ voice dropped to a growl. “What do we do?”
“Savages ho,” shouted a tired sailor, and they were back at the fight without any response to Kitchens’ question.
What we do, Boaz thought, is what all life does. We struggle until we die.
::death is but a hallway in the house of God::
That had been one of the Seal’s more sensible observations.
They fought more. Night, moonlight, blood black as oil on the wooden deck, the Chinese ships following with the patience of sharks. Their battle lanterns were an uncertain constellation, always in the corner of Boaz’ eye, always reminding him of where the Wall lay.
He fought. He killed. Men dropped around him from the blows of crude bronze swords, from the swipes of claws and teeth, from sheer fatigue.
They were losing. Kitchens continued to shout from the poop, screaming orders, curses, random nonsense. A sailor who had taken a clawed kick to the gut leaned against the mainmast trying to keep something long and damp clutched within his body.
Boaz was once more very glad he could not smell.
He would die with Erinyes. They were much too far above the ground for him to survive the fall, as he had done so long ago when traveling with al-Wazir. “Chief, I have failed you,” Boaz whispered. “You as well, Paolina. Most of all.”
There she was. Paolina stared at him in wide-eyed wonder for just a moment before the air beneath her feet claimed her and she fell screaming into the African night. Someone else tumbled with her. A flight of winged savages peeled away to follow them down.
Boaz nearly leapt over the rail to save his lady love, but Kitchens was shouting again about the Chinese and a respite from the deck fighting and there was still more battle to be joined, and still he prepared to dive overboard, hoping to think of something deeply clever to do as he plunged thousands of feet to the jungles below.
WANG
Good Change steamed slowly through the Bab el Mandeb waterway. The Royal Navy apparently were far too excited about their submarine to bother with a motor yacht. That huge British warship shepherded Five Lucky Winds from the Gulf of Aden into the Red Sea, and then north toward Suez. All they could do was trail along.
“You have lost her, I think,” Wu told him. “You will soon lose us. We have no charts beyond the Gulf of Aden.”
“How hard can it be to follow another ship?”
“Not difficult here. If Childress somehow talks them into the Mediterranean, well . . . Do you fancy seeing how well Good Change can slide beneath the waves and pursue them underwater? In any case, without charts of the bars and reefs and rocks, we will soon be done for.”
“I am not interested in returning,” Wang said shortly. He didn’t look forward to the fate in store for him. Being under British guns seemed less terrible.
Where was she bound?
He watched the shore slide by on each side. Rocks tumbled down from the plains of sand that rose to both east and west here. This place was a dry ocean bottom, as if the water had drained away except for the trickle of the Red Sea. A man could lose his soul staring at those expanses of dun and ochre and rippled brown.
Wang realized that much to his surprise he missed Chersonesus Aurea. The green intensity of the island had always seemed overwhelming to him, maniacal even. The endless hooting of the birds, the nodding of the trees, the sweet heaviness of the flowers: It had been so much more like his home of Chiang Hsi than this desert-on-the-ocean ever could be.
The sun was pitiless, like a shovel opening a grave. On the islands there had been shade and fruit and occasionally cool water. When the light in the sky grew too much like a fiery lamp, one could go to ground. Even the flooded library, with its stinking well of lost knowledge, was better than this boat. He could either stay below and bake in a stuffy cabin, or he could remain on deck to be broiled by the sun.
At least up top Wang could keep an eye on his quarry. Five Lucky Winds remained occasionally visible despite the huge ship in the way.
Even stranger, he realized he missed the monk.
“I am going to go sleep,” said Wu, jarring Wang from his reverie. “Nothing will change for several days, at this speed.”
The cataloger scratched at a pool of sweat on his back, beneath the rough white uniform they all now wore. “It is too hot to sleep.”
“Hell is also warm, I hear.”
They sailed on for two days and two nights. Wang ate little, and dozed on deck in the evenings, eschewing even the limited accommod
ations afforded to him. He was far more interested in whatever might be taking place ahead.
Which was nothing, so far as he could see.
They moved in a convoy, six ships in total. Two civilian freighters followed Good Change as they followed the British warship and her submarine charge. A smaller warship led the parade.
Twice British airships overflew, heading toward the war. Once a southbound convoy passed, a series of troop ships and escort vessels carrying what seemed to be thousands of soldiers.
They go to fight my emperor, Wang thought, but he could not summon outrage. Not when he traveled under a false flag. Waiting to be discovered as a spy seemed almost the least of his worries, but at the same time his most likely outcome.
He would find Childress; he would find the words to call her back to the east, to China and the Silent Order. In bringing her along, the net of warfare that had been cast across these oceans would be gathered, too, so that all could return to their rightful pursuits.
CHILDRESS
She walked to the foremost point of the grating, where the hull sloped away. Water rushed past, foaming and busy and gurgling to itself. Oceans by night were very different creatures, she realized. They reflected no burning sun, did not seem to birth storms so readily, and absorbed the effluvia of a million dreams from the cities along their coasts.
Something sharp tugged at her nostrils. Cigarette smoke? Leung allowed no tobacco aboard Five Lucky Winds, any more than he allowed opium or hemp. The fire danger alone was too great.
Childress turned, thinking to see Lao Mu with a cupped flame in his hands—the old man was a great trickster among the crew, she knew. Instead someone stood right behind her, jauntily smoking a small pipe.
“You—,” Childress began in Chinese, then stopped. This was no sailor. A monk, in fact, of the Oriental tradition; in robes of color uncertain by moonlight. Bright, gleaming eyes peered at her from a grinning Asian face, beneath a head shaved bald.