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in his cadet’s uniform, rushed up with a signal slate. I’d seen the colors breaking from the signal yards of both
Storm Rising
and
Nath’s Hammer
, the ships carrying our aerial cavalry squadrons.
    Before the signal cadet had time to gasp out anything at all I snarled at him: “No, Cadet Thingol. Signal back Request Refused.”
    He went scarlet clear up past those fetching brown curls.
    “Quidang, majister!”
    Galloping off back to the signal halyards, he fairly broke the speed records. I sighed. If my precious aerial cavalry lads had their wish and took off, the squadrons would just simply be ripped apart. They would be wasted for nothing. They might buy us a few moments of time. That kind of exchange might be regarded by your puissant high and mighty emperor as a fair deal; it did not suit me.
    “Here they come,” said Targon the Tapster in a matter-of-fact way.
    “Shaft the cramphs good.”
    Bows bending, gleaming in the light of the twin suns, slender shafts flashing outwards, feathers all aglitter in the radiance. Crossbows clanging and twanging, and the cruel bolts hurtling. Varters coughing their ugly chunks of rock, or driving their long barbed darts deeply into enemy flesh. Oh, yes, by Krun, we shafted them.
    Because of our hurtling onward speed the windrush drove our flags stiffly to the rear, making the reading of signals difficult for ships ahead and astern. Partially to overcome this problem, the aerial sailors of Kregen fitted up guy lines on the outside of the flags, by which means they could draw the outer edges around to make the flags more easily identifiable. This could be done for short moments only. Even then, more than one set of flags was ripped to shreds.
    “Signal to the lead voller,” I rapped out. “Change course to south southeast.” We were rushing along almost due southerly.
    I wanted to avoid drawing this ravening pack on our heels over the heads of those refugees.
    By this time we were really shifting along. After two more abortive attempts at us, the flutsmen were left to our rear, for no fluttrell can fly as fast as a voller at top speed.
    The pursuing airboats kept on after us, and I wondered if they were picking up their aerial cavalry, or if they had not yet mastered that tricky technique. We kept up a watch for what went on back there; but the distance and the haze of afternoon rendered accurate observation difficult. There were far fewer fluttrells in the sky; that could simply be because they had called it a day and flown back to their base.
    The haze thickened into the outskirts of real clouds.
    Captain Voromin rubbed his hands.
    “If we are to run away, majis, then a few handy clouds will not come amiss; no, by Corg.”
    “Right you are, Cap’n.”
    Lorgad Voromin had been the master of one of the superb sailing galleons of Vallia. Now he had transferred to the Vallian Air Service he took, as I had instituted recently, the rank of Jiktar as the commander of a largish vessel. Still, we all called the old sea dog Cap’n still, which pleased him.
    Weirdly enough, this business of running away did not distress half as much as I anticipated. Those folk who had known me in the long ago when I’d first arrived on Kregen would snort with derision at what I was now doing. Dray Prescot, they’d say, laughing, Dray Prescot run away? Never!
    In these latter days, concerns over wider issues than merely my own skin motivated me.
    The clouds whisked by, thickening and then thinning and then churning into a white froth that rolled back over our forecastle and along the deck like spilled milk.
    Before the opportunity was altogether lost, I managed to get off further signals to the squadron. Their instructions were to bear straight on until we broke out of the clouds. We were making slightly under nine db’s. [2]
    With the flutsmen left straggling to the rear we had the sky to play in.
    There had to be a plan to fetch success out of apparent failure.
    Captain Voromin, in a quiet