Otherwise he might have glimpsed, here and there in the snow-choked streets of New Cabora, the bright blue uniforms of the Royal guards making the arrests he had ordered.
CHAPTER 4
Anton dashed through the deserted streets of Elkbone, the mixture of slush, mud, and horse manure a recent thaw had created splattering his leather pants, even reaching as high as his sheepskin coat. The boardwalks on both sides of the street, fronting the few shops the cattle town could boast (half of which were saloons), were covered with ice, and he couldn’t risk a fall… not now, not today. The sky overhead had just turned to blue from pink as the sun rose above the horizon, and for the moment, at least, there was no wind: perfect flying weather.
Elkbone nestled in a low valley, sheltered from the cold winds that scoured the prairie above by the valley slopes and a few straggly trees… if you could call them trees.
If you could even call Elkbone a town. Lord Mayor Ronal Ferkkisson liked to call it a city, but perhaps that level of delusional grandiosity was to be expected from someone who also insisted he was not just a mayor, but “Lord Mayor.”
Elkbone wouldn’t even have made a good-sized neighborhood in Hexton Down, Anton thought as he skidded around a corner, and Hexton Down was small compared to the truly great cities of the Union Republic, like Summerfell and Hawksight. Even the harbor town of Wavehaven, more than a thousand miles to the west and the largest settlement in the Wild Land, barely qualified as a city by Anton’s standards.
Cities, for instance, usually had tall buildings, whereas in Elkbone the Temple Tower, rising ahead of him, was the only structure that exceeded two stories… except for what rose, albeit temporarily, just beyond the tower. Blue like the sky, shaped like a breadloaf, made of the finest silk, the envelope of Professor Carteri’s airship tugged at its constraining netting as though longing to leap into the air… as it would, momentarily.
As it would have already if the Professor… oh, all right, if I… hadn’t forgotten the telescope, thought Anton. The Professor was not the sort of master who beat his apprentice. But he was also not the sort to simply let an oversight like that slide, and Anton knew he’d be hearing about it all day.
The emptiness of the streets he had run along was due to the presence of the airship, of course. The town’s entire population seemed to have come down to the Temple courtyard to see them off. As Anton dashed through the slush and finally onto good solid cobblestones, he couldn’t even see the Professor, though he knew Carteri had to be standing by the wicker basket, impatiently awaiting his apprentice’s return. All he could see were the backs of people’s heads; but, of course, as he started to make his way through the crowd, those heads turned in his direction, and then, as though he’d parted the seas like the Prophet in the old Temple tale, the crowd opened up before him, giving him a straight run to the rope barrier surrounding the airship… and Professor Carteri. The Professor, standing with the Lord Mayor and a red-robed priest from the Temple, appeared completely calm, but he frowned just enough in Anton’s direction as Anton reached the barrier to let him know that he definitely would hear more about this later.
Anton ducked under the rope barrier, accompanied by a barrage of flashes from the imagers of the newssheet reporters gathered along one side. Anton knew most of them, since they’d all made the long journey from Wavehaven together, their stagecoaches accompanying the wagon hauling the Professor’s airship over the rutted trails. In fact, several of them he knew from as long ago as that day in Hexton Down when, after weeks of work helping his new master assemble and test the airship, he had stood at Professor Carteri’s side as he announced his grand plan to fly his airship over the top of the mysterious Anomaly in the heart of the Wild Land. The skepticism and outright derision that had followed had not deterred him. More importantly, it had not deterred the Academy of Natural Philosophy, which was funding the expedition.
“Are you ready to go now, Professor?” one of the reporters shouted.
“Hey, Anton, sure you want to go through with this?” yelled another, to the laughter of his colleagues.
Anton ignored them. The Professor had made it clear that any comments concerning the expedition should come from him alone… although Anton suspected the reporters had already garnered plenty of other comments from the people of Elkbone, who were relishing the excitement of having Professor Carteri and his amazing airship in their midst, but were convinced that once he flew over the Anomaly-if he even made it over-they’d never see him again.
He’ll prove you all wrong, Anton thought as he handed the telescope to the Professor.
“Thank you, Anton,” the Professor said gravely. “If you would be so good as to board and conduct the final preflight check, I’ll just say a few words to the press.”
Anton nodded, and went up the wooden steps behind the professor to the platform the town had built for the launch, apparently using the plans they normally followed for constructing gallows. The airship, already afloat in the air but tethered to the same stout posts that formed the corners of the rope barrier, dipped slightly as he stepped aboard. He immediately began following the checklist he’d long since memorized, scrutinizing ropes for wear, counting sandbags, inspecting the large tank of compressed rock gas and the burner above it (only flickering at the moment, putting out just enough heat to keep the airship bobbing on its tethers) and the tiny steam engine, with its own tank of rock gas, that powered the propeller at the gondola’s stern. He tapped the glass of the instruments on their wooden panel, then swung the tiller, the blocks squeaking, and glanced up to make sure the giant rudder on the back of the envelope swung properly. All the while, he was listening with half an ear to the Professor’s speech …
“… since its discovery twenty years ago, the Anomaly has been the greatest scientific mystery of our age… until recently no way to investigate it, but with the advent of my airship… understand the dangers, but advancing human knowledge is worth any amount of risk
… my thanks to the Academy for supporting this important expedition…” Anton had heard it all before.
He finished his checklist with a look in the stores cupboards in the bow and then went back to the gondola’s door. The Professor knew to a tee how long the check took; he was just wrapping up. “… we do not know what we will find. But that is precisely why we must make the attempt. Thank you.”
The Lord Mayor had made his speech before Anton had realized he’d been missing the telescope, and the Priest had already offered his blessing; knowing how the Professor felt about religion, Anton was almost surprised he’d accepted it-but then he thought of the reporters and understood.
The Professor’s farewell said, he turned and climbed into the gondola with Anton. “About time we got away,” he said under his breath, and Anton smiled sheepishly.
The Professor closed and latched the gondola’s door. “I’ll take port, you take starboard,” he told Anton, and Anton crossed to the other side of the gondola to look down on the two beefy police constables in green uniforms standing ready at the posts on that side. “Untie!” the Professor shouted, and the constables undid the ropes from the posts, but kept a tight hold. The airship barely moved, the air in the envelope having cooled enough that it was on the verge of sinking. The Professor turned to the burner in the center of the gondola and opened a valve. Instantly the faint murmur of burning rock gas rose to a thunderous roar. Anton glanced up to see the enormous yellow flame shoot up into the envelope, then turn to blue, then turned his attention back to the two constables to make sure they didn’t let go too early, the heat from the burner warming the back of his neck.
The crowd matched the roar of the gas with a roar of its own, mostly cheers, though there were a few jeers and catcalls in the mix as well. Until the Professor had shown up, most of the residents of Elkbone had never even heard of an airship, much less seen one, and more than a few of them didn’t really believe it would fly.
Well, you’re about to learn different, Anton thought.
He could tell from the increasingly strained expressions of the constables that the heat was building rapidly in the envelope. The ropes drew taut. One constable staggered forward a few feet, and the gondola lurched upward at that corner.
“Hold fast!” Anton shouted. He glanced over his shoulder. The Professor was still watching the burner, but now at last he turned back to the other side of the gondola. He raised his hand. Anton raised his.
“Let go!” shouted the Professor, and chopped his hand down, Anton mimicking him an instant later.
The constables released the ropes. The airship began to rise, the roar of the crowd so loud in Anton’s ears it felt almost as if the airship were riding sound rather than hot air into the sky. But the noise dwindled rapidly as they
