Page 61 of Wings of War

Behind him, the other door to the barracks room banged open, and the drill sergeant barked orders.

Fieran didn’t stop. Neither did the others following him. The sergeant was, after all, shouting the others into getting their butts off the floor and into the night to do what they had been trained to do. Fieran was just a little ahead of things there.

Another whistling sound, then a detonation roared into the night, staggering Fieran with the force of the blast that stole his breath for a moment.

Six dark shapes drifted overhead, almost lazy and ethereal in the wash of the searchlight. A brief flare of light opened on the bottom of one, square and orange against the darkness, before it slammed shut again. Seconds later, an explosion erupted, quaking the ground beneath Fieran’s boots and ringing loud and painful in Fieran’s ears, his hearing more sensitive from his elven heritage.

For a moment, all he could do was stand there, taking in the jets of flame burning against the night, sending up clouds of black smoke. Shouts rose into the darkness. Black shapes of men scurried between the buildings. The crews manning the three-inch guns that guarded the river scrambled to both swivel and crank the guns to their highest elevation to attempt to shoot upward at the attacking airships.

Over the central square of the base, the three flags of Tarenhiel, Escarland, and Kostaria flapped in the light breeze, silhouetted by the fires and wreathed with smoke.

The other flyboys from his barracks streamed around him and his small group, racing toward the hangar at the far side of Fort Linder.

“Fieran.” Merrik was suddenly there in front of him, gripping his shoulders hard enough to hurt and giving him a solid shake. “You are a Laesornysh. You have your dacha’s magic. Stop gawking and do what your dacha trained you to do.”

Right. Fieran sucked in a lungful of smoke and gunpowder, searching for a single moment of calm amid the burning, tearing world all around him. Then he unleashed that tight, mental grip on his magic.

It blazed from his fingers and burst into the sky above him. He let the magic pour from him in a torrent, extending it in a brilliant, crackling dome that covered the entire base.

Something struck the magic from overhead, and he snatched it on instinct, nearly losing his magic grip on it as he felt its size. This bomb was so much larger than any of the artillery shells he and Dacha had practiced with at Fort Charibert.

Fieran growled, hurled his magic at the sky, and heaved the bomb over and away, changing its trajectory enough that it slammed into the open fields that surrounded Fort Linder. It exploded in a spray of dirt and shrapnel that were consumed in the hunger of Fieran’s power.

Merrik tugged Fieran’s arm, and together they sprinted into the night. The sharp raps of running bootsteps echoed behind them as Pretty Face, Tiny, Stickyfingers, and Lije stuck with them.

Fieran tripped on a block of cement that had been blown out of the wall of the nearest building, and he would have fallen if Merrik hadn’t gripped his arm and hauled him onward.

Splitting his focus between his magic and his body’s movements was all so much harder in real life than in morning practices with his Dacha. With the airships chucking bombs down onto him, it was all he could do to pay attention to his feet so he didn’t take a tumble on the rubble blocking their way.

Another bomb plummeted into his magic, nearly slipping through before he managed to get enough of a grip on it to send it hurtling safely into the ground away from the fort.

Fieran skidded to a brief halt and hurled a spear of his magic upward as far as he could, reaching higher and higher into the sky.

As with his dacha’s wall, the magic fizzled out before it reached the airships. While Fieran could—theoretically—stretch his magic for miles with the earth to ground him, he couldn’t extend his magic far enough into the empty sky to swat at the attacking airships.

With a growl, Fieran added that magic to his overall shield and kept running.

The hangar was just ahead, huge and hulking in the firelit night. The doors gaped open like black mouths, only a few pinpricks of light showing inside rather than the blaze of the overhead lights.

As they neared, Fieran tasted another, metallic magic filling the air. A few stray bolts of his magic sizzled down from the sky to dance along the shield that arched over the hangar, its edges stopping just below the roof.

“Pip!” Fieran raced inside the hangar, then skidded as he nearly ran face-first into the wheel struts of the flyer the ground crew was wheeling toward the doors.

As the ground crew flung a few curses his way, Fieran scrambled out of the way, then cast about in the near darkness.

Utter chaos reigned. Lit only by the elven lights the mechanics used for shining into dark corners of aeroplane engines, ground crews wheeled the aeroplanes toward the hangar doors, even while others raced about, getting in their way. The men in Fieran’s squadron stood about, as if not sure what to do or where to go. A few raced about, each doing their own thing.

In the center of the hangar, Capt. Arfeld cast about, gesturing vaguely with his hands, as if he wasn’t any more sure what to do than his men.

This was the weakness of the current Escarlish military, despite their training, their modern weapons, and the structure Uncle Julien had formed in the past seventy years. While the armies of both Kostaria and Tarenhiel had a core of warriors who had fought in the previous wars, no one in the Escarlish military outside of Uncle Julien—thanks to his bond with his longer-lived troll wife Aunt Vriska—had any experience with war. No one at Fort Linder, from the lowliest private to the commanding general, had ever seen combat.

All the training in the world couldn’t prepare for the shock of an attack like this.

Merrik and the others clustered around Fieran, waiting for orders.

“Fieran?” Pip appeared at his elbow, her hands spread and laced with her silver magic as she held her shield over the hangar. “What should we do?”

Fieran drew his shoulders straight, trying to think with the part of his brain that wasn’t occupied with holding up his own shield over the fort. “I’m protecting the fort at the moment. Drop your shield and save your magic.”

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