The White Rose

Chapter Forty-One: A TOWN CALLED HORSE

Fourteen days passed before we took air for Horse, a modest town lying between the Windy Country and the Plain of Fear, about a hundred miles west of the latter. Horse is a caravan stage for those traders mad enough to traipse through those two wildernesses. Of late, the city has been the logistical headquarters for Whisper's operations. What skeleton forces were not on the road to the Barrowland were in garrison there.

Damned northbound fools were going to get wet.

We drifted in after an eventless passage, me with eyes agog. Despite the removal of vast armies, Whisper's base was an anthive swirling around newly created carpets.

They came in a dozen varieties. In one field I saw a W formation of five monsters, each a hundred yards long and forty wide. A wood and metal jungle topped each. Elsewhere, other carpets in unusual shapes sat upon ground that looked to have been graded. Most were far longer than they were wide and bigger than the traditional. All had a variety of appurtenances, and all were enveloped in a light copper cage.

"What is all that?" I asked.

"Adaptation to enemy tactics. Your peasant girl isn't the only one who can change methods." She stepped down, stretched. I did the same. Those hours in the air leave you stiff. "We may get the chance to test them, despite my having backed off the Plain."

"What?"

"A large Rebel force is headed for Horse. Several thousand men and everything the desert has to offer."

Several thousand men? Where did they come from? Had things changed that much?

"They have." That damned mind-reading trick again. "The cities I abandoned poured men into her forces."

"What did you mean, test?"

"I'm willing to stop fighting. But I won't run away from a fight. If she persists in heading west, I'll show her that, null or no null, she can be crushed."

We were near one of the new carpets. I ambled over. In shape it was like a boat, about fifty feet long. It had real seats. Two faced forward, one aft. In front there was a small ballista. Aft there was a much heavier engine. Clamped to the carpet's sides and underbelly were eight spears thirty feet long. Each had a bulge the size of a nail keg five feet behind its head. Everything was painted blacker than the Dominator's heart. This boat-carpet had fins like a fish. Some humorist had painted eyes and teeth up front.

Others nearby followed similar designs, though different artisans had followed different muses in Grafting the flying boats. One, instead of fish fins, had what looked like round, translucent, whisper thin dried seed pods fifteen feet across.

The Lady had no time to let me inspect her equipment and no inclination to let me wander around unchaperoned. Not as a matter of trust, but of protection. I might suffer a fatal accident if I did not stay in her shadow. All the Taken were in Horse. Even my oldest friends.

Bold, bold Darling. Audacity. Becoming her signature, that. She had the entire strength of the Plain just twenty miles from Horse, and she was closing in. Her advance was ponderous, though, limited to the speed of the walking trees.

We went out onto the field where the carpets waited, arranged in formal array around the monsters I had spotted first. The Lady said, "I planned a small demonstration raid on your headquarters. But this will be more convincing, I think."

Men were busy around the carpets. The big ones they were loading with huge pieces of pottery which looked like those big urn-planters with the little cup-holes in the upper half for small plants. They were fifteen feet tall; the planter sites were sealed with paraffin, and the bottom boasted a twenty foot pole with a crossbar on its end. Scores were being mounted in racks.

I did a fast count. More carpets than Taken. "All these are going up? How?"

"Benefice will handle the big ones. Like the Howler before him, he has an outstanding capacity for managing a large carpet. The other four bigs will be slaved to his. Come. This one is ours."

I said something intelligent like, "Urk?!"

"I want you to see it."

"We might be recognized."

Taken circled the long, skinny boat-carpets. Soldiers were aboard them, in the second and third seats. The men facing aft checked their ballistae, munitions, cranked a spring-powered device apparently meant to help restretch bowstrings after missiles were discharged. I could see no apparent task assigned the men in the middle seats. "What's the cagework for?"

"You'll learn soon enough."

"But…"

"Come to it fresh. Croaker. Without preconceptions."

I followed her around our carpet. I do not know what she checked, but she seemed satisfied. The men who had prepared it were pleased by her nod.

"Up, Croaker. Into the second seat. Fasten yourself securely. It'll get exciting before it's over."

Oh yeah.

"We're the pathfinders," she said as she buckled into the front seat. A grizzled old sergeant took the rear position. He looked at me doubtfully, but said nothing. The Taken assumed the front seat aboard every carpet. The bigs, as the Lady called them, had crews of four. Benefice rode the carpet at the center point of the W.

"Ready?" the Lady shouted.

"Right."

"Aye," the sergeant said.

Our carpet began to move.

Lumbering is the only word to describe the first few seconds. The carpet was heavy and, till it managed some forward motion, did not want to lift.

The Lady looked back and grinned as the earth dropped away. She was enjoying herself. She began shouting instructions which explained the bewildering bunch of pedals and levers surrounding me.

Push and pull on these two in combination and the carpet began to roll around its long axis. Twist those and it turned right or left. The idea was to use combinations somehow to guide the craft.

"What for?" I shouted into the wind. The words ripped away. We had donned goggles which protected our eyes but did nothing for the rest of our faces. I expected a case of windburn before the game was played out.

We were two thousand feet up, five miles from Horse, well ahead of the Taken. I could see traces of dust raised by Darling's army. Again I shouted, "What for?"

The bottom fell out.

The Lady had extinguished the spells which made the carpet go. "That's why. You'll fly the boat when we hit the null."

What the hell?

She gave me a half dozen shots at getting the hang of it, and I did see the theory, before she whipped toward the Rebel army.

We circled once, at screaming speed, well outside the null. I was astounded at what Darling had put together. About fifty windwhales, including some monsters over a thousand feet long. Manias by the hundred. A vast wedge of walking trees. Battalions of human soldiers. Menhirs by the hundred, flickering around the walking trees, shielding them. Thousands of things that leaped and hopped and glided and flopped and flew. So gruesome and wondrous a sight.

On the westward leg of our circle I spied the imperial force, two thousand men in a phalanx on the foreslope of a ridge a mile ahead of the Rebel. A joke, them standing against Darling.

A few bold mantas cruised the edge of the null, sniping with bolts that fell short or just missed. I judged Darling herself to be aboard a wind whale about a thousand feet up. She had grown stronger, for her null's diameter had expanded since my departure from the Plain. All that bewildering Rebel array marched within its protection.

The Lady had called us pathfinders. Our carpet was not equipped like the others, but I did not know what she meant. Till she did it.

We climbed straight up. Little black balls trailing streamers of red or blue smoke scattered behind us, shoveled overboard hastily by the old sergeant. Must have been three hundred. The smoke balls scattered, hovered just feet short of the null. So. Markers by which the Taken could navigate.

And here they came. Way up, the smaller surrounding the W formation of bigs.

The men on the bigs began releasing the giant pots. Down, down, down went a score. We followed, sliding along outside the smudge pots. As they plummeted, the flowerpots turned pole-downward. Mantas and whales slid out of their way.

When the pole hit ground it drove a plunger. The paraffin seals burst. Liquid squirted. The plunger hit a striker. The fluid ignited. Gouts of fire. And when that fire reached something inside the pots, they exploded. Shards cut down men and monsters.

I watched the blooming of those flowers of fire, aghast.

Above, the Taken wheeled for a second pass. There was no magic in this. The null was useless.

The second fall drew lightning from whales and mantas. Their first few successes cured them, though, for the pots they hit exploded in the air. Mantas went down. One whale was in grave trouble till others maneuvered overhead and sprayed it with ballast water.

The Taken made a third pass, again dropping pots. They would hammer Darling's troops into slime unless she did something.

She went up after the Taken.

The smoke pots slid around the flanks of the null, outlining it completely.

The Lady climbed at shrieking speed.

The W of bigs went away. The smaller carpets took on more altitude. The Lady brought us into position behind Whisper and The Limper. Clearly, she had anticipated Darling's response.

My emotions were mixed, to say the least.

Whisper's carpet tipped its nose downward. Limper followed. Then the Lady. Others of the Taken followed us.

Whisper dove toward one especially monstrous windwhale. Faster and faster she flew. Three hundred yards from the null two thirty-foot spears ripped away from her carpet, impelled by sorcery. When they hit the null they continued on in a normal ballistic trajectory.

Whisper made no effort to avoid the null. Into it she plunged, the man in her second seal guiding the carpel's fall wilh those fish fins.

Whisper's spears struck near the windwhale's head. Both burst into flames.

Fire is anathema to those monsters, for the gas that lifts them is violently explosive.

The Limper trailed Whisper with elan. He loosed two spears outside the null and another two inside, just dropped as his second-seat man took the carpet within inches of the windwhale.

Only one lance failed to strike home.

The whale had five fires burning upon its back.

Storms of lightning crackled round Whisper and Limper.

Then we hit the null. Our buoying spells failed. Panic snatched at me. Up to me?…

We were headed for the burning whale. I jerked and banged and kicked levers.

"Not so violently!" the Lady yelled. "Smoothly. Gently."

I got it in hand as the whale roared upward past us.

Lightning crackled. We passed between two smaller whales. They missed us. The Lady discharged her little ballista. Its bolt struck one of those monsters. What the hell was the point? I wondered. That was not a bee sting to one of them.

But that quarrel had a wire attached, running off a reel…

Wham!

I was blinded momenlarily. My hair crackled. Direct hit from a manta bolt… We're dead, I Thought.

The metal cage surrounding us absorbed the lightning's energy and passed it along the unwinding wire.

A manta was on our tail, only yards behind. The sergeant ripped off a shaft. It look our pursuer under The wing. The beast began to slide and flutter like a one-winged butterfly.

"Watch where we're going!" the Lady yelled. I turned around. A windwhale back rushed toward us. Fledgling mantas scurried in panic. Rebel bowmen threw up a barrage of arrows.

I hit and yanked every damned lever and pedal, and pissed my pants. Maybe that did it. We scraped the thing's flank, but did not crash.

Now the damned carpet began spinning and tumbling. Earth, sky, windwhales swirled around us. In one glimpse, way up, I saw a windwhale's side explode, saw the monster fold in the middle, raining gobbets of fire. Two more whales trailed smoke… But it was a picture there and gone in a moment. I could find none of it when the carpel again rolled to where I could see the sky.

We began our plunge from high enough that I had time to calm down. I fiddled with levers and pedals, got some of the wild spin off…

Then it did not matter. We were out of the null and it was the Lady's craft again.

I looked back to see how the sergeant was. He gave me a dirty look, shook his head pityingly.

The look the Lady gave me was not encouraging either.

We climbed and moved westward. The Taken assembled, observed the results of their attack.

Only the one windwhale was destroyed. The other two managed to get under friends who doused them with ballast water. Even so, the survivors were demoralized. They had done the Taken no injury at all.

Still, they came on.

This time the Taken dropped to the surface and attacked from below, building speed from several miles away, then curving up through the null. I maneuvered between whales with a more delicate hand but still fell dangerously near the ground.

"What are we doing this for?" I yelled. We were not attacking; we were just following Whisper and Limper.

"For the hell of it. For the sheer hell of it. And so you can write about it."

"I'll fake it."

She laughed.

We went high and circled.

Darling took the whales back down. That second pass slew two more. Down low the Taken could not throw themselves all the way through the null. None but Limper, that is. He played the daredevil. He backed off five miles and built a tremendous velocity before hitting the null.

He made that pass while the bigs were dropping the last of their pots.

I've never heard Darling called stupid. She did not do the stupid thing this time.

Despite all the flash and excitement, it was clear that she could, if she wanted, press on to Horse. The Taken had expended most of their munitions. Limper and the bigs were headed back to rearm. The others circled… Horse was Darling's if she was willing to pay the price.

She decided it was too dear.

Wise choice. My guess is, it would have cost her half her force. And windwhales are too rare to give up for a prize so insignificant.

She turned back.

The Lady broke away and let her go, though she could have maintained the attacks almost indefinitely.

We touched down. I scrambled over the side even before the Lady and in a calculated, melodramatic gesture, kissed the ground. She laughed.

She had had a great time.

"You let them go."

"I made my point."

"She'll shift tactics."

"Of course she will. But for the moment the hammer is in my hand. By not using it I've told her something. She'll have thought it over by the time we get there."

"I suppose."

"You didn't do badly for a novice. Go get drunk or something. And stay out of Limper's way."

"Yeah."

What I did was go to the quarters assigned me and try to stop shaking.