It was another half hour before Martin and Av reappeared out of the trees, strolling one to each side of the road, stripped to campaign shirts and sporting more weapons between them than a platoon of hussars.
Both Dar and Entigh had long since begun to fidget, imagining all manner of horrible fates that might have befallen the two men.
Martin caught sight of Dar and waved him over.
Dar strode deliberately over to his father, rifle held steadily. He noticed that, along with all of the smaller weapons he’d festooned himself with, his father was cradling a Thompson like he knew what it was for. Funny, he’d never have imagined the old man to have so much as seen one up close, and here he was like he’d been at it his whole life, more natural even than holding a rake.
“Yes, Sir?” he asked as he approached within conversational distance.
“You played some hooky yesterday?” Martin asked calmly.
Dar fidgeted, but nodded without excuse.
“What did you see?”
That surprised him. “Nothing much, I guess,” he admitted. “The Westerling heavy packet was running late is all.”
Martin’s eyes sharpened. “That’s all? You’re sure? Nothing else unusual?”
“Well...” Dar thought. “She was wallowed down pretty low, I guess.”
“How low?”
“Eight hundred feet or so beneath her lane,” Dar said. “Is it important?”
“I think it is,” his father said intensely. “Nothing else?”
“Kestrel was escorting—”
“I knew it!” Av crowed before Martin could respond.
“What?” Dar was suddenly and overpoweringly curious. “What does any of that have to do with pirates attacking Northridge?”
Hendrel Entigh was striding up, looking uncomfortable and odd to Dar. He was still dressed in the work pants, white shirt and vest he wore at the mercantile, but he’d mashed an old Tommy helmet over his head and strapped it under his chin. For the first time since he could remember, Dar thought the man to look almost comical. “Is the airship still there?” Entigh asked.
“Oh, it’s there alright,” Av said.
“No fighting,” Martin told him. “Not that we could hear. Whatever’s happened has happened, but there’s considerable activity otherwise. How good a machine shop di— does Pascal have?”
Entigh narrowed his eyes at the verbal slip. “Better than yours, I suppose. Not so good as mine,”
“Good enough maybe to rebuild an airship engine or patch a high steel hull or rigging?”
Entigh scratched at his head under the edge of the helmet. “Depend on how bad the damage was and what kind of engine, I’d guess. Maybe so, if he had the parts. Maybe not. I doubt he’d have any highware tools anywhere on the place. Why?”
“Because it looks like whoever brought that ship in here took a run at that heavy packet and got mauled by Kestrel’s Lampreys,” Martin told him. “Looks like they limped in here on spit, prayer, and chewing gum. I think they took the stead so that they can use its facilities to repair their ship and get the hell out of here.”
“What does that mean for my daughter’s family?” Entigh asked.
Martin shrugged. “I couldn’t say at this point. The ship looks pretty well maintained — hell, it looks almost new. Aside from the fresh damage you’d almost think it was polished up for an inspection. Bespeaks a professional crew with some pride in their equipment.
“I did some tree climbing and got a look over the walls. The stead doesn’t look to have suffered any sort of destruction for its own sake. All the buildings are still standing, anyway. We can hope that they’re professionals who’re going to cause the minimum fuss and be on about their way.”
“We can hope?”
Another shrug. “Like I said, it all depends on who they are. How far from home they are.”
“You mean,” Dar ventured, “whether they can afford to leave anybody alive behind them to raise an alarm in time to catch them.”
Martin frowned volcanically at his son before turning back to Hendrel Entigh. “I mean that, yes.”
“They’ve already killed His Majesty’s constables,” Entigh pointed out. “Wouldn’t that be enough to let them know they’re on somebody’s map already?”
“That might even be a mark in our favor, Henry,” Martin reassured him. “If they don’t have to worry about silencing witnesses, they may not bother. Takes a special kind of bastard to kill unarmed prisoners. Particularly women and children. Most people can’t do it.
“On the other hand, it looks like they opened up on the constables without any sort of warning or parley. Seems to me that slides them down along towards the ruthless end of the scale more than I really feel comfortable about.”
“Too many mights and ifs and hopes and maybes,” Entigh sighed.
“What I said,” Av agreed.
“There’s a risk, Henry,” Martin admitted. “I want you to be absolutely sure that this is the path you want to take.”
“Risk?”
“If there’s anybody left alive in there,” Martin explained, “what do you think the pirates will do at the first sign they have they’re under attack?”
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“Oh,” Entigh’s face paled.
Dar made eye contact with Av, who rotated his head slowly right and then left, giving it the faintest toss in Martin’s direction. It was up to the elder Palin where this venture went, and he was not going to interfere. Dar made a mental note of that deference.
Entigh was pacing, rifle slung. He looked like he was walking a very short watch. Every couple of steps, he’d raise his head and look either to Martin Palin or over the trees in the direction of his daughter’s stead.
While this was going on, Dar was fidgeting, his eyes still scanning the trees on either side of the road. New worries were crowding into his brain to wrestle with the old ones for dominance. “Pop?” he asked finally.
“Yes, Son?”
“Should we be just standing around out here right next to the road like this?”
Martin scowled and looked over his shoulder at Av, who was grinning mischievously, then back at Dar. “What do you mean, Son?”
“Won’t they have pickets or scouts out in the trees looking for somebody like us to show up?” Dar wondered. “It’s what I’d do. And we’re not near far enough away to not be worrying about it.”
Av was snickering, and Martin’s hand was down fishing around in his pocket. “They did,” he said, passing a crumpled pound note over to the old man, who smoothed and folded it ostentatiously before causing it to disappear. “But now they don’t.”
“Pop?”
Martin sighed. “Yes, Darnan?”
“How did that airship get to Northridge?”
Martin fixed him with a level gaze.
“I mean,” Dar mushed on, “what were Kestrel and her Lampreys doing while that thing was limping in here on spit and chewing gum?” he asked. “After they mauled her, I mean?”
Martin didn’t answer at once. He and Av exchanged dour glances. He spared another for Hendrel Entigh, walking and worrying, before addressing Dar again. “I doubt there is a Kestrel anymore, Darnan,” he said quietly. “Nor any of her Lampreys. You’re right that they wouldn’t have let any pirates reach here if they’d been able to stop them.”
“So these guys might be waiting for their own help to arrive?”
Martin shrugged. “I really wish I had an answer to that,” he said.
Finally Entigh stopped his pacing and turned back to them. “How close do you figure you can get before they realize they’re under attack?” he asked.
Martin smiled a grim smile. “I was hoping you’d go that way, Henry,” he said. “But remember, I did warn you.”
The gear was spread out on the ground behind the truck at last. Entigh must have been expecting quite a war indeed. There were things spread out there that Dar hadn’t thought existed outside of military arsenals, and certainly not on the island. The old man had even brought what he recognized as a .50 caliber Browning heavy machine gun, along with four cases of belted ammunition for it.
Martin regarded it all, shaking his head. He looked up at Hendrel Entigh when he’d had his fill. “What do you expect me to do with all this artillery, Henry?” he asked in wonder. “That Ma Deuce,” he pointed at the .50, “will go clean through the outer walls and into the residence. Maybe even out the other side. If we do have friendlies alive inside there, the last thing I want to do is start putting big, gaping holes in them. And how were you planning on moving it anyway?”
Entigh shrugged. “I said I brought everything, Martin,” he admitted. I never said I had a plan for any of it. I kinda thought we could mount the tripod up on the back of the truck and just back on up the road.”
“Let’s let that be plan L,” Martin allowed, doffing his hat to run a hand through his hair. “First, we’ll see how A through K work out, alright?
“Let me see those plans again.”
Entigh laid the roll out on the truck bed and unrolled it, weighting the corners with stripper clips of .303 ammunition from his belt.
“Okay,” Martin asked, sweeping a hand across the layout. “Now that you’ve had some time to think about it, where’s the most likely place they’d put any prisoners?”
Entigh had been thinking about it. All the long way here and all the while since, but he hadn’t had to think like anything but a merchant or mechanic in far too many years. He still didn’t really have a solid idea. His mind was too full of horrible visions of his daughter and her family lying slaughtered in the dust of their homestead for him to think clearly.
“Okay,” Martin sighed. “We’ll try it this way. Which of these buildings has an outside lock that you can’t monkey with from the inside?”
“Oh!” Entigh flushed embarrassedly. “Here,” he leaned in and pointed to a square on the map. “Tool shed. Generator building,” indicating each with the pointing finger. He pointed at the main house. “Root cellar—”
“What’s in the root cellar?”
Entigh looked at him like he was nuts. “Food,” he said. Potatoes, preserves, that sort of thing. What else would there be?”
“While the tool shed will be filled with tools, and the generator shed is filled with the machine that keeps the lights going and the other machines working,” Martin supplied. “Any others? No?
“So, assuming the root cellar; how many entrances? For instance, can you get in there from inside the house, or just through an outside door?”
“There’s a trap door in the kitchen,” Entigh said, putting finger to paper. “Along with one set of stairs leading down from outside of the building.”
“Windows?”
“In a root ce—?”
“In the kitchen.” Martin scowled. Is there a way to cover the inner door through a window in the kitchen? Preferably one with a view of both entrances.”
“This one here,” Entigh scrubbed a finger along one wall of the drawing. “If you could get high enough,” he allowed. “If, that is. I don’t know how you’d do it, though. The nearest elevation high enough to let you clear the outer wall from that angle is a good six hundred yards away, and then about another hundred-forty more to the house.”
“Floor?”
“Dirt.”
“No,” Martin shook his head, edging toward frustration. “In the kitchen. Hardwood? Plywood? Plank? Cement?”
“One-by-six oak planking and two-by-twelve joists, why?”
“Because it would be a shame to accidentally shoot through the floor and kill the people we’re trying to save,” Martin told him.
“Dar?”
“Through open sights, Pop? If I could get set maybe. Maybe two of four on a target the size of a man, depending on how he’s moving and how well I was braced.”
“But you could get pretty close four of four?”
Dar grinned. “Close enough to make ‘em duck you mean? Yeah, I think I could.”
“And,” Martin pressed. “And this is important, Darnan. Could you shoot to kill?”
Dar was taken aback. Of course he could! Couldn’t he? He was hell on wheels against targets or mellits or boolies. And pirates too, sure, when they were in his head, flying those imaginary HTAs. But an individual pirate? A human man moving around inside the sights? He swallowed the sudden lump in his throat. “I th—”
“Don’t think, Darnan!” Martin snapped. “There are lives at stake. Can you do it or not?”
Dar looked his father directly in the eye, seeing the pain there — seeing the worry. He wasn’t sure what Pop wanted to hear at this moment. Did he want to hear that, yes, Dar could and would pull the trigger and end somebody? Or did he want to hear that his only son was too civilized to end a life by his own hand? Did he want Dar to be a warrior or a farmer? Could he accept him as either, or only as one? And which one?
“Yes, Sir,” he said at last, voice steady and strangely flat. “Yes, Sir, I can shoot to kill, if that’s what it takes to protect Mr. Entigh’s family.”
Martin Palin sighed heavily. He, himself hadn’t known exactly what he’d wanted the answer to be. In the end, it had been that his son was no longer a boy. Where that revelation led, only time would tell.
“Henry?” he asked. “Can you get him up to that place you mentioned without being seen from the compound?”
Hendrel Entigh really wanted to say that, yes, he could, but he knew better. He wasn’t a soldier anymore — he was a mechanic and a storekeeper, and he was near sixty years old into the bargain. “I can get him close enough to point it out,” he said sadly. “After that, it’ll have to be up to him.”
“How long?”
Entigh scratched at his head again, shrugging. “I’ve got no idea,” he admitted. “I’ve never been up there myself. Three — four hours anyway.”
“No good, damnit!” Martin shook his head angrily. “That’s too long.” We’ve got maybe five hours of usable daylight left. After that, he may as well be back at home with the rifle on the rack.”
“Well, isn’t two hou—?”
“No, Henry,” Palin cut him off. “It isn’t enough time. You did notice that there’s only the two of us here, right Henry? And that I’m nearly fifty? Me? The young one?”
“What’re you saying, Martin?”
“I’m saying that it might take us five or ten minutes, or it might take us four or five hours. If we can do it at all! You don’t send two old men into twenty or thirty to one odds and then ask them to hurry, Henry. That’s what I’m saying.”