by Angus Watson
Chogolisa placed Ottar gently down with one arm then threw the coffin up to Paloma. Paloma caught it, disappeared for a moment, then returned.
“Whheeee!” cried Ottar as he flew up the side of the rabbit, thrown by Chogolisa. Paloma grabbed him at the top.
Sassa pulled herself up next to Thyri Treelegs. The rabbit’s fur was thick as rope but smooth as, well, rabbit fur.
“Lovely morning for climbing a giant rabbit,” she said.
“Sure,” said Thyri.
What’s got her back up? Thyri had hardly said a thing since the battle with the spiders. She guessed the girl was afraid. Everyone took Thyri for granted. They thought that she was tough and that she could look after herself. Sassa knew different. Thyri was seventeen years old. She’d been brought up with a shitty brother and even more of a shit for a dad. She was as insecure as any seventeen-year-old. She’d never had support, but that didn’t mean she didn’t need it. Sassa resolved to do more to look after Thyri when this was all over.
She reached the rabbit’s spine, looked over the sea of monsters and gasped, forgetting Thyri and finding her own fear again.
Sofi’s plan was absolutely, totally, lever-a-beaver insane. The rabbit was huge, but, compared to many of the other animals, it was rabbit-sized. There were much, much bigger, much, much more ferocious beasts.
Ten miles or so away, past thousands of leaping, rearing and diving creatures, towered the black pyramid. Even at that distance, even with everything else around, she could feel the anger and danger pulsing from it.
How could they hope to make it that far? And how could they hope to prevail if they did?
“Keep moving,” said Paloma, “sit behind its shoulders.”
Sassa half crawled, half walked over slippery fur to where Freydis, Ottar and Chogolisa were sitting behind Finn on the beast’s shoulders. Chogolisa had one hand on the coffin. Sassa sat down next to her.
The coffin leaked misery, but Sassa made herself stay put. If Chogolisa was prepared to put up with it for the good of the group, so was she. For now, anyway.
“Here, let me help!” Paloma held out a hand to Sofi because she knew it would annoy her.
Instead of climbing the last pace up onto the rabbit, Sofi pulled hard on two thick strands of fur, flicked herself heels over head and landed on her feet next to Paloma.
Paloma smiled. Would she ever tire of mocking authority, she wondered? And would Sofi ever cease being irked by it?
She looked north to where the warriors and warlocks were attacking. Sitsi stood next to her.
“How’s it going for them?” Paloma asked.
“They’ve killed several of the large beasts,” said Sitsi. “It’s amazing.”
“And…?”
“A few of them are down. But the rest are still attacking. They’ve done—”
Both women crouched as the rabbit lurched “—well.”
For a while, to Paloma’s amazement, it worked.
The rabbit’s feet were large enough to lollop across the living, shifting ground without sinking, and it was small enough that the truly vast mountain-of-flesh monsters didn’t notice it. The Wootah and Chogolisa sat between its shoulders, gripping onto its thick but silky hair.
Sofi, Sitsi and Paloma stood, wind whipping their hair around their faces–because they could stand. That was the advantage of bare feet coupled with alchemically enhanced balance.
Sitsi shot down the flying beasts that approached. Freydis and Sassa had both loosed arrows from their seated positions, but neither of them had hit anything yet.
Paloma stood next to Sofi. She had thought she’d run ahead at this stage, but the ground was made of creatures coming to life, dying creatures, and a huge variety of things that she guessed you could call creatures, waving multiple limbs in the air, scurrying or just flopping about. Paloma doubted that even she would be able to run on it. She knew she didn’t want to. The noise was extraordinary. The smell of excrement and decay was eye-watering.
Still, Paloma was happy. They’d come nearly a third of the way from the edge of The Meadows to The Pyramid and it seemed like they really might make it. A few hideous fanged, clawed and tentacled beasts that were nearer the rabbit’s size did chase it for a while, but their mount was faster. It looked like Finn had chosen well after all.
A tornado stabbed down between them and The Pyramid, sucking up thousands of flailing beasts. Finn steered around the vortex. He cut it fine. For a moment the sucking wind threatened to pluck them all from the rabbit, then they were past.
Paloma looked back as monsters, some larger than the rabbit they were riding, tumbled spinning up into the sky. A great slug beast rippled and wobbled but remained grounded as the tornado passed directly over it. It flung out clawed tentacles to grab animals flying past, then pulled them down and into its oily body.
They were halfway. The Pyramid was huge now and Paloma could see the opening on its side. She began to dare to think they’d make it. They passed a great, fat animal on flippers with a head very like a wolf’s. It was a lot bigger than their rabbit.
Paloma felt like the wolf-seal’s yellow eyes were looking into her soul and not liking what it found. It bent down, plucked up something that looked like a feathered dagger-tooth cat and bit down. The feathered cat burst like an overripe fruit.
Please don’t chase us, thought Paloma.
But it did. The wolf-seal whirled its great flippers around and slid across the mess of monsters on its massive belly, crushing some, annoying others. It was fast. Faster than their rabbit.
“Finn!” Sofi shouted.
The rabbit turned tight to the north, swerved around a mountainous slug then skidded back onto its westward course, kicking up showers of smaller beasts which screamed as they flew broken through the air.
The seal-wolf barged the slug aside and swung round behind them, closer now. It snapped at the rabbit’s rear and missed. Sitsi shot arrow after arrow into its yellow eyes, but it blinked them away.
The rabbit jinked to the left.
The wolf head came closer and closer, but the seal body didn’t. For a moment Paloma thought the head had become detached and was flying after them, but then she saw that a long neck was growing out of the bloated torso.
The massive jaws champed at them again, missing the back of the rabbit by a pace. The ground around was still a writhing mass of beasts snapping teeth and claws, stinging with barbed needles and generally killing each other. And The Pyramid was still several miles ahead.
Finn headed for one of the giant scorpions. The wolf-seal leant in and bit a chunk out of the rabbit’s hind quarters.
Their mount squealed and stumbled. Paloma, Sitsi and Sofi crouched. Chogolisa gripped the coffin and both children. Sassa held Wulf. Thyri, who’d been standing like the Owsla, would have fallen off if Keef hadn’t grabbed her.
If the rabbit fell and tossed them all among the morass of monsters… well Paloma didn’t know what she’d do. Try to save Ottar, she guessed, but it would be hard enough to save herself.
“Down!” shouted Wulf. Paloma dropped and gripped fur as they shot between the scorpion’s legs then underneath its abdomen. She looked back in time to see the wolf head appear between the scorpion’s legs, buck, and throw the huge beast over its back.
The manoeuvre had bought them maybe half a heartbeat, which the wolf-seal made up more or less instantly.
Their pursuer reared its head to strike. It wouldn’t miss this time.
“Shall I?” Paloma asked Sofi.
“Go,” said Sofi.
Paloma sprinted to the front of the rabbit, gripped the handle of Finn’s sword Foe Slicer and whipped it clear of its scabbard. Finn was too focused on controlling the rabbit to notice.
“Chogolisa, throw me!” she commanded. “Top of the head!”
The big woman didn’t hesitate.
Paloma caught Freydis’s eye. The girl was biting her lip.
“You can be Freydis Pronghorn now!” Paloma yelle
d as Chogolisa grabbed her by the heels, swung her round once, twice, then hurled her at the striking wolf-seal’s head.
Chogolisa’s aim was a little off.
Paloma flew, Foe Slicer out in front of her, directly for the beast’s gaping, blood-dripping maw. Not what she’d hoped at all. It might still work, but she hadn’t meant to be flung quite so certainly to her death.
Top of the head, she’d said. Oh well.
When she was only paces away from the dripping fangs, the wolf-seal lunged at the rabbit again, dipping its head. Paloma pulled Foe Slicer behind her and whumped into the huge nose, rolled over and struck down with the sword, into the beast’s muzzle.
The monster reared again. Paloma was thrown flying upwards. She peaked, hung in the air for a moment (which was a wonderful feeling), then plummeted, sword first, all her strength and weight put into driving the blade into the beast’s skull.
Its head was a great deal softer than she’d expected. The sword sliced through flaccid bone and into brain. Her hands, arms, shoulders and head followed the sword into the soft matter. She felt like screaming, she felt like vomiting, but she managed to swirl the sword around inside the animal’s soupy mind.
She felt herself shooting upwards again. She was thrown high as the beast stretched its neck and unleashed a horrifying scream.
Then she was falling.
She landed on the beast’s body. She sprung onto all fours and wiped gore from her face. Her view of the rabbit was blocked by the bulk of the seal-wolf. She could see The Pyramid, though, and reckoned the rabbit must be between her and their goal. She gripped the sword free and sprinted across the dying animal’s head with all her power.
She leapt.
This time it was her aim that was a little off.
She flew, arms and legs working as if she were running. She had the distance, but the rabbit was forty paces further east than she’d gauged. Wootah and Calnians watched her, shock-faced. She felt a bit silly, soaring through the air, forty paces off track, about to plunge to her death.
The rabbit lurched to the right but it was far too late. Paloma’s momentum failed and she fell towards the writhing mass of monsters.
Was it possible to land well on a pile of animals, she wondered?
If it was, she didn’t manage it. The air was punched from her body. Her face slapped onto something leathery. She pushed herself up on her arms, but her hands stuck to the gooey skin of whatever vile beast was below her. She saw the rabbit’s huge cotton tail bouncing away, then her view was blocked by a hairy, giant semi-human rising out of the animal soup. It swung a lumpen fist. She tried to pull her hands free but they were stuck fast.
The blow knocked her sideways and down into the gloop. She realised her hands were free but before she could use them, something impossibly heavy fell on her. Teeth or possibly a claw bit into her shoulder. She kicked uselessly as she sank into the sea of beasts. Teeth clamped into her ankle. Hot wetness enveloped her other leg and something rough licked her face. She was stuck, she couldn’t breathe and she was sinking.
And she was enraged. This was not how she was meant to die.
Chapter 9
Treachery
Sassa Lipchewer’s elation at the stopping of the seal-wolf turned to horror as she watched Paloma plunge.
“Go right!” shouted Sofi.
The rabbit swerved. Far too late. Paloma fell into the sea of monsters and disappeared.
“Hold the coffin,” said Chogolisa, standing.
“Turn the rabbit!” called Wulf.
“No,” Sofi ordered.
“But—” said Sassa. There was nothing to say. If they went back, the chances of them all being killed multiplied greatly, and they’d seen Paloma disappear under the tide of murderous beasts.
Far to the north Sassa could see only two of the great beasts with pyramids on their backs. The rest had left The Meadows to spread the Warlock Queen’s madness and death around the world.
They had to get the coffin and the boy to The Pyramid.
The rabbit ran on. More animals gave chase. Beasts leapt at the giant running mammal. It dodged some and kicked others away. Running across The Meadows had made it bolder. Paloma would have appreciated that, thought Sassa.
The Pyramid loomed larger and larger ahead of them. It was a regular triangle, clearly made by human hands–an awful lot of human hands. The tornado at its summit was paler and cleaner than any of the tornados they’d seen, including the two that were raging right then in the west of The Meadows. Perched as it was fifty or so paces above the top of the peak, The Pyramid’s tornado wasn’t sucking up any debris. Or people. Not yet anyway.
Sassa looked back, expecting to see Paloma bouncing along over beasts, ready to leap back onto the rabbit’s back with a quip and a smile. There was no sign. But something caught her eye to the east.
There were thousands and thousands of flying beasts coming for them. Wasp men.
Sitsi stood ready with her bow.
“Wulf, hold my feet!” Sassa shouted, leaping up. Wulf, lying on his front, clasped her ankles to hold her steady. Freydis jumped up with her bow. Ottar wriggled free from Chogolisa’s arms and grabbed his sister’s feet to secure her.
Keef stood, bow in hand, then stumbled as the rabbit lurched to the left. Sofi grabbed him, then sat down behind him, holding his hips as the Wootah man stood, arrow strung.
They could hear the familiar wasp men screaming now, over the noise of the other beasts.
Sitsi shot. A wasp man fell, one tumbling from the multitude.
Sassa waited. She had only two dozen arrows and she’d have to kill a wasp man with every one of them. Keef and Sitsi had the same, Freydis had ten. So that was… eighty-two arrows.
She had no idea exactly how many wasp men were headed for them but it was a lot more than eighty-two.
They flew in, screaming hate. Sassa shot, Keef shot, Freydis shot. Wasp men fell, but it was like trying to hold back the rain by shooting a few raindrops.
They were twenty paces away. Ten. Their yellow eyes were unsheathed and glowing. Sassa could feel the foul wind from their leathery wings. They were clacking claws, clenching and unclenching their human-like hands as if to show how they were going to rip the Wootah and Calnians to pieces.
“Can you go faster, Finn?” shouted Sassa.
The rabbit swerved to the left and Sassa nearly fell. Finn had turned to avoid a grey-green beast rising out of the ground ahead. It was more hill than animal. Smaller monsters tumbled down its shiny flanks as it grew.
The sudden change in direction flummoxed the wasp men but only briefly. As Finn brought the rabbit back on course for The Pyramid, the wasp men were maybe fifty paces behind and closing fast again.
“Wow,” said Keef. Dozens of bulges had appeared on the vast, shiny flank of the new monster and were forming into frog-like faces. As Sassa watched, open-mouthed, one of the faces opened its own mouth and spat something enormous and pink at them.
It was a tongue. She had seen frogs hurl their sticky tongues at beetles. The fat end of the tongue enveloped the helpless beetle and sucked it back into the frog’s mouth.
“Speed, Finn, now!” she shouted.
The rabbit bucked forward and the tongue–a colossal ball of pink, shiny flesh on a thick and veiny grey rope–fell to the ground behind them.
There was already another one coming, this one aimed a little high. Keef hurled his bow aside and pulled Arse Splitter off his back. He swung the long axe overhead and cleaved the tongue in two. A shower of grey goo drenched him. The split tongue fell away.
“Ya!” shouted Keef, then looked about for his bow.
“You threw if off the rabbit,” said Chogolisa.
“Why did I do that?” said Keef.
“You probably thought it would look more dramatic.”
“That does sound like me.”
Sassa raised her bow and aimed at the nearest wasp man, but a tongue hit the creature first, enveloping it and hauling
it back into a giant frog mouth.
More and more tongues lashed out from the frog faces on the grey monster’s flank. They whacked into wasp men and sucked them back shrieking into the body of the monstrosity.
The swarm of wasp men screamed and turned, diving at their attacker. Sassa saw several of them spray poison on the frog faces, then they were out of sight around the flank of the monster.
“I think we’re through,” said Sofi a short time later. Indeed, the monsters were thinner on the ground as they neared The Pyramid. Soon the rabbit was sprinting across bare, baked earth, smashing aside dead, burned trees.
Sassa could see why there were no monsters. The Pyramid loomed ahead, higher than even the largest of them–so much larger than it had looked from a distance–black and terrifying. It wasn’t just the tornado, swirling and roaring at its summit. The very air thrummed with the power of the thing. Nobody, nothing, with any sense would go anywhere near it.
“Good rabbit,” said Sassa, patting their mount as it drew to a halt at the base of The Pyramid and lay, shivering.
They slid down. There was no need to say anything. They began the ascent of the rough, black sides of The Pyramid.
Although if you’d fallen you would probably have died, it was–as Sitsi had said it would be–an easy climb. The Pyramid was less steep than it had looked from a distance, and the black rock was grippy. The gale howling around the man-made mountain up towards the tornado at the top actually helped to pull them up. Even Ottar and Freydis were scampering with relative ease, and Chogolisa Earthquake was managing admirably with the coffin on one shoulder.
Sassa kept glancing back, as did everybody else. She expected to see Paloma tearing across the sea of monsters towards them, and was almost surprised every time she didn’t. Paloma could not have died. There was no way a life that burned so brightly could be snuffed so suddenly.
But there was no sign of the speedy Owsla woman, just monsters, tornados and great gouts of fire pluming out of who knew what.
Soon Sassa reached a platform. She, Thyri and Finn were last up. Several hundred paces above their heads the tornado howled. Sassa panted. It was hard to breathe.