by Anthony Ryan
“We could make one,” Scrimshine suggested. “Break up the sleds to fashion a flag-pole, sew some tarps together for the pennant. Something to do at least, Skipper.”
Hilemore saw wisdom in his reasoning. After their initial enthusiasm the party’s exercise regimen had slackened off considerably, most sitting lethargic and preoccupied by their impending fate. He was about to start rousing them to the task when an unexpected someone called his name. Preacher hadn’t said a word since they climbed Mount Reygnar, and precious little before then, so it took a second to recognise his voice. The tall cleric stood on the south-facing edge of the berg, pointing at something in the maze of bergs covering the horizon.
“See something?” Hilemore asked, moving to Preacher’s side.
“A ship,” the marksman said, still pointing.
“Can’t be,” Scrimshine said. “Probably just a trick of the light. No offence,” he added quickly when Preacher turned his impassive gaze on him.
Hilemore saw the smuggler’s point; no vessel could have sailed this far south through so many bergs, not in the few days since the sheet broke up. However, recalling that it was thanks to Preacher’s eyes that they found the spire, Hilemore retrieved his spy-glass from the folds of his furs and raised it to his eye. It took some seconds of focusing the lens before he found it, a low dark shape just visible through a gap between two bergs, and rising from it the unmistakable sight of three masts.
“It seems,” Hilemore said, lowering the glass, “the ice has one more wonder to show us, Mr. Scrimshine.”
• • •
It transpired that they had to break up the sleds after all, but to build a boat rather than a flag-pole. Although the drift of their berg had brought them to within a few hundred yards of the mysterious ship, it had become clear that its course was unlikely to bring them any closer. Steelfine did most of the work, putting Island-born skills to use. Within the space of two hours he had crafted a bowl-shaped frame from the pliable struts, which was duly covered by a skin of hastily-sewn-together tarps. Hilemore forbade the Islander from taking charge of the craft, knowing this duty fell to him.
“I can’t guarantee she’ll make it all the way, sir,” Steelfine cautioned. They had lowered the boat over the edge where it bobbed in the current, a small pool of water already sloshing in the bottom.
“I have every confidence in your skills, Lieutenant.” Hilemore nodded towards the ship and the hump of an upturned life-boat visible on its upper deck. “She only has to last a few minutes.”
He was obliged to use a rifle as an oar and it proved a clumsy implement, barely capable of ploughing a course through the swirling currents. Several times the tiny craft was spun about by an eddy before Hilemore managed to reassert control. They had fixed a line to the edge of the boat’s hull, insurance against the life-boat on the ship proving to be unsailable. The men played out the line as Hilemore made his often-wayward progress towards the ship. It took an hour of arduous labour before he drew close enough to get a clear view of her hull. He was pleased to find it intact, the lower planks clad in iron and lacking any obvious damage or even overt signs of age, though this vessel was undoubtedly of antique construction. She lacked any stacks or paddles, the three masts telling of a ship built in the pre–Blood Age.
Hilemore was obliged to navigate a gap between two towering bergs, finding the current even more violent and difficult to traverse. By the time he made it through and the ship’s hull towered above him, the once-shallow pool of water in the bottom of his makeshift boat had swollen to ankle depth. Hilemore unslung a rope from around his chest, taking hold of the grapple and preparing to throw, then pausing as his eyes caught sight of the ship’s name-plate. The word had lost its paint long ago. Now he was close enough to read it clearly, he could make out a name set in Mandinorian letters rich in archaic flourishes: Dreadfire.
CHAPTER 31
Clay
The lake turned out to be more of a sea and the bridge more of a road. The crystals faded twice before they caught sight of another land-mass, an island even smaller than the one now home to the ruins of Kriz’s home. So far their erstwhile captor and subsequent saviour hadn’t provided any further information on her origins or explanation for the island’s destruction.
She kept on striding along the algae-covered road, resting for short intervals and only stopping completely when the light of the three suns faded. She ate several of the sea-biscuits Clay offered her, but bunched her face in disdain when he proffered a strip of dried beef. After that she sat in silence, offering only vague shakes of her head to his repeated questions as she maintained a careful vigil over the surrounding waters. The reason for her caution soon became clear. Almost as soon as the darkness closed in the surface of the water was broken by a series of bright splashes. One flared only a few yards shy of the road’s edge, Clay catching sight of gleaming scales and a long snake-like form before another splash erupted and it was gone.
“Stands to reason there had to be more Blues,” he told an alarmed Loriabeth, now crouched to one knee, cocked pistol fanning back and forth across the water. “Seem to be just as titchy as the ones back at the shore.”
He turned to Kriz, who seemed much less alarmed by the Blue’s appearance than he might have expected. “Guess they just grow smaller here, huh?” he asked, elaborating by making a shrinking gesture with his hands. Kriz merely gave him a blank look before returning her gaze to the waters, the small brass-and-steel weapon clutched tight in her hand.
Their brief sharing of minds had increased the understanding between them so he found it increasingly easy to discern meaning in some of her infrequent words. He also suspected that she comprehended more of his conversations with Loriabeth and Sigoral than she let on. However, when he suggested, via some inexpert miming, that they trance again, she refused with a firm shake of her head.
Doesn’t fully trust us yet, he decided. Worried how we’ll react to what she’ll tell us, maybe. He also suspected there might be another reason for her reluctance. Could be she’s more scared of what she might learn from me than what I might learn from her.
“There’s gotta be fish in here,” Loriabeth commented a few hours into their second artificial day on the road. She paused to peer at the water below. “Like Krystaline Lake. The drakes there preyed on dolphins and such, Scriberson said.” She turned to Kriz, making a flapping motion with her hand before pointing at the water. “Fish in here? Yes?”
Kriz returned her gaze for a moment, possibly contemplating if there was any danger in providing a response, then nodded. “Fishhh,” she said carefully. “Yes.”
“It would be nice to catch a few,” Sigoral put in, chewing unenthusiastically on some dried beef.
“I’m all out of rods and nets, Lieutenant,” Clay told him.
“You could go for a swim, sailor boy,” Loriabeth suggested with a sweet smile. “See what you can catch.”
Sigoral replied with a bland smile of his own and strode on.
A mile or so later they came to a fork in the road, a second walkway branching off to the right to disappear into the haze a hundred paces off. Kriz strode past the junction without pause, barely glancing at the alternative route and ignoring Clay’s question about where it might lead.
“It seems she has a definite destination in mind,” Sigoral observed.
“As long as it leads to a way out of here,” Loriabeth replied. “Never thought I’d say it, but I’m sorely missing the sight of the ice.”
They passed several more junctions before the light faded again, Kriz again ignoring each one. As the darkness descended and they made their customary halt for the night, Clay noticed a definite increase in the number of Blues disturbing the water on either side of the road.
“Gotta be double the number there were last night,” Loriabeth surmised, squinting into the gloom.
“They hungry or just curious?” Clay as
ked Kriz.
He saw her fingers twitch on the brass-and-steel gun, a grim decisiveness colouring her gaze as she watched the Blues churn the water. “Hungry,” she said, getting to her feet. “Yes.”
She went to Loriabeth’s pack, pointing at the lantern fastened to the straps. “Want me to light that?” Loriabeth asked, receiving a nod in response. Loriabeth struck a flint to light the lantern’s oil-covered wick, Sigoral quickly following suit with his own heavier sailor’s lamp.
“Look,” Kriz said, gesturing for the two light-bearers to cast their beams out over the water on either side of the road. “Move . . . fast,” she added, starting off at a rapid pace.
They marched through the darkness, Loriabeth and Sigoral constantly playing their lights over the surrounding waters. Clay noticed that the Blues seemed shy of the lights, diving down whenever one of the beams caught them on the surface. But whatever threat they sensed wasn’t enough to force a retreat and the night air was constantly riven by the sound of multiple splashes.
An hour’s rapid marching brought them to another junction and this time Kriz took the alternate route, branching off to the left. She moved with greater urgency as the journey wore on. Clay noted that the Blues were becoming bolder, rising close enough to the road to cast an increasing amount of lake-water over the party.
“Getting right feisty, ain’t they?” Loriabeth commented. She moved with a pistol in one hand, the barrel aligned with the lantern’s beam.
“I guess a meal like us don’t turn up too often,” Clay said, grunting a little with the effort of matching Kriz’s pace.
Finally she slowed as a bulky shape resolved out of the darkness ahead; another island. It was much smaller than the last one, formed of a slab of rock rising to a height of perhaps fifteen feet from the water, lacking buildings or vegetation. They followed Kriz to where the road met the island, giving way to a series of steps carved into the stone. She started up the steps immediately, whilst Clay and the others lingered at the bottom. The water on either side of the road seemed to be roiling now.
“Gotta be fifty or more,” Loriabeth said, her beam tracking from one shimmering form to another. “Reckon I could get a couple. Even from here.” She drew back the hammer on her revolver, aiming carefully. “How’s about it, Lieutenant?” she asked Sigoral, who duly raised his carbine in readiness.
“We got maybe thirty rounds between us,” Clay reminded them. He turned as Kriz called to them from the top of the steps, voicing a phrase in her own tongue that sounded far from complimentary. “Come on, looks like we’re wanted. I doubt she’d’ve brought us here without good reason.”
They followed the steps to the bare flat crest of the island, finding Kriz standing beside another plinth. As she touched the crystal set into the plinth, Clay and the others started in surprise at a sudden thrum of grinding rock beneath their feet. A near perfectly square cloud of dust rose a few feet away as a section of the island’s surface descended then slid aside. Clay felt a rush of wind on his skin and saw the displaced dust being sucked into the revealed opening.
“That’s weird,” Loriabeth said, levelling her revolver at the opening.
“Air filling a vacuum,” Sigoral said, stepping closer to peer into the gloomy depths below the hole. “A hermetically sealed chamber of some kind.”
Kriz motioned for Loriabeth to hand over the lantern then moved to the opening, playing the beam around until it alighted on a series of iron rungs set into the wall. She handed the lantern back and began to descend, soon disappearing from view as the three of them continued to stand immobile. After a pause they heard her call out an impatient summons.
“If she meant us harm,” Clay said, watching Loriabeth and Sigoral exchange a suspicious glance, “we’d already be dead ten times over.”
Moving to the opening, he lowered himself onto the ladder and started down. The shaft proved to be about a dozen feet deep, Clay stepping off the ladder to find Kriz waiting at the bottom, surrounded by darkness. He called to Loriabeth to toss down her lantern, catching it and casting the light around to illuminate a long tunnel-like chamber. The walls were lined with racks containing what appeared to be mechanicals of some kind. Some were long, others short and stubby and most featured handgrips set behind what were unmistakably trigger mechanisms.
Guns, he realised, noting how each device bore a similarity in construction to Kriz’s stubby weapon. Steel and brass merged together in an intricate harmony that no manufactory he knew of could match.
“Looks like she’s brung us to an armoury,” Clay told Loriabeth as she climbed down.
“Don’t look like no iron I ever saw.”
His cousin stepped closer to one of the objects, a shiny black device about two feet long. It had a grip and trigger like the others, and a narrow cylinder fixed to its upper side. Loriabeth touched a tentative hand to the object before taking a firmer hold and lifting it clear of the rack. “Got a barrel, right enough,” she said, turning the object over in her hands. “Small bore, though. And it don’t weigh much for a weapon.” She raised the device to her shoulder, a smile coming to her lips as her eye came level with the cylinder. “A spy-glass,” she said, a certain anticipatory delight colouring her voice. “Could shoot out a pigeon’s eyes with this.”
“Not a speck of rust,” Clay saw, running a hand over an identical weapon.
“Preserved by the vacuum,” Sigoral said from the base of the ladder. “These could have been stored down here for a very long time.”
Kriz moved deeper into the chamber and returned carrying a much larger device. It was longer than the one in Loriabeth’s hands and had a barrel with a bore larger than any shotgun Clay had seen. Kriz paused to retrieve a drum-shaped object from a near by rack and slotted it into the weapon’s underside with a loud clack. That done, she returned to the ladder and began to climb up.
“At least show us how this works,” Loriabeth called after her, patting the weapon she held. Kriz failed to respond and Clay quickly followed her up the ladder, Sigoral and Loriabeth close behind.
He found Kriz standing close to the edge of the island’s crest, the weapon raised with its stock at her shoulder. On either side of the road the lake continued to roil as the massed Blues thrashed their long bodies, making their positions easy to mark despite the gloom.
Kriz began firing almost immediately, the weapon making a percussive popping sound with every shot, six in all loosed off in quick succession. Clay saw six bright waterspouts rise up amongst the Blues. There was a one-second delay then the water beneath the surface blossomed into a bright shade of white before erupting upwards in a series of explosions. Clay could see flashes of red amid the rising water, and the sight of one Blue cut in half by the force of the blasts. The beast’s two constituent parts trailed blood as they cart-wheeled amidst the spume before plummeting down to land on the road with a wet crunch.
As the lake becalmed into dark unbroken placidity Kriz lowered the weapon and favoured Clay with one of the few smiles he had seen on her face. “Not . . . hungry now,” she said.
• • •
The weapon’s stock gave a faint pulse against Clay’s shoulder as he pulled the trigger, a ten-foot-high geyser of water erupting in the centre of the black circle visible through the spy-glass.
“Over four hundred yards,” Sigoral said, eyebrows raised as he looked at the weapon in his own hands. “Barely any recoil, or smoke.”
Clay saw that he was right, lowering the weapon to see a thin tendril of greyish vapour escaping the barrel. They had remained on the island until the lights came again, catching a few hours’ fitful sleep. Come the dawn Kriz began to educate them in the weapons from the armoury. Loriabeth, as might be expected, took to the task immediately, quickly learning how to load one of the carbine-like guns with a surprisingly small box that slotted into its underside. Clay watched her fire off fifty rounds before the box emptied
. The weapon was apparently capable of reloading its chamber without the need for cocking or levers. Also, unlike any other repeating fire-arm he had seen, it ejected no cartridges. When removed the box was empty.
“Ever see the like?” he asked Sigoral.
“There were persistent rumours of a self-loading rifle being developed in the Emperor’s workshops,” the marine replied. “But I doubt it could compare to this.” He smoothed a hand along the weapon’s stock. “This . . . is a thing beyond our time, Mr. Torcreek.”
A cacophonous burst of gunfire came from the right where Kriz was acquainting Loriabeth with a different device. It was much larger than the carbine-like weapons, bearing a vague resemblance to a longrifle in the dimensions of its barrel and stock. The similarity ended there, however, for it quickly became apparent this weapon could outrange a longrifle by a considerable margin, and fire a great many more bullets. It also produced more smoke than the carbines and the calibre of its barrel was at least twice the size. It was loaded via a drum that contained at least two hundred rounds. But its most salient feature was the fact that it would fire continuously at one pull of the trigger, emptying its copious magazine in a concentrated stream lasting all of ten seconds.
“Well, how about that,” Loriabeth said, a broad grin on her face as she lowered the weapon, smoke leaking from the barrel. “Could take me a whole pack of Greens with this.”
In addition to the weapons the armoury also yielded an additional pack of ingenious design, resembling a rolled blanket in the way it curved across Kriz’s back. It appeared to have been fashioned from the same material as her belt, as were the set of clothes it contained which Kriz had been quick to swap for her borrowed garb. The clothing consisted of a loose-fitting, all-in-one garment that covered her from shoulders to knees. A deep fold at the neck could be formed into a cowl to cover her head. The pack also contained a pair of shoes which at first appeared little more than flimsy slippers, but subsequently proved impervious to rigours of the road.
