Through Fire Read online

  Chapter 11

  Diana stood up and faced him, tears shining in her vivid red eyes. “Do something, Flint. They’re getting away.”

  He looked up at her, and no words came. How could he express the pain and helplessness he felt? He closed his eyes and looked down.

  “Flint, there’s no one left to stop them. If they get to the city, my awful uncle will get his guns, and he’ll make everyone slaves. Isn’t that what you hate? Haven’t you told me a million times you won’t be a slave, won’t see the city a, a cage, a prison?”

  He tried to ignore her, but heat built in his chest until he had to speak. He scowled up at her. “This isn’t about my values, Diana. It’s about the Eagle’s goddamn turbine. They’re past us. I tried my best to prevent it, but they’re past us now, and this rig cannot overtake that rig, not here, not on the smoothest way ever made. Don’t you understand? There is nothing that I can do.”

  She held his gaze. Her face turned pale and her hands trembled, but she held her gaze. “Really?”

  “Yes. Really.”

  “You’re a liar.”

  He looked skywards and spread his hands in a gesture of exasperation. “In what world am I a liar? Look, look over there. You can see the Eagle. How am I lying to you?”

  She reached into a pocket on her skirt. “You’re lying to yourself.”

  “No. No I’m not.”

  “Then explain this.” She took out a shining golden object and held it before him. He recognised the gleaming metal claw, and remembered finding it still dug into the wing.

  “How did you get that?”

  “You dropped it when Jerethy knocked you out.”

  “He didn’t-” He broke off and sighed. “That doesn’t help us, Diana. I can’t magically summon the fire monsters. I can’t call up the King of Fire on the radio and ask him to take care of Caerlion and co.”

  She set the claw on the dash, beside the wooden rhino. “Yes,” she said, and looked out at the sea. “Yes you can.”

  He followed her gaze and looked at the great expanse of water. From here to the city, the way followed the wide curve of the shoreline, but a straight run across the water would be much faster. His heart started to beat quicker, but he shook his head. “No. No way.”

  “You’ve done it before,” she said. “I know you have. I might not be grown up, but I’ve seen the new burn marks on the right flank. They’re the same as the one you showed me at Smelt. And there’s a deep scratch on the wing, and it matches the claw perfectly. You didn’t tell me before because you thought we were going to die, and you were so mad at Caerlion you’d try anything to beat him, but you went up against a fire monster right after we left the burned place.”

  He shuddered. “I had to do that.”

  “No, you didn’t. You chose to because Caerlion had turned your home into a prison, and you wanted to be free. Well that’s my home over there,” she said, and pointed at the distant city. “And every second you waste telling me ‘no’ is another second he gets closer, and when he arrives he’ll make everyone I know a slave.” She sobbed, and her eyes streamed. “How dare you ignore them? How dare you abandon them?”

  He grimaced, and felt himself heat, boil, felt he had to explode from the pressure within. He wanted to comfort her, and he wanted to hurl her out of the door and fly away, forget everything that had happened in the past week. But he knew he couldn’t do either. Comfort would ring hollow, and having come this far he couldn’t turn his back on her now. He only had one choice, and he’d known it since she’d shown him the golden claw. A strange, wild exhilaration rose in him; it spiraled up from his belly and shot tingles and sparks through his chest, back and arms. He grabbed the wheel in both hands and wrestled with it, almost wishing it would break off and make the next move impossible, but he knew the rig would hold.

  The Rhino always held.

  Diana must have seen the change come over him, for she wiped her eyes, and sat in her seat.

  He didn’t look at her. “I would tell you to get off the rig.”

  “Not back in the hold?”

  He grinned. “Not this time.” He looked at her. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, Diana, but I do know this rig is going to be anything but safe on this run.”

  “Rigger,” she said, “when was it ever safe?”

  +

  He fixed his gaze on the distant city. The sea looked smooth enough, no storm clouds looming overhead to spoil the ride. He glanced at the way, and saw a blur of motion as the Eagle sped on. Could they really catch her up? He didn’t know, but he was going to try. He fired up the engine, pulled the rig around and lined up the horn on the city. He closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and started to accelerate.

  The Rhino hummed down over the pebble beach, and dipped a little when it got over the water. He corrected their course and gunned the engines. The rig began to pick up speed and he saw the water ahead deepen and turn blue, and a foamy wake form in the rear screen.

  Diana sighed. “Oh Flint, I thought something horrible would happen as soon as we flew over the water.”

  He winced. “Don’t say that, Diana.”

  “Why not? Don’t tell me you’re afraid I’ll jinx you.”

  “Uhm...”

  She giggled. “Flint, you’re supposed to be the mature adult here...” She trailed off, her eyes locked on a green glow emanating from the water ahead. “Flint.”

  “I see it.”

  “Flint!”

  “I see it!”

  The green light shone almost straight ahead. Flint nudged the wheel right, and they whipped past it just as it turned red.

  Diana sighed. “Oh, that was scary.”

  A second light appeared ahead, and the first one burst from the water in a cloud of steam. Flint steered left this time and got past the second machine, but when he checked the rear screen, he saw two fiery orbs trailing them.

  Diana watched the chasing fires in the rear screen. “I’ve never seen that,” she said. “It’s like fire come to life, flying through the air. How does it work?”

  He kept his eyes on the water ahead. “No one knows any more.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Maybe it’s like the rig,” she said, absorbed by the light show in the rear screen. “Maybe they use hydrogen from the water.”

  “Diana, it’s not healthy to think about them too much. I’d trade all the rigs ever for a world without those monsters.”

  She didn’t look at him. “No, you wouldn’t.”

  He laughed. “No, I guess you’re right. Hang on, here comes another one.”

  This time the green light seemed odd, distorted. He nudged the Rhino towards the shoreline, and the shift in perspective revealed not one, but two lights rising close together. “Looks like they’re getting thicker,” he said.

  Diana yelped. “Flint, there are more of them behind us now.”

  He checked the rear screen, and saw that the pair of trailing fires had spread out, one to the left, one to the right, and had activated two or three more fires. He swallowed. “They’re giving us a bigger shadow.” He frowned. “It’ll be okay, it’s not like we were planning to go back.”

  When he faced front again he felt his composure slip. Where before he had seen a pair of lights, he now saw a line of glowing green ascend through the water ahead, a line that swept right, to the shore. Sweat made his palms slick, and he rubbed them on his shirt, then turned the wheel left.

  The girl half-rose in her seat and leaned on the dash. “They’re cutting us off from the shore.”

  “Uh huh.”

  The lights ahead rose faster now, and fires blossomed ahead of them like a line of lanterns, floating on the blue water. They began off to the right, towards the distant shore, and new lights rose and added to the line, until it reached left in a great blazing semicircle, and the fires behind them multiplied and joined with the others to form a vast burning ring. As Flint watched,
the ring began to contract. His eyes fell on the golden talon on the dash. It reflected the approaching firelight, and Flint had a vision; he saw dozens of golden monsters gouge holes in the rig, and screech and scream as they burned through the Rhino’s titanium hide. It would be a race to see whether he and Diana would cook in the superheated air or drown in molten metal.

  He shivered, and glanced at Diana. She looked pale and shaky. “Flint,” she said. “This might have been a mistake.”

  “You think?”

  She brightened. “But at least we won’t make a lot more.”

  “...I guess.”

  The chain of fire closed in on them. The blaze made it hard to keep sight of the city, and he decided the only course was to break through. He scanned the chain, saw a slightly wider gap between two fires ahead and to the left, and he aimed the rig that way. As if the chain understood his intentions, the gap closed. He cursed and looked for another, but the chain continued to contract in on the Rhino, and it began to circle.

  “Flint, why are they doing that?”

  “Keep us from getting bored, I suppose.”

  “I’m not bored. I’m not bored at all. Flint, are you sure we can’t just fly over them?”

  “Ground effect, Diana. Ground effect. I’m pretty sure those things can go as high as they like.”

  “What about the water? Can’t we, like, swim or something? They don’t burn in the water.”

  “Neither does the turbine.”

  “You mean we’d...” She raised her hand, pointed the fingers down, and thrust it down.

  He nodded.

  “It wasn’t like this when you took Caerlion’s gun, was it?”

  He shook his head.

  “I didn’t think so. I’m sorry, Flint.”

  He gritted his teeth. “Don’t be. We’re not cooked yet.”

  She shot him a hopeful glance. “Do you have a plan?”

  “Nope. I’ve got the Rhino. That’s all I’ve got, all I’ve ever needed.”

  He aimed the horn where the thought the city lay, pushed the engines to full power, and sent the rig hurtling at the chain of fire.

  As the fires spun and the gaps in the chain shrank, the water began to bubble and steam. Where before the monsters had turned their steam into fire, now they shed so much heat that it boiled the sea’s surface, made it churn and froth, and filled the ring with hot mist that settled on the Rhino’s windows and obscured Flint’s view. By that point the light from the fires had already grown so intense that he couldn’t see the mainland, and had to guess the direction of the city with a combination of instruments and intuition. Now even the fires seemed to fade, diminished by the fog to a glowing haze.

  Diana leaned forward and peered through the sweat damp window. “Maybe they’ve lost us in this mist.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think it works that way.”

  “What’s going to happen? Really tell me, don’t lie to me.”

  He squinted into the fog. “Imagine that someone twisted that necklace of yours tighter and tighter until you couldn’t breathe, and then heated it until the metal melted into your flesh.”

  “...Flint?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When I told you not to lie… I didn’t mean it.”

  He angled the rig up. “Welcome to the world of grown-ups.”

  The mist began to glow brighter, and Flint wiped sweat from his face. He couldn’t tell if the monsters’ heat had warmed the cockpit or whether it was all his imagination. Either way he felt he was about to cook. If they remained in that ring of death, they would roast like chickens. He had to count on the strength of the rig, and the speed of the engines. “Hold on, Diana. We’re going to crash through.”

  He turned the nose down, and shed a couple of metres. It brought him close to the water’s surface, and he saw, through the mist, the dazzling reflection of the whirling golden ring, contracted almost to a point. Then the hurtling rig hit the closing fires with a shock that tossed Flint and Diana about, but the main force of the impact struck just above the window bubble, at the Rhino’s tough brow, raised a squeal of tortured metal that ran from the front of the rig to the back, and shook the whole vehicle. Then they burst out of the mist, and the fires receded in the rear screen, but Flint had no time to celebrate, because the Rig’s downward angle of flight made the sea rise up before them, deep blue waves that danced with foam. He heaved back on the wheel, the Rhino pulled up, but not before they splashed the surface, and gouts of water streaked the windows. Then they rose, but the engine coughed, and Flint feared the sea had flooded the turbine, and he clung to the wheel with white fingers, saw the circle behind break into a following wedge, and all he could do was keep going, keep on going, and finally he sighed and let his body relax, for although the Rhino had dipped her snout in the sea, she hadn’t drowned.

  “Flint, you did it,” said Diana. She wiped sweat and tears from her face and leaned over and hugged him. “You went under. Why didn’t you tell me you could do that?”

  “Truth? I didn’t know it would work.”

  She fell back into her seat. “When you tell this story, you have to change that. Tell people you know your rig better than your own skin, or something.”

  “Who am I going to tell?”

  She pointed across the water. “Look, we’re halfway across the bay already. But the fire monsters… Why are they doing that?”

  He checked the rear screen, and saw the wedge of fire stretch out into a line, but as he watched, it angled right, towards the shore, as if the Rhino had grown a long and gently wagging tail. “Well, I think-”

  “Look. Flint, look!”

  He followed her pointing finger to a spot ahead and to the left, and saw a new green glow illuminate the rippling waves. At first, still elated by his escape from the burning chain, he felt little more than mild excitement. Then, as the light brightened, it also expanded, and he frowned in puzzlement. He watched this for a few moments more, and when the light turned red, he understood. The light hadn’t expanded, that had been a trick of perception. No, it had come from deeper.

  They caught on at the same time, and Diana put it in words. “This one’s bigger.”

  His heart sank, and he felt the familiar icy sensation deep in his belly. “You know what that is, Diana. Who that is.”

  She half-turned from the window, but her eyes remained fixed on the rising light that bathed the cockpit in a red glow. “I thought it was a story. I thought it was just a story.”

  “Some of the old stories are true.”

  “The King of Fire.”

  The huge form burst from the water, the red light faded, and they saw a great golden skeleton, like a human with no legs but many arms that ended in cruel claws, each finger a sharp, hooked scythe. It rose above them, arms spread wide like gilded wings, and the morning light made it shine like a new sun. It gazed down at the onrushing rig with cold obsidian eyes, and showed them the smile of the dead. Atop its gleaming skull it wore a diamond crown.

  Diana shrank in her seat. “Flint,” she said, “do something. Please do something.”

  Flint gazed up at the King of Fire. The fire monsters never revealed themselves in this way, and he had never seen one of them so clearly. He felt certain that the few people who had seen this had not lived to speak of it. But someone had, he began to think. Someone had survived. “We can get through this, Diana,” he said.

  “Lies are good, Flint. Keep ‘em coming.”

  “No, listen,” he said. “Someone survived. Someone made it through. I never knew why we called it the king, but I understand now. They saw the crown. They saw the diamond crown and they got away.”

  “Did they leave a handy guide on how they escaped?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Then stop realising things and get us out of here!”

  As if the monster had heard her, it brought its arms together and pointed them at the Rhino. The air around it began to swirl with heat, and steam rose from the sea. Th
e skeletal figure danced all over with pale blue fire, and then it erupted in dazzling yellow flames. It hung there for a moment, and then it flew at them.

  +

  Fire burned behind them and fire burned ahead, a light so bright it hurt the eyes and gilded the waves, turning the sea into one vast, foaming golden mirror. Flint held steady, watched the King advance, and saw the sea boil away before it, the steam streak behind. Diana said what he wanted to ignore. “This one’s faster than the others.”

  “Much faster.”

  “It’s bigger, too. Flint, you have to do something.”

  “I do agree.”

  She stared at the blazing monster, and her eyes shone with crimson fire. “Can you go under it again?”

  “I don’t think that’ll work this time.”

  “Over?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “You’re the damn rigger, Flint. Think of something!”

  He set his jaw. “I already have. I thought of it before we hit the surf. I thought of it days ago. It’s the one thing the Rhino is really good at.”

  She shook her head. “Why did I ever come on this dumb race?” Then she picked up the little red wooden rhino she’d carved, kissed it, and set back on the dash, facing the King. “Let’s make jam.”

  He broke out in a broad grin. “Jam it is.”

  He lined the Rhino’s horn dead centre on the King of Fire, let the engines rest a moment, and then spun the turbine up to maximum power. The Rhino bellowed and shot forward. Wavelets whipped up and lashed the windows with spray, and the whole rig juddered as the engine strained to drive it forward, even as the King of Fire rushed towards them, an incandescent brand on a pillar of steam. At the last moment, Diana yanked her seat-belt across her body, and Flint cursed and scrambled to do the same, then he looked up and saw the King bearing down on them, faster than anything he’d ever seen, arms splayed and slashing at the air, and he grabbed the wheel, gripped it with all his strength, and drove the Rhino through the steam, the fire, between the cruel clawed hands, to smash straight into the King’s gleaming golden ribs.

  The impact hurled Flint headlong at the window, but his seat-belt clamped down on his chest and belly, saving him, and he saw Diana had gone through the same thing. The King of Fire did not escape; it took the Rhino’s full force right where its heart would have been, and it burst in a flash that hurt the eyes, and beat the rig like a drum. The ribs flew apart and revealed motors, gears and circuits, and all of them, cast out from their protective casing, burned to ash or melted before Flint’s tortured eyes, and dropped into the sea. The monster’s head flew up into the air, and Flint watched it in the rear screen, saw it fall into the sea behind the rig, still showing that malevolent grin. Just after it plunged below the foaming blue waves, he heard a terrible screech, like a knife blade scratching a chalk board, looked left, and saw one huge, glittering clawed hand, scythe-like talons gouging at the window. He saw, too, that the heat had warped the whole window, raised bubbles at the edges, and the collision with the King had flung shrapnel that had scored lines in the diamond glass.

  “Flint, that hand...”

  “Yeah,” he said, and saw the disembodied hand jab one vicious serrated blade deep into the window. The thing still radiated enough heat the make the air shimmer around it, and the window continued to warp. If he didn’t stop it, the hand would cut and burn its way through the window, and the mere thought made his skin crawl.

  He unstrapped his seat belt, climbed up on the dashboard, and slammed a kick into the window.

  Diana shrieked. “It’s burning through.”

  He grunted and kicked again. The window shook in its frame, and he heard it pop along the warped seams. He drew back for another kick when he felt a jet of hot air blow in his face. He glanced up, and saw the King’s talon poke clear through the window, and, now through, it began to scrape and gouge faster. Flint shook his head. “Not today, you monster, not today.” He tensed his body and threw another kick. This time the window popped out of its frame, and he stumbled and fell to his knees, blasted by the rushing wind of the Rhino’s passage, and felt the sea spray his face and chest. The window fell back, slid down the Rhino’s snout, and he watched the golden claws spread out, as if to grab at him one last time, before they disappeared into the sea.

  He struggled back into the cockpit, drenched by sprays of seawater, the wind howling. The wooden rhino figurine had disappeared. He climbed into his seat, locked his belt, and shielded his face from the battering wind. He turned to Diana, saw her mouth some words at him, but the noise drowned her words. She gave up and raised her thumb. He copied the gesture, and they both grinned. Then she pointed right, at the coast. He nodded, and turned the wheel.

  The wind buffeted them the whole way back to land, and Flint watched the children of the King of Fire follow them like a monstrous funeral procession.

  +

  They spotted the Eagle racing towards them, near the end of the long curved way. Flint considered trying the radio, but the wind still blasted his face, and he felt sure his ears would sing for days. No, he’d tried the radio before, to little effect. Besides, what could they tell him that he could trust? He aimed the Rhino inland, left the water, crossed a sandy strip of beach, and flew up the way to meet the onrushing rig. The Eagle grew before them, and with the window gone, he felt he could hear the roar of its powerful turbine even over the screaming wind. He cut his own engine, shed some speed, and caught a warning glance from Diana. He narrowed his eyes, checked the rear screen, and held speed. Moments later the Eagle rushed up towards them, so close he could see two figures in the cockpit. Whether imagination or true vision, he believed he saw Nathor’s gaunt face, green eyes wide in shock, and Caerlion’s mouth fall open as they saw the impossible – the slow old Rhino, left behind at the other end of the bay, waiting in their path. He bared his teeth in something like a smile, gunned the engines, and sent the Rhino flying at them. Then, at the last moment, he hauled the wheel left, turned inland, and watched the result in the rear screen.

  The fire monsters had trailed the Rhino across the sea, and when he’d paused on the way, they had almost caught up. He’d lined the Rhino up with the Eagle, and obscured the sight of the deadly machines from Nathor and Caerlion. When he’d gone left, he’d given the traitors nowhere and no time to escape from the column of blazing wrath that descended on them. The monsters flung themselves on Nathor’s rig. The Eagle bucked and jerked, but the fires massed up and piled on it, turning the speeding rig into a huge fireball. Even with that weight of ancient metal clawing at it, the Eagle continued to run, and Flint felt a pang of sympathy for the embattled rigger. He knew the relentless aggression of the death machines, knew the anguish of having them dig their talons into his rig, to cut and burn its metal hide. Traitor or no, he couldn’t hate Nathor so much as to feel pleasure or pride in the death run of the Eagle, and death run it was, for the rear screen showed the Eagle slow and lose height, until its belly hit the way and raised a trail of sparks, but even then Nathor kept the turbine running, and Flint knew he had to be hoping, praying that if he could just run far enough, he would somehow shed the monsters. Flint shook his head, his hands tight on the wheel. He would have done the same, he knew it. Enemies or not, he and Nathor were brother riggers, but that alone wouldn’t save anyone. The Eagle’s skin must have melted through, or the power systems overheated, for a blast ripped it apart and thundered even over the wind howling in through the broken window, followed, moments later, by a series of explosions that began at the shattered ruin and spread out, Nathor’s bombs, hurled from the Eagle’s corpse, to create a cloud of fury that dwarfed the creatures from the sea, and snuffed out their flames with force beyond fire.

  Flint cut the engines, brought the Rhino around, and set her down on the way. The wind died, and he and Diana sat in a silence that seemed to echo with the beats of a distant drum. She turned her crimson eyes on him. “They’re gone, Flint. The rig, the monsters, they’re just… Gon
e.” She narrowed her eyes. “My uncle...”

  “Vistor’s finished, Diana. Time to go home.”