“Go be my eyes,” Honovi grunted, adjusting the controls so the prow of the airship angled to the port side, moving away from the colored smoke being torn apart by the early morning breeze.
Blaine hurried onto the deck, breathing in air that felt thicker in his lungs than during the flight over. The sky was brighter, sunlight chasing away the stars and the dark. The crew cast long shadows over the decking as Blaine ran to the railing, leaning over to get eyes on the ground. Honovi was guiding the airship low enough they’d skim treetops if there were any to be found.
But the land below was free of trees and scrub bushes, only covered by prairie grass parched from the summer sun. It would be an enticing meal if the bison were alive, except revenants had no need to feed. The spores that drove them onward had only one driving need once they’d set roots into flesh, and that was propagation in living flesh. Revenants might be mindless, but they were always a threat.
Blaine could see automatons on top of the walls, their built-in weapons pointed at the horde of revenants, but law stayed their hands. The gates to the town hadn’t opened yet, which meant the wardens hadn’t made it to the wall. Their crew would have to do some of the work until the wardens could take over.
“Let’s get the Zip gun ready. I want our best gunners in the turrets on the port and starboard sides. Who is going in the harnesses?” Blaine yelled.
“We already rolled dice for who gets to play bait,” someone called out behind him.
“Then the lucky winners get to strap in.” Blaine placed their location in the sky with a practiced eye before retreating back to the flight deck. He braced a hand against the doorway, peering at Honovi. “Got about one hundred feet to drop. We’ll be kissing the dirt if you go any lower than that.”
Honovi flashed him a smile that was all teeth, eyes on the horizon and hands steady on the control levers. “We’ll descend hard in thirty seconds.”
Blaine turned right back around to shout the warning, his words repeating through the crew on the deck. Three men and one woman were already strapped into harnesses and pitching themselves over the railings to the ball turrets built onto either side of the airship, fore and aft.
“Hold fast!” Blaine shouted, curling his fingers around a grab handle on the outside of the cabin.
A hard descent was quick and brutal and required a level of skill that not all pilots had. Blaine would always trust Honovi to fly them true. He heard the engines change pitch as air reversed in the ballonets, filling rapidly. TheKatabaticlurched downward at a speed that made Blaine dig his heels into the decking to hold himself steady.
The airship juddered when Honovi reversed the controls, leveling them out so low to the ground they were about the height of the town wall. It was more than enough space for the crew to work with.
Blaine turned around in time to see a slim figure dart out from the crew cabin toward the railing. He swore under his breath as he realized Caris, followed by Lore, were terrible at listening to orders. Truly, he shouldn’t be so surprised about that. Lore was a noble and a high-ranked cog in the Clockwork Brigade. Caris was a noble and an engineer whose curiosity would always get the better of her.
“I told you two to stay in the crew cabin,” Blaine said when he reached them.
“But I can help,” Caris protested.
She had the sense to at least press up against the railing and stay out of the way of crew running between stations and rigging, but he’d much prefer if she wasn’t out on the deck at all. “Your particular help isn’t needed right now.”
Lore touched her shoulder, and Caris jerked away almost immediately. Lore didn’t seem put off by that reaction. “I told you Blaine had a plan.”
“We’re not allowed to shoot them, though,” Caris said.
“Not this close to the airfield.” Blaine peered over the railing, getting eyes on the fore gunner in the ball turret. The windowpanes had been slid open, and while the Zip guns were quiet, he could hear the clacking of gears as a crew member readied the harpoon cannon. Hanging even lower than that were the crew members acting as living bait for the dead. “We’ll lure them far enough away that any active fire won’t cause damage.”
Even as they watched, theKatabaticcame about broadside, and the forward-placed ball turret on the port side cranked the harpoon cannon into position. The gunner discharged the weapon a second later. The harpoon shaft was almost too quick to follow its trajectory, but it found its target with brutal efficiency.
The revenant reared up on its hind legs with a raspy sort of cry, the rotten flesh hanging off its rib cage swaying with the motion. No burst of spores erupted from the body, indicating the gunner had chosen well. When its front legs met the earth again, its hooves scrabbled against the ground as it shook its massive head from side to side.
The harpoon shaft from the aft ball turret of the airship discharged, streaking through the air. It, too, found a home in a revenant’s body, tearing through dead flesh to hook deep in the body. The revenant bellowed, the sound rough and ragged, drawing attention from other revenants. It wasn’t so much the predicament of the speared revenants that got the horde lurching toward the airship but the crew members hanging off the side in low-dangling harnesses, alive and kicking and far too enticing for spore-addled bodies.
Blaine shoved himself away from the railing and raced back to the flight deck, skidding inside. “Two revenants have been speared, and the rest are coming after our bait.”
Honovi nodded, hands moving over the controls. “I’ll turn us about.”
The engines worked hard to stay aloft at their current low level, all the while hauling the dead after them. Blaine took a quick moment to check the engine readouts and found them within acceptable levels before returning to where Caris and Lore stood at the railing, still refusing to return to the crew cabin.
“You ladies risk pitching over the side, and that’s a drop neither of you will survive. Please get back into the cabin,” Blaine called out.
Lore tugged firmly on Caris’ arm, pulling her away from the railing. “We’ll take cover.”
Caris scowled, reminding Blaine he still needed to find her a veil. “I’ve not seen how E’ridians handle a horde. I’m only curious.”
“I’ll draw you diagrams once we’re inside the walls and safely tucked away in Lore’s home. For now,pleasestay out of the way,” Blaine said.
They went, and Blaine no longer had to worry about an accidental fall. He moved toward the prow, dodging around a set of chains that anchored the air balloon. Their navigator was at the secondary radio at the prow, calling back to Honovi their position and the status of the crew in the harnesses.
