The Court of the Air

From the dome Coppertracks emerged and bowed before the King. ‘Loading has already begun, Your Majesty.’

‘Gravity is on the shifties’ side, Aliquot Coppertracks,’ said the commodore. ‘I’ve seen boats trade fire with stats, and their ballonets take a fierce beating before they sink.’

Coppertracks’ transparent brain crackled with blue fire. ‘Dear mammal, Jackals has held a monopoly on celgas for generations, but we have always planned for the worst — that one of the other nations might discover their own supply. We are not loading with mere ball or grapeshot.’

Gangs of steammen pulled long silver shells on flatbed carts past their position, smoke from their stacks steaming in the cold with the exertion of dragging the heavy load. Oliver watched with curiosity, a memory of a siege jumping unbidden into his mind, giant mortars like bloated toads thumping out rounds as large as these — surely they weren’t going to use shrapnel against the coerced vessels of the RAN?

Oliver pointed to the pinned-down maps on the collapsible command table. ‘When I was coming down here, I saw our forces being rolled back on the eastern flank.’

‘That is where the Special Guard are fighting for the Commonshare,’ said Hoggstone. ‘Most of the Free State’s knights have been committed here, but they are being badly punished. Flare’s guard are holding back, but they are crawling with worldsingers from the Commonshare. A few of the guard refused to fight at the start of the battle and the shifties executed them by torc in front of us.’

‘What of Jackals’ worldsingers?’ asked Oliver.

‘We have a few,’ said Ben Carl from his chair. ‘But most of the order fled Middlesteel when the capital was invaded. I hate to say it, but we are out-gunned — those that have passed through the flesh-mills are slow, but they carry their own armour with them. The Third Brigade are veterans and-’ Carl’s words were interrupted by the thunder of the aerostats’ fin bays emptying their cargo on the body of the Free State’s forces.

‘-they have our navy,’ said Oliver. He shut his eyes as the ground trembled. The leylines were being sucked dry by the Commonshare’s worldsingers. Once pregnant with the land’s power, they were thin and barren now. He could feel the weather witches in the Jackelian lines trying to whip up the snowstorm to push the aerostats back, but the bones of the earth under their feet was too thin.

Oliver looked up to the brow of the downs. The mocking presence of the Shadow Bear was there, watching the advance of the Third Brigade troops, gloating as the Jackelian fighters wavered in panic at the shadows of the passing aerostats. It would not take much now to cause a rout. He could feel how close their soldiers were to breaking and running.

‘They’re about to run,’ said the Whisperer.

‘I know.’ Oliver turned his horse to the east and nodded at King Steam. ‘You hold the line against the aerostats, I’ll try my luck with the fey.’

Oliver flew across the Free State’s lines, the Whisperer’s steed hard-pressed to keep up. Nathaniel Harwood could convince the troops he was a six-foot fighting god — even convince his steed — but the illusion of a horseman’s skill was not the actuality.

Commodore Black watched the two riders disappear through the ranks of steammen auxiliaries, swallowed by snow and the swirling flags of the army.

‘That shootist has spirit,’ said Hoggstone.

‘He’s riding with the devil,’ said the commodore. ‘I’m just glad he’s riding for us.’

Black pulled his undersized greatcoat in tighter — it had belonged to old Loade before he pulled it off its peg back in Middlesteel and the blessed fellow must have been a grasper of a man. But it was warm Jackelian wool and helped shield a poor fellow from the biting cold of this perverse summer. On the command table the maps started shaking, a brass telescope rattling until it fell over. Gun-boxes jolted forward on their stubby legs. The house-sized artillery pieces had abandoned their position on the high ground and were settling down alongside the steammen formations. Rolling the strange-looking shells onto loading cradles, steammen conscripts heaved them into the loading position behind the gun-boxes. Sucked into the breach, the shells vanished, followed by the clank-clank- clank of crystal charges of blow-barrel sap being lowered into position to propel the missiles on their way. Commodore Black covered his ears. Their barrage had been deafening enough when they had been in the hills duelling with the Third Brigade’s artillery.

With the crack of a titan’s hammer on the earth the barrels of the gun-boxes flowered flame and flung their shells towards the chequerboard hulls of the aerostats. Some of the shells struck the airship’s gondola structures, smashing wood and metal, others tore holes in the hulls, the fabric of their catenary curtains left flapping in the wind. A few ballonets spilled into the air, the gas cells floating out of sight. Not even slowed, the aerostats continued to glide across the fields of Rivermarsh.

Black nodded sadly. History was repeating itself. It was just the same as when the RAN had raided his fleet of royalist privateers. You could pierce their hulls with ball, with shrapnel, hit them with fire, but the cursed vessels were almost indestructible. Celgas did not burn, and each aerostat was filled with thousands of ballonets, each man-sized canvas sphere swelled fat with the precious lighter-than-air substance. Puncture one with shrapnel and they still had a hundred more to lift them out of the range of enemy guns.

King Steam’s monster shells had failed and now their forces would be flattened, crushed without the option of slipping away beneath the deep waters of the ocean. The Duke of Ferniethian cursed his luck.

On the bridge of the RAN Hotspur, the revolutionary commander of the vessel pointed a discipline rod accusingly at the metal-flesher who had once been a first mate of the Royal Aerostatical Navy. ‘It is as I said, we should be running higher, Compatriot Ewart. We should be dropping our fin-bombs from a greater altitude.’

Ewart flinched as the pain stick passed his iron chest. ‘We need line of sight for the fin bay crew. A turn of the wind and we would be dropping fins on your people — this snow is working against us.’

‘This is more of your defeatist whining and sabotage. I do not want to listen to excuses, compatriot. I have had a bellyful of them from your crew.’ The revolutionary officer turned to one of his soldiers. There were as many shiftie marines and brilliant men on the RAN Hotspur as equalized sailors, getting in the way and issuing contradictory orders. It was a wonder the aerostat could hold a true course with the skeleton crew that had been assigned to each ship, let alone clear for action. ‘Take Compatriot Ewart and a crew of patchers to the larboard hull. I want full lift — any damage from the Free State’s gun-boxes must be repaired at once or there will be consequences.’

With four shiftie marines in tow, wet navy lubbers who didn’t know one end of a stat from another, Ewart followed the howl of the wind to the breech in the aerostat’s curtain. He tethered a holding line around his iron waist so he could climb securely around the ballonets and inspect the damage.

‘How many patchers are needed?’ shouted up one of the marines.

‘The netting is torn,’ said Ewart. ‘We need to-’ he stopped as he found the shell still buried in the ballonets, its metal buckled against one of the larboard girder stays.

It had not detonated and Ewart tapped it. This was his chance. If he could detonate it he could bring down the Hotspur and take some of these dirty shifties down with him. But it was not crystal-fashioned, so how could it be filled with blow-barrel sap? As Ewart felt the lines of the weld on the shell, metal plates sprung out and he fell back towards the torn curtain flapping in the gust from outside, a garbled cry issuing from his voicebox as he jerked on his support line and hung helplessly in the air.

The Quatershiftian marines laughed at him, thinking he had tumbled clumsily off the aerostat’s hull frame, still unused to the quirks of his new equalized body. Their laughter was cut short when the steamman dropped down to the repair gantry, a round sphere sporting six pincer-sharp legs and an armoured dome for a head with a pressure repeater protruding from it like a mosquito proboscis. With their rifles slung around their shoulders the marines did not stand a chance — the six barrels of the steamman’s nose spun around and a whining blizzard of small iron balls tore the soldiers to pieces, their corpses flopping off the gantry and into the ballonets. The steamman turned its attention to the ballonets, unleashing a wave of fire into the leather gas sacks. The lift bags exploded, deflating and leaking sweet-smelling gas into the cold air of the airship’s interior. Then the steamman — actually a mu-body of one of the slipthinkers below — swivelled its pressure repeater in the direction of the laughing metal-flesher.

‘Sharply done, mate,’ said Ewart. ‘I don’t mean to knock the gilt off the gingerbread, but you’ll be here all day if you’re trying to sink the Hotspur that way.’

On the ground the steamman slipthinker evaluated the facts in a fraction of a second. Equalized Jackelians