Treachery of Kings

THIRTEEN

"It isn't as if I want her wailing and thrash ing about,” Finn mumbled to himself, noting that the sun had dropped farther behind a crimson veil. “But I do feel she could have shown a bit more fervor, anguish and remorse. I don't think that's too much to ask”

“What now? What you be mumbling over there? A human person's got such a weaky little voice, they might's well not be talkin’ at all.”

“I was talking to myself, Bucerius. I would have spoken louder if my words were meant for you.”

Finn was surprised he'd let his attention wander so long. The war balloons were closer now-much too close for his liking, and too many of them to boot. Was there any reason they had to huddle together like a school of bloated fish? There was plenty of room to move about, a whole bloody sky.

Some, he noted, had vented their balloons, letting their craft sink rapidly down. Others tossed over bags of sand to rise higher still. The skies were near smothered with clumsy craft, rising up and sinking down. Through sheer dumb luck, most seemed to pass each other with room to spare.

“Fate is truly kind,” Finn said, “or we should see a dozen dire disasters before our very eyes “Kites and Mites,” he suddenly shouted, squeezing the wicker rail, “ look out, you damn fool! ”

No one heard him above the constant shriek of air. Bucerius saw it too, and cursed beneath his breath, jerking a line that sent his vessel swooping dizzily away.

It happened in a wink, in the blink of an eye. A great, dun-colored sausage, patched, pasted, fiddled and darned, rose straight up into four enormous spheres, linked together as one. It struck the wicker baskets suspended from the vessels, struck them cruelly hard, and sent grenadiers, archers, fusiliers with purple pantaloons, crimson-clad dragoons, shrieking down in a deadly colorful array. Some went straight to the ground, some bounced once, some bounced twice on other balloons, before they went down. Several poor fellows plummeted through another craft and disappeared.

As one cart collides with another on the ground, as each slams another, and another after that, so it is with vessels of the air. Finn looked on in abject horror as one balloon tore itself apart and spun dizzily to the ground, a basketful of doomed soldiers trailed by a string of tattered rags.

A tragedy greater still occurred then, one that stunned Finn above the rest. A large balloon exploded, its fabric set ablaze. Finn covered his eyes from the blast as a gaseous ball of fire blossomed nearby.

Before it was done, he counted nine of the monsters down. There was no way to tell how many men had perished as well.

“Have you-have you ever seen this happen before,” Finn said, staring at Bucerius. “Whales and Nails, it's not always like this, is it?”

“Isn't bad. I be seein’ worse.”

“Worse?”

“Trouble is, there be plenty of bold balloon pilots, but there isn't no old balloon pilots. If a captain don't die his first trip, he don't be ever signin’ on again.”

“You seem to make it, all right.”

“I be a business person. I'm not some kinda fool what's fightin’ in a war.”

Bucerius looked at Finn with a mix of scorn and pride. “War be for human persons. Killin’ be what they like to do.”

“There are many brave Newlies who have joined our forces to fight with valor in the war.” “Uh-huh. They be stupid, too.”

And that, it appeared, was that.

As if on some silent signal, the cluster of merchant balloons rose higher still, higher than they'd risen before. Finn peered over the side and saw the reason why. There, far below, lay the dread, desolate province once known as Melonius. The only dry land in the midst of the Swamp of Bleak Demise, it was now the battleground where warriors from Prince Aghen Aghenfleck and the King of Heldessia, met to slaughter one another as they had for seven hundred thirty-nine years.

Finn was glad they had risen so high. The balloons of Fyxedia and those of her foe, which had just arrived from the west, were disgorging their troops on the bare and blackened ground-those that had survived the journey there. The gaily decked officers and somber-clad men were much too far away to appear more than blotches to Finn's eye, and he was most grateful for that.

Beyond, the swamp took hold again, and, past that, the onset of the night.

“I see the sun is nearly gone,” Finn said. “We can hardly have more than an hour more of light. Where will we stay for the night?”

“What?” The Bullie scratched the little nubs where horns had appeared among his kind in the past.

“Where would you like to stay, different from where you bein’ now?”

“Why, down there somewhere, of course. Surely you wouldn't attempt to sail this device in the-in the dark?”

Finn felt a sudden chill, for he could see the answer in the Bullie's glassy brown eyes.

“No, truly, that makes little sense at all. We can't very well remain aloft unless we can see… “

“An’ what'd you like to do? Set ‘er down there among that poor lot? By damn, if you'd stop thinkin’ ‘bout your Mycer lass, you'd see what be a'happenin’ outside your fuzzy head… “