To Rescue General Gordon (Clockwork Imperium #1)

II

The big Sikh tugged his beard, "I do not like heights."

His companions were panting heavily. "Now? You tell us this now?" Henry hissed.

Raheem Aranjapour shrugged his broad shoulders, but he did not relax his left hand's grip on the gangplank railing. The two Englishmen tried again to dislodge him, Henry straining to push Raheem's bulky midsection, James puffing as he pulled at one of the Indian man's trunk-like legs.

It was no use. The pair might as well have been trying to roll a boulder up a hill for all the progress they made.

Above them hung the motionless oblong of the airship's silk envelope,inflated to a taught rigidity. In the darkness of the desert night the ship's bulk was a tantalizing presence. Moonlight feathered its outlines and made it shimmer like some lesser celestial body. To Henry its promise had always been mystery, adventure, the open sky. A glimpse of it always sent his heart soaring.

But now he cursed. They were stuck at the most dangerous moment in their plan, when they were most vulnerable to being spotted by a wandering subaltern or curious officer. The airship was still tethered close to the ground, they still had to enter it, loose the tethers to begin ascending--silently--above the British camp, and then, when hopefully out of earshot, stoke the boiler and engage the propellers before they lost sight of the meandering ribbon of the Nile, which was to be their midnight guide to the besieged city of Khartoum.

If any passerby happened upon them now, standing exposed at the top of the gangplank, there would be a lot of explaining to do, especially with the heavily loaded rucksacks and freshly oiled Martini-Henry rifles Emerson had stacked just over the railing of the airship's open gondola.

Henry bit off a few particularly choice descriptions of Raheem's character,his background, and his general hygiene as he struggled with his friend's physical intransigence. Emerson had a wide range of expletives at his command, but even his objurgatory powers were being tested by the evening's events. He quickly ticked off options in his head; they couldn't just leave their obstinate friend, a gunner in the ranks of the 2nd Bengal Clockwork Artillery, or they'd have no one to man the Gatling mounted on the little airship's prow. Moreover, three people was the absolute minimum needed to fly the often finicky dirigible.

They could try to knock the big man over the head and drag his unconscious body aboard, but there was just no telling how hard they'd have to hit the bloody bastard, not to mention what his reaction might be when he woke up. Henry couldn't even entice him with promises of gold and glory; Raheem was concerned with three things only: his god,his family, and his stomach. The first two were far away, and the last had recently been filled with some spicy glop from the Indian soldiers' mess. Henry's bowels protested at even the thought of it.

His ruminations were interrupted by James, who exclaimed, sotto voce,"Someone's coming!"

Indeed, two figures were approaching the airship through a gap in the tents. Henry could hear snatches of their conversation.

He turned, "Pull harder!"

James whispered hoarsely back, "Push harder!"

The two young Britons grunted once more with the exertion of moving the stubborn Sikh. After a good thirty seconds of this effort Henry was exasperated, "Sod it! Let the big oaf get caught. Come on!"

And, so saying, he scrambled up the gangplank, past the still unmoving Indian, and onto the deck of the Pegasus where he dropped to crouch in relative safety behind the railing. Billingsworth soon joined him.

Raheem looked back and forth between the oncoming soldiers and his two friends, barely peeking above the gunwale. He seemed to be torn,trying to make up his mind in the fleeting few seconds before his bulk became unmistakably visible in the low light.