Natasha threw up her scimitar, catching the saber at the last second. She foiled his blow, but the blade bit down across the back of her hand. Natasha grunted and fell back, blood running in rivulets down her arm.
His eyes were cold. “It seems that you learned something from Mordecai, after all.”
Her mouth twisted into an ugly snarl. She made to reply, but the pipe on the far wall chose that exact moment to burst. Boiling magma shot out into the room in an incandescent stream. The air heated, becoming instantly almost unbreathable. The liquid splashed only a dozen feet from the edge of the fight, spattering and scatting molten rock all about.
Those nearest the splash yelled in alarm. Salomcani and Perinese sailors both flung themselves back from the overwhelming heat, all thoughts of conflict forgotten. One unlucky Bluecoat caught fire. He ran back for the platform, screaming.
The crack in the crystal pipe widened to unleash even more pressurized magma. Natasha cursed and ducked out of the way. The rest of her crewmen followed suit, scrambling for safety. She kicked and fought to get away from the melee, until the smooth metal floor was empty around her and she could clamber back up the steps of the platform where she’d entered the room.
Natasha took a breath and looked back. Her crew ascended to safety beside her, having moved almost as fast. On the opposite side of the room, Fengel and the Perinese had done the same. Remarkably few of her own people had fallen in the fight. Fengel wouldn’t be able to say the same. Natasha watched the spreading magma ignite Perinese clothing and flesh.
A flash of light caught at the corner of her eye. Natasha looked up to see Fengel standing on the steps to the far platform, watching her, the flames from the corpses of his men reflecting in the cracked glass of his monocle. Behind him, the Perinese nursed their wounds, looking demoralized.
Natasha smiled at her husband. She blew him a wide and extravagant kiss. Her crewmen threw jeers and catcalls along with it.
Fengel said nothing. Wordlessly he herded his crew through the archway leading deeper into the mountain. Natasha drew her scimitar and pointed at the stair up to the causeway that would lead them in pursuit.
I’m not done yet. This day will be mine.
Chapter Sixteen
The arch led into a low tunnel of smooth Voornish brass. Though dim, it was a reprieve from the infernal heat of the magma pumping into the room behind them. Fengel led his new crew with saber in hand, questing forward through the gloom. Behind him came the men of the Goliath, groaning in pain, shock, and fear.
Someone tugged at Fengel’s sleeve. He turned to see Midshipman Paine, breathless and bloodied by a slew of scratches above one ear. “Sir!” he cried. “Sergeant Cumbers is hurt.”
“Can he still walk?” Fengel asked.
“Yes. He’s bringing up the rear. Private Simon is helpin’ him because Cumbers won’t rest. But his shoulder is all messed up, an’ bleedin bad. You need to come help!”
The idea was ridiculous. There were far more important considerations at the moment. Natasha was winning. “If he can still walk, then he isn’t dead yet. His wounds can wait.”
Paine was taken aback. “But, sir—”
“No buts,” snapped Fengel. “If you’re so concerned, get back there and prop the sergeant up until he can find a better place to die. I am busy at the moment.”
Fengel turned away, feeling Paine’s eyes upon his back. He ignored them, moving farther ahead from the rest of the crew. Hopefully he could find something defensible soon. This is just...repositioning, tactical repositioning. Yes. That’s it.
It still felt like running away. Which was galling. A small part of Fengel had to admit it was true. Natasha had surprised him in the ravine, forced his retreat into this mountain. Worse, the hasty ambush he’d set up had failed. To top it all off, Natasha had routed him, crushing his lieutenants and forcing him again to flee.
But I can still do this. She is not clever, and she is not skilled. I can still beat her. I just have to arrange the pieces correctly. Somehow.
The tunnel ended in an arch up ahead. Fengel passed through and found himself in another massive chamber, even larger than the one behind them. Polished brass made up the floor, with two rows of glowing crystal orbs illuminating a path that led deeper into the room. They failed to fully dispel the gloom, leaving the boundaries of the chamber shrouded and dark. Encompassing the orbs and the path were long, low platforms made of the same burnished material as the floor, covered with tables and racks full of strange machineries.
A rumbling susurrus of clockwork mechanisms echoed down from the darkness above. They clicked and whirred much like the room before, but held a discordant note, as if their machineries were distressed.
Is this whole damned mountain hollow? It certainly seemed like it. Fengel could only guess at the purpose of this strange enclave. Was it a gigantic workshop? An alien factory? That was certainly plausible; the few Voornish ruins he had come across always showed signs of great engineering and advanced technologies.
Enough woolgathering. Fengel looked to his crew as they emerged from the tunnel. They came in twos and threes, eyes panicked and wild. Not a one of them was hale, with injuries running from assorted light cuts to heavily bandaged gashes and contusions. A quick count confirmed that these were the lucky ones, however. All told, there were less than ten surviving members of the crew of the Goliath.
Still, they would serve. He certainly wasn’t ready to give up quite yet. When young Paine emerged out of the tunnel, helping Private Simon to support Sergeant Cumbers, Fengel clapped his hands for their attention.
“All right, lads!” he called. “That didn’t go so well, admittedly, but we’re not out of the game yet.”
Deckhand Riley Gordon helped a Bluecoat marine carry the unconscious Mr. Dawkins. He let go of the aetherite and then collapsed. “It’s over!” he cried. “That madwoman is right behind us. She’ll be the end of us all!”
“Ridiculous,” replied Fengel. “We just need to be clever about things.”
Sub-Lieutenant Hayes glared at Fengel sullenly. “Is that the same kind of clever you had in the last room?”
Goddess, I am sick of this man. Fengel smiled. “Of course, Mr. Hayes. After all, my plan was excellent. It was only your incompetent execution that earned us such a miserable failure.”
There. Insulting Hayes always earned him a bit of good-feeling among the crew. But a quick glance revealed that not a single man of the Goliath was smiling. Even young Paine and the milksop Private Simon were glaring at him. Wait. What’s this?
“Anyway,” continued Fengel. He gestured about them at the cavernous room. “Look at this place. Obviously a factory of some sort. There’s got to be something that we can use here. Something we can use to get the advantage again over that horrible witch.”
The nearest platform caught his eye. A rack of the machineries atop it had fallen over, spilling long, strangely-shaped metal rods all over the floor. Fengel sheathed his sword and walked over to pick one up. The Voorn artifact was cool in his hands, like glass or ceramic. He tossed it back at the sub-lieutenant. “Here. Figure out some use for this.”
The rest of the crew weren’t even watching him anymore. Instead they glanced around the chamber, looking for places to hide and talking with their fellows quietly, as if they didn’t want him to overhear.
Fengel frowned. This wasn’t good. He needed everyone together, or they were beaten before Natasha even came through the tunnel. And he’d be damned to the Realms Below before he let that happen.
“Come now, lads,” he called. Fengel pointed at another platform a little farther down the path. Racks full of the odd metal rods were stacked atop it in rows. “High ground, up there. Perfectly good place for another ambush, and we’ve no time. Let’s hop to it.”
Riley Gordon and a few of the others moved immediately, just glad to follow orders. They clambered up atop the platform and moved to take cover. The rest of the crew milled about, eyeing Fengel and other a
venues of escape.
Something moved abruptly in the corner of his eye. Fengel wheeled, drawing his saber as he went. From out behind the nearest platforms stalked the Voornish automaton. It tottered awkwardly, but seemed no worse from the blow it had suffered in the previous room.
“You must not be here!” it cried, voice mechanical and tinny. “And this one is 90 percent certain that you are capable of understanding this dialect. Further ignorance of this communication is inexcusable.” It stopped to glare at the assembled sailors. “Also, further mistreatment of this unit. That is inexcusable as well.”
Everyone stared at the machine. Fengel lowered his sword and grappled for something to say. He coughed, and it whirled to peer at him through the great glass eyes in its faceplate. “Look...fellow,” he said. “I’m sorry about what happened back there. But we’re in a spot of trouble. So if you could just point us at some method of crushing that raving bitch who’s after us, it would be greatly appreciated.”
A rumbling shook the room. Distant machineries groaned. The sailors glanced around in alarm, as did Fengel and the automaton. It raised its hands.
“This one is pleading now! You must not be here! Your presence has already destabilized many important systems. There is great danger! The geothermal tap has been damaged, and now you stand in the Foundry of Garaam. Many and varied are the weapons stored here. You must not awaken them, or the other engines of destruction built in this place.”
The automaton fell silent. It wrung its hands together in a too-human gesture of worry.
Fengel blinked at the thing, then he yelled at the crew of the Goliath. “All right, you lot! You heard the thing—there are weapons stored here; find them!”
Salomcani curses and howls of bloodlust echoed out of the tunnel. Midshipman Paine raced back from where he’d been peering into it. “They’re coming!”
“No!” cried the automaton. “This one is asking, pleading, please to all of you for leaving this facility. Do not be travelling deeper—”
A bright flash of viridian lightning struck the automaton full in the chest. It flew up across the path and crashed into a pile of machinery atop a distant platform. Fengel looked to Hayes, along with everyone else. The sub-lieutenant gripped his rod awkwardly, still pointing, apparently by accident, to where the Voornish machine had stood only a minute ago.
“Ah,” said Fengel. “Some sort of lightning-muskets. Well done Hayes, for once. Lads, arm yourselves. I think the tables just turned in our favor.”
The crew of the Goliath ran for the fallen rack of Voornish weapons. Riley Gordon was first, followed by old Harvey the shipwright. Private Simon emerged after them a moment later bearing a lightning-musket with one arm and supporting the still-incoherent Sergeant Cumbers with the other. Midshipman Paine had grabbed up two of the things, and glared angrily at the tunnel opening. The look he gave Fengel wasn’t much kinder.
I may have misstepped here. Fengel glanced over at Cumbers. The sergeant’s face was covered in blood, and he stumbled like a drunken sailor, dagger clutched in one hand. Private Simon, ever loyal, kept pointing him toward the entrance to the chamber. Damnation. Still, there wasn’t any time for that now.
Hot for blood, the sailors of the Salmalin emerged into the Foundry of Garaam. Natasha was in the lead, flanked by two familiar-looking sailors. One was tall and dark-haired, with a scimitar and a nasty bruise on his face. The other was short and older, and had a nasty gash across his forehead. Behind them came the rest of her crew, blades brandished high in the air.
The crew of the Dawnhawk fired their pilfered lightning-muskets. Or tried to, at least. Some shook the things violently and received no response. Others frantically hunted for a trigger along the inhuman handgrips. Private Simon threw his away and drew his cutlass as the enemy closed the distance to within a few dozen feet.
It was young Paine who figured out the trick of it. He pressed a large stud at the rear of each weapon, sending viridian lightning crackling forth. One shot went high, impacting the near wall of the foundry and exploding in a half-second sunburst of light. The other shot just past Natasha and took the big sailor behind her in the chest. As with the automaton, there was a burst of light and the man went flying.
The Salomcani faltered in their charge. Natasha herself stared in sudden shock and surprise at the crew of the Goliath. Then a few more of the Perinese managed to fire their lightning-muskets. None of the shots hit, but the look on the face of his wife brought warmth to Fengel’s heart.
“Take cover!” Natasha cried in Salomcani. She dove off the path between a pair of platforms, and her crew scrambled to get out of the way as well.
Fengel raised his saber. “Fire at will!”
The rest of his crew found the firing studs and unleashed more alien energy at their Salomcani enemies. Not all of them did so successfully. Some held the things backward, sending stray shots out among the men of the Goliath. Fengel danced away from a blast while the Bluecoat beside him clutched at the blackened, bleeding stump where his hand had been.
“Grab the rods!” said Natasha in high, clear Salomcani. He saw her point at the platform she was currently hiding behind. “Just like the bastard Perinese have got! They’re all over the place!”
Damn, damn, damn! Things were falling apart. Fengel glanced at his crew; some were still firing away, others still frantically tried to master their new weapons. A few lay still and scorched.
“Fall back!” Fengel cried, for what seemed the thousandth time today. “We need better cover!”
He reached out and grabbed at the nearest crewman, repeating his call and shoving whoever was closest down the path. In moments he’d gotten them all up, if not moving. That changed when the first volley of Salomcani lightning spit in their direction.
Fengel goaded the crew of the Goliath into retreat. Two stood with him as he withdrew, covering the rear. One was Midshipman Paine, who yelled wordlessly and fired viridian blasts from a lightning-musket in each arm. The other was a Bluecoat who caught a return shot in the face and fell down dead with his skin blackened and burned. The rest fled deeper down the path into the Foundry of Garaam.
The platforms and their machineries became stranger and stranger as they ran. Fengel spied blazing lights glimmering from glass spheres and great cables dangling down from the ceiling, attached to equipment that chugged and whirred. Shapes half-seen in the gloom hinted at more ominous and malevolent things.
A forest of large mechanical legs occluded the path up ahead. They were long, heavy things that dangled down from a complicated chain conveyor, canted backward like those of a lizard. Each of the vicious claws was longer than Fengel was tall.
A viridian blast flashed past Fengel’s head, exploding against one of the legs with a flash of light. “There!” Fengel pointed with his saber. “Through there!”
The men of the Goliath didn’t need to hear him, if they still paid him any heed at all. They charged past him, disappearing behind the dangling mechanical limbs. Fengel followed, racking his brains for something, anything that he could do to regain the advantage over his wife.
Fengel ducked behind a gigantic foot just as a trio of viridian blasts scorched the ground he’d been standing on. The cover was only momentary. Any moment, Natasha and her minions would overtake him. Fengel took in his new surroundings.
A dozen yards away hung another row of limbs. Tails this time, all in a row, with tall, sail-like plates running down their length. Past these were another row of dangling arms. And beyond those hung huge armored necks. The globe-lamps still shone from their places along the floor, but their light was hidden and occluded within the inverted forest of Voornish machinery. The whole place was dim and close-in.
The crew of the Goliath were scattering. Some ran beyond where he could see. Others hid down behind a metal leg, sobbing and tending to their wounds. A few still fought back, having mastered the lightning-muskets. Young Paine was among the most competent, it seemed. And the angriest.
Damnation! His men were broken. Worse, he would never regain control of them all before Natasha reached their position. Fengel glanced about for something he could do to even the odds. He spied Simon and Cumbers, dodging with two other men through the shadows as they made their escape. A viridian blast shot after them, stopped by a mammoth mechanical tail.
His men may have been broken, but he was not. Clashing out in the open had gone consistently poorly. Fengel always thought Natasha’s old first mate, Mordecai, had been behind her successes in battle. Maybe it really had been her, though. But here, in the dark and behind cover? Fengel drew his sword. “Keep falling back!” he yelled, hoping the crew would heed him. Then, stealthily, he moved behind a clawed leg and clambered up onto it from behind.
He had just reached a shadowed space below the knee when Natasha ran past, yelling at the top of her lungs. The big Salomcani followed her, despite his scorched chest, along with several others. They spread out in pairs to hunt the disparate Perinese. Fengel gritted his teeth as viridian blasts and the cries of battle echoed amongst the limbs. When the stream of Salomcani had faded to a trickle, he dropped down, saber at the ready.
A trio of enemy sailors saw him. They checked their charge and came for him instead. One had wide mustachios and a pair of long daggers. Another bore a scimitar and an ugly gash across his lips. The third had a cudgel. All three glared at Fengel with murder in their eyes.
Fengel took a crude hack at the nearest man. As the fellow raised his scimitar to parry, Fengel dropped his sword down under the man’s guard in a thrust that took him high in the chest. He withdrew and made a low parry just in time to block the daggers aimed for his gut. Fengel replied by ramming his pommel into his assailant’s face, feeling the momentary resistance of breaking teeth. The man fell back into the darkness, screaming, just in time for the third sailor with the cudgel to step in. Fengel blocked two solid blows aimed for his head, sending wood chips flying out into the dark. He answered with a cut at the knuckles that bit home, sending the sailor down to join his fellow, yelling as his fingers fell to the Factory floor along with the cudgel. Fengel laid him out with a left cross to the head.
On Discord Isle (The Dawnhawk Trilogy) Page 22
