The Black Dream

by Col Buchanan

  Now, over thirty years later, Ash grimaced and wiped his eyes clear with numb fingers and tried to shake the recollections from his mind, all too aware that life was somehow repeating itself here, that he was leaving his home behind again never to return.

  Through frozen lashes he squinted over the opposite side of the ship and saw the two-tone slope of the mountain growing nearer, its coating of snow a dim paleness studded by black rocks, all of it obscured by rushing sleet and clouds.

  ‘Full ahead starboard, full reverse port!’ Trench shouted into the speaking tube mounted near the wheel, where the two pilots, Stones and Lomax, were fighting to change course by turning the starboard side-skuls into the following wind.

  Around the wheel, heavy storm-canvasses had been erected to ward off the worst of the icy blasts, though the entrance flap facing Ash had come loose, and it was snapping in the gusts like gunfire. Aiming for it, Ash released his grip on the rail, and was shoved by the wind as his feet scuttled down the slope of the deck. He snatched an edge of the soaking canvas on the way past, stopped himself with his other hand grasped around one of the humming guidelines above his head. Gasping for breath and light-headed for lack of air, he felt someone grab the front of his cloak and yank him in behind the covers.

  In the partial shelter, Captain Trench stared at him with his desperate red-rimmed eye, his bearded face underlit by a sickly yellow glow. The space within was a small cell of light and noise amidst the greater blasts of the storm, though it remained gusty enough with three of the viewing slits open so that they could see out, and all around them the canvas sheets heaved against their ropes in a rage to be free. Ash wiped clear the frozen icicles hanging from his nostrils and took in the eyes of the pilots, glimpsing the fear in them, the sickness of panic.

  A storm during the crossing had been their greatest fear all along, and now here it was – falling upon them with a ferocity and speed that was beyond anything they had ever encountered.

  ‘That’s it,’ Trench shouted, peering through the side opening, and he placed his hands on the pilots’ shoulders and gripped hard, as though trying to transmit his strength and urgency through the two men and into the wheel. ‘She’s turning!’

  Through the flapping entrance, Ash glimpsed the mountain flashing by their starboard side, no longer growing closer. He swayed for balance as the ship tilted back again, righting itself beneath the great bulk of the silk loft.

  ‘We must land this ship before we are wrecked!’ he called out.

  ‘And what do you think we’ve been trying to do?’ Trench yelled back at him, and the captain swept his long sodden hair from his forehead. ‘We can’t get a purchase with the drag anchors, the wind’s too strong. No choice for it now but to ride out the storm.’

  ‘Can I help?’

  ‘No. Get below, man. You’re nothing but a hindrance to us up here.’

  Ash had no intention of climbing below to huddle out of the way like the others. If this was going to be the end of them, he wanted to be staring it in the face.

  ‘There’s a side-valley ahead, branching off from the western side of this one,’ shouted a voice at their feet. Looking down at the decking, Ash saw the open hatch of the captain’s cabin spilling its soft light and framing the open-mouthed face of their navigator. ‘If we can’t make the height for the next pass, we should try for the side-valley.’

  ‘Understood,’ Trench shouted back, too focused on getting the ship through the next few moments of the storm, still glaring hard at the flashing mountainside. ‘Nelson, can you hear me?’ he shouted into the speaking tube again, and then he pressed his ear hard against it. ‘Nelson!’ he yelled down to the powder room in the tail. ‘More thrust, do you hear?’

  Steeling himself against the elements, Ash pushed his way outside once more. Instantly the sleet blinded him as his hood swept clear from his head and icy needles struck the pain already throbbing in his skull. The force of the wind pushed him towards the steps as though it knew where he wanted to go, his boots slipping on the icy decking. At the top of the steps he grabbed a post and felt his boots scoot out over the weatherdeck below. Ash gasped and regained his footing and struggled down.

  On the weatherdeck, Dalas and a gang of skymen were propping each other up in a roped line as they passed items along it to be thrown over the side; non-vital inner parts of the Falcon that had been sawn away; barrels of water, furniture; anything they could pick up and carry.

  Squinting ahead along the length of the deck, Ash saw another group of crewmen trying to make their way along it with their safety lines unhooked, heading for the front of the ship. Time and again the gale and the tipping deck were sending them tumbling, though they helped each other up where they fell – huddled figures with their storm hoods blown back from their determined, bearded faces, the spars and rigging creaking as the gas loft twisted above their heads. Beyond the men, their more distant mates up on the prow were barely visible save for the luminous green stripes painted on the sleeves and backs of their oiled coats, ghostly lines seemingly afloat in the swirling night.

  Even further than that, the glowing stripes of a repair crew dangled from the underside of the envelope, right out there over nothing but space. For a long moment Ash marvelled at their audacity.

  ‘Give us a hand there,’ someone shouted in his ear, and he saw that it was the longhunter Cole, working with the sprawling gang of crewmen making their way towards the prow, trying to drag along a massive coil of cable. So the man had been unable to sit doing nothing either.

  A figure fell badly. Ash tried to help him up but the fellow grimaced and waved him away, gestured down at his other hand which now hung from a snapped wrist. Ash took his place, helping to heave the coiled cable along the deck. It was anchor cable made from silkfibre, no thicker than ordinary climbing rope but much stronger and lighter. Slipping and sliding, locked in their own individual efforts to stay on their feet, they struggled with the coil up the steps to the exposed foredeck where the wind screamed even louder, and then they heaved it over to the forward rail of the ship, above the small platform known as the nose, just below where the foredeck ended. He glimpsed two crewmen down there already.

  Staggering sideways in a sudden gust, Ash gripped his arms around the prow rail and Cole did the same, so that they clung there gasping like fish while the sleet hammered their heads, and for a moment squinted together through the darkness at the carved figurehead of a falcon, its wings spread in flight, racing through the storm just ahead of the ship.

  Down they all scrambled into the nose, falling wherever they could around the cable they’d just dropped there. Quickly the skymen checked that no one was missing. Ash sat on his ass for a moment with his breath wheezing in and out of his burning chest. He felt dizzy and sick now, the thinness of the air hitting him harder than he would have expected.

  A slap on his back roused him. It was Cole again, offering a hand to him like the old man that he was. It fuelled Ash with sudden frustration. He slapped the hand aside and forced himself to his feet.

  ‘They lost the anchor head,’ Cole shouted in his ear. ‘But the winch is jammed so they need to replace the whole line.’

  Below their feet the slope of mountainside swept past in a blur of rocks and trees, growing closer again.

  Just then he saw that it was young Berl bent over the anchor housing trying to clear it; Berl the ship’s boy, all of fourteen years of age and with a length of polished wood for one leg. The man next to him was shouting into his ear as Berl reached into a tool case, and then the ship pitched over sharply, sending Berl skidding on his back. Ash’s heart leapt, for none of the crew here were bothering with safety lines. The others steadied each other and someone dragged the boy back to the housing, where Berl passed a wrench to his companion and clung on for dear life as they continued to shout back and forth over their task. Ash leaned forward to try and hear what the two were yelling about, and snatched a few words about botched repairs back in Bar-Khos, and someone�
��s name being cursed blackly.

  Griping, at a time like this.

  It brought a smile to his face.

  Without warning the ship pitched over again in a blasting cross-wind. Men went scattering across the planking.

  Like a concerned father he looked to young Berl first, and saw that the boy was no longer there.

  Ash blinked. Berl’s companion with the wrench was clutching the starboard rail and looking out over it. The skyman’s horrified face turned to the rest of them, and he shouted: ‘Man overboard!’

  In an instant the old farlander was at the rail, leaning out to take in the rolling snowy slopes rushing past not that far below them. A shrill whistle sounded from the crewmen. Within moments the thrusters were turning to full reverse in an attempt to slow the vessel’s speed.

  Dread nestled in his belly. This was why he worked alone, why he’d always refused to take on an apprentice over the years. A boy lost to the storm on this voyage which Ash was entirely responsible for. A death amongst the crew, and so soon.

  Yet through the darkness he saw how the slopes were close and thick with snow. Hope flashed through him that Berl might still be alive down there.

  Ash rounded on the men and snatched the frayed end of the cable from their grips. ‘Tie off the end to something!’ he shouted at Cole’s startled expression before he scrambled up the ladder with it.

  Hauling the silkfibre rope over his shoulder he ran across the foredeck and jumped off the end of it, landing at a run while he eased the jolts of pain from his body with great whooshes of air. Men tumbled backwards out of his way, and Ash jumped over the last one sprawled on the deck and vaulted up the steps of the quarterdeck, already feeling the strain of the cable dragging behind him, and the hot coals flaring to life in his chest.

  ‘Buy me some time!’ he shouted to Trench’s startled face through a slit in the canvas wheelhouse, then grabbed hold of the starboard rail. With a quick glance downwards, the old Rōshun launched himself over the edge.

  Ash fell, his legs kicking through the air to keep himself upright, still gripping the cable that fell with him.

  ‘Whuff!’

  He landed waist deep in a bank of snow, the storm howling over bare rocks just above him. Daggers shot from his lower back.

  You old fool, what are you doing?

  For a precious moment Ash wiped his eyes clear so he could blink through the dark skies towards the Falcon. Her storm lanterns were barely visible through the sleet, though it was clear the ship was fighting now against the push of the gale.

  Before him on the snow lay the end of the cable. He hoped Cole had followed his directions and tied it off.

  Move, said his mind, and he followed its instruction, scrambling out of the snow and crouching down in the storm with the end of the cable wrapped about his forearm.

  ‘Berl!’

  It was like screaming into the mouth of an angry god. Around him the few hardy pine trees shook and bent over in the gale. Ash leaned into it and struggled along the slope as fast as he dared with his legs sinking deep in the snowdrift, hauling the cable after him, his single lifeline back to the ship. The farlander squinted through eyes that could barely see ten feet ahead.

  ‘Boy!’

  Something moved out there, lighter than the darkness around it.

  A hand raised up with fingers splayed.

  Ash staggered towards it and spotted the boy lying there in the snow. Berl was huddled over his broken wooden leg. He went to take another step closer and felt the cable grow heavier in his grasp, losing its slack.

  Out of time.

  Ash sprang to the nearest mature tree and wrapped the end of the cable around the trunk and looped it through itself, hoping it would be enough. Then he turned and fought his way over to the boy.

  ‘It’s all right, I’ve got you,’ he told the lad, not realizing he spoke in his native Honshu as he gathered Berl up and hung him on his protesting back. Ash turned around just in time to glimpse the tree tearing loose from the ground in a small eruption of snow and dirt; saw the tautened cable dragging the uprooted trunk across the slope, spinning and leaping over rocks and catching on other trees.

  For a sliver of time all he could do was stare at it.

  ‘Run!’ the boy Berl screamed in his ear.

  Ash growled and sped across the packed surface as lightly as he could, breathing the fast rhythm of onwi and picturing in his mind the dancing leaps of the snow leopard.

  He sprang just behind the spasms of the racing tree trunk, showered with chunks of churned-up snow and propelled along by the wind at their backs, trying desperately to catch up with it. He was running out of footsteps though. Ahead the slope seemed to end in an upthrust of rocks and then the swirling darkness of a great drop.

  Ash reached out to grab at one of the roots, but they were just beyond his grasp. He scrambled after it as the tree bounced once over the outcrop of rocks then clear into the gulf of air.

  Ash leapt for it.

  *

  ‘Cup of chee?’ one of the crewmen asked as Ash slid down the steps into the relative heat and silence below decks, dripping wet and with a furnace roar in his ears.

  All he could do was stare at the crewman addressing him. ‘It’s on the brew, if you want some,’ said the man as he thumbed towards the mess room where others were congregated, then shuffled off towards the head.

  Ash collapsed on the steps and rested his forehead on the back of his hand, his other hand shaking in his lap. He listened to Shin in her nearby infirmary talking soothingly to Berl, the boy as sombre and self-contained as ever.

  For an instant, Shin glanced sideways through the severe angle of the doorway at him, a perspective which framed her face just as she swept the hair from her tense features.

  You are a beautiful woman, Shin Moloko.

  Ash took all the time he needed to catch his breath while his clothes thawed and dripped onto the steps. At last he stood, slowly unfurling his aching body with a sigh, then made his way stiffly along the passage leading to the cabins with a fist pressed against his lower spine, his mouth chomping on a fresh bundle of dulce leaves.

  This is why your back is giving out on you, he scolded himself. All these falls compacting your spine.

  Hearing voices ahead, he spotted figures sitting on either side of the passageway with their backs to the walls between the open doorways of the cabins. It was Aléas and Cole and the cat.

  The longhunter sat in a puddle of water dripping from his cloak. He didn’t look up at Ash’s approach, the blue eyes within his scarred features staying focused on the cat where she lay with her head in his lap. Cole had helped to carry Berl down below, after grinning and shaking his head at Ash in amazement.

  Now the battered Khosian stroked the cat’s reddish head, and watched Ash’s shadow in the reflection of her eyes as they stared up at him balefully, the animal as miserable as the rest of them.

  ‘Tell me,’ Aléas was saying. ‘The Hush. Is it truly empty of people?’

  Cole looked away from the cat’s eyes and the reflection of Ash standing over them, observing him quietly. The longhunter had proven himself a useful pair of hands up above, exactly what they would have hoped for in a guide leading them into the Hush. Yet still, that shadow remained about him – this man who was likely a Khosian deserter, if his military tattoos were anything to go by; that sense of his loyalties lying only with his immediate self.

  ‘Beyond the highlands, aye, it’s empty,’ the longhunter was saying. ‘The highland tribes claim the Hush makes humans and certain other animals infertile, as well as mad. They say it’s the serpent god that lies beneath the land, poisoning the water with its bile. I think its the kree myself, and maybe the boli trees. Whatever strange scents they give off.’ He ruffled the cat’s fur and she flicked her gaze up to him.

  ‘And the kree. All of them live in the Edge?’

  ‘Quite a few million of them, anyway. The Edge runs right down the centre of the continent.’


  They all jumped as something thudded into the hull.

  ‘Your cat, what do you call her?’ came a voice through an open doorway of one of the cabins – Meer perched on a bunk with an open book.

  ‘Just Cat. And she isn’t mine. We travel together.’

  ‘She acts more like a dog than a cat at times.’

  ‘Aye. She was raised with hounds.’

  The prairie lynx widened her gaze in alertness, knowing they were talking about her. She growled low and menacing when Aléas reached a hand towards her head.

  ‘Don’t mind her,’ Cole said, and the way he spoke suggested he had softened towards Aléas in their short time together. ‘She doesn’t like Mannians overly much, is all.’

  ‘She can tell, can she?’

  The longhunter smiled faintly.

  What else had Aléas told the man? Ash wondered in annoyance. He’d asked that they keep their business to themselves for now whenever they were in the company of the longhunter; this man who Ash was still uncertain whether to trust at all.

  ‘You have a wife, Cole?’ Ash asked abruptly, and studied the long-hunter’s reaction closely.

  Cole looked as though he was rolling a stone around in his mouth. The man gazed down at the cat then made an effort to swallow.

  ‘Once. And you?’

  ‘Long ago.’

  The wind howled against the window shutters. The deck pitched forwards more. Ash thought he heard shouts from the distant hatchway. He pressed back against a doorway to maintain his shifting balance.

  ‘How’s it going out there?’ asked Aléas, as though wishing to change the subject.

  ‘Fine,’ he answered, even with the Falcon dropping fast enough to make his stomach flutter. Somewhere in the depths of the ship a man was screaming his heart out. ‘A few crosswinds is all.’

  Someone had the fortitude to chuckle. It was Meer.

  ‘I recall the first time I flew in a skyship,’ said the hedgemonk. ‘It was an exhibition in Al-Khos when we were visiting my mother’s parents there. They were taking people up in one to show it off. When our time came, some of the seals in the envelope split open for some reason . . . I remember they said the sun was too hot for the glue, and then we almost crashed into a hillside.’