Free Ilse Witch by Terry Brooks Page A

reduced in rank or dismissed from service.
    His green eyes scanned the horizon, west to where the mountains rose against the blue of the sky. The one good thing about being a flyer was that you could always be somewhere else by nightfall.
    He thought momentarily of taking
Black Moclips
and heading out, not even bothering to go back. But she wasn’t his ship, and he wasn’t a thief—not just then, anyway—and he couldn’t leave Little Red behind. It was best to go back, pack up, and be out of there by dark.
    Before he knew it, he was smelling the Blue Divide and remembering the colors of spring in March Brume.
    He brought the ship down carefully, letting the ground crew haul her in and secure her, then walked back to free the Commander and his aide. Neither of them said a word or even looked at him. As soon as they were unhooked, they bolted from the ship as if scalded. Alt Mer let them go, turning his attention to checking the damage to
Black Moclips
, making certain steps would be taken to complete the necessary repairs. Already he was thinking of her as someone else’s ship. Already, he was saying good-bye.
    As it turned out, he was a little too slow doing so. He was just coming down off the rope ladder onto the airfield when the Commander reappeared with a squad of Federation regulars.
    “Captain Alt Mer, you are under arrest for disobeying a superior officer while engaged in battle. A hanging offense, I think. Let’s see who’s in charge now, shall we?” He attempted a menacing smile, but it failed, and he flushed angrily. “Take him away!”
    Furl Hawken and his crew started off the ship, weapons already in hand, but Redden Alt Mer motioned for them to stay where they were. Slipping free his weapons, he deliberately walked past the Commander and handed them to thegrizzled squad leader, a man with whom he had shared more than a few glasses of ale and knew well enough to call by his first name.
    “I’ll see you tonight, Hawk,” he called back over his shoulder.
    He paused suddenly to look at
Black Moclips
. He would never see her again, he knew. She was the best ship he had ever captained, maybe the best he ever would. He hoped her new Captain would prove worthy of her, but he doubted it. Whatever the case, he would miss her more than he cared to imagine.
    “Lady,” he whispered to her. “It was grand.”
    Then, looking past the Commander to the squad leader, he shrugged his indifference to the whole business. “Lead the way, Cap. I put myself in your capable hands.”
    Whatever his thoughts might have been on the matter, the squad leader was smart enough to keep them to himself.

F IVE
    T he flat-faced, burly line sergeant had been drinking at the bar in the back room of the company blacksmith’s for over an hour before he got up the nerve to walk over to Little Red. She was sitting alone at a table in the rear, clouded by shadow and the kind of studied disinterest in her surroundings that made it clear she was not to be approached. The line sergeant might have recognized as much five tankards of ale earlier, when his judgment was still clear enough to warn him against foolish behavior. But his anger at the way that she had humiliated him the night before, coupled with false bravado fueled by the quantity of his drink, finally won out.
    He squared himself away in front of her, a big man, using his size as an implied threat.
    “You and me got something to settle, Little Red,” he declared loudly.
    Heads turned. A few soldiers rose and quietly moved for the doors leading out. The blacksmith’s wife, who tended bar for her husband in the midday, glanced over with a frown. Outside, in the sweltering heat of the forge, iron clanged on iron, and hot metal thrust into water hissed and steamed.
    Rue Meridian did not look up. She kept her gaze steady and direct, staring off into space, her hands cupped loosely around her tankard of ale. She was there because she wanted to be alone. She should have been flying,