The Shadows of God - J. Gregory Keyes [113]
Arrows fell like devilish hail, thudding into horses and men.
His men lowered their short-barreled carbines and fired as they rode, reloading with paper cartouches.
A fresh line of explosions cleared out many of the archers as the airship made another pass, and then it was time for the first shock of the charge.
Softened up by artillery and grenades, the enemy line crumbled. That was to be expected. While the colonies had aerial intelligence, the devil army did not—they had no way of knowing where to concentrate their men and, indeed, appeared to be massing for an invasion several leagues east. Nairne and the Apalachee would handle them there as best they could. For Oglethorpe and his companions, it meant an easy first engagement.
And, indeed, now they were clear, and border troops and artillery would dispose of what they left behind, so they would not have the problem he had faced charging the guns a few days earlier.
But the same air-gathered information that told them where they should break through told them something more worrisome: between them and the Russian airships there were at least two thousand troops. Even if they hadn't lost a single man just now—and Oglethorpe doubted that very much— that put the odds at right around four to one. And if the Russian ships managed to get airborne …
You made your decisions, then you lived by them. No one had gainsaid him. For good or ill, it was begun, and there could be no retreat.
Adrienne leaned on her couch, so that she could see her son, far below. In her diagrammatic sight, he appeared as a sphere, with waves and rays emanating to connect him to the mala-kim and to stranger things yet.
He looked, in fact, very much like her hand.
“He is still there,” she said, “in the center ship.”
“Good,” Franklin said. He smiled, but she recognized the quality of it. He was worried.
“That were passin’ easy.” Robert grunted, lying on the floor with his nose pressed against the thick pane. “They still ain't made no motion.”
“Our aegis hides us,” Franklin said, “for a time.”
“We gonna drop grenados on ‘em?” the big man called Tug asked.
“Not yet,” Franklin replied a bit absently. “No use in letting them know we're here until they notice, or until our forces scare them off the ground. Then you can toss out all the grenados you want.”
“Good.” Tug grunted. “I'm goin’ t’ open a cask or two o’ ‘em.” He ambled toward the ladder leading up to the hold.
Crecy knelt by Adrienne. “How are you feeling?”
“Well, Veronique. Able.”
“Able to what?”
Adrienne looked back down, this time with her mortal eyes. There, half a league below the airships, were tiny dots. And yet it was no great distance really. And she could feel him. Her hand hummed in sympathy with him, as one chime will hum when a like-tuned one sounds. It must be one of Lomonosov's less-perfect affinities, the ones that faded with distance.
Like love, perhaps? What sort of attraction was less perfect than that? Or less useful?
She realized that Crecy was still awaiting an answer. “Nico has to be stopped,” she said.
“You tried once before.”
Adrienne took her friend's hand, touched it with her angel digits. “No,” she said softly, “I didn't.”
“Mademoiselle?”
Adrienne glanced up. “Mr. Euler.”
“Ah! You remember me.”
“Of course. I read one of your papers, though I do not recall the topic. One of Swedenborg's students, weren't you? Did you tell Franklin that?”
“Yes. He knows what I was.”
“And yet he trusts you?”
“No, not entirely.”
“Neither do I. I find it too strange that you are here— especially since I remember hearing that you died.”
He smiled grimly. “I had to vanish from Russia, Mademoiselle. Few seek the dead.”
“I quite understand.”
“I just wanted to tell you—I'm honored you are here. I—”
At that moment, Tug, who had been poking around in the storage area,