Flying the Storm (27 page)

The man opened his eyes to look at Fredrick. “A bandit raid. Like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

“To the south?”

He nodded. “Crossing over from Armenia. They wouldn’t break. Why didn’t they break?” The man sobbed now, tears forming in his eyes. “Why didn’t they break?”

Solomon came forward
. “Are these all the vehicles?”

“No,” said the man, rubbing his eyes with filthy hands. “We lost some.
They captured the caravan leader.”

“Captured?” asked Fredrick.

“Yes. At least, they weren’t shooting when we left them behind.”

Something, and Fredrick didn’t know what, was nagging him at the back of his mind.
An awful feeling of dread. But why? Surely it wouldn’t have been…

“Was there anybody else with the convoy when you left Armenia?”
he asked, urgently.

“The leader was carrying a
passenger, yes. From Stepanavan. But why does it matter? They have them now. They are lost.” The driver started sobbing again, louder this time. “They are lost,” he mumbled wetly, “they are lost.”

The dust between Aiden’s knees was spotted brown with blood.

His face was numb. Once again he’d felt Elias Prosper’s stinging backhand, then an excruciating stab at his bullet wound with that little silver pistol. He hadn’t asked him anything. Vengeance was all it was. The way things went in Ashtarak, it was to be expected. No option but to take it, either.

The bandits had crowded around; laughing, shouting. Smoking their new cigarettes and counting their new money.
Eyeing up each other’s loot. They were animals, just like everybody else. Didn’t seem too bothered by their casualties. The haul must have been worth it.

It was just a couple of mild slaps, really: Prosper was being careful not to kill him. No doubt there was a percentage riding on that back in Sevastopol.
That, and a reputation. Reputation was everything to Prosper’s type. You didn’t get exclusive contracts like this without one.

Aiden’s lip and nose had stopped bleeding, not that he could feel it. He was only guessing that it had clotted since it had stopped dripping
into the dust. His left arm itched where his dressing needed changed and his wrists burned against the rough hemp rope. And it was getting
hot
. The gaps between the planks of the dusty little shed didn’t seem to help at all.

He tried to focus on the pain in his wrists, to stop his mind drifting. If he could keep it right here and now, he wouldn’t have to think about…

It wasn’t working. He could feel himself slipping.

Malkasar
, he thought.
Ileana
.

Both of them, dead
. On his account. He fought back the wave of guilt as best he could, but it wasn’t enough. There was her face again.

Jura
, she said.
Jura
.

They’d died for nothing. Prosper caught him anyway. Aiden’s hands balled into painful fists behind his back.

They had been killed because of him, and now he would die too. He probably deserved that. Maybe then they would let him be.

He’d be taken back to Sevastopol to be executed, in whatever way the
Gilgamesh
wanted. He had no delusions. He knew it would be public and humiliating. Pain was a certainty. Subjects
cannot
stand up to the marines. He would be the example. People would get the message.

And now, somehow, Prosper would drag him back there. Maybe not right away, though. Maybe he’d hold him here until he caught Fredrick too.

He couldn’t get Fredrick. Aiden couldn’t picture it. One of them had to get away, keep the
Iolaire
flying. That was what it was all about, at the end of the day. That was what mattered.

His mother had left him the money. Everything she’d had, she left it to him.
Told him to use it well. He’d spent it on a share in a boat, first, then the
Iolaire
. Spent it on getting away. Making sure he had work.

I did my best, I promise
.

Her face came to him vividly now, unbidden. Why, when sometimes he couldn’t even remember her eyes, would she be so clear to him right now?
Her voice, her scent, the corner of her mouth as she smiled. Her eyes smiled too; he could see that so clearly.

But his mother couldn’t protect him now. He knew that, but he clung to the image of her as tightly as his dazed mind could. The tighter he squeezed
, though, the faster it slipped away, blurring and shifting. He almost cried out when it finally faded into the darkness. It all went with her: the sound, the smell. He was alone again in the dusty shed.

Hours must have passed. The slices of sunlight had shifted from one side of the floor to the other. Aiden’s mind was lingering
on faraway things, old things.

He was shaken from his reverie by the sound of raised voices, not very far from the shed.
He noticed the shadow of his guard had disappeared. Probably headed off to join in the party a while ago. Couldn’t blame him.

The language the
arguing men used didn’t matter: Aiden could tell they were drunk. A life spent orbiting one pub or another had instilled in him an acute sense of such things. The two men were drunk, and spoiling for a fight. At this stage the words didn’t matter to them either – violence was the only conclusion to this, and it was only a matter of time before the first punch was thrown.

Five seconds, Aiden counted. The wet slap of a punch to the face was clear even through the door of the shed. The shouting stopped, replaced by grunted curses and shuffling feet;
more punches.

The fight was getting closer. It was directly ahead of him, in front of the shed now. Somebody was getting the upper hand. There was a pause – and then one, two, three hard impacts.

Someone crashed through the shed door, flinging it open to lie sprawled and unconscious at Aiden’s knees. Bright white light was cast over him, and he looked up as a dark figure resolved itself in the doorway. The victorious drunk. It was a bandit, he saw as his eyes adjusted: an
ugly
bandit, massive and panting and swaying a little.

Not rescue, then
, thought Aiden. His faint hope died.

He watched as the big brute’s drunken eyes made him out in the shadows of the shed. A sloppy grin creased his bulbous features. He took a step towards him, clambering over his flattened opponent.

Aiden kept as still as he could, his head lowered slightly, not wanting to offer any provocation. There wasn’t anything he could do, with his hands tied to the post at his back.

The man was standing right in front of Aiden now, so close he could
smell
him. He towered over Aiden’s kneeling form, and Aiden could hear the noisy hiss of his breath through his nostrils. He risked a glance upwards. The man was still grinning down at him. He didn’t like the look in his eyes.

Still swaying slightly, the man reached down and started unbuttoning his fly.

No, that was too much for Aiden. He was going to piss on him, or worse.

The man muttered something and laughed to himself. Aiden only caught one word, “
westerner
”.

Aiden had to stop this in its tracks. He didn’t want
whatever was going to come out of that fly. He took a deep breath, and did the only thing he could do.

He head-butted the bandit in the crotch.

A grunt, and the big man doubled over, his head just above Aiden’s. Quickly, he gathered his feet under himself. Then he thrust upwards as hard as he could, skull first, his bonds dragging painfully up the rough wooden post. Aiden’s head and the brute’s collided with force, and the big man toppled over backwards across the body of the already-unconscious bandit.

Aiden was standing now, looking down at the sprawled bodies for any movement.
The top of his forehead throbbed.

None.
He looked out of the shed door then, listening. Apart from the usual noise of the camp, there was nothing. The shed was on the edge of the place, and most of the celebration seemed to be happening a distance away.

It needed the most complicated and cramped footwork Aiden had ever performed,
but somehow he managed it. He slipped a knife from the belt of the big bandit and passed it under himself to his grasping fingers. He couldn’t hold the handle
and
cut at the rope, he realised. He had to hold the blade itself.

Gingerly he sawed at the bundled rope from the bottom, pinching the flat of the blade between his fingers. Now his arms were threatening to cramp, but he didn’t dare stop in case he dropped the knife.

A minute or so passed. Aiden heard singing now, and footsteps coming closer. Drunken singing and shuffling steps. One man, he decided. Aiden froze and waited.

The single drunk bandit shambled slowly past the shed door, not five metres away, a pistol held shakily in the air as he sang loudly and tunelessly at nobody in particular.

He took no notice of the shed or its three occupants and kept wandering away out of the camp, his singing giving a good indication of his distance. Aiden let out the breath he’d been holding and kept sawing.

Another minute and several accidental stabbings later, the rope came loose.
Aiden winced as the blood returned to his hands, flexed his fingers and examined the stinging cuts. Nothing too deep, thankfully. All of his fingers could move.

He got up into a crouch and moved to the two unconscious bandits. As fast as he could, he rifled through pockets and pouches, feeling for anything useful. Some copper coins, a couple of loose six-point-fives. Neither had guns – otherwise it might not have been
just a fistfight. There was no uniform to speak of, either. Nothing Aiden could have worn to blend in. The most useful thing either of them had was the knife he’d already stolen.

He could sneak out of the camp on foot, probably. The shed was close to the edge already, and all he’d have to do would be to slip into the brush and run for it. He’d heard dogs barking in the camp, though. They’d have no problem tracking him. Where would he have gone, anyway? He was still a long way from Tbilisi. He didn’t even know exactly where the camp was, either: he’d come to it shut in the back of a truck.

No, going on foot would be as useful as not going at all. He needed a vehicle.

There were no vehicles by the shed, though. He knew they were near the entrance to the camp, maybe two hundred metres away. Not easy.

Holding the knife by his side, blade pointing backwards, he stepped out of the shed.

To his right was a long,
low ruin of a cattle shed. To his left through a wrecked wooden fence was where the dry mountain brush and gnarled old trees started. Maybe he could use the cover of the bushes to skirt around the camp.

It seemed as good a plan as any.

He started towards the fence, when somebody emerged from behind the cattle shed.

It was Prosper’s man. The one Aiden had recognised from Kakavaberd.
The slaver.

Both men froze, only
fifteen metres apart. The slaver’s puffy face was immobile, but Aiden saw the dark eyes dart to Aiden’s hands, looking for a weapon. Aiden’s eyes did the same. The man was unarmed. He’d just come to check on the prisoner.

The slaver took a careful step backwards. Aiden knew he couldn’t catch him before he made it around the barn, and by then it’d be too late. The man sucked in breath to shout.

Aiden instinctively threw the knife at him. But he had never thrown a knife before. It tumbled as it flew, thumping into the flinching slaver handle-first. The slaver’s shout turned into a pathetic yelp of terror.

His moment’s hesitation was all Aiden needed. He charged the man and tackled him before he’d even stood up straight again, knocking him to the ground and throwing a hand over his mouth. Aiden felt hot breath as the man tried to yell against his palm.

He cast around for the knife, seeing it about a metre away. He stretched for it, but one of the man’s hands grabbed his elbow, pulling him short. Angry, Aiden wrenched free and punched him hard in the side of the head. He got a hold of the knife.

The slaver’s hands grasped feebly at Aiden’s shirt and face, but he held the knife clear,
and then brought it down as fast and as hard as he could. The blade punched easily between the man’s ribs. Just left of the breastbone, into the heart. The slaver gave a last, muffled cry against Aiden’s hand, before his eyes rolled and he went limp.

Aiden didn’t pause for a second. He scrambled to his feet, wiping the blade on the dead man’s shirt before leaping the fence and ducking into the bushes.

He’d already made his way some distance before he realised how cold-blooded he had just been. An unarmed man, weaker than him, killed without a second thought. There was no option, he knew. The man had to die for Aiden to have any chance of escape.

His own ruthlessness frightened him.

It was easy to follow the edge of the camp. It had been a farm at some point, maybe pre-war, so the fence clearly marked its perimeter. With no one caring to tend it, the surrounding brush had become overgrown, hiding him perfectly. He didn’t even have to crouch.

A glance through a gap in the foliage told him he was near the entrance to the compound. He could see the smoke and huddles of celebrating bandits a hundred metres or so into the compound, too busy drinking and playing with the camp whores to bother looking in his direction. Even if they had, all they’d have seen would be bushes and trees. He doubted they even had sentries.

And there, as if put there just for him, was the Armenian’s car. It was sitting in the open, next to the dirt road, maybe thirty metres back into the compound. He’d have to cross into the open to reach it, but this end of camp seemed to be deserted. He could make it. He had to make it.

Aiden pushed through the bushes to the fence and climbed it, stepping over into the long grass of a disused paddock. He crossed it at a walk, reasoning that a walking man would be less likely to catch someone’s eye than a running
one. It felt like the longest thirty metres of his life. He kept his gaze on the car, not even daring to look towards the bandits.