The Long War

suddenly there was action all around Joshua.
    McCool was back, he had brought more kobolds, and they were already fighting. The cavalry, Joshua thought with a rush of gratitude. But this was a cavalry that stepped , like its opponents. Suddenly figures from both subspecies were flashing past Joshua’s view, like fragments of nightmare.
    Joshua got out of there. He ran head-down for the ladder which came dangling from the descending ship. He had to knock one fighter out of the way; he couldn’t tell if it was a good guy or a bad guy.
    Only when he got to the ladder, and, with the security of an alloy rung in his hand, was already rising in the air and out of the battle, did he look back down.
    The elves favoured swords, while the kobolds tended to fight barehanded – which showed rather more intelligence in Joshua’s view, because if you were grappling with your opponent he couldn’t step without taking you with him. Besides, the kobolds seemed to have elevated unarmed combat to the point where weapons would merely get in the way. He saw one kobold vanish momentarily as a blade nearly beheaded him, then reappear, grab the sword arm and with balletic grace send a kick into the elf’s chest that must have killed immediately. As usual with a humanoid fight, it wasn’t a battle so much as a series of private duels. If a fighter was victorious he sought out another opponent, but would be quite oblivious to the fact that a colleague was being backed into a corner by overwhelming odds.
    And then Joshua saw Finn McCool downed by a wooden sword thrust through his arm. Maybe he tried to step, but he was stunned, confused. His elf opponent dodged a disembowelling swipe from McCool’s horny toes, and withdrew the sword for a second thrust.
    Again this elf paused before the moment of the kill. His back was to Joshua.
    And Joshua had a chance to intervene.
    ‘Damn it!’ Joshua let go of the ladder and his chance of safety, dropped heavily to the ground, picked up a fallen branch, and ran across. It wasn’t that Finn McCool had endeared himself to Joshua. But if Joshua had to choose, he’d take the side of someone who hadn’t actually tried to kill him. Had, indeed, come back to fight on his side.
    Still running, he hit the elf across the neck as hard as he could. Joshua had anticipated a satisfying thunk of timber on flesh. Instead there was a soft necrotic splat, as the rotten branch disintegrated in an explosion of fungus spores and angry beetles. The elf, totally unharmed, turned slowly, its face puckered in astonishment.
    Finn McCool’s good hand flashed out once, twice, and where it hit there was a sharp crack of bone. The elf folded up on itself, and stepped away before it died.
    Blood was dripping from McCool’s arm, but he wasn’t paying it any attention. McCool stood up, face-to-face with Joshua – and Joshua realized that something had gone very wrong. ‘Pathless-ss one! I kill you many!’
    The war around them was ceasing. Elves and kobolds alike had paused in mid-slaughter to watch them. ‘Now look—’
    Finn McCool flung back his head and screamed. The flying kick he launched could have killed Joshua in a second.
    But Joshua had already set off running, heading for that ladder again. He threw himself into the air and grabbed a rung, and to his credit, Bill raised the ship immediately. Joshua looked down from a few yards up, to see Finn McCool sprawled cursing under a tree, his injured arm leaking blood.
    Then Joshua was rising up through the sparse canopy and into the sunlight, and the montane forest, the messy, sprawling battleground, receded from view.
    He climbed up the rest of the ladder, through the hatch and into the sanity of the gondola, stood up, and cracked his head on the ceiling. He started pulling up the ladder in great tangled armfuls.
    ‘That is you, isn’t it, Joshua?’ Bill asked anxiously. ‘I’ve been out of touch since you used the radio to bust that elf’s jaw—’
    ‘Just go, go!’
    Only when the ladder was up did he let himself sag down on to a couch, fighting for breath. There was no sound up here but the squeaks and groans from the gasbag as it warmed up in the morning’s heat. Below him the Shillelagh ’s shadow drifted peacefully across the forest roof, as if all sorts of hell weren’t going on down there in the gloom.
    He kept seeing Finn McCool’s face, a contorted Noh mask of fury and hatred. ‘I saved his life. McCool. Somehow that made me a deadly enemy.