Finally there was a slender, rangy demon wearing a leather flight jacket and a battered Stetson.
Tex here’s the turret gunner.”
With introductions made, Charlie waved his “crew” toward the airplane. “Okay, boys, saddle up and let’s ride.”
“User interface, huh?” Mick said to Taj as they watched Charlie and the demons swarm over the plane doing last-minute checks.
“At least it ain’t Windows 95,” Jerry said.
The best interface is the one that best fits the user,” Taj added. “Can you think of a better interface for this job?”
At last Charlie and the demons were aboard and in position. Charlie slid open the cockpit window and signaled thumbs-up to the Flight Master, who controlled operations from the aerie.
As he had been taught, the Flight Master waved to Charlie to indicate all was ready. Charlie responded with a one-finger salute. The Flight Master turned to the door, dropped to one knee and brought his stiff arm down pointing at the entrance. On that signal Malus raised his staff and the big biplane shot the length of the aerie and out into the open air like an F-14 coming off the deck of a carrier. The cavern erupted into a deafening chorus of roars as the dragons protested an unfamiliar flying thing in their airspace.
As the grooms and riders fought to keep the dragons under control the plane disappeared below the rim of the entrance for a heart-stopping instant and then appeared again, climbing smoothly For altitude.
“Come, My Lords and Ladies,” said Bal-Simba. “We have our own work to do.”
With a final glance at the rapidly vanishing speck in the center of the patch of blue, Gilligan turned and followed the group out of the aerie.
“Where’s your girlfriend?” Taj asked as they climbed the stone steps back to the main keep.
“She left a little while ago,” Mick said shortly.
Deep beneath the ground the pale queen sat upon her ink-black throne. Light there was none, nor sound. Neither was needful.
Part of her was in this dark hall and other parts were in a thousand different places, sensing, observing and here and there acting. All of that was part of the dark queen just as she was part of all of it.
She could feel the pulse of the earth and the putt of the tides. She could sense the currents and eddies of magic which flowed through this place. She could sense her belly ripening even as desires ripene. All were good. All would come to fruition in the fullness of time.
The pale queen knew neither impatience nor haste. Only the pattern, changing, unfolding, becoming. That was all there was and all there needed to be.
TWENTY-FIVE – THE FLIGHT OF THE OLD CROW
The sea was gray, the sky was pale, dear blue and all was quiet. Too quiet.
I shoulda had the wizard do something about engine noise, Charlie thought as the plane hissed through the air. The AN-2 was as rugged as a steel I-beam, but her Russian designers hadn’t spared any attention for non-essentials like soundproofing. Flying a Colt and being able to hear himself think was a new experience for Charlie. He wasn’t sure he liked it.
He flicked the intercom switch.
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition,
And wee’lll alllll stayyy freeee.
None of the demons could sing worth a damn and that wasn’t stopping any of them. In fact they’d been singing constantly since they launched out of the aerie several hours before. They’d started with “Remember Pearl Harbor” and worked their way through a medley of World War II patriotic songs, including a rousing number called “Bomben auf England” that Charlie was sure never graced the messes of the Eighth Air Force. When again. It wasn’t such a large repertoire and Charlie had decided long ago he preferred the unnatural silence of the cockpit to the racket in the intercom.
Gilligan leaned over the map and put his fists on the table. “Okay, their forces are deploying. We’ve got six, eight, it looks like about ten squadrons of dragons moving into range of Charlie.”
“What is Dushmann doing?” asked Kuznetsov.
Gilligan looked puzzled.
“The enemy,” the Russian explained. “ ‘Dushmann’ means the Enemy.”