The veteran studied him a moment longer, then nodded. “Very well. Get aboard.” He turned to a pair of sailors sitting nearby. “Pon! Cresck! Off your duffs and get aboard! Take in the lines and anchors! Prepare to cast off!”

The two crewmen and the grizzled Captain were skilled at making quick departures, and the Asashiel was airborne in minutes, swinging south with the wind, tacking swiftly out across the flats and beyond the Free-born lines. Pied stood in the pilot box with Markenstall while the crewmen manned the railguns to either side, breeches opened and loaded, triggers unlocked. No one mistook the foray for anything but what Pied was certain it was going to turn out to be.

“Mind if I ask what it is you intend to do with a sloop and two railguns?” Markenstall asked once they were winging out over the desolate front, a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

Pied shook his head. “Whatever I can.”

Ahead, the Federation lines were so dark they were virtually indistinguishable from the surrounding land. Pied thought he heard shouting, the sounds of sudden activity, but it was hard to tell with the rush of the wind and the whine of the rigging in his ears.

Then lightning split the darkness, brilliant and piercing, the bolt a horizontal rope stretched low and taut against the horizon. The bolt struck something that exploded instantly into a fiery ball, burning fragments pinwheeling into the darkness to fall like tiny firebrands to the earth. For just an instant, a cluster of airships was silhouetted against the brightness, masts and hulls stark and black.

“Shades!” Markenstall hissed. “What was that?”

Pied swiftly amended his earlier conclusion. It wasn’t lightning after all. Not riding that low and that straight.

Then it flashed again, and there was another explosion, this one more violent than the first, and again the airships were revealed, scattering in all directions now, angling away from the fireball like frightened animals. An earth-shattering boom reverberated through the night, the shock waves so powerful that Pied could feel them even through the deck of the sloop.

He knew then what it was. It was the weapon Acrolace and Parn had discovered in the Federation camp. The trap had been sprung; Kellen Elessedil’s airships were being destroyed, one by one. Pied was too late to give warning. He was too late to do anything but witness the consequences of the King’s ill-considered, rash behavior.

“Faster, Captain,” he said, catching hold of Markenstall’s wiry arm. “We have to try to help.”