Page 66 of Wings of War

Pip braced herself against the flagpole at her back, pouring more magic into the shield stretched above her head.

The black, tubular shapes of the bombs tumbled down toward her. The first bomb struck her shield, exploding on impact.

She gritted her teeth at the force pounding her magic. Several of the bombs struck without detonating, rolling off and exploding among the buildings she didn’t have shielded.

More bombs tumbled through the sky and blasted into her magic.

She cried out, pain stabbing through her skull and into her chest at the force of the explosions she staved off with the power of her magic.

Yet another explosion pounded into her. The enemy must have realized she was holding a shield over the central command of the fort, and they were hitting her with everything they had.

She crumpled to her knees, blackness dancing at the edges of her vision.

Chapter

Twenty-One

Fieran’s flyer lifted into the sky, following Merrik’s aeroplane. They pointed their flyers’ noses upward, toward the airship hovering above Fort Linder.

Other biplanes darted around the airship, even as the airship’s machine guns chattered.

Clawing into the sky took an agonizingly peaceful fifteen minutes. The breeze raked icy through Fieran’s hair. He hadn’t had the chance to bundle up in the normal leather jacket, fur-lined leather boots, scarf, and cap that he would normally wear to protect himself from the cold air high in the sky. He didn’t even have gloves, but he kept his hands from numbing by letting his magic twine around his fingers. At least he had goggles to keep his eyes from tearing up in the wind.

Then Merrik banked to circle the airship, and Fieran followed, shadowing Merrik’s movement into a pandemonium of barking machine guns, tearing bullets, a haze of smoke, and whirling aeroplanes.

Fieran called up his magic, but he held it back from fully unleashing. There was so much smoke and chaos he was just as likely to catch one of his fellow pilots in his magic if he sent it at the airship from too far away. He’d have to get closer, using his magic in limited amounts, to prevent hurting one of his own.

As he dove toward the airship, a black shape came out of nowhere around the curve of the dirigible, headed straight for Fieran.

Fieran let out a few crude words and shoved the rudder over with his feet while pushing the stick forward to dive into a right turn. Thanks to the rotary engine, his flyer tumbled sideways even faster than he expected.

A gust of wind took his wings, and then he was spiraling. Everything around was black. Black sky. Black land. Black, black, black.

Was he headed for the ground? The sky? The airship? The jumbled, tugging forces left him with no sense of gravity to tell up from down.

His heart hammered in his throat, his rising bile coating his tongue with a sour taste. His head whirled, all of his senses swimming until he thought he might be sick. Everything in him wanted to just yank on the stick in a blind panic.

Gritting his teeth, he forced his clenching muscles to move. Slowly. Gently. He fought the forces until he regained a margin of control over his flyer, stopping the spin, though he couldn’t have said if he was pointed at the sky or at the ground.

Blinking, he forced his eyes to focus. He craned his stiff, aching neck to try to locate something that resembled a light or a landmark.

Over his head, bright orange flames danced among black buildings, a rippling, liquid surface off to his left over his head.

Not over his head. Beneath him. He was flying upside down. Now that he settled back more firmly into his body as his panic receded, he could feel the pain of the lap belt around his hips, the only thing holding him in the cockpit.

This was fine. He was fine.

Trying to calm his thundering heart, Fieran eased on the rudder and control column, trying to turn his craft right side up once again. The aeroplane made only a sluggish attempt to right itself.

Nothing for it. Fieran pushed the control column forward again, putting his aeroplane into a dive, this time curving into a loop so that his flyer slowly righted itself even as it screamed ever closer to the ground.

Fieran braced his feet on the rudder bar and pulled back on the stick, fighting the forces on the ailerons and elevators. His aeroplane finally leveled out right side up, skimming rather disconcertingly close over Fort Linder and punching through the plumes of black smoke.

Ahead and below him, a curving silvery dome of magic arched over Fort Linder’s headquarters. While he’d been tumbling through the sky, the airship had drifted, and it now pounded Pip’s shield with bombs.

He couldn’t have said how he knew, but he could sense her magic wavering, weakening, beneath the bombardment.

Fieran released that burst of magic he’d been holding to so tightly, sending it at her shield. As it had during their practice together, his magic danced over hers, blending together to form an even stronger shield.