The Price of Flight – part five
Eagle Day. And Hawk Day. And Falcon Day. And Angry Pigeon Day. Followed by Owl Night.
V0.4. corrections made, or first batch of. As with everything, it has room for revision. Watch this space.
We're back… following on from the end of the prior chapter, but first, more backstory. Then a darker turn as the Battle of Lancre happens in the air. Adding backstory to fill in the gaps about several characters who are growing in my tales. I'm also getting very definite vibes about Hanna von Strafenburg and how to develop this character and round her out. Especially how a Discworld "German" interacts with Discworld "Russians".
The air war did not end just because Olga had insisted most of her pilots stand down and snatch some sleep and rest. Other fliers had travelled out with her. Many of the broomsticks leaving Ankh-Morpork had also carried perching birds, some hoodwinked, some covered to spare them from the day. Their own Feegle pilots had travelled with them. Insofar as these things can be discerned, the birds had appreciated flying as passengers. Most of the daytime birds were asleep about Lancre Castle. Hodgesaaargh, the Royal Falconer, had wondered, but not for very long, why his own avian population appeared to have doubled.
Their Feegle pilots had in the main dispersed to carry messages across what would afterwards be referred to as The Feegle Clacks. They would be back in time for morning and more active duty.
But some birds were out and about. With pilots.
An unwary Elf was out, scouting the moonlit landscape for entertainment. He didn't' see the swooping owl until it was upon him. He heard the triumphant hooting call and the voice that said "Hey. Jimmy. Have a facefu' o' beak!"
Shortly afterwards, a beak-and-talon-savaged Elf, separated from his yarrow stalk, plummeted to earth in Lancre.
A Feegle patted the neck plumage of his Howondalandian Eagle Owl, a creature that had seen something like a large rodent, and followed its biological imperative. Elves do not normally grow to any spectacular height.(1) A fully grown Eagle Owl has a wingspan of getting on for five feet. From the elf's briefly experienced point of view, it was like having a feathered meat-mincer thrown in his face.
The Howondalandian Eagle Owl spat out something it found distasteful. Its Feegle rider provided a strip of better-tasting meat.
"Guid lassie, Johanna!" the pilot-Feegle said. "But forbye, leave one for me!"
The Air Watch now had three Eagle Owls, all female. They were named Johanna (2), Alice and Joan. And all were lethal and deadly when unleashed.
Dreams are fragile and elusive things. They are so often forgotten when waking up naturally in the morning, elusive strands and themes and ghosts of a larger whole that vanish in the mists of waking life.
Wake somebody up un-naturally, on the other hand, say by shaking them awake, and the vivid memory persists for longer. As Olga Romanoff raced to the dispersal area where the Tekniks had racked their brooms against a wall for fast collection and take-off, she remembered the white cat and the message Do the job that is in front of you. Do not weaken. She also remembered, vividly, the other dream. When a magic user dreams, it can be more than a dream. Part of you is in a different reality.
"You think Witches and Shamen is different, girl? You look at them out in the forest shambling around in them reindeer furs and things, saying "Far out, man!" and "Groovy!", and thinking you ain't got nothing in common?"
Old Babiuschka Natalia had reclined back in her rocking chair out on the isba's step, contemplated her evening vodka, and said to her two pupils
"They walks the dreamworld all the time. Granted it takes a lot of mushrooms and herbs to do it. We just gets to go there in dreams when we gets our heads down at the end of the day. Same thing. Same place, usually."
Natalia had studied her two pupils. Then grinned.
"When I was younger and out on the Steppe with the Cossacks, and you'll go there too, you'll see more of 'em. The men is…" Natalia made a dismissive "pfft" noise and waved her hand. "There's women shamen too. They're more effective. And as damn close to Witches as you'll get, anywhere!"
Good. Sometime during the night the Tekniks have secured nameboards behind the brooms to say whose is whose. So we can grab our own broom at the run and be in the air soonest.
Olga grabbed the broom under the card saying O.A.E. Романоф. (Лейтенант). The other dream came back as a memory:
OLGA ANASTACIA EKATARINYAVICHNYA ROMANOFF?
"Oh, It's you."
She glared at Death. He prompted her.
THE NEXT QUESTION IS USUALLY "WHAT DO YOU WANT NOW?"
Olga nodded.
"So what do you want now? I know you are not here for me, because I would know. I did not receive the usual advance warning."
Olga frowned and wondered why her mind wasn't working as sharply as it usually did. She noted Death nodding meaningfully at her.
HOLD THAT THOUGHT.
Olga found her mind slipping away again. She realised she was dreaming. Or else in that other world which had its own reality, the one a Shaman tried to enter by brute force and lots of drugs.
Death looked, insofar as a seven foot skeleton can look, sympathetic.
PERHAPS I AM HERE TO ASSURE YOU THAT SIGRID HELGASDOTTIR HAS PASSED TO A BETTER PLACE, ALL PAIN AND SUFFERING HAS CEASED AND THAT SHE IS HAPPY IN HER NEW HOME AND SENDS YOU HER LOVE FROM BEYOND THE VEIL.
Olga was suddenly angry.
"If that was a joke, it was in bloody bad taste!"
I APOLOGISE. DAMN, IT IS SO HARD TO COMMUNICATE WITH SLEEPING PEOPLE. BUT, OLGA, ALL YOUR COMMAND ARE WITCHES. YOU ARE A WITCH. ASK YOURSELF WHAT HAPPENS TO A MAGIC USER SHORTLY BEFORE THEY DIE. SPEAK, PERHAPS, TO ESMERELDA MARGARET NOTE SPELLING. TALK TO YOUR WITCHES.
Death nodded to her, and half turned to go. Olga noted the white cat again, who was doing the cat thing of rubbing herself against his shin bones.
YOU ARE GOING TO KEEP ME BUSY HERE FOR THE NEXT FEW DAYS. NOW I HAVE TO GIVE SUCH ATTENTION AS IS NECESSARY TO SOME OF YOUR ELVEN VISITORS. THEY DO POSSESS SOMETHING LIKE, BUT NOT QUITE, A SOUL. AND THEY HAVE DIED IN MY JURISDICTION.
Death looked at her again. It was not unkindly.
WIN YOUR WAR, OLGA. I PREFER A WORLD WITH HUMANS IN IT. OH, AND SIGRID TOOK NINE ELVES WITH HER, IN A ROUNDABOUT WAY. YOU WILL DISCOVER MORE LATER.
And now Olga was in the air. The larger part of her was scanning, watching, spotting, for the enemy. A smaller part was contemplating her conversation with Death, filtered through the slow fug of a dreaming mind. What had he meant? Talk to Nottie… HOLD THAT THOUGHT….
Lancre, some years previously.
"That was tight, Esme!" Nanny Ogg protested, as they walked away from the old man's cottage in the late afternoon.
Granny Weatherwax did something that might have been a shrug.
"Happen it was, Gytha. Happen it was."
They walked on together. Nanny stirred, restlessly.
"We'll soon see if that young girl's got what it takes. To be a Witch. Only way, Gytha."
Nanny walked along in a protesting silence. Reluctantly, she accepted Esme might have a good point…
"But she got here, Esme. From Überwald. Same way them two came from out of Überwald a few year ago. On her own two feet. Granted, Perspicacia Tick set her on the road. But she's committed, Esme. Like young Olga and Irena were."
Silence. Nanny filled it.
"Olga and Irena come out right. Devils and buggers for flyin', mind. They was committed to bein' Witches, too."
Granny Weatherwax gave a short curt nod.
"But committed to what sort of bein' a Witch, Gytha? The girl's nobility, for one thing."
"Yes, so was Olga Romanoff." Gytha Ogg protested. "Bit of a reality shock for her. I means, she had to run to keep up, to find out how the rest of us lives. Longer distance, for her, as she was startin' from so much further away. But she got the idea. We flushed all the nobby stuff out of that girl."
Granny considered this. Then said "We needs to find out. I wants to know if this one is too posh to wash, for one thing."
Granny paused. She made a little derisory noise.
"Yunkers. Hah!"
A few hours later they returned. The girl, a tall blonde with broader athletic shoulders, looked deadbeat. But she was tending the patient still. The bedroom was spick. The patient lay in clean fresh sheets. The patient was clean. Which for somebody who had had uncontrollable Djelibeybi Fever, the Pharoah's Vengeance, was remarkable. Djelibeybi Fever was not pleasant for those called upon to nurse the patient. Especially solo.
And the girl herself looked – dishevelled would be kind. Granny nodded a grudging appreciation, noting her hands, arms and crucially her fingers were clean. She understood the essential things.
"I apologise for my unkempt state." the girl said, in her punctiliously exact Morporkian. "but I believe Mr Rogers is out of danger and is on his way to good health. I have sought to keep him clean and his sick bed is correct and clean. Alles in Ordnung, Grossmutter Weatherwax!"
"She's a bloody wonder, Mrs Ogg." the old man in the bed said. "Bit reserved, like, and can't have been pleasant for her, but she put her back out. No word of complaint."
Granny and Nanny looked at each other.
"I reckon she'll do, Esme." Nanny said.
Granny Weatherwax regarded Hanna von Strafenburg, aged fifteen and apprentice Witch.
"We'll carry on here, I thinks." she said.
She gave Hanna a brief and almost imperceptible nod. It might have been missed if you weren't looking for it.
"Your clothes is fil.. well, needs smarten' up – and you needs a hot bath, for one thing."
"Nip back to the cottage, Hanna, love." Nanny said, kindly. "One of the girls can run hot water for you. Tell 'em I said for 'em to."
GRAND TRUNKS++TURNWISE OCEAN REGION(LANCRE)
O/TOWER; LANCRE TOWN
D/TOWER: ANKH-MORPORK CITY WATCH PS/YD, FAO SIR SAMUEL VIMES
C/C – PP/AM FAO HIS GRACE LORD VETINARI, PATRICIAN.
LANCRE, DATE:
WITH GREAT SORROW AND REGRET HAVE TO INFORM YOU OF THE DEATH IN ACTION IN THE SKIES OVER LANCRE OF THE FOLLOWING PERSONNEL
WITCH AIR POLICE CONSTABLE SIGRID HELGASDOTTIR
WITCH AIR POLICE CONSTABLE JENNIFER GRALOCK
WOUNDED IN COMBAT AND CURRENTLY UNFIT FOR ACTIVE DUTY. IT IS EXPECTED THAT SHE WILL MAKE A FULL RECOVERY.
WITCH AIR POLICE CONSTABLE VIRGINIA HEARTSEASE.
STATUS OF UNIT: WE ARE IN COMBAT OVER LANCRE WITH GROUPS OF THE ENEMY WHO HAVE MADE THEIR WAY INTO THIS WORLD. PATROLS FLYING CONSTANTLY AND ENGAGING THE ENEMY IN COMBAT. OUR CURRENT TALLY IS THIRTY-SEVEN OF THE ENEMY CLAIMED IN AERIAL COMBAT AND AN AS YET UNSPECIFIED NUMBER DESTROYED IN GROUND ATTACK. FRIENDS ON THE GROUND ARE CONFIRMING OUR ATTACKS WHERE POSSIBLE AND AN ESTIMATION IS AT LEAST FIFTY DESTROYED ON THE GROUND.
MAIN ATTACK IS ANTICIPATED SOON. FOUR BROOMSTICKS DESTROYED DUE TO ENEMY ACTION AND WRITTEN OFF FROM STORES. WE HAVE, FOR NOW, SUFFICENT REPLACEMENTS.
I HAVE DETACHED SERGEANT I. Y. POLITEK AND A SMALL FORCE TO THE CHALK. WE REMAIN IN TOUCH AND SO FAR NO CONTACT HAS BEEN MADE WITH THE ENEMY THERE.
WE ARE SUFFICIENT FOR STORES AND SUPPORT. OUR WOUNDED PERSON IS COMFORTABLE AND BEING CARED FOR. AS WPC GRALOCK WAS A LOCAL LANCRE GIRL, I WILL FULFIL THE DUTY OF INFORMING HER FAMILY OF HER DEATH. I WILL SEEK TO CONTACT THE FAMILY OF WPC HELGASDOTTIR WHEN I CAN. REQUEST, IF A-M HAS AN EMBASSY OR LEGATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF THE ISLAND, THAT THEY ARE INFORMED.
IF AT ALL POSSIBLE, SEND AN IGOR OR IGORINA AS THIS IS NOT A BLOODLESS WAR.
MORALE IS HIGH AND WE ARE FIGHTING AND WILL CONTINUE TO FIGHT.
O.A.E. ROMANOFF, LIEUTENANT COMMANDING.
Sam Vimes put down the clacks with a deep sigh. He pushed the flimsy over to Angua von Überwald.
"Sigrid. She travelled a long way from home." he observed. Vimes was thinking – Widows and Orphans. "Did she have any dependents? Anyone special to her? Apart from the other airwomen, I mean."
"Kept to herself. Tidy girl. no local family. Her friends were all in the Air Watch. I don't think there was any sort of Understanding with anyone." Angua said. "Makes it tidier." .
"Does her country have an Embassy of any sort?" Vimes asked. He wished he paid more attention to these small details.
"Don't think so, sir. One of those Hublandish places where people still wear helmets with horns in. Remote. Hard to get to. Maybe two or three centuries behind in some respects. I believe they have a Cod Fisheries Delegation and a specialised knitwear shop, which is as near as it's going to get. Oh, and a creamery making interesting yoghurts."
Vimes nodded. He decided to get to the palace. With no great rush. Going now would save time.
Over Lancre.
Ground observers had seen the yarrow stalks rising over the Dancers. News had gone back to the Castle via the fast-moving Feegle Clacks. Wee Mad Arthur had accepted the Duty of waking Lady Olga by repeatedly and restrainedly kicking her in the small of the back and shaking her shoulder. (but respectfully).
"They're coming, Mistress." he had said to her. "Fifty were counted, ootwith the Dancers."
"Horoscho." Olga replied. "And nineteen of us."
"Ach, weel. They're ootnumbered, then."
Olga pushed the vivid dreams out of her head. And scrambled the squadron. Ten minutes later, flying in echelons of three, they were airborne. Olga had ordered six flyers remained on call as a reserve. The six witches nominated had grumbled, but obeyed orders.
It was the drill they'd decided on, after long practice. Three trios, nominally commanded by the best and most senior flyer. Olga herself was one of four: for convenience and because they could use Rus as a common language, she was with Marina, Nadezhda and Tatiana. Olga wished Irena was here to make it five. She wondered how things were over the Chalk and decided to clacks a request for a sitrep. As they gained height, there was a moment of unease – how safe were the clacks? Would it occur to Elves to break the clacks line, or to intercept messages? Olga considered this. No, she thought, they'd be more likely to destroy the towers out of destructive malice, and not ask what the towers were for. I can send messages in clear. I hope.
Height mattered. The air witches had worked this out in those long sessions of mock-combat and play-dogfighting. Get above the enemy and you have advantage. And while you could never have too much height, you had to balance it against practical things. Go too high, you ran out of air. They'd discovered that in training. It caused problems. And here, nearer the Hub, you also had to bear in mind that if you tried to go higher than Cori Celesti, you got Gods who got uneasy about mortals looking down from above. It hadn't happened yet and Olga thought she could deal with that if it did. Possibly.
She judged six thousand would be about right; there was a good hunter's moon up there, and it was illuminating things in a pleasing way. Her command dodged around clouds of varying thicknesses and over the Lancre landscape below, which gloomed. While some scanned the skies above and around, just in case, others watched below for signs of things moving. As Witches, they were sensitive to disturbances in the Octarine. Any sort of magically powered flight showed up as octarine discharge. Olga knew her own pilots would be glowing, to the right sort of mind. Ponder Stibbons and HEX, the university's thinking machine, had once demonstrated to her how her pilots left a glowing green trail on an omniscope screen.(3) Ponder – such a clever, clever, man! – had speculated a suitably prepared omniscope superimposed over a map could be used as an early-warning detection screen, to alert a Ground Controller that the airspace over Ankh-Morpork was being intruded upon. Errr. You could, I don't know, sort of scramble up a response then, Olga, and you'd know exactly where to send it. Errr.
Olga could see uses for that sort of technomancy. But for now, the detection technology was Human Eyeball Mark One, backed by witch senses.
They flew on. Elves would be flying low and fast. But we have height.
Some Wizards are not stupid. Some are quite clever. They would not be a liability.
Olga had absolutely resisted the idea of flying Wizards in the air Service. Sam Vimes had backed her up. A very firm Nyet! had been sent to the University. Men with magic whose first response to flight would be "how fast can it go and what's the biggest possible fireball it can carry? Hey, if we drop this on a city it can make a big hole!" were not what the Air Police wanted. Although, as she had pointed out to Vimes, "sometimes, fireballs." She was not opposed to fireballs. Not at all. The trick was, knowing when to use them and that ninety five per cent of the time, they were not an appropriate response.
Olga contemplated the remaining five percent of the time. She grinned. Tatiana Grigorenko grinned back at her.
Then, below, there were octarine ripples in the air, invisible to anyone except a magic user. She knew she hadn't spotted them first. But Witches in other echelons were signalling. Olga reckoned the first Witch to make visual contact on the enemy had been Kiiiki Pekkisaalen. That figured.(4) Rus pilots could go higher and were less affected by cold. Kiiki could go higher still and stay there longer. She was a natural sniper: any Witch figuring she was as high as anything could possibly go, and who didn't bother looking up or behind her, soon had Kiiki on her tail, coming down from where she had been patiently waiting, higher still. A high-altitude sniper, a lone wolf.
Unable to make contact other than with hand-signals and shouting, Olga lifted herself up on her broom, unsheathed her sabre, raised it, and pointed it down. Towards the large octarine disturbance that suggested a lot of air movement down there, several thousand feet below.
"V'put!" she shouted. Let's go.
Pork Scratching, Lancre. Years previously.
Petulia Gristle, an older witch who had married a pig farmer, was used to a succession of apprentice Witches each getting a year of Work Experience in her Steading. A lot of it revolved around farm animals, especially pigs. The girls soon knuckled down, recognising pig-work was by its nature dirty. Petulia had probably the best bathroom in Lancre, for one thing. She had a standing account with a cosmetics company in Ankh-Morpork and received regular large parcels of scented bathroom essentials. She even had a novelty for Lancre, a boiler room that pumped lots of reliable heating and hot water around the house. This also fired a very good laundry room for clothing. Some things are essentials.
Her girls did the mucky jobs uncomplainingly. It was the price they paid for a good long luxurious soak. Getting them to pitch in with pigs was never a problem. But today she had the opposite problem…
The pig byre, currently unoccupied, had never looked cleaner. You could even see the stones and the cobbles. They looked scrubbed.
Conversely, the apprentice Witch doing the cleaning had inevitably managed to transfer a lot of the grime, and other things, to herself. She was still scrubbing at a stubborn patch, with grim determination.
Petulia tried not to be nervous. There was something about this apprentice. Tall, blonde, with those icy-cold blue eyes. Petulia had the feeling she was dealing with a higher-functioning Annagramma Hawkins, but one who was actually good as a Witch. And she felt, like the younger Petulia being bullied by Annagramma, as if she should shrivel inside, meekly take it, allow the uncertain shy and hesitant inner Petulia to emerge, in the presence of cold commanding competence who was born to rule and had a right to rule.
Petulia shook herself. Those were just bad memories. This one was perfectly nice inside. You just should look behind the surface impression.
"Hanna." She said, kindly and reasonably. "Hanna. Listen to me. Errr. You don't have to take it this far. This is more than good enough for the pigs. Err."
Her pupil, Hanna von Strafenburg, looked up at her. Petulia caught a glimpse of something behind the cold ice-blue eyes. It looked like vulnerability, desperation.
"I mean. Err. You never shirk from the dirty work. Even when you don't need to do it. Errr. Why?"
Hanna took her time in replying.
"Because they think. "She is too posh to wash. Too haughty to be dirty. She is some sort of Duchess or something. She is too good for us. Not one of us.""
Hanna indicated the dirt on her working clothes. A smell rose. Essence of pig.
"I want… to fit in. To be among people. And to be one of them."
Petulia recognised the desperation.
"I know, love." she said. "You want a place where you can belong. Everybody does." Petulia paused. "Right now, your place is a really hot bath. Leave your clothes in the usual place for laundering? I'll get you a drink. We can talk."
Hanna walked away with immense dignity. Petulia shook her head, wondering what sort of awful life the Überwaldean nobility had given to one of its daughters.
Lord Vetinati turned the despatch between his fingers. He looked thoughtful and replaced it on the desk.
"I would begin by speaking to Hagrid Grimismondsson at the fish docks." he remarked. "He can at least provide a home address and directions. Island is a small country. Everybody knows everyone else. And when normality resumes, Lieutenant Romanoff then knows where to travel to. By Pegasus."
Vimes did not reply.
"Pronounced Ice-Land." Vetinari remarked. "A language congruent with Old Nothingfjordian possibly a thousand years ago. Many points of congruence with Morporkian. Isolated and fossilised. Many people make the mistake of speaking the name as it is written in Morporkian. It is an island, of course. But more than that."
Vetinari paused.
"A hardy people. Of course, descended from great barbarian fighters, adventurers and heroes of old. And, of course, heroines."
There was a pause in the Oblong Office. Vetinari looked over to his Watch commander, sternly.
"Deaths are regrettable, Vimes." he said. "And of course every dead person is a life truncated, children never born, a life never lived, a grieving family. But this is, regrettably, a war. Against a vicious, alien, hostile, foe who delight in cruelty and destruction. They have invaded our world. They are…" Vetinari paused. He steepled his fingers.
"If the Battle of Lancre ends badly, Vimes, a Battle of Ankh-Morpork will commence. Better we defeat them, conclusively, in Lancre. Or else all we have known and cared for will end up inexorably sliding into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister by the non-light of a perverted people."
Vetinari paused. Then he seemed to shrug off whatever had settled on him. It looked as if he was about to say more. Vimes fought off a sudden perverse urge to offer the Patrician a cigar.
"There will be casualties, Vimes. Steel yourself for them. Lieutenant Romanoff will gain new and able recruits to train. Who knows, even now a witch fighting in the ground war, in the mud and cold, will be looking up, seeing fellow Witches fighting in the air, maybe catching sight of the air war, and she will think – I want to be part of that. The gaps will be filled and the ranks, who knows, will be extended. Her new recruits will be taught by seniors with practical, invaluable, experience of air warfare. Now if you excuse me, I have an appointment with the Klatchian Ambassador. His country has experience of entities called djinns. He will wish to be – thoroughly - briefed concerning our Air Arm's progress in the skies over Lancre."
The elves over Lancre were flying in a mass. They had heard there were Witches in the air fighting them. On those old, slow, laughable, broomsticks. No match for us. But we can have fun killing them when they try.
Then they heard the song from somewhere nearby. It was punctuated by high, shrill, "hup!" and "yip" noises, like farmers herding animals. Song captivates Elves, Even if they don't know the words. And a woman's voice, solo, was singing. They made what would turn out to be an error. And slowed down to listen. The song grew nearer It was punctuated by the repeated word that sounded like "Kazack!"
Then the Night Witches burst out of their cover in the cloudbank and hit them. The Elves looked into the eyes of the women fighting them. And very briefly got a sense of what the word "Kazack" meant.
The war-cries were loud and carried. "Ya Kazack!" alternated with "Sigrid!" There was no doubt the women up there were angry and seeking revenge. On the ground, people marshalling for an earthly combat heard them. They looked up and saw the mushrooming fireballs above and heard the explosions.
Nanny Ogg saw one particularly large fiery ball split into trails of flaming debris plummeting to earth.
"Well." she said, to nobody in particular. "We'll be pickin' bits of elf out the ground for a long time to come!"
She didn't touch iron. No point, as they were on their way regardless.
Olga Romanoff estimated the first mad vengeful rush had killed at least twenty elves. At least one each. But they were getting over their surprise now and they still outnumbered her fliers by at least two to one.
Olga scowled. Numbers. What of them? She unsheathed her sabre, knowing it was best to conserve her fireballs. Practical experimentation had established you could only throw so many before the magic depleted. She considered the pistol crossbow at her right thigh that Irena had obtained, on loan, from a friend. She wasn't sure if she could fire more than one shot; it needed to be reloaded, and she suspected air combat allowed no leisure to reload. But she still manoeuvred into range of an Elf, one intent on getting close up to Maggie Bracewell. He was so intent on getting her that he simply did not notice Olga. And the crossbow bolt came as a brief surprise to him.
Olga frowned, noticing the elf had been holding a flaming torch. It pinwheeled in fiery circles across the sky. What was the point of that? They could see in the dark… she watched the body plummet, and reholstered the black-enamelled crossbow. It had served.
"Watch your back!" she shouted at Maggie, swerving past and banking. You did not fly a straight course in a fight.
The battle had degenerated into a series of individual fights. Olga noted a couple more elves plumetting as flaming ruins, and approved. She also fretted at the possibility they would run out of ammunition soon.
Then a heavy weight landed on her back, causing the broomstick to buck and leap. Olga felt the knife grating at her back and sensed puzzlement on the part of the stabber. She felt the choking arm around her throat and gagged at the feral stink.
Then she recentred and balled her left fist, using her elbow as a pivot and smashing it into what felt like the face of her attacker. She felt the splintering of bone and cartilage and the gush of blood. The arm around her neck slackened, she could breathe again, but it did not let go. Oga didn't even think. She twisted in her seat, her left hand groping for her waist.
The Elf briefly stiffened as the short kijndal dagger, the companion piece to the shaksha sabre, went through him. His numbed arms flew wide.
"You ripped my tunic, brat." she said, coldly. "For that, you die."
Then she pushed the dying Elf into space, taking care to retrieve the dagger. All the Rus fliers were wearing Cossack tunics and fur caps. The four had agreed that was fitting. They were Kazack, riding into battle. They should know who kills them. Courtesy.
But they were also Watchwomen. Watch-issue breast and back plates were being worn under the tunics. Olga suspected there was now a dent and a scratch in hers.
She heard a voice from the past, somewhere inside her head.
"What sort of Witch carries a sword, anyway?"
She saluted the memory. And shouted into the sky
"A Cossack witch!"
She suspected, at the edge of hearing, a voice laughed and said
"A good answer."
Olga saluted the sky.
"May your soul have mercy on the Gods."
The fighting was petering out now. Surviving Elves were running for it. And there were not many. Olga raised her sword over her head and swung it in a circle, then back towards her. It meant "Regroup on me".
Then she sighed. There had to be a better way of communicating in the air. Perhaps Ponder Stibbons was working on one. When she returned the borrowed crossbow to Johanna, with thanks, she'd ask him.
Olga felt a cooler rush of air than she anticipated and reached up to pat her head.
Govno.
In the fight with the elf, her fur cap had gone. She sighed, philosophically. She could always get another one. Even if the one she had lost had been the one the Vulga Cossacks had presented her with, to mark her acceptance into the Horde after a year of training.
However, there was a bigger issue to deal with. Conferring with Marisa and Nottie, she realised that three broomsticks had been seen to catch fire and veer out of control during the air battle.
"Who have we lost?" Olga asked. Marina indicated broomsticks where two witches were to be seen riding pillion.
"We were alert. We saved people."
"Horoscho. We have reserve brooms." Olga said. "For now, brooms with rescued pilots. Back to the air station. They will also require cover…"
Then the elves launched a raid of their own. Olga, wondering if the brooms had simply been overloaded with too much magic whilst charging and had simply caught fire, and making a note to ask the tekniks about this, realised what the fiery torches some Elves had been carrying were for.
One of them, in a the brief flurry of fighting, latched onto Jenny Gralock. Engaged in duelling another elf, she simply did not notice the second flying alongside and setting fire to her bristles, which caught quickly.
Jenny very soon found herself on an uncontrollable broomstick that was flying erratically and running out of power. She might have waited to be picked up and taken pillion. But Jenny was a local Lancre girl. And she was one of the witches who had opted to take a parachute with her. She tipped off her broom, rolled, and a couple of seconds later there was the white bloom of an opening chute, These had come a long way since Leonard of Quirm's first design. The Air Watch favoured a lightweight device that fitted into the smallest possible space.(5)
"Her decision. She knows the ground locally. She can find friends, and return to us by ground." Olga said.
Nottie, hovering nearby, agreed.
"Hope that broom lands on top of some Elves when it blows." she said.
"We can only hope." Olga agreed, watching the dying broom staggering towards the ground with all the precision of a firework rocket.
And then the elves found her.
Jenny, in her parachute, retaliated with whatever fireballs were left to her, but the outcome was inevitable. Elven arrows. Quite a few of them, even as Air Witches were streaking in, just too late.
Olga felt appalled. She felt, in her heart of hearts, that whatever happened in the air, a pilot who baled out of a stricken broom and who was clearly taking no further part in the battle was safe, Inviolable. She felt this in her soul. Olga would not have used the word "war crime". But some things resonate in the soul.
"Kill them." she said. "Kill the bastards. No mercy."
In the following fight, Ginny Heartsease received close-combat injuries from an Elf armed with a stone club. Kiiiki Pekkisaalen, her deadly Swommi combat knife flashing, had rescued her and carried an unconscious comrade back over her broom.
And on the flight back to Base, Olga suddenly realised what Death had tried to explain to her in the dream.
I went into battle because I knew I was not going to die. Because I had not had Advance Notice, which is the privilege of magic-users.
Olga tried to remember if this only happened in the event of natural death – some people thought that if your coming death was to be a violent or un-natural one, you did not get the Warning. She decided not to rely on this as a guarantee she would not be killed. As Assassins put it, that could be called over-confident.
But Sigrid seemed distant and preoccupied in the last week, Olga reflected. What if she knew? And Jenny?
Olga called a crew meeting when everyone had landed. There were things to discuss.
GRAND TRUNKS++THE CHALK AND OCTARINE GRASS COUNTRY)
O/TOWER; SHEEPRIDGE
D/TOWER:LANCRE TOWN
HI OLGA.
WE MAINTAIN A PATROLLING ROUTINE HERE WHICH AT THE MOMENT IS HARD TO DO WITH FOUR OF US. A COUPLE OF YOUNGER WITCHES WHO CAN FLY ARE HELPING OUT AND I AM PAIRING EACH ONE WITH ONE OF OUR FLIERS. THEY HAVE APTITUDE AND ARE RECEIVING SICH TRAINING AS WE CAN GIVE. SUGGEST WE CONSIDER THEM AS RECRUITS AFTERWARDS. TIFFANY THINKS SOMETHING IS ABOUT TO BLOW HERE – SO FAR NO ACTION. IT IS COMING. REQUEST MORE PERSONNEL AND SEND A CARPET WITH SUPPORT STORES AND A TEKNIK. LOTS MORE OF THE SPECIAL AMMO FOR HANNA. YOU KNOW HER STICK EATS IT AT VAST RATES. I GRIEVE FOR SIGRID. I HOPE SHE IS THE ONLY ONE.
REPEAT, QUIET HERE. FOR NOW. YOU HAVE SEEN ACTION?
IRENA Y. POLITEK (RELUCTANT SERGEANT, COMMANDING SHEEPRIDGE DETACHMENT)
More to come… the girls learn a little more with every fight. Flashbacks to Ankh-Morpork. And the war begins over the Chalk.
Notes Dump: think of it as a sort of dispersal area for recovered ideas which can be cannibalised for spare parts so as to get new ideas up into the air again.
The kindjal, or kindal; the shorter sword or dagger, depending on length, which is used by Cossacks as a sort of auxiliary weapon to the shaksha, or else as a sidearm: like the shaksha, it has no cross-guard and the pommel might be ornamented with a stylised animal head depending on region or Host.
(1) African Eagle Owls can grow big – although most African Owl species are not much bigger than their European cousins, the apex predator has a wingspan of over 4'6" (1 metre 35). Night flying Feegle have tamed all sizes, but guess which end of the scale they like most…
(2) To my story Whys and Weres in which Johanna the night-stalking killer gets her name. The Watch Feegle stuck with the same idea for the other two birds, normally used for night-vision patrols. Their riders knew to let them take the odd rabbit, rat or small rodent during a patrol, and stopped for necessary meal-breaks. Tonight the three silent, lethal night hunters weren't just observing. They were hunting.
(3) Olga, invited to the High Energy Magic building to watch the experiment, who had instructed three pilots to fly a steady trail over the City where HEX could detect them, had watched appreciatively, her mind assessing the possibilities, as the green line swept the omniscope screen like a fast-moving watch hand, picking out the moving green blur as it got closer and larger, then, as it passed over the University, receding and fading. "Errr.. it's not very precise yet." Ponder had said, apologetically. "And still a prototype. We can't yet tell how many there are and we can only approximately guess at what height. But the octarine ray picks them up and plots them. Errr…"
Olga had wanted to hug him. She forced herself to remain, outwardly, impassive. It was expected of her.
"The ray. Da." she had said.
(4) Kiiki was a witch from the Swommi country who had also made the long trek to Lancre. She wasn't slow to point out, whenever Cossack sentiments emerged, who exactly had won the centuries-ago Winter War and prevented their land being absorbed into the Rus Empire. "We'll give you that." Nadezhda had replied, taking no offence. "But had Cossacks been there, it would have been different."
"Cossacks." Kiiki had said, dismissively. "Perkkele. You don't have mobility when those horses are balls-deep in a snowdrift. You can't put horses on skis."
(5) Parachutes were optional. Olga did not insist on this. Many pilots thought they were a bulky un-necessary impediment. It was left to the individual.