The Warlord of the Air by Michael Moorcock Read Free Book Online Page A

the sun was lower in the sky. It was about three o’clock in the afternoon.
    I dragged myself to my feet, turned and began to move back through the ruins. I would try to get to the other side of the city and see if there were any other means of climbing down the mountain.
    All around me were the snow-capped flanks of the Himalayas: impassive, uncaring. And above me was the pale blue sky in which not even a hawk flew. It was almost as if I were the last creature alive in the world.
    I stopped myself from continuing this line of thought, for I knew that madness would be the result if I did begin to reason in that way.
    When I did eventually reach the far side of the city hopelessness once again consumed me, for on all the remaining quarters there were sheer cliffs going down several hundred feet at least. That was doubtless the reason for locating the city here in the first place. There was only one approach—or had been—and it meant that Teku Benga was safe from anything but a frontal attack. I shrugged in despair and began to wonder which of the plants might be edible. Not that I was hungry at that moment. I smiled bitterly. Why should I be, if I had remained alive for at least two years? The joke made me laugh. It was a crazy laugh. I stopped myself. The sun was beginning to set and the air had grown cold. At length I crawled into a shelter formed by two slabs of masonry and fell once more into a deep, dreamless sleep.
    I t was dawn when I next awoke. I felt a new confidence and I had devised a plan of sorts. My leather belt and shoulder strap had been unaffected by time and though slightly cracked were still strong. I would search the ruins until I found more leather. Somewhere there must still be store chests, even the remains of the Kumbalari warriors who had died in the earthquake. I would devote what remained of my energy to discovering enough leather out of which I might plait a rope. With a rope I could try to get down the mountain. And if I died in the attempt, well, it would be no worse than the alternative means of dying which were presented to me.
    I spent the next several hours clambering in and out of the ruins, discovering first a skeleton still dressed in the furs, iron and leather of a Kumbalari soldier. Around his waist was wound quite a good length of leather cord. I tested it and it was still strong. My spirits lifting, I continued to search.
    I was crouching in the ruins of one of the temples, trying to drag out another skeleton, when I heard the sound. At first I thought it was a noise made by the bones scraping on the rock, but it was too soft. Then I wondered if I were not, after all, alone in the ruins. Could I be hearing the purr of a tiger? No—though that was more like the sound. I stopped tugging at the skeleton and cocked my head, trying to listen harder. A drum, perhaps? A drumbeat echoing through the mountains? It could be fifty miles away, however. I crawled back through the gap and as I did so a shadow began to spread across the rubble before me. A huge, black shadow which might have been that of an enormous bird, save that it was long, regular in shape and curved.
    Again I doubted my own sanity and in some trepidation I forced myself to look upward.
    I gasped in astonishment. This was no bird, but a gigantic, cigar-shaped balloon! And yet it was like no balloon I had ever seen, for its envelope seemed rigid—constructed of some silvery metal—and attached to this envelope (not swinging from it by ropes) was a gondola almost the length of the balloon itself.
    What astonished me even more was the slogan, inscribed in huge lettering on the hull:
ROYAL INDIAN AIR SERVICE
    From its stern projected four triangular ‘wings’ which resembled nothing so much as the flukes of a whale. And painted on each of these in shining red, white and blue was a large Union Jack.
    For a moment I could only stare at the flying monster in incredulous wonderment. And then I began to leap about the ruins,