The Battle of Àdexethal
The San Sebastian Chronicles, XXIX
“So are you calling for sculpting to be banned, like the sale of cocaine to children under twelve?” I asked, smiling. I was in that rarest of conversations with Beatriz. The type where the two parties have diametrically opposed viewpoints, but that of each is so foreign to the other that they both can’t help but be entertained by the spar.
Continued from…
“No, I am advocating and predicting a society where there will be no call for sculpting, at least not as it is known today,” said Beatriz, containing her entertainment far more than was I, but letting it show in little inklings, perhaps just to keep me going.
“Well, as a would-be sculptor, I can say that your predictions may well have already come to pass,” I pronounced.
“So you are a sculptor?” She paused, wondering for a moment I was sure whether she’d said anything too offensive to me. “I might have suspected.”
“Not a professional one. Not now anyway, and likely not ever. It is not exactly a growing field, but it is where my talent lies. Are you saying I am doomed to a life of penury, or merely that I should work as a postal clerk and sadly sculpt stone pets for my children in my cellar, like a doddering man makes ships in a bottles to mark the time until he dies?”
“No, you are free to do as you wish. I don’t doubt that in the coming world there will still be some paying audience for sculpture. I only say that it will not be marble busts of Marc Antony or Scipio or a Pope or a Pieta.”
“What then?”
“Abstractions, ideals, monuments. And in concrete and steel, and zinc and chrome, with cables and anything. Anything at all you can sculpt. I am freeing you from old forms. It is not all chisels and chests and blank eyes.”
“Actually, in the newer school one carves out tiny pupils.”
“Well if you enjoy that, keep at it, Mister Mant. I am sure you are quite good at it. But I fear you may not have any takers.”
At that the ironic enjoyment in our play-argument died.
“Yes, I suppose that’s what I fear.”
Beatriz could see I’d been wounded.
“I apologize. I sometimes overstate my positions. I enjoy the bout. I did not mean to doubt your skill as a sculptor.”
“No, no. It’s not my skill that’s fragile. Perhaps it’s my want of a legacy. Or my ego. And perhaps they are the same. It’s is only that I — ”
I was about to show her the small granite figurine I’d carved, the one I kept in my pocket for luck, when I stopped myself for I then saw something that I am now quite sure no one who was not there then, above the clouds on that evening above that valley, had seen before or will see again.
In little more than the time it took to puff once upon my pipe, our fantastical craft rose above the cloud, the top of which was nearly as smooth as the felt of a billiards table. We passed through the top of it like a duck coming out of water, as if we’d never been in it. And above that cloud, what a sight.
While we’d been in the cloud we had risen many thousands of feet, nearly to the ridge line of the mountains to the west. In that time too the sun had fallen to just above those western peaks. Its light now cast on the vaporous veil below us a blazing orange and yellow lucence so bright that I was made to squint for several seconds. Beyond that labent layer was the inky sky of the eastern horizon, where night had fallen. Above that the empyrean brightened through deep indigos and purples, then through violets, dark blues, then azures, yellows, and golds, until finally back to the titian tendrils around the setting sun.
And hanging between these opposed planes of resplendent cloud and tenebrous sky were balloons. Dozens if not a hundred. In all colors, vividly illuminated by the dusk’s rays. Hordes of them to our left a bit farther from us. Throngs to our right, closer to us as we looked toward the oriental sky. The closest were still hundreds of longsteps away. The farthest only specks at the dark horizon. Some were solid blue in color, some striped red and white, some ivory, others green. Many carried silk flags, ensigns, and banners below them, as big as ships’ sails, on which were sewn or painted great seals and crowns. I could just make out some of those closest to us. On our left they sported the coat of arms of Austria-Hungary. Off to our right, I could see war flags, seals, and ensigns of the Kingdom of Italy. On one or two on that side I saw the flag of our little country, San Sebastian.
Beatriz and I were dumbstruck. After a few moments, Desotto and Tomasso emerged onto the outer deck with us. I could see even dutiful Ugo gazing at the spectacle from the large starboard window of the pilot’s bridge.
Our craft was climbing faster now along the great cable that led to a ridge of snowy, treeless summits to the north, where the monastery of San Romedio sat in the saddles. Our ascent gave us a commanding view of the balloons, the two opposed groups of which we could see were slowly approaching one another.
Desotto had with him a set of field glasses. After he had scanned the flights, he handed them to me. Focusing on the closest balloons I could see mounted to their baskets small engines made to spin spindly propellers. It was by these means that the floating vessels were able to motivate themselves. Pondering on this, I held my hand out and was very unsettled to find that the air was nearly still, a rare sense at such altitude. I posited that the balloonist commandants perhaps had chosen this evening for this clash for the very reason of its stillness. Taking in the motionless air caused me then to appreciate for the first time just how high we were and how thin and scattered were the wires and balusters that would claim to hold us from falling into the mist were a gust to tip this ship to starboard with any suddenness. I became quite queasy.
I saw then that Tomasso perhaps felt the same and had gone back inside, his face appearing against a porthole between Desotto and me.
“Well, I’ll be,” I heard Johnny call out. I turned to my right and saw he, Gus, and the two varlets looking out from just inside the rear door onto the deck.
“Capital. Truly capital,” said Gus, holding a small spyglass up to his eye.
It was then that our spectacular view turned tragic. For as we continued to ascend, the two opposing flocks of balloons had drawn closer, to within perhaps a thousand longsteps for those at the vanguard, as we had continued to move northward until we were nearly equidistant between the two floating fronts, and it was there that we saw the first of the balloons open fire.
The first volley was a single flaming missile, perhaps two longsteps end to end. I hadn’t seen it lit, but we saw it sail across the sky, from one Austrian balloon toward an Italian one, in a great arc above the yellow cloudfloor. Some of us gasped and pointed. That giant arrow missed the mark, disappearing into the vapors and leaving only a thin trail of black smoke behind. Next we saw a similar weapon as it was lit and then fired from the Italian side. Through Desotto’s field glasses I was just able to catch a glimpse of its launch from a device resembling a great crossbow mounted on its side, against the basket of a large blue- and white-striped Italian balloon. The basket was oblong, three or so longsteps end to end and one across. There were about four men — air sailors? — in it, one on the motor, one with epaulets in front pointing, and two working the ballistus, which was wound by a manual crank and great gears. With the pull of a lever, the bolt ablaze was launched toward the Austrians, leaving the launching balloon and its basket rocking forward and back just noticeably. The missile sailed a thousand feet or more and fell just below its target and into the white fog.
I looked to a Sebastiano balloon and saw a similar weapon mounted on its basket. This one more closely resembled our famed gastraphetes. That crew then launched their own flaming projectile back toward the Austrians. It too missed the mark, sailing long and right. Despite their apparent closeness, cubic acres of air separated the balloons. I could see that targeting would be most difficult.
Perhaps I’d underestimated the gunners’ skills, for as I took down the field glasses I saw a horrific show. Within in seconds dozens of these conflagrant weapons had been hurled across the airy chasm between the two sides. Black tendrils of smoke soon stitched a web between the battling dirigibles. Most of these shots missed but they kept coming. Like great flicked cigarettes they streaked across the sky, looking brighter each minute in the dimming light. Then some began to hit. First one, then handfuls of balloons began to fall from the sky. Their punctured and torn udders utterly deflating in mere moments. The heavy baskets with their men inside them would then drop like stones beneath the cloud line, their brightly colored silks trailing behind for only a second more before all evidence of the craft vanished. Some left small holes in the undercloud, which were filled in a moment later.
I felt sick as I watched it go on. One after another the balloons were dropped from the sky by flaming arrows as long as two men. We could see sometimes that the crewmen would jump from the baskets of ruined balloons, madly failing to see that escape from the basket would not spare them. I had heard of new devices called parachutes that could allow a man to safely drop from a balloon to earth, but if any such devices had been issued or used we did not see it happen. We could only hope the deployment of any such devices occurred in the cloud. But I sadly doubted there was any invention that would save these men, or if their were that it had made its way into their hands.
Some of the balloons were getting closer to us now and for the first time it struck me that though we were not sporting any flag or ensign there was nothing stopping an eager archer from targeting our craft. My hands went wet. I wanted to vomit. I saw Beatriz bang her hand on the glass to her left and mouth something to Ugo. Moments later I saw the hulk emerge with a Vickers machine gun and set it on a bipod on the deck. He took up a shooting position behind it.
I considered that as the highest ranking military man on board, I could and perhaps ought to commandeer this vessel and join the fight, telling Ugo to take aim at the nearest Hun air bag. But we were not a military craft. We were under no orders. On the other hand, did we not have an obligation to help our countrymen and allies? Too we had an advantage I realized, looking up, in that if we were hit the cable would keep us aloft. In the next thought, though, I clearly envisaged us inside the cabin, sliding back down the cable at terrible speed until we crashed into the boarding structure at our origin, surely grievously injuring or killing us all.
“I don’t know that we should join this fight,” I said, far too loudly. Catching my excessive volume, I perceived another reason I was so disquieted by this horrid scene: the silence of it. There were no cannon reports. No screaming. Due to the distance and absorbing quality of the clouds, we could hear almost nothing at all of the battle. Only the occasional hum of a small balloon motor, and then only when that was not overcome by the skidding rattle of our ascent along the cable.
“We will only defend ourselves if attacked,” Beatriz said. “But I must tell you, sergente, if this vessel is hit we will all perish. It will be painful, but it will be fast, for our balloon is filled with hydrogen and not air.”
“What does that mean?” I had now unconsciously stepped into the doorway from which I’d come and was holding tightly to the jamb, just to the right of Ugo’s outlaid legs.
I did not have to wait for Beatriz’s answer, for a heard a sickening cry from Desotto and the others. I looked out to the balloons in time to see a furious fire come out from a hit balloon in all directions, vaporizing its silk bladder in an instant. The damned basket was thrown down into the cloud below it like a spit seed. A few seconds later we were hit by a cacophony that took my breath away. I then felt a pound in my chest. It was a sound nearly as loud and deep, though less crashing, than that of the largest field guns I’d ever seen San Sebastian’s artillerymen bring to bear. The shockwave rocked our craft, though luckily not enough to toss Desotto or Beatriz overboard. They both grabbed on tightly to the guy-wires near them as we rocked slightly from the effect of the blast.
“Oh no,” I said. Then I watched in silence with the others as we saw many more of these hydrogen balloons explode as they were struck by flaming arrows. The shockwaves kept coming at us until we’d felt nearly two dozen, although most were much softer than the first owing to more of the bomb-balloons being farther from us.
It soon seemed clear that we would not be targeted. We had drifted by now behind the main line of Austrian balloons and were getting farther above all the combatants. We still had a clear view. As the Italian and Sebastiano balloons drew closer to their enemies we began to hear crackling reports. I recognized the sound as machine gun fire.
“My God,” said Desotto.
I heard Johnny toward the rear. “Dear Lord in Heaven, this is an awful thing. I don’t think I can believe whatI’mseein’rightnow.”
As the bullets invisibly raced across the front, we began to see still more balloons fall into the clouds, which now reflected a deep red, calling up visions of the balloonists being thrown into the fiery gates of Hell itself. The machine guns sent the balloons and their crews to their fates even more hastily, tearing the silks to ribbons with one volley. There were more brilliant explosions as hydrogen ones were destroyed apace. I thought that the gunners must have learned how to identify the more flammable targets for soon they were all gone and we heard no more explosions.
By then, to continue to watch the display Desotto, Beatriz, and Ugo had moved toward the rear of the ship’s deck as we continued to ascend northward away from the battle. Johnny, Gus, and the ne’erdowell knaves had congregated at a different door in the center of the rearward wall of the cabin, at the end of a hall. I joined them there and made my way out to the aft deck.
The cloud floor was then a deep red with a tulle of black shadows across it, making it appear to me, frightfully, that suspended as we and the combatants were by only hot gas and gossamer threads we were all sinners about to slip through the buttery fingers of an angry God right into Hell itself. We saw the last handful of balloons near us drop in tatters or flames, one by one, until they were all gone.
Looking out I could see that there were only four or five balloons remaining on each side at all, all of them from among those farthest east. I could just make out that the few survivors had turned around in retreat, limply floating away under the barest push from their little propellers. Some were heading southeast back to Italy and some seemed to be in the process of returning north to Austria or perhaps occupied San Sebastian.
It was obvious to me at once that we had just witnessed the first, largest, only and last large-scale balloon battle the war would ever know. It was a sad slaughter. The vessels were slow, incapable of bearing armor, and unable to avoid by maneuver even the most weak and simple assault. The could have been sent to the ground with pistols and bayonets. Anyone could see it had been senseless. The ends of my mouth spasmed into grimaces and I wiped away not a small amount of tears upon contemplating the fate of those poor balloonists falling in a rain of baskets and bodies to their deaths in the fields and forests below.
“That was a terrible thing. Why should they have done that? They have no means of defense. They could have been taken down with javelins. Hell, with sharpened pencils.”
“Well, that was just a damn shame,” said Johnny. “A damn shame if I do say so. Like hell. How’d any of ’em think they’d live, let alone win? Them balloons, they didn’t have a chance. Like ‘e said, hell anything in the world could have destroyed ’em. They did it with just about a giant’s matches as it was. Why’d they all even go up into this? Those baskets and silks, they were just nothin’. Thin as paper,” said Johnny.
Gus remained stoic. “No thinner than a man’s skin. If you’d seen the Somme… As to why they did it, they were ordered, simple as that. And no one man can say no when all around him say yes. And so it is for all of them.” He sniffed and crossed his arms.
No one else had anything to say to that. Tomasso had gone inside, as had the ragamuffins. Desotto shook his head and removed his cap. I said nothing, my chin on my chest in prayer. Ugo frowned, picked up his machine gun, and went inside.
Beatriz muttered, “Generals.”
I looked up in time to see one last spectacular thing in a day of spectacular things. The end of the setting sun had fallen just behind us, and had cast the shadow of our ship down upon the embers of the clouds to the east, increased, stretched, and distorted by distance to acres in size. We could see the penumbras of each of us on the deck, cast hundreds of feet toward the horizon, the shadow of the balloon above us blackening nearly the whole of the eastern horizon. Just as Nuzzo and Gabler had been at the start of this absurd affair, our craft had become a Spettro di montagna. And then, in a flash of green, the sun set below the last western ridge and we and the cloudy valley behind us were snapped into darkness.
The San Sebastian Chronicles have been reworked into a novel soon to appear. Thank you for reading.
