by Iain Lindsay
Back! The ship-beast boomed its barnacle-encrusted song through Talin’s mind, and the youth felt the power flood through and out of him like a storm wave. Obeying some subconscious mandate that he didn’t understand, the Nhkari thrust out his empty hand in an open gesture, and the winds took him-
From the youth their flowed an explosion of power. The desert sands at his feet flew outwards and he saw the advancing barbarian’s eyes grow wide as he was flung back. The surrounding smugglers and Jekkers were likewise falling under the onslaught of raw power, sand in their eyes, stinging flesh.
“Agh!” He heard Jekkers shriek. Talin’s body felt light and filled with an unearthly power as his feet started to lift from the desert floor…
Pheet! In his fevered dream state, Talin saw two ugly crossbow bolts wing their way towards him, only to hang strangely in the air at the edge of the expanding circle, before falling, stalled, to the sand. The invisible tempest continued, driving their attackers backwards.
I need you, Talin of the Nhkari. Holder boomed through the corridors of his mind, as Talin felt the sweep of power delicious as it coiled through his limbs. He felt as though he could lift his arms and fly. As if he could do anything…
“Filthy! Cheating! Nhka!” The shriek of the Overseer broke into Talin’s reverie. Jekkers had managed to cling onto the dirt, clawing towards him over the sand and the flung bodies as his clothes whipped around him in the eldritch storm. In his hands he held a blade that looked strange and cruel, glowing with ugly bruise-light, the shape of a snarl.
“Back!” Talin felt his combined Holder-voice scream at the man, thrusting out the hand at Jekker’s face, directing all the ethereal currents of the ship’s power. Jekkers hung on, shark-teeth grimacing in fury for a moment, before one hand was ripped from its purchase, his black eyes filled with sand and, with a muffled scream, he was flung backward into the darkness.
With that outburst of power, Talin felt his body shake. The power of the ship-beast was too much for him. Talin could feel his reserves of vitality and strength being burning away and darkness cloud his vision…
Your mind is too small for this, and I need you alive. Now flee – the darkness is coming! Holder forced the youth’s attention to the southern skies, where dark shapes where spearing towards them. In Talin’s power-washed vision he saw that the edges of the Volt’s ships bleed the colors of a nightmare. They were wrong. They carried terror with them.
Talin thumped to the floor as Holder abruptly left his mind. He coughed and his limbs shook. He felt like a fish out of water and gasping for air.
“Talin…?” It was Kef, struggling towards him with an ashen face. He looked at the youth as if he had sprouted horns and tentacles.
“Get up. We must flee! The Volt are here.” Kef seized the youths shoulder, but Talin could barely move for the trembling exhaustion that simmered through his veins.
“God’s Spit!” Tremaine raised his pistol and discharged it in the roaring face of a smuggler who had come screaming out of the dark towards them. They stood near one of the outer watch fires of the Blue Princes, Gulbrand already swinging his mace to send first one, then another smuggler into the air. The heimr snarled as he fought, his gigantic form moving surprisingly fast as he bounded, leapt, and swung.
Pheet! A bolt shot over their shoulders. The madness and confusion of the battle was starting to clear, and the far larger numbers of the Blue Princes starting to isolate where their enemies where.
“LURA!” Tremaine bellowed. “TAL!”
Pheet! Another bolt thudded into the dirt by Tremaine’s feet as he sprang back, attempting to put the fire between him and the unseen shooter. All around them the keening sound of the Volt was growing louder, but the Captain daren’t raise his eyes from the fight to see quite how badly screwed they were. He already knew that it was probably total.
Another thud and a scream as Gulbrand dismantled somebody. The Captain almost felt sorry for the smugglers, as they still sang songs about War-Lag Gulbrand in the land of Heim.
“Captain!?” Shadows at the edge of the firelight, a thin, crouching Lura with her arms protectively over a girl in a blue puffball dress.
“You got her?” Tremaine was incredulous as he refilled his flint and powder pistol, rising from his crouch to sight the shape he thought was the crossbowman. BANG!
“Barely.” The Rigger was snarling as she was trying to carry the Princess, whose face was pale in the gloom.
“Quartermaster!” Tremaine called, and suddenly Gulbrand was there. From somewhere he had managed to pick up a barrel-lid which he as using as a shield, it was already peppered with crossbow bolts. “Get her out of here.”
“Aye, Cap.” The heimr grunted, dropping the lid to seize the Princess under one hand, and leap up the hill in thunderous steps.
“Talin? Kef?” Lura said from her crouch.
“Not here.” Tremaine gritted his teeth. “We can only hope that they’ve already pulled out…” He seized his Rigger’s hand, pushing her behind him as he reloaded and fired another shot into the camp. “We have to go. Now.” They turned and fled after the Quartermaster.
35. The Volt
Talin’s mind screamed. What did I do? How was that possible? What did the Ship do through me? There were dark shadows falling towards him, reminding him of the night-terrors he had a long time ago at the Reach. The dreams of violence closing around him and his ailing mother, the sharp crack of a whip.
Wake up, Talin. Holder’s voice washed around him. You have to wake up! The ship-beast sounded anxious, if such a great creature could. It only made the youth even more scared.
“Wake up, Talin!” A forceful shake, and he was gasping in the dry airs, looking up at the wide-eyes of Father Kef. The sky looked wrong around his head, it was greying-blue now, but also tinged with purples as his vision doubled and swam. Talin felt sick.
It is too much. You cannot hold me in your mind. Holder was thrashing in disturbed waters.
“The Overseer. Where is he?” Talin whispered, but Father Kef didn’t answer him as his own eyes were fixed on what was happening behind them. Shouts had turned into screams, as Talin blinked, he thought he could see dark shapes falling from the Volt’s ships above. The accursed vessels were low over the sands, and he could make out not planks of wood, but long, twisted curves of wood like interlocking, blackened roots. The ships were ugly and scarred, and from portholes in their outer hull dropped black-fluttering shapes through the smokes of the bonfires. The wind caught and tore at them. Figures in ragged blackened cloaks, bundling and falling like storm crows, but attached to knotted ropes as they thudded into the sand.
“Sweet Mother…” Father Kef said, transfixed.
The dark shapes were rising from their fall, miraculously unbroken by their landing as they jumped, seizing the nearest figures in blackened arms.
“Aiii!” With strangulated screams, the seized smugglers and their capturers were hauled upwards into the air as fast as they had fallen, carrying their prey with them. Talin heard screams, struggles, several of the Blue Prince’s fighters managed to pull or kick free, to fall with un-miraculous, merely mortal thumps to the dirt. However, these smugglers didn’t get back up again.
“What are they doing…” Talin pushed himself into a squat.
“Raiding, boy.” A voice met them in the darkness. It was Jala and her group of tall, lean-limbed Nhkari bearing their staffs and short bows as they fanned out around them, seizing Kef and Talin and helping them to their feet.
“You were right, Ekun,” Jala’s face was dark. “We have no choice but to fight. Fight and run.”
Talin, I am coming. Hold on. Holder burst into the youth’s mind, making him scream. It was no longer the comforting blue when the ship-beast arrived, it was an assault of storm-winds and pain.
“What is wrong with him?” Jala hissed.
Talin was too blinded by his pain to see the old man’s face, but his words were still dire.
“Sorcery.”
“Captain!” Lura shouted, a moment before a dark shape thudded to the floor in front of them on the slope, between them and Gulbrand.
“Heaven’s teeth!” Tremaine cursed. The shape had thumped to the floor like a felled black-winged bird, wreathed in the tatters of a blackened cloak, and from its back extended a vine of knotted rope.
“Gulbrand!” Tremaine shouted as he jumped back, and the Volt sprang awkwardly to its feet. It was human – or looked humanoid, at least, but its limbs were bound in black leather straps and a rough sort of armor crisscrossed the being’s chest. The thing’s head was similarly covered in a ghoulish black-leather hood, tight around the brow and eye holes, through which glittered the sparks of the things pupils. In one gloved hand it held a cruel, curving blade with a serrated edge. It snarled as it jumped towards the Captain.
Tremaine had no time to curse, lifting his fine Maricci fencing sabre to parry the thing’s attack with a jolt that shook his arm. The Volt was strong and quick, as it struck out again, black rags flaring as it sliced another blow straight at the Captain’s eyes.
“Urk!” He was jerked backward as Lura seized the scruff of the Captain’s hauberk. For a terrifying moment he heard the hiss in the air as the Volt’s blade swung inches in front of his eyes.
But the thing wasn’t stopping. It jumped forward, one hand seizing Tremaine’s sword arm. There was a tug, and Tremaine found himself being pulled violently upward as the rope attached to his attacker and the Captain carried both into the air.
“Get off!” But the Volt hadn’t bargained on the Captain still being attached to the Master Rigger; a tylaethi who was born for the ropes and branches of high trees. Still attached to Tremaine’s neck and half strangling him, the Rigger grappled the Captain’s waist with her legs, swinging her heavy scimitar in a blow that severed flesh and bone.
“Achhk!” The Volt screamed; a high-pitched, sick-sounding wail. Lura had severed its grasping hand from the rest of its arm, and the pair of them thudded back to the rocky floor, showered in the Volt’s blood as it shot upwards into the dark, struggling and flailing.
“Dear gods…” Tremaine moaned as he pushed himself off Lura. “Damnit!” He fell to one side, shaking his sword arm as the thing’s black-clad hand was still clutching at him. With another shake, the appendage fell to the ground, twitching feebly.
“At least we know they bleed.” The Rigger spat into the sand, her face was covered in deep scarlet.
“Then they can die, too.” Gulbrand boomed. He had returned to stand protectively over the two, the Princess Eliset now holding onto his back as he held his war maul in both hands. Dark shadows were failing out of the skies further behind them at the foot of the hill.
“You have to run, Tal. You have to wake up and – run!” Father Kef was hissing at him as they staggered through the glooming morning. He was aware of the ugly little sounds of fighting as the Nhkari shot and struck the smugglers who dared to remain in their way – but most of the Blue Prince’s forces themselves had also decided to flee the terror of the Volt. When he dared to look back over his shoulder, it was like a scene from a story: the dark Volt ships swum and circled around each other as lines extended from their bellies. More of the smugglers were being seized, and those that weren’t, were being cut down where they stood. The Volt were merciless and savage in their slaughter.
“But…why?” Talin gasped as he was pushed and half-carried by two of the Nhkari guides beside him.
“No witnesses.” One of the men snipped back. “The Volt probably never meant to leave anyone alive…”
Lura! The others, the Princess – did they get out? Talin managed to think despite his pain as they stumbled and ran. Behind them there was a bloom of orange light as someone had managed – whether accidentally or on purpose – to set one of the Blue Prince’s airship’s alight.
Fire! Holder thrashed in the recesses of Talin’s mind, making the youth scream as he clutched at his temples.
“He is mad.” Jala said tersely over him.
“Not mad. Ensorcelled.” Father Kef replied, his own pain clear in his clipped tones. “The Old Nhkari tunnels. We have to take cover underground…”
“They are cursed!” Jala argued as screams rose behind them from the battle.
“Believe me, we know – but we have no choice. The Volt will leave none alive…” Kef appeared to be fast running out of breath.
Some decision must have been taken, Talin thought distantly through his fog of pain as he found that the ground under their feet was fast becoming rocky and steeper. He stumbled and fell, before being picked up and shoved onwards. A scream from close nearby.
“Damba!” he heard Jala the guide suddenly cry out.
“No – he is gone!” Father Kef tried to stop her, but Jala was already running back down the slope towards the wreckage of her friend. Talin didn’t know if it was the Volt who had seized her friend, or perhaps one of the smugglers had, but now their numbers had grown much smaller in their climb. A couple more of the guides peeled off, racing into the fading night – whether to aid their leader or to flee, Talin didn’t know.
“Climb, Talin – please, climb!” It was Father Kef now that pulled the youth to his feet and helped his protesting legs move up the boulder slope.
“I’m so tired, Father.” Talin whispered. Everything ached, his body, his mind. The act of magic had taken every last ounce of his strength.
You will not die! Holder was booming through him. I am coming for you.
Talin’s sight was suddenly eclipsed by a dark shape as something blocked the light of the rising sun.
36. A Ship’s Anger
“Quartermaster! Protect the Princess!” Tremaine was shouting as the embattled group pushed their way back up the hills. They were fighting a rearguard action as dark shapes of the Volt fell from the skies beneath them. This time, however, he saw that each of their savage raiders were given slack to their ropes as they ran, leaping and bounding up the slopes to advance from under the shadows of their mothership.
They can’t spread far from their ship, Tremaine saw the lines extending out from the nearest Volt ship like the long, spindly legs of harvest spiders. Grotesque and ugly, the Volt would run out a hundred feet to their escaping quarry, having to seize them before their lines became taut once more.
“We have a chance if we can get on the tops!” Tremaine shouted, raising his flint-and-powder pistol to pick off the nearest Volt. His pistol discharged with a powerful kick and a cloud of smoke, the Volt spun wildly to the floor, before pushing itself up from the rocks again.
“Heaven’s teeth! Will these things never die!” Tremaine almost wept in frustration. But at least the rocks behind it were blood-smeared, a cold part of his mind thought.
Above him, the Quartermaster had bounded up to the tops of the hill, not far from their hidden tunnel-crevasse, as Tremaine and Lura followed, firing (in the Captain’s case) or throwing short knives (the Rigger). They had managed to hit several of the Volt attackers pursuing them, but aside from slowing them down, none had so far agreed to die.
“Stay put.” Tremaine heard Gulbrand say, and a terrified whimper from the Princess behind as there was a crash, and the heimr was heaving boulders the size of barrels down the slopes at their pursuers. One of them narrowly bounced past Tremaine’s shoulder as he ducked – but it gave them both a few precious seconds to scrabble upwards.
A garbled shout and thud as one of the projectiles struck its target, and Tremaine was hauling himself up over the rise at his Quartermaster’s feet, panting with exhaustion.
“No time to rest, Captain,” Gulbrand grunted. “The tunnels are that way.”
“Okay, okay,” he said weakly, struggling to his feet. The tunnels which could still hold a wight, the Captain tried not to think. Why under the heavens had he agreed to this? Oh yeah, the money.
The Volt ship was below them and hung low over the battle ground. Their roped-pursuers were falling back, one by one tugging o
n their lines to be yanked into the air in a gesture that would have broken the spines of any normal human.
“What are they?” The Captain wheezed in horror. Had the Volt given them up for easier prey? He didn’t want to test that theory as he stooped to the girl who had been the center of all this trouble.
“Princess?” Tremaine said through bruised and cracked lips. “I am the Captain Tremaine, and this is my crew. How badly are you hurt, can you run?”
The Princess Eliset looked about an age with Talin, perhaps, but who had once had a considerably easier life than he, now recently marred with misery and privation. Despite her state, she looked seriously at the Captain with her blue eyes. “Have you come to rescue me, sir?” she said in a husky, clipped voice.
“I wouldn’t go to all this bother not to, believe you me.” Tremaine managed a ghost of a smile.
“My ankle, sir.” Eliset’s eyes were shadowed with pain as she nodded to where she sat awkwardly over a twisted foot.
“Captain…?” It was Lura’s voice above him, she sounded worried.
“If you’re going to tell me more bad news, I really don’t want to know, Master Rigger…” Tremaine snapped.
“Not bad news, Cap. Not bad news at all!” She said exultantly. “It’s the Storm!”
Tremaine looked up from the injured Princess, to see that there, racing towards them out of the sun, and low over the hills was indeed their carrack, her lateen sails full in the morning’s breeze, the crest of the blue heimarian fishing eagle proudly flaring as she turned on her side and flew fast and low.
“I don’t know how Odestin and Sevesti got here that quickly – but thank the gods!” this time, Tremaine really did weep.
The Captain watched as the Storm moved like a dream, cutting as fine to the hill that her air fans blew sand in their faces as she paused. He didn’t think that he had ever seen her flown so expertly, or so well. I’ll have to make Odestin full pilot, if he can do that! Tremaine could have laughed as rope bridges were already swinging down towards them. First up went the Quartermaster (his weight rocking the airship to one side as she took him) carrying the Princess on his back. Lura jumped for a second ladder, and Tremaine the third. The Storm did not stop moving however during the operation, but lightly peeled off the hilltop to fall down the desert valley beneath them, just ahead of the battle.