Page 5 of Stalk the Sky

“Do you think your cousins are in port?” Merrik’s murmur was too low for the others to hear, except for Pip huddled between them.

“I don’t know. It’s possible.” Fieran shrugged, still searching the warships below. “It would be nice to have a few cousins who actually like me here.”

“It would be nice to have some backup in case you get in a brawl with your other cousin,” Merrik grumbled as he, too, peered down at the ships below.

“That sounds ominous.” Pip stopped gawking at the harbor long enough to eye Fieran.

“Nothing to worry about.” Fieran shot her a grin.

Merrik snorted but he didn’t comment as they studied the harbor stretching below them.

The sound of pipes trilled from the various ships along with the shouts of orders. The whole harbor rang with the clangs from the shipyard where crews swarmed over three unfinished hulls in dry docks. More warships in various stages of construction floated at their slips.

As the airship passed over the dry docks, Pip straightened, then leaned farther over the rail. “I sense dwarven magic. I think there are dwarf work crews building those dreadnoughts.”

Fieran let a little trickle of his own magic wind around his fingers, and his magical senses heightened.

There was so much magic present in Dar Goranth, from troll magic laced all through the cliffs ahead of them to the magical power cells fueling the airships and the dreadnoughts in the harbor that Fieran struggled to pick out the faint, foreign magic emanating from below. It didn’t feel exactly like Pip’s. Then again, Pip might have dwarven iron magic, but she used her magic the way an elf would.

Stickyfingers leaned farther out, squinting. “Real dwarves? I’d like to see them! Not that you aren’t a real dwarf, Pip. But…you know what I mean.”

Pip rolled her eyes. “Lije, give Sticky a smack upside the head for me.”

Lije grinned and did as asked, smacking the back of Sticky’s head lightly.

“For once it wasn’t me saying something inappropriate.” Pretty Face smirked, lounging more languidly against the railing.

Lije reached over and gave him a smack on the back of the head too.

Pretty Face tried to duck but not fast enough. He gave an exaggerated wince. “What was that for?”

“A preemptive smack. I’m sure you’ll deserve one eventually.”

“Preemptive. That’s a rather big word. I didn’t know you knew that kind of vocabulary.”

Lije huffed. “There you go. And yes, I’ve been working to expand my vocabulary. I’m a lieutenant now. I need to sound like one.”

Fieran shook his head and tuned them out as he tipped his head to Pip. “Are the dwarves from your muka’s kingdom or one of the others?”

“I don’t know. I’ll find out when I have the chance to speak with them.” Pip’s gaze remained locked on the working dwarves until the dry docks passed from sight beneath the airship.

Ahead, tall, craggy cliffs formed the back wall of the Dar Goranth base, its face pockmarked with windows and doors that opened onto balconies formed out of the cliff. The entire cliff was a warren of passages and rooms in true troll fashion. Why live on a mountain when one could live in it?

Three flagpoles stood in a circle of cleared space among the buildings just before the cliffs. Here the Kostarian gray-and-white banner flapped higher and in the center while the Tarenhieli and Escarlish flags were relegated to either side.

One side of the cliffs had a series of staggered protrusions of stone, and two airships were already at dock, tied in the shelter of the cliffs where they were protected from the buffeting winds.

At the top of the cliffs, a grassy field spread out long and straight. The base’s airfield. A few knolls rose from the otherwise flat top, with dark mouths of openings leading into the cliffs.

Dar Goranth. The mighty bastion of the Kostarian Navy amid the storm-tossed northern ocean. Fieran’s first post and first command. Time to prove himself all over again.

Chapter

Two

Fieran waited with his squadron of flyboys and mechanics as the airship settled into place alongside one of the docking stones jutting from the cliff. The various human airmen threw lines to the troll ground crew, who tied the ropes to the large stone bollards.

After a bit more rigmarole of docking, the gangplank was extended, connecting the airship to the stone.

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