Then he saw the scattering of dots ahead and off to the starboard where the coastline bent inward in a series of deep coves.
“Black Beard!” he said in the other’s ear, pulling on his shoulder and pointing.
Spanner Frew looked. Ahead, the dots began to take shape, to grow wings and sails. “More of them!” the big man growled, a hint of disbelief in his rough voice. “Shrikes, as well, if I’m seeing right. How did they get ahead of us?”
“The Shrikes know the coastline and cliffs better than we do!” Alt Mer had to fight to be heard above the wind. “They’ve found a way to cut us off. If we stick to our flight line, they’ll have us. We have to get further inland, and we have to get there quickly.”
His companion glanced around at the mist-shrouded mountains. “If we fly into these in this mist, we’ll end up in splinters.”
Alt Mer caught his eye and held it. “We don’t have any choice. Give me the wheel. Go forward and signal back whenever you think I need it. Hand signals only. Voices might give us away. Do your best to keep us off the rocks.”
Having repaired the broken draws and swept aside the bits of wreckage, the crew was standing by on the lines. Spanner Frew called out to them as he passed, sending them to their stations, warning of what was happening. No one replied. They were schooled in the Rover tradition of keeping faith in those who had the luck. No one had more of it than Redden Alt Mer. They would ride a burning ship into a firestorm if he told them to do so.
He took a deep breath, glanced once more at the shapes ahead and behind. Too many to evade or to fight. He swung the wheel hard to port toward the bank of mist. He let the airship maintain speed until they were into the soup, then cut back to dead slow, watching the vapor gather and fade, wispy sheets of white wrapping the darker edges of the mountains. If they struck a peak at this height, in this haze, with a third of their power already gone, they were finished.
But the Shrikes couldn’t track them, and their pursuers were faced with the same problem they were.
It was oddly silent in the mist, in the cradle of the peaks, empty of all sound as the Jerle Shannara glided like a bird. All about them the mountains seemed afloat, dark masses appearing and fading like mirages. Alt Mer read the compass, then put it away. He would have to navigate by dead reckoning and gut instinct, then hope he could get back on course when the mist cleared. If it cleared. It might stay like this even further inland, beyond the mountain peaks. If it did, they were as lost as if they had never had a course to begin with.
He could just make out Spanner Frew standing at the bow. The big Rover was hunched forward, his concentration riveted on the shifting layers of white. Now and then he would signal by hand—go left, go right, go slow—and Redden Alt Mer would work the controls accordingly. The wind whistled past in sudden gusts, then died, baffled by a cliff face or air current. Mist swirled through the peaks, empty and aimless. Only the Jerle Shannara disturbed its ethereal fabric.
The rain returned, a gathering of dark clouds that turned quickly into a torrent. It engulfed the airship and its crew, soaking them through, shrouding them in dampness and gloom, claiming them as the sea might a sinking ship. Alt Mer, who had weathered worse, tried not to think of the way in which rain distorted shapes and spaces, creating the appearance of obstacles where there were none, giving hints of passage where walls of rock stood waiting. He relied on his instincts rather than his senses. He had been a sailor all his life,—he knew something of the tricks that wind and water could play.
Behind him, the mist and darkness closed about. There was no sign of their pursuers—no sign of anything but the sky and the mountains and the shifting rain and mist between.