Robert Charrette - Arthur 03 - A Knight Among Knaves (44 page)

John and his companions stared in disbelief.

The missile screamed over their heads and disappeared behind the bulk of the station, hitting a second later in an explosion that threw ice and rock and snow in a geyser taller than any of McMurdo's buildings.

"That was no conventional missile defense," Kun said. "If he can do that, how did they manage to down his craft in Boston?"

"Maybe they caught him by surprise. Maybe he's improved his spells. Maybe he's just more powerful now," Dr. Spae said. "It doesn't really matter how. We've got a serious problem."

"Can't you use one of the Snowhawks to shoot him down?" John asked.

"No armament," Kun reminded him.

Antarctica was still demilitarized, all heavy weapons prohibited. The antiaircraft missiles they'd used were among the proscribed armaments.

"Looks like we chase him after all," Dr. Spae said.

Having felt Van Dieman's touch, John preferred the idea of taking him down from a distance. "But you said that the closer he gets to his destination, the stronger the harbinger will become. It would be better to stop him now. Maybe if we fire all four launchers at once, he won't be able to stop them ail."

"Don't be so sure," Dr. Spae said.

"I'm open to suggestions," Kun said. "Is there no spell you can apply?"

"I thought you wanted the magic passive until we cornered him?" John asked

"No point in that anymore," Kun said. "If he recognized the camouflage illusion, he knows we've got at least one specialist."

"Agreed." Dr. Spae looked unhappy. "He'll be ready to counter any magic directed at him."

John had an idea. "What if he's busy doing something else?"

"The missiles?" Kun asked.

"It might work," Dr. Spae said thoughtfully.

The missiles were only part of John's idea. "More than that. What if instead of trying to do something to
him,
we went after the verrie?"

"He'll be watching for arcane attacks. If an attack is directed anywhere in his vicinity, he'll counter. Overt hostile magics are almost as easy to block as they are to detect."

John had anticipated that response. "But what if rather than trying to make something happen, we made something
not
happen?"

"What are you suggesting?" Dr. Spae asked.

John explained.

"It may be the best chance we have," she said.

"Very well," Kun said. "We'll try it."

While John and Dr. Spae riffled through the doctor's tools and supplies, quickly gathering whatever they could find to ritually enhance their spell, Kun arranged the mundane aspects of the plan. There wasn't much time before the fleeing verrie was out of sight.

Fortunately, Hagen had already ordered the two missile-armed dwarves on the western perimeter up to firing positions that commanded the eastern horizon. When John and Dr. Spae signaled that they were ready—they weren't, but they were as close as they were going to get in the time they had—Kun gave the order to fire and four missiles arched into the sky.

Coincident with the rising smoke and flame of the missiles, John and Dr. Spae launched their astral essences. Dr. Spae, more experienced at projection, led the way. Their speed was that of thought, and they closed the distance faster than the rocket-powered missiles. They slipped past the roiling energies with which Van Dieman battered the incoming missiles, and skirted the darkness coiling around the fuselage of the Petrel. John was glad that they weren't going to do their magic any closer. They approached the starboard engine heedless of what would have been dangerous for physical forms, for neither the whirling rotor nor the churning vortex it created had power to affect their immaterial presences. They alighted on the great cylindrical housing that covered the throbbing power plant driving the rotor.

John touched the engine and felt the heat of the fire inside. It was the fire he had come to deal with. He spoke to it, addressing it by the names he had learned in the otherworld. He told the fire of the frigid air all around it, and of the ice below, and of the cold. He especially told the fire of the deep, deep, deadening cold.

Benton thought they were cooked when he heard the pilot's bleating report of two antiaircraft missiles coming for them. The man was a hireling and had no combat experience. Benton was down the aisle and into the cockpit doorway before the pilot started evasive maneuvering. One glance at the radar screen told Benton that the man's effort's were worthless. The missiles were too close.

Then the threat was gone—one missile heading for orbit and the other back the way it had come. Unnatural. Benton looked to the nearest source of unnatural happenings. Van Dieman was sitting in his seat, eyes closed. To the casual eye he might look asleep, but Benton's was not the casual eye. Van Dieman's temperature was elevated, his blood flow more consistent with serious physical activity than with sleep. A dark, smoky haze hung about his body, but there was no scent of anything burning. Weird. The very sort of thing that Van Dieman had once hired Benton to observe and bring back to him.

Unlike some of his teachers, Benton believed in cause and effect. He'd seen the effect, the redirection of the incoming missiles, but he could see no connection to a cause. Just a suspect. Benton couldn't prove it, but he felt certain that Van Dieman had been responsible for their salvation. In the world Benton understood, such a feat should have taken some very fancy electronics. However Van Dieman had done it, he hadn't done it with electronics.

Still, one had to accept what was, and Benton was happy to accept a save from missiles that would have blown their aircraft to component parts—even if it did leave him feeling unsure about the nature of his employer.

He ordered the pilot to shift to level flight. The faster they were away from McMurdo, the better. Taking the Petrel inland wasn't a good solution, but it beat landing in enemy-occupied territory. Benton had no idea of Van Dieman's limits, but he doubted they were infinite, and where there two missiles, there could be more. The airspace around McMurdo Station was not healthy for them.

When nothing immediately rose to challenge their flight, Benton breathed a little easier. He watched with satisfaction as the base crawled closer to the edge of the map screen. A warning buzzer killed his hopes of an easy escape as four incoming targets appeared on the Petrel's radar screen.

Four surface-to-air missiles.

Van Dieman had dealt with two. Could he deal with four? He'd better be able to, the Petrel didn't have the juice to do anything.

"Forget the evasion," he told the pilot. "Go for speed."

It wasn't much of a hope.

He knew it was no hope at all when one of the engines coughed.

Had they been hit? No, there had been no shock of impact. The radar screen showed the incoming missiles wobbling in their flight. One was already diving back toward the ground.

Then what had happened?

The starboard engine coughed again and died. The Petrel tilted. The pilot fought to compensate for the loss of lift and thrust on that side. If they had been in vertical flight mode, they'd be spinning to destruction. What difference did it make? They were going to be easy prey for the missiles now.

Benton checked the radar just in time to see two of the missiles collide. The Petrel shuddered from the shock of their self-immolating explosion. The last missile veered off course. They were safe.

The port engine emitted a stuttering series of coughs and died as completely as its partner.

Safe?

Whatever had gotten them had gotten them good. They were going down. The idiot pilot was fighting the controls, his copilot trying for a restart. Benton shoved the pilot out of the way and reached down to hit the emergency releases on the tilt hydraulics. The Petrel shuddered and bucked as the massive engines made an inertia shift into vertical flight position. Benton waited anxiously for the vibration that would indicate that the housing had completed the arc and the locks had engaged.

The Petrel was still dropping. Unsecured, Benton was tossed against the cockpit door frame. The craft yawed and he was thrown to the floor. The Petrel leveled out. The locks must have engaged, allowing the rotors to catch air. His ploy had worked! The blades were free-rotating, cushioning the verrie's fall. The landing would be hard but it wouldn't be devastating.

Van Dieman was not surprised when his enemies sent more missiles after him. Indeed, after he had disposed of the first two, he had expected them to send more at once in the vain hope that their first failure had been a fluke. Their delay had puzzled him—until he heard the first sputtering of the Petrel's engines and realized that he had been made a dupe. The second missile attack had been only a diversion. While he had been disposing of the missiles, the enemy mage had been engaged in a subtle but devastating attack.

They were too close to the ground for him to draw upon the harbinger's power to arrest the Petrel's fall. The craft hit hard. A spike of jagged rock tore through the verrie's belly, demolishing all in its path, including one of Benton's men. The Petrel's nose tilted down. The fuselage strained against its impalement, twisted, and, with a rending screech shredded. Frigid Antarctic air whipped into the cabin as the shattered verrie heeled over. The port engine housing jammed against the unyielding ground. The overstressed structural members in the stubby wing snapped and sent lethal shrapnel whirring through the wreckage.

Pain chewed its way into Van Dieman's back and left leg. He screamed in agony and outrage at the darkness seeking to suck him down. He fought against it. In a haze of flashing stars, he tore out the sharp fragment of aircraft composite that had embedded itself in his knee. The lacerations he incurred in his hand were nothing next to the fires that lit his

insides.

"Heal me," he ordered the harbinger.

You are broken. Energy is needed for more important things,
the creature replied distantly. The harbinger's dark, serpentine image floated above him, but its attention was elsewhere, longing for their now seemingly unattainable destination.

More important? How dare the creature imply he was not worth its effort! " You have the power to heal my injuries. Do

so."

No reward for the useless.

"Useless!"
The creature's temerity went beyond all bounds. The fire of Van Dieman's anger overwhelmed the pain. The harbinger needed a lesson. He could whip it down, teach it its place—but this was not the time to engage in a dominance battle with a servant chafing at its bonds. The harbinger was right on one point: energy was needed for more important things. Once they were free from these am-bushers, however... "1 could compel you by the terms of your binding, but I am magnanimous. I will merely point out that your goal—our goal!—is still unachieved. You need me, for you have no hands to carry the
telesmon
to its appointed place. You still need me."

Still,
came the reluctant response.

Van Dieman knew that it understood. "Take away this pain. The path remains closed unless you do so!"

The pain went away so quickly that it might never have been. A hardness probed at his abdomen. The harbinger's head dipped to that point and nuzzled him. A jagged ceramic shard emerged, passing through his clothes without tearing a thread. The harbinger dropped the shrapnel into Van Die-man's hand. He marveled at it, imagining the damage that such a thing must have done to him. The pain and damage were gone, made nothing by the harbinger's power.

Van Dieman smiled, not from relief as a lesser man might, hut from pleasure—the pleasure of his exerting his will upon the rebellious harbinger, and knowing that he was still in control. There was also, of course, the anticipation of showing the harbinger its master's strength.

But the ending of the pain brought back the input of his other senses. From outside the wreck of the Petrel he could hear gunfire.

The harbinger's discipline would have to wait.

He extricated himself from his seat. The
telesmon'
s case was wedged in the rain of the forward locker. The carrying case had done its job of protecting the precious contents, but would no longer do so, mangled as it was. Van Dieman removed the precious treasure and clutched the
telesmon
to him. Making his way across the uneven floor, he looked at the gaping hole in the Petrel's side. Benton and the rest of Van Dieman's surviving bodyguards had spread out from the wreck in a skirmish line and were moving across the ice field back toward the McMurdo airstrip. From positions at the edge of the buildings, the enemy was firing at them, trying to stop them.

A groan from the cockpit caught his attention. He turned and saw the copilot staggering into the cabin. Beyond him the pilot lay sprawled and dead, impaled on the steering yoke.

"Santiago," Van Dieman said. He read the name on the man's bloodied flight suit as he silently ordered the harbinger to strengthen the man. His servant reported the copilot fit. "Are you well enough to fly?"

"No ship," he replied, slowly but coherently.

"That is a temporary condition," Van Dieman told him.

The harbinger radiated fierce, anticipatory joy.