Or was it a sign of confidence in a new type of weapon?
Toller mulled the question over as he rode down against the sunlight at the apex of Red Squadron’s formation. The sloping glass screen, a recent modification to the fighter’s design, was protecting him from the worst of the icy slipstream. A furlong away on either side he could see the Blues and Greens scoring their own white trails through the spangled heavens, and the old guilt-tinged excitement began to course through him.
Far below, outlined against the great painted curvature of Land, some of the enemy fleet were already turning on their sides. The Landers no longer sailed blindly into ambush. They had developed a method of observing the sky above, probably using look-outs at the end of long tethers, and at the first sign of the fighters’ condensation trails rolled their ships into varying attitudes for mutual defence. For that reason the three squadrons now went into action separately, and the style of combat had become individualistic and opportunist. Spectacular individual victories and equally spectacular deaths had ensued; legends had proliferated.
What is going to happen this time? Toller thought, his pulse quickening. Is there a soldier down there whose destiny it is to end my life?
As the array of skyships expanded across the view the fighters broke away from their formations and began to weave a basket of vapour trails around their quarry. Toller was aware of Berise Narrinder curving away to his left. There came a spattering of fire from long-range muskets, but it seemed sporadic in comparison to the usual fierce volleying, and Toller’s premonition about a radical new weapon returned to him in force. He shut down his engine and waited for the fighter to coast to a halt so that he could study the skyships better. Several of the other fighters were already darting through the grid in high-speed attack runs, and he could see the orange flecks of their arrows, though as yet no balloons were on fire.
Toller reached for his binoculars, but his gauntlets and the bow tied to his left wrist made him clumsy, and it was with still unaided vision that he saw some of the enemy gondolas become surrounded with brownish specks, as though the crews were hurling dozens of missiles towards their attackers. But the specks were fluttering and beginning to move of their own volition.
Birds!
Still untangling the strap of his binoculars, Toller had a moment to let his mind race ahead to the question of what kind of bird the Landers would have chosen to send against human opponents. The answer came immediately—the Rettser eagle. Found in the Rettser mountains in the north of Kolcorron, the eagle had a wingspan exceeding two yards, a speed which defied accurate measurement, and the ability to gut a deer—or a man—almost in the blink of an eye. In the past they had not been trained for hunting or warfare, even against ptertha, because of their unpredictability—but the New Men had shown themselves to have little regard for their own lives when bent on the destruction of an enemy.
Toller’s first look through the glasses confirmed his fears, and a chill went through him as he waited to see what havoc the great birds, natural masters of the aerial element, would wreak among his pilots. The pattern of vapour trails abruptly changed as the pilots closest to the skyships perceived the new threat and took evasive action. Seconds dragged by, then it dawned on Toller that the battle situation was remaining strangely static. He had expected the eagles, with their incredibly fast reflexes, to begin their unstoppable attacks on the instant of sighting the human fliers—but they were remaining in the vicinity of the ships from which they had been launched.
The magnified image in the binoculars revealed a curious spectacle.
The eagles were vigorously beating their wings, but instead of being propelled forward by the action were spinning head over tail in tight circles, making little or no progress through the air. It was as though they were being held in place by some invisible agency. The more frantically they flapped their wings the faster they revolved without changing position.
Toller was so bemused by the phenomenon that more drawn-out seconds passed before he began to appreciate that in weightless conditions the eagles would never be able to fly. In the absence of gravity the equations of winged flight were no longer valid. The dominant force acting on the birds was the upward thrust from their wings, and without weight to counterbalance it they were thrown into continuous backward rolls. An intelligent creature might have responded by altering its wing movement to something akin to a swimmer’s stroke, but the eagles—prisoners of reflex—could only go on and on with their futile expenditure of energy.
“Bad luck, Landers,” Toller murmured, feeding his engine. “And now you have to pay for your mistake!”
In the ensuing minutes he saw balloon after balloon set alight, apparently without loss among his own fliers. Now that the Landers fought from stationary positions their balloons burned less readily, lacking a flow of air to feed the blaze, and sometimes the flames extinguished themselves long before the entire envelope was consumed, though without making any difference to a ship’s eventual fate.
On this occasion the battle was given a touch of the bizarre by the presence of the gyrating eagles. Their terrified shrieking formed a continuous background to the roar of fighter jets, the patter of muskets and occasional blasts from cannon. Most of them kept on spinning, mindlessly squandering their strength, but Toller noticed that some had become quiescent and were drifting with their heads tucked under their wings as though asleep. A few were inert with wings only partially furled, giving every indication of being dead, perhaps overcome by sheer panic.
Immensely gratified by the turn of events, Toller pulled clear of the white-swaddled tumult to search for a likely target and saw a pilot of his own squadron closing in on him. It was Berise Narrinder, and she was rapidly opening and closing her right hand, signalling that she wanted to talk. Puzzled, he closed his throttle and allowed the fighter to coast to a halt. Berise did likewise and the two craft drifted together, gently yawing as their control surfaces became more and more ineffective.
“What is it?” Toller said. “Do you want to bring one of the birds back for dinner?”
Berise shook her head impatiently and pulled her scarf down below her chin. “There’s a ship far down below the battle zone. I’d like you to have a look at it.”
He looked in the direction she was indicating, but was unable to find the ship. “It has to be an observer,” he said. “The pilot was told to remain well out of trouble and return to base with a report.”
“My glasses tell me it is not an ordinary ship,” Berise said. “Look carefully, my lord. Use your binoculars. Look where that line of cloud crosses the Gulf of Tronom.”
Toller did as instructed, and this time was able to pick out the tiny outline of a skyship. It was on its side relative to him, reinforcing his opinion that its function was to observe the outcome of the battle. He wondered if it had yet become apparent to those on board that all was far from well with their fellows.
“I see nothing unusual about it,” he said. “Why are you interested?”
“What about the markings on the gondola? Can’t you see the blue and grey stripes?”
After further study of the miniature shape Toller lowered his binoculars. “Your young eyes are obviously better than mine.” He paused, a coolness on the nape of his neck, as the full import of Berise’s words reached him. “Blue and grey were always the colours of the royal ships—but would Rassamarden have retained them?”
“Why not? They might mean something to him.”
Toller nodded thoughtfully. “In spite of his declarations of contempt he seems to covet everything the old kings had. But would any ruler be foolhardy enough to venture so close to a battle?”