by Nate Crowley
Kaba fired a blast from her shotgun to scare the animals to the raft’s edges, then set a crew of the more able sailors to dislodging them from the morass with poles and chain-cutters. Once again, Mouana was quietly pleased her de facto first officer had chosen not to throw all the ship’s old whaling gear overboard before transfer.
“We’re on the Sinfondo now, chief,” called Kaba, gesturing at the wide dark with her scrawny arm. “Drifters like this’ll be a lot more common here on in, and we’re headed upriver now too, so they’ll smack harder with it. And that yonder’s a tadpole compared with some you see on the open channel. She’s a hard boat sure, but won’t take kindly to a waltz with a whale-oak.”
“How far upriver is Mwydyn-Dinas?” asked Mouna.
Kaba waggled her crooked jaw thoughtfully as sailors hacked and shoved to disentangle them from the tree, then answered with a wave of her hand.
“Some hours yet; we’ll likely reach it a stroke before dawn. That’s a long yomp in the night; might be cannier to pause for a spell, ’til the light’s fat enough to see more logs on the float?”
“Not an option; she’ll be on us before we know it. Soon as we’re free, pick up her speed again, have the Bastard pull in behind us, and keep the searchlight sweeping. Put out a launch too, to keep ahead and shout back if anything big’s coming our way. Any damage we take, we can patch up with the rest when we dock.”
Kaba nodded, then tipped her head towards the fallen blastwood. “And the gobbler?”
“You what?”
“The big green thing, out on the raft. Ugly thing with the hands. They’re good eating, and we could use the meat.”
Mouana peered at the potbellied giant on the edge of the light, then gave a grunt. “Take it if it’s easy, then take us on upriver.”
IT WAS STILL too dark to read, so Wrack crouched by the mount of the searchlight and looked out into the boundless night. As the light swept across the water its beam caught on countless insects, their wings drawing lambent arcs within its slow swoop. The river was everywhere and invisible, glimpsed only in the circle of choppy brown that roved over its surface in search of trees.
Wrack wished the light could penetrate the river’s muddy thickness and shine down to its hidden lower layers. The Rio Sinfondo, “river without bottom”: Waldemar had sent a diving bell into its belly, then hauled it up again when he had run out of rope. Even in daylight you could see no banks from its centre, and at night its immensity was crushing. Wrack was enraptured by it; deep water held little terror for him after Ocean, and besides, the sheer fecundity of the place wholly denied that other world’s anxious, alien bleakness.
From beside him rose the smell of the watch team’s meal of gobbler meat; roasted for the living, raw for the dead. It stank of the beast’s algal blood, a weird mix of offal and cabbage that married greasily with the breath of the river. He had tried some for curiosity’s sake, picking shreds from a glaucous haunch with a secondary claw, but he had a strange appetite these days and soon lost interest.
A wary cry went up as the searchlight caught another log—a true giant, this time—and the ship banked to port to avoid it. Wrack pondered how long that log had been floating, and how many others, over how many years, the river had carried from its banks to the distant sea. Trunks like that had drifted over these depths since before Waldemar, before the Lemniscatus, since before people, for all he knew. Back in the library, Wrack had spent the best part of a term curating an exhibition on the allegory of history-as-river. Central to it was a famous verse by Chancellor Regina, regarding states as logs afloat on time. The scansion had been shit, and so had the woodcuts used to illustrate it, but watching the wooden hulk drift past as Lipos-Tholos burned in another world, it seemed suddenly shrewd.
At the thought of burning, Wrack dipped his eyestalks in what had become his version of a frown. There was a definite tinge of smoke on the air, and it was not coming from the roasting fire amidships—there was a strong katabatic breeze blowing downriver, carrying the scent from upstream.
From Mwydyn-Dinas. Wormtown, and the island it sat on, had been visible as a smear of light over the horizon for some time. Now the old colony was only a few miles upriver, the light was brighter, and it had changed colour to a deep orange. Wrack peered at the horizon through his zoom lens, hearing murmurs of consternation on deck as watchers on the top-cranes called down the news; Wormtown was on fire.
Orders rang out across the gnat-haunted river, and an engine revved in the dark as Gunakadeit’s launch was sent ahead to gather a report. Weapons were retrieved from their lockers by cautious sailors, and the lights of the Bastard loomed as the warship pulled in alongside them again. In the absence of information, speculation rippled over the deck. Some were convinced the Piper uprising had spread to the Lipos-Tholon outpost, while others suspected an attack by an opportunistic foreign colony, launched in the knowledge that no reinforcements would be sent. Others still feared the worst, that Dust had beat them there by marching overland, and was bearing down on them as they spoke.
The island came into range of their telescopes as the greyness of dawn crept over the world, but nothing became any clearer. Gunfire echoed down the river, and the town docks swarmed with fleeing boats, but the nature of the conflict—or any idea of who was winning—remained obscure. In the cabin, Mouana was locked in heated discussion with Fingal and Kaba, while the Bruiser gulped at his can of oil and stared blankly ahead in the clear hope of a punch-up.
Two miles from the Wormtown docks the convoy changed course, veering sharp to starboard and heading towards the Sinfondo’s banks to give the island as wide a berth as possible. The argument in the cabin still raged, and the sailors on deck were clutching their weapons, rumours giving way to mute anxiety as the colony burned off to port.
Not long after that, the boats started coming. As dawn shimmered over the river they were everywhere, from worm-steamers a third their size, to leaking dinghies just a few yards long. They speckled the river like drowning insects, and all floated low in the water, packed with people and their possessions. Some were fleeing downriver, but more were turning in their direction, abusing struggling engines to try and intercept their course. Gunakadeit’s hard-faced crew rushed to the rails with their guns, but this was not an invasion force—they were ordinary civilians, desperate for the prospect of escape and a sheltering hand.
Their shouts rang across the water as the fastest boats approached, but Wrack couldn’t understand their dialect. When the lead craft was close enough for Wrack to see the desperation in the eyes of its occupants, Kaba emerged from the cabin and began shouting back through a loudhailer, gesturing wildly with her other arm.
Remembering what Fingal had said about sticking it out and pitching in, Wrack scuttled to Kaba’s side, and tapped at her leg with his claw.
“What is it, crab-man?” she said, looking down at him, still gesturing at the boats.
“We’re taking them aboard, aren’t we?” said Wrack, already fearing the answer.
“That’s a no, Wrack,” answered Kaba, her tone suggesting she felt as comfortable with it as he did, but offering no avenue for persuasion. “Mouana wants no part of whatever’s going on over there. We’re changing course and heading for the Esqueleto, with a mind to making dock at Rummage.” Wrack tried to hold her attention, but the conversation was clearly over, and she began shouting on the horn again.
Nevertheless, the boats showed no sign of slowing their pursuit. Those with oars had fallen behind now, but the larger craft were gaining, and their occupants were crowded on the gunwales with grapples and ropes. As they drew level with the colony, more still were pouring from its docks, cutting across the channel so as to fall into their path. In minutes they would be surrounded.
With a mounting sense of horror, Wrack saw there were families in the boats. There were elders wrapped in blankets, children clutching rags, and babies deep in wormskin swaddling. Men and women were waving their arms, calling out with a mixtu
re of terror and exasperation. But Kaba’s refusals only grew more emphatic, and the convoy did not cut their speed.
When the lead boat, a sleek river cutter with perhaps eighty souls aboard, got within a hundred yards of them, Mouana emerged from her cabin like a creeping mountain. Her footsteps were slow as she plodded down the deck, and her face was hard as she began slowly spinning up the barrels of her gun. Waving Kaba silent with a flick of her hand, she mounted the ladder to the quarterdeck and stood at the stern.
Wrack rushed up after her, claws scrabbling on steel, and began burbling pleas through his speakers. This couldn’t be happening. He knew Mouana was ruthless, and seemed to be becoming more so every day, but surely this was beyond even her dissolving scruples. Nevertheless, there she stood, a ton of metal crowned with the withered sneer of a cadaver, sizing up the pitiful armada that jostled in their wake.
“Let them aboard, mate,” begged Wrack, wishing that damned voice they’d given him could do anything but read the words out. “At least talk with them. They’re scared! Please!”
“Go away,” said Mouana in a husk of a voice, not looking at him. Against the roar of the engines and the shouts of the boat people, her stillness was terrifying; she stood with her gun level, like a statue of someone too grim to be tidied away by history. Wrack ran at her, not sure what he intended to do, and found the world spinning as she sent him across the quarterdeck with a flick of her boot.
As he struggled to right himself, the clang of a grapple sounded above the chaos of the chase, biting into the deck with a cargo of rope. Mouana slashed the tether with her arm blade, then barked a single word of warning in the local dialect, before firing a volley into the air. For a moment Wrack hoped this might all end sanely.
But then another pair of grapples struck the deck, and Mouana’s gun levelled at their pursuers and fired.
At first, Wrack was glad he couldn’t see what was happening to the boats off their stern. But in a way it was worse to watch Mouana, her face stretched into an unreadable grimace and lit from beneath as her gun belched death. She paused to reload, and a shaking hand reached up from one of the grapple-ropes to clasp the deck. Mouana stamped on it, and fired again.
Then it was over. Mouana stalked back towards the cabin, her expression barely less grotesque than it had been as she was firing, and Wrack was left alone on the quarterdeck.
He reached the stern rail just in time to see his first phosphorescent worm. Wrack spotted it maybe thirty yards from where the people flailed in the water; a patch of glowing water that snaked towards them, trailing occasional bumps of mottled purple as its flanks brushed the surface.
The townspeople panicked as they saw the worm’s glow among them, moaned in terror as their feet brushed its bristled hide. They thrashed to get away from the bullet-struck, whose blood was now attracting the beasts, and surged to climb the sides of the boats that remained. With a creak and a splash, a dinghy capsized as more men than it would carry tried to scramble aboard.
Then a second worm appeared, a woman was pulled down in a cloud of red, and the feeding began.
Wrack turned away from the blood and stared at Mouana’s back as she retreated, wishing his gaze could carve molten troughs through her armour and blacken her bones. As she stepped over the hold doors, he shivered, trying not to visualise black arms jetting up and cracking her like a shrimp. This is what had become of the Tavuto revolt. This is what they did now, in the name of compassion and the ease of suffering. They filled boats full of children with lead, and left their parents for the jaws of river worms.
As the massacre receded behind them, Wrack found a horrible solace in the sound of the worms’ feeding. Killing and eating. That was what was easiest to understand, what it was safest to expect, from the world. It was what they wanted from him, when it came down to it, and it was what they had made of this journey. Fingal could say all he wanted about heroics and team spirit, but he was nothing more than a thuggish murderer; the same was true of that miserable sadist, Mouana. Wrack wished he’d left her for the shark’s jaws back on Tavuto.
And what neither of them realised—and perhaps he hadn’t until now—was that he hadn’t been reading the book all the time because he didn’t want to get involved in the fighting. It was because he was terrified of how much he might absolutely fucking love it if he stopped trying not to.
Wrack screamed, but not with his voice. He held the image of the blood-clouded water in his mind, and clamped down on it ’til his nerves sang. He felt ichor stream from his teeth, ice water streaming as his tentacles flew open, cold dread bursting in the minds of his prey.
Wrack screamed, and every soul on deck wailed in fear. The sun rose above the river, lacing its wavelets crimson, and something black and dreadful rose with it.
CHAPTER TEN
DUST WATCHED THE hilt of her sword fluoresce with strange, crackling odours as it cooled in the chest of the mayor. Or was it the mayor? Blinking past the wash of colours from the wound, she took in the man’s clothes, which clearly weren’t Lipos-Tholon. Perhaps this had been whoever had led the revolt. It didn’t matter, really. He had been the one cowering behind the greatest number of guards in the town’s capitol tower, and so the place was hers now.
Not that that mattered much, either. Looking down from the windows of the stunted edifice, she saw a pathetic place: a few rows of weed-smeared tenements, muddled with reeking markets (their stench roared even from here) on a mile-long hump of river mud. It matched the meagre world it sat on, smelly and jumbled, and chaotic in the least interesting way. She did not plan to make much of it. With most of the fires put out, it would serve as a decent staging post for the Blades.
It hadn’t been much of an invasion. Dust had always had a fondness for an amphibious assault, but compared with the taking of Steel Beach at the close of the Thaddean war, it had been an embarrassment. Whatever invasion or uprising they had interrupted had nearly spent itself on the town, leaving just a few dozen sweating gunmen to fend off the Blades. After mortaring a couple of half-hearted barricades from mid-channel, they had simply waded ashore and put metal through anything still breathing. It had barely been worth the drugs, thought Dust gloomily, veins trembling with wasted juice.
Already, her vanguard were nearly done cutting down the remaining population; glancing down onto the town’s main thoroughfare, she saw them being lined up to be dispatched with a neat slot to the chest, then hauled off to the town’s meat store to take the miasma. Even as the last of the living were finished off, the first of the newly woken were being corralled into work gangs to speed the unloading. Of course, some of her infantry were refusing to run the execution lines, but that only meant more bodies for her new logistics corps.
Turning to look back downriver, Dust knew the dead would be busy with unloading for some time. The lights of her army formed a stream of fire all the way to the horizon and the Entrada confluence beyond. From the cargo barges that had been refitted as floating stables, to the fishing boats wallowing under the weight of her infantry, they were carrying her whole company into the world. Even now at the shattered docks of Lipos-Tholos, her engineers were working around the clock to scavenge more hulls and carry the last of her army from the city.
There would be no time to wait for those stragglers, however—even the brief pleasure of impaling the mayor had been a wasteful diversion. There was a hunt on.
Dust clapped her hands once, and her intelligence officer shuffled forward. He had not taken kindly to death. The man’s scalp oozed where he had pulled his hair out in clumps; his permanently fearful face sagged around watery eyes. But he did his job, and so long as his memory held out, he would keep it.
“What news from the interrogation?” asked Dust, enjoying the taste of the man’s voice as it churned in his throat.
“The refugees... they say... two ships. Passed just before dawn, at high speed and armed. If we pursue straight away”—the officer gulped, and licked his lips with a dry tongue—“they�
�ve maybe got twenty-two hours on us.”
“Did they stop here?” she asked.
“They... avoided the colony, sir. Some of the other refugees... begged sanctuary with them, but they were... shot in the water. Only a few made it back.”
Dust was impressed—she would have thought Mouana had been the type to slow and dither, if not actually stop to help. If she had, her cargo would already have been in her grasp. Maybe death had hardened her—if anything, it would make the chase more interesting. Her mood brightening, she clapped again and called Logistics to report.
The tinworld crone was adapting much better. She had been dour and unimaginative to begin with, and was taking undeath like a bad bout of camp fever. If anything, her reports had more life in them now.
“Barge Sections Alpha-Nine through Kappa unloading now,” she reported. “Engineering Section Three is now ashore and expanding the dock. We’ve assembled an embarkation pier upriver; the fastest boats are being routed there for reloading with troops as per my deployment plan submitted after transit. Current projections show that—”
Dust stopped listening halfway through the report. She had not read the deployment plan when it arrived, either. So long as her forces were able to continue the pursuit as efficiently as possible—and the logistics officer had been tediously reliable in her efficiency for the last few decades—there was little more to learn. As Logistics droned on, she turned to Engineering. The young officer had a particular flavour of anxiety to her that fascinated Dust, and she wished to draw it out.
“The triremes?” she asked her abruptly, drawing an indignant grunt from Logistics.
“Still... still getting there, sir,” wheedled Engineering. “We’ve got them all through the gate and laid up on the beach after a controlled descent. Unexpected tidal action stalled work for two hours, but we’re making progress and I expect—”
