The silo was sixty-six feet high to the crown of its domed peak. Av was settled in at the sixty foot mark, where the concrete walls ended and the tin dome began. Spread out atop the dangerously liquid grain, he’d slid the access panel aside the smallest bit — just enough to give him a clear field of view, but not enough to make it obvious that the panel was open.

The Lewis gun was laid out before him, the bipod legs hooked over the outer wall, a circular drum locked down atop the action. Hanging the muzzle outside would be like flying a flag the instant he opened fire, but he didn’t want the muzzle flash anywhere near the explosive dust hanging in the air inside the dome. He still might blow himself and the whole shebang up with the ejecting brass, but that was a risk he’d have to take.

He had a pretty clear view of the stead, and, peering through the gap between the airship’s hull and the stead wall, he could see Entigh out there standing on the running board of the old Oshkosh like he was taking an order from any other farmer. Henry was all right for a storekeeper.

Craning his neck, he spotted men up on the east and north walls. Nobody on the west, though... or was there? Squinting, he thought he could see a body up on the wall over beyond the hog sheds. No alarm, and he hadn’t heard any shots, so the jig wasn’t yet up. He grinned a cold grin. They might just live through this mess after all.

High as he was, though, he couldn’t make out much on the deck of the airship. It still had almost thirty feet of altitude on him. Oh, he’d see if anybody stuck their melon over the side, for instance to shoot down into the yard, but he couldn’t keep the deck clear. And those extra guys on the walls worried him too.

This close in, he could see weapons blisters along the lower hull that would give clear fields of fire on anything beneath or below the ship. They were empty. What was that all about? Then he shook his head. So long as there were no weapons in them, they weren’t his problem, and there were things he really needed to be paying more attention to more than empty gun blisters.

The more he looked, the more he thought that this really was an operation for a full platoon, not two old men and a boy. Hell, give him two squads of reasonably trained rangers and he’d have the place scoured in ten minutes.

As it was, there were four directions to cover, and only two of them to do it, because Dar had his own job to do here right quick.

He found himself wishing he’d hung onto the Nagant. No way he was going to get down out of this silo, clear those walls, and get back up here in the time they had, and once the noise started, he’d have more important targets to worry about. Those guys were going to be a problem.

Down inside the milk house, Martin and Dar were eyeing the back porch of the main house. It looked a lot farther away than in the plans, but that was probably just nerves.

“Okay, Son,” Martin said quietly. “Once you get past that fence, you just tuck your head down and run. Don’t look left, don’t look right. Don’t worry about anything but where your feet are hitting the ground. Anything else, I’ll take care of from here, understand? You just concentrate on getting inside that house and waiting for the signal. Got me?”

Dar was taking deep, calming breaths, saturating his muscles with oxygen. He nodded. “Got you, Pop. Tuck my head and run. You’ll take care of the rest.”

He took a few steps back into the room, bracing a foot against the pasteurizing tank. He’d hit the doorway at an angle, already going full tilt.

The Thompson was slung crossways over his back and shoulder, the leather sling cinched down tight. The Nagant was stuffed down inside his shirt. He hadn’t recocked it. He’d worry about trigger pull when he got to the house.

“Now!” Martin said, swinging the door wide and ducking out of the way.

Dar exploded away from the wall, pumping his legs for all he was worth, eyes directly ahead, focused on the fence. It was four feet high and made of horizontal steel bars about a foot apart. At this speed, if he didn’t hit it just right, he’d end up rolling across the yard with a broken leg and the whole business would be gone south.

Martin swung back into the doorway, his own Thompson shouldered, eyes scanning the yard. Nothing. He kept sweeping, though, as Dar charged across the open space like a football quarterback going for the winning touchdown.

He gasped as Dar appeared to stumble, but the boy was only adjusting his step prior to the leap for the fence. He hit the upper bar with both outstretched arms, his feet already off the ground, and swung himself around like a pendulum, hitting the hardpack on the far side and twisting half around before he regained his orientation.

Martin winced as the boy spanged off of the nearest dragon stake —one of hundreds that filled the yard and environs of the stead, six inches thick and twenty feet high— but Dar pushed himself clear and used the momentum of the shove to gain speed. He was off again.

Dar’s breath whooshed out of his mouth in great puffs and his arms pumped counterpoint to his legs, yesterday’s bruise all but forgotten with the flush of action. Everything to the sides was just fog — his whole attention was on the back door of the farmhouse.

He was hauling the Nagant clear of his shirt as he passed the second stake close enough to feel it brush his elbow. His feet pounded into the hardpack of the stead yard, and the house just seemed to hang there off in the distance. He couldn’t tell if he was making any progress at all! It was almost like he was running in place. This must be what Pop had been talking about.

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Last stake cleared. And then, almost without transition, he was charging up to the back porch.

Without warning, the back door swung open and a blocky guy in red rushed out, head down, looking at some papers clutched in his hands.

Dar stuck his right arm forward, elbow bent ninety degrees and grabbed his wrist in his left hand. He hit the guy at a full gallop, taking him in the throat with his right forearm, and they both went down in a pile together, the papers scattering into the air.

The ground came up and hit Dar a smack to the side of the face as he rolled. Bouncing up like a cat, he twisted and lunged back toward the fallen pirate who was just sort of lying there, grasping ineffectually at his crushed throat. Dar landed on him elbow first, smashing at the gasping man’s throat again with his whole weight. Quickly, he rolled atop the feebly struggling body and punched him again, hard, in the same spot. Then he rolled off and scuttled into the shadow of the porch, finally cocking the Nagant, gasping for his own breath as he tried to make himself blend in with the shadows, his whole right arm tingling like it had fallen asleep.

The fallen pirate gurgled once or twice and then just stopped. His hands flopped limply into the dust by his sides. No other nearby sounds broke the silence of the night. Was it possible that nobody’d heard the thunderous battle that had just taken place? He could still hear the allox out on the other side of the wall, but they weren’t that loud.

Letting his breath out in a long, slow gust, Dar looked around, brushing dust and gravel from his cheek with a shaking hand. Pop was waving and making sweeping motions from back at the barn. Oh! He reached out and took the body by the leg, dragging it into the shadows with him and rolling it up against the edge of the raised porch out of sight.

Fancy duds. And a saber? What the hell? Dar drew it slowly from the sheath. Not a cavalry saber as he knew it, but more like one of those Av said they used at the European military academies. Officer’s blade. Curved, single edged, about thirty-four inches long in the blade and optimized for the cut. No false edge at all. It weighed, to his hand, around two pounds, maybe. Maybe a bit more. Well, he’d wanted to be quiet, hadn’t he?

Slithering up to the back wall of the house, he stood and slipped inside, the saber in his left hand, the freshly cocked Nagant in his right.

Martin nearly had a stroke when the red-clad figure blundered out the back door. His fear turned chill at the brutally efficient way Dar handled it. ‘No pie in the sky’ Av had said. Well, that was most certainly true. It took him a few moments past Dar’s entry into the house before he was able to move.

Maybe the old man had been right after all. Maybe he wasn’t that guy anymore. He was pretty sure Pale Horse Palin wouldn’t have felt his stomach roll over at watching his son so casually do that to a man.

He shook himself back into the moment. Whoever he was, he had a job to do. With a last, long look around, he was up and sprinting for the old pig sheds.

He brought up hard against the shed wall, gasping, feeling his heart pounding near out of his chest. Maybe he’d been living too easy a life? Maybe he was just getting old. A few deep breaths, and he was back up and into the shed, Thompson in his left hand, stock braced against his hip, his long, slender dagger in his right.

The shed had already been ransacked. Boxes and buckets were scattered across the floor, their contents strewn about or missing. He was at the north end of the larger shed, peering out when he saw the bodies. He grimaced, sucking in a short breath. Pascal. Pascal’s oldest son, Rolly —Henry’s first grandson and all of about fifteen— two men he didn’t recognize, but who were dressed like working cowboys. Laid out in a line on their backs in the lee of the shed, dark stains on their torsos. Pascal was in his nightshirt, and his son was barefoot, clad only in torn jeans. One of the cowboys was in his sock feet and undershirt.

Martin wondered idly if they’d gotten a single shot off before they’d been overrun. He didn’t see any red-clad bodies, but it was possible that the pirates had moved their own dead back to the airship.

The good news was that he didn’t see Evie or any of the younger kids. And only two of the hired hands. He had no idea how many hands Pascal would have had on the place at any given time, but it was likely, big as the place was, that there were more than just these two. So there were probably living prisoners somewhere.

Firming his jaw, Martin put the dead and possibly living from his mind, sprinting across the fifty feet or so to the back end of the slaughterhouse. There were a couple of wagons stored here, so only the first thirty feet or so lacked cover.

There weren’t any doors or windows on this side of the building, just blank walls. The door was out on the west side in full view of the whole stead. He pressed an ear to the wooden wall of the building but heard nothing. He’d have to keep an eye out, because he wasn’t about to check the door. Instead, he eased his way between the smoke house and the outer wall, sidling north towards the tractor shed. He peeked his head around the north end when he got there, just a quick glance and back behind cover. So far, so good.

Looking up, he had a good view of the tractor shed and the considerable activity around it, though from here he could no longer see the front gate. He had to get closer and time was running out.

It was too open up here, with too much activity. It would only take one of them to glance up at the wrong moment and he’d be trapped like a mouse in a corner waiting for the broom to come down.

He’d need to go back. If he could get up under the raised foundation of the bunkhouse now.... It was risky, as there was no ready way to fall back once the party started, but he had to get eyes on that gate, and quick.

It was already miraculous that Henry had held their attention for so long. It couldn’t last much longer.

Crouching between the wagons, he surveyed the path he’d have to travel. From back here, there was only about a hundred feet of open space to cross, and the shadows were getting longer as dusk closed down on the stead.

He crouched over and tried to blend himself with the dragon stakes as he made for it.

* * *

Hendrel Entigh was running out of stall. He’d been playing the dim, out-island hick for a good half hour now, and the character was in danger of becoming too transparent for the audience. The sun was nearly to the treetops, though, and he’d given the Palins and old Tall Pines enough time, he hoped, to get into position.

“Is that all?” he asked, leaning his head and bowing slightly, the picture of obsequiousness.

“It will do for now,” the pirate called back. “See that you’re quick about it and we shall end this unpleasantness without further injury or delay!”

Entigh nodded again and climbed slowly back into the truck. He made an operation out of starting the engine by deliberately over-choking the carburetor on the first try, nearly flooding it. He tried again, and this time he had the arrester retarded enough to get a good, loud backfire.

There was laughter coming from the wall by the time he finally allowed the truck to start and shifted into gear, backing slowly in a three point turn before lining out for the opening into the trees and the road to town.

As the truck gathered speed with its tail to the wall, he carefully adjusted the hand throttle and eased himself down onto the floorboards, moving slowly, carefully, to lie on the floor. The front wall of the truck’s bed was thicker steel than the back wall of the cabin — protection against shifting loads. Perhaps thick enough to stop a rifle bullet, but probably not. Still, it seemed worth a try.

So soon as he saw the first tree out the side window, he started counting. On three, he yanked the hand throttle all the way out, sounded the horn twice, and threw himself out of the accelerating truck and into the trees.