Out of the Dawn

The first rider, wearing the livery of a personal messenger to the Grand Duke, adjusted the way his plain overcoat draped from his narrow shoulders down over the saddle to stop it gathering under the cantle. One hand on the pommel, he looked at his companion and bodyguard, sitting the saddle with the ease of one born to it. Which as a White Russian Cossack, he had been. A heavy revolver was strapped high on his hip, and on his left a sabre was looped to the high clip on his belt, keeping it away from his knees and preventing the scabbard from slapping the laboring flank of his thoroughbred mount.

They rode hard in silence, doing their best to remain alert as the sun breasted the rampart of the foothills to the east, throwing the open grazing lands into sharp relief where the darkness pooled in lower areas. They had ridden all night, changing horses twice, and only had the last few leagues to cover before arriving at the town nestled at the fork in the river that drained the grasslands.

From the next rise, almost imperceptible on the rolling plains, a shepherd leaned on his stick and watched them through a pair of battered binoculars. It was a considered and thoughtful look, twisting the brass focus wheel to let him take in the quality of their clothes and horses, and the fact that there were only two of them, and it caused the brief notion that they might be poachers to be dismissed. He muttered a couple of words to his dogs, which lay back down and twitched their ears against the attentions of early morning midges.

The shepherd flicked his experienced gaze across his flock, unconsciously checking the leaders and the stragglers. A ripple passed through the mob of sheep, each beast pausing in its grazing to fix a woolly eye on the small wood that lay about a mile off. Both dogs also dragged themselves up, pricked their ears forwards and began to whine softly.
Smiling grimly, the shepherd picked up his satchel containing his meagre lunch and draped it over his shoulder, then his rifle, and walked towards the woods. He hoped it was a wolf, the bounty would buy his children new shoes and there might even be enough money left over to have an afternoon at the flicks. The talk of the village was a new flick where you could hear them talking rather than having the person in the neighbouring seat read the words off the screen. Hefting the rifle that he had carried in peace and war for most of a lifetime, he checked the safety. With it he had accounted for more wolves than he could remember, some with two legs and some with four.

Suddenly the sheep scattered to all the points of the compass and the dogs set up a yap-yap-yap of fear and alarm. Still unable to see any sign of what had spooked them he lifted the rifle to his shoulder in readiness anyway, there might be only a chance for one shot and each sheep that was injured would come out of his pay.

Over the top of the trees came a black airship, not the long thin sort that carried rich passengers, but the wide flattened type built for speed and not comfort. It came straight for him, dropping to nearly ground level as it cleared the wood, the base of the gondola seeming to almost brush the grass. For precious seconds he stared at the apparition as it rushed at him, his eyes fixed on the figure manning the machine gun in the prow with the black dot of the muzzle aimed at his head. At almost the last possible moment he threw himself at the ground, pressing himself flat and offering up prayers to rural gods that the village priest had never quite stamped out. Passing by so close he could have spat on it the airship went over his head, and the hair on the back of his arms stood up from the static charge in the backwash of air from the electric thrusters pushing the craft silently forward. Lifting his head he saw a tall man in a grey coat watching him briefly from the rear of the gondola before turning away.

Of course he was being ignored, realised the shepherd. These were highwaymen, and there was nothing that a shepherd possessed that they wanted. He rolled onto his hands and knees and then upright, brushing dirt and broken grass blades off his shirt, and watched as the black ship swooped towards the horsemen.