ornithopters were shooting upward erratically, some immediately plunging back down again.
Aubrey hastened to cut off the spell before they rose too far and brought themselves into a direct line with the guns of the fleet.
Instantly, their upward surge halted. The gigantic shape of Tremaine’s flagship cut off the sun and they were plunged into shadow while they bobbed like a balloon a few hundred feet below it.
Satisfied, and unwilling to trust to the altitude enhancer again, Aubrey started the other spell he’d prepared as his part in getting them close to Dr Tremaine’s location without being seen, all of which made his initial plan of bringing magic suppressors to neutralise Dr Tremaine’s magic impossible.
Like most of his outlandish schemes, this one had seemed reasonable when it had first come to him. He’d prepared a spell derived from the Law of Sympathy (‘Like affects like’) to encourage a link between the hull of the warship and the steel of the ornithopter. An attractive link wouldn’t be difficult to propagate, he reasoned, since even though the hull was made of cloudstuff, it was aspiring to steelhood, no doubt aping the form and qualities of steel through an application of the Law of Propinquity. The Law of Attraction provided a backbone to the spell, made all the easier by this propensity of ferrous materials to attract each other.
Awfully exposed, bobbing in the air as they were solely due to the altitude-enhancing device, Aubrey hurried out the spell. They rose, quickly, and before he had time to make any adjustments, they struck the hull with a resounding clang.
They hung there, silently looking at each other, and the whole ornithopter vibrated as if it had decided, on a whim, to become a bell. The cabin shook, the frame vibrated, every single piece of steel or iron around them hummed.
Caroline turned to him, a needless question on her lips. Aubrey wanted to slap himself on the forehead, but decided that fixing the spell would be a better use of his time. He hadn’t anticipated that it would be making every iron-based component of the ornithopter want to embrace the overwhelming iron-like presence just above them. Hurriedly, before the ornithopter could shake itself apart in its eagerness, Aubrey eased back on the attraction spell. Not enough to disengage them, but enough to stop the ornithopter from disassembling itself.
When the quivering all about them diminished and then vanished, Aubrey relaxed the death grip he had on his pencil and notebook. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Just as planned.’
Sophie tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Aubrey, how are we going to get onto the ship?’
76
‘Don’t worry,’ Aubrey said, as reassuringly as someone could when he and his friends were hanging from the belly of an enemy battleship made from magically wrought cloudstuff. ‘I have this part under control.’
He paused and waited for a chorus of disbelief at this notion, but it was a measure of the situation that a serious-looking George merely nodded, while Caroline locked eyes with him. ‘Go on.’
‘I think it’s fair to say that you’ll have to trust me here.’
A brace of Albion ornithopters swooped along what would have been the waterline of the flagship, if the craft had been afloat. One of them was buffeted by a blast before it climbed rapidly and disappeared from view.
‘Aubrey,’ Caroline said, ‘none of us would be here if we didn’t trust you. At the moment, I’m sure we’d follow even if you asked us to step outside.’
‘I’m glad, because that’s just what I’m looking for.’
77
Aubrey had always appreciated silk. He liked its texture, the sheen, the touch of the exotic about it and the way that it was the only clothing fibre made by insects – locust leather, in his opinion, not being a legitimate garment material.
So the rope with which his friends and he were tied together being silk was a lovely touch, if unnecessarily luxurious. He would have settled for good old manila hemp, but silk was lighter and easier on the hands.
Leading the way, with his rifle slung across his back, Aubrey shuffled his hands along the hull of the Sylvia, propelling himself forward, and grimaced as he fumbled around a rivet. He uttered a small spell adjustment to ensure that his friends and he were constantly being buoyed upward, rising strongly enough that they had to hold their hands over their heads in order to avoid painful cranial-battleship collisions.
Their progress once they’d left the relative safety of the ornithopter had been a peculiar bobbing accompanied by what could be described as an inverted walking on hands. He’d been assisted by the surprisingly thick and warm air – part of Dr Tremaine’s magic, Aubrey assumed, enclosing the Sylvia in a bubble of comfort for whoever was on board – so moving air about was something he didn’t have to organise.
The experience was disorienting, with the massive bulk of the magically created warship directly overhead while Albion streamed by far, far below. Steadfastly, Aubrey didn’t look down after that initial, nervous glance, for the spiralling drop was only too easy to imagine – and imagination, in this instance, wouldn’t do him any good. He kept his attention doggedly on their destination: the point at which the hull curved upward to become the sides of the Sylvia. To their right, in the distance, the enormous propellers rotated, churning away at the air. To their left, the bow crested the non-existent waves. Pressing against their hands were rivets, bolts and seams.
The cloudstuff hull was peculiar to the touch. At close quarters, it looked as if the surface were swirling but, to the fingers, it was as solid as the steel it was imitating. Dr Tremaine had gone to some pains to make the ship as real as possible. Aubrey could only attribute such a rigorous approach to Dr Tremaine’s general spell-casting excellence. If he was going to conjure up a battleship, it was going to be a very fine battleship indeed.
Aubrey was jarred out of his contemplation by a thunder stroke that made the hull ring. Quickly, it was followed by a series of equally appalling blows. A rapid flickering flare of orange-white light to starboard threw a nearby battleship into high contrast, enough to see the storm clouds to the north.
The aerial battle had begun.
A few hundred yards away, an ornithopter plunged, dropping below the level of the skyfleet with an ominous plume of black smoke billowing from its tail section. Its wings were beating frantically and Aubrey had some hope that the pilot would bring the stricken craft safely to the ground. He wished them well.
Aubrey scanned the skies. Around them, the attack force of ornithopters was doing its best, but the pilots were having trouble with their altitude enhancers. He could clearly see a dozen or more ornithopters struggling for control. A handful were relatively stable and were firing at the battleships with machine guns, sending tracers flashing through the skies, bright streaks like wasps on fire. Some were descending, aiming to swoop under the skyfleet ships and away from their guns. This left vulnerable hulls exposed and several ornithopters were streaming along the lengths of the enemy ships, directing their weapons upward and raking the hulls with fire.
Naturally, this made their own position under the hull of the enemy flagship extremely precarious. Aubrey wasn’t in favour of the prospect of coming under enemy fire and coming under friendly fire was an even less attractive option. He looked over his shoulder and urged his friends onward.
The closer they came to the upward curve, the more of the sky they were able to see. Aubrey soon had a view of half the skyfleet as it continued in its stately progress, terrifying all of Trinovant. The skyfleet’s ships were firing, the unmanned guns magically aiming at the few ornithopters that had managed to control the altitude enhancers enough to climb above the plane of the vessels. Turrets rotated, barrels adjusted elevation with horrible speed, then orange and black clouds burst along the flanks of the ships as the mighty armaments let loose to bring down their attackers. Other ornithopters completed their attack on the belly of the ships and immediately came under fire as they swung out from underneath and sought to find another target. The noise was deafening, vast and painful, with the giant flagship shivering every time it let loose a broadside.
Off to the east, one of the ornithopters had a pilot more capable or more daring than most. Its wings thrashed, striving for altitude, and were having some effect. The aircraft yawed, canting sideways but still buoyed by the altitude enhancer. It flailed like a drowning man, but kept climbing slowly, and Aubrey could only think that the pilot was bringing the craft into position for an attacking dive.
