by A. L. Brooks
The entity squealed and threw a hundred arms at the giant, hauling him up against the train’s windows, arms curling about his neck, fingers poking into his mouth and down his throat.
17
Beyond the carriage Melai and Locke had gained the upper hand over the hounds. But the star demon were rushing toward them with great speed. Suddenly there came a squeal of metal and the train shunted violently and Gargaron hurtled forward, all his weight slamming against the entity at front of carriage, crushing its skull beneath him. Yellow gunk oozed from the critter’s brain, and the garetrain groaned to a shuddering halt.
There were great commotion beyond the train. He heard Locke yell, ‘Dark Ones!’
Gargaron pulled himself from the fiend’s embrace and ran the length of the carriage and emerged onto the verandah at back of train. Here he saw them. It were almost enough to sink his heart. Cresting Devil’s Knee were Dark Ones so tall and immense they matched almost the star demon for size.
Gargaron leapt from the motionless train. Locke were firing his blowflute at a handful of ghost-hounds still charging toward train. Gargaron looked about. He could see no Melai. No Hawkmoth.
‘At front of train,’ Locke called out to him.
Gargaron turned and spotted Melai flying toward the head of the locomotive. He raced after her, thinking something had happened to the sorcerer but he found Hawkmoth trying some spell to push a boulder free.
‘Whatever you lot are doing,’ came Locke’s voice, ‘you might wish to hurry it up. Those Dark fiends look eager to join this party.’
Gargaron did not even think. He strode up to the boulder that were lodged there in their way and with sheer brute force hefted it aside.
Hawkmoth lowered his staff. ‘Right then,’ he said. ‘That’s one way to do it. Now, let’s keep moving.’ He climbed the locomotive back to the driver’s compartment and inside he dropped himself into driver’s seat and fired the engines.
Melai and Gargaron returned to rear of train where Locke were fighting off another handful of ghost-hounds, firing his blow dart, taking them down in great clumps. More were on their way.
The garetrain had begun to move.
‘Locke!’ Gargaron called as he guided Grimah and Razor up verandah and into carriage. ‘We are leaving.’
Locke blew his magic darts at anything that flew at him. The train were picking up pace. Melai flew up and perched on the verandah railing, firing her arrows.
‘Come now!’ Gargaron called.
Locke whistled for Zebra who had been busy biting hounds in half; as she slithered by him he leapt into saddle.
The train built speed rapidly, though not so swift yet that Zebra could not catch it. She slithered forward, lifting her head as she drew close, allowing Locke to scramble along her neck and jump from saddle. He landed deftly upon the spacious verandah at rear of carriage.
‘Hurry girl!’ Locke commanded and Zebra snaked her bulky body alongside the train and then squirmed up through one of the carriage’s large windows, blown open by the star demon’s fire bolts. The garetrain continued to gain more and more speed and the last of the ghost-hounds on their tail began to lose ground.
They stood there, Locke and Gargaron, on the verandah, with Melai perched on the handrail, and they gazed back at the Dark Ones, watching them march down Devil’s Knee hefting enormous war hammers.
NORTHLANDS RAIL
1
BLEAK countryside rushed by. Rain didn’t let up. A roadway trailed the railcourse for some miles before it turned away through hills and were lost to the deluge. Gargaron remained at the train’s rear, watching the Dark Ones through his spyglass. He were intrigued by what he witnessed.
He watched as they trudged toward the star demon. And were puzzled as they took their warhammers to it. ‘What do you see?’ Locke asked.
Gargaron handed him the spyglass. ‘I do not know.’
2
In the driver’s compartment, Hawkmoth maintained an eye as much as he could on the rail line ahead—he and his friends did not need another obstacle to derail their getaway. Still, for a time he stood with the cabin door ajar, wind and rain gushing in, and with his own spyglass he watched the colossal Harbingers batter Jhegoth into the hill.
The scene left him with a measure of disquiet.
Eventually he put away his spyglass and shut the door to the elements. He sat there in the driver’s seat, contemplating things as the garetrain sped onward.
3
The rain did not peter out till evening. As such there were not much to see by way of scenery; most of the land they passed were hidden beyond the deluge. Gargaron and his companions spent much of this time seeing to wounds and scratches.
Gargaron patched the gashes in his flesh, stripping grafts of skin from his lower belly and pressing them over his wounds.
Locke studied the giant with great intrigue. Yet the way Locke dealt with his own wounds were equally as intriguing to Gargaron. Locke had sustained cracks and rents in his claws and crab legs. He used barnacles, stored inside a saddlebag, to patch them up, pressing them against his wounds and waiting until they attached, much like Gargaron’s skin grafts.
Melai watched them both in silence. ‘This world certainly produces strange folk,’ she said. Her own wounds were minor; except for some dark green bruising to her head she had come through the scrap virtually unscathed.
Once done, Gargaron, Melai and Locke did their best at pulling the deceased spider fiend from train’s rear carriage. Both Grimah and Razor were not happy with its presence; remaining at the back of carriage, sniffing the air. Zebra did not seem to care; she rolled about it like a dog in dirt. Locke simply laughed at her. But there were an unpleasant stink about it. So all agreed it would be worth getting rid of it.
Hacking its dead limbs from where they were still tangled across ceiling and floor, they tossed chunks of it from the back of train, and watched its bony body go rolling and crashing across stony ground.
As they worked, Gargaron indicated Locke’s blow flute. ‘I know now, a lute that not be.’
Locke eyed him sideways, grinning. ‘No. And even if it were, you would not wish to hear me put voice to it.’
Gargaron smiled. ‘So what be this weapon then? I have never seen its like before.’
‘It were a gift to me by the sea goddess, Ehl Nori,’ Locke told him. ‘She gave it to me after I saved her daughter from fisherman who had hauled her up in their nets and planned to sell her to pimpeteers.’
He unhitched it and handed it to Gargaron who took it, turning it over as he studied it. It were cold as steel, with texture not dissimilar to dead coral. It had a single mouthpiece but up to twenty firing holes. It had a sense of age about it, a sense that it had grown in the depths of ocean a trillion years ago. He felt also it were something he should not be handling. With a sensation of growing discomfort, he handed it back to the crabman.
‘It be a formidable weapon,’ Locke assured him, taking it. ‘Anything I strike with it, I kill.’
Gargaron frowned. ‘Really? Such did not seem the case during our recent fight.’
‘You did not see me take down those hounds?’
‘Aye. I also saw your darts having no effect.’
‘Yes, well some occasions it takes its time assessing an enemy’s weakness.’
‘Assessing enemy weakness?’ Gargaron said intrigued. ‘What do you mean?’
‘It be a magical object. Its supply of darts be endless. But it is not always immediately effective. If my first volley of darts not kill my attacker then each subsequent volley will slowly unravel the secrets of its defences. Thus the poison and lethality of any following dart will be adjusted so as to make it more target specific. The only music this “lute” makes be the cries of my assailants dying.’
‘Sweet music then after all,’ Gargaron said.
‘So, what of your own blade, giant?’
Gargaron shrugged. ‘Why, it be just an ordinary great sword. Blooded in no war.
Has no name. Though, it means much to me as it were my father’s and his father’s before him.’
‘A treasured possession then. And what of this hammer hilt you lug with you?’
Gargaron shrugged as if to suggest it were useless. ‘Drenvel’s Bane. Famed throughout the Vale as far as I am lead to believe. Belonged once to Hor the Cutter, legendary warrior who heralded from my village. I lifted it from our village temple after the first Boom shake killed all. At present I am not counting it as a weapon. Though I am beginning to think it came in two parts and its better half were stolen long before I got to it.’
‘What about you, nymph of Thoonsk?’ Locke asked Melai. ‘That little bow of yours packs some power.’
Melai looked tired and, Gargaron guessed, perhaps in no mood to brag about weaponry. At Locke’s insistence, she lifted her bow from her chest and handed it to him.
‘Such a slight item,’ Locke commented. ‘I would not have believed it packed such viciousness had I not witnessed it with my own eyes. Be it a weapon of your own devising?’
Melai shook her head. ‘When I were a but a youngling of the forest, I were given it by Sera the wood’s spirit who taught me how to wield it. It be made of Starwood, and it bears three chords spun from arachnid silk; that means I can nock multiple arrows simultaneously, thus striking multiple targets at once.’
‘And your arrows,’ Locke said. ‘From where do you source those?’
‘My quiver provides them, grows them. I simply spike them with deadly toxins and poisons derived from the plant life I carry with me from Thoonsk.’
Locke were impressed. ‘A single army in but one compact little forest nymph. I would not wish to go up against you.’
‘No,’ Gargaron said with an ironic smile, ‘you would not. I can personally attest to that.’
Locke raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh? Do tell.’
After hesitating, Gargaron retold the account of his and Melai’s first meeting. Locke laughed. Melai smiled at the memory though she felt somewhat uncomfortable at how she had treated the giant.
4
Melai did not expect to find sleep on that strange vehicle. She walked down the enormous, silent corridors of the first and second carriages, unable to access any of the sleeping compartments for the doors were all slid shut and she did not possess the muscle to open them. And if she had not already been along with Gargaron as he had inspected each room she might have feared some monster hiding behind each door.
Eventually she found one whose door were not quite shut and in she squeezed. It were large and imposing: every object, the desk by the window, its chair, the bed and basin and luggage rack (things pointed out to her earlier by Gargaron) all loomed high above her. Nothing here had been built for people her size.
She spread her wings and flew to the desk where she alighted and sat by the chilled window, watching the darkened countryside race by. The desk were wood she were glad to find, but dead wood and did not speak to her as the trees in Thoonsk did. Her initial fear of being confined within this garetrain were lifted somewhat, for cooped up in this compartment reminded her somehow of being cradled in her willow tree. She sat, sore, tired, gazing out window.
5
Back at rear of train, Locke made to climb for train’s roof where the chilled rain thundered down. ‘If you’ll excuse me, giant,’ he said, ‘I have a need to feel the elements on my skin.’
‘Would you not prefer to stay dry?’ Gargaron asked him. ‘There be room for many in these here carriages.’
Locke laughed. ‘Giant, I am of the seashore. I am of the water. Too long lately have I been away from it. And too much have I missed sitting upon the cliffside rocks with my clan, gazing out to thunderous sea during a hefty rain storm.’
Gargaron nodded at him respectfully. ‘Very well then. Not something I might entertain myself but I respect your wishes. Watch that rail beam though won’t you.’
‘Aye, I shall keep my head about me.’ Locke eyed the giant sideways for a few moments. Then went to move off. But hesitated and turned to eye Gargaron. ‘I ought tell you something, friend. Something I have not yet spoken aloud to any of you. Not even to the good sorcerer. On my journey from Barnacle-On-Sea to find the sorcerer, I happened to stumble upon an elven woman, tall, fair, beautiful. She told me she had been tracked down by a peculiar metal man and were now off to see Hawkmoth. I told her I were heading the same way and as we had not the luxury of a zeppelin we opted to travel together.
‘Eyferith her name were and she turned out to be friendly company. As we traipsed across land we enjoyed good conversation, and much laughter too despite all that had befallen us. I grew quite fond of her. We were with each other for several days when one morning I awoke and she did not. I tried rousing her but somehow, somewhy, she had passed during the night.’
Intrigued, Gargaron could not help but think back to the elven woman who had inadvertently delivered him Grimah. How he had found her perished in saddle.
‘I have no explanation as to what caused her demise,’ Locke said. ‘She may have harboured some unknown ailment or illness, though she seemed in good health the entire time I knew her. I have deduced that whatever phenomena brought down my clan, brought on her demise.’ He paused at length in his tale… and then digressed. ‘I have not always been this optimistic soul that you see, giant, you may wish to know. Eighty three wives and one hundred and twenty children have a way of loosening the screws of any sane person. But those wives and children strengthened me too somehow. You would understand this, having a wife and child of your own?’
Gargaron nodded. He knew that strength, a strength of soul and mind and spirit, and how it had grounded him. A strength of feeling and of self-affirmation. Feelings of deep, eternal love. Something he had not known in days before fatherhood.
‘I marveled in the innocence of my children,’ Locke continued. ‘The delightful way they viewed their surroundings, their world. Everything to them were new, everything exciting, wondrous. Since Cloudfyre turned, since Eyferith succumbed, I have come to realise that any point in time, any day or night, could be my last. Thus I now live and love and breathe every moment granted me as I would were I a wee innocent child.
‘How many times have I wandered the shore and not noticed the shells or the sand around my claws? How many times have I strolled through a woodland and not breathed of its woody smells, or enjoyed the songs of birdlings, or touched the damp moss upon its stones? Too many, I would wager. Because life has a habit of throwing other things to crowd your mind with: chores of a domestic nature, commitments to vocation, involvement in communal activities or campaigns. Day to day life sees one scurrying hither and thither without pause for thought of the greater world. And now, mostly, since Cloudfyre turned, since finding my children and wives all perished before burying them each at sea, that is all there is to consume one’s time. And I find that it excites me more than it concerns me. For, should I die in the next moment, then I die, giant, without fear nor regret.’
6
Gargaron left Locke and wandered back into the carriage where the spiderling had camped itself. The stench of its sweat and excrement lingered like gamey bore flesh.
Gargaron ignored the stink, hitching the saddles from both Grimah and Razor before sharing with them some dried apples from his pack. The serpent Zebra seemed curious by the offerings and lifted her face toward him, her tongue swishing in and out of her side-ways mouth, tasting the air.
‘I am not certain you’ll like apples,’ Gargaron told her. Yet she opened her jaws and gently tried to take a piece from his fingers. He let her have it. She ate eagerly just as if she were gulping down Locke’s clam meat. Again she nudged him. Gargaron had naught seen this tender side of her. She allowed him touch her; he ran his large hand down her scaly skull. She shut her several eyes and inclined her head into his caress, enjoying his touch. Though both Razor and Grimah wanted some attention too he soon found, all of them gently swamping him. It were a touching moment. He dished out
another serve of dried apples, surrounded by these animals.
7
Gargaron found Melai asleep in a sleeping birth in carriage two. The smell were far more pleasant this end of the train. And far less like some fetid creature had been holed up there. The interior were polished rosewood with sleeping compartments and at the far end a smoking booth with a beverage bar. A lovely aroma of sandalwood and spice hung in the air.
Melai were not curled up in the enormous bed as Gargaron had expected. But squished inside one of the horizontal wooden beams that, he supposed, mimicked the thick branches of her home tree. Positioned by the sliding door, he found himself watching for the rise and fall of her chest, haunted by what Locke had just imparted to him, about the seemingly healthy Elven woman succumbing to some mysterious condition and never waking.
Were it possible that Melai, himself, Locke and Hawkmoth might simply just drop dead at random and without warning? Perhaps we are not survivors, he thought, but are simply ones who have not yet died. The thought chilled him. Causing him to swallow nervously. He would let Melai sleep. And decided, when she awoke (and pray she awoke), he would not burden her with Locke’s tale.
He shut the door quietly and strode forward toward the engine.
8
Hawkmoth were seated in driver’s compartment, lost to his thoughts, sewing a patch of cloth over a tear in his side-pack.
‘Mind if I join you?’
Hawkmoth started mildly at Gargaron’s sudden presence but did not object. ‘No, come in, good giant. Sit down if you please.’
Rain pelted the locomotive’s long nose but a rain guard kept most of the deluge from the forward windows. Gargaron could clearly see the arcane railcourse stretched out before them—the peculiar green energy beam that propelled the monstrous garetrain vanished off into the heavy rain, sizzling as the rain pelted against it, illuminated like some ghostly artefact.
