Chapter 3
The wreck looked more like a collapsed bridge than a machine of the air. It was piled about the base of a sturdy oak tree, which had endured the assault with nothing worse than a split bough to show for it. The immense biplane wings had folded forward like a swimmer performing the butterfly, while the central section including the engines had collapsed forward on the cockpit. Somewhere in that mess of broken struts and crumpled fabric were fuel tanks the size of bathtubs full of an explosive prehistoric mineral liquid called petrol. The only sound now was the clatter of the petrol leaking out.
Some local natives gathered around Donald where he lay on soil after his escape from the wreck. A deadweight apathy had settled over him now that he was clear of the danger of being incinerated. The natives gabbled in a dialect he could not understand. One of the natives kneeled beside him and put an arm around his shoulders.
“You intact?” he said. He spoke in the slow, careful manner of one with limited command of a foreign language. He was a man of about twenty, with a thick beard in which a set of excellent teeth gleamed. He wore a sleeveless sheepskin jacket and pale canvas trousers but went bare-foot, perhaps having just come from some task like treading grapes or bating animal hides.
“You intact?” the native repeated.
“I think so.”
The huddle of natives around him started to wail and call appeals. They were staring at a figure who had risen into view from the upper deck of the flying boat. It was Cecil Tarran-Krossington. He rested against the windscreen of the promenade deck, slowly turning his head this way and that, as if trying to see beyond the mist hanging in a circular curtain around the crash site. His expression was of dawning horror. He lifted something from the pocket of his brown motorcycle jacket—it was an automatic pistol—and a crazed intensity came into his eyes.
“Aurum vita est!” he screamed.
He opened his mouth wide as for a dental exam, inserted the muzzle of the pistol and fired. A gout of blood leaped from the top of his head. Blood poured from his mouth as if a tap had spun open, streaks of it ran down the side of the hull, the whites of his eyes flashed just before he toppled over backwards and dropped from sight.
The natives around Donald bowed their heads and crossed themselves. They started a fervent muttering that was probably prayer. The suicide left Donald in a state of paralysis. Were the two women going to kill themselves too?
There came a rising pounding of hooves. Donald looked behind to see a line of impressive Clydesdale horses cantering out of the mist. An officer rode the lead horse, which was clearly not enjoying the ploughed ground and proceeded sullenly with its big hooves throwing out fans of earth and pebbles. As the mounted troops approached, the huddle of natives around Donald seemed to shrivel, sinking to their knees and bowing their heads.
The officer jumped down, his heels landing with a whack about ten feet away. Donald observed that he was in his mid-twenties, with a square, bold-jawed face. He wore the olive-green uniform of General Wardian glory trust, as confirmed by the silver corporate motif on each collar of the tunic. Two red stars on each epaulette and sleeve marked him as a team lieutenant, a middle rank not commonly attained by such a young man.
He strode over swinging his riding crop and stopped, glaring first at Donald and then at the rough-and-ready group of natives. He raised the riding crop and lashed it across the back of the bearded young man who had spoken to Donald.
“Be from sight, riff-raff.”
The natives scuffled away on hands and knees until well clear of the riding crop, whereupon they jumped up and sprinted off towards a cluster of what looked like toy houses along the edge of the field. Donald only had time for a glance at these odd hovels, vaguely discernible through the mist, before he felt the tip of the riding crop under his chin. The officer leaned over him. By this time the squad of horsemen had dismounted and gathered behind their officer.
“What are you?” the officer demanded.
“My name is Donald Bartleigh Aldingford. I’m a commoner in transit for a sovereign client.”
“Your business?”
“I’m a barrister.”
“I see the Krossington coat of arms on that wreck.”
After a pause, Donald said: “Yes, indeed you do.”
“How many were aboard?”
“Eight. Three on the sovereign deck and four crew in the cockpit. I was alone on the commoners’ deck.”
“Do you understand you will be interned under the law of Frite?”
“I do understand that, yes.”
“Can you stand up?”
Donald found that he could, although his legs shivered and his head pounded.
“There’s still a young woman inside the hull,” he said.
“Where’s the crew?”
“Under that mess.”
Donald pointed to the heap of wreckage against the base of the oak tree. As the mist had thinned somewhat, he could now see there was an awful lot of open field in which the flying boat could have landed pretty much intact on its tough hull, designed as it was to withstand landings on the open sea. He guessed the pilot had aimed for the tree to get it over with rather than survive to be executed by Cecil Tarran-Krossington, as he certainly would have been.
The team lieutenant ordered his men to search the wreck, adding they must take the most extreme care against causing sparks as the site was soaked in petrol. The squad of ten glory troopers made quick work of searching the wreck. From within the hull they extracted the body of Cecil Tarran-Krossington, bloody and limp, and the body of one of the young ladies, her head and chest a mass of blood. A blanch-faced sergeant returned from poking about near the tree and confirmed all four crewmen were definitely dead meat.
“One of the engines
