Solely by chance, Walker and his three Rover companions were spared the fate of so many. Just before the attack arrived, they had been testing the responsiveness of their ship. As a result, they were still aboard when the warning was given, light sheaths yet unfurled, radian draws in place, and the anchor barely down. The Rovers acted instantly, leaping to tighten the stays and reset the draws, cutting the anchor with a sword stroke, and casting off. In seconds, they were airborne, lifting toward their attackers like a swift, black bird. Even with only three hands to sail her, she responded with a quickness and agility that left the enemy ships looking as if they were standing still.
A safety line secured about his waist, Walker crouched just in front of the pilothouse and behind the forward mast and watched the land and water spin away in a dizzying rush. With Spanner Frew and Rue Meridian manning the starboard and port draws respectively, Redden Alt Mer wheeled their sleek craft recklessly through the dark line of attackers, nearly colliding with those nearest. The hulls of ships loomed on either side, sliding past like night phantoms, great massive ghosts at hunt. Some passed so close that Walker could identify the Federation uniforms worn by the soldiers who knelt in the fighting ports firing their arrows and launching their spears.
“Hold tight!” Alt Mer shouted down to him from atop his precarious station, hauling back on the steering levers to gain more height and speed.
Missiles flew everywhere, dark projectiles against the twin glows of the sunset and the fires in the harbor. Walker flattened himself against the rough wall of the pilothouse, protecting his back. He did not want to use magic. If he did, he would reveal his presence, and he thought it best not to do so. To his right, crouched deep in one of the fighting ports, so close to the nearest ship that he could have reached out and touched it, Spanner Frew was cursing loudly under a hail of bow fire. Across from him, Rue Meridian was dashing recklessly from draw to draw, miraculously avoiding the barrage of arrows that sailed all around her, dark face grim and determined as she set the lines.
Their wild, hair-raising escape was punctuated by the underside of their ship raking across the mastheads of the last attacker as they finally gained the safety of the open skies. All about them, the remaining Rover airships were fleeing into the darkness, skimming across the cliff tops, and disappearing down the coast. Below, their attackers were descending on the settlement buildings, setting fire to everything, and driving the last of the residents into the surrounding forests. Masts jutting sharply against the flaming debris, dark hulls glided everywhere.
As their vessel steadied and their passage smoothed, Rue Meridian appeared at Walker’s side. “Those were Federation ships!” she snapped angrily. Her face was streaked with soot and sweat. “They must be madder at us than I thought! All those people driven out or killed, their ships and homes burned, just to make a point?”
Walker shook his head. “I don’t think it was you they were after.” He caught her startled gaze and held it. “Nor do I think it was the Federation who was behind this witch hunt.”
She hesitated a moment, then let her breath out in a long, slow hiss of understanding.
Behind them, hidden by the cliffs they were fleeing and reduced to a reddish yellow glow against the darkness of night, Rover buildings burned unhindered to the ground and gutted airships sank into the deep.
THIRTEEN
Provisioned and readied, Bek Rowe and Quentin Leah departed at daybreak and rode east through the Highlands. The day was cool and clear, with the smell of new grass and flowers heavy on the scented air and the sun warm on their faces. Clouds were massing west, however, and there was a clear possibility of rain by nightfall. Under the best of conditions it would take them several days just to navigate as far as the Eastland and the beginning of their search for the mysterious Truls Rohk. In the old days, before invasion and occupation by the Federation army, they could never have gone this way. Directly in their path lay the Lowlands of Clete, a vast, dismal bog choked with deadwood and scrub, shrouded in mist and devoid of life. Beyond that were the Black Oaks, an immense forest that had claimed more victims than either of the young men cared to count, most to mishap and starvation, but some, in earlier times, to the huge wolves that were once its fiercest denizens. All this was daunting enough, but even after navigating bog and woods, a traveler wasn’t safe. Just east of the Black Oaks was the Mist Marsh, a treacherous swamp in which, it was rumored, creatures of enormous power and formidable magic prowled. Below the marsh, and running south for a hundred miles, were the Battlemound Lowlands, another rugged, difficult stretch of country populated by Sirens, deadly plants that could lure and hypnotize by mimicking voices and shapes, seize with tentaclelike roots, paralyze with fleshnumbing needles, and devour their victims at leisure.