“But I am your friend,” he murmured.
She eased. She even smiled, shakenly. He gave her his knife and went back inboard.
And now the last pirate vessel stood up from the earth. It moved near; Ruori’s two craft made no attempt to flee. He saw sunlight flash on edged metal. He knew they had witnessed the end of their companion craft and would not be daunted by the same technique; rather, they would close in, even with their ship burning about them—if nothing else, they could killdle him in turn and then parachute to safety. He did not send arrows.
When only a few fathoms separated him from the enemy, he cried: “Let go the valves!”
Gas whoofed from both bags. The linked blimps dropped.
“Fire!” shouted Ruori. Hiti aimed his catapult up and sent a harpoon with anchor cable through the bottom of the attacker. “Burn and abandon!”
Men on deck touched off oil which other men splashed from jars. Flames sprang up.
With the weight of two nearly deflated vessels dragging it from below, the Canyon ship began to fall. At five hundred feet the tossed lifelines draped across flat rooftops and trailed in the streets. Ruori went over the side. He scorched his palms going down.
He was not much too quick. The harpooned blimp ordered compressed hydrogen released; the vessel rose to a thousand feet
with its burden, seeking sky room. Presumably no one had yet seen that the burden was on fire. In no case would lhey find it easy to shake or cut loose from one of Hiti’s irons.
Ruori stared upward. Fanned by the wind, the flames were smokeless, a small fierce sun. He had not counted on his fire taking the enemy by total surprise. He had assumed they would parachute to earth, where the Meycans could attack. Almost, he wanted to warn them.
Then flame reached the remaining hydrogen in the collapsed gas bags. There was a sort of giant gasp. The topmost vessel became a flying pyre. The wind bore it out over the city walls. A few antlike figures managed to spring free., The parachute of one was burning.
“Sant’sima Marl,” whispered a voice, and Tresa crept into Ruori’s arms and hid her face.
VIII
After dark, candles were lit throughout the palace. They could not blank the ugliness of stripped walls and smoke-blackened ceilings. The guardsmen who lined the throne room were tattered and weary. Nor did 5’ AntOn itself rejoice, yet. There were too many dead.
Ruori sat throned on the calde’s dais, Tresa at his right and Páwolo DOnoju on his left. Until a new set of officials could be chosen, these must take authority. The Don sat rigid, not allowing his bandaged head to droop, but now and then his lids grew too heavy to hold up. Tresa watched enormous-eyed from beneath the hood of a cloak wrapping her. Ruori sprawled at ease; he felt a little more happy now that the fighting was over.
It had been a grim business, even after the heartened city troops had sallied and driven the surviving enemy before them. Too many Sky Men fought till they were killed. The hundreds of prisoners, mostly from the first Maurai success, would prove a dangerous booty; no one was sure what to do with them.
“But at least their host is done for,” said Dónoju.
Ruori shook his head. “No, S’flor. I am sorry, but there is no end in sight. Up north are thousands of such aircraft, and a strong hungry people. They will come again.”
“We will meet them, captain. The next time we shall be prepared. A larger garrison, barrage balloons, fire kites, cannons that shoot upward, even a flying navy of our own. . . we can learn what to do.”
Tresa stirred. There was life again in her words, but a life which hated: “In the end, we will carry the war to them. There will not be one left in all the Corado highlands.”
“No,” said Ruori. “That must not be.”
Her head jerked about, she stared at him from the shadow of her hood. Finally she said, “True, we are bidden to love our enemies, but you cannot mean the Sky People. They are not human!”