Heavy Lies The Crown (The Scalussen Chronicles Book 2)

by Ben Galley

  ‘Kill a god?’

  ‘End this!’

  The bickering of the council spread down from the forecastle to the deck. The crowds of survivors and crew were swiftly in a constant murmur of confusion and doubt.

  Elessi felt like barging through them, finding her cabin, and slamming the door. She could not lead these people, not against empires and gods, and yet her promise called to her. She stuck out her chin, refusing her nervous legs. She expected more of herself. All she was hearing was madness, and she would not stand for it.

  It was then she heard a thought as clear as day. Far too clear to belong to her knotted rosebush of a mind. Far too loud.

  We can forge a new Emaneska.

  Elessi stared around, demanding with her eyes to know who had spoken. She looked up to the dragons perched high in the crags of Hardja and Ursufel, or in the great masts of the bookships like multicolour hawks in a tree. Only one wore golden scales, and he hovered on the high winds of the mountain peaks. The Old Dragon.

  ‘Admiral Lerel!’ Elessi yelled over the tumult. It took two attempts for the decks of the Vanguard to fall silent. ‘Lerel!’

  Lerel grazed past Nerilan, cutting the queen off from a tirade about dragonfire and superior forces. The look on the Siren’s face was murderous.

  ‘Aye, General?’ Lerel barked.

  ‘I want a league put between us and this spineless city.’

  ‘Aye!’

  Orders began to ricochet across the deck. Sailors stumbled into action, though they worked with furrowed brows of confusion and dismay.

  ‘If Krauslung doesn’t appreciate what we’ve done and the blood we’ve shed for it, then we’ll either wait for them to come to their senses, or leave them to their madness,’ Elessi spoke, surprising herself with her volume. ‘If we have to, we’ll forge a new Krauslung.’

  Nerilan spun her narrowed stare on her as if she had heard those words before. ‘And leave our home? Our rightful lands?’

  Elessi didn’t reply. She returned to the bowsprit and looked down upon the god. The crowds of Krauslung’s docks had begun to stamp their feet in rhythmic unison.

  ‘What say you?’ Loki called out.

  Once more, Elessi let silence loiter. They didn’t deserve her breath. Instead, she stared back at Loki with as little rage as possible showing in her expression. The power of the wind mages behind her blew her silver hair around her face. The clank of contraptions unfurling black sails spoke for her.

  To the cheering of Krauslung and the slow yet resounding clap of Loki’s gloved hands, the Autumn’s Vanguard slowly backed from the harbour until Lerel showed the city her giant stern.

  The other two bookships lingered until the Vanguard had passed between them, menacing the port with their bulk as a parting warning. Only then did they follow, and with their lanterns lit against the encroaching evening, they withdrew deeper into the bay. The dragons left their perches, either disappearing into the clouds or swooping down to follow.

  Somewhere between the flat islands of Skap to the south and the mocking cheering that still filled the air and black waters of Rós, the Rogue’s Armada dropped its anchors.

  Loki lifted his arms to the thunder of the crowds. Behind him, the rowers drummed their callous hands against their oars and said his name, over and over.

  ‘You’ve done it again, sire!’

  ‘Showed them what for!’ they yelled.

  The power of their adoration and belief felt like waves coursing over Loki’s skin. Enjoyable to any god, of course. Strengthening, naturally. Emboldening even, but their adoration was not what made this a moment of victory.

  No, his pride was all his fault. And gladly so. With little but words and threats and promises, Loki had stolen the heart of a city and broken the hopes of Scalussen in the same week. Hopes and dreams two decades in the making. What glee it gave the god to guide his foes astray, if only to see the torment on their faces.

  And how simple it had all been! How wonderfully the unexpected trick of Irminsul’s fire had only played into his hands. To turn the last Arka warship into a frenzy of fear had only taken one sailor’s borrowed face and barely an hour. How slow they were. How easily he had plucked Farden’s Emaneska from beneath him.

  For an instant, Loki’s smile wavered. All a little too easy, in fact, he thought.

  Reinforcing his smile, Loki waved to the crowds. It was not enough to cripple them, he realised. They remained a threat. His success was proof of how the forgotten and ignored can forge the downfall of their so-called betters. Like the daemons, who would one day know their own downfall at Loki’s hand, Scalussen had to be crushed.

  Loki knelt at the edge of the longboat, where the weight of those on board forced the water close to its flat deck. Into his endless pockets, dug his hands. It took him a moment to summon the trinket from the dark void within his coat; his hoard of the lost, trapped beyond the dawn and the dusk, known only to those who truly know what it is to be forgotten.

  Into the light of evening, as torches were lit upon the layered boardwalks behind him, he withdrew a small silver bell. The trinket was a tapering pyramid, somewhat similar to a cowbell. All manner of markings had been engraved across its three faces, then scratched out, then rewritten in a different language, and so on. Parts of it bore marks of repair, as if somebody had once tried to destroy it. The only markings that survived were of curling, scaly heads poised on each face.

  Ever since he had found it, lost in the depths of Essen’s markets, Loki had always wanted to ring the Serpent’s Chime. For years he had highly suspected its powers were nothing more than a merchant’s rumour. There was no better time to test it than now.

  Much to the muttering conversation of the onlookers, Loki held it above the water, shook its weathered handle and let the piercing tone of the bell ring loud before he plunged it into the dark, polluted waters.

  The tone continued underwater, growing and deepening. The water around his submerged hand danced in peaks and crowns. Loki watched the note ripple out across the waters. Other than the distant roar of a dragon above, a quiet fell on the harbour. An uneasy silence, charged with questions and curiosity.

  The note died, and, out of the water, the bell returned to a silent piece of silver. With a tut, Loki spun the bell in his palm and slid it back into his pocket. Perhaps the bell was a lie after all. The chime was another useless, worthless artefact. ‘Alas,’ he said aloud. ‘Would have been quite the evening’s entertainment.’

  ‘What’s that, milord?’ asked one of the nearest men.

  ‘It is a shame is all, my good sir—’

  ‘Sorry, sire, but I meant that noise. What is that?’

  Loki’s disappointment was stifled by the distant moan of a horn or trumpet. So distant it had almost gone unnoticed. Another joined it, louder.

  ‘More trouble, sire?’

  Loki grinned as he felt the wind shift. ‘Not for us. Not for Krauslung.’

  The Serpent’s Chime was not a fake after all.

  ‘Where, Elessi? Where are we to go?’ Roiks demanded.

  Everybody wanted answers. Half the souls aboard had hollered questions as they had hustled below. Even the other ships had sent admirals and captains on rowboats to the Vanguard to discuss what in Hel was going on. Even the Warbringer’s second in command: a bloodmonger with a name apparently only pronounceable by minotaurs, much like dragons’ true names. He filled the doorway. He snuffled continuously at the dust and the smell of magick in the room.

  Elessi now sat on a high-backed chair of wood, elbow to knee and chin cupped in her cold hand. It was gloomy in the libraries deep within the bookship. The smell of old pages and salt was thick in the air. In the brief moments between bursts of avid conversation, the sound of blue moths pattering against their glass lanterns ruled.

  Elessi had expected a round table to be just what she needed, and yet somehow they still stared at her as though she alone sat at the table’s head. ‘Wherever we go, the north is ruined. Th
ere is Albion, maybe…’

  Half the crowd groaned. She shook her head, tutting at the suggestion. She was still repeating Loki’s words in her head, desperately figuring where the god had outwitted her. Her homeland was out of the question.

  ‘We would have to fight the dukes tooth and bloody nail,’ said Roiks.

  ‘Then we go south, or continue east.’

  Lerel spoke up. ‘The empire might still reign in Paraia. They might need our help. We’ll be warmer, too, for once.’

  The northerners of the room, particularly Ko-Tergo and Nerilan, growled at that. Having spent half her life in a land of precipitation, Elessi knew the feeling.

  ‘We minotaurs go home to Efjar, the land our Warbringer fought for and your dead king promised.’

  ‘Farden is not dead,’ Lerel hissed. ‘Not until we know for sure.’

  ‘What is that noise?’ Peryn asked. High Crone Wyved was shaking her head back and forth, knocking her ears with her palm.

  ‘A roomful of people not able to make a single decision?’ Hereni grumbled by Elessi’s side. Her comments drew narrowed stares. ‘What?’ she challenged them. ‘We put the general in charge, didn’t we? Then we should bloody listen to her. Let her decide.’

  Peryn snapped. ‘Quiet, Captain!’

  Hereni slammed a hand on the table. ‘I’ve got as much of a right to speak here as you do, witch—’

  ‘Captain!’ Elessi barked.

  Wyved was reaching for the nearest shelf of books, hands outstretched, her long black nails quivering. One of the many tiny birds stowed in her layers of rags and matted hair hopped down her arm and perched upon a fingertip. It pecked at the spine of a book, and between its intermittent cheeping, Elessi heard it: like the cry of a pack of wolves, haunting despite how distant they sounded.

  ‘What is that?’ she asked.

  Lerel was staring between her fellow admirals and captains, eyes creeping wider with every passing second. Elessi watched the blood drain from her face. ‘No…’ she was whispering.

  The scrape of Roiks’ chair set half the room flinching.

  ‘Fuck me!’ he bellowed before sprinting from the library without explanation.

  ‘TO ARMS!’ Lerel roared as she chased him.

  ‘What is happening?’

  With Eyrum and Hereni forging a path for her, Elessi bustled upwards through deck after deck. Lerel’s orders had turned the uneasy mood of the ship’s bowels into manic activity. Mages stood by the portholes and hatches. Crews loaded and cranked ballistae. Sand and water scattered the deck in preparation for fire and blood.

  ‘Admiral!’ Elessi yelled to Lerel as she breathlessly ascended to the forecastle. She scanned the skies, seeing nothing but whirling dragons. The city was as calm as ever. Not a sail besides those of the armada’s broke the horizon. The night was creeping in from the east, where the noise was coming from. The shadow of the mountains betrayed nothing.

  ‘What’s happening?’ she yelled.

  Lerel seemed to be having trouble spitting out her words. Roiks and Sturmsson were too busy bellowing orders to their captains back aboard the bookships. It was from Roiks that Elessi finally got an explanation.

  ‘A leviathan, by the bleeding gods!’ the admiral roared. ‘To arms!’

  The word ignited further energy and panic. Standing like a rock in a river of action. Elessi wracked her brains to make sense of it. Leviathans. They were nothing but creatures of fairytale. She saw the same uncertainty on Hereni and Bull’s faces. Then again, Loki was in their vicinity, and nothing was for sure with that god around.

  ‘East!’ came a cry from the lofty crow’s nest. ‘A league out and closing!’

  Elessi was swept towards the port bulwark. Her heart pounded to the tune of fear even though she had only a name to be afraid of. In the gloom past the headland, white water frothed. She saw no shape, no body, only the water displaced as something surfaced momentarily.

  ‘Lights!’

  Lanterns bloomed in a wave across the Rogue’s Armada. The lights turned the water glossy green, like the surface of fluid and ancient copper. Silver fish scattered from beneath the keels.

  ‘Dragons, with me!’ yelled Queen Nerilan, standing upon the edge of the aftcastle. As Elessi watched, Towerdawn appeared from beneath the bookship, seized the queen in his claws, and soared over the Vanguard. In a pirouette of colour and scaled armour, the dragons of Scalussen climbed into the air. For a dreaded moment, it looked as though they were abandoning the armada.

  ‘I want answers, Lerel!’ Elessi shouted.

  ‘There’s nothing a ship fears more than a leviathan, Elessi,’ Lerel snapped, making a rapid path for the wheel. ‘And I’m pretty sure Loki just summoned one. In all my years on the waters, I’ve never heard of ship surviving a direct encounter with a leviathan.’

  ‘Even a bookship?’ yelled Elessi in hope.

  Lerel flashed her a petrified stare. ‘I don’t want to find out. Raise anchor! Mages at the ready! Ballistae stand by!’ she hollered at her crew.

  Barely half a mile beyond the anchored armada, the surface of the sea exploded into white and black water. A wave arose, surging towards them. A dark, serpentine form coursed through the sea beneath. Two broad fins, spiked as a dragon’s crest and an ultramarine blue, pierced the waters. Each of them was a tree’s height. They broke the water with white froth, creating bow waves like the keel of a ship. From their size alone, Elessi found the fear in her heart utterly valid. She remembered the primordial terror she had felt first meeting a dragon. That memory paled now.

  The fear only increased as the leviathan swept towards the armada. Elessi found herself breathless as the wave crashed against the hulls of the bookships. No impact came. No rending crash. It seemed, for a wonderful moment, as if the leviathan passed them by. It was then she saw the dark shape barrelling towards the surface.

  ‘Fire!’ cried Lerel and Eyrum in one voice.

  The Autumn’s Vanguard rocked as the starboard side unleashed its volley. The sounds of crashing spells and a ballistae unloading was a thunder that temporarily deafened Elessi.

  The water roiled with bolts, fire, and lightning. The surface of the sea steamed within moments. When the last spell had been unleashed, a dread silence settled over the armada. Every neck craned over each bulwark and railing, staring down into the waters to see what their barrage had done.

  The short answer was nothing.

  In the vacuum of the volley, with a detonation of water, the leviathan at last emerged. Elessi swept back from the edge of the ship, stumbling in her panic.

  Seawater coursing across its teal diamond scales, the leviathan’s head alone rivalled some of the smaller vessels in size. Its neck was as thick as a tower, built of scale and sinew instead of stone. In slow, deliberate movements, it kept rising from the sea until its gaze drew level with the top deck of the Vanguard. Serpentine in nature, its head sloped like the blade of a pickaxe and bristled with webbed fins. Its eyes burned a piercing blue. Serrated fangs bristled from its mouth, each competing to poke as far from its gums as possible. And when it opened its dire head to emit a deafening roar, its jaws opened in quarters rather than halves. Thick, blue spittle soaked the decks between sailors clutching their ears. Wherever the saliva touched, the wood bubbled and smoked. Holes began to appear in the deck. Flesh melted like wax before a fire. Excruciated screams of the crew joined the leviathan’s roar.

  ‘Fire again!’ Lerel yelled. Elessi could hear the desperation in her voice.

  The onslaught collided with the leviathan. In panic, a good portion of the volley overshot the leviathan and landed upon the rest of the armada. Screams unfurled alongside sails as the ships tried frantically to set sail.

  The ballistae bolts that found soft places between the leviathan’s scales only served to anger the colossal beast. Fire, while it seemed to stall the monster, failed to elicit any damage but anger. As it unlocked its jaws, the leviathan reared backwards to add weight to its strike.

&n
bsp; ‘Hold!’ bellowed the officers across the Vanguard, but it came too late. The leviathan smashed its giant head into the bookship’s port side. Bulwarks and railings splintered into sawdust before its strength. A dozen sailors and mages’ screams were silenced as the jaws came crashing down. Bloody smears were their only eulogy.

  Elessi heard the stuttered impact of the volleys from the other bookships colliding with the Vanguard. Bellows of pain and panic came from below.

  ‘I need speed and sail, damn it!’ Lerel was baying at her officers. Wind mages tried desperately to go to work between the chaos. The Vanguard’s clockwork spars let loose their sails, but as the leviathan withdrew, half the rigging became entangled in its spines and bladed fins.

  ‘Fire at bloody will!’ yelled the admirals to their ships. Spells exploded against the leviathan’s hide one after the other, barely making a scratch. Spears and arrows clattered uselessly against its scales.

  In a burst of fire from the heavens, Towerdawn’s dragons made their attack. Jaws and fire assailed the leviathan. Blue blood spattered like rain across the Vanguard’s decks, causing more injuries. Elessi could hear the decks hissing.

  The leviathan submerged as rapidly as it had appeared. Somehow, despite its terrifying appearance, the notion of it being hidden was much more unsettling.

  ‘We need to move!’ Lerel was screaming.

  The panic struck Elessi again as a huge impact shook the Vanguard from deck to keel. Elessi heard the iron and timbers of the ship groan in complaint.

  Elessi watched the other ships of the armada buck and shudder as the leviathan tested them, too. ‘Get us out of here, Lerel!’

  ‘I’m trying!’

  The Vanguard shuddered as the sails filled with wind spells. The bookship started to move, setting a course that swung around the rest of the armada.

  The leviathan surfaced again, not to attack this time, but to unhinge its quartered jaws and utter a blood-curdling scream. To her horror, Elessi heard an answering screech behind her. She whirled, catching sight of two more leviathans lifting out of the water. She saw their serpentine shapes: sinuous bodies arcing between the huge bow-waves they created.