Free Far Called Trilogy 01 - In Dark Service by Stephen Hunt Page B

droning that caught Carter’s attention first, like a flight of hornets stirred up and ready to swarm the dunderhead who’d banged their nest. Staring through the keep’s open gate, he could just see a black dot against the sun, little bigger than a coin. Have the radiomen marked the size right – don’t see that having a couple of hundred propellers?
    ‘No perspective that high in the sky,’ said his father, guessing what his son was thinking. ‘Their sound tells you the size of it, though.’
    ‘So far out, and she’s still humming like a flight of locusts,’ said Wiggins. ‘More like a goddamn flying city than any Rodalian flying wing; pardon my language, Father. Ten minutes and they’ll be on top of us.’
    ‘Keep the gate open as long as possible,’ Jacob told the constable. He was off, under the walls and sprinting towards the church with Carter following as fast as he could.
    ‘Stay inside the battlements,’ his father shouted back.
    ‘You got your congregation at church and I don’t know about it?’ asked Carter, ignoring his father and catching him up. ‘Ringing the bells is a two-person job at least.’
    ‘You take your mother out,’ hissed Jacob, relenting. ‘That’s your job. Just stay alive.’
    They fair flew through the streets, yelling warnings at everyone they passed to head up the hill to the old town. Given the size and noise of the approaching aircraft, their warnings were fast becoming irrelevant. The flying machine approached like a dark black dragon filling the sky, eight long wings stacked on either side at the front; another four wings towards the carrier’s rear, the spinning discs of its propellers – each a dozen times bigger than any Northhaven windmill – far more numerous than Carter could count.
    ‘Won’t be much left of Landor’s fields after they’ve landed that monster,’ panted Carter.
    ‘Doesn’t land,’ said Jacob. ‘That’s their mother bird up there, a carrier. See those dark oblongs running along the bottom of her fuselage. Those are hangars. They’ll launch gliders to land raiding parties, and it’s those that’ll come down in our cornfields. You need flats to land a glider. We’ll see their fighter kites first, though, looking to give us something to worry about other than bundling up the family silver and running for the forests.’
    ‘What, the saints wrote some passages on bandit tactics that I missed out on?’
    ‘Don’t be smart with me, boy. That’s the way it’ll happen. Don’t look to fight them. They’re not some pony-riding barbarian horde aiming to settle here. They’re raiding for the corn oil and any trade metals and valuables not nailed down or buried. They’ll hit hard and fast and brutal. Anyone that stands against them is a corpse. Their reputation is all the baggage they’ve got up there.’
    ‘What’s the point of me passing through the cadet force if I can’t take a stand?’
    ‘I’m glad the territorials aren’t here, boy. They’re good for scaring off wolves from the livestock in the winter, but bandits like those devils up there, if their raiders haven’t left a trading caravan looted and dead on the road at least once a week, they’re not pulling their weight.’
    Despite the chill in the air, Carter was sweating by the time they arrived home. His father banged on the door and got their mother out, pointing to the sky and growling out the town’s predicament in a quick, terse explanation. Mary Carnehan sucked in her cheeks, shielded her eyes with her hand, looking up at the approaching aircraft as if this was just one more thing sent to try her patience this morning. Might as well have been a cloud of locusts looking to strip the town of its harvest. Carter had to admit he was impressed; secretly proud, even. No hysterics. No flapping or cursing or tears. Just a couple of seconds to get a handle on the situation and then she was straight to business.
    ‘What tune will you be