by Ian Whates
She watched him return to the tiller, calling to Clatterstock to make ready with the anchor. As the barge drew closer to the bank Ethelynne’s gaze was drawn again to the Red. It had stopped twitching now, its precious blood flowing thick enough to leave a dark stain in the river’s flow.
She drank half the remaining Green on reaching the Badlands, staggering a little as the effects took hold. Green was second only to Red as the Ironship Syndicate’s most valued export, a greatly prized medicine among the unblessed, curing infection better than any physic human hands could concoct. But for a Blood-blessed it was both panacea and ultimate tonic, banishing her exhaustion and filling strained muscles and nerves with renewed vigour. Ethelynne drew breath as she straightened from a sagging crouch, deep and long, the air sweet despite the lingering tang of the Iron Sands. She cast a final glance at the red desert, experiencing a momentary satisfaction at its emptiness before her newly keen eyes picked out a plume of gunsmoke rising less than a mile away.
What at the odds he’d miss three times? There was no boom from the rifle, the distance was too great for that, just the whine of the bullet as she threw herself flat. It impacted on one of the narrow conical tors twenty feet ahead, chalky rock exploding into a pale white powder.
Ethelynne surged to her feet and sprinted forward, faster than any unblessed could ever run, the confused, jagged maze of the badlands closing in around her. She kept running, pace only slightly slowed, hurdling boulders and leaping to bound from the surrounding rock, hurling herself onwards, following the marks left by Wittler’s charcoal. The lessons in Green had always been her greatest joy back at the academy, outperforming all the other students as she raced around the cavernous gymnasium. There was no exhilaration now, just the fear and her thudding heart, and the lesson learned long ago. Red for the fire…
“Never been so cold my whole life,” Brother Two said, handsome face drawn in misery as he shuffled closer to the glowing circle Ethelynne had conjured in the sand. “Thought the wind over the southern seas was the coldest thing a man could feel, but it’s got nothing on this.”
“You’ve sailed the southern seas?” Ethelynne asked.
“Surely, Miss Ethy. Sailor on a Blue-hunter for more’n six years. Think Reds’re big, wait’ll you see a Blue…”
“Quiet,” Wittler said, voice soft as he rose to a crouch, eyes scanning the darkened dunes beyond their camp. Ethelynne noted he had drawn his six-shooter. A double-snick came from her right and she turned to see Bluesilk similarly crouched, a pistol in each hand. They had cleared the badlands the day before, Wittler leading the way through the twisted labyrinth of chalk and granite. He set a punishing pace, pausing only to check his ancient map and scratch a black mark on one of the conical tors with a stick of charcoal.
“Don’t wanna lose your way in here,” Clatterstock said, sweating more profusely than the others though he showed no sign of slowing. “‘Specially if the Spoiled come callin’.”
Ethelynne had been obliged to take her first taste of Green in order to keep up, just enough to make her legs move at a decent pace, though even then she found the going hard. It took almost a full day to traverse the Badlands, whereupon Wittler allowed a pause to survey the vast redness of the Iron Sands.
“No sign, Cap’n,” Bluesilk said, sweeping her eyeglass across the dunes. “Maybe they’ll leave us be this trip.” Ethelynne detected a note of forced optimism in gun-hand’s voice, something Wittler evidently saw no need to succour.
“They’ll be along,” he said. “Spoiled don’t forget a scent, nor turn from a feud when there’s still blood to be settled.”
Ethelynne watched him sniff the air now, seeing a grim acceptance settle on his face. She caught it then; an acrid stain on the easterly wind, redolent of corrupted flesh and stale blood. They drink it like wine, Clatterstock had told her back on the wagon. Untreated, undiluted. And somehow, they stay alive. They was here long before us, so I guess they had time to learn many a thing. Never learned to fear though. Must’ve left near a score lyin’ on the sands last trip, but still they kept on comin’.
Wittler briefly scanned the camp, checking to ensure they had all drawn weapons, then moved to Ethelynne’s side. “Well, here’s where you earn your share, Miss Ethy,” he told her in a whisper. “You remember what I told you?”
She nodded, finding she had to swallow before she could voice a response. “The arrows.”
“That’s right. You leave the killing to us. But keep those arrows off.” He paused to peer deeper into the dark and she fancied she saw a smile play on his lips. “Need us some light too, if you could oblige.”
She reached for her box and extracted the Red and the Black, surprised to find her hands weren’t shaking. She removed the stoppers from both vials and drank, Red and Black mingling on her tongue in bitter concord before she swallowed it down, feeling the power building inside, a fierce intoxicating rush. “How far out?” she asked Wittler, raising herself up.
“Thirty yards should do it.”
She sought out a patch of sand at the specified range and concentrated. Some Blood-blessed were given to theatrics when utilising their talents, their hands describing elaborate gestures as they intoned cryptic phrases in ancient languages. But that was all farce. The only tools a Blood-blessed needed were a disciplined mind and a decade or more of practice.
Ethelynne summoned the Red, feeling the power surge and the air between her and the patch of sand thicken with heat. She had taken a large gulp and the results were immediate, the sand taking on a fierce glow. She stood and turned in a slow circle, the glow spreading and following her gaze until the camp sat surrounded by a ring of melting iron, the dunes beyond lit by a soft yellow light. She heard Brother Two give a low whistle of admiration and forced the resultant smile from her lips. Emotion is the enemy of focus, Madame Bondersil had said more times than Ethelynne could count.
For a second nothing happened, the newly lit desert silent and empty, then came a faint hiss of something small and fast cutting the air. Ethelynne instantly switched to the Black, instinct finding the arrow before her eyes did. Black for the push. She caught it a foot short of her chest, watching it quiver as she held it in place. The head was fashioned from crudely shaped iron, the shaft a length of whittled bone and the fletching a ragged tail of dried grass. She blinked and broke it in two, letting it fall to the sand as a great hiss rose from the surrounding dunes.
“Best hunker down!” Wittler called to her but she ignored him, moving to the centre of the camp and raising her gaze skyward. The arrows fell in a black hail, perhaps a hundred arcing down out of the dark. She let them get within ten feet before unleashing the Black, sending out a single pulse of power, the arrows scattered and shredded like chaff.
“Hoo-yah!” Brother Two whooped. “How’d ya like that, y’stinky bastards?”
She saw them then, low black shapes beyond the circle’s glow to the south, scattering dust as they charged, the light catching on spearpoints and hatchet blades. The Crawdens’ long-rifles fired simultaneously, two shapes falling, the others coming on without pause. Bluesilk began to fire when they reached the circle, standing and blazing away with both pistols, more shapes twisting and falling, the rest leaping the circle amid a chorus of inhuman snarls. Ethelynne could see their faces now, dark and scaly with spines protruding from forehead and jaw, their eyes bright yellow, slitted and full of hate, just like the Red back at the river.
“Guard Miss Ethy!” Wittler yelled, rushing to Ethelynne’s side and loosing off a rapid salvo with his revolver, two Spoiled falling dead as they reached the edge of the camp. The rest of the company followed suit, Bluesilk crouching as she replaced the cylinders in her pistols with a swiftness that seemed incredible, the Crawdens blasting away with their revolvers whilst Clatterstock emptied his repeating carbine with practised efficiency.
A lull descended as the Spoiled drew back, lingering in the shadows beyond the diminishing glow of the circle, the air now filled wit
h their guttural snarls. Ethelynne scanned the surrounding sands, snaring the intermittent arrows launched by the Spoiled and snapping them before they could reach the company, the Black diminishing with every catch. The chorus of snarls increased in pitch, building by the second, a discordant but definite cadence becoming discernible among the babble, almost like a chant.
“Shit,” she heard Clatterstock growl. “Death song.”
“If you got anything left, Miss Ethy,” Wittler said. “Now would be about the time.”
She reached for the vial of Black once more, drinking deep, leaving only one last drop. “You need to be quick,” she said. “I won’t be able to hold them all for long.”
The snarling chant rose to a crescendo and the Spoiled came surging from the dark, yellow eyes gleaming and malformed lips drawn back from wicked sharp teeth. She stopped them ten feet short, summoning the Black to snare each one, some caught in mid-air with club raised.
“Aimed shots!” Wittler said, raising his pistol.
It took maybe five minutes but it seemed an age, Ethelynne feeling the Black ebb away like water from a leaky cistern as the Sandrunners methodically put a bullet into each and every frozen Spoiled. When it was done, and she had let them fall, they counted eighty-six bodies on the sand.
“Looks like we bagged us a whole tribe, Cap’n,” Brother One said, drawing his knife and crouching beside a body. “Ironship pays cash-money for every Spoiled head.”
“Leave it,” Wittler told him, casting a disinterested gaze over the corpses before turning to the south. “Got us a White to find.”
She used up the Green before getting clear of the Badlands, feeling the last of it drain away as she leapt to propel herself onward with a shove against one of the tors, landing hard on suddenly weak legs. She fell face first and lay still for a time, willing herself to move, but finding only the strength to keep breathing. “Black…” she murmured, lips dry against the stony ground. “Black for the push… Red for… Red…”
Her eyes were already half-closed when she heard it, echoing through the Badlands, rich and vibrant in its utter madness. “You know what I saw, Miss Ethy!” Wittler screamed, voice growing louder with every word. “You know what it showed me! I ain’t gonna burn! You hear me, girl? I AIN’T GONNA BURN!”
Ethelynne abandoned all pretence of focus and let the terror seep into her, filling her with a single desperate urge; stay alive.
She yelled with the effort of raising herself up, wept as she gained her feet, stumbling on and voicing curses so foul she didn’t realise she knew them, regaining focus, mind fixed on a single goal. There’ll still be blood in the heart…
Ethelynne had been hearing or reading about the Crater all her life, the centre of the Red Sands, site of a calamity great enough to turn an iron-rich mountain range into a desert and, some said, provide a birthing ground for the fabled White Drake. In the event she found it a disappointment, just a circular gouge in the red wastes about sixty feet wide and ten deep. No great colony of Whites nursing nests full of precious eggs, no treasure to reward their perilous quest.
“You, uh, sure this is it, Cap’n?” Clatterstock ventured after they had clambered down the steep but not unassailable wall to the Crater floor.
Wittler ignored him, eyes locked on the ground as he roamed about.
“I mean to say,” the harvester went on. “The map is plenty old. Could be there’s other craters to the south…”
Wittler stopped and held up a hand, waving him to silence, eyes now fixed on something next to his boot. Abruptly he went to his haunches and began to scrape away at the sand with his hands, Ethelynne hearing a laugh of unalloyed triumphed as the dust rose around him. After several minutes digging he rose and stood back, the others coming to his side to peer down at his find. It was maybe six feet in length, longer and broader than either a Red or a Black, and more bulbous, perhaps to accommodate a larger brain.
“Contractors,” Wittler said in a formal tone. “I give you the skull of the White Drake.”
It took a full day to dig it out. They had no spades and were obliged to rely on hands and knives to scrape away the soil, but by nightfall they had revealed a complete skeleton some thirty feet long, sixty including the tail. It snaked around the body in a tight protective arc of revealed vertebrae, and there, nestled, between its two great forearms, a single white egg.
“We’re gonna be so damn rich,” Brother Two breathed, then laughed as he lunged for Ethelynne, lifting her up and whirling her around. She found she couldn’t contain a giggle when he set her down, sank to one knee and took her hand to formally propose marriage.
“You’re only after my money,” she laughed, gently but firmly disentangling her hand.
Clatterstock stroked his thickening beard as he ran a hand along one of the great ribs. “Don’t look so old,” he mused. “Old bone turns to rock after a time. Could be there’s still some marrow to be had here.”
“Marrow?” Ethelynne enquired.
“Surely, Miss Ethy. Grind up drake bones and the powder’s still of use. Not so potent as blood but it’ll fetch a fair price. I’d hazard this here beauty will fetch a sight more.”
“Just one,” Wittler said. “The smallest. Wanna keep her as intact as we can.”
“Certainly, Cap’n.” After some pondering the harvester chose one of the claw bones, only as long as Ethelynne’s forearm.
“Well now,” he said, laying the bone on a leather ground-sheet and hefting his hammer. “Gather round and watch the show…”
She had feared it might not be there, scavenged to nothing by its own kind or slipped into the river and carried away. But there it was, the skin already peeling and shrouded in flies, but still wonderfully, actually there. She slid down the slope, grunting as she collided with the Red’s corpse, the flies voicing an angry buzz as they rose from their meal. She hauled herself over its thick neck, crouching next to the sternum and fumbling for her box.
“ETHYYYY!” The voice was hoarse, the madness even more evident in its roaring croak. And also close. Too damn close.
Ethelynne lifted the vial of Black and tipped the last remaining drop into her mouth. She let it burn its way down, staring at the patch of desiccated skin on the Red’s chest. Focus.
“You… You stop that now!”A hoarse yell and a shot. A pistol this time, meaning he was finally out of long-rifle shells. She heard the bullet impact somewhere on the drake’s corpse but kept her gaze firmly locked on its chest, summoning the Black and using it all up in a single frantic spasm. Black for the push… and also the pull.
The Red’s chest exploded in a fountain of half-rotted flesh and shattered bone, Ethelynne opening her arms to receive the gift that burst forth.
“STOP THAT!” Another shot, landing somewhere in the river judging by the splash. Ethelynne looked up now, seeing him at the crest of the slope. His hat was gone as was his duster, his shirt and pants ragged and torn. He moved towards her, gun-arm outstretched and pistol wavering as he staggered like a drunkard but with an odd, desperate appeal in his gaze.
“You know what I saw,” he croaked, taking another shuffling step closer. “You know… I gotta…”
Ethelynne raised the Red’s heart, throwing her head back and mouth wide as she squeezed, and drank.
For an unblessed the slightest taste of undiluted drake blood is invariably fatal. The Blood-blessed are more resistant to its effects but do not enjoy complete immunity, survival being dependant on the quantity imbibed. Ethelynne choked down two full mouthfuls before the fiery agony forced her to stop, leaving her collapsed against the Red’s flanks, heaving and retching.
“Won’t save ya’!” Wittler yelled. “Think you gonna burn me now? You show one inch o’that pretty head, I blow it off, ya hear?” A snick as he cocked his pistol. “Just one inch…”
Ethelynne convulsed and vomited a good supply of blood before managing to choke down her gorge. She shrugged off her pack, blinking sweat from her eyes as she ripped away t
he ties to reveal the egg. Cold, she thought, pulling it free of the pack, laying it down and scuttling back. Waiting for the waking fire.
Focus was beyond her now, the pain raging from throat to belly too intense for anything other than a single, explosive release of heat. She had seen it many times in the breeding pens, an endlessly fascinating spectacle, the brood drakes breathing fire on their eggs when they judged the time right. She had loved to watch them hatch, though it was always somewhat sad, for the hatchlings were immediately taken away, leaving their mothers to voice their distress in long, keening screeches.
The fire raged for only a few seconds, Ethelynne reeling and huddling from the heat of it, more intense than anything she had conjured before. When it faded she looked for the egg, finding it blackened and cracked, a faint glow pulsing inside.
“Stop!” Wittler came reeling into view, eyes wide as they tracked from her to the egg, then back to her. His mouth twisted into what might have been a smile, the lips cracked and bleeding as he snickered in triumph as he raised his pistol.
He pulled the trigger, Ethelynne shrinking back, eyes closed tight in expectation, but hearing only the click of a hammer meeting an empty chamber.
Wittler stared at the revolver in baffled consternation for a moment, then tossed it aside. “Got other options,” he said, reaching for the knife on his belt and starting forward.
Ethelynne’s toe delivered a gentle nudge to the egg and it rolled away, coming to a halt at Wittler’s feet. He stared at it, all vestige of triumph vanished from his face. “Not…” he said, weeping now. “Not gonna b –”
The egg exploded in a blaze of combusting gas, the shell, harder than any stone, transformed into shrapnel by the force of the blast. It shredded Wittler’s legs below the knees and sheared away much of his right arm, leaving him a gibbering red mess, his remaining hand slapping feebly on the sandstone slope as flames licked over his flesh.
