Chapter 21

Twenty-One

Fieran's flyer lifted into the sky, following Merrik's aeroplane. They pointed their flyers' noses upward, toward the airship hovering above Fort Linder.

Other biplanes darted around the airship, even as the airship's machine guns chattered.

Clawing into the sky took an agonizingly peaceful fifteen minutes. The breeze raked icy through Fieran's hair. He hadn't had the chance to bundle up in the normal leather jacket, fur-lined leather boots, scarf, and cap that he would normally wear to protect himself from the cold air high in the sky. He didn't even have gloves, but he kept his hands from numbing by letting his magic twine around his fingers. At least he had goggles to keep his eyes from tearing up in the wind.

Then Merrik banked to circle the airship, and Fieran followed, shadowing Merrik's movement into a pandemonium of barking machine guns, tearing bullets, a haze of smoke, and whirling aeroplanes.

Fieran called up his magic, but he held it back from fully unleashing. There was so much smoke and chaos he was just as likely to catch one of his fellow pilots in his magic if he sent it at the airship from too far away. He'd have to get closer, using his magic in limited amounts, to prevent hurting one of his own.

As he dove toward the airship, a black shape came out of nowhere around the curve of the dirigible, headed straight for Fieran.

Fieran let out a few crude words and shoved the rudder over with his feet while pushing the stick forward to dive into a right turn. Thanks to the rotary engine, his flyer tumbled sideways even faster than he expected.

A gust of wind took his wings, and then he was spiraling. Everything around was black. Black sky. Black land. Black, black, black.

Was he headed for the ground? The sky? The airship? The jumbled, tugging forces left him with no sense of gravity to tell up from down.

His heart hammered in his throat, his rising bile coating his tongue with a sour taste. His head whirled, all of his senses swimming until he thought he might be sick. Everything in him wanted to just yank on the stick in a blind panic.

Gritting his teeth, he forced his clenching muscles to move. Slowly. Gently. He fought the forces until he regained a margin of control over his flyer, stopping the spin, though he couldn't have said if he was pointed at the sky or at the ground.

Blinking, he forced his eyes to focus. He craned his stiff, aching neck to try to locate something that resembled a light or a landmark.

Over his head, bright orange flames danced among black buildings, a rippling, liquid surface off to his left over his head.

Not over his head. Beneath him. He was flying upside down. Now that he settled back more firmly into his body as his panic receded, he could feel the pain of the lap belt around his hips, the only thing holding him in the cockpit.

This was fine. He was fine.

Trying to calm his thundering heart, Fieran eased on the rudder and control column, trying to turn his craft right side up once again. The aeroplane made only a sluggish attempt to right itself.

Nothing for it. Fieran pushed the control column forward again, putting his aeroplane into a dive, this time curving into a loop so that his flyer slowly righted itself even as it screamed ever closer to the ground.

Fieran braced his feet on the rudder bar and pulled back on the stick, fighting the forces on the ailerons and elevators. His aeroplane finally leveled out right side up, skimming rather disconcertingly close over Fort Linder and punching through the plumes of black smoke.

Ahead and below him, a curving silvery dome of magic arched over Fort Linder's headquarters. While he'd been tumbling through the sky, the airship had drifted, and it now pounded Pip's shield with bombs.

He couldn't have said how he knew, but he could sense her magic wavering, weakening, beneath the bombardment.

Fieran released that burst of magic he'd been holding to so tightly, sending it at her shield. As it had during their practice together, his magic danced over hers, blending together to form an even stronger shield.

The next bomb burst against their combined shield, and this time it held strong.

Fieran sent one more burst of magic at her shield to reinforce it before he gripped the stick with both hands again and pointed his aeroplane's nose toward the confusion in the sky once again.

Aeroplanes darted about in utter disorder around the airship, seemingly doing nothing at all to actually harm the behemoth floating in their sky.

As Fieran swooped back into the bedlam, another flyer came around the curve of the airship's balloon. The pilot didn't seem to see him, and Fieran swerved, this time managing to keep his craft under control as the other flyer darted beneath him, the pilot so focused on firing on the airship that he didn't even glance at Fieran's aeroplane.

As he cleared that flyer, another one appeared out of the smoke. This time a two-seater. Lije remained utterly focused as he flew while Stickyfingers cackled maniacally as he sprayed the side of the airship's balloon with the machine gun. Holes appeared in the canvas skin, but nothing else happened.

The Mongavarian airship was probably constructed with multiple inner balloons beneath the outer dirigible sheathing, those balloons reinforced with magic to prevent air loss, just like the Escarlish airships. It would take more than a few rounds from a machine gun to take the airship down.

Then Lije and Stickyfingers disappeared once more among the smoke and the darkness. Fieran didn't know where Merrik was. Or Capt. Arfeld or anyone else. Each flyer was on his own with no way to communicate with each other, the orange signal flags essentially useless in the murk.

Fieran curved his flyer underneath the airship, his biplane wobbling with the buffeting forces of the air currents tangling as they flowed around the dirigible's bulk. He struggled to keep control of his aeroplane, his entire focus narrowed to just staying in the sky. He didn't have the experience in the air for the maneuvers he was trying to pull off.

He'd have to learn under fire. He didn't have another choice.

A machine gun underneath the airship swung in his direction. He dove and bobbed, trying to avoid the stream of fire.

A buzz whined through the air. A line of pain cut across the side of his arm. When Fieran glanced over, blood welled from a line sliced into his fatigues.

He muttered a rather naughty word and swung his biplane farther over, only to have to swing the other way as another flyer tumbled toward him, spinning out of control, headed for the ground.

This was ridiculous. He was Fieran Laesornysh, son of the legendary Farrendel Laesornysh. Surely he could concentrate enough to both fly his blasted aeroplane and wield his magic at the same time.

If he didn't, his entire squadron would be massacred here in the sky.

Calling on his magic, Fieran let it flow from his fingertips, coating his biplane with a layer of sparking magic. He extended the layer upward, pouring his magic into the six-inch-deep barrier of magic surrounding himself and his aeroplane, concentrating to make sure that he didn't accidentally incinerate the delicate canvas and wood around him.

Merrik's flyer whirled into view around the edge of the airship, his biplane glowing faintly green. He must have reinforced the wooden frame with his magic, protecting himself as much as he could. He lined up with his rifle, aiming for a machine gun emplacement in the side of the dirigible.

Yet Merrik's entire attention appeared so focused on lining up his rifle while keeping his biplane steady that he didn't seem to see that another machine gun farther along the airship's side was swinging toward him, taking aim, seconds away from killing him.

Not on Fieran's watch.

He dove toward the airship, both hands on the stick, squinting to see through the brilliance of his own magic.

Both sets of machine guns swung toward him. Blazing with magic as he was, he made for the bigger, brighter target, even if nothing could touch him.

As the machine guns opened fire, the bullets thwapped into his magic. With barely a thought, he incinerated them, choking the air with the stench of overheated metal.

Flicking out his hand, Fieran sent his magic along the path of the bullets, following the stream of lead back to the machine guns. He wrapped his magic around the guns, then squeezed tight, melting the metal and setting off the gunpowder. The tiny explosions were swallowed up in the fury of his magic.

Fieran swung his flyer to parallel the airship, pouring more of his magic through the air and coating the airship. He glanced over his shoulder, trying to locate any of the other flyers so that he didn't accidentally catch them in the blaze of his power.

Merrik fell in behind Fieran. The two-seater with Lije and Stickyfingers roared up from underneath the airship. At the intensity of Fieran's magic, they nearly stalled as Lije pulled up. After a moment of wobbling in the air, Lije regained control and swerved into line to follow Merrik.

The airship was swinging in a wide turn, drifting over the Hydalla River. Whether to flee for the distant border or turn for another bombing run over the fort, Fieran didn't know. It wouldn't change his duty to take down the airship regardless.

Fieran's magic crawled over the airship, and with that magic, he could sense the canvas, metal, helium, and rope that formed the airship. Bright spots of human magic laced through various parts of the ship, though he couldn't have said what the purpose of the magic was. It didn't matter. His magic would consume it as easily as everything else.

He could also sense the people. All the lives of those swarming over the catwalks and in the gondola. The fear filling them as they watched his magic crawl over their craft.

Something in Fieran went cold, and in that moment, he understood. All of it. All those times his dacha's eyes had gone distant. The way he'd pushed Fieran during training. The practice in killing the pig carcasses.

Most of all, that conversation they'd had the night Fieran enlisted.

He'd always had the sense that, when he killed in war, it would be in self-defense. That it would somehow be more justifiable because the killing was on equal terms, strength for strength, bullet for bullet. He'd kill those who were actively trying to kill him.

But this…this was on a whole different scale. The Mongavarians had no hope of fighting back. He could wipe out every single person on that airship with a twitch of his magic. It was not equal. It was not an honorable battle decided in a test of measure for measure. It wasn't even self-defense, as he was no longer in any danger from the Mongavarian guns.

This was just death. Doing what he had to do to defend his squadron and his kingdom. Killing on a scale the world had not seen since his dacha had fought in the wars between the trolls and the elves.

With one last bracing breath to steel himself, Fieran mentally squeezed his magic tight, devouring the hard sides of the dirigible, the air bags, the catwalks, everything in mere minutes, leaving only tatters of flaming canvas and twisted shards of metal to tumble, burning and groaning, toward the darkness of the waters far below.

He left the gondola, though he wasn't sure if the people within would survive the crash into the water or if he was condemning them to a fate of falling to their deaths if they did not get to their parachutes in time. Assuming the Mongavarian airships came equipped with parachutes.

But right now, there was no time to spare a thought for mercy or regrets. Only logic and cold-hearted duty.