by Garth Nix
The six of them retreated to the piles of the wharf, the huge, ambulatory starfish pressing their attack. With no time to reload, Hereward and the pirates had to hack and cut at them with sword, cutlasses and a boarding axe, and kick away the pieces that still writhed and sought to fasten themselves on their enemies. Within a minute, all of them had minor wounds to their lower legs, where the rough suckers of the starfish’s foul bodies had rasped away clothing and skin.
“Line’s fast!” yelled the bowman, and he launched himself up it, faster than any topman had ever climbed a ratline. Two of the other pirates clashed as they tried to climb together, one kicking the other in the face as he wriggled above. The lower pirate fell and was immediately smothered by a starfish that threw itself over him. Muffled screams came from beneath the writhing, yellow five-armed monster, and the pirate’s feet drummed violently on the ground for several seconds before they stilled.
“Go!” shouted Hereward to the remaining pirate, who needed no urging. She was halfway up the rope as Hereward knelt down, held his sword with both hands and whirled on his heel in a complete circle, the fine edge of his blade slicing through the lower points of half a dozen advancing starfish. As they fell over, Hereward threw his sword up to the wharf, jumped on the back of the starfish that was hunched over the fallen pirate, leaped to the rope and swarmed up it as starfish points tugged at his heels, rasping off the soles of his boots.
The woman pirate handed Hereward his sword as he reached the deck of the wharf. Once again the surviving quartet huddled close to him, eager to stay within the small circle of light provided by his brassard.
“Watch the end of the wharf!” instructed Hereward. He looked over the side. The huge starfish were everywhere below, but they were either unable or unwilling to climb up, so unless a new enemy presented itself there was a chance of some respite.
“She’s gone,” whispered one of his crew.
The Sea-Cat was indeed no longer visible in the tunnel, though there was still a great noise of gunfire, albeit more distant than before.
“The ground rising up has set her aback,” said Hereward. “But Captain Fury will land a reinforcement, I’m sure.”
“There are so many of them evil stars,” whispered the same man.
“They can be shot and cut to pieces,” said Hereward sternly. “We will prevail, have no fear.”
He spoke confidently, but was not so certain himself. Particularly as he could see the pieces of all the cut-up starfish wriggling together into a pile below, joining together to make an even bigger starfish, one that could reach up to the wharf.
“We’ll move back to the quay,” he announced, as two of the five points of the assembling giant starfish below began to flex. “Slow and steady, keep your wits about you.”
The five of them moved back along the wharf in a compact huddle, with weapons facing out, like a hedgehog slowly retreating before a predator. Once on the quay, Hereward ordered them to reload, but they had all dropped their pistols, and Hereward had lost one of his pair. He gave his remaining gun to the gold-toothed pirate.
“There are stone houses above,” he said, gesturing into the dark. “If we must retreat, we shall find a defensible position there.”
“Why wait? Let’s get behind some walls now.”
“We wait for Captain Fury and the others,” said Hereward. “They’ll be here any—”
The crack of a small gun drowned out his voice. It was followed a second later by a brilliant flash that lit up the whole cavern and then hard on the heels of the flash came a blinding horizontal bolt of forked lightning that spread across the whole harbour floor, branching into hundreds of lesser jolts that connected with the starfish in a crazed pattern of blue-white sparks.
A strong, nauseatingly powerful stench of salt and rotted meat washed across the pirates on the quay as the darkness returned. Hereward blinked several times and swallowed to try and clear his ears, but neither effort really worked. He knew from experience that both sight and sound would return in a few minutes, and he also knew that the explosion and lightning could only be the work of Mister Fitz. Nevertheless he had an anxious few minutes till he could see enough to make out the fuzzy globes that must be lanterns held by approaching friendly forces, and hear his fellows well enough to know that he would also hear any enemy on the wharf or quay.
“It’s the captain!” cried a pirate. “She’s done those stars in.”
The starfish had certainly been dealt a savage blow. Fury and Fitz and a column of lantern-bearing pirates were making their way through a charnel field of thousands of pieces of starfish meat, few of them bigger than a man’s fist.
But as the pirates advanced, the starfish pieces began to move, pallid horrors wriggling across the stony ground, melding with other pieces to form more mobile gobbets of invertebrate flesh, all of them moving to a central rendezvous somewhere beyond the illumination of the lanterns.
Hereward did not pause to wonder exactly what these disgusting starfish remnants were going to do in the darker reaches of the harbour. He ran along the wharf and took Fitz’s hand, helping the puppet to climb the boarding nets that Fury’s crew were throwing up. Before Fitz was on his feet, pirates raced past them both, talking excitedly of treasure, the starfish foe forgotten. Hereward’s own boat crew, who might have more reason than most to be more thoughtful, had already been absorbed into this flood of looters.
“The starfish are growing back,” said Hereward urgently, as he palmed off a too-eager pirate who nearly trod on Fitz.
“Not exactly,” corrected Fitz. “Forjill-Um-Uthrux is manifesting itself more completely here. It will use its starfish minions to craft a physical shape. And possibly more importantly—”
“Captain Suresword!” cried Fury, clapping him on the back. Her eyes were bright, there were several dark spots on her face and her ears were long and furred, but she evidently had managed to halt or slow the full transformation. “On to the treasure!”
She laughed and ran past him, with many pirates behind her. Up ahead, the sound of ancient doors being knocked down was already being replaced by gleeful and astonished cries as many hundredweight of loose gold and silver coinage poured out around the looter’s thighs.
“More importantly perhaps, Um-Uthrux is doing something to manipulate the sea,” continued Fitz. “It has tilted the harbour floor significantly and I can perceive energistic tendrils extending well beyond this island. I fear it raising the tide ahead of time and with it—”
“The eagre,” said Hereward. “Do we have time to get out?”
“No,” said Fitz. “It will be at the mouth of the gorge within minutes. We must swiftly deal with Um-Uthrux and then take refuge in one of the upper buildings, the strongest possible, where I will spin us a bubble of air.”
“How big a bubble?” asked Hereward, as he took a rapid glance around. There were lanterns bobbing all around the slope above the quay, and it looked like all two hundred odd of Fury’s crew were in amongst the Scholar-Pirates’ buildings.
“A single room, sufficient for a dozen mortals,” said Fitz. “Ah, Um-Uthrux has made its host. Please gather as many pirates as you can to fire on it, Hereward. I will require some full minutes of preparation.”
The puppet began to take off his bandanna and Hereward shielded his face with his hand. A terrible, harsh light filled the cavern as Fitz removed an esoteric needle that had been glued to his head, the light fading as he closed his hand around it. Any mortal that dared to hold such a needle unprotected would no longer have hand or arm, but Fitz had been specifically made to deal with such things.
In the brief flash of light, Hereward saw a truly giant starfish beginning to stand on its lower points. It was sixty feet wide and at least that tall, and was not pale yellow like its lesser predecessors, but a virulent colour like infected pus, and its broad surface was covered not in a rasping, lumpy structure of tiny suckers but in hundreds of foot-wide puckered mouths that were lined with sharp teeth.
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br /> “Fury!” roared Hereward as he sprinted back along the wharf, ignoring the splinters in his now bare feet, his ruined boots flapping about his ankles. “Fury! Sea-Cats! To arms, to arms!”
He kept shouting, but he could not see Fury, and the pirates in sight were gold-drunk, bathing uproariously in piles of coin and articles of virtu that had spilled out of the broken treasure houses and into the cobbled streets between the buildings.
“To arms! The enemy!” Hereward shouted again. He ran to the nearest knot of pirates and dragged one away from a huge gold-chased silver cup that was near as big as he was. “Form line on the quay!”
The pirate shrugged him off and clutched his cup.
“It’s mine!” he yelled. “You’ll not have it!”
“I don’t want it!” roared Hereward. He pointed back at the harbour. “The enemy! Look, you fools!”
The nearer pirates stared at him blankly. Hereward turned and saw . . . nothing but darkness.
“Fitz! Light the cursed monster up!”
He was answered by a blinding surge of violet light that shot from the wharf and washed across the giant starfish, which was now completely upright and lifting one point to march forwards.
There was silence for several seconds, the silence of the shocked. Then a calm, carrying voice snatched order from the closing jaws of incipient panic.
“Sea-Cats! First division form line on the quay, right of the wharf! Second to load behind them! Move, you knaves! The loot will wait!”
Fury emerged from behind a building, a necklace of gold and yellow diamonds around her neck. She marched to Hereward and placed her arm through his, and together they walked to the quay as if they had not a care in the world, while pirates ran past them.
“You have not become a leoparde,” said Hereward. He spoke calmly but he couldn’t help but look up at the manifested godlet. Like the smaller starfish, it was becoming quicker with every movement, and Fitz stood alone before it on the end of the wharf. There was a nimbus of sorcerous light around the puppet, indicating that he was working busily with one or more energistic needles, either stitching something otherworldly together or unpicking some aspect of what was commonly considered to be reality.
“Cold things from the sea, no matter their size, do not arouse my ire,” replied Fury. “Or perhaps it is the absence of red blood . . . Stand ready!”
The last words were for the hundred pirates who stood in line along the quay, sporting a wide array of muskets, musketoons, blunderbusses, pistols and even some crossbows. Behind them, the second division knelt with their own firearms ready to pass on, and the necessaries for reloading laid out at their feet.
“Fire!” shouted Fury. A ragged volley rang out and a cloud of blue smoke rolled back across Hereward and drifted up towards the treasure houses. Many shots struck home, but their effect was much less than on the smaller starfish, with no visible holes being torn in the strange stuff of Um-Uthrux.
“Firsts, fire as you will!” called Fury. “Seconds, reload!”
Though the shots appeared to have no affect, the frantic movement of the pirates shooting and reloading did attract Um-Uthrux’s attention. It swiveled and took a step towards the quay, one huge point crashing down on the middle wharf to the left of Mister Fitz. Rather than pulling the point out of the wreckage it just pushed it forward, timber flying as it bulled its way to the quay. Then with one sweep of a middle point, it swept up a dozen pirates and, rolling the point to form a tight circle, held them while its many mouths went to work.
“Fire and fall back!” shouted Fury. “Fire and fall back!”
She fired a long-barrelled pistol herself, but it too had no effect. Um-Uthrux seized several more pirates as they tried to flee, wrapping around them, bones and bloody fragments falling upon shocked companions who were snatched up themselves by another point seconds later.
Hereward and Fury ran back to the corner of one of the treasure houses. Hereward tripped over a golden salt-boat and a pile of coins and would have fallen, had not Fury dragged him on even as the tip of a starfish point crashed down where he had been, flattening the masterwork of some long-forgotten goldsmith.
“Your sorcerer-puppet had best do something,” said Fury.
“He will,” panted Hereward. But he could not see Fitz, and Um-Uthrux was now bending over the quay with its central torso as well as its points, so its reach would be greater. The quay was crumbling under its assault, and the stones were awash with the blood of many pirates. “We must go higher up!”
“Back Sea-Cats!” shouted Fury. “Higher up!”
The treasure house that had sheltered them was pounded into dust and fragments as they struggled up the steep, cobbled street. Panicked pirates streamed past them, most without their useless weapons. There was no screaming now, just the groans and panting of the tired and wounded, and the sobbing of those whose nerve was entirely gone.
Hereward pointed to a door at the very top of the street. It had already been broken in by some pirate, but the building’s front appeared to be a mere façade built over a chamber dug into the island itself, and so would be stronger than any other.
“In there!” he shouted, but the pirates were running down the side alleys as one of Um-Uthrux’s points slammed down directly behind, sending bricks, masonry and treasure in all directions. Hereward pushed Fury towards the door, and turned back to see if he could see Fitz.
But there was only the vast starfish in view. It had slid its lower body up on to the quay and was reaching forth with three of its points, each as large as an angled artillery bastion. First it brought them down to smash the buildings, then it used the fine ends to pluck out any pirates, like an anteater digging out its lunch.
“Fitz!” shouted Hereward. “Fitz!”
One of Um-Uthrux’s points rose up, high above Hereward. He stepped back, then stopped as the godlet suddenly reared back, its upper points writhing in the air and lower points staggering. A tiny, glowing hole appeared in its middle, and grew larger. The godlet lurched back still farther and reached down with its points, clawing at itself as the glowing void in its guts yawned wider still. Then, with a crack that rocked the cavern and knocked Hereward over again, the giant starfish’s points were sucked through the hole, it turned inside out and the hole closed taking with it all evidence of Um-Uthrux’s existence upon the earth and with it most of the light.
“Your puppet has done well,” said Fury. “Though I perceive it is called Fitz and not Farolio.”
“Yes,” said Hereward. He did not look at her, but waved his arm, the brassard leaving a luminous trail in the air. “Fitz! To me!”
“It has become a bloody affair after all,” said Fury. Her voice was a growl and now Hereward did look. Fury still stood on two legs, but she had grown taller and her proportions had changed. Her skin had become spotted fur, and her skull transformed, her jaw thrust out to contain savage teeth, including two incisors as long as Hereward’s thumbs. Long curved nails sprouted from her rounded hands, her eyes had become bright with a predatory gleam, and a tail whisked the ground behind.
“Fury,” said Hereward. He looked straight at her and did not back away. “We have won. The fight is done.”
“I told you that I ate my enemies,” said Fury huskily. Her tail twitched and she bobbed her head in a manner no human neck could mimic. Hereward could barely understand her, human speech almost lost in growls and snarls.
“You did not tell me your name, or your true purpose.”
“My name is Hereward,” said Hereward, and he raised his open hands. If she attacked, his only chance would be to grip her neck and break it before those teeth and nails did mortal damage. “I am not your enemy.”
Fury growled, speech entirely gone, and began to crouch.
“Fury! I am not your—”
The leoparde sprang. He caught her on his forearms and felt the nails rake his skin. Fending her off with his left hand, he seized hold of the necklace of yellow diamonds with his right and
twisted it hard to cut off her air. But before he could apply much pressure, the beast gave a sudden, human gasp, strange and sad from that bestial jaw. The leoparde’s bright eyes dulled as if by sea-mist, and Hereward felt the full weight of the animal in his hands.
The necklace broke, scattering diamonds, as the beast slid down Hereward’s chest. Fitz rode on the creature’s shoulders all the way down, before he withdrew the stiletto that he had thrust with inhuman strength up through the nape of her neck into her brain.
Hereward closed his hand on the last diamond. He held it just for a second, before he let that too slip through his fingers.
“Inside!” called Fitz, and the puppet was at his companion’s knees, pushing Hereward through the door. The knight fell over the threshold as Fitz turned and gestured with an esoteric needle, threads of blinding white whipping about faster than any weaver’s shuttle.
His work was barely done before the wave hit. The ground shook and the sorcerous bubble of air bounced to the ceiling and back several times, tumbling Hereward and Fitz over in a mad crush. Then as rapidly as it had come, the wave receded.
Fitz undid the bubble with a deft twitch of his needle and cupped it in his hand. Hereward lay back on the sodden floor and groaned. Blood trickled down his shredded sleeves, bruises he had not even suspected till now made themselves felt, and his feet were unbelievably sore.
Fitz crouched over him and inspected his arms.
“Scratches,” he proclaimed. He carefully put the esoteric needle away inside his jerkin and took off his bandanna, ripping it in half to bind the wounds. “Bandages will suffice.”
When the puppet was finished, Hereward sat up. He cupped his face in his hands for a second, but his burned palms made him wince and drop them again.
“We have perhaps six hours to gather materials, construct a raft and make our way out the gorge,” said Fitz. “Presuming the eagre comes again at the usual time, in the absence of Um-Uthrux. We’d best hurry.”
