Thief of the Ancients

by Mike Wild

  As he did, his mental hold on Slowhand relaxed and, feeling his body untense against the panel, the archer made his move.

  He dropped to the floor and, as he impacted, threw himself into a forward roll, hands snatching behind his back for Suresight and an arrow from his quarrel. He came upright, the bow readied. Slowhand could have killed Fitch there and then but, without knowing exactly why, he didn’t. Instead he fired off, in quick succession, four arrows aimed at Fitch’s arms and legs. Flitch tried to deflect them, but he had no chance. The threadweaver was suddenly picked up and carried off his feet by their speed and power, thudding into the packing crate behind him. Fitch roared with anger, trying to pull away from the arrows that held him, but they were so solidly embedded in the wood through the folds of his cloak that he was trapped.

  Slowhand took a deep and satisfied breath and walked towards Fitch, pausing only to offer a hand to help the still prone Jenna up. She snatched it without thanks – without even a smile, of relief or otherwise – and rounded on the pinioned threadweaver, pointing at the control panel where Slowhand had been trapped. It buzzed now with a release of energy that, despite Slowhand not knowing what it should sound like, didn’t seem quite right.

  “You’re action was irresponsible and stupid,” she shouted. “Have you any idea of the amount of power contained in those things?” She pointed at Slowhand. “Inserting him into the circuit has destabilised the entire system and –”

  Jenna broke off, ducking, as the upper left corner of the panel exploded.

  “I think she’s trying to say you broke it,” Slowhand pointed out. He studied the panel as another section detonated, lighting up everyone’s faces. “If you ask me, I reckon this whole place is going to go up.”

  “You fool!” Jenna yelled at the threadweaver.

  Fitch actually looked chastised. “He shouldn’t have done what he did. Shouldn’t have been able –”

  “He’s my brother. He’s a –”

  She’s going to say it, Slowhand thought. The name. And when she did, then the world would know the truth. But at the same time he considered this, the panel behind him detonated once more and the conversation abruptly ceased. Because, this time the explosion set off a chain reaction that spread to more panels next to it, and then more after that, and suddenly one entire side of the waystation was aflame.

  “Yep, I was right,” Slowhand said, smugly.

  “Fark,” Jenna shouted, and she began to move among her people, shouting orders. “Get everyone back on board, now! You, do as I say! And you! Leave everything not already loaded! Mister Ransom, loose the umbilicals and prepare for immediate departure!”

  “Ma’am, we haven’t finished refuel –”

  “It will have to do, Mister Quinn! If we don’t get out of here now, we’re not leaving. By the Lord of All, I’ll glide this thing into Gransk if I have to!”

  Gransk, Slowhand thought. There was that name again. Where the hells was it? What was it? As troubling as the question was, though, something troubled him even more, and that was his sister’s attitude to him since he had escaped from certain death. There had been no smiles, no hugs, no anything, and he was beginning to think that the only reason Jenna had fought with Fitch was because she knew how dangerous his unauthorised actions were – that the fact that her own brother had been the spanner in the works didn’t really matter to her at all. The realisation left him with a heaviness in his heart that was worse than he’d felt at the loss of Kali Hooper, but it was a heaviness that he could not afford to indulge in right now.

  He looked around him, ducking as the explosions from the Old Race mechanisms increased, sending plumes of fire into the paths of the airship crew. Most were on board now, only himself, Jenna and Ransom still uncoupling the ship not on the safety of the deck. And, of course, Fitch. The threadweaver was still struggling against the arrows holding him, and Slowhand was pleased to see an expression of panicked horror had overtaken the usual arrogance that filled that face. His temptation to leave the bastard exactly where he was almost overwhelming but –

  Slowhand sighed, swiftly pulled the arrows from Fitch’s robes and then bundled him towards the gantry. The last thing he expected – but should have expected – was that at the last minute Fitch would plant his palm on his chest and send him hurtling backwards into a pile of crates. Dazed, he watched as Jenna and the last crewmembers boarded, and the airship was already pulling away by the time he rose and ran after it. The archer tried to make the jump from dock to airship but stopped himself at the last moment by grabbing onto a rail. The gap between them was just too great.

  “Jenna,” he shouted as the airship receded further beyond his reach. “I have to know – is there anything of you left?”

  His sister stared back, the wind whipping at her face, and Slowhand wasn’t sure whether it was that or something else that made her eyes tear up.

  Then she dug into a pocket, took out a small object and threw it across the widening gap towards him. Slowhand flung out a hand and then stared down at what he’d caught – a bracelet – before looking back up to question what it was. But, in the brief moment he had looked down, the airship had begun to turn away, as had his sister, perhaps not voluntarily, towards Querilous Fitch. Slowhand roared as the threadweaver approached her and then placed his palms on her skull and the hopes that he had harboured until that moment – that even now he might be able to turn Jenna away from the Final Faith – were finally dashed as his sister quivered beneath Fitch’s touch.

  Watching the airship descend to the harbour’s entrance tunnel, Slowhand could not remember when he had last – if ever – felt so lonely. But there was no time to dwell upon the feeling as another fierce explosion from behind almost blew him off the gantry.

  The archer looked around, searching for something – anything – that could help him get off this rock. But the only viable method of transport had already left and all that remained was the bones of its sister ships. Then it suddenly occurred to him that if Jenna and the Final Filth could build their flying machine piecemeal, then anything the Filth could do, he could do too.

  Slowhand worked quickly but precisely, skewering bolts of cloth from the rotted dirigibles with arrows from Suresight, before pulling them down and framing them around struts of lightweight metal. He tied the pieces of cloth into place with catgut from his quiver, pulling each piece taut until, when he flicked them, they thrummed like drums above the two triangular sections he had created. Finally he linked the two sections together, creating a makeshift hinge by tying the metal struts to the flexible frame of Suresight itself, swung a strap beneath the two, and then stood back to admire his handiwork.

  Looking like a pair of artificial wings, what he had created would not emulate a bird but he could hang beneath it and it would glide. He hoped that was all he would need. There was no time to test its airworthiness, however, as the explosions around him had now become so frequent that they were one solid, roiling mass of ever expanding combustion. The only thing that he could do now was fly.

  Slowhand slung the device on his back, tightened the strap, and ran, the precipice that loomed before him doing nothing to discourage him – because if he stayed he was dead anyway. Suddenly, he was in the air and plummeting, and with desperate shifts of his weight from his left and to his right, he managed to manoeuvre the contraption between the numerous metal struts and beams that filled the cavern, dropping past and through them until the floor of the cavern was in sight.

  Here, Slowhand arced his body upward, feeling the strain not only on his muscles but on the contraption itself. However, as it groaned in unison with him, his flight path gradually changed from the near vertical to the horizontal. He banked to the left, into the harbour’s exit tunnel, its striplights blinking by him, and he could feel the wind from the outside on his face. But with a quite literal sinking feeling, he realised that the air currents within the tunnel were not enough to keep him aloft. Thankfully, the explosions in the harbour above o
bliged him at that very moment, blasting a wave of heated air and flame down into the tunnel and buffeting him forward as effectively as if he had been swatted away by some giant, invisible hand. Slowhand yelled with surprise and with exhilaration and, as the sky darkened around him, realised he had exited the tunnel and was above the Drakengrats once more.

  He was just beginning to think he was safe when the entire underside of Thunderlungs’ Cry began to blow apart in a series of thunderous and buffeting explosions. There was an ominous cracking from above, too, and as the air about him began, suddenly, to fill with falling stones, rocks and even boulders, he realised that Thunderlungs’ Cry itself was coming down. Slowhand cursed and frantically began to manoeuvre the glider through the deadly rain, avoiding pieces of the collapsing bridge by inches and aware that even a single impact could slap him from the sky. Whether through some innate piloting skill or sheer luck, he emerged unscathed, and was about to whoop in triumph when a growing shadow on the distant ground made him instinctively look up.

  Ohhh, fark! he thought.

  Because Thunderlungs Cry had saved the best for last, it seemed, and – seemingly in slow motion – an entire middle section of the bridge was plummeting towards him.

  Slowhand never thought he’d be grateful for more explosions, but for the final, momentous detonation from the rockface, he most assuredly was.

  He suddenly found himself being punched across the sky. The shockwave from the final detonation had caught the glider and punched it into a spin away from the rock face and, to Slowhand’s misfortune, higher rather than lower into the mountains. As he sailed dizzyingly above the immense chasm he realised that while he had been punched higher, this did not necessarily mean that he was going to remain high as the shockwave had severely damaged what little integrity his invention had possessed in the first place. Swallowing uneasily, the archer craned his neck to inspect how bad things were, and his worst fears were confirmed. His jerry-rigged frame was bent and warped, and where he had lashed catgut to hold it together, it was now either snapping away from the metal or uncoiling from it with a sound like multiple cracking whips. He estimated he had perhaps a minute before the whole thing came apart.

  There was nothing, absolutely nothing, he could do to keep the glider aloft, and there was nowhere he could bring it in to a forced landing. He was going down.

  Slowhand found his attitude becoming unexpectedly philosophical. Maybe Hooper and he were going to meet up again, after all, and he could imagine the conversation already.

  “Hooper.”

  “Slowhand.”

  “How’s things?”

  “Ohhh, you know… dead. You?”

  “Dead.”

  “Mmmm.”

  “Mmmm.”

  “So…”

  “So…”

  Killiam Slowhand smiled, but it was a smile that faded as it formed. Because one of the last things he saw from his aerial vantage point were the k’nid, spilling towards the peninsula.

  Then, abruptly, there was no more time and the glider impacted with the ground.

  There was a rapid and utterly disorientating series of cracks, thuds and crunches, accompanied by the sound of a whistling wind and breaking struts and bones. Then the world turned sideways, lengthways, diagonal, upside down and, ultimately, dark.

  The body of the archer lay face down amongst the wreckage in the remote peaks, twisted and spasming, and he reflected that if there had been a small chance that he might ever be found, that chance was dashed as flurries of snow blew in around him, then over him, covering him in a thick, white shroud that, come night, would freeze about him completely.

  His hand moved slowly, shakily towards a pocket, searching for the bracelet Jenna had given him, hoping for comfort in its company. But his fingers felt nothing, the piece of jewellery that had seemed so important to his sister had been lost in his frantic attempts to flee the harbour. The archer sighed lengthily, though knew the sound was only partly disappointment and that, in truth, the strength to care was deserting him.

  His eyelids fluttered closed and, as white flakes began to settle on them, he did not blink them away. His face unmoving now, more flakes settled layer by layer until, at last, his features were indistinguishable from the snow.

  High in the Drakengrats, nature had built Killiam Slowhand his grave.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE DRAKENGRAT MOUNTAINS flared for a moment with a light so intense that it whited out the eyepiece through which Merrit Moon watched the event occur. The old man turned quickly away, rubbed his eye, and then frowned deeply. The ancient elven telescope – a rune inscribed, hand-lathed and polished thing of great beauty – was infinitely more powerful than any such device humans could have made. However, even though, at full magnification, its lenses permitted him to gaze across what amounted to a third of the peninsula, it should not have made what he had just seen seem quite so intense or immediate. That could mean only one thing. The explosion in the Drakengrats had been incredibly powerful and, consequently, the catalysts or combustants involved, like the telescope itself, had to have been infinitely more powerful than anything his own race could have manufactured.

  The conclusion was inescapable. Something Old Race was up there – had been up there – but what?

  Moon bent back to the eyepiece but any details on the far distant mountains were now obscured by a strange, mushroom-shaped cloud and he’d see nothing for a while. Besides, the sun was coming up, and it was time to open the shop. He was about to turn away when a slight nudge to the telescope shifted its focus down to the plains of Pontaine and something there caught his eye.

  What is that?

  It looked like some strange black cloud moving over the landscape, or at least would have done had it not been at ground level. And it appeared to be heading towards Gargas. There was something else, too. Something familiar. In the middle of it. A bulky black thing with something on it, moving at speed, as if trying to outrace the cloud. Moon adjusted the magnification on the telescope but, by the time he had done, the object and the cloud had become obscured by what few hills existed in that part of the province.

  This was surely a day for mysteries.

  Moon sighed, covered the telescope with a cloth, and made his way over to the spiral staircase that wound down through two floors to ground level. The old man grunted as he began to negotiate the creaking risers, the wooden stairs having always been a tight squeeze but having become something of a tortuous ordeal since his unfortunate ‘accident’ in the World’s Ridge Mountains. Though in the months since the events of the Clockwork King he had managed to concoct a number of potions and medicines that kept Thrutt’s ogur form in relative check, his physical mass and bone structure remained twice what it had been. This left him with a physiognomy that had a tendency to make babies cry and small dogs bark. He had to force himself to be philosophical about this, however, as he had learned on a number of unfortunate occasions that what seemed to trigger the Thrutt transformation was a rise in his blood pressure. A condition flagged by a tendency for his nose and ears to turn a bright red, his eyes to bulge and his mood to become very, very angry. It was embarrassing, yes, but he supposed it could have been worse, even if he wasn’t sure exactly how.

  Calm, he told himself as he squeezed between the stairway’s walls, dislodging pictures and ornaments as he went, cursing the resultant clattering. Calm.

  The old man emerged into the shop, found it dark and, yawning, moved to the two windows and door to flip their blinds. Azure dawn light flooded Wonders of the World and, through a criss-cross of dusty motes, he took a quick inventory of stock, working out which lines he would need to replenish from the cellar. Goblin death rattles, for sure, always popular with the babies. Shnarl fur dice and the stick-on elf ears, too – the only non-authentic line he carried. And there had been quite the run on troll testicles of late, but then it was spring and they were always popular at this time of year.

  The cellar, however, could wait.
Despite the required restocking, things had been pretty quiet around Gargas of late, and there would likely be no customers for a while. It was a state of affairs Moon attributed to the rumours of new predators on the peninsula. He didn’t know how much truth there was in the rumours – certainly there had been no sightings of the creatures this far east – but once these things got started, that was that, people simply weren’t prepared for the unusual. Peering out through the glass of the door, however, everything looked normal to Moon. The market was gearing up and the flummox was starting to bubble on the Greenwoods’ nearby stall. When it was ready he might even be tempted by a glass, maybe dunk some redbread to kick start the day, slurping the juices from his chin. Since he had become part ogur his appetites had changed, though thankfully not so far as getting the munchies for the heads of the babies who squawked interminably when they saw him. The temptation, though, had been there.

  Moon flipped the open sign and suddenly a figure loomed in his face, leering in at him through the glass. A customer, already? And a fop from one of the cities or larger towns by the look of him, even if he seemed slightly on the down-at-heels side. City dwellers were the worst kind of customer, because even though everything in his store was genuine they never believed it so, for the simple reason that they had never encountered it – as closeted as they were in their own, small and so-called ‘civilised’ world. Moon sighed then opened the door, and even before he could say good morning, it started. Except this time it wasn’t about the provenance of his stock.

  “By the Lord of All! The butcher across the way was right.”

  “Excuse me?”

  The fop jabbed him in the chest, and Moon got a whiff of a pungent underarm. “This ogur thing – great idea and I have to say you have it almost bang on. The perfect way to advertise your shop. Harmon Ding, by the way, consultant to the retail trade. Consultancy’s quite the big thing in the cities, you know.”