Twilight of Kerberos: Wrath of Kerberos

by Jonathan Oliver

  He hugged her so hard that he almost dragged her under.

  “Where’s Zac?” he said.

  “With the others. Come on.”

  She led him to a rowboat, its oars missing and its hull blackened by fire. Within were huddled their companions, starting with each fresh explosion, staring into the fog with fearful expressions. Illiun had survived the assault of the dragons, although of his people only Hannah, Shalim and Rosalind had survived.

  “I’m presuming,” Silus said as he scrambled into the boat, followed by his wife, “that this isn’t what you intended, Kelos?”

  “No.”

  There was a peal of thunder and the water erupted ten yards off to starboard, lifting the boat on a swell that threatened to capsize them.

  “Well then, do something!” Silus shouted.

  “I can’t,” Kelos said. “The only reason I managed to perform the sorcery in the first place is because I had the blood of a dragon. Here, I don’t have enough power to do it again.”

  With a roar, a line of fire arced over their heads, before silence descended. A break in the fog briefly showed them the dull copper disk of the sun and, just beginning to move before it, the azure glow of Kerberos. To port and starboard, shadows loomed, rearing up like cliffs. But cliffs don’t move, and when two vast galleons hove into view, their flanks bearing down on them, panic began to break out in the small vessel.

  “Row!” Ignacio shouted.

  “With what?” Katya said. “We don’t have any oars.”

  Gun ports opened alongside each ship, and they were close enough now that Silus could see the spark of fuses being lit.

  He dived overboard, quickly filling his lungs with water, drawing the very essence of the ocean into himself. Positioning himself directly beneath the rowboat, Silus closed his eyes. He focused on the flow of blood through his veins and the movement of the water around him, and opened up a channel; a strong current taking him in its grasp, the water blood-warm and echoing with the beat of his heart. Silus raised his arms and the rowboat was borne aloft on the back of a wave that quickly curled down the narrow channel between the two great ships, just as the sliver of sky above them began to disappear.

  The boat sped out onto open water, the power of the wave quickly diminishing. Behind them, the ships’ cannons fired, the galleons erupting in flame, blown to matchsticks in an act of mutual destruction.

  “I don’t think that those were Final Faith ships,” Dunsany said. “Just what the hell is going on here?”

  “It seems,” Silus said, pulling himself back into the boat, “that Kelos has landed us in the middle of war.”

  Ahead of them, the water was crowded with ships. Vessels of all sizes jostled against each other as bodies flung themselves from deck to deck, swords flashing as boarders were repelled and corpses pitched into the churning waters below. Cannon fire punctuated the roar of hand-to-hand combat, ships sinking swiftly as they were holed below the waterline, only for others to just as quickly take their place. Silus had never witnessed naval battle before, but he had always imagined it would be more graceful than this; neatly regimented fleets dancing around each other as they exchanged fire, each side taking their turn as though playing some civilised game of strategy. This was as bloody and chaotic as any land war; perhaps more so, for out on the open water there was nowhere one could retreat to. Once battle was joined, it was all or nothing.

  In the confusion, it was difficult to tell who was fighting whom. The combatants appeared to be human, though one side was unnaturally tall – lithe, pale figures who moved with a graceful sure-footedness – while the other was stockier and shorter. It was these latter who appeared to have the upper hand. What they lacked in martial skills and finesse, their ships more than made up for with payloads of heavy munitions. Their cannon balls were barely slowed by the hulls of the enemy vessels, but punched straight through ship after ship before finally falling into the sea. On some of their ships were mounted vast crossbows, their projectiles, when fired, skewering men horribly, their points opening up as they punched into flesh so that the victims could be reeled quickly in and brutally dispatched. Seeing this, Silus couldn’t help but be reminded of the stories he’d heard concerning the whalers of the Sarcrean islands.

  A stain was spreading from the waters of the battle, lapping up against the rowboat in oily red waves. Two men were swimming towards them, shouting for help as they floundered. Ignacio rose and held out his hand. One of the men grasped it, babbling his thanks as he tried to gain purchase on the slippery boards, only for Ignacio to lean in close and open up his throat with a dagger. The other man, seeing the fate of his comrade, began to back-paddle, but he was tiring swiftly and the second time his head bobbed beneath the surface, it failed to re-emerge.

  “You... you... Ignacio, how could you?” Katya said, her voice quavering. “Zac saw that.”

  “And he’s seen worse,” Ignacio said. “Katya, we don’t exactly have a lot of room to move around on this useless dinghy. If we take on any more people, we’ll sink. Someone has to think of these practicalities.”

  “Kelos, why did you even bring Ignacio and his new friends with us?” Katya said, exasperated.

  “Trust me, Katya, it was as much an accident as me landing us in the middle of a war!”

  Ignacio looked back at the handful of Swords who had made it through the time rift with them, but his comrades had nothing to say. They looked just as stunned as everybody else; their righteous ire quashed by everything they had seen.

  “That man you just killed,” Kelos said. “Was it just me, or didn’t he look a bit like a... well... an elf?”

  “And those short chaps with the deadly cannons...?” Dunsany said.

  “Gods, I’ve sent us back to Twilight alright, but we’re in completely the wrong era. This must be the last great war between the elves and the dwarves. I’ve read of the fierce naval battles they engaged in. The dwarves came to naval combat late, but they quickly took to it.”

  The boat began to pitch wildly as something beneath them pushed its way to the surface.

  For a moment Silus thought that it was a deep-water leviathan, come to find the source of the detritus that was raining down into its territory. But as dark water rolled from the back of the huge barrel-like body, it revealed not flesh, but wood.

  “What in the name of Kerberos is that?” Silus said.

  The craft was three times the length of the rowboat. From its tail rose a steel fin that swung back and forth with a squeal of metal bearings as the vessel turned to face the conflict. The nose of the craft was a bubble of thick glass that magnified the squat, shirtless man sitting within, sweating profusely as he yanked at levers and twirled the small brass wheels housed between his feet.

  “Is that...?” Silus said.

  “A dwarf? Yes,” Kelos replied.

  The dwarf – looking up briefly from his controls – seemed equally as surprised to see them, but then the vessel was past, the corkscrew propeller at its rear kicking up a crimson spray. It came to a halt about five yards from the battle and a hatch opened up in its back. Steam wafted from the opening as the dwarf climbed onto the roof of his ship, pulling a golden robe around himself. He faced the battle and threw up his arms. As he did so, a dozen ships disappeared, sucked swiftly under by the whirlpools that now raged at the heart of the conflict. The dwarf gestured again and lightning lanced down from the cloudless sky. The stench of cooking flesh drifted towards them, as those who still floundered in the raging waters were cooked in an instant.

  “That’s nothing,” said Kelos. “I could do that, with enough practice.”

  The dwarf gestured again and the gold thread of his robe unravelled, spinning itself around him in a shimmering cocoon.

  “That, I admit, I would have trouble with.”

  However, the dwarf’s magical protection proved to be for naught. One of the elven ships swung about and there was the report of a single cannon. A few heartbeats later, the dwarf and his f
antastical vessel were reduced to a shower of gore and splinters.

  “That was way too close for comfort,” Katya said, as the rowboat bobbed alarmingly on the swell.

  Silus looked around for signs of further dwarven submersibles, but the craft they had seen appeared to have been unique.

  “Such a shame,” Kelos said. “I’d have loved to be able to examine that wondrous device.”

  Despite having taken such heavy losses from the mage’s assault, the elves battled on, throwing themselves at the dwarves even as their ships burned or fell to bits around them. Silus saw an elf woman climbing the rigging of a ship as the sea slowly claimed it. Gaining the crow’s nest, she turned to face in their direction. When she sang, her voice cut through the roar of the battle, the delicate and complex song finding its own place at the heart of the maelstrom. For a moment, Silus thought that the song was just for him, that the elf had recognised in him a kindred soul, but then a comment from Emuel made him turn.

  “Lord of All, there’s a whole fleet of them!”

  The ships sailing towards them now far outclassed any of those currently engaged in the conflict. Silus counted at least twenty vessels, with more shimmering into existence beyond them, wreathed in the flames of sorcery. The sails of the ships billowed silently with a wind that had nothing to do with the weather, the sail cloth shining with a rainbow sheen like oil moving on water. The figurehead at the prow of each vessel had been sculpted into the likeness of an elf maiden, and the mouths of these wooden women sang a harmony to complete the song calling to them.

  “Song ships,” Emuel said. “The ancestors of the Llothriall.”

  Tears were rolling down Emuel’s face as he answered with a song of his own, the tattoos on his body writhing as they responded to the magic.

  The fleet began to move past them. The ships were far larger than any they had so far seen, yet left no wake.

  The dwarves had spotted the newly-arrived elf fleet and let loose with a barrage of cannon fire. But though their aim was true, their missiles turned to dust the moment they closed on the ships. Silus expected to see decks bristling with soldiers, readying themselves for boarding actions, but on the deck of each song ship stood only a single figure. The elf fleet closed swiftly around the enemy ships, encircling them. The dwarf ships, in a final act of desperation, exhausted their magazines in a deafening salvo that lit up the sea for miles around and obscured both the fleets in a stinking fog. But when the mists cleared, the elf ships were still there, their hulls unmarked and the song unbroken.

  Figures began to plunge into the sea, as dwarves threw themselves overboard, clearly deciding that attempting to swim for it was preferable to what the elves had in store. Silus wondered how a magic so beautiful – this sorcery written in song – could be so feared, but then the melody changed and the cadence grew more frantic and he discovered exactly what the dwarves so dreaded.

  EMUEL HAD CLOSED his eyes to be better able to focus on the song, opening himself up to its ethereal power. This was beyond anything he had heard before, beyond even the song of the Stone Seers which had once so filled him with awe. It was a song of protection: a nurturing, calming melody that enfolded him like a mother’s arms. Within it, he knew no harm would come to him. But then, something changed. The transition was so subtle that Emuel didn’t realise the true nature of this new song even as he began to mouth the words. There was a sense of mild irritation, an annoyance that spread through him, swiftly turning into rage; he opened his eyes to see the tattoos that covered every inch of his body tearing at each other like savage beasts. A creature moved through the thicket of black ink thorns that now entwined his right arm, and when Emuel saw its baleful gaze, he was certain that the monster would have launched itself at him had it not been imprisoned by his flesh.

  While the song had a marked effect on the eunuch, on the dwarves it was more profound.

  They had begun fighting – not against the elves, but amongst themselves.

  Emuel saw a female dwarf throttling a male. She knocked him cold before hoisting a cannon ball high over his head and letting go. The dwarf’s skull shattered, driven into the deck beneath him by the impact of the heavy iron sphere. Elsewhere, former comrades were pitted against each other – all military training forsaken as they sought the quickest kill, no matter how messy or brutal the means. Decks were soon running with blood, the bodies piling up swiftly on the planks – survivor turning on survivor until the last dwarf standing, seeing that there was none left to fight, turned his weapon on himself and took his own life. Even in death, however, the dwarves found no peace, for from the throats of the corpses came the song that had destroyed them, its dreadful low cadence a funeral dirge that chilled Emuel’s blood.

  He looked to his companions to gauge their reactions to what had just taken place, and was appalled to see them turning blank gazes on one another as the song overwhelmed them. Emuel tried to interject, but his protestations did little but earn him a bloodied nose from Dunsany. The song was coming from his companions’ throats as they tore into each other and, listening to its dreadful sound, Emuel realised what he had to do.

  Managing to compose himself, even in the midst of the chaos surrounding him, Emuel sang; a sheen of sweat beading his brow as he concentrated on countering the music of the elves. When Ignacio drew his sword and swung back his arm to take a swipe at Katya, Emuel almost faltered, but finally he found the heart of the music.

  Ignacio’s weapon dropped from suddenly slack fingers and he looked down at Katya as though unsure as to why she was kneeling before him. She looked up in turn, an expression of confusion written upon her face.

  “Ignacio, what are you doing?” she said.

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember the last few moments at all. What happened? Why is Emuel singing?”

  Emuel’s song came to an end at the same time as the elves’.

  Silus looked at the now silent dwarf vessels and immediately shielded Zac’s eyes from the horrendous carnage.

  “What did they do?” he said.

  “They sang,” Emuel said. “Their song did this.”

  “I think that they heard you,” Katya said as one of the song ships broke away from the fleet and headed their way.

  There was more than the solitary figure they had seen earlier on the deck, now; a whole host of curious faces looked down at them as the vessel drew alongside the boat. There was urgent, muffled conversation from above, before a rope ladder unrolled down the side of the ship, thudding against the planks.

  “An invitation?” Kelos said.

  “But what if it’s not safe?” Katya said.

  “Really, I don’t think we have many options here. We either stay on this oarless boat, and eventually die of thirst, or we join the elves.”

  Illiun looked up. “These people, they are very different from yourselves. Is this place truly your home?”

  “Yes,” Kelos said. “Well, no. Look, it’s complicated. We’re a few years out, is all.

  “A few!” Silus said.

  “Okay, several thousand.”

  “Come on,” Dunsany said. “I for one can’t wait to meet our hosts and examine their magnificent ship.”

  “Just don’t try stealing it,” Kelos said.

  “As if I would.”

  Emuel followed his companions as they made their way up the side of the ship, glancing up once to look at the pale faces that gazed down upon them.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  STANDING AT THE prow of the song ship, Silus recognised the familiar curve of the north shore of Allantia, but that was all he recognised. Where he expected to see the south of the island curving gently back down to the sea, instead it continued unbroken – its gentle hills dotted with pasture and woodland – all the way to what must be (or would one day become) Freiport. Allantia was thus connected to the mainland, not an island at all, and Silus wondered what cataclysmic future event would lead to its separation from the peninsula.

  The fleet hugged
the shore as it tacked to the west, eventually entering a half-moon bay. At its head sat the largest harbour Silus had ever seen. Yet more song ships were berthed there in ordered ranks, their tarred hulls gleaming, the odour of magic pouring off them, distinct even at this distance. But even more impressive than the elven fleet was the city that lay beyond the harbour, shining in the midday sun. It marched up the tiers of the surrounding cliffs, each layer meticulously constructed so that nothing was out of place, and carriages ascended and descended the slopes with no obvious means of propulsion.

  Silus’s eyes were naturally drawn to the building that graced the headland like a crown, its many wings encircling the entire apex of the bay in marble and glass. Above this palace – for what else could it be? – the sky was just as busy as the waters of the harbour. Tethered balloons bobbed gently in the light wind rolling from the headland, while men with wings of canvas and wood leapt from platforms, swooping over the city before heading out to sea or circling back inland. Silus had heard stories of wondrous elven cities, but the only remnants of these that the people of his own time had found were broken pots or shattered archways, nothing to suggest anything on this scale. He wondered what event would so meticulously remove such settlements from the map and leave little more than dust in its wake. Could the elves or the dwarves have an inkling of the apocalypse heading their way?

  The elves on the song ship had been quiet – even dismissive – during much of the voyage, interacting with their human guests as little as possible, beyond making sure they were fed and kept warm. Silus had expected that they would at least be questioned about their presence at the battle, but if the elves had any curiosity about this they hid it well.

  “It’s true that I never thought I’d see Twilight again,” Katya said, coming up behind Silus and slipping an arm around his shoulder, “but even if I had, I never imagined I’d see it quite like this.”

  Zac clutched her left hand, looking goggle-eyed at the approaching city and squealing with delight when he spotted the balloons drifting high above it.