Darnan did not look back again, and so he missed the swarm of small red specks dropping down from the high strata like hurled stones, reflecting metallic glints in the late afternoon sun. At this distance, and with the shoulder of the island between them, he couldn’t even hear the explosions as their dive bombs took Kestrel from the fore port quarter, shattering her armored high-steel decking and starting fires in the forward magazines before her crew had the time to react to general quarters.

He was almost back to his balloon wagon and its cud-chewing draft beasts when Kestrel swelled with internal explosions and broke apart, sending her crew and anything made of mundane materials plummeting downward as the shards of her ruined highware scattered upward and outward, trailing smoke and flame.

Almost quicker than the eye could follow, all that remained of Kestrel was a slowly spreading black smudge of oil smoke blowing eastward on the wind.

A few of her Lampreys —the heavier than air fighting aircraft of which the Royal Navy was so inordinately proud— made it clear before Kestrel broke up. Another aircraft managed to achieve air speed as it fell, its pilot bringing it out of the spiraling dive, slashing into and then up and out of the mist sea with a staccato roar that was definitely not that of a standard MK III Lamprey, or even one of the new MK IVs.

The RN pilots tried to fight back, but between the red specks dropping from above and a number of larger craft dropping ballast and shooting skyward from beneath the mist with their own guns and cannon firing, there was really no contest.

Outnumbered twenty to one, the pitiful few Imperials were swarmed and quickly overcome. But they did not go alone. Five of the red specks dropped from the sky trailing smoke and fire down into the mist, and one of the larger of their brethren was now belching thick, dark smoke as well, whether from being struck by the autocannon of a Lamprey or some falling piece of debris from Kestrel, it was unclear.

The remaining red aircraft swarmed over the Westerling heavy packet, raking her engine sponsons with their machineguns. They were out to disable, not to destroy. Larger ships with oversized engines were already moving alongside as she began to settle even lower, down towards the mist.

Grappling lines belched forth from pneumatic deck guns specifically designed for such purpose. Slowly, ponderously, the Westerling heavy packet was taken under tow and pulled away from her westward course, such of her crew as remained alive helpless to either stop her or to save themselves.

Dar checked the rigging of the garishly decorated balloon, glancing upward with a practiced eye to gauge did he need to increase the flame of the burner. It was sagging just a bit, so he turned up the flame. Pop would be on him for the amount of fuel he’d used on this run, but it wouldn’t be the first time nor, probably, the last.

Once the balloon was soaring to his satisfaction, it’s demonic “face” snarling upward to ward off any wandering predators, and its lift pulling the wagon’s wheels up out of the hardpack of the road sufficiently, he fixed the valve and moved forward to check on the allox. He might as well not have bothered.

The beasts pretended not to notice he was there or that he’d been gone until he’d pulled the picket pins and tugged on their harness a few times. His efforts were rewarded with a raucous blast of flatulence and a moment of token resistance before the lead allox deigned to put one spatulate, eight-toed foot before the others.

Sighing yet again, he moved to the wagon’s port —no, left— side. He shook his head, actively flushing any and all thoughts of airships or their vernacular from his mind. He stowed the flechette rifle in its scabbard alongside the cargo bed and took up his drover’s staff.

Smacking the lead allox’s rump with the end of the staff from time to time when it considered slowing to graze at the roadside weeds, he finished the afternoon trudging forward beside it, concentrating on being a teamster. Some days that was harder than others, and today was shaping up to be one of those.

He wasn’t really going to be able to have the grain in the silo by dusk, he decided. Not that it mattered. Payment was determined by distance rather than time spent, and the silo mechanism was automated oil combustion rather than manual.

He could as easily start the grain pump and stow the load as the old man whose job it was to sit there all day and make sure the silos didn’t float away of their own accord for some reason. Probably better, since it was Dar who maintained the pumps in the first place and knew their workings most intimately. And what care had Hendrel Entigh whether Dar was home before dark or not, so long as his grain was where it belonged in the morning?

Kisêyiniw, now. Kisêyiniw would not be amused that his pupil had squandered three hours and more of valuable daylight just to watch a packet go by in more or less the same manner that packets did twice a week every week of every year, first heading west and then east in their turn — the only difference between the lot being their owners and their destinations, which depended on where the island was in its orbit during any given week.

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There would be a price to pay, Dar knew. He only hoped it didn’t involve horse dung. Kisêyiniw had several horses, and they seemed prodigious eaters by the detritus they left behind on the stable floor.

It started drizzling well before he’d reached his destination, and the combination of water gathering on the balloon’s skin and the cooling ambient temperature forced him to adjust the gas flame twice more. Pop was going to be livid. The allox were protesting the mud, loudly and odorously, slowing their pace further despite all he could do to hasten them along.

Well after dusk, Dar revised his estimate.

* * *

The price hadn’t involved horse dung. Three hours into his lessons, Dar found himself not regarding this as a victory.

Sweat was rolling down his face and his hair was plastered to his head with it. It was all he could do to gasp enough air into his lungs to stand upright, but the old man was demanding that he advance yet again. How?

His feet were encased in lead blocks easily forty tons to the toe. Nor could he wipe the stinging flood from his eyes, for if once he took a hand from the heavy rifle, Kisêyiniw would be on him in an instant, reminding him that one did not have time for such luxuries in battle. He flicked the sweat away with a quick flip of his head.

It never occurred to him to ask why he was learning to wield an empty and dismounted twenty-three millimeter swivel rifle in melee any more than it had ever occurred to him to wonder why the old man sometimes insisted that he stalk mellits or boolies through the forest for hours at a time just to see how close he could get to them.

Or why they spent so much time with blades when anybody with a brain went into battle with one or more firearms to hand — one did also not ask Kisêyiniw why one was forced to do the seemingly random or pointless if one knew what was good for one. So he’d quietly spent an extra half hour at the saber this evening as penance for his tardiness, working on soft sand. And now this.

Kisêyiniw stepped in abruptly, wielding a more common hickory staff for his own part, and slashed at Dar, torquing the heavy implement with arms spread, arcing its tip around almost too quickly for the eye to see.

Dar shifted a leg and shoved out on the stock of the twenty-five pound rifle, bringing the long, heavy barrel up and around just barely in time to intercept the weighted end of Kisêyiniw’s staff. Not so the return arc, which Dar only partially deflected. The bonk of the staff’s tip hitting his leg just below the knee was almost as loud as the grounding of the rifle as the leg went out from under him. He started the counter belatedly and from the ground, but the old man waved him to a halt.

“Two moves ahead,” Kisêyiniw grated angrily. “What do I keep telling you? Always know what’s most likely to happen after you’re done doing what you’re doing! Three’s better, and four’s better than that. Five is when you can start in sayin’ you know what you’re doin’ without you have to lie, but two’s bare minimum to keep you alive.”

Dar nodded tiredly. Knowing and being able to do anything about it were two distinctly and painfully different things. Not that he was about to say it out loud, of course.

He grimaced at the pain in his leg, already feeling the heat spreading out from the impact point. He’d be limping tomorrow, he figured. He looked up and the old man was waiting quietly, the staff hanging parallel to the ground at the ends of relaxed arms.

Nodding, shaking sweat from his eyes with a toss of his head, Dar used the heavy rifle’s length to lever himself upright. The old man nodded and moved in again.

Two hours later the rifle was once more hanging from the wall of Kisêyiniw’s great room where it customarily lived, arrayed alongside a museum’s worth of esoteric small and not so small arms gleaned over many years from many lands.

Dar was leaning back in a straight-backed chair, a mug of hot cider on the table before him, trying to ignore the fire in his leg as he studied the small unit tactical manual laid out before him. He still had to walk home.

“Lemme see the leg,” Kisêyiniw commanded.

“Wha’?” Dar looked up at the sharp old features of the man’s dark face. The piercing, old-young eyes peered down at him, framed by flags of straight black hair, streaked liberally with grey.

“The leg,” the old man repeated. “I caught you a good one on the knee earlier. Lemme see it.”

“Just below the knee,” Dar started to stand, “I wasn’t that slow.”

The old man shook his head and waved him back down.“Just skin the pant leg up and lay it up on the table here,” he said.

Dar did so and the old man leaned in to peer closely at the mottled blue-green knot of the injury. He whistled, laying his hand on the leg to feel the heat radiating out from the skin. “You didn’t even draw back, did you?” he asked.

Dar shook his head. “If I’d’ve had time to do that,” he said tightly. “I’d have had time to get the rifle all the way in to block it. At least I diverted some of it.”

Shaking his head again, Kisêyiniw straightened and left the room. He returned with some rags, and a bottle that Dar recognized with some horror. He was still considering a protest when the old man started in smearing the horse liniment over the bruised tissue.

“Pop’s gonna figure out what I’ve been up to out here if I keep coming home smelling like a race horse,” he said with a grimace.

The old man laughed. “Without pain, there’s no lesson,” he said merrily. “You never heard that?”

“You mean besides from you?”

Kisêyiniw laughed harder, reaching for some of the rag bandages to wrap the leg. “So move quicker next time. Here, try standing on it.”

Dar did, and his face paled when he put weight on the leg.

Kisêyiniw tsked and shook his head. “I’d better saddle you up a hoss,” he said with a trace of concern. “I’ll bring your wagon and animals in come first light.”

“But Pop—”

“Let me worry about your father,” the old man assured him. “It’s comin’ on time he was told flat out what we’re up to anyhow.”

Dar’s face paled even further, the pain in his leg suddenly much less important. “But...!”

“Don’t worry, lad,” the old man reached out to pat his shoulder roughly. “It’ll be fine.”

There might be any number of things it could turn out to be, Dar thought fearfully, but fine wasn’t any of them. Not with his father! But, as he’d already reminded himself several times throughout the night, one didn’t question Kisêyiniw.

He was halfway down the ridge beneath the old man’s stead before he realized that he’d forgotten to mention Mailyn.