“No,” whispers Shara. “No, no, no …”
Instantly she feels a huge, terrible pressure on all the defenses she’s constructed: her river of freezing water begins unraveling; her Divine shelter creaks and groans; her very mind trembles. Madness spills into her skull like water on a sinking ship. She tries to push back. But is like an insect, she thinks, trying to push back against the lowering foot of a man.
The freezing water fades. The streets are flooded with gleaming soldiers. Three of them hurl their massive blades at the walls. The swords hack through the white stone, and Saypuri soldiers tumble back shrieking from a gun post. To Shara’s surprise, little Pitry Suturashni, screaming a tinny war cry, mans the abandoned cannon and opens fire. Shara tries to use Ovski’s Candlelight, but it’s like the oxygen is sucked out of the air, and she cannot even make a spark.
Everything pushes on her, pushes and pushes and pushes, floodwaters piling up against a dam. …
I will die as countless Saypuris died, she thinks.
A thousand Divine soldiers push upon her invisible walls.
Crushed under the machinery of the Divine.
Then one of the soldiers beside her screams, “Look! In the sky! Ships! There are ships sailing in the sky!”
Shara feels the pressure immediately release. She falls to the ground, gasping and half-dead.
She looks over the wall and sees Kolkan staring up: apparently this turn of events is a surprise even to him.
Shara, choking and coughing, thinks, No, no! Have they already destroyed Ghaladesh? After all this, is everything already lost?
She tries to peer through the tears in her eyes … and sees, to her confusion, that there is only one ship in the sky.
Then she hears another soldier’s voice: “Is that a Dreyling flag that ship is flying?”
Mulaghesh says, “I know that. That’s the flag of King Harkvald. What the hells is going on?”
Shara says, “Sigrud.”
*
The good ship Mornvieva, once occupied by twenty-three souls, now occupied by one sole stowaway, cuts through the clouds and the wind like a dream. Sigrud stands at the wheel, puffing at his pipe, and makes a slight adjustment south-southwest.
Sigrud laughs. He can’t remember the last time he laughed. Ship-borne for the first time in years and smoking his pipe. … It is a blessing he never thought he’d have again.
There is no greater pleasure, he thinks, than to sail once more.
On the mast before him is a large steel plate sporting a very large ring; and once, twenty-three cables were tied to this ring, anchoring all the crew to the ship. However, now there are only twenty-three severed ends of cables hanging from the ring, and they click and clack in the brutal winds.
To be frank, it might be the easiest time Sigrud has ever had taking a ship: if you just aim a cannon at every other ship in the armada, fire once (in retrospect, Sigrud reflects that this ship was not designed to fire that many guns at once, so he is lucky the thing didn’t fall apart under the stress), run up to the deck in the confusion, cut all the cables, and grab the wheel and tip the ship over ever so slightly …
Sigrud grins wickedly as he remembers all the little black figures tumbling through the clouds, rushing down to the embrace of the world.
The Restorationists bet everything on Saypur never expecting air-to-ground combat; but they, similarly, never considered air-to-air.
Sigrud sees the embassy below, and the river of silver soldiers before it, and the giant robed figure standing at its back.
He sets the course and trots belowdecks. He had no idea what to expect—certainly not this—but he had all the cannons ready, though some require minor adjustments.
Straight ahead, he reminds himself. Start at the beginning of that stripe of silver, and work down.
“Fire,” says Sigrud.
*
The retort of the first six-incher is like hearing a whole mountain cave in.
“Down!” screams Mulaghesh, but Shara does not listen.
Shara turns to the street and pulls up a thick, thick wall of soft snow, and she tells it to hang in space.
The first block of armored soldiers explodes. Evidently, though Divine armor was designed to protect many things, the Divinities never expected six-inch cannons.
Shara and everyone else on the fortifications are blown backward. Metal goes clanging off of building fronts. Shrapnel flies into the veil of snow, slows, and tumbles softly to the ground. The sky is black with starlings.
The next retort sounds in the skies, and another, and another, as if an immense thunderstorm is breaking open above them. Huge explosions march down the street toward Kolkan, who stands with his head at an angle, as if thinking, This is very unusual. This is all very unusual.
*