by Stephen Hunt
Out in the river the witch doctor’s chants were finally answered by an eruption of winged fish, a cloud of purple scales and rainbow fins bursting out of the water, fluttering off the walls of Rapalaw like bats, others of their number bouncing across the river, skimming into the sailors still fleeing after their Jonah. Poison-barbed fish heads buried into the striped shirts of the Sprite’s crewmen, tiny razored mouths gnawing at the flesh of their victims.
‘Ironflanks,’ Amelia cried, ‘back to the boat!’
She tried to drag one of the fallen sailors towards the conning tower hatch, but his face was swelling like a balloon, the skin of his bloated fingers turning rigid as his throat muscles expanded and slowly strangled him.
Veryann appeared and rolled the dying man into the river with a kick. ‘The toxin from the flying fish is fatal — there’s no cure.’
Over the top of Rapalaw Junction’s walls the thud of launching gas shells at last sounded, fingers of yellow gas trailing behind each projectile. Where they landed, clouds of noxious fumes mushroomed out, fountains of mustard tentacles curling up as far as the town’s ramparts. The redcoats looking down on them had leather masks with locust-like goggles strapped under their shako hats now, a single tube swaying from the front of each soldier like the snout of an anteater. Amelia could smell the sickly-sweet gas already, the taste of cinders and the promise of burning lungs hanging in the air. Its presence in the wind made her skin itch and she had to fight to hold down her panic. Dirt-gas was meant to be humane — first unconsciousness for an oxygen-starved brain, then a quick smothering of the target’s lungs — but she did not want to put their aerial navy’s propaganda to the test.
Plunging into the safety of the conning tower Amelia turned to watch the scene of horror through a porthole; curtains of gas drifting across the river and masking the town’s walls, sailors and Catosians running through the hail of devilbarb fish, spinning as their bodies were caught and pierced. The crackle of rifle fire echoed eerily through the mist, then out of that grim fog of death came Ironflanks, the steamman striding backwards with his four arms flickering in a dance of steel. His hunter’s hat had been mounted with the antlers from the craynarbian witch doctor, still bloody where they had been removed — with some force, Amelia imagined — from their owner’s skull. Three enraged craynarbian fighters followed from the fog, thrusting their spear-like spring-guns towards the steamman while he croaked at them in the voice of a rainforest moon-toad. Over their faces the feral shells had strapped on something that looked like a wet slug, a sack of pulsing black flesh. It was their answer to the redcoats’ dirt-gas.
Bull Kammerlan ducked through the tower’s hatch, the bloody body of one of his crewmen draped over his wide shoulders. ‘Masks! Some of them have got gas masks. They’ve been gassed outside the junction for centuries and now the damn feral shells have finally found a way to even up the odds.’
Amelia had a sneaking suspicion that Bull’s slave raids along the river might have educated the tribes in the use of gas as much as the defenders of the trading post, but she held her tongue. Pushing through the surviving sailors, Veryann appeared, replacing her carbine in its leg holster. ‘The tribe’s spring-gun darts are harmless against our hull, but if they should turn their improvised grenades against the boat …’
Amelia slid down a ladder into the pilot room. Commodore Black was hanging onto the periscope, watching war rafts emerge from the curtain of gas, heading straight towards the Sprite.
‘Make ready for diving stations,’ called the first mate. ‘Everyone inside. Rapalaw will have to fend for itself.’
‘The feral shells are mortal stirred up about something, lads.’ Black reached over to the wall and pulled out a speaking trumpet from its bracket. ‘T’ricola, I’m looking at you for some cheery news on our scrubber assembly now.’
Billy Snow flicked a switch on his console and the craynarbian engineer’s voice vibrated out of a voicebox above them. ‘Two minutes more, skipper, maybe five.’
‘Gabriel?’ The commodore looked across at his first mate.
‘Diving stations aye, commodore. We’re locked and sealed.’
‘Time to show our teeth,’ said the commodore.
Amelia borrowed the periscope. The war rafts were larger now, almost on top of the u-boat. ‘They’re too small to hit with torpedoes, Jared?’
‘I would not be wasting my precious glass-tipped fishes on these beasts, professor,’ said the commodore. He turned to Billy Snow, the blind sonar man’s head heavy with an iron dome and cables hanging off his skull. ‘Port lances?’
‘Can you not hear them humming for you, skipper?’
‘Those crabs up there are close enough to my lovely old lady now, Billy. Let them hear the hum too.’
Billy’s fingers punched the console in front of him. Outside the hull there was a low hiss as pneumatic tubes opened, pushing out a series of serrated spikes from the u-boat’s two conning towers, twin crowns of metal thorns emerging from the Sprite.
‘Wild power,’ said Amelia. ‘Sweet Circle, you’re carrying a capacitor on the Sprite.’
‘The power electric,’ said Billy, throwing down a switch.
She remembered the strange burned tiles she had seen exposed after their engine-room fire; it appeared they were insulation against more than just the cold of the open ocean. Amelia returned to the periscope. Beyond the u-boat, the river was lit by an undulating circle of lightning flickering from the Sprite’s two towers, the waters burning, devilbarb fish fried in mid-flight, the blow-barrel grenades of the wild craynarbians detonating as the chambers of explosive sap were joined by the force electric. Pieces of wooden raft and smoking craynarbian exo-shell rained down around the u-boat, dead river creatures floating up to the surface of the Shedarkshe before being carried downstream, towards Jackals. ‘It used to work better, the wild power,’ said Billy. ‘Something that people could control and direct. For peaceful uses too, not just war. But the world changed.’
Commodore Black took back the periscope from Amelia and gazed at the carnage across the water. Craynarbians on the far shore were already massing for a second attack, darts streaming over towards the Sprite of the Lake. ‘You’re a fine one for old legends, Billy Snow. The power electric works blessed well enough for my tastes.’
The voicebox sounded above their heads. ‘Skipper, you havethe scrubbers back again.’
‘Take us out, Gabriel,’ ordered the commodore. ‘Take us out slow and steady.’
Sailors bustled around their posts in the pilot room, but the only answer to their efforts was a hollow knocking running along the hull. It grew louder every second, the hull vibrating with a fury.
‘First mate?’
‘Something is wrong.’ McCabe ran over to the double pilot seats.
‘Kill the propellers,’ ordered the commodore, ‘shut down the screws before my girl burns out.’ He turned his periscope towards the tail of the u-boat. ‘Ah now, there’s the wicked thing.’
One of the exploding war craft had been approaching the Sprite’s stern and the force of it striking the u-boat had twisted one of their iron rudders into the path of a propeller. They were jammed and beached.
The first mate surveyed the damage through the periscope. ‘The rudder’s only slightly bent, but it’s enough to foul the rotation of the screws.’
For the first time since the trip began, Amelia started to feel the claustrophobia the seadrinkers called the black tunnel.
‘Can’t we heat it up with welding torches, bang the rudder back into shape?’
‘Do we have enough power left for a second tickle on the lances, Mister Snow?’ asked the commodore.
‘They’re spent, skipper. Pistons need to be turning to recharge them.’
‘Well then, there it is.’ Black looked at Amelia sadly, as if he was disappointing a favourite granddaughter. ‘A work crew will take too long. With our lances working we could hold the craynarbians back, give them a taste of the wild juice when the
y get too snappish. But without them …’
‘There is another way.’ Gabriel McCabe stood to his full height, his heavy frame nearly brushing the copper pipes along the pilot room’s ceiling. ‘If I go now, before the shells have a chance to reform their ranks, I might be able to bend the rudder back into shape.’
‘That’s suicide,’ said Billy. ‘The tribes’ braves will be swarming over our hull and Rapalaw’s walls like wasps smoked out of their nest.’
‘You heard the applause of the crowds in the gambling pits, Billy Snow, when I bent steel bars for their wagers.’
‘I had assumed that was a Circle-damned parlour trick, old friend.’
‘Does the trick work as well for two?’ Amelia’s worldsinger-twisted arms lifted up to clutch onto the rungs of the conning-tower ladder.
‘You do not have to do this,’ said McCabe.
‘To get away from this cursed corner of civilization and send us towards the foundation stones of Camlantis? Yes. Yes I do.’
‘Let her go,’ begged one of the sailors, ‘she’s a bloody Jonah. If we keep her on the boat we’ll all-’
Commodore Black swung around, landing a pile driver on the submariner’s face and the ex-convict spun onto the deck, unconscious. ‘No annoying the cargo, lads. If it weren’t for the professor, your mortal luck would have left you all swimming back in the tanks at Bonegate. You ponder on that. If I hear any more fiendish talk of a Jonah on the Sprite, I’ll walk the next of you rascals to speak such filth through the sea lock without a helmet.’
Gabriel showed Amelia how to suit up in the conning tower closest to the Sprite’s screws; their rubber suits their only protection — not from the water, but from the waves of dirt-gas still being mortared out of Rapalaw Junction towards the attacking savages. Shaped like one of the seashells children in Jackals pushed against their ears to hear Lord Tridentscale’s whispers, Amelia’s copper helmet screwed down tight into her neck plate. Her crystal visor was barely wide enough to allow her to see her air tank, before the first mate slipped the tank’s straps over her shoulders.
As Amelia finished suiting up, the handle on the sea lock spun and Ironflanks stepped into the small chamber. ‘Excellent, Amelia softbody, I see that you have made a start without me.’
‘This could be a one-way trip, old steamer,’ said Amelia.
‘I’ll return from this trip in penury unless I get you to the source of the Shedarkshe,’ said Ironflanks. ‘If we stay behind here, the second half of my fee is going to stay locked up inside Abraham Quest’s counting house.’
‘You’re quite the mercenary,’ said Amelia. ‘Most steammen of my acquaintance are happy enough with a pail of coke for their boiler and a single room to lay their head down at night.’
Ironflanks squawked a burst of what might have been laughter through his voicebox. ‘For a short period, my boiler heart shall run as well on dirt-gas as it does on air. And as for your rich countryman’s Jackelian guineas, don’t you worry, I’ll find something to squander his silver on.’ Gabriel McCabe moved his massive bulk — made even larger by the diving suit — towards the conning tower’s outer lock. ‘We will not be able to evade their spears in these suits.’
‘You two see to this submersible’s rudder,’ said Ironflanks. ‘I shall deal with your mammal-shell cousins when they come hunting for us.’
Choking green clouds muffled the sound of the water lapping against the Sprite’s hull and the echo of rifle fire from the trading post. If the hell denied by the Circlist church’s vicars existed, it might have looked something like this. Amelia’s lead-lined boots clanked against the hull as blind shots from the garrison spouted in the river. She could hear Ironflanks’ feet clanking behind her, the steamman sweeping the empty mist with the business end of his massive thunder-lizard gun.
Dead craynarbians bobbed in the water, shuddering as something still left alive in the river gnawed at their shells. She could just make out the war song of the savage craynarbians, a whistling fluting thing, followed by the crash of dart spears against their exo-armour. Amelia said a quick meditation to the Circle, imploring that the lunatic steamman escorting them did not join in the chorus; she and the first mate were exposed enough as it was in their clumsy diving suits.
Gabriel pointed ahead — there was a twinned assembly of propellers at the rear of their massive u-boat and the starboard side’s screw blades were caught against a twisted fold in the rudder. Gabriel said something, then realized his words were too muted by their helmets to be audible. He pointed to the rudder and made a hand motion indicating they should both seize it. Amelia anchored her feet against the iron frame while the first mate took the opposite side, his glove-encased hands gripping the battered steering mechanism above hers. Together they applied their muscles to the metal, Amelia pushing it while Gabriel McCabe pulled from the opposite end. Behind his visor, the first mate’s face was contorted in effort, condensation misting the crystal. Already stretched tight around her massive arms, the rubber of Amelia’s diving suit dug deep as her muscles swelled taut. If the suit ripped, the best she could hope for would be burns along the skin where the dirt-gas worked its foul business … if the tear opened a path to her lungs, then bleeding, blistered skin would be the best of it. Gabriel roared with the exertion, the yell of anger audible to Amelia even inside her helmet. She could hardly see now, floods of sweat running down into her eyes. Somewhere above the gas clouds the Liongeli sun was pouring its fury down onto Rapalaw Junction, heedless of fools in rubber suits and their desperate efforts. The rudder just appeared to be moving when a dart jounced off the metal, blue drops of ichor splattering Amelia’s visor as it broke. Poison. They filled their darts with venom milked from the flying fish!
Ironflanks stepped in to block the attack, darts glancing off the riveted metal under his hunter’s jacket as he hefted up his thunder-lizard gun. The rifle bucked in his hands like an incensed dragon as he emptied a buckshot load towards the origin of the whistling darts.
Driven by the scare of nearly being injected with jungle venom, Amelia pushed at the rudder with all her might, screaming into the rubber-scented air of her helmet. Gabriel pulled, his grasp so tight he was leaving indentations in the metal. More darts punched down, a deadly rain, bouncing off the steel deck boards and into the river. Amelia felt rather than heard the bang of the craynarbian raft impacting the side of the Sprite. She tried to concentrate on moving the rudder, on clearing the bent metal from the propeller blades, ignoring the massive wild shells leaping onto the u-boat. Ironflanks ran towards the craynarbians, yelling abuse and rotating his machetes like an iron windmill enchanted to murderous sentience — but these savages were not for scaring.
At last, amazingly, the rudder suddenly began to move — bending easily, as if it had been heated in the afternoon sun and was now butter beneath their grasp. Down the deck Ironflanks fought the craynarbian savages with a precision only a steamman could muster, two arms trading blows with a wall of thrusting spears, while another two scissored out, severing the slug-like face mask of one of the warriors. Coughing in the dirt-gas, the craynarbian stumbled back, Ironflanks crushing the squirming living gas mask underfoot then swivelling to kick the warrior overboard.
More braves leapt off the raft, bypassing the craynarbian-steamman duel and running towards Amelia and the first mate. Their job on the rudder was done, but it looked like it was going to cost them dearly. Amelia swore, cursing her bulky gloves and the pistol she’d had to leave inside the Sprite. Gabriel gave a thumbs-up towards the periscope and drew a sea knife from his belt. Standing beside the giant submariner, Amelia slipped out her own blade. Craynarbians had a lifetime to learn how to fight inside their bulky exo-shells; Amelia was a newborn in her heavy, hot suit. One of the warriors jabbed at Amelia with his spear and she clumsily turned it aside with her knife arm, then grabbed the wooden shaft with her left arm, locking it into place. The craynarbian began a tug of war for the spear, trying to batter her with his shield, a round piece
of bone armour from the corpse of one of the jungle beasts. Amelia rolled forward, unbalancing the brave and coming to her feet with possession of the spear. Her oppon ent came at her with his shield up, the perfect stance for deflecting a spear thrust. But Amelia Harsh was not a shell warrior — she was a Jackelian, the daughter of a disgraced politician. Ostracized perhaps, but her father had still been a master of debating sticks — trading blows on parliament’s dais of democracy with the heavy staff of a Guardian. And how Amelia had studied at his feet! She swept the spear’s shaft down into the warrior’s knee, swivelling up, out, to whirl the brave’s shield into the air. The brave thrust at her with his sword-arm, the serrated limb clearing her neck by an inch. With the spear-staff in her hands all her father’s lessons were returning to her now, the sweet rhetoric of the debating stick, every dirty, nasty, street-fighting trick the political fighters of Middlesteel had developed on the capital’s lanes and boulevards.
Tripping the craynarbian with a blow known as the ‘chancellor’s statement’, Amelia ducked down and snapped a clout across the warrior’s armoured forehead, giving him a ‘second reading’ with all the strength in her massive arms when he tried to stumble back to his feet. Behind her, Gabriel was using his gambling-pit pugilism, swinging the unconscious carcass of one of the craynarbians into the warrior’s comrades, his body weaving left and right as they stabbed at him with their spears. More and more craynarbians were gathering behind, ready to wreak their revenge against these soft-skinned invaders of their realm. It was only going to take a minute more, with these odds. Gabriel and Amelia were surely both about to fall to a flurry of jabbing spear points.
Amelia glanced down at the water. With their wet suits she and Gabriel could leap into the river and cling onto the Sprite while the u-boat got underway — the risk of the river predators of the Shedarkshe surely better than certain death where they stood. It would mean leaving Ironflanks to fight his way back to the trading post, though. She was momentarily torn. Then she made her decision: better that the two of them survive — and there was always a chance for the steamman, however slim. Amelia was about to tackle the first mate from behind and cast them both into the river when a conning tower hatch opened. Bull Kammerlan strode out of the door, a couple of his sailors behind him, suited up with seashell-shaped air tanks — and something else, besides: they were bent under the weight of chemical batteries strapped to their backs, gutta-percha insulated cables dangling down to tridents almost twice as tall as the sailors stood.