“I could not leave you to take off alone.” Merrik’s voice held a trace of humor before he sobered. “What happened? We saw the Wall come down.”
As the two of them gained altitude and turned back toward the fight, Fieran gave a brief summary, ending with, “Pip is going with the team to retrieve a machine or two for study.”
“Got it,” Merrik acknowledged, but then there was no more time for talking as they shot into the edge of the whirling chaos of the dogfight spreading over Fort Defense.
Mongavarian aeroplanes dove as they dropped bombs onto the fort below, some of the canisters even falling among the headquarters buildings on the bluff. A part of the Escarlish officer quarters was burning, a column of gray smoke rising into the sky to join the haze of gun smoke. Clouds of gas drifted over the front lines, spanning from the bluff, across the muddy river bottom, and even onto the Mongavarian side of the border.
Alliance aeroplanes chased and battled the Mongavarian ones, attempting to take them down before they could drop their bombs. Yet without Dacha’s magic arching over the fort, the burning wreckage falling from the sky just added to the destruction below.
To the south, Alliance airships lumbered into a defensive position at the border, though they had yet to join the fray.
There was no cohesion or plan to the Alliance aeroplanes’ movements. Each pair of pilots were on their own, trying to defend themselves from the attack.
“I’m going to sweep the Mongavarians toward the border.” Fieran reached into his chest and tapped the deep well of his magic. Despite all the magic he had expended during the fight on the ground, more still sizzled inside him, just waiting to be unleashed.
“Is that safe?” Merrik still led the way, his machine guns blasting as the nearest Mongavarian aeroplane swung toward them. “If they have one of those machines up here, and your magic gets caught…”
He’d get knocked unconscious, and this time he really would die in the crash.
But they couldn’t continue this fight over Fort Defense. Between the bombs and the falling debris, the fort below was getting hammered. Better to take the fight to the enemy skies.
“Those machines were large. I doubt they can mount one on a fighter aeroplane.” Fieran let his magic build in his chest, but he held it back for a moment longer as he aimed his machine guns to the side of Merrik’s aeroplane to also target the enemy flyer. “But I’m open to suggestions if you have a better idea.”
He wasn’t going to just disregard Merrik’s concerns over the risk. Not again. The last time Fieran had been reckless, Merrik had lost a leg.
There was silence from Merrik for a long moment. The enemy aeroplane’s engine caught fire, and it stalled in the air so abruptly that Merrik and Fieran had to scatter—Merrik whipping his aeroplane one way, Fieran the other, to avoid a head-on collision.
When they swerved back to each other, Merrik fell in behind Fieran. “All right. Do it. But if you feel anything off, pull your magic back immediately.”
Fieran didn’t think such a thing would be so easily done. Dacha hadn’t been able to pull his magic back, and anything that could overwhelm Dacha’s magic could take out Fieran’s easily.
But he wouldn’t clutter up the airwaves to say so.
Nor would he point out the glaring problem. If the Mongavarians had one of those machines mounted to an aeroplane, all of them would be in trouble, not just Fieran. They were, after all, flying aeroplanes powered by magic. That machine had seemed to need physical contact to latch on to the magic, but if it only needed proximity, then it could take down any one of their aeroplanes, whether Fieran was using his magic or not.
But Fieran wasn’t about to say that out loud on the radio for members of all the squadrons to hear. They needed to focus onfighting, not on the possibility that their engine’s power source might be neutralized at any moment.
“Magic incoming.” With a deep breath, Fieran blasted his magic outward. He didn’t try to wrap it around anything but instead concentrated on forming his own, active version of the Wall in the sky as far as he could stretch it across the open air.
“Capt. Fleetwood, Lt. Hadley.” Fieran worked to keep his tone and aeroplane steady as he held the great quantity of magic crackling above, below, and to either side of him. One of the Mongavarian aeroplanes got too close before it sheered off, propelled away by its own deflecting magic. “I will cover as much of the sky as I can to sweep the Mongavarians back, but I might need some help herding them toward the border.”
Technically, Capt. Fleetwood was the senior captain, and Fieran was toeing the line of giving an order to an officer who outranked him by wording that as a request rather than the demand it really was.
But someone had to take charge here in the skies, and while Capt. Fleetwood was a good pilot and good squadron leader, he wasn’t always the most creative when it came to overall battle tactics in the sky.
“Acknowledged.” Capt. Fleetwood’s voice had a harried edge to it. “Fighting Second, you heard Capt. Laesornysh. Let’s chase the enemy back to the border.”
Lt. Hadley repeated the order to his own men.
Fieran couldn’t see any of the Half-Breed Squadron nearby. As they had been the first ones up, they appeared to be all at the border, strafing and bombing the enemy lines while trying to prevent more of the enemy aeroplanes from getting past them.
With Fieran’s wall of magic pushing the enemy from the center, the rest of the Alliance aeroplanes in the sky rallied, only engaging the Mongavarian aeroplanes that tried to swerve around Fieran’s shield in some way.
He swept over the bluff, then over the front lines. Below, great gouges tore into the earth where bombs had struck. Buildings smoked while elves with strong plant magic worked to cleanse the air from the gas attacks.
The muddy expanse of what had once been a river was churned and soupy, with the tiny figures of the dead and dying sprawled in the mire. Despite the carnage, Alliance troops charged across to join the fight on the far side.
The Mongavarians had been pushed back across the river and into the marshy expanse where Fieran had crashed. The sharp line of Rhohen’s icy, crackling magic sliced across the land, showing exactly where the battle raged.
