by Tim Lebbon
Bon nodded and smiled. ‘I’m going for some privacy.’ He turned and stomped away through the snow. The heavy flakes floated like bird down in the motionless air. They were fat and wet, and clung to his clothes, hair and eyelashes. He was swimming through snow. Even though the sun was a smudge above the eastern horizon, visibility was low, and just out of sight there could have been anything. They could be watching me even now, he thought. Though he had not been scared of Skythians up to now, he found the idea disconcerting. Their god had returned. What that might do to a people, he could not know.
He retraced his footprints back to their camp, even though they were already half obliterated, and paused to watch Leki. He liked the way she moved. He found grace in her, and certainty, and even behind her Arcanum training she was still her own person.
Now she was on her knees, and Bon could see the steam valves planted in a square in the snow.
He was across the clearing in four bounds, and he kicked the shoot dust tube from her hands. It scattered dust in lazy spirals as it flipped into the snow, disappearing when it struck the ground. The dust confused the air for a moment – full of snow, open to sunlight. Then the blanket of flakes obscured where it had ever been.
Bon turned to Leki, but she was not there. Splashed with shoot dust? he thought, and then he was shoved in the centre of his back, head snapping back, falling forward onto his chest beside the square of steam valves. He grunted and rolled, kicking up and back blindly and feeling his right foot connect with something soft.
Leki grunted. He looked for her, trying to distinguish movement behind the waves of snow. A shadow shifted to his right, and then Leki darted in from the left, so fast that he could barely track her movements.
Got to twist and roll and stand up before one of us—
Leki sat astride his chest and pushed him down, pressing something cold and sharp against his throat. She stared down at him, lips tight. She did not even seem to be breathing hard. The knife at his throat shifted, and he felt a trickle of warmth down his neck.
‘So kill me,’ Bon said. Leki’s hair hung around her face, and snow fell past her head, into his eyes. She looked like some daemon out of a child’s story book.
For a moment, Bon thought she would do just that. And why not? For all the claims that she had no wish to harm him, she was Arcanum, and loyal to the Ald. Whatever her personal beliefs – and she claimed atheism, though he had his doubts – she had her masters to think of, and obey. And he was obstructing her purpose. Preventing her from sending her message, in which she would have told the approaching Spike army to head north.
But Leki leaned back and sheathed her knife in one smooth motion. Then she stood and hauled Bon up beside her, one-handed, thumping him back down into a sitting position in the snow. She pointed at his face, tilting her head in a warning gesture. No words.
Bon sat still and watched her gather the steam valves. Then she kicked through the snow until she found the shoot dust tube, examined it, tucked it back into her jacket seam.
‘So what now?’ he asked.
‘Now I leave you,’ she said. ‘I have to go south, to meet the Spike as they come inland.’
‘Come with me,’ Bon said. He could sense her surprise at the emotion in his voice. And, in truth, it had surprised him. Not quite pleading, it had been an exhortation to stay with him, because the idea of being parted from Leki sent him into a spin. To watch her leave would tug at his heart. He was convinced that he could never love a servant of the Ald, but she was not like anyone he had ever met.
‘Anywhere near that thing will be dangerous,’ she said.
‘Not if it doesn’t mean harm.’
‘I mean from what will happen when the Engines fire up.’
The idea heavily between them. Snow almost obscured Leki for a moment, then he saw her again. Nothing had changed.
‘Wouldn’t you serve Alderia more by coming to see what it wants?’ he asked. ‘The Ald see only fear and hatred and danger, and they answer with the same. So, run to them with nothing, or come with me and see.’
‘See what?’
‘Perhaps wonders,’ Bon said.
‘I don’t believe in gods. Any gods.’
‘Nor do I. But I believe in things that none of us can understand, and for many that is what makes a god.’
‘Your dead son has blinded you to what’s happening, Bon.’
‘No. My son died years ago, and that is the single thing that opened my eyes.
‘I have to tell them,’ Leki said, but her hesitation was clear.
‘Come with me,’ Bon said again. ‘Not far. I don’t think it’s far.’
‘How do you know?’
He ignored the question. ‘Come with me.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Come, and I’ll tell you.’ And he would.
Leki brushed snow from her jacket, a futile gesture. She retied her hair into a gentle braid, sighing heavily.
‘My husband sails with the Spike,’ she said.
‘Husband.’ Bon’s heart sank.
Leki did not name him, and did not elaborate. But she nodded, and said she would go with him.
They left camp. Bon knew Leki less, and was more fascinated with her, with every moment that passed. The bond between them had changed, but remained unbroken. He was glad they faced this adventure together.
Chapter 16
deep
Sol Merry’s hopes for an easy landing on Skythe were dashed several miles from shore.
In their preparations to sail they had made a point of placing a sailor from the prison ships on board each attack vessel. They’d hoped that such knowledge might enable them to avoid troublesome areas of ocean, where the deep pirates were known to operate and decapuses stalked. And, so far, that idea had worked well. They had sailed a curving route from Alderia, heading in towards Skythe to the east of the main islands of the Duntang Archipelago. Amongst those islands was where the largest, oldest of the deep pirates dwelled, surrounded by evidence of their plunder and the displayed bodies of their many victims. But in the open ocean, spinebacks were the greater danger.
Their navigators had ploughed a careful path through violent seas. The Spike were always at the ready, but as they drew closer to Skythe, Sol could sense the relaxing of guards. We’re not there yet! he’d screamed at his Blade over dinner, and they armed up and went on deck for drills. The deck guns needed easing and greasing, gears and actions being constantly assaulted by the aggressive saltwater, and they unpacked and rewrapped their various hardweaponry. Sol walked amongst them. He commanded respect and loyalty, and he also treated his soldiers as friends while maintaining the distance of command. That afforded him the greatest respect of all.
And then the first shout from the skynest, and the attack began.
Sol had already agreed that should a spineback get amongst the fleet he would cede command of his Blade to the big prison ship sailor Drake for the duration of the assault. As soon as the alert was sounded, Sol nodded to Drake and watched as the man sprang into action.
Shouting orders, dashing back and forth across deck, signalling to the wheelman and the lookout up in the skynest, rushing from one harpoon gun to the next, Drake was a revelation. For the bulk of the journey he had remained a surly drunk, slouching on the steps leading up to the wheelhouse and abusing anyone who came near. He’d instigated several scuffles with Spike soldiers that had left him bloodied and battered. Now, he was a sailor again.
Soldiers strained to see the spineback, a creature of legend to many who had never even seen the sea before this expedition. A little fear, but mostly excitement, thrummed across the ship. But then Drake froze close to the railing, and ran for the mast. As he scrambled quickly up to the skynest, Sol searched for what he had seen.
There was a shape to the west, a wave amongst waves that was cutting the wrong way. Though distant, Sol could already hear the impact of the shape upon the surging sea, and great showers of foamy spray erupted at regula
r intervals.
‘Spineback,’ he muttered. ‘It is. Must be.’
Gallan arrived by his side, shielding his eyes. ‘What’s happening?’
Sol did not reply. Instead he looked up for Drake, and saw the sailor busy signalling with other ships using a rig of coloured flags. His hands moved quickly, flags rose and flapped, fell again, furling and unfurling as if in defiance of the direction and strength of breeze. Then Drake swung over the side of the skynest and slid down a rigging rope, hands moving too fast to see as they went from grip to grip.
‘Something worse than a spineback,’ Sol said. Drake leaped from the rope and slid to a halt a few feet from Sol, a harpoon setting receiving his attention. He was sweating. He looked scared.
‘Drake!’ Sol called.
‘Deep pirate. One of the old ones.’
‘Deep pirate?’ Gallan said. ‘I thought they only hunted in the Archipelago.’
‘In and around,’ Drake said. He dashed to another harpoon mounting and started switching gears, working mechanisms.
‘But you took us this far east to—’ Gallan protested.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Sol cut in, and Drake glanced at him, one eyebrow raised. ‘What do we do?’ Sol asked.
‘Hope it’s alone,’ Drake said.
‘But you’ve fought them before,’ Sol said. ‘Seen them away. You know what to do.’
Drake stood back from the harpoon and nodded to the sailor manning it. He placed his hands on his hips and looked out to sea, where spray clouds threw up smears of rainbow light as the deep pirate made its way towards them.
‘We can inconvenience it,’ he said. ‘A force this size, this many ships, this many harpoons …’ He shrugged, rugged face haunted by fear. ‘We can hope it’s not too determined.’ He looked from Sol to Gallan and back again. ‘Now, will you let me do my job?’
Sol nodded, and Drake darted away across the deck to the next gun.
‘Sparkhawks,’ Gallan said. ‘And if it comes close enough, perhaps we can get some dart worms into it.’
‘I think this is Drake’s fight,’ Sol said. ‘Him and those like him.’
Across the fleet, flag signals were passed back and forth, and then the Spike attack ships turned towards the west, bow-on to the imminent assault. The sound of the sea striking hulls changed, booms swung, sails emptied and billowed again.
The deep pirate’s trail vanished.
‘It’ll come up from deep down!’ Drake called. ‘This bastard’s already carrying a few broken harpoons, I’ll bet.’ He walked back and forth beside the ship’s wooden railing, then froze and pointed across the waves. ‘There.’
Sol could see nothing at first that distinguished one area of ocean from another. Drake was pointing at a ship a quarter of a mile south of them, its strong hull carving at an angle across the waves and booming, booming with each impact. Then he saw that the waves just before it were already breaking, and he could not hold back a gasp as the deep pirate emerged.
Rising straight up from the depths, the shape powered from the sea and seemed to hang for impossible moments in the air, a sculpture of nightmares made real. What Sol had heard about these monsters, and the few images he had seen, meant that he could distinguish the pirate from its mount, though where one began and the other ended was not so clear. The deep pirates rode a range of sea creatures, from red dolphins to much larger animals. This one attacking the Spike fleet rode a decapus. That in itself displayed the pirate’s age, size and standing. And it was almost as large as the decapus, which only added to the surreal horror of the sight.
The pirate had human qualities merged with the worst aspects of the sea. Bare, thick torso spotted with shellfish, a large head with shockingly human features, long flowing hair which was said to consist of poisonous fronds, long limbs that ended in claws ten times larger than the most monstrous crab’s, and thick legs that parted into powerful tentacles, each of them suckered and spiked. Its scale made it even more awful – ten times the size of a human, it was a blight on reality.
The decapus beneath it was a vivid red, its tentacles longer and more deadly, its beak clacking, and its huge eyes reflecting sunlight with an alien regard.
Even from this far away, Sol and everyone else on his ship could hear the monster’s screech.
‘By all the gods, how does something like that come to be?’ Gallan said at Sol’s side. ‘A creature from the Pit, for sure.’
‘It’s no Pit creature,’ Sol said. ‘Just another challenge from the gods.’
Several gusts of steam drifted up from the pirate’s target as harpoons were fired. Their impacts went unseen. The vessel lurched across a wavetop and the decapus curled its tentacles up around the bow, the pirate climbing its back and clamping around its head with its own limbs. The deep pirate screeched again, and then lurched sideward with surprising grace as another weapon was discharged, dodging the harpoon.
The pirate lashed with its arms, and something on the ship’s deck came apart in a spray of red. It climbed higher, angling itself so that some of its tentacles could unfurl and reach across the ship. It plucked two struggling shapes away and backed down again.
‘Poor bastards,’ Gallan muttered at Sol’s side.
‘They’ll fight all the way,’ Sol said, because he could make out the pale leather of Spike soldiers. But whatever fight the deep pirate’s victims had in them was meaningless. A glistening flap opened on the decapus’s flank and the pirate dropped the unfortunate soldiers inside, then slipped back down its mount’s back and sank quickly from view.
The ship fired several more harpoons at where the pirate had disappeared, but already the sea’s surface had returned to normal.
‘Drake?’ Sol asked.
‘Easy pickings,’ Drake said. He scanned the sea’s surface, eyes sharp, concentrating. ‘It won’t be leaving too soon.’
Sol looked from one ship to another, wondering which would be next. Perhaps it would be them. He closed his eyes, imagining the fate of the two soldiers plucked from the vessel and dropped into the decapus’s insides. But they were beyond anyone’s help now. They would be remembered, and their families honoured.
‘I want it killed,’ Sol said.
Drake snorted, still watching the sea.
‘Everything can be killed,’ Sol said, angry. ‘And this is why you came.’
‘It’s old,’ Drake said. ‘That one, maybe four hundred years. It will have started young, maybe the size of me. Amphibious. Perhaps with a bit of humanity left over from its ancestors, perhaps not, but that will have quickly been erased by the waters of the Forsaken Sea. It probably hunted close to the Duntang islands to begin with, keeping to the shallows. As time went on, the deeper sea became its domain. It’ll make its nest where it always has, and that island will be its own. Skeletons, there. Skulls. Thousands.’ Drake glanced back at Sol, but only briefly. ‘It’ll add some more today.’
‘It’s a living, breathing thing,’ Sol said.
‘A travesty against the gods,’ Gallan said.
‘And yet allowed by them,’ Drake said, smiling humourlessly.
Sol glared at Drake, but the fear he saw in the sailor’s eyes was not for him. ‘I want it killed.’
Drake’s expression changed, the grim smile dropping. ‘Here’s your chance.’
Closing on Sol’s ship, a trail across the waves quickly became a grey shape breaking water, riding something red, with trailing tentacles and wet hair flicking poison at the sky.
The decapus struck amidships, the pirate screeched, and the fight began.
Throughout the battle, Sol could not help dwelling on what Gallan had said – that this was a creature of the Pit. While the decapus gnawed at the hull and flailed with tentacles not used to clamp it to the ship, the grotesquely huge pirate reared up to deck level and screamed its terrible, blood-freezing roar of fury. Its face was barnacled ugliness. Its large eyes were horribly human, pupils a deep black, surrounds a piercing green, and it blinked a leathery
film across its eyes each time a harpoon was fired at it or a Spike soldier dashed in with a spear or fired an arrow. Its hide must have been incredibly thick to withstand such attacks – it twisted to deflect harpoons, and arrows ricocheted from its body – and Sol spied several old wounds that had turned to knotted scar tissue. Some of them still held the broken ends of harpoons, worn smooth over time. Rifles were fired, steam drifted, shot impacted and puckered its hide, or bounced off to embed itself in mast or sail.
The pirate dribbled and slavered, long teeth scoring across the deck as it took a bite from a sailor it had snapped almost in half with one of its huge claws. The man screamed as the pirate chewed at his exposed stomach, and Sol pulled his pistol and shot the man in the top of his head.
More harpoons, and two penetrated close to the pirate’s neck. It roared and shook its head, long hair flailing across the deck. Another sailor screamed, hands pressed to his bubbling face. The beast’s trailing hair scorched intricate patterns in wood and flesh alike.
As the pirate retreated at last, one of its flailing tentacles clasped Drake around the hips. He cried out and threw himself to the deck, grabbing onto a wooden hatchway, nails scoring the deck, timber and nails splintering as the pirate dropped towards the sea. The tentacle squeezed until Drake’s scream of terror was crushed to a soundless gasp.
Sol and the others tried to save him. A creature of the Pit, for sure, Gallan had said, and as Sol slashed into a decapus tentacle, ducked closer to attack, and locked eyes with the pirate, he did have to wonder as he almost shrivelled beneath the thing’s glare.
Then the terrible pair were gone, disappearing over the side and beneath the waves with an enormous splash. The last Sol saw of Drake, he had a knife in his hand and was struggling against the monster’s grasp to open his own throat.
Sol hoped that, inside the belly of the beast, he might succeed.
Three more ships were attacked before the pirate disappeared beneath the waves for the last time. No one pretended that they had killed it, but the bloodstains upon the ocean were plain to see.
