In the display room they didn’t bother with the ramp or attempt the slippery statue Aedan had used earlier; instead they hoisted Lorrimer up on their shoulders and then climbed a short rope he lowered for them. After the hours they had spent in the training hall, this was a simple feat.
Aedan made sure everyone was properly awake before proceeding down the treacherous stairs. They all carried their dark lanterns unlit, except for Aedan who kept his trimmed low, so the group moved in near-blackness and in silence disrupted only by the brushing of cloth and the slapping of Lorrimer’s big feet.
“Can’t you put those things down more softly?” Peashot whispered.
“What things?” Clack, clack, clack …
“Your boots. You sound like you’ve got hammers strapped to your ankles. Why didn’t you come barefoot? Aedan’s barefoot.”
“Aedan’s mad. Have you tried –”
“Hush you two,” said Aedan. “I think I see …”
The light peeping from under an entrance ahead suddenly burst out and flooded a section of the passage as the door swung open. Aedan snapped the shutter closed on his lantern and crouched against the wall as the others dropped down behind him.
Two cleaners with mops and buckets stepped into the passage. Aedan prepared to run as he watched their movements. While one of the men held the lamp, the other struggled with a key in the lock, dividing his concentration between what he was doing and saying.
“But like I says, Mik, them folks what lives out east is going to have a rough time if it’s true. We got our walls and our army. What they got? Bunch o’ wooden fences and hay forks. I’m telling you like I’ve told you before, you get her a nice job here in the city and she can stay with my sister until you’ve got enough to get married. Don’t you be leaving her out there with these whispers of a Fenn invasion. You won’t be able to turn the days back if it happens.”
In the silence that followed, the lock in the door finally yielded with a rusty scrape and a click. The second cleaner handed over the broom he’d been holding, and to Aedan’s relief, the men turned away and headed further down the passage while the conversation resumed.
“She already moved last year from Eymnoer. Slavers pretending to be merchants from Tullenroe hit the town, she says. Hit it bad. Now she says the further east, the better …”
By this stage the talk was all echoes, too indistinct to follow. The cleaners unlocked another door in the distance, stepped inside and closed it behind them, dropping the passage into blackness. Aedan opened his lamp and moved off, the others following.
Clack, clack, clack …
They hurried along, passing the door to the weapons and training halls, and continued until they reached a split.
“I’ve never been here,” said Peashot.
The others echoed him and wanted to know how far the passages went.
“This is only the beginning,” said Aedan. “I think there’s more under the ground of the academy than above it.”
He took the left turn. After fifty yards they reached another split and turned left again. Even in the dim light it was clear that this passage was different, older. The pale stone that had lined the walls had given way to coarse-grained reddish blocks that were roughly placed. The smooth flagstones were gone and they walked now on uneven blocks that had deep and sometimes wide fissures between them. It wasn’t long before Lorrimer caught his toe and swooped to ground with a crunch of his lantern. It was a good thing it wasn’t lit because oil gushed out over the blocks and soaked most of his shirt.
“Haven’t you learned to lift your feet over uneven ground?” Peashot complained while helping Lorrimer up.
“I was keeping them low to be stealthy, so you would stop yakking about the noise.”
“It didn’t work.”
“Quiet,” Aedan hissed. “There are night staff in this section too.”
They moved on. The air was colder here, the walls closer, and there was a forgotten smell of earth and damp and darkness. A few doors were set in the walls, deeply recessed. The wood was black with age, as if all colour had been leached from it during the long, silent years.
Hadley whistled quietly. “It’s enormous down here. We must be near the edge of the academy by now.”
“I don’t think we’re under the academy anymore,” said Aedan. “I have a hunch some of these passages might lead as far as the city walls, maybe even beyond.”
He stopped at a doorway on his right that turned out to be a very narrow corridor.
“Better light your lanterns now,” he said.
Using a splint, they transferred his flame to the other wicks. When all but Lorrimer had a lantern, Aedan handed the tall boy his, then moved into the dark opening, asking Lorrimer to hold the light up behind him.
“Careful here,” he whispered. “Watch the ground. It’s collapsed in places. Keep your feet to the outside.”
“Is he mad?” Vayle asked as Aedan scuttled away down the shaft.
“Took you a while to notice,” Lorrimer mumbled.
Aedan stopped a few feet before an iron grille that barred the way.
“Well?” Hadley asked when he came to a stop.
Aedan leaned to the side so Hadley could see, and pointed ahead at the floor, or rather, he pointed to where the floor should have been. A black void swallowed the ground. There was nothing to step on. No way to proceed.
“But we can’t –”
Aedan had braced his back against one wall and his feet against the other and started edging his way down through the hole into the darkness beneath. Hadley leaned forward as far as he dared and held out his lamp. It was twenty feet down to another tiny passage, only that the lower one had a floor. He made no comment, simply copied Aedan. Lorrimer and Vayle had a different reaction. They exchange thoughts freely and several words drifted down, mostly colourful variants of idiotic, irresponsible and insane.
It was a while before Lorrimer, breathing hard, lamp handle clasped in his teeth and spit dribbling off his chin, touched the ground. Aedan noticed Lorrimer’s oil-soaked shirt eager inches from the flame.
“How is this supposed to be fun?” Lorrimer growled.
“This way,” Aedan replied, grabbing his lantern and moving off in the direction they had been going when the grille above had blocked the way.
They came to an ancient wooden door, partly eaten by time. It was not locked and Aedan pushed it open with a feeble creak. After looking left and right he whispered, “There’s nobody here. Come on.”
He led the way down another blocky passage, this one unexpectedly wide and high. It almost felt like stepping outdoors until the gathering lanterns provided enough light to reveal the ceiling and far wall. The paving stones showed evidence of recent heavy use – they were dirty, scraped and well-trodden rather than dusty. The boys set out again, passing a number of archways on both sides, and finally turned into a huge alcove that ended before a giant door.
Aedan had not exaggerated. The black double door was as wide and high as the passage itself. Obviously it held something important. The metal looked thick enough to scoff at battering rams. A man could pick any tool and spend a month hacking at panels like these without success. This was a door nobody could force.
And it was open, just a crack.
Aedan put his ear to the crack and listened.
“What can you hear?” Lorrimer whispered, pressing forward.
“You. What do you expect? Go breathe somewhere else.”
“Oh, uh … right.”
They waited.
“I think it’s empty,” Aedan said. “Whoever was in here must have forgotten to lock. This is even better than I’d hoped.”
“Could have gone to fetch something,” Vayle pointed out.
“Been gone a long time for that. I don’t think anyone is coming back tonight. Here, help me with the door.”
Hadley added his weight, and the two of them heaved the great door back enough to allow them in.
Their lan
terns illuminated a large room whose high walls were shelved and hung with what looked like woodwork tools, but some of them were strange indeed.
“Funny place to put a carpentry workshop,” Aedan said.
Vayle was inspecting the shelves. “I don’t think these belong to carpenters. These are shipwright’s tools.”
“Shipwrights? Who builds boats underground?”
Vayle wasn’t listening. He was walking to the end of the workshop, but now the others saw that it wasn’t the end; there was no wall here and a lot of hollow darkness lay beyond. Following Vayle, they passed under a great arch and, after a few paces, came to a standstill on a balcony. Surrounding them were giant swinging platforms suspended from levered beams, and wide ramps that led down, far down. As they hastily snapped open the shutters on their lanterns, greedy for more light, none could hold back the gasps.
The space was cavernous. The ceiling rose high overhead, but the floor dropped away even further, at least a hundred feet. And before them, looking as out of place as a beached whale, and far more intimidating, was a ship of such gigantic proportions that it completely dominated everything else. Even with all their lanterns open, the far end of the hull extended away into a thick, dusty gloom.
Aedan stared. He had never been to the coast and had only seen small boats on rivers and lakes. This monstrous vessel that reached almost up to the balcony was beyond anything he had imagined.
He noticed now that the assembly was not complete. The entire structure was surrounded by braces, scaffolds and supports. A large section towards the middle consisted of little more than skeletal braces, but the forward portion looked finished, and it was simply terrifying. No grand figurehead graced the prow; instead, a thirty-foot trunk-like ram tipped with black metal thrust out from the keel. He had read of such things but never seen them in their stark and vicious horror.
High above it, ballistae and catapults were fixed on the broad deck, and the bulwarks looked as solid as the battlements on a castle wall.
This was no ship. It was a fortress.
But admiration of the immense craft, and the pride he felt for his city’s strength turned to confusion.
“Why do we have a dry dock in Castath, hundreds of miles from the sea?” he said. “And why build a ship underground? How would we get it out? Vayle – your father is a shipping merchant. Do you know?”
“It’s not being built,” said Vayle. “Look at the beams. Most are damaged, all have seen weather. The keel is shattered. This ship is a wreck that is being rebuilt.”
“What for?”
“To study it, I would think. And that’s probably why it’s here – to make sure it isn’t discovered and destroyed along with all its secrets. Look at the hull – it’s not like our ships at all. See the three sharp angles going from the deck to the keel instead of the gentle curve we use. Hard chined I think it’s called – allows the boat to carry more weight and reach higher speeds. The ram looks hinged – clever. A punctured ship won’t pull this one down even if they don’t separate. And can you see the lines of portholes running along the hull. Rowers. Must have been a few hundred. Sail and oar. This thing would have been fast and it’s as big as a mountain … Wait …”
Vayle put a finger to his lips as he often did when deep in thought. “I know this ship. We heard rumours of it down in Port Breklee about five years ago. I was just a child, but I remember it now. They called it a monster of the ocean. My father was convinced it never existed, but this must be it. The Vreimdrak, I think. Supposed to be the most devastating warship ever built. This would have been the king of the seas. Only the sea itself would have been able to sink it. Must have got caught on a lee shore.”
“The rowers …” Aedan began, his voice changed. “Would they have been sailors or …”
“Slaves,” said Vayle.
Aedan was quiet. His face was twitching. “What nation built this ship?”
“What nation? Who do you think? Only one nation can build ships like this. Lekrau.”
Aedan pushed away from the railing and turned his back, all his admiration soured to hatred and disgust.
His lamplight fell on several racks of piled shields, spears, crossbows, javelins for the ballistae, oil-pots for catapults and much more, obviously collected from the wreck. He dropped his lamp, marched up to the weapons and snatched a spear. Then he sprinted back at the railing and flung it with all his strength. The spear shot out through the murky light, flew over the prow, and plugged into the foredeck with a sharp crack of splintering wood.
Five heads spun at him.
“If anyone finds out you did that …” Lorrimer began, but Aedan grabbed his lamp and stormed down one of the many ramps.
The great bows arched and loomed over him, dark and cruel. He snarled back, and when his feet reached the ground he began walking down the length of the hull, his solitary light casting hard shadows that stalked and weaved through the open belly of the beast.
Though he had known Lekrau commanded the seas, a few dozen men and a few flimsy river boats were all he had glimpsed of the nation. The monster that now towered over him seemed to laugh, ridiculing his insignificant anger.
He considered setting it alight.
Then he realised this would probably be in Lekrau’s favour. So he walked and seethed and studied the ship. One day … one day he would send ships like this to the bottom of the sea; one day there would be vengeance. At the stern he noticed something peculiar about the rudder mechanism – revealed by incomplete panelling. He studied it until he understood every aspect of its functioning and then filed the knowledge away in his mind.
It took him a long time to complete a circuit. When he finally made it back to the bows, the others were there. Kian and Vayle were looking at seams, Hadley was inspecting the ram while Peashot walked on top, and Lorrimer was hovering half way down to the construction floor, constantly turning his head with nervous twitches back to the gallery as if he expected to be caught at any moment.
“The stem has to be plumb because of the ram,” Vayle was saying, “Raked would have been too weak. But see how it flares overhead to those bluff bows. That way they could fill the forward deck with a whole army of soldiers, catapults or whatever they wanted.”
Aedan didn’t recognise half the words in Vayle’s explanation from either of the languages he knew, so he walked over to Hadley.
“See this, Aedan. The tip of the ram doesn’t end in a point like a spear. It couldn’t be any blunter. Almost looks like it was put on the wrong way. Obviously the idea was to smash planking instead of just puncturing it. Probably to make a bigger hole.”
“Bronze?”
“Looks like it. No rust.”
“What – is – that?” Peashot pointed and then rushed back to the ladder he had propped up against the ram – it was a good eight feet off the ground owing to the presence of a keel. He slid down and ran away from the ship to something that had been hidden in shadow. The others followed. Lorrimer remained at his sentry post.
As the other lamps arrived, the grotesque shape swelled out from the darkness. Aedan stepped back and bumped into Kian. Dark bronze teeth cast fierce shadows on the wall, and the heavy jaws looked built to crush stone pillars. It was simply colossal, made on the same daunting scale as the ship.
“What is it?” Peashot repeated, reaching out and stopping a foot short before retreating. Aedan understood why. There was something about the contraption that reminded him of an unpredictable, growling animal. It was poised to snap shut, and this metal fiend would slice through anything – wood, stone, iron, boy – it would not differentiate. Those six-inch teeth were over two inches thick at the base, but they ended in knife tips.
“It is being built like a trap,” said Kian, still rubbing his nose. “See there’s a thick twisty steel part by the inside.”
“Can’t be a trap.” Hadley pointed at the length of the jaw. “It would close six feet up. Miss any animal. Miss most men’s heads.”
�
�Unless they were hanging,” said Peashot. “What! Why are you looking at me like that? These people are cruel. Why wouldn’t they do something bloodthirsty, like a double execution?”
“Too much trouble,” said Hadley. “And it’s way too powerfully built. It must have had another purpose. Maybe it was mounted against the sides of the ship and used to snap shut at other boats.”
Vayle shook his head. “Don’t think that would be too successful. Maybe they had a way of throwing it at another ship’s mast. But that still seems clumsy.”
“Whatever it is doing,” said Kian, “this is being the most frightening weapon on the academy.”
Everyone agreed.
They were all hovering, but nobody touched it. They made a respectful retreat and drifted back under the bows of the ship, five small points of light in a giant’s cavern, insignificant as glow-worms faintly illuminating the head of the monster itself.
“Hey! Hey!” It was Lorrimer, doing his best to shout in a whisper. “I think someone’s coming!”
Aedan dashed up the ramp past Lorrimer and arrived at the top just in time to see a slice of light vanish. He heard a heavy metallic clank that travelled past and then swam back at him from all angles in deep, lost echoes.
“We’ve been closed in!” Lorrimer cried, his whisper forgotten.
“Quick!” Aedan called, “if we don’t get his attention now, we might be here for a week, without water.”
It would be a death sentence.
He rushed across the balcony and into the workshop, grabbed a hammer and was about to pound on the door and give himself up to punishment and infamy when he noticed a low table beside him … and had an idea.
“Lanterns out. Under the table, now!” he whispered as loudly as he dared. They raised no argument, and while they were puffing at wicks and scuttling out of sight, he ran to the nearest cabinet of standing shelves, braced his foot against the wall and pulled it over.
The noise was thunderous. Chisels clinked, braces rattled, anvils thumped, saws twanged, nails tinkled, and all of this was swallowed and regurgitated with a monstrous boom from the cavern beyond. Aedan dived under the table and waited.
Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1) Page 35
