Spanner Frew grunted, stood up, and went back down the pilot box steps. The Jerle Shannara was canted to port at a twenty-degree angle perhaps a hundred yards from the precipice, the curved horn of her starboard pontoon lodged in a cluster of boulders. She wasn’t in much danger of sliding over the edge, but she was fully exposed to anything flying overhead. Behind her, running back for perhaps another hundred yards, a forested shelf jutted from the cliff face of the mountain on which they had settled. They were lucky to be alive after such a crash, lucky not to have fallen all the way into the jungle below, from which extraction would have been impossible. That the Jerle Shannara had not broken into a million pieces was a testament to her construction and design. Say what you would about Spanner Frew, he knew how to build an airship.
Nevertheless, they were trapped, lacking sufficient diapson crystals to lift off, short one more crew member, and completely lost in a strange land. Big Red was normally optimistic about tough situations, but in this particular instance he didn’t much care for their chances.
He glanced skyward, where clouds and mist hung like a curtain across the horizon, hiding what lay farther out in all directions. Nothing was visible but the emerald canopy of the jungle and the tips of a few nearby peaks, leaving him with the unpleasant feeling of being trapped on a rocky island, suspended between gray mist and green sea.
“Spanner!” he yelled suddenly. The burly shipwright trudged back over to stand below the box and looked up at him. “Cut some rolling logs, rig a block and tackle, and let’s try to move the ship back into those trees. I don’t like being out in the open like this.”
The big man turned away without a word and disappeared over the side of the ship. Big Red could hear him yelling anew at the crewmen, laying into them with his shipyard vocabulary. He listened a moment and shook his head. He missed Hawk, who was always a step ahead in knowing what needed to be done. But Black Beard was capable enough, if a bit irksome. Give him some direction and he would get the job done.
Redden Alt Mer turned his attention to his sister. He bent down and gave her a gentle shake. She groaned and turned her head away, then drifted off. He shook her once more, a little more firmly this time. “Rue, wake up.”
Her eyes blinked open, and she stared at him. For a moment, she didn’t say anything. Then she sighed wearily. “I’ve been through this before—come back from the edge and found you waiting. Like a dream. Still alive, are we?”
He nodded. “Though one of us is a little worse for wear.”
She glanced down at herself, taking in the bandages wrapped about her torso and leg where the clothing had been cut away, seeing the splint on her arm. “How bad am I?”
“You won’t be flying off to rescue anyone for a while. You broke your arm and several ribs. You ripped open the knife wounds on your thigh and side. You banged yourself up pretty good, all without the help of a single Mwellret.”
She started to giggle, then grimaced. “Don’t make me laugh. It hurts too much.” She lifted her head and glanced around, taking in as much as she could, then lay back. “We don’t seem to be flying, so I guess I didn’t dream that we crashed. Are we all in one piece?”
“More or less. There’s damage, but it can be repaired. The problem now is that we can’t fly. We lost all our spare diapson crystals through a break in the hull. I have to take a search party down into the valley and find them before we can get out of here.” He shrugged. “Thank your lucky stars it wasn’t worse.”
“I’m busy thanking them that I’m still alive. That any of us are, for that matter.” She licked her lips. “Got anything to drink that doesn’t come from a stream?”
He brought her an aleskin, holding it up for her as she took deep swallows. “You hurt anywhere I can’t see?” he asked when she was done. “A little honesty here wouldn’t hurt, by the way.”