A Darkling Plain

“There they are!” Pennyroyal shouted. “They’re escaping! Stop them!”

“Who are you?” barked Kriegsmarschall von Kobold, in such a military voice that the men stopped short. Up on the High Street passersby began to gather at an observation platform to see what was happening down on Strut 13.

“We, sir, are officers of the Manchester Civic Guard,” said the tallest and most sober of the newcomers. “We have been informed that a dangerous Mossie is concealed aboard this airship…”

“Blimey!” said one of his comrades, pointing. “It’s her! Naga’s wife, just like the old man said!”

“What, in that getup?” asked another.

“It’s her. I seen her picture in the Evening News. Blimey!”

“You’re under arrest!” said the leader, striding toward Oenone.

“Stand back, sir,” snapped von Kobold, and drew his saber. “The lady is my prisoner, and I will not deliver her into the hands of your warmongering mayor.”

“Now, steady on!” called Pennyroyal, who didn’t want a squabble between Murnau and Manchester to ruin his chance of some favorable headlines. But before he could say more, the light of a flashbulb blinded him. A small man in formal robes walked out onto the increasingly crowded strut. There was a girl behind him, fumbling a new flashbulb into place on the top of her camera.

“Mr. Pennyroyal!” the newcomer called out pleasantly. “Sampford Spiney of The Speculum. Been looking for you everywhere. Do you have any message for your many disappointed fans?” His voice was affable and faintly snide; it faded into silence as he saw the Mancunians with their drawn swords, von Kobold with his saber, Oenone supporting Hester, who had crumpled to her knees at the foot of the Humbug’s gangplank. “I say!” he murmured excitedly. “What’s all this?”

But the leader of the Mancunians was tired of talking. He raised his sword and tried to barge past von Kobold, but the kriegsmarschall barred his way. Sparks flew as their swords met, directly contravening Airhaven’s strict fire-prevention laws. Up on the High Street people screamed. The Manchester swordsman screamed too, stumbling away with blood running down his arm. Von Kobold turned to face the others. “Defend yourselves!” he shouted, and most of them started to edge back, frightened of this fierce old soldier who seemed ready to take on five of them at once. Only one held his ground. He was a young man, red cheeked and running to fat. In addition to his uniform sword he had a revolver. He pointed it straight at von Kobold, and fired twice.

Theo, waiting aboard the Shadow Aspect, heard the shots. He ran to the hatch. He tried to tell himself that those bangs had not been gunfire, but he knew that they had, and he knew that they had come from the direction of Strut 13.

An alarm bell began to jangle. Theo jumped down onto the mooring strut and started to run toward the docking ring. A squad of men in the sky-blue uniforms of Airhaven was storming down a stairway from the High Street, crossbows held ready. From a docking pan near the town hall a red fire-fighting dirigible was lifting off, ready to train her hoses on any blaze that broke out.

Theo stood helpless, halfway between the Shadow Aspect and the docking ring. What could he do? How could he help?

A horrified scream reached him, blowing on the wind. Another. More shots. He turned and went hammering back to the Shadow.

As Kriegsmarschall von Kobold fell, the man who’d shot him sprang forward, reaching for Lady Naga. Hester heaved herself up to face him and suddenly, although she had done no more than glare at him, he dropped his gun and shouted, “Yaagh!” Looking down, Hester saw the sharp blades that had been driven up through the deck from beneath. There were five of them, and two had gone through the Mancunian’s boot and through the foot inside it. He screamed again, wrenching himself free, and the blades slid back through the deck, leaving ragged holes. “Get this, Miss Kropotkin!” Spiney was ordering his photographer.

The deck plate heaved. An armored fist punched up through the quay from beneath; clawed fingers widened the hole, and Grike scrambled out. He flared with light as another flashbulb fired, silvering his armor, his fingertips, and his gruesome metal grin.

“Stalker!” screamed the Mancunian gunman, trying to hop away. Grike picked him up and flung him off the edge of the strut; he flailed at the empty air for a moment and then fell with a terrible shriek, and landed bouncing in the safety net. Grike hurled one of his friends after him; the rest turned to run, and collided with the first squad of Airhaven militia arriving from the High Street.

Hester fainted again and fell down on the hard quay, waking a few seconds later when the Airhaven fireboat swung overhead, dowsing everyone with freezing water. There seemed to be a general belief that whole squads of Stalkers had been landed on Strut 13. Dozens of alarm bells were ringing, making horrid discords. At the end of the strut the Mancunians were fighting with the Airhaven men, who had somehow got the idea that they were Green Storm raiders in disguise. “No, no, no!” Pennyroyal was yelling. Below the strut, the Mancunians Grike had thrown off it were scrambling up the mesh of the safety net to the neighboring quay, where aviators from a Florentine highliner leaned out to haul them to safety.

Below that, dark against the cloud layer, the plump shape of an airship moved, rising upward.

“The Jenny Haniver,” said Hester, looking down at it through the holes in the deck plate. Then she realized that it couldn’t be; it wasn’t Tom coming to her rescue this time, but Theo, in the Shadow Aspect.

Grike had seen it too, or heard the mutter of its engines. He picked Oenone up under one arm, as if she were a parcel.

He turned and reached for Hester, but Hester was dragging herself away from him toward von Kobold.

In the scrum at the far end of the strut one of the Mancunians was yelling, “It was Pennyroyal! Pennyroyal lured us here! Into the claws of the Storm’s Stalkers!”

“That’s not true!” Pennyroyal shouted, skipping backward as an Airhaven soldier made a grab at him. “I’m the victim here! What about my money?”

The Shadow Aspect came up like a surfacing whale at the end of Strut 13. Hester saw Theo inside the gondola as she turned von Kobold over. The fat Mancunian’s gun had made two charred holes in the front of von Kobold’s coat. But he was only winded. Beneath his coat she saw the dull sheen of Old Tech body armor. He raised a hand to cup her face. “They breed you brave in the Green Storm’s lands,” he whispered.

“I’m not …,” said Hester, but there wasn’t time to explain.

“Tell Naga that not all of us want this war,” she heard von Kobold say. Then she passed out, and Grike swept her up and loped toward the Shadow with the bolts from Airhaven crossbows rattling against his armored back.

Pennyroyal scurried away from the men at the end of the strut and ran into Spiney. The journalist had been directing Miss Kropotkin while she took the pictures that would appear on the front of the next day’s papers beneath the headline “Manchester Men Battle Bravely Against Naga’s Raiders!” He flung himself at Pennyroyal with a vulpine grin. “What’s your part in all this then, Nimrod? How long have you been working for the Green Storm?”

Pennyroyal shoved him aside. An airship was maneuvering away from the strut with a deafening howl of engines, and he had a sudden, terrible fear that it was the Humbug, taking off with his gold still aboard. “What about my money?” he shouted at it.

“How much have they paid you, Pennyroyal?” called Spiney, stepping into his path again and flapping at Miss Kropotkin to bring her camera.

Pennyroyal gave a feeble roar of rage and pushed Spiney hard with both hands. Spiney fought back, flailing at Pennyroyal’s face, grabbing him by the collar. So much was happening on Strut 13 that no one saw the two writers stumble across the quay and plunge off the edge. Their screams harmonized for a brief moment as they fell.

On the Shadow’s flight deck Theo pushed all the engines to full power, preparing to shove the airship out into the open sky beyond Airhaven’s shadow, but as he reached for the steering levers, a steel hand clamped his wrist.

“THERE ARE TWO ANTI-AIRCRAFT HARPOON BATTERIES ON AIRHAVEN HIGH STREET,” the Stalker Grike announced. “AS SOON AS WE CLEAR THEIR AIRSPACE, THEY WILL FIRE ON US.”

“But we can’t stay here!” shouted Theo, waving at the windows. The glass was already starred by hits from a dozen crossbow bolts, although no one had dared to fire anything more dangerous yet, for fear of igniting a blaze that might engulf the whole of Airhaven.

“GO DOWN,” said Grike. “DROP INTO THE CLOUDS. THEY WILL HIDE US.”