by Anthony Ryan
The alarm call finally came two hours past noon, just as Hilemore had begun ordering the wall planks stripped from the captain’s cabin. He rushed onto the deck, looking up to see Braddon Torcreek standing alongside Preacher in the crow’s nest. The Contractor captain pointed east and opened his hand, spreading the fingers wide. Five of them. “A mile off!” Braddon added, shouting through cupped hands.
Hilemore kept the dismay from his features, striding forward and casting out a string of orders, sending the crew rushing to follow a pre-rehearsed drill. “Furl sails! Drop anchor fore and aft! Mr. Steelfine, to your gun, if you please! Deck crew stand by to deploy mines!”
The deck crew consisted of Scrimshine and Skaggerhill at the starboard rail and Hilemore and another crewman on the port. They waited until the anchors bit the sea-bed, bringing the Dreadfire to a dead stop, then began hauling rope through block and tackle.
“Gently man,” Hilemore cautioned as the first mine was lifted off the deck. They hauled it a good few inches clear of the rail then slowly swung it out over the side before lowering it into the water. The temptation to rush the task was strong but Hilemore was wary of how the gun-cotton would react to any sudden movements. The barrel sank into the water two-thirds of its length before floating free of its enclosing mesh of ropes. Hilemore took an oar and gave it a soft shove, provoking the crewman at his side to take a deep breath and hold it until the device bobbed its way out to a safe distance.
“Only another twelve left,” Hilemore told the man, clapping him on the shoulder and moving to the stern.
It took fully ten minutes of nerve-stretching labour to float off the mines, during which time Scrimshine contrived to jerk his rope a little too fast, causing the device to tumble free of its ropes. The entire crew froze and stared at the tottering barrel spinning on its base until coming to a juddering stop.
“Slipped me grip, Skipper,” the smuggler said with a weak smile. Some of the crew were vociferous in calling for Hilemore to “tip that bilge-scum over the side,” to which he replied, “We’re short-handed. Draw your rifles and stand ready. I suspect we’re in for some hot work today.”
By the time one of the deck crew called out a sighting the Dreadfire sat surrounded by a floating ring of mines. Hilemore craned his neck and called up to the crow’s nest. “At your discretion, gentlemen!” Braddon replied with a wave whilst Preacher simply crouched and put his rifle to his shoulder.
“Leave the mines to the Contractors,” Hilemore repeated to the crew in a soft murmur as he paced along the deck. “Aim at any drake that shows itself above water and then not unless they’re at pistol-range. Aim for the eyes. Anything else is a waste of ammunition.”
He completed his tour and moved to where Steelfine and Skaggerhill crouched at their only cannon. They had crafted a raised platform from the few bits of furniture that hadn’t been tossed overboard. The twelve-pounder sat atop it, the barrel at full elevation and packed with both ball and chain-shot. Steelfine touched a match to a taper as Skaggerhill packed a wad of gun-cotton into the touch-hole.
“Hardly a rifled pivot-gun,” Steelfine commented as Hilemore came to his side. “Hauling her about won’t be easy. But she’ll do.”
She’ll have to, Hilemore said inwardly, turning his gaze to the water. The surface remained placid but for the occasional swirling eddy and the ripples caused by the bobbing barrels. A hush settled over the ship, the stillness made more ominous by the realisation that the Blue beneath their hull had stopped its call. The pack is gathered, Hilemore thought. Now all that remains is the kill.
The first attack was so swift it almost proved disastrous, a Blue rearing up twenty yards off the port bow, mouth gaping to deliver its fire. The flames had already lanced out towards the hull when Preacher fired his longrifle, detonating the barrel just to the left of the beast. The resultant explosion dispelled any doubts as to the efficacy of their invention, and also made Hilemore wonder if they hadn’t overdone it with the gun-cotton. The ship shook from end to end, heaving on the swell birthed by the blast. Fortunately the anchor cables held and she stayed in position. Hilemore staggered across the swaying deck to the rail to gauge the effect on the Blue, seeing it coiling in a spreading red mist. The explosion had almost cut it in two, its mouth opening to deliver a pathetic final stream of fire before it slipped into the depths.
Another shot sounded from above and an explosion erupted thirty yards to starboard. Again the Dreadfire shuddered, shifting to port as the blast wave caused her to drag her anchors. “Got the bastard!” Scrimshine yelled, pointing to a large slick of gore on the rippling surface.
Preacher and Braddon detonated two more mines in quick succession, one blasting a drake into several large pieces a short distance from the prow, the other without obvious result though it did appear to herald a lull.
“Scared them away good and proper, sir,” a crewman commented to Hilemore, face flushed with relief and triumph.
“Look to your front!” Hilemore snapped. “This isn’t over yet.”
For a time it appeared the Blues intended to prove him wrong, launching no more attacks for a full quarter hour. “Any thoughts, Mr. Skaggerhill?” Hilemore asked the harvester quietly as the calm dragged on.
“Not my speciality, Captain,” Skaggerhill replied. “Could write volumes about land drakes, Blues’re something else.” His craggy features bunched in consternation as he scanned the water. “Were they Greens I’d hazard they’re waiting for nightfall.”
Hilemore looked up, seeing the first glimmer of stars in the darkening sky. Night came early and fast in polar climes, something the Blues were certain to know. “Light the lanterns!” he called out. “And rig torches, all you can make!”
By the time the sun began to dip the Dreadfire was brightly lit from bow to stern, making Hilemore grateful for the fact that he hadn’t tipped any oil over the side. The mines had begun to drift farther away as the minutes dragged by, coming close to the edge of the glow cast by the lights. Hilemore ordered two small rafts fashioned from the planks they had ripped from the walls of the captain’s cabin. Empty barrels were lashed in place for buoyancy before the small craft were piled with oil-soaked rope and set adrift to port and starboard. Torches were thrown to set the rafts alight and the mines flickered back into view, along with something else.
The spines cut the water just beyond the ring of mines, wakes bright in the glow of the burning rafts. Hilemore’s gaze swept around, seeing spines knifing through the surface on all sides. The Blues were circling the Dreadfire.
“Shoot them!” Skaggerhill shouted, casting his voice up at the crow’s nest. “They’re gonna rush us all at once! Shoot the mines!”
As if in response a set of spines immediately turned and slipped below the surface, an action mimicked by the drakes on either side. “Open fire!” Hilemore ordered, calling out to every crewman on deck. “Aim for the mines!”
Water spouted all around the ship as the crew obeyed, the crackle of rifle fire joined by the deeper blast of Preacher’s longrifle. Three mines exploded in quick succession, two to starboard and one to port. Realising there was scant cover at the stern, Hilemore retrieved the spare rifle he had slung over the wheel and rushed aft. He could see a mine bobbing on the surface thirty yards off, raised high by the swell as something very large passed beneath it. He put the rifle to his shoulder and fired, missing by several inches. Hilemore cursed, reloaded, took a shallow breath, held it and fired again. The mine blew, transforming the surrounding water into a cascade of white, shot through with red. He caught a glimpse of the Blue’s snout, snorting blood into the air before it sank.
Three more explosions shook the ship, causing her to heave to and fro at alarming angles. Hilemore was pitched from his feet, his head connecting painfully with the deck. He lay there dazed for several seconds, vision clouded and ears filled with a high-pitched buzzing, a buzzing that transformed into screams
as the confusion faded. He scrambled upright and turned to the bow, finding much of the forward rigging in flames. A Blue was in the process of hauling itself aboard, huge coils bunching and thrashing as it forced its bulk out of the water, fire spewing from its gaping maw all the while. One man writhed on the deck, covered all over in flames. Hilemore saw another leap over the side, hands scrabbling at the blaze engulfing his head and shoulders.
The Blue’s flames died as it shifted its bulk, shattering timber and rigging in an effort to gain purchase on the ship. A flurry of rifle-shots cracked out and the beast reared, screaming as blood spouts erupted around its eyes. Hilemore cast his rifle aside and drew his revolver, charging across the deck and firing, a bestial roar erupting from his throat. As if recognising a challenge the Blue focused on him, one eye narrowing whilst blood and viscous fluid leaked from the other. It hissed, its crest flaring as it reared up, mouth gaping as the heat-haze formed around its maw.
Hilemore suddenly found himself in the air, propelled off his feet by a fresh explosion on the fore-deck. Time seemed to slow as he flew backwards, enabling him to enjoy the sight of the upper half of the drake’s body disintegrating into red-and-blue pulp. Its severed head turned end over end, casting out a crimson spiral before disappearing over the side.
Hilemore landed with a jarring impact that left him winded and immobile. He lay there, chest heaving as he tried to will strength into numb limbs. “C’mon, Skipper,” Scrimshine grunted as he put Hilemore’s arm over his shoulders and hauled him upright. “Not quite time for bed.”
The twelve-pounder lay on the mid-deck, smoke rising from the barrel which had shattered down to the breech. Steelfine stood next to the remnants of the gun platform, his taper still in hand and much of his clothing hanging from his massive frame in charred tatters. As Hilemore limped closer he saw that the Islander’s face was blackened and his eyebrows appeared to have been singed away.
“All right, Number One?” Hilemore asked him, drawing a blank gaze, Steelfine’s eyes blinking in the ashen mask of his face. “A little deaf perhaps?”
“Apologies, sir,” Steelfine replied in a hoarse bellow. “You’ll have to speak up. I think I may be a little deaf.”
Hilemore grasped his shoulder briefly and moved away, straightening his back and forcing the limp from his leg. “Let’s get some buckets over the side, lads!” he called out. “I want this blaze extinguished in five minutes!”
• • •
Morning brought still waters and no sign of any drakes. Incredibly one mine had survived the night, bobbing indifferently on the surface a short way off to starboard. “Got ’em all, d’you think?” Scrimshine wondered, cocking an ear towards the deck. “No call that I can hear.”
“I’d prefer not to wait and find out,” Hilemore said, raising his voice to a moderate shout as he turned to Steelfine. “Unfurl the sheets, Number One.”
Damage to the fore-deck was severe but not fatal, leaving the Dreadfire with a blackened prow and partially denuded deck. The loss of two more crewmen was of far greater concern, not least in the fresh wave of guilt it left in Hilemore’s breast. To have followed me such a long way and receive an ugly death as their only reward. Added to the guilt was the inescapable fact that they now had two less bodies to work the rigging. Hilemore considered it an odd piece of good fortune that they didn’t possess more sails since working a fully rigged vessel of this size would have been impossible with so few hands. Even so, progress was painfully slow, every course change a trial of frantic rope pulls and hands made raw by hauling canvas.
They gave the burnt body of their crewmate to the King of the Deep after they had been underway for a good few hours. Hilemore entertained the faint hope they had denied the fellow’s flesh to any Blues that might have lingered at the scene of the battle. The fiery spectacle of Mount Reygnar grew on the horizon as they followed the winding channel through the ice. Hilemore trained his spy-glass on the volcano to watch the red-orange gouts of lava cascade over the lip of the crater to flow in sluggish rivulets down its flanks to the sea. The base of the mountain was perpetually shrouded in mist now, the waters raised to the boiling-point by the continuing tide of lava.
“Pondering the question as to how we’ll get by that thing?”
Hilemore turned to find Braddon had joined him at the prow, his shrewd gaze focused on the blazing mountain. They could hear it as well as see it now, crying out with a throaty, booming roar every time it spewed up another gobbet of molten rock.
“We’ll keep to the fringes,” Hilemore said. “It’ll take some careful sailing, but I think we’re equal to the task.”
“More worried about the gas. There’s volcanoes in south-west Arradsia given to coughing up all manner of foul humours.”
Hilemore knew that the Contractor was right but also knew they had no alternative. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t share this knowledge with the men, Captain Torcreek,” he said.
Braddon gave a small shrug. “As you wish . . .”
His brow furrowed and his shoulders took on an involuntary hunch as a boom sounded from astern. From the length of the echo Hilemore judged the source to be a few miles off. He and Braddon hurried aft, Hilemore training his glass on the distant maze of bergs. “That a cannon?” Braddon wondered.
“No.” Hilemore’s glass stopped as it alighted on something between two large bergs. Something large jutting out of the water to a height of at least twelve feet. “It was the mine we left behind.” He watched the huge spine slip below the water. It didn’t kill him, he thought. Of course it didn’t.
“Captain!” Preacher called down from the crow’s nest, pointing to something off the starboard bow. Hilemore didn’t require the glass to find the object of the marksman’s alarm. The water some twenty feet across appeared to be boiling, though there was no steam. Huge bubbles rose and burst on the surface, which soon began to swell as something very large rose from the depths.
“Last Look Jack brought a friend,” Hilemore murmured, a wry, despairing grin forming on his lips. I should have had them make more mines.
CHAPTER 48
Clay
This is impossible. Clay held Kriz as she shuddered, blood still pouring from her mouth in a dark torrent. This can’t happen.
Silverpin gave a soft laugh, Clay looking up to find her standing with her arms crossed and a triumphant grin on her lips. “If we can fuck in here,” she said, “why do you imagine we can’t kill too?”
Clay clamped down on his burgeoning rage, returning his gaze to Kriz and seeing the light begin to dim in her eyes. “The trance,” he said, pulling her closer. “End it.”
Kriz just stared up at him in agonised incomprehension, her convulsions coming in shorter, weaker spasms now.
“Feel free to leave if you like,” Silverpin said. “But she stays. Her mind thinks this is all real, you see. Shock I expect.”
All real . . . “No,” he grated. “Nothing here is real.”
He closed his eyes and concentrated, the grey void around them transforming into Nelphia’s dusty surface. My mindscape, he thought, turning Kriz over and taking hold of the knife embedded in the back of her neck. I decide what’s real here. He pulled the knife free with a quick jerk of his wrist and concentrated on the gushing wound left by the blade. It’s not bleeding. He summoned the image of Kriz, healed and undamaged, willing it into being. The blood faded away and the wound vanished, Kriz letting out a moan of agonised relief, though she still lay limp in his arms.
“Oh no,” he heard Silverpin say in a hard, intent voice. “I don’t think so, Clay.”
He took a firmer hold of Kriz and surged upright, raising dust as he whirled away with unnatural speed. Silverpin cast a brace of knives after them, aiming for Kriz. He summoned a blast of wind to deflect the spinning shards of metal and sank into a crouch, Kriz still clutched in his arms.
“My mind,” he told S
ilverpin. “And I don’t remember inviting you.”
He raised a hand, summoning a gun to fill it, the Stinger he had lost within the mountain. Silverpin leapt as he fired, tumbling across the mindscape like a surface performer as the bullets raised dust in her wake. She came to a halt as the Stinger clicked empty, laughing again in the face of Clay’s rage. He could feel the trance fading fast, cracks appearing in Nelphia’s surface.
“Your mind is my mind too,” Silverpin called to him. “My home, you could say. Call me greedy, but I’ve never been fond of sharing.”
“I don’t want you any more!” Clay shouted, rising with Kriz held tight in his arms.
“If that was true I wouldn’t be here.” Silverpin’s face became suddenly sombre, sad almost. “You saved me, Clay. Kept this part of me inside you. Looks like we’re stuck with each other for a very long time.”
“I don’t want you any more!” he repeated, teeth clenched as he willed truth into the words. In response another crack appeared in the ground between them, broader than the others and emitting a deep orange glow. Clay looked down to see lava bubbling in the bottom of the newly created chasm. It was darker than the molten lake he had seen beneath the mountain, the fiery soup shot through with streaks of blood red.
Guess that’s what rage looks like, he thought, raising his gaze to Silverpin. “I . . . don’t . . . want . . . you . . . anymore!” he told her in a harsh, grating whisper and had the satisfaction of watching the surety fade from her face.
“Without me what are you?” she demanded, tone edged in desperation. “You’re like a child lost in the jungle, fumbling around, trying to find a way to defeat something you can’t even understand. The White remembers and it doesn’t forgive. When it comes for you . . .”
Her words died as Clay shattered the ground beneath her feet, sending her tumbling into the depths of the chasm. She screamed as she fell, all the way down to the molten river where she screamed some more until falling blessedly silent.
