Page 41 of Stalk the Sky

Was that Tiny or someone else? Fieran couldn’t make out enough of the voice through the static.

“Lt. Rothilion.” Fieran fought the buffeting winds, his aeroplane skidding sideways, then slamming downward before yet another gust nearly rolled him. The canvas on the wings strained at the pummeling forces. “Lt. Rothilion, can you hear me?”

A long, crackling pause. Then, barely discernible above the static, “Yes, Laesornysh.”

“We need to go back. We can’t fly in this, and we’ll lose thirty of our best pilots if we keep trying.” If they hadn’t lost some already. Besides Merrik valiantly keeping his aeroplane stationed behind Fieran’s, Fieran had no idea where the rest of his men were.

A longer pause. More sleet arrowed downward. A hint of ice shimmered on Fieran’s wings.

Hang their orders. That airship wasn’t getting much information in this storm, and for all they knew, it had been taken down already by the sleet and relentless, now freezing rain.

“Rothilion, we will all die out here. We need to land.” The control stick was nearly ripped from Fieran’s hands at an even more violent gust.

This might not be something even Fieran could survive, if Lt. Rothilion didn’t give the order to land.

Chapter

Twelve

Lt. Rothilion’s voice crackled over the radio. “Return to base. Everyone, return to Dar Goranth.”

Could the pilots hear the order?

Fieran fought his aeroplane to fly closer to a few of the pinpricks of light, joining Lt. Rothilion in shouting the order into the radio. “Everyone, return to base.”

When he let go of the talk button, he might have heard a few acknowledgments. Hard to tell over the pounding of the storm and the crackling radio.

He let his aeroplane continue on its course for another few minutes, shouting into the radio for the others to return to base.

Where was Dar Goranth? The sky? The ground? As the rain tumbled and the wind churned, a chill swept through him, his heart beating harder and sharper in his chest. A fuzzy sense of disorientation muddled his senses as he cast about.

There. Twin dots of light far below. The lighthouses marking the passage between Brenzuk and Urixidor Islands. That meant he was flying south, and he needed to turn around to return to Dar Goranth himself.

He held down the talk button. “Merrik, I’m going to make a turn to the right and return to Dar Goranth. I don’t see anyone else out here.”

He didn’t see the airship either. Not that he could even see his own aeroplane’s nose in this sleet.

“Understood.”

Fieran dove into the right-hand turn, gaining extra speed to fight the force of the wind. As he straightened out going north, the wind was now coming out of his rear quarter, driving his aeroplane before it. It was all he could do to fight the control stick to keep the wind from tumbling his craft tail over nose.

He glanced over his shoulder long enough to ascertain that Merrik had survived the turn as well.

With the wind propelling them, they crossed over the southern point of Drogenvroh Island and approached Dar Goranth within a few minutes.

The dark shapes of other aeroplanes danced through the sleet, more voices once again crackling through the radio. One after another, the flyers made a run for the ground, not even waiting for the airfield to be fully cleared before they came in for their landing.

Fieran tried to count the aeroplanes, but he didn’t know how many had already landed before he’d arrived. The only thing to distinguish the black shapes of the aeroplanes from each other was the dark outline of the gun on the upper wing of the elven aeroplanes.

“Fieran, your wing!” Merrik’s voice yanked Fieran’s gaze from the other aeroplanes. He peered left, then right.

The tip of his right front upper wing flapped, no longer attached to the support to the lower wing. The wind snatched the loose piece, peeling back a whole section of canvas on the upper wing.

On instinct, Fieran released a slash of his magic, slicing through the canvas before more of it could be yanked away. The piece of his wing soared past his head, then out of sight as the wind whipped it away.

At this point, it didn’t matter if he used his magic. That mystery airship wasn’t close enough to see, and right now, Fieran just needed to survive.

With most of his upper right wing gone, the lower wing on that side was straining, his aeroplane tilting in that direction with the unbalanced lift.

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