Hoping for a kiss would be too much at this point, and yet…
“Want to rub my dragon?” Ridge asked.
Sardelle blinked. “What?”
He fished the wooden figurine out of his pocket.
“Oh.” She offered a sheepish shrug—that was not where her mind had gone—and stuck her hand out. Enh, why not?
Feeling silly, she rubbed the belly of the wooden dragon and handed it back to Ridge.
“Sir?” the guard asked from the hallway.
“Yes, I’m done.” Ridge pocketed his lucky charm. “Thank you, Private.”
The young man squinted into the cell, assessing Sardelle but not quite meeting her eyes. “You’re brave, sir.”
“Uh huh.” Ridge stepped into the hall.
“Is it going to be all right for me to be out here, sir?” the private whispered. “General Nax said the iron door was supposed to keep her from getting out, but I… I also heard—overheard—him tell someone I was expendable.”
Ridge snorted. “Nax is expendable. You’ll be fine, soldier. Now, shut the door, eh? We wouldn’t want her to escape.”
“Yes, sir. Of course.”
The door thumped shut, and if the men spoke further, Sardelle didn’t hear it. An iron door? They thought that would keep her in here? If they had lined the whole cell in iron, it would have kept her from sensing or communicating with the outside world, but it wouldn’t have done anything to nullify her actual power. Still, Sardelle couldn’t help but feel very alone again when the key thunked in the lock. Ridge had helped her, but she also had a feeling that had been a goodbye as well.
• • • • •
Ridge hadn’t taken more than three steps out of the confinement building when shouts started up on the wall.
“They’re coming again.”
“To the weapons!”
Ridge couldn’t spot the airship in the night sky yet, but he trusted the lookouts. He jogged not to the wall but to the flier perched on its landing legs near the frozen stream, its hull as clean and rust-free as it was going to get. He wasn’t surprised to find Captain Bosmont standing next to a wing, the engine already humming in the back of the craft.
“Ready for that test run, sir?” he asked.
Ridge glanced toward the horizon. “Yes.”
“I figured you might be. Got her as ready as I could while everyone was worrying about our witch.”
Ridge’s jaw tightened at the word witch, but he didn’t correct Bosmont. That didn’t matter now. Getting in the sky and helping the fort did. “Thank you, Captain.”
“If anyone can take that airship down, you can.”
Ridge climbed into the cockpit. “I appreciate your faith.”
“Good. But you should also know, if you wreck this baby I spent so many hours on, I’m going to hunt you down in whatever level of hell they stick you in.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Captain.”
“Oh, and one more thing, sir,” Bosmont said, a grin splitting his broad face. “I made a little something extra for you, to keep you warm up there.”
“Chicken soup?”
“Not exactly.” The engineer winked. “They’re down by your feet.”
No sooner had Ridge slid into the stitched up leather cockpit seat and pulled his harness across his chest when an irritated call came up from below. “Where in all the cursed realms do you think you’re going, Colonel?”
“To stop that airship, General.”
“Were you going to ask for permission first or just do whatever you felt like, as usual?”
Ridge smirked down at the man. “The latter, naturally.”
He fired up the lift thrusters, drowning out Nax’s reply. He was going to be in so much trouble after this was all sorted out that it hardly mattered what he did at this point. Maybe if he took down the Cofah airship, his disrespect—and his dalliance with Sardelle—might be forgotten or at least treated with lenience. And if he failed utterly against the Cofah… the only threat he had to worry about was Bosmont’s.
When the thrusters pushed into the earth, the engineer and general scurrying back, and the flier inched off the ground, Ridge let out a relieved breath. If he hadn’t gotten off the ground, he would have felt idiotic about his insubordination. But the craft responded to his touch, if more sluggishly than he would have preferred. The crystal in the back glowed, illuminating his control panel. At least that was at full power. A ceiling light. The ridiculousness of it all almost made him throw his head back and laugh.
Later. The Cofah ship was visible now, not hovering above the distant peaks, but sailing straight toward the fort.
Ridge hit the switch that lowered a cover over the crystal, and the light disappeared. No need to make it obvious to the enemy that he was coming. His hands knew the controls well; he didn’t need to see to fly this craft.
As it rose above the fort walls, wind whipped through his short hair, and the chill air burned his ears. Usually he would have a leather cap and goggles, but he hadn’t been expecting to fly out here. All of his piloting gear was back in his locker on base. Tonight, he would have to make do without. One way or another, he doubted he would be in the sky long.
Once he had enough altitude, Ridge nudged the controls, taking the flier toward a rocky ridge the airship was paralleling. Maybe he could sneak behind her that way—the dark metal hull blending in with the bare slope—and attack from behind while the Cofah were focused on the cannons and rocket launchers in the fort. The soft clink-thunks of the engine shouldn’t be audible over the wind and the airship’s own machinery. He hoped.
Ridge took the flier to a higher altitude than the airship, though he was careful to keep the rocks behind him, and not the snow. He would stand out like a beacon against a white backdrop. Higher was often better, though, especially with airship captains who rarely took their slow-moving craft into battles. When they did, they were often used to looking down to drop bombs, not up to fend off attacks.
The men on the deck were visible as Ridge passed by, bundled so heavily against the icy wind that they seemed to waddle from place to place. The number of people manning the cannons disturbed him. Not only that, but the sheer number of cannons. He supposed he should have expected that, based on the damage the craft had done to the fort during its last attack. Clearly this particular airship had been created for war, maybe even specifically for this mission: to destroy the only source of the Iskandian dragon flier power supplies.
Ridge was tempted to bank and veer in, tilting his wings as he flew by so he could strafe the deck with his bullets. They were preparing something to one side, a smaller balloon and a big basket. An escape craft? Something for launching bombs? Or maybe for delivering troops. He almost attacked it, but he wanted to go for a more important target on his first run. He could only surprise them once.
The flier passed the airship, and, staying above them, keeping the stars at his back, he glided through a turn. He grimaced at the pull in the controls, the jerky way the craft responded. Tonight’s run might be all she had in her. He could only hope it was enough.
He leveled the craft and headed toward the back of the airship. If this one was true to other Cofah designs, the engines would be in the rear, hidden below decks and behind those wooden planks, planks that might be reinforced with metal. The airships might look a lot like the Cofah sailing ships that plundered the seas, but they were more advanced, usually with superior defenses. His guns could still do damage though. And he could always target the balloon, though it would take a lot of holes to let out enough gas to bring it down.
With the lights of the fort visible between the deck and the balloon, Ridge struck. He squeezed a trigger, and guns blasted, punching holes into the rear of the ship. Shouts arose on deck, just audible over the wind. Men raced for cannons at the back of the deck.
Tears burned his eyes, streaking back into his hair, and Ridge again lamented his missing goggles, but he didn’t falter in his mission. He kept firing until th
ose men were close to targeting him, then he pulled the nose up, hurling a few rounds into the balloon before rising above it. He slowed his speed as much as he could, putting that balloon between him and the deck so he would seem to disappear to those below. The flier would drop out of the sky if it tried to pace the airship, so he made tight circles above it. He couldn’t see the Cofah any more than they could see him, but he hoped he had them consternated—and distracted.
A boom came from the fort, the first cannon firing from the walls. The ball sailed by a few meters to the side of the airship, but another cannon blasted on the heels of the first. Those on the airship deck should be busy now. Time for Ridge to do some more damage.
He guided the flier away from the balloon, rising again so it would be difficult for them to see, then swooping around to target the airship from the rear once more. That was the intent anyway. Something streaked out of the darkness, arrowing right at him.
A cannonball, that was his first thought, but that would have moved too quickly to see, and this was bigger anyway. Much bigger.
Ridge banked hard, his left wing tipping toward the sky. The object—no, the creature—blurred past him, missing by inches. Far more agile than he, it turned back toward the flier before he realized what he was dealing with. If he hadn’t seen it before, he would have been mystified, but this wasn’t the owl’s first appearance.
Ridge swooped left and right, trying to make a difficult target for the creature, even as he distanced himself from the airship. He didn’t want to be visible to their cannons while the owl distracted them. It screeched, raising all the hair on his body. Not only was the unearthly cry eerie… it was close. He glanced back, searching for it against the snowy peaks and the stars, but it was playing the same game he had with the airship. Only better. How could a mechanical contraption rival the grace of nature? Granted, some sorcerer had perverted the creature, but it still had all the agility of a bird of prey.
Something slammed into the top of the flier. Metal screeched in Ridge’s ear. He shrank low in his seat, though he kept his hands on the controls. He twisted his neck and glimpsed spread wings and beady yellow eyes—the cursed thing had its talons locked around a bar on the frame. It wasn’t more than three feet from Ridge. The cockpit was partially enclosed, but not fully. A giant owl could slip its talons in and slash his neck.
“So attack it first, eh?”
Easier said than done. Ridge banked hard, shaking the creature free. Then he accelerated, flying over the fort. He wasn’t sure it was the best direction—with that idiot Nax in charge, Ridge might very well get shot down by his own people—but it was the only way that offered room to accelerate without having to climb over a mountain.
He pushed the engines to maximum power, hoping the owl couldn’t match the speed. In a dive, a bird could drop as quickly as his flier, but surely wings couldn’t flap as quickly as propellers rotated. He twisted his neck again, looking behind him. His own personal flier back home had mirrors, but he hadn’t thought to install them here. Silly of him not to anticipate attacks by giant birds.
The owl was trailing him, its massive wings flapping, but falling behind. Ridge thought about trying to pull up right before he hit the side of the mountain ahead—hoping it would be so intent on chasing him that it smashed into the rocks—but he reminded himself that this wasn’t another pilot-flown machine, this was a bird, something far more agile than his flier. Especially this flier.
Instead, when he had pulled ahead as much as he could without running into a mountain, he banked hard, turning back toward the owl. He lined up that dark silhouette, which was easier to see with the lights of the fort as a backdrop, and pounded ammunition into it. He remembered that their bullets hadn’t done much in that canyon, but the flier’s big guns had more power. He hoped it was enough.
Ridge hit it. Many times. But the owl kept coming. It flew straight at him.
With visions of it tangling in his propeller, he swerved at the last moment. The creature clipped his wing, and the flier shimmied like a top spinning on an old cobblestone drive. The nose of the craft dipped, and the rocks and snow of the hillside below filled Ridge’s vision. He forced himself to keep a loose grip on the controls, though his instincts cried for him to yank on them, to pull the flier up before he crashed. Instead he waited for the wings to find equilibrium again, then eased the nose up. He swooped so low to the ground that snow sprayed in his wake, but he started climbing once more. An intermittent kerchunk-clink joined the engine’s regular noise.
“A little longer,” he murmured to it. “Hold out a little longer.”
He searched all around for the owl, hoping he had injured it enough that it couldn’t continue to fly, but not daring to believe that was the case. Nothing streaked out of the sky at him. Maybe, just maybe, luck had favored him.
Before he could think to celebrate, he spotted the Cofah hovering directly over the fort. Cannonballs blasted upward at the wooden hull, but impossibly they bounced off. The sky burned beneath the airship, lit up like an inferno as it spat a hailstorm of flames down onto the courtyard and walls.
“What the—” Ridge shook his head. Whatever weapon that was, he couldn’t identify it. All he knew was that his people were in trouble.
Chapter 14
Sardelle crept down the hallway toward the front door of the prison building. She had left the young guard slumped on the floor outside her cell, snoozing in a deep slumber. It would take a cannon going off in his ear to wake him. Making him drowsy had taken time, but it had been a better alternative than giving him a rash.
Missing Jaxi’s usual commentary on the subject, Sardelle cracked open the door to peer into the courtyard. It was surprisingly empty.
A cannon boomed from atop the wall, and she had her answer as to why. The fort was under attack.
Usually, she wouldn’t root for that, but it gave her the opportunity she needed. She didn’t have to throw illusions around or camouflage herself to trot unnoticed to the headquarters building. She did falter for a moment when she realized the dragon flier wasn’t perched near the creek as it had been for days. A hasty sweep of the fort revealed that Ridge wasn’t around either. The buzz of a flier’s propellers drifted on the breeze, and she spotted the craft near the mountains south of the fort, a dark shadow against the snowy peaks. At first, she couldn’t guess why he was there when the airship was floating in from the north. Then she spotted a second shadow. That shaman’s overgrown owl.
Sardelle chomped on her lip, torn between going for her sword and trying to help Ridge from there. Seeing a soldier jogging down the stairs from the wall and turning in her direction made up her mind. He was heading toward the armory, but he would see her if she didn’t duck inside. She pushed through the door, vowing to return shortly. With Jaxi’s help, she would be able to do more damage, maybe even stop that shaman, not just his pet. She prayed Ridge could survive against the owl for a few minutes on his own.
Sardelle jogged straight up to Ridge’s—now the general’s—office without seeing anyone. It was so easy that she paused with her hand on the knob, half suspecting a trap. No, she didn’t believe Ridge would do that to her. It was more that she worried she would open the door and find Jaxi had been moved. What if the general, knowing the soulblade’s value, had taken it with him when he ran out to command the fort defense?
“Look first before worrying,” Sardelle grumbled, and tried to turn the knob. It was locked. Well, someone must have had her in mind.
An explosion sounded. It hadn’t come from the cannons on the wall but from somewhere above, and she sensed the approach of dozens of people—and one shaman. He wasn’t talking to her this time. Maybe he was up to something more important. Like planning how to raze the fortress, destroy her, and take Jaxi.
“Not happening.”
Another boom rang out. The floor quaked beneath her feet, and for a moment, she clutched her chest, remembering the disaster in the tunnels below. Something clanked to the floor
on the other side of the door. The sword case? That brought her back to the moment, filled her with urgency.
Sardelle’s first thought had been to carefully disable the lock, but with the Cofah floating ever closer, she simply blasted the hinges off the door. Let the general scratch his head over that later.
The office hadn’t changed much, and she spotted the out-of-place iron box on top of a bookcase right away. Several books and a filing cabinet drawer had been dumped to the floor from the quakes, but the long box remained in place. When she climbed on the desk to reach it, it reminded her of the day she had walked in on Ridge cleaning, and another twinge of worry for him ran through her. She tugged the box down, hardly caring that it was too heavy for her. She let it clank to the floor, jumped down, and tried to tug it open. Of course it was locked. She hissed in frustration at all the delays and tore off another set of hinges. The general wouldn’t know if a sorceress or a tornado had swept into his office.
Sardelle yanked open the lid on the box.
It’s about time.
She sank to her knees on the floor in relief. After three hundred years of being trapped, that half hour shouldn’t have fazed you.
It was well over an hour, thank you.
There was a piece of paper tied around the blade. Sardelle yanked it free, opened it, and found an address. She snorted. Nax had the blade all ready to ship off to some military research facility, did he?
Cannons boomed outside the window. Reminded that Ridge and the rest of the fort were in trouble, Sardelle stuffed the paper in her pocket, grabbed the soulblade, and raced back into the hallway. At the bottom of the stairs, she thrust open the front door and almost ran into a rain of fire.
The air sizzled with heat—and magic. Screams of pain erupted on the ramparts.
“Cover,” someone cried, “find cover!”
“Stay where you are, soldier!” That was General Nax. Bastard.