Thief of the Ancients

by Mike Wild

  It was Redigor. Fists burning, the Pale Lord was frying his own people, any and all of them who tried to clamber onto the objects out of turn or objected to the fact that they seemed not to have a place there. For these, their desperation to escape the doomed ship overrode their fear of their leader, but it was a bad choice, a fatal choice.

  What disturbed Kali the most about it was that Redigor smiled as he so casually doled out their deaths.

  No, that wasn’t quite true – what disturbed her most was why Redigor was favouring the hostages over his own people. If he was so intent on saving them and taking them with him, surely that suggested they had a purpose that went beyond their being hostages or simple prisoners. But what?

  The ship twisted again and groaned beneath her, louder than ever before, and Kali knew it could not take the stress it was suffering for much longer. As waves crashed about her and parts of the ship’s superstructure broke away to crash onto the deck, she moved closer to the desperate gathering, keeping to cover, trying to see if there was any way that she herself could find her way onto one of the mysterious objects of salvation.

  There was none, however, and she could only look on as the objects revealed themselves fully. Groups of Redigor’s people – the hostages scattered amongst them – were positioned beside each of the ‘cigars’ and, now that Kali could see more clearly, she watched as each in turn began to unfold, transforming from their original shapes into something quite different.

  Kali knew immediately what she looking at – flutterbys. The deceptively charming name for elven troop carriers. Triangular shaped wings extended from the objects’ sides, retractable blades from their tops, and, from the main bodies of the objects, riding platforms in the form of interlacing metal struts on which passengers were clearly meant to stand. The flutterbys fully deployed, they sat on the deck of the ship like a swarm of giant insects.

  Impressive, Kali thought. They looked original, too, and she reflected that while she had never physically come across one, Bastian Redigor clearly knew where to look.

  The flutterbys were filling up now, but there remained far too many people to be accommodated by them. But, as before, Redigor was ensuring that the numbers became more manageable in his own, inimitable fashion. The whole group fell into chaos as more of his own men died thrashing and screaming, and Kali thought it the ideal moment to make a dash for one of the machines to guarantee her own passage off the sinking ship.

  But she paused. The balance of numbers between Redigor’s people and his hostages was favouring the latter now, and for her to take a place in one of the pods meant one of the hostages would not make it, and she couldn’t condemn them that way. Of everyone on board, with the possible exception of Redigor himself, she was the one most physically capable of surviving the ship going down, even if she didn’t yet know how she was going to manage it.

  She was sure something would pop up. It always did. But it was going to be one hells of a rough ride.

  The last flutterby being boarded, now, Kali bit her lip as she watched Redigor and his personal retinue, accompanying the last of the hostages, step into position. Just as the last, a man whom she’d swear she’d last seen as one of the press-ganged, stepped onto his foothold, he turned and spotted her hiding behind her cover. For a second their eyes met and Kali wondered if he would reveal her presence to Redigor. He did nothing, however, apart from nod as if wishing her luck.

  She was going to need it. As the flutterby rose from the deck, turning in a sweeping circle to head towards the island, the ship groaned beneath her as if poisoned to its core.

  Suddenly the whole of the stern, where the flutterbys had been, began to break away from the hull, a rift opening from below decks that spread upwards until it began to tear the deck itself asunder. As decking warped, popped and tore under her, revealing the equally torn lower decks spilling their contents into the sea, Kali joined those few of the Faith whom Redigor had left behind alive in running towards the bow and relative safety. That they had such commonality of purpose made it all the more irksome when one of them – clearly acting above and beyond the call of duty – grabbed her and demanded to know what she was doing there. She flattened the idiot and threw him over the side.

  The deck buckled as she and the others continued to run, sending a wave of wood and metal nipping at their heels, but while it caught up to and brought down a number of the Faith, Kali herself leapt for the safety of a handrail to one of the upper decks. It provided only a brief respite from the surging destruction below, however, and a few seconds after grabbing onto it, it, too, buckled and fell.

  Kali cursed. The first time in her life she had been on a sinking ship and it didn’t even have the decency to sink properly, which was to say slowly and languorously beneath the waves. At least then she might have had a chance to formulate some kind of plan, perhaps even grab a drink and sing a rousing song or two as the sea proceeded inexorably towards her feet. But no – the increasing stresses from the swirlpools all around were tearing the ship apart, and the screams, rather than songs, that came from all around her reflected that fact.

  A scream from one Faith as the deck suddenly opened and then closed again beneath him, cutting him in two at the waist. A scream from another as a stanchion broke from its mooring and decapitated him instantly if not cleanly. A scream from a third as the deck rail against which he hoped to gain respite broke away, plunging him into the maelstrom below.

  Screams. Screams everywhere.

  And then, just like that, the ship broke cleanly in two. The hull finally gave way to its stresses and parted right in front of her, bringing Kali to a skidding halt. She was suddenly surrounded, overtaken, by screaming, flailing forms as the Faith who had been following in her wake flung themselves desperately across the widening gap. One or two reached the opposite section of deck cleanly, somersaulting and continuing to run, some didn’t quite make it, gaining precarious handholds and dangling desperately from struts exposed by the rent, while still others missed their mark completely and plunged into the churning mass of hull and water that waited beneath.

  Kali didn’t know what had made her halt in her tracks but the decision had proven to be the right one. The irony was that what they all – herself included – had thought to be the safer half of the sinking ship was not that at all. The final battering that had broken the ship’s back had been caused by the confluence of two massive swirlpools challenging each other for their prize, and as Kali watched the bow of the ship was immediately taken by one, while the stern was swept away by the other. As the distance between the two halves of the ship grew, the stern section a quarter of the way around the periphery now and receding all the while, the bow was already being pulled directly into the heart of the furthest maelstrom. She could see the figures of the Faith who had made it across realising their situation and flinging themselves off the sinking ship into the water, but this was the worst thing they could have done, serving only to accelerate their deaths as their tiny forms were sucked beneath the surface in advance of the much larger wreck. Not that they would have survived that much longer, because the bow of the ship was already tipping forwards as it succumbed to the terrible forces in which it was snared, and only a few seconds later it sank beneath the waves.

  Kali turned to look about her, and realised she on her own now. As the stern half of the ship listed beneath her, she was sent tumbling across the deck to its far rail, so that once again she was staring directly into the hungry sea. The list was only the result of the ship finding its natural position, however, and as it began to circle the sloping rim of the swirlpool she would, had it not been for the deafening roar of the chaotic sea, have found it almost relaxing, like being the sole passenger on some weird carousel.

  But there was only one way this ride was going to end, and as the stern section spiralled gradually but inexorably ever deeper into the giant, watery crater, Kali bit her lip, deep in thought. One by one she assessed the circumstances of her situation – sinki
ng ship, swirlpool, middle of the ocean a long, long way from home – and it didn’t take her long to reach a summation of her predicament.

  Farked. She was farked. All she could do was ensure that as the stern section began to sink she stayed as far from the all consuming water as she could, and when she could do that no longer… well, she was just going to have to make it up as she went along.

  Round and round the wreckage went. And down and down. Its descent into oblivion more gradual but no less inevitable than that of the bow. Kali was backing up in what remaining space she had, the churning surface of the swirlpool literally lapping at her feet, when something burst through the surface of the water some hundred yards away.

  It was some kind of machine that sped towards her, pumping the discoloured sea through membranes that seemed to drive its solid and barnacle covered frame forward. She didn’t have the remotest idea of what it was but she did know who was sitting in what could only be the driver’s seat.

  Jerragrim Brundle grunted as, with the whine of some unknown engine, the strange machine slewed up onto the deck and skidded halt beside her. It still pumped out the water it had used for propulsion. Its streamlined shape was etched with dwarven runes and, though simple, its controls were far more complex than anything anyone on the peninsula could produce. Kali grinned. This was the aquatic equivalent of the mole machine she had found many months before, and she wanted one. Hells, did she want one.

  “Are you gonna continue grinning like a loon or are yer gonna jump aboard?” Brundle demanded. He flicked his head toward the water. “Cos if yer haven’t noticed, we don’t have a lot of time.”

  Kali slammed her hands on her hips. “Oh, so now it’s all rush. Just where the hells have you been for the past two weeks?”

  “Close by, smoothskin. Close by.”

  The dwarf looked down.

  And Kali looked at the machine. She noticed that some kind of breathing tube protruded from its control panel. There appeared to be one for a passenger, too. “Are you telling me that this thing’s been attached to the hull all this time?”

  “As tight as the piles up me arse.”

  Kali pulled a face. “How did I know you were going to say something like that? Couldn’t you have just said ‘limpet’?”

  “Why?”

  “Because… oh, never mind.”

  The waters began to slosh and slap over them, threatening to wash the machine off the deck. The last remains of the ship tipped dangerously as it began to be pulled down to the heart of the swirlpool.

  “Are you coming, or what?” Brundle asked with some urgency.

  “What do you call this thing, anyway?” Kali asked as she settled herself into the space for a second rider.

  “Scuttlebarge. Now hang on.”

  Whatever response Kali might have had emerged only as a startled yelp as Brundle slung the scuttle barge around and, with a roar of its engine, it shot nose first into the churning sea. Kali scrabbled for the breathing tube, convinced that it was simply going to slip right beneath the waves but, as soon as it was waterborne, the membranes that pumped the water rotated in their housings so that they pointed straight down, and the machine gained its buoyancy on the surface with the force of their thrust. They didn’t remain there once their job was done, however, rotating once more into a position half way between the two, and with a kick that threw Kali back in her seat the scuttlebarge began to skip across the sea.

  To say that it was a bumpy ride would be an understatement. But Brundle appeared to be an expert pilot. Despite being continuously slapped and drenched by waves, more than one of which threatened to knock her overboard, forcing her to hold on tighter, Kali couldn’t help but be impressed by the way the dwarf handled the scuttlebarge, playing the tumultuous surface of the sea with practiced ease, going with the flow here, using it to gain momentum there, never once hesitant as he threw the machine into each new manoeuvre.

  The one thing that did come as a surprise – and caused a small lurch of shock – to Kali was that rather than piloting the strange craft to avoid any swirlpools in their path, Brundle aimed it straight for them. What appeared to be a suicidal ploy was nothing of the kind, however, as at the very last second on approaching the first of the maws, Brundle veered the scuttlebarge to starboard so that rather than heading right into the swirling water it skirted its rim, using the power of the swirlpool to carry them around the maw. Once on its other side, Brundle gunned the pumps of the craft so that they flipped over the crest of the maelstrom and then immediately flung her around so that they were carried along in the rim of another, this one swirling in the opposite direction. After successfully achieving this a couple more times, it became clear to Kali what it was he was doing – using the coriolis effect of the swirlpools to catapult the scuttlebarge between them. It could not have been the first time he had attempted such a task.

  But what lay ahead of them might not prove such an easy task.

  Roaring with a sound that drowned out of all its compatriots, out of all the swirlpools that surrounded Trass Kathra, this was the daddy of them all.

  “You might want to use that tube now!” Brundle warned, and even as Kali fitted it tightly into her mouth, the pumps to the rear of the scuttlebarge rotated so that they were pointing upwards, forcing the machine beneath the waves. Everything was replaced by the turmoil of grey water, and all that Kali could make out was Brundle’s beard, previously in danger of slapping, with all its bells, into her face, floating about her.

  The reason Brundle had submerged had already become clear to Kali. Even with his expertise there was no way he could have negotiated the sheer power and violence of this swirlpool on the surface, but here, under the water, things were just that little bit calmer, even if it did still appear as a maelstrom from the hells. Brundle used the same technique he had above, riding the scuttlebarge into the outer edge of the underwater spiral and then allowing it to carry them around, to what would hopefully be calm on its other side. There was, however, something different about the swirlpool down here – caught up in the churning waters were patches of a whiter substance, still liquid but slightly more viscous than the surrounding element, which moved within it and yet not with it. Whatever the stuff was, it was clearly not simple seawater, and Kali noticed that Brundle put all of his effort into grimly and steadfastly avoiding it.

  Dark shapes bounced around the scuttlebarge, and as the currents brought one of them smack bang into Kali’s face, fleetingly revealing a horrified though quite dead visage whose lips had pulled back from its teeth, she realised they had hit a pocket of drowned men from the ship. A couple of the bodies bumped against the side of the scuttlebarge, forcing Brundle to correct his course slightly, but then, thankfully, they were through the cluster of dead. Kali couldn’t help but turn to look behind her as they passed, however, and for the briefest of moments thought she saw one of the bodies caught up in the whiter substance whose nature she still knew nothing about. All she knew was that she was glad Brundle had managed to avoid it, because, as it touched the drowned Final Faith, his whole body seemed simply to drift apart.

  What the hells? Kali thought.

  The scuttlebarge began to rise, and Kali realised Brundle was returning it to the surface, using the last of the power of the swirlpool to throw them beyond its influence into calmer waters. They should, now, be nearing the island, she calculated, and, sure enough, as the machine lurched above the surface, slewing water from its barnacled frame, the coastline of Trass Kathra was right ahead of her.

  Oh gods.

  The island was not so much an island as a mountain in the middle of the sea, and built into its shadow and into its sides were structures so ancient and overgrown they’d come to resemble the rocks themselves. Accessed by a precipitous network of carved steps that led up from a small cove on the shoreline – what, perhaps, had once been a landing point – Kali saw strange bunkers and metal towers, many of these collapsed and bent at unnatural angles, a couple of carapaced stru
ctures that looked as if they might be some kind of warehouse, and numerous other, oddly shaped buildings whose purpose she couldn’t even begin to guess at. Dominating them all, though, was the most impressive looking structure of them all. Almost at the island’s highest point, on the slope of a great, thrusting clifftop, was what appeared to be a huge observatory dome.

  Kali’s mouth dropped open. Out here, far beyond the known world, where nothing at all should be, was the work of those whose secrets she’d spent a lifetime exploring.

  An Old Race outpost.

  She couldn’t wait to set foot on those steps.

  Disappointingly, however, Brundle wasn’t piloting the scuttlebarge towards the cove but keeping an equidistant course along its coast. If they continued the way they were, they would leave the steps far behind and round the island’s farthest point.

  She tapped the dwarf on the shoulder, shouting above the noise of breakers on rocks.

  “What the hells are you doing?”

  “We’re not landing here, smoothskin,” Brundle responded. “Too dangerous.”

  Kali frowned. She looked back towards the cove and saw what her enthusiasm had denied her seeing before. The cove was filled with the grounded flutterbys from the Black Ship. And though she saw many of the guards and their prisoners snaking their way up the steps to whatever destination Redigor had in mind, others of his landing party – prisoners and guards – remained behind. A number of the guards having positioned themselves as sentries on the steps, there was no way they would get past them.

  “Oh, and one more thing,” Brundle shouted over his shoulder. “Yer got the name o’ the place wrong. People always get it wrong. It ain’t Trass Kathra, the Island of the Lost. It’s Trass Kattra... the Island of the Four.”

  Kali almost fell off the scuttlebarge.