Soulblade (19 page)

Fortunate. That’s me.

• • • • •

The sound of a rifle firing woke Cas from sleep. She jerked alert, finding her own rifle in the dark of her cockpit. She had chosen to sleep up here, rather than trying to find a dry spot in the swamp.

“What is it?” Pimples asked from the flier nearest to hers.

“Animals,” Blazer said. It sounded like she had climbed into the back of his flier. “Some kind of swimming hogs, I think. They came out of the dark and chased me off my stump where I was standing watch.”

“So you decided to hide behind Pimples?” Cas squinted into the gloom. There weren’t any lanterns lit, but she could hear shuffling and grunting noises, along with a splash here and there.

“Yes, I was drawn by his manliness,” Blazer said.

“Captain, you teasing us again?” Duck asked, then cursed. “I think there’s one trying to eat my wheel.” A thump sounded as he tried to scare it away instead of shooting. Cas couldn’t see the details in the night gloom.

“I wasn’t teasing
you
, Duck,” Blazer said, “but if you’d like to volunteer for the Pimples treatment, I can include you in later comments.”

“Nobody wants the Pimples treatment.”

“Thanks,” Pimples said dryly.

A howl came out of the trees across the river, raising the hair on Cas’s arms. She wondered if she had stirred up the predators in her twilight run to and from the beach. Or maybe, as she had surmised earlier, the animals weren’t being cautious now that Phelistoth and his fearsome dragon aura had left.

A splash sounded, followed by moist chewing sounds. Duck cursed and thumped the side of his flier again.

“Anyone else entertaining the notion of moving the camp
tonight
?” Captain Blazer asked.

“You’re in charge, ma’am,” Pimples said.

Blazer grunted. “If only that were true.”

Duck lit a lantern and dangled it from his cockpit by a rope. Cas caught a glimpse of tusks, a bristly snout, and a stocky, mud-spattered body before the four-legged creature scampered back into the darkness.

“If I were in charge—” Blazer inhaled, the red tip of a cigar burning in the darkness, “—I would have flown us to the city, landed at their docks, and gone in under the pretext of needing a break from a long flight. Stayed at a nice hotel with feather beds, enjoyed some shopping from the exotic southern markets, ordered in some grilled tuna steaks—”

Growls came from below her, as one of the pigs thumped against Pimples’ flier, maybe trying to bite the tires again.

“Or grilled pig,” she growled, leaning over the side and shooting.

The creature squealed and ran away. Cas glimpsed it and could have fired a shot, one that would have killed it, but she did not want a pile of carcasses to draw more predators to their camp. She didn’t know if Blazer shared the same mindset.

“That would have been suspicious.” Pimples, apparently not worried about pigs eating his flier, was sketching in his notebook by the tiny glow of his communication crystal. “If they would have let us land at all. We might have been shot upon approach. Our fliers clearly mark us as Iskandians, and if the city is in the middle of cementing an alliance with the empire...”

“You’re awfully logical for a lieutenant, Pimples. Not all women appreciate that, you know. They want a man to console and commiserate, not point out the reasons why staying in a feather bed is a bad idea.”

“They also want him to have a name more manly than Pimples,” Duck said.

“As manly as Duck?” Blazer asked.

“Ducks can be manly. The males are tough.”

“Don’t the males gang up on the females and attack them?” Pimples asked.

“Only some species. And only during mating season.”

“Very manly.”

“Don’t you have a pimple to pop?” Duck grumbled.

“Not lately. I stopped eating that slop in the mess hall, and it’s helped. Raptor, what do you think about male ducks attacking females?”

Cas was never sure whether to feel pleased or not when they included her in their silly conversations. It was good to be a part of the group and be able to talk about something besides death and battle, but she would rather have spoken with Tolemek. It worried her that they hadn’t been able to get in touch. She’d tried using the crystals in the other cockpits in case something had failed. He hadn’t responded on any of them. It was possible he had gone out of range, but she’d been told that the crystals could reach fifty miles, and the city was closer than that.

“I think we should move our camp tonight,” Cas said. “It’s dark as pitch out there, and if it’s as misty along the beach as it is along this river, we could get within five miles of the city without anyone seeing or hearing our approach. The roar of the ocean should drown out our propellers.”

“The problem is then finding a place where we can land and hide that close to the city,” Blazer said.

“True,” Pimples said. “Tildar Dem is supposed to have a population of fifty thousand. Even if the marsh is kissing the borders, I bet there’s development outside of the core area. I would like to see it,” he said wistfully. “I heard that there are a lot of tree houses.”

“You’re not planning to design one of those next, are you?” Cas waved to his notebook.

“I might.”

Something growled from a branch near the river. Blazer took her cigar from her mouth and growled back.

“This place could make you crazy,” she said. “Raptor, you want a scouting mission?”

“You want me to look for a closer place where we could land?”

“Yeah, you and Duck. No, take Pimples. I need Duck to drag whatever it is I shot down there out into the river, so it doesn’t attract whatever’s growling in the trees.”

“Me?” Duck protested. “Why me?”

“You’re the wilderness kid. Raptor, you two go ahead and see if there’s a good place to land. If there is, you can sneak into the city and try to locate the others, find out if they’re in trouble. Two of us better stay back here, since we’re not able to communicate with Quataldo. He might be irked if he kidnaps the emperor, drags him all the way back here, and we’re gone.”

“Agreed,” Cas said, though she was not enthused about taking Pimples as a partner for skulking around in a city, especially if they ended up needing to mount a rescue. Maybe she would leave him to guard the fliers and go in alone. She couldn’t help but think of the Cofah volcano lab mission where the elite forces soldiers had gone in by themselves, and one of them hadn’t come out.

“If you can’t find a landing spot, just come back,” Blazer said. “You don’t want us to get lonesome. Or for Duck to join in with a bunch of bachelor drakes and start pummeling females.”

“Ha ha,” Duck said. “Is this because I teased Pimples?”

“If it is,” Pimples said, “I approve.”

The hogs must have gotten tired of being targets. When Blazer hopped down into the mud, nothing ran forward and bothered her. She did not linger. She made her way to her own flier and scrambled up into the cockpit.

Cas hit the starter on her dashboard, and the power crystal flared to life. “Let’s go, Pimples. I won’t tease you.”

“That’s because you’re a
good
teammate.”

“You might want to reserve judgment on that until you see if I get us lost.” Cas also hadn’t forgotten that there was a dragon lurking out there somewhere. She planned to be extremely careful as they approached the city. Full darkness had fallen some time ago, but she had no idea if dragons slept at night—or at all.

Muddy water rippled as she ignited her thrusters. As her craft rose, the stick responded sluggishly. She doubted the humidity—and the nap in the mud—could be good for the fliers, and she hoped they would not have any trouble before they got back home. Blazer had been a mechanic before going into flight school, but they had limited tools out here and were a long way from their hangar back home.

“My engine sounds like there’s a dying lizard in it,” Pimples announced as they rose out of the water and turned down the river.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if there was,” Cas said.

“Keep us in the loop, you two,” Blazer said over the communication crystal.

“On lizards?” Pimples asked.

“On your progress, you lout.”

Curtains of mist thickened the air, and Cas wished they could fly slowly, but as soon as they transitioned from thrusters to propellers, they had to maintain the minimum flier speed to stay aloft. The mist cleared somewhat as they reached the mouth of the river, a stiff sea breeze pushing it inland, but clouds hung low up and down the coast. That was good. Cas did not want to be visible to anyone who might be out late. It was less good that scouting and finding landing spots would be difficult in the gloom.

“Wing to wing?” Pimples asked.

“Yes, we don’t want to lose each other in the dark.”

Cas kept her goggles resting on her forehead since the thick sea air left droplets on them, and visibility was already poor. She led Pimples out over the water, so their propellers should not be audible to anyone on land, not that the dark depths of the marshes suggested anyone lived on this section of coast.

She and Pimples traveled at least twenty miles before that changed. After that, the occasional lamp burned, and she spotted the outlines of houses here and there. The coast did not appear as marshy in this area.

“I don’t see any tree houses,” Pimples said. “Those appear boringly normal.”

“Maybe the tree houses are inland,” Cas said. “Look for a stream or bay, or maybe some nice cliffs full of caves large enough to hide fliers.”

“That would be convenient.”

Unfortunately, cliffs did not appear to be a feature here. The land remained relatively flat, offering few interesting topographical features—and few hiding places.

The houses disappeared as the shoreline grew wild and swampy again. Cas started to wonder if they had flown past the city without realizing it, but then a huge delta came into view. As they passed it, they could see clumps of lights burning all along the bank of a wide river, as well as along platforms and bridges on either side.

“Those don’t look like natural flames,” Pimples said. “At least not all of them.”

Many of the lanterns had a bluish cast, and Cas instinctively nudged her craft farther out to sea—if there were magic lamps, there could be shamans here, people who might sense intruders. “I guess they don’t share the Cofah and Iskandian fears of magic.”

“Or maybe the citizens don’t ask too many questions when someone shows up with practical tools, much like our power crystals.”

“Could be.” Cas continued flying past the delta. “There’s no way we can land in there without being noticed.”

“No, and I didn’t see any likely spots along the way. Should we fly a few more miles and see if we find something farther up?”

“Yes. The other option is to circle around the city and try to land inland somewhere.”

“Inland looks extra swampy.”

“There might be tree houses.”

As they continued up the shoreline, Cas tapped her fingers on her flight stick, wondering if this scouting mission would be for naught. Unless there was a lake inland, she did not know where they might find a spot to land, not with the trees a solid mass from the beach to the distant mountains. Whatever the denizens of this city did for their livelihoods, clearing land and farming wasn’t it.

“Is that a bay?” Pimples asked.

Up ahead, the beach turned inland. Cas followed the shoreline, staying low as she had been for most of the trip. Because of this, she flew around the trees instead of over them, and she twitched in surprise when the lights of multiple airships came into view. She veered away immediately, heading back out to sea, but she craned her neck for a view. Pimples was right behind her and doing the same thing.

“Guess we know where the emperor’s ships are parked,” he said, the dryness in his tone not quite hiding his alarm.

There were five huge airships anchored in the bay, lines attaching them to thick trees. Numerous naval ships occupied the quiet inlet too. A few docks thrust out from the shore behind them, with fishing boats moored there, but Cas only had eyes for the Cofah craft. Enough lights burned on the decks that she had no trouble verifying that those were imperial ships. Her shoulder blades itched as they flew away, and she worried that alert soldiers on watch might have spotted her and Pimples. She did not hear any alarms or gunshots, but that did not mean much. Seeing an Iskandian flier would be enough to put those people on guard, and that was the last thing her team wanted.

After they passed out of sight of the bay, Cas reluctantly tapped the communication crystal. “Captain? We found where the imperial ships went—there are seven naval warships in addition to five sky-cruise class airships, and they’re moored in a bay approximately a mile south of the city.”

“Did anyone see you?” Blazer asked.

“Unknown. We were flying close to the waves, and it’s dark, so I’m hoping not, but it’s possible.” Cas hated admitting that. They had needed to stay low so they could look for hiding places in the dark, but now she wished they had flown up high for an initial pass before dropping low. Then they would have seen the bay from miles away and known to avoid it. Zirkander wouldn’t have made such a foolish mistake.

“Find a place to put down yet?” Blazer asked.

“No.”

“All the good bays are taken,” Pimples added.

“See any dragons?”

“No, but I wasn’t looking for any either.”

“I’m tempted to tell you to come back,” Blazer said.

“What if Tolemek and the captain and colonel ran into trouble and need help?” Cas asked.

“I’m not sure two lieutenants are supposed to be the backup forces.”

“We can’t leave our people behind...”

“Cas,” Pimples blurted. “Up ahead.”

She spotted it as soon as Pimples alerted her—the form of a dragon flying along the coast.

“Inland,” she said, though she had no idea whether they would be more likely to avoid it over the marsh than over the sea. She thumped her fist on her thigh, annoyed that they hadn’t stayed put and given the other team another couple of days before worrying.