As Simple As Hunger

by D Des Anges

  “What—” cried Hajar, but she seemed more in the throes of excitement than terror. “How is this achieved?”

  Orgone, clicked El Miriápodo in plain irritation.

  “Breathe shallow,” John said, instead. “The fumes of this will leave you in madness and constriction.”

  “Wonderful,” said Ferdinand in a clear sulk. John supposed that the fingers compressing his flank must be his. “And how long will this take?”

  “Five days,” said John.

  Six, clicked El Miriápodo. The boat came level again, and thrust forward in a great surge of mechanical sound. We must to the very shore of Albion-of-the-Britons this time.

  “Six,” John corrected.

  Ferdinand made no coherent word, but only a sound of disgust and despair. John felt Hajar lay upon him her head with a resigned groan of her own.

  “Bloody—” Ferdinand grumbled, but he said naught else.

  John thought that though he would be trapped in the dark below the frozen sea again, and though he was to suffer the gross effect of the orgone fumes once more, he was this time at least sure of his destination and of his company. He thought that he was warmer, and safer, and that he knew now he would not be slain or tortured.

  He was comforted by this only for as long as he could keep from his mind the knowledge that he had now no hope of El Alacrán.

  He could not say, El Alacrán will come for me. El Alacrán had tried, and he had never reached him.

  John did not weep, for there was no means to conceal it in such close quarters, but he held onto his breath until he was sure he would not.

  * * *

  After what El Miriápodo said was three days the boat surfaced and all three humans gasped groggy at the air as if it were some intoxicating incense.

  They were not permitted to rise up to piss into the ocean, which Ferdinand protested with vigour and which Hajar said, ‘Good’ to with some satisfaction. They instead sat in what they had been unable to keep in, with which John noted Hajar was a lot less satisfied.

  * * *

  They had ploughed on in foetid, delirious noise for how long John knew not, when further racket came to them. It shook the craft from end to end, and drew from El Miriápodo a hissing arthropod oath.

  “What’s happening?” Hajar cried, though she lay as still in the dark as them all.

  Shipping, El Miriápodo clicked, and John took a moment to perceive his meaning.

  “It is the engines of some great steam ship,” he said. “We must be coming close to shore.”

  “We must come to some secluded bay,” Ferdinand said, “not in the midst of shipping, else –”

  Does he think I am deaf as well as stupid? El Miriápodo hissed, and John covered his mouth against his own shoulder to keep from an unexpected and unsuited snort. The peevishness of El Miriápodo here was as near in tone to the peevishness of Ferdinand’s earlier complaints as arthropod and human speech might ever come.

  John conceived too easy of a world in which the General and the Wirelessman were friends, coming together in exasperation at the world’s ineptitude.

  “He knows, Ferdinand,” Hajar sighed. “How would he not?”

  Their debate came no further, for in this instant something struck the hull of the little boat, and shook it with such violence that John’s head rung as if it were a part and piece of the hull itself.

  El Miriápodo hissed another, even more harsh, arthropod oath, and Ferdinand cried, “Wyrm turd!” in shock and consternation.

  There was scrabbling in the darkness, as John assumed El Miriápodo reached for some lever he knew of not. The boat shuddered and shook, and tipped to one side.

  Hold breath, El Miriápodo instructed, urgent as any warning.

  “HOLD YOUR BREATH,” John cried, and did so.

  The boat sank lower, and with it the stench of fumes came so strong that his eyes began to water, his chest to squeeze, and he longed to choke.

  John buried his face against his shoulder and tried not to breathe. The air within the little boat grew thick and foul as they sank and sank, and he perceived the means through which they had once breathed must be below the surface of the water.

  Another blow struck the undersea boat, throwing them all against the body of El Miriápodo as the great centipede was flung against the far wall of the tiny craft. The reverberation of the craft was such that John was rendered temporarily deaf.

  “Shi—” Hajar hissed.

  HOLD BREATH, El Miriápodo hissed back, but it was no use.

  Water trickled down from some unseen breach onto John’s face, and with a struggle he freed his arms from beneath Hajar and Ferdinand to feel for the rent, to plug it.

  John’s hands were joined, side-by-side, by hands small and large, and together the humans groped and felt along the plates of the undersea boat with their fingertips. Water rained down upon them, and amid the tepid sea of piss that already inhabited the boat, he could feel cold seawater rise.

  It is no use, El Miriápodo squeaked.

  John’s fingers came upon it – the water forcing its way past – before his fellows. There protruded a terrible vast hook, no doubt of the most recent manufacture, through the gap between two plates.

  Even as he touched it, it tugged hard and pulled up the plate under which it was caught. There was a scream as if the metal were in pain.

  “Fuck,” said Ferdinand in a faint voice.

  Another terrible blow shook the little dark craft, and another jet of water struck John about the chest as the shock swayed the undersea-boat like a bough in a storm.

  OUT, El Miriápodo hissed, and there was a terrible grinding of gears. John felt the plates beneath his hands shake as in a wind, and struggle to withdraw themselves. Swim, or drown. Out. Out.

  The water came fast into their dark prison, and tilted it, tipped it until it stood upright in the water like a man.

  John found Hajar, wet and shivering, and as two plates pulled free and the sea rushed in upon them, he thrust her out into the ocean.

  He knew not if she swam, and only grappled to shove Ferdinand from the undersea boat even as Ferdinand sought to push him.

  It was Ferdinand who succeeded, and as John burst from the vessel in a cold wet birth that near broke his lungs. His eyes open and stinging with salt, he saw a dim Hajar strike for surface like smoke rising from a fire.

  Turning, his lungs screaming, he seized Ferdinand’s protruding arm and pulled upon it as he had pulled on nothing else.

  He set his feet against the plates and pushed away, tugging at the Moor as he scraped through the rent in the vessel. As he swallowed a mouthful of sea water and nearly lost his grip altogether, John saw the tips of dark arthropod feet pushing up, pushing Ferdinand up out of the boat.

  John had so little breath left in him that when Ferdinand came out into the ocean he could only strike for the surface with weakening limbs. They could scarce be enough, and he trusted his own fat to push him to the surface, for he knew his legs could not.

  He broke the surface of the waves without movement. Only after choking out what felt like most of the ocean from his body did John comprehend what surrounded him, and why it was so loud.

  The day was overcast and snow fell into the sea.

  About him stood two great steam-ships, each with their rail lined with men: by squinting he saw at least some of these men were in the uniform of the Secure Guardians of Albion-of-the-Danes, and some of the Secure Guardians of Albion-of-the-Britons.

  He could not see Hajar, or Ferdinand, or El Miriápodo, only several great cables which sank below the surface of the water whence he had risen. Terrible sounds rent the air. He made no sense of what he saw.

  John gulped great breaths and turned him round about as fast as he could. He pushed back below the numbing water with his stinging eyes held open. They might stream salt water of their own, but he needed them to search.

  There the cables sank beyond him, into the undersea boat. He knew then that the wicked
barbed hooks which had felled their vessel were shot from some catapult or other means, the better to knock the craft down. They had been meant for the boat, not grazing it without intent on their way to anchor the ships above.

  John turned himself about in the water, still seeking.

  There Ferdinand floated, yards below the surface, with Hajar pulling on his armpits, unable to drag him to the air. He looked as limp as some cloth mannequin used for target practice, and with each kick that Hajar strove to lift him, she sank below the surface herself.

  There sank the undersea boat, with El Miriápodo covered in bubbles and still struggling to be free of the craft. The scales of its roof impacted like a crushed cup beneath some terrible weight, rent and torn about as no metal ever should be.

  John could see then that he might yet break free of the boat, and turned to help Hajar lift the unconscious Ferdinand –

  Even as he moved, something black and huge and fast penetrated the water and threw them all asunder. It came for the undersea boat as fast as a speeding train, faster – faster.

  It split the water and split the boat.

  Even in the water John could hear the clang of metal on metal and the terrible rending of metal from metal.

  He saw then that it pinioned El Miriápodo to the hull of the undersea boat as a needle through the belly of a preserved fly-by-day.

  Though the arthropod struggled still, the cable from the hook’s rear tightened.

  El Miriápodo’s legs beat in the darkness of the stove-in boat.

  Even as he watched, the cable tightened, and the hook pulled back, ripping at the scaled armour plating of the undersea boat. It ripped at the underbelly of the General of the Northmost Faction.

  John swam to Ferdinand, and placed his shoulders under the Moor’s dangling legs. He tried to push upward as Hajar swam, pulling upward, and though she once kicked him in the head with her heavy boot he did not move or cease.

  Once again they were thrown from their course by the passage of a great hook. It shot through the water past them so near that John was for a moment sure he must be cut by it.

  He knew not when Ferdinand’s head broke the water, only when the weight above him grew less. John struck for the surface for more air.

  Hajar floated beside Ferdinand, her arm beneath his head, bobbing up and down as she kicked.

  All about them now, men swarmed the sides of their two great steam ships and snow fell gentle down into the sea and disappeared. John saw a third from between the hulks.

  They came to their little row-boats, lowered while he had been below. As Hajar said, “Breathe, you great bastard, I brought you up here to breathe,” John saw the confusion on the faces of the Secure Guardians that came.

  As he heaved up Ferdinand’s body the better to let him breathe he saw too the fine white foam in his nose, and the limpness of his head. He saw how still was Ferdinand’s neck, not jumping with pulse.

  He trod water as best he could, and could not reach to check the man’s eyes himself. John said, “I don’t think he will.”

  The snow fell.

  The rowing boats came closer, and the first among them sent waves that near-submerged Ferdinand’s face and swamped John a moment in the cold water. His head had begun to ache from the chill in the air, and when he broke surface again it felt as if someone was squeezing it with metal-gloved hands. His legs weighed on him so they might have been filled with lead.

  “Take him,” Hajar said, trying to lift Ferdinand’s inert body out of the water for the Secure Guardians to lift.

  The nearest to the bow was a man John’s own age, his beard dark and his eyes pale. He took his mouth from within the folds of his scarf and said in a great rush of steam, “He’s dead.”

  “I know,” Hajar said with chattering teeth and no small rage in her voice. “Take him aboard.”

  “Live prisoners only,” said the Secure Guardian.

  “TAKE HIM,” Hajar roared, and she tried to lift Ferdinand from the water by her own hand, and sank, and choked. She came up spluttering and spitting, and almost in an instant roared again, “TAKE HIM ABOARD.”

  John tried to tread water and lift Ferdinand’s body at once, to help her, and only went under himself. He had little warning and he, too, came up spluttering and choking.

  When he made surface once more he saw the nearest of the Secure Guardians exchange an exasperated look with his fellows, and reach down to seize upon Hajar by the hair.

  “Hey,” John said, weak-voiced, and he swallowed another mouthful of seawater.

  She roared at the Secure Guardian, but he only pulled the harder upon her. His fellows leaned to help haul her from the water, and she kicked, and thrashed, and rocked their boat.

  John saw no more of the struggle, for one of the Secure Guardians on his side laid his hands about John’s shoulders and plucked him from the water as hard as he could pull. It was not without kindness, though lacking in tenderness. John came from the cold sea like a cork from a bottle and began to shiver as he came to the air.

  The Secure Guardian placed about him a stiff woollen blanket and closed over his wrists a set of thick iron manacles.

  The remainder wrestled with Hajar at the bows: John saw one raise a short stick above his head the better to bring it down upon her, and another make a grab for her flailing, kicking legs only to receive an almighty blow to the nose that burst it into a fountain of blood.

  He turned his head to watch the sea.

  The Secure Guardians reeled up their cables as fishermen hauling in a line. He did not know how long it would take them to find the shards of the undersea boat, or the fragments of a drowned General.

  To his left, back in the water, some of the sloshing and rocking of the boat or Hajar’s struggles to evade capture and drowning both had turned Ferdinand. As the remaining rowers set to rowing back to the ship, the better to subdue their prey, John watched with a terrible cold calm fear in his chest as the Moor bobbed face-down in the cold waters.

  The falling snow collected upon his back.

  Chapter 29

  The deafening presence of her hatched and clamouring finch brood had required Hana’s further expense in the purchase of a second cage lest their older relatives consume or destroy them. In their unceasing cries, Hana bent to her translation.

  The translation was dull, an account of taxes taken in the third generation of a ruling family long-past and some hundreds of leagues west of her own home. Were Hajar present Hana would have passed it to her with her blessing.

  But Hajar was not present, and none had heard word nor glimpse of her since her departure from a foul boarding-house in the company of an unknown Moor and her bloody doctor.

  Hana straightened from her work and laid down her pen the better to massage the joints of her hand. In cold such as this, and in tasks like these, she was reminded with the most force of her age, and of the toll it took upon her body.

  She watched the poor tricked chaffinch brood hen feeding her green-finch chicks. They were heavy eaters and light sleepers, and Hana had once or twice given way to whimsy in the wondering of whether their new mother ever tired of them.

  “You will miss them when they’re gone,” she told the hen, before near laughing at the romance of the notion that birds had such fine feelings. The hen could not tell her own clutch from another, what would she care when they were gone?

  Hana’s break in her translation had the property of allowing her to come much faster to her feet when a small fist beat upon her door. It was so she was able to open it right away upon the scarf-wrapped face of an errand boy.

  Unlike the main of the children of the city he was dark, in hair and eye if not of skin. There in his garb and bearing spoke the signs of a mixing between the Albionmen and some other Moorish comer to the land.

  She sought with her eye the red mark upon his forefinger, and seeing her look he held him up his hand obliging. He wore gloves, but had taken the care to cut the finger from the forefinger that his
customers might know him for what he was.

  “Message?” she asked.

  “From Magister-in-Waiting Radigis,” said the errand boy, proud as a peacock, as he held out the paper. “Paid ahead.”

  “Very kind of him,” Hana muttered, taking it.

  The errand boy stared at her expectant, but when she did not produce a coin of gratitude he sighed, spat on her doorstep, and ran off down the stairs at such a speed that Hana was sure he would slip and break a limb on the melt-wetted stone.

  The note was sealed now with the official seal of the Durham Magister, for although no word had come from the Prefect of Durham there was little doubt in anyone’s mind that Radigis should take the mantle now that Hrothgar was discharged, and he had already been given the run of the seal. They called him loyal, and hard-working, and they made much of his link by wyflock to Cumbria.

  Hana opened the note and found no flowering blossom of courteous greeting, but rather a brief and hastened scrawl in ink smudged by the too-soon closing of its paper:

  Come quick. Urgent. Important. Meet you at the station. R.

  Disliking the summons – was she a dog to be called thus? – Hana folded the note once more, and went to find her gloves and boots.

  He would not send so curt a note were he not accepting of the debt to which it laid at his feet. From the great haste in which the note had been scribbled and sent, Hana made that it was a very great debt he took upon him.

  She took upon her rabbit gloves and wrapped about her head a second, thicker scarf that might the better warm her, not caring then that it would grant her only the air of a beggarwoman. Hana pulled on her heavy boots and took care to thrust inside her pocket a perfumed handkerchief from the stock that remained in her casket of such.

  There would be no call to stink like a beggarwoman too.

  The day was bright, not choked with clouds of snow as the last had been, and as she hurried from the building with her coat tucked tight about her she was near blinded by the light of sun upon snowdrift. Though the city had done its best befouling the snowfall until it was the hue of an old man’s beard, fresh fall leant a clean white sheet to every drift and until the sun gave melt all was dazzling and hard to see.