Cloud Castles (35 page)

‘A
long
way,’ she agreed. ‘And move in under cover. But it wouldn’t work.’

‘I know.’ We’d discussed it all, and it came down to speed. One of the great forces from the Rim had moved in to touch the earth here, and there was no telling what it might do if it was alerted. Our only hope was to move in fast. If we recovered the Spear, then it might be a different story; then we ought at least to be able to defend ourselves even against …

‘Even against that,’ said Alison quietly, and I realized suddenly, horribly, that I desperately didn’t want her going anywhere near that place. I never learned; often enough before I’d only come to realize how much I valued something when I was closest to losing it. Or some person. I let her hand fall suddenly and wrapped my arm around her shoulders, tightly, drawing her close. She looked up at me, startled.

‘Stay with the ship!’ I said tightly. ‘Somebody’s got to—’

She gave a breathless half-grin. ‘Oh, Steve, you know I can’t do that. I’m a Knight of the Sangraal! That’s meant more to me than anything – than almost anything. I took the privilege, I pay the price, and this is it.’

‘Sod the privilege!’ I muttered, and she half laughed, wrapped an arm around my waist and gave a companionable squeeze in return. I rounded on her suddenly, and pulled her hard against me, and kissed her, also hard. She was almost the first woman apart from Mall I hadn’t had to bend down to. Her body pressed against mine, serpentine, slender, softer somehow than I’d expected even as she stiffened with surprise. I felt her arms shift as if to push me away; instead
they clapped around my shoulder blades and pressed, hard, pulling me closer. Her dry lips parted, and they weren’t dry any more. She shifted slightly against me, and I felt all of her, the texture of her skin almost, as if there were no clothes at all between us, as if we were welded close by the swelling heat. I slid my hand up to the back of her neck and twined my fingers in the close-cut curls, slid them over the soft neck beneath the soft uniform collar. My other hand slowly traced down her spine—

You need to breathe at the damnedest times. I wanted to come up for air, my lips were bruising against my teeth, and she wouldn’t let me. Those arms were whipcord and steel cable. I hauled myself free and stared into her wide startled dark eyes. How, in God’s name, had I ever thought this woman was plain? It was just that habitual look she’d had, all anger and resentment, that and the ghost of it lingering on in my memory which had blinded me to her. With that wiped away and filled out a little, the dark eyes wide instead of permanently narrowed, the softer outline and the fine bones beneath made the best of that firm chin and full lips and put her face back into balance. Wide-eyed, open-mouthed, startled and unguarded, the look suited her. At least as pretty as half the faces I’d seen that close, prettier than I ever deserved and then some, because there was something more than just the prettiness there. She didn’t fight, she said nothing, she just stared back. I couldn’t think what to say; I had a hundred handy responses for situations like this, and every one of them turned sour on me, cheap and stale and stinking of lies. I was scared to say anything; it seemed too important somehow. It was a mercy when Jyp’s hail broke the spell.

‘Ahoy all! West away! A light! Navigation lights!’

We sprang apart, still staring at each other, then wildly round at a cockpit and company we’d completely forgotten. Maybe they hadn’t seen us in the dark, maybe—

The dark; the sky; lights. I pulled myself together, and saw where Jyp was pointing, a faint flashing gleam barely above the western horizon. ‘Are you sure?’ whispered Alison, grabbing the telescope. But before she’d finished asking it was obvious, a constellation of faint glows surrounding one brighter flashing light; and over the clamour of the mountain and the soft purr of our engines a distant, deeper sound was
growing, a distinctive, thudding roar we’d last heard in a Munich scrap yard.

‘Jyp,’ I whispered, ‘you’re amazing. I think you could chart a course back to the Big Bang.’

‘Maybe so; wouldn’t bank on the round trip, mind. But I’ll steer you a course between a girl’s first and second thoughts of her lover, and that’s tighter yet. And with more shoals.’ Alison made a small sound. I concentrated fervently on the incoming machine. It was bigger than I’d realized, a fast, long-range ‘copter of the kind favoured by oil exploration teams and narc agents.

‘He’s coming in very low,’ I told Jyp. ‘Why? It’s slower. He must have a reason.’

‘Yah. Where’s he going to land?’ We scanned the immense expanse of
Urwald
surrounding the mountain’s base, but there were no major breaks in it at all along that flank.

Alison frowned. ‘It has to be the summit, then … unless – yes, look there!’

Just at the treeline, beneath one of the granite outcrops, a wide shelf stretched out over the slope, half hidden by the tangle of distorted, half-uprooted pines around it. As we watched from cloud height, hardly daring to breathe, the big ‘copter rumbled its way around, banking till we looked down on its rotors, obviously preparing to come in.

‘Quickly, Jyp!’ I hissed, but he and Alison were already at the controls. In the shadow of a cloud the airship sank swiftly but smoothly, so any chance watcher would be hard put to it to make it out. I snapped out my orders, and there was a general scramble as the Knights in the gondola moved to their stations, unshipping the small breech-loader at the rear of the platform. It swung on its mount, brass shell cases were charged, one slammed home and the breech dogged down. Very quietly the rear door was unlatched, and the gun swung back. Still we sank, slow as a leaf now, till it seemed that the wood would reach up and swallow us like a sea anemone after a fish.

‘Wish we could shoot the bastard out of the air!’ murmured one of the World War I esquires. ‘Wouldn’t hurt the Spear!’

Alison frowned. She still looked beautiful. ‘No – but would you want to have to go hunting
for it? Through all
that
down there?’

The squire shuddered. ‘I surely wouldn’t! And I’d have competition fast enough, I bet!’

‘No takers,’ I whispered. ‘Quiet now!’ The airship rocked slightly, and I heard a soft scratching as the pine tops brushed the base of the gondola. The helicopter’s engine thundered as it came to a hover, and then rumbled slowly down as it sank to the earth of the bare mountain. Even as its skids touched the bare stony soil, blasting up clouds of dusty gravel, figures appeared at the margins of the wood and came streaming towards it. Horrible figures, for all their human-like outlines, mostly like Le Stryge’s ogreish henchmen but some even weirder, bloated, rolling monsters of horrendous height and bulk; their swollen arms flailed as they crashed forward on legs grown conical and stubby to support their bulk. This was the ultimate development of this mingled race of demons, human and otherwise, the fully adult stage of the Children of the Night – giants, vast, coarse, primevally strong. It looked as if the helicopter had strayed into one of those nightmarish illustrations from an old Grimm’s. But its door slid back, and a familiar figure jumped down and strode confidently forward; metal gleamed underneath his arm. He must have had more nerve than I’d given him credit for, even if they were on his side.

‘Now!’

I’d meant it to be an inspiring shout. It came out as a sort of falsetto eunuch shriek.

‘
Go, Jyp, go-go-go!’

Alison’s hand tilted the control surfaces; Jyp’s slammed down the throttles, and he spun the helm. We’d sunk down, right down below the shelf, unnoticed as I’d hoped we’d be while the ‘copter was landing. And now, even as the captain stepped out from beneath the circle of the blades, we rose like an avenging angel to the edge of the shelf, and over. The gondola lurched violently as its base scraped and screeched along the stones, but we stayed upright. I snatched up the speaking tube that linked us to the rear gondola, shouted an order, then threw open our forward door and sprang down, stumbling on the stark earth of the Brocken. Behind me sprang Alison, and Mall after her. The monsters swung towards us, glaring; their faces were impossibly bestial, lumpy, misshapen, fanged and filthy, with slitted eyes glittering under pouchy lids, like a living satire written on human flesh. From the rear gondola
the wide ramp boomed down, scraping against the stone. They started at the noise; and then they fell back as a loud metallic jingle sounded. The first horses came slipping and sliding down the ramp, their riders crouching low in the saddle to pass through. It didn’t slow them in the least; they came out with lances already lowered, sabres in hand, to the charge. Utterly taken aback, the monsters howled and scattered, some in aimless panic, others for the trees; but I had no eyes for them. Dragovic, as stunned as the rest, was frantically dodging the monstrous stampede, running for the helicopter. Understandably it was already gunning its rotors, and he screamed at them to wait. He needn’t have bothered; I’d given my orders. As the last horse sprang out the airship swung around, and from the after door the breech-loader spat fire. A cracking explosion, and the ‘copter jerked forward and crashed back on its skids, its rotor smashed and its cabin roof chewed open. A figure slumped out of the co-pilot’s door, held back by the cords of his helmet. The captain gaped for an instant; then he saw us coming, and he turned to run.

A fearful mêlée filled the shelf now, as many of the giant Children, overtaken, turned with horrible savagery on the soldiers who milled around them. Some of them were fifteen feet tall or more, much bigger than Kodiak grizzlies or polar bears, and stronger, by the look of it; those puffy, bowed arms picked up warhorses and broke their necks, or threw their riders spinning headlong. But they feared the lances and heavy sabres that left great slashing wounds, and the arrows of the cataphracts; and when they tried to mass another shell burst in among them, the survivors scattered and the axemen and foot soldiers closed in and hewed down the monsters like trees. Through the middle of the slaughter the captain ran for his life, and at his tail, keeping together as we’d arranged and leaving the fight to the Knights, came Alison, Mall, and myself. Dragovic leaped violently as a pistol shot whizzed past his ear; Jyp, who’d been seeing the airship made fast, sprang down and joined the pursuit. Dragovic swerved to avoid him, and so into our path. We lunged frantically, thought we had him, collided – and he ducked in among the trees and away, shouting loudly for help.

Slashing branches, leaping stones, we kept after him, turning at every turn he made, cutting off his attempts
to double back. He kept on screaming and screaming for help, but nothing happened, and I came so close my sword slashed a wide half-moon flap out of his ragged shirt. But then, as swiftly as the telling of it, a great curtain of grey flew up in my face, a puff of dense fog that filled the air and blotted out my sight, so that abruptly, unnervingly, I was alone.

I took a cautious step. My foot skidded on some puffy fungus; I caught myself on an overhanging limb then jerked my hand away, thick with slime and decay.
‘Alison!’
I yelled.
‘Mall! Jyp! This way! Keep together!’

But it was as if the vapour drank my voice. Out of the fog a dark figure appeared – and then a sword flashed, lance-straight in a lightning lunge, almost too fast to see. I parried, barely, staggered back, saw Dragovic’s eyes glitter, and again only just parried a cut to take my throat out. I tried to launch my own attack and was countered with a force that jarred my wrist, and nearly skewered on another lunge. I knew in a moment of cold panic that Dragovic really was a better swordsman, and nearly as strong; I’d no advantages of muscle or stamina here. How about nerves? I launched a fearful wild swing at his head and a horrible cracked wolf-howl. His sword jerked even as it caught mine, and he jumped back and vanished into the mist. From somewhere another voice called out, muffled as if by great distance; I couldn’t tell whose. Silence fell again.

I hated fog, ever since the Gates. I stepped forward – and something loomed up in front of me, tall, misshapen, fantastical. I yelled and struck at it. My sword slashed the fog, and I almost fell over. Again it appeared, to the side this time. Again I struck at it, again there was nothing there. I bounded forward a few steps, found a stout tree and put my back to it. Nothing – and then abruptly it was there again right in front of me. I sprang forward, slashing wildly, and this time I did fall over, hard. A rock caught me sickeningly in the kidneys. I rolled over – and there the thing came again, more shapeless than ever, rippling across the face of the mist. My sword lay feet away. I snatched up that rock and threw it, a poor throw. It passed straight through the thing and went rattling away into sudden silence. A crash echoed up from somewhere below. I snatched up my sword and scrabbled forward on all fours. Where the thing had appeared the ground dropped away abruptly, that was all I could see. I tossed another rock, there was
a delay, then another crash. I sank back, sweating. Whatever that image was, it had almost led me right over quite a respectable cliff—

‘No more than a simple natural illusion.’

I sprang up, swearing, and stared wildly around me. That voice had sounded right in my ear.

It was there again, papery and cold. ‘Have you not heard of the Spectre of the Brocken? An effect of light and shadows, no more.’

‘Stryge?’

‘A votre service comme toujours, mon seigneur.
But kindly enlighten me, boy. If you cannot cope with so slight a thing, what chance have you against the power that dwells upon this mountain?’

His voice almost concealed the slight scraping sound at my back. Almost. I half turned, barely in time. The captain’s stabbing lunge, meant for my kidneys, slid along my left arm, leaving a shallow cut, and stuck me awkwardly in the side. The impact was bruising, but the blow was indirect; the tough, taut merhorse skin of my top turned the point and sent it skidding over my ribs. I yelped with pain and lashed out a cut, as he should have done; he’d tried to kill me painfully instead of cleanly. He ducked hastily away again.