Ottilie Colter and the Master of Monsters

by Rhiannon Williams

  ‘It was just a dredretch,’ said Leo, patting Maestro, who was growling quietly, ears flattened to his skull.

  ‘I don’t think it was – look at him, he’s upset,’ said Ottilie.

  ‘He’s not upset, are you, mate?’ Leo rubbed the top of his head and frowned. Maestro relaxed at his touch. ‘Unsettled maybe.’ He looked at her. ‘You saw someone that day?’

  She nodded, still prickling with nerves. Her darting eyes found the husk of a stump to her left. Something drew her gaze, a single drip of thick black liquid trailing from a crack in the dried-out wood. It was hard to see, but it looked familiar, like the oily black gloop that dribbled down the leaves in the Withering Wood.

  She frowned. That wasn’t possible. The withering sickness spread outwards from the heart of the Withering Wood. It didn’t show up in isolated patches. She shifted her weight to step closer, but then realised what it must have been. It was just dredretch blood. Someone had probably felled one nearby and the blood had spattered. Her fear was fuelling her imagination.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said honestly. ‘I didn’t know what I could say and who I could trust. A lot was happening at once.’

  She thought she caught a streak of hurt cross his face, but he turned away. ‘Come on, you can go up front.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked, surprised. Ever since Leo’s leg had improved, Ottilie had been relegated to the back of the saddle.

  ‘Because I said I was taking you to hunt knopoes to cheer you up, so you can take the lead.’ He paused, then turned back to Maestro. ‘Fine – if you don’t want to …’ He moved to climb up front.

  ‘No, I want to!’ She hurried forwards and leapt into the saddle, bracing herself for adventure.

  They flew north, towards Jungle Bay. Ottilie remembered her first glimpse of the sea. She and Leo had been flying through the mountains south of Fiory, and between the peaks she had seen it – an endless stretch of deepest blue, scattered with specks of sunlight. She remembered losing her breath and feeling very small, in the most wonderful way.

  Ahead of them now, a hooked peninsula scooped Jungle Bay out of the darkened ocean, like a greedy arm of cliffs and caves. Maestro flew low over the giant dewy leaves and fat tree trunks. The trees, linked by thick vines, spread all the way down to the edge of the water, which mirrored the night sky.

  Maestro touched down on a pad of damp rock, beneath the canopy.

  ‘Hear that?’ said Leo.

  Ottilie couldn’t hear anything beyond the gentle lapping of water against tree trunks.

  ‘Jungle Bay used to be full of birds and frogs and insects. All the noisy things,’ he said. ‘I knew something new had moved in, because everything else has moved out.’

  ‘Where are the knopoes?’ She looked around, her pulse quickening.

  ‘That’s the really crazy part,’ he said, pointing across the water. ‘They’re out there. Go slow, I’ll show you why.’

  Ottilie pulled her bow from her back and nudged Maestro into the air. Nearing the curve of the cape, she could just make out great columns of rock. Some stood independently, like ancient towers stretching up out of the sea. Others were still joined to the cliff in part, bridged by lines of jagged rock.

  ‘We call them the Sea Spears,’ said Leo. ‘The knopoes are in the caves, on the cape just behind them.’

  Approaching the caves, they were greeted with jarring hoots and ear-splitting screams. In the light of the glow sticks, Ottilie saw a knopo, twice the size of Wrangler Morse, lumbering out of a cave. It had matted fur and long, uneven fangs. Standing on its short legs, the knopo waved its elongated arms threateningly, and beat its melon-sized fists against the rock.

  Circling, Ottilie glimpsed animal carcasses scattered around the edge of the cliff. Her breath caught and she felt a swoop of sorrow. She pointed to a rocky crag above the water, and the rotting skeleton of what might have been a large sea lion.

  ‘How did that get up there?’ said Leo, over the knopoes’ screams.

  ‘I think they must have dragged it,’ she said. ‘Look – they’ve been killing animals. There are so many!’

  ‘Doesn’t make sense,’ he muttered.

  Ottilie stared down at the remains of the coastal creatures and felt a burning behind her eyes. She nocked an arrow and aimed at the huge knopo. It lunged and the arrow bounced off the cliff wall. Three more appeared from the caves, all significantly smaller than the first. Fangs bared, they screamed like phantom apes.

  Ottilie hit one, piercing its sloping shoulder. The knopo stumbled sideways, the beginnings of salt paralysis affecting its balance. She had missed the heart, but at least they knew the salt blades still worked.

  There was a moment of stillness. Then they became frenzied, hooting and shrieking and dancing around – wilder, if possible, than before.

  In an attempt to get closer to their attackers, one knopo leapt heedlessly onto the rocks that, like rows of teeth, stretched out to the Sea Spears. Leo shot it down and it plunged into the inky water with a great splash.

  One by one the other knopoes leapt onto the rocks, clambering towards the Sea Spears. The first one to reach them hung off the edge, hooting and screaming. Maestro wove between the towering columns, tipping and tilting, dodging swinging arms and razor-sharp claws.

  With an almighty shriek, a knopo sprang from its perch on the rock right above their heads. Maestro rolled so suddenly that Leo gasped. Both of them grabbed hold of the saddle, and Ottilie clenched her jaw so tight she hurt her teeth, as the knopo missed its mark and Maestro righted himself in the air.

  She took a deep breath. Leo managed a shaky laugh, reaching forwards to ruffle the wingerslink’s fur. Maestro made a rumbling noise in response and continued sweeping and soaring in spirals until Ottilie and Leo had shot every one of the foul monsters into the sea.

  Their work done, Maestro landed on the cliff by the caves. There were carcasses everywhere, in varying stages of decomposition.

  ‘They shouldn’t have been here,’ said Leo, his brow creasing. ‘If they killed that sea lion …’ He shook his head slowly. ‘That thing would have been covered in salt. They shouldn’t have been able to touch it.’

  Ottilie shivered. ‘They shouldn’t have even wanted to try,’ she said, staring sadly at the carcass of what might have been a mudcat. ‘Voilies said dredretches don’t bother with natural beasts. Not unless they threaten them, or get in their way …’

  ‘That’s normally true,’ said Leo. ‘And the salt blades still affected them …’ He glanced at the curved scrap of light, high in the sky. ‘We need to get back – we should report this.’ He gestured at the carcasses.

  Ottilie wasn’t used to Leo looking worried. It made her feel unstable somehow, as if the cliff was rocking and cracking beneath them. She pushed Maestro into the air. They rose higher and higher until the trees were bristly shadows below. She let the flight calm her and, for a little while, felt there was no land or sea, no world beneath them, just wings and sky and starlight.

  Fiory came into view, shining silver on the hilltop. Ottilie felt Maestro tense and hesitate. Moments later she heard the sounds that must have reached him first – a cacophony of bells ringing out from the station, the howls of the shepherds and, as they drew closer, the shouts from within.

  4

  Sleeper Come

  Maestro landed in the upper grounds. A bespectacled boy dashed towards them, arms waving.

  ‘There’s a wyler!’ Preddy cried. He clutched his ribs and panted, ‘In the fort!’

  Panic gripped Ottilie like cold hands in the dark.

  ‘Where?’ said Leo, leaping out of the saddle and kicking her in the leg.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Preddy. ‘I just got in from patrol and Wrangler Furdles said … someone’s hurt, and they’ve lost it. All of the elites on site are inside now, hunting it.’

  ‘What do you mean they’ve lost it?’ Leo barked.

  ‘Who’s hurt?
’ said Ottilie. Her thoughts were leaves in a windstorm: Gully wounded, Gully dead, Alba and Skip … blood and venom and blackened fangs. How had a wyler got inside?

  ‘A fourth tier, they’ve taken him to the infirmary. I think he’s recovering,’ said Preddy.

  She swallowed her sigh of relief and rubbed her bruised calf. Leo merely grunted and charged off towards the lights.

  Her fear told her to run to her bedchamber and bolt the door, but she wouldn’t do that. She couldn’t. Skip was her first steady thought. Gully knew how to handle a dredretch, Alba had Montie, untrained but armed with the instincts of a mother. Skip had no-one.

  Steeling herself, Ottilie climbed down from the saddle and drew a long knife from her boot.

  ‘Wrangler Morse said we’re to stay clear,’ said Preddy, staring wide-eyed at the knife. ‘The elites –’

  ‘Come on, Preddy.’ She grabbed his arm.

  Ottilie knew she couldn’t hunt it. How could she track a wyler down the dim stone corridors with no crunching or rustling, no markings in the dirt? But Fort Fiory was full of unarmed custodians: girls that the Hunt refused to train, brought to the Narroway to serve the huntsmen and maintain the fort. Skip was a sculkie, an interior servant. Ottilie would head for their corridor, for Skip’s bedchamber.

  Everywhere she looked doors were shut tight. They tiptoed down each corridor, wary of drawing the wyler to them. Now and then they crossed paths with an elite, but no-one told them to go and hide. There were no wranglers to take orders from. Ottilie guessed they were locked in their chambers, under the impression they could do a dredretch no harm; like everyone else in the Narroway, they believed only an innocent – a child – could fell the monsters. Ottilie strongly suspected that wasn’t the case. She and Alba had been reading, seeking answers, but they were yet to find any solid evidence that proved the rule of innocence true or false.

  Leo was nowhere to be seen. She wondered where Gully and Scoot were. She had been so focused on her own mood that day, she didn’t know what was going on with everyone else.

  ‘Do you know where Gully is?’ Ottilie whispered.

  ‘What?’ said Preddy. He leaned down, bending almost half over to get his ear closer to her mouth.

  ‘Gully and Scoot, are they out or in?’

  ‘Gully and Ned are on a night hunt, but they might have come back if they heard the bells. I think Scoot’s in for the night.’

  She didn’t know which was safer, Scoot locked in his room or Gully out in the Narroway.

  ‘They’re probably fine,’ Preddy murmured, more to himself, perhaps, than to Ottilie.

  The silence pressed on her ears like deep water. With every step her nerves mounted and she found it a little more difficult to breathe. Fiory was supposed to be safe. There hadn’t been an incident inside the boundary walls since the yickers in Floodwood, and that had been an anomaly – that was what Captain Lyre had assured them. Dredretches never got inside.

  They reached the sculkies’ corridor. Preddy was one step ahead of Ottilie when he lurched forwards and fell on his face. The crunch of his eyeglasses was like a boot to the teeth.

  ‘Preddy!’ Ottilie’s heart skipped. Christopher Crow had lurched just like that.

  ‘I’m all right,’ he muttered, scrambling sideways. ‘I tripped on something.’ His voice was thin, his eyes fixed on the obstacle.

  A feeble lamp hung by the sculkies’ door, a little further down. Ottilie’s gaze settled on the ground ahead. She could see a large shape just beyond the lamplight.

  ‘Ahh!’ Like a startled crab, Preddy scuttled further away. He kicked out with his foot and something rolled across the floor, clinking on the stone. Ottilie blinked, her insides squirming. It was a thumb – a huntsman’s left thumb, with a flat bronze ring still clinging to the dismembered bone as if by magic.

  The rings were their shields. Huntsmen still learning to ward off the dredretch sickness relied on those scraps of metal to keep their hearts beating when a dredretch was near. Her ribs pressed in. Sleeper comes for none. Those words were engraved inside all of their rings. She stared at the shiny piece of bronze to avoid seeing the truth. The sleeper had come. That ring belonged to a huntsman, and that huntsman was lying a few feet from where she crouched.

  Wylers were smart. They went for the rings first. She had read that in a bestiary – or maybe Leo had told her. She couldn’t remember.

  Leo. Ottilie rocked on her feet, hot panic creeping up her neck. Could this be him, bested by a wyler?

  No. The elites didn’t wear their rings, didn’t need them. This was a young huntsman. A fledge or a second tier. For one terrible breath she considered it might be Gully – but she knew it wasn’t. Even from the corner of her eye she would know him.

  Ottilie shook her head and forced her eyes to blink away from the severed thumb.

  Preddy was leaning over the body. ‘He’s not a fledge,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t know his name.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ She moved over to help him up and felt, strangely, as if she couldn’t feel her legs.

  ‘I don’t know his name,’ Preddy repeated.

  ‘That’s all right, Preddy, you were at Richter most of the –’

  ‘Do you know his name?’ he asked, desperation in his voice.

  Ottilie clenched her jaw tight and looked down at the body. ‘His name is Tommy,’ she managed to whisper. He was a second-tier flyer. She didn’t know his family name.

  They weren’t safe. They had to move. Ottilie scanned the corridor, noticing only vaguely that tears wet her cheeks. There was blood, but not nearly as much as there could have been. The wyler hadn’t lingered.

  ‘Come on, Preddy, we have to go. We have to make sure they’re safe.’ She pulled him to his feet. Her own knees quaked, but she kept hold of his arm and they steadied each other as they walked.

  When they reached the door to Skip’s bedchamber they paused, searching for any sign that the wyler was still in the vicinity. Ottilie caught Preddy’s eye. Her fingers wrapped around the latch, but before she could lift it someone behind the door screamed.

  The panic was like walking headfirst into an invisible wall. Dizzied but determined, Ottilie flung the door open. At least thirteen girls were inside, pressed into two corners of the bedchamber. They were all staring at a bed by the west wall.

  ‘What happened?’ said Preddy, to no-one in particular.

  Skip’s dark blonde head was poking up from behind Gracie Moravec. ‘It’s in here. No-one’s hurt. We saw it by that bed, we think it’s gone underneath.’ She sounded calm – focused.

  Preddy looked at the bed in horror. ‘How did it ge–’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Ottilie, readying her knife.

  ‘One of us needs to sound the alarm,’ he said. ‘I wonder if anyone heard the scream.’

  Ottilie wasn’t thinking straight. ‘You go, I’ve faced one before.’

  Preddy sprinted from the room. Only when the beat of his boots had faded did it occur to her that one of the sculkies could have gone, leaving two armed huntsmen in the room instead of one. It was too late to do anything about it. They needed help, fast.

  She felt someone move behind her.

  ‘Give me a knife,’ muttered Skip.

  Ottilie passed her the one she was holding and pulled another from her belt. Skip stood beside her, knife at the ready.

  What was it waiting for?

  Ottilie didn’t want to do anything that might trigger its attack. She would wait there, armed, standing between the wyler and the sculkies until help arrived. Preddy would reach a watchtower soon, and he might well come across an elite on the way. She was considering checking the wyler was still under the bed, weighing up whether meeting its eye might set it off, when there was a dull thud and the chink of metal on stone.

  Ottilie whipped around. There was a flash of orange, and the flick of a dark tail disappearing under a bed by the window. Someone screamed again. A girl on the edge of the group was clutching her ha
nd, blood seeping through her knuckles, her fingers grasping the stump where her thumb should be.

  Ottilie felt her own blood drain at the sight of it. She had failed. She had already failed them.

  ‘Get her out!’ Skip barked. ‘Get her away from it!’

  There was nothing else to be done. The girl’s ring had disappeared under one of the beds with the wyler and no-one could spare their own. Ottilie considered trying to ward off the sickness, but weakening herself was too dangerous – not that she had been of any help so far.

  The girl fell to her knees, retching. A girl beside her bent down to help, but she did not take a step in any direction, too scared to separate from the pack.

  ‘Get her out!’ Skip said, again.

  The girl went limp in her friend’s arms, her pale hand falling to the ground like a lifeless squid. Her friend clutched it between her own, trying to slow the bleeding. It was clear that no-one was going to move, and in a couple of minutes that girl would be dead. Skip hurried over to the injured girl.

  ‘Help me,’ she said to the friend, and together they hoisted the girl to her feet and half-dragged her towards the door.

  Ottilie was frozen, a strange lightness in her legs and lower back. She felt disconnected, unstable. How was she going to help them?

  ‘Are you going to do something?’ spat Maeve Moth. Her dark hair was loose and hung like a mourning veil, casting shadows on her face. From behind the thick strands Ottilie could see her bright eyes blazing.

  ‘If I attack it, it’ll start attacking you,’ said Ottilie.

  ‘It’s already attacking us!’ said Maeve.

  Ottilie stared at the red pool on the ground and her fingers shook on the hilt of her knife.

  Maeve growled in frustration. ‘Kill it before it does that again!’ She gestured wildly to the blood on the floor.