“I think he’s counting on us breaking the tiger’s teeth,” Jeffrey said. “God go with you.”
“How not? If there was ever anyone who fought with His blessing, it is here and now.”
“Damn,” Jeffrey said softly, watching the Unionaise walk towards his staff car. “I hate sending men out to die.”
If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be the man you are, Raj said. But you’ll do it, nonetheless.
Maurice Hosten stamped on the rudder pedal and wrenched the joystick sideways.
His biplane stood on one wing, nose down, and dove into a curve. The Land fighter shot past him with its machine guns stuttering, banking itself to try and follow his turn. He spiraled up into an Immelmann and his plane cartwheeled, cutting the cord of his opponent’s circle. His finger clenched down on the firing stud.
“Fuck!” The deflection angle wasn’t right; he could feel it even before the guns stuttered.
Spent brass spun behind him, sparkling in the sunlight, falling through thin air to the jagged mountain foothills six thousand feet below. Acrid propellant mingled with the smells of exhaust fumes and castor oil blowing back into his face. Land and cloud heeled crazily below him as he pulled the stick back into his stomach, pulled until gravity rippled his face backward on the bone and vision became edged with gray.
Got the bastard, got him—
Something warned him. It was too quick for thought; stick hard right, rudder right . . . and another Land triplane lanced through the space he’d been in, diving out of the sun. His leather-helmeted head jerked back and forth, hard enough to saw his skin if it hadn’t been for the silk scarf. The rest of his squadron were gone, not just his wingman—he’d seen the Land fighter bounce Tom—but all the rest as well. The sky was empty, except for his own plane and the two Chosen pilots.
Nothing for it. He pushed the throttles home and dove into cloud, thankful it was close. Careful, now. Easy to get turned around in here. Easy even to lose track of which way was up and end up flying upside down into a hillside convinced you were climbing. There was just enough visibility to see his instruments’ radium glow: horizon, compass, airspeed indicator. One hundred thirty-eight; the Mark IV was a sweet bird.
When he came out of the cloudbank there was nobody in sight. He kept twisting backward to check the sun; that was the most dangerous angle, always. The ground below looked strange, but then, it usually did. Check for mountain peaks, check for rivers, roads, the spaces between them.
“That’s the Skinder,” he decided, looking at the twisting river. “Ensburg’s thataway.”
Ensburg had been under siege from the Chosen for a month. So that train of wagons on the road was undoubtedly a righteous target. And he still had more than half a tank of fuel.
Maurice pushed the stick forward and put his finger back on the firing button. Every shell and box of hardtack that didn’t make it to the lines outside Ensburg counted.
* * *
“Damn, that’s ugly,” Jeffrey said, swinging down from his staff car.
The huge Land tank was burnt out, smelling of human fat melted into the ground and turning rancid in the summer heat. The commander still stood in the main gun turret, turned to a calcined statue of charcoal, roughly human-shaped.
“This way, sir,” the major . . . Carruthers, that’s his name . . . said. “And careful—there are Lander snipers on that ridge back there.”
The major was young, stubble-chinned and filthy, with a peeling sunburn on his nose. From the way he scratched, he was never alone these days. He’d probably been a small-town lawyer or banker three months ago; he was also fairly cheerful, which was a good sign.
“We caught it with a field-gun back in that farmhouse,” he said, waving over one shoulder.
Jeffrey looked back; the building was stone blocks, gutted and roofless, marked with long black streaks above the windows where the fire has risen. There was a barn nearby, reduced to charred stumps of timbers and a big stone water tank. The orchard was ragged stumps.