The Black Dream

by Col Buchanan

  The small kree paused, probing out with its lashes. It studied Dalas’s torch for a moment before touching his chest with its tendrils, but the man held his nerve, incredibly, until the creature passed onwards.

  They uttered a collective sigh of relief and then continued downwards, deeper and deeper until the stench of the kree grew thick enough to gag on. The cat growled once from the darkness ahead. An opening revealed itself where she stood waiting for them, her gaze fixed on movement beyond.

  One by one the party straightened as they emerged from the tunnel. Gloom swallowed the light of their torches in every direction save for down, where at the bottom of an earthen slope the floor heaved with the forms of kree. The air was hotter now, more humid. They were in some kind of chamber too large to fully take in.

  ‘The ones without spines are the workers,’ Cole told them. ‘The rest are scouts and warriors. Stay away from either.’

  Squinting down through the gloom, Ash studied a nest of yellow eggs on the floor to their left, each one larger than a barrel, tended by small workers that cleaned the shells with their maws and the curved tips of their limbs. At the outer limits of the flickering torchlight, others were emerging carrying more eggs or nothing at all from a wide opening in the floor.

  He scanned right, taking in the lower ceiling there. Out of the darkness kree hung with their abdomens extended many times their original size; big dangling balloons stretched thin enough to be transparent, holding the same amber liquid the party had seem them carrying in the field.

  ‘What are they?’ Aléas asked, and their guide took a moment to follow the young man’s gaze.

  ‘Their food stores. What they mostly war over.’

  Cole made a soft whistle of air with his lips and the cat stopped at the bottom of the slope, her sleek hair standing straight up on her back like the spines of the kree. Carefully, the longhunter trod down to join her, tugging Ash after him with the connecting rope.

  ‘They can sense us,’ Kosh remarked, venturing further out next to Cole and Ash.

  He was right. The nearest kree were surrounding the group and probing towards their smeared skin. The cat backed away, hunkered against Cole’s legs.

  ‘There’s too many of us,’ Cole muttered.

  Ash spoke in a hush. ‘Can we risk going further?’

  ‘Maybe. If we push the pace.’

  Again the longhunter whistled softly. The cat looked up at him, then looked out across the floor of kree.

  ‘Go on now,’ he urged, and she picked herself up and ventured out amongst the kree and the eggs, carefully weaving a path through them towards the central tunnel in the floor. While she did so, Cole turned back towards the tunnel mouth above and lowered his torch to the slope, dribbling a line of sap across it that burned with a tiny blue flame.

  ‘Follow me closely,’ he said, leading the way out across the floor.

  It was getting hard to think straight. Ash’s mind was sluggish, unfocused, like the slow creep of hypothermia. He trod between two kree and leaned away from the exploring forelegs of the nearest one. Pricks against his bare feet made him look down at the ground. It was littered with detritus beyond his recognition. He swept the torch around to see how the others were faring. They threaded their way along the same route he was taking, Dalas towering above their heads, the blade of his machete resting on his shoulder. Like the rest of them he had eyes only for the kree. The two Caffey brothers followed behind him, and at the back came Aléas, holding a small double crossbow loaded and ready.

  In a tight group they gathered around the opening in the floor, staring down into the gulf of it where kree were coming and going. The entrance was large enough to swallow a wagon, and it fell vertically for some feet before curving steeply into a slope until they could see no further, though a warm press of air flowed upwards, carrying the scent of something new now, like bile. The men glanced at each other uneasily. No one moved. The cat was standing at the very edge, and she looked to Cole and Cole stared back at her, puckering his lips in an unhappy knot. When the tunnel was momentarily clear he exhaled sharply then hopped down into it with the lynx.

  Their show of bravery seemed to spur the others into matching it. With curses and black jokes they helped each other down into the hole, passing torches and weapons from grimy hand to grimy hand.

  ‘Can we get back up?’ Kosh was eager to know, and his face looked up at the opening above them like a man treading water at the bottom of a deep well.

  It had been a mistake to bring him here, Ash thought grimly.

  ‘Of course. It isn’t that steep,’ he reassured his old friend. ‘Come on, you old fool.’

  The slope was slick like the rest of the floors of the warren. The hardened strands of bile that covered it held a sticky residue which plucked ever so slightly at the soles of his feet. Below, the arching passage swallowed itself in a blackness deeper than night, into which the longhunter was following his cat.

  There was something unhinged about a person who would choose to do this alone for a living, and only now was Ash starting to fully appreciate that fact. What twist in a man’s life drove him towards such a lonely death as this one?

  He followed after the longhunter with a worsening feeling of dread in his belly, the men hushed behind him. Ash had offered each of them an advance in gold and a promised small fortune in Milk for their aid in this, but right now that hardly seemed enough.

  ‘I can’t breathe,’ the younger Caffey brother was saying over and over. ‘This stench is sucking the life from me.’

  ‘Go back then if it’s too much for you,’ said the older brother.

  The air was even hotter now, unlike any cave system he had ever known. Ash could feel the heat pulsing into his bare soles from the floor as though it was rising up through the earth. The walls were sweating with humidity. He stumbled as Kosh bumped into his back, the man mumbling words of apology in a slurred voice.

  Ash was little better. His senses reeled from the thick brew he was breathing in. Through his eyelashes, the flutters of the longhunter’s torchlight swam and took on a life of their own; a fiery winged creature trying to rise free from the wooden stake that ensnared it, snapping out towards his face. From his own torch a drop of burning sap fell on his arm and he held the flames further away, not daring to look up at the other fire creature struggling in his grasp.

  ‘Hallucinations,’ he said to Cole quietly. ‘Coming on strong.’

  ‘Aye,’ replied the longhunter, and when he spoke on there was a tremor in his voice. ‘I keep seeing a wild native youth lurking in the side tunnels.’

  ‘What does he want?’ Ash whispered hotly, and he found his gaze flickering to the passage they were passing, caught by the tussles of shadows within.

  ‘I think he wants us to turn back.’ Cole deigned to look around at him, and his face leered in the ugly light of his torch like the mask of a demon. ‘We’re deep now. It only gets worse from here in. You think you can handle it?’

  Ash responded with a snort of derision.

  Echoes of movement sounded out as they emerged into a wide, low-slung chamber where kree scuttled one way and another into the many tunnels around the walls. Cole dribbled another line of burning sap on the ground from where they had just emerged. He jerked his head at the cat and the animal sniffed out the tunnels on the other side, careless now as she darted around the scuttling kree.

  The group threaded their way across with dashes and sidesteps, and watched the cat choose one of the tunnels on the far side before disappearing into it, their breaths loud and ragged against the clicks and scratches of the kree.

  What was that along the passage she had chosen? Ash wondered, and peered closer, seeing a faint glow of light eerily red beyond the black silhouette of the cat. Following after her, they found themselves emerging into another chamber, this one filled with a species of giant fungi growing on the floor, which glowed red then slowly purple, then red again. More tunnels led away from this one, all of them exa
ctly the same.

  Easy to get lost here, Ash thought, if you panicked and lost your head. But the cat knew where she was going, and she went straight for a large passage at the back. Ash stumbled into it after Cole, tugging Kosh on the rope behind him. The pain in his head was making it almost unbearable to keep his eyes open in the torchlight now. Squinting, he had to grope the wall to keep his balance and feel out the way.

  ‘Easy now,’ someone was saying.

  ‘There’s a bloody mountain over our heads,’ rasped the youngest skyman of the group. ‘Can’t you feel it?’

  A flame danced before Ash’s face. He recoiled from it, raising a hand to shield his eyes, but a stranger’s grip shook his shoulder and he saw that it was only Cole, stopped now in a high space as massive as the first one they had entered, lit by more of the strangely glowing mushrooms around the walls.

  Ash gazed out across the heaving space to the absurd form that lay across its breadth. Open-mouthed, they all gazed in awe.

  The queen kree was the colour and translucency of amber; a great, pulsing worm of a thing with liquid-filled sacs for a body, lit from within by a string of glowing golden pearls.

  ‘Huh,’ exclaimed Kosh in Honshu. ‘A slug the size of a galleon.’

  So they had reached their goal at last. The source of Royal Milk.

  Turning to face them all, the longhunter said breathlessly, ‘Your heads are probably reeling by now but I need you to keep it together, understand? We need to be careful here.’ And then he led the way towards the queen kree, waiting long moments for workers to clear a way for them to pass through. Ahead, the queen rose high towards the vaulted space of the ceiling, where more mushrooms glowed upside down, pulsing red and purple, a suitably nightmarish hue for this scene they trod through with heavy feet.

  The creature lay in a shallow depression in the earth, lubricated by its own fragrant juices frothed into white foam along the sides of its body. There was a head somewhere at the end of it, lost beyond the angle of their perspective, though they could see the rear end well enough. It reminded Ash of a wasp, even as he saw a yellow egg sliding out from a stretching sphincter. Milk dribbled out around the shell of the egg as it slid out and fell into a puddle of juices. Warm, bad air wafted over them and they all staggered at the passing affront of it.

  ‘Whoah,’ Aléas said. ‘I thought Baracha was bad.’

  Quickly, workers scrambled in to take away the egg, but Cole was faster, sprinkling something from a vial along their path, stopping them in frantic confusion. Other workers, their abdomens engorged with amber liquid, waddled around to the head of the queen kree, where they fed food into her mouth.

  Ash felt another splash of hot sap against his forearm. Noticed that the torch in his hand was well past the halfway mark already.

  Cole had noticed too. ‘We need to hurry,’ their guide told them all, and he took the empty bladders from his belt and hurried down to the egg, which was larger than a wine barrel.

  ‘Quickly,’ said Ash to the others as he saw what Cole was doing. ‘Get as much as you can.’ But just then he gasped at a sudden piercing skewer through his temples and clenched a hand to his forehead. He almost toppled over.

  ‘You all right?’

  It was Kosh, watching Ash sway while his balance reeled around his feet.

  ‘I’m fine. Stop wasting time.’

  ‘You don’t look fine.’

  ‘Go!’

  Through a grey fog he saw the men down in the pool of juices. Cole had rolled the egg on end and had cut a hole in the top of it. One by one the men were dunking their bladders into it, filling them full with fresh Royal Milk, while Cole swung his torch about at the kree workers gathering around them in interest.

  ‘Make it quick!’ he shouted and his voice echoed loudly around the chamber.

  One by one they staggered back up to where Ash was trying to gather himself together, their sputtering, shortening torches spurring them onwards. He stumbled down with his own empty skins and filled them with the last of the Milk pooled at the bottom of the egg. The others were licking their fingers and grinning despite the kree looming around them. He did the same and thought he felt the pain recede a little, his vision starting to clear.

  ‘Tastes vile,’ he said to Cole.

  ‘Needs to ferment first,’ the man answered. ‘It isn’t potent yet. Is this enough for you?’

  ‘I reckon so.’

  ‘Good, I doubt we have the time to wait around for another egg to pop out.’

  Ash nodded and took in the excited faces of the men, knew that he owed them more than he could ever repay them for their courage here.

  Some workers followed them as they retreated back across the floor burdened with their bulging skins. It was the Milk they carried, Cole told them, and the scent of it on their skins. Unconcerned, he told Aléas to take the lead. ‘Just follow the cat, she’ll take us straight out.’

  Behind them, in their wake, Cole sprinkled droplets from the vial to slow and confuse the following workers, and in a low tense voice urged the men to move faster.

  *

  Upwards they hurried, all of them moving along a sloping tunnel as fast as their heavy burdens of Milk would allow them, the rope tight between their waists and everyone panting hard now, the painted numbers on the skin of their backs glowing a pale green in the dimness.

  Faces turned back occasionally along the line of torches; white beacons lit by the sputtering dripping flames above their heads. Big Dalas seemed as though he was trying to run for it, surging up even against the resistance of the rope, pulling Kosh and Ash and Cole behind him with all the power of a work zel.

  ‘Clear a way!’ they heard Aléas shout ahead, and in a rush they pressed themselves against the side of the tunnel, though in his lather, Dalas stepped to the wrong side so that the rope stretched tight across the passage, right in the way of a scuttling kree.

  It was a large warrior, and the creature crashed into the rope then reared up on its six legs. Its jaws snapped the line in two.

  ‘Leave it be!’ Cole shouted, surging forwards as Dalas grabbed for the long-shafted axe he carried on his back.

  But he was too late. With dreadlocks flying the big Corician swung the axehead and chopped through the nearest limb of the creature, causing it to swing round at him.

  Steel sang as Ash and Kosh drew their blades too, both acting from instinct. Right next to the kree, Kosh whooped like the young man he had once been, shouting the fear from him.

  ‘No!’ screamed Cole.

  Again the axehead swung. The winged blade sank deep into the kree’s hood but failed to kill the creature outright, and in the next moment Dalas’s fist was punching frantically as he went down beneath its frenzied attack, spines rattling across its back as though in a gale. Men were yelling now. Cole was still shouting, still telling them not to kill it. But Dalas was down there on the floor getting his flesh torn away.

  In a rush, Ash and Kosh leapt in and tried to stab at the kree’s vital underhood, a tricky feat while it was moving so fast, thrashing its maw over the prone man and stabbing at him with its tapered legs.

  Teeth gritted, Ash clutched the edge of its carapace for leverage and felt the animal strength of it pushing and pulling him. Dalas was using the shaft of his axe to hold its jaws from his bloody throat, but the barbed lashes were doing their work on his face, and awfully so. Amongst all the pink and crimson, Ash caught a flash of the mute’s manic white eyes, and saw the fight in them even now.

  With a growl of intent Ash ducked low and skewered the kree’s underhood with the best thrust he had in him, twisting the blade as it sank deep. The creature reared around to face him, the two still connected by the length of steel. Lashes whipped at his forearm, stripping the flesh from it, and Ash threw himself against the hilt to shove the blade even deeper until the kree’s legs gave out on one side, and then the other.

  The creature lay dead before him, its dark juices oozing out onto the floor.

&nb
sp; Somewhere up ahead the cat was roaring.

  ‘You bloody fools, you’ve gone and killed us all!’ Cole shouted and surged past Ash to see what they had done. The longhunter had cut himself free from the rope. ‘That kree blood will have the whole nest down on our heads!’

  The ground seemed to be trembling, or did Ash only imagine that, the thousands of kree converging on them from every direction?

  Dalas gasped for a breath, though it came out as a bloody bubble which broke upon his ruined face. He made a strangled sound as though he was trying to speak, but then he was still. His eyes glazed over.

  Dalas was gone, and what was left of him was enough to make Ash avert his veteran eyes.

  From the tunnel behind them they heard the scrabbles of running kree.

  ‘Run!’ Cole yelled at the rest of the men staring at the still form of Dalas, and his voice broke the spell so that suddenly they were all moving, running up the tunnel as fast as they could.

  Not wanting to slow them down, Ash cut through his own portion of rope then snatched up Dalas’s bulging skins and threw them over his shoulder. He took a moment to unfasten the belt of grenades from the man’s torso too, and with a final flourish he grabbed up the fallen torch and turned and cast it down the tunnel behind him, feeling the rush of air being pushed along it before he glimpsed the frantic glistening forms of kree warriors scrambling up towards him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Survival

  ‘Which way? Where are we going?’

  ‘There – ahead of you – are you blind?’

  ‘It’s blocked by kree, you bloody fool.’

  ‘Then wave your torches at them!’

  ‘Where’s Ash? Where’s the longhunter?’

  ‘Behind us I think.’

  ‘Where’s the cat gone then?’

  ‘I don’t know!’