Art of Hunting

by Alan Campbell

  They slipped the narrow ends of each of their lances through the opposite handles, and so were able to hoist the coffin between them. It was almost unbearably heavy, and yet Maskelyne found the strength from somewhere. By short stints with much grunting and cursing, they manhandled the thing back to the tender.

  Only after they were half a mile distant from the parasite, did Maskelyne feel that it was safe to remove his helmet. He wiped the sweat from his brow and took a long draught of water from the tender’s supply. He handed the cup to Pendragon and gave him a wry grin. ‘You survived, then.’

  ‘Seems I did, sir,’ the young man replied. He kept his eyes fixed on their mysterious new acquisition. ‘What do you think it is?’

  Even from where he sat, Maskelyne could feel the heat radiating from the box. He shrugged. ‘It’s an enigma to be solved,’ he said. ‘We’ll open it once we get aboard.’

  ‘What if it’s . . .?’ The young sailor’s voice tapered off. ‘What if it’s dangerous?’

  ‘Everything the Unmer make is dangerous,’ Maskelyne replied. ‘I’m sure this will be no exception.’

  When the reached the Lamp, Maskelyne climbed aboard and relinquished the tender over to Mellor and his team of men. They used the dredging crane to hoist up the container and set it on the bathysphere deck, whereupon Mellor examined the artefact and turned to Maskelyne. ‘Do you think this is the lock for which the Drowned bring you keys?’ he said.

  ‘It’s certainly possible,’ Maskelyne replied. ‘Perhaps even likely.’

  ‘But which key fits?’

  ‘Who cares?’ Maskelyne said. ‘We’ll cut it open.’

  Mellor summoned the best of their welders – a tough, grizzled little man named Teucher, who lowered his mask and sparked his gas flame to life and bent over the Unmer coffin. The crew gathered round to watch as Teucher’s flame slowly ate into the metal around the lock. It was a long process, constantly interrupted by Teucher’s need to back off to recover from the heat, but finally the gas torch cut away the last of the steel around the lock. A circle of red-hot metal hit the ship’s deck with a clang, and Teucher stood up.

  Using rags to protect their hands, two crewmen seized the front of the lid and heaved it open. Maskelyne stepped forward and gazed down at the coffin’s contents.

  It was full of molten silvery grey metal. Lead? Maskelyne squatted down and peered at the substance more closely. Hot fumes assaulted his nostrils. The heat from it was atrocious. There had to be some energy source inside that liquid, something keeping it molten.

  ‘What is that?’ Mellor said.

  ‘Molten lead.’ Maskelyne extended a hand. ‘Give me something, a pole.’

  One of the crewmen passed him a nearby broom.

  Maskelyne dipped the end of the broom handle into the coffin. It disappeared a few inches into the hot liquid, before he felt resistance.

  And then suddenly a hand burst from that molten metal and seized the broom handle. Several crewmen cried out in alarm. Maskelyne leaped back.

  A second hand appeared out of the molten metal and gripped the side of the coffin. And then a figure surged upwards out of the coffin, splashing lead across the deck as it sat up. It was completely grey, covered in the hot liquid, and yet it appeared to be human. It opened its mouth, took a single hissing breath, and then it rolled out of its prison and collapsed on the deck.

  ‘Fetch a hose,’ Maskelyne said.

  CHAPTER 6

  ASSISTANCE

  His attempts to resist the sword replicates had given him a headache. As he steered the assault craft out of the bay and turned east around the main headland, Granger could barely look at the green glare of the open ocean to his right. Even in the dusk it was a slab of tortuous scintillations – countless millions of them fizzing behind his retina like shards of mirror-glass, forcing his jaw to tighten. The boat’s engines sounded distant, dreamlike; the scent of the brine in his nostrils didn’t seem real, more like a memory.

  He looked down at his hand clutching the wheel, still clad in the metal gauntlet. He lifted his hand and flexed his fingers, watching as a hundred tiny alloy plates slipped over each other. How long would it be before he lacked the freedom even to make a small movement such as this? Even this pathetic effort seemed to require too much of his waning energy. His fingers felt stiff, unwilling to bend.

  He pulled the gauntlet off.

  The skin underneath was grey and dead-looking. Now when he tried to move his fingers he found that he could not. He sensed the sword resisting him, testing its hold on Granger’s mind. For a few moments the tips of Granger’s fingers did not even twitch. Only when he funnelled all of his remaining strength and will into the effort could he close his hand into a fist.

  The effort left him gasping.

  He realized that his power armour was helping him to resist the sword. Without it, he would be helpless.

  He wondered what would happen when the sword assumed total control over his body. Would he be aware? A prisoner inside his own body? Or would he simply become a mindless ghoul like the other replicates – an extension of someone else’s mind?

  Granger slid his gauntlet back on and found that he could move his hand again with ease. He tried to banish all troublesome thoughts from his head. He had to concentrate on the task at hand. He needed fuel to reach the dragon nests at Doma. Fuel he hoped to buy in the gypsy village Fuller had said lay two leagues to the east. What had they called it? Addle? Granger could barely drag the details from his muddled mind. Three sorcerous daggers. One to buy the fuel he needed to reach Doma, the other two to pay a dragon to carry him to Ethugra. Where he hoped Ethan Maskelyne could release him from the sword’s grip. The pain behind his temples continued to pulse. His eyes twitched repeatedly, uncontrollably. He realized he had been staring past the bow of the vessel and seeing nothing but the points of white light flashing on the sea.

  Now he made an effort to look along the coast. To port lay the forested shore of Awl, a maze of small islands and inlets disappearing between half-drowned granite ridges. Wild pines clung to the thin earth between cliffs and boulders. He perceived a pall of smoke hanging over a long peninsula to the east. The distance seemed about right. The village he sought had to be behind that spur of land.

  Granger aimed the craft a few degrees out from shore, lashed down the wheel, and ducked through the hatch down into the captain’s cabin in the bow.

  There was nothing of any value: old fishing nets, some tin pails, a pile of soiled blankets on a wooden sleeping shelf. He kicked empty tins around with his foot. In one corner he found a barrel of unscented dark brown liquid, but it could have been anything. Countless layers of white paint rimpled the hull interior and now bore streaks the colour of old tobacco or blood. An odour of sweat and old food made the air feel overused. Granger tried to open one of the two portholes, but the steel had corroded around the rims and fused them shut. He went back up to the wheelhouse.

  The light was fading quickly now, which came as something of a relief to his tired and tender retinas. He cruised along the coast for about an hour before he drew near enough to the peninsula to perceive the cliffs and wooded slopes in any detail. No sign of habitation. He turned the boat to the south-east and powered around the southern end of this land-mass, where the winds picked up and pushed green waves against rocks and half-drowned trees.

  The sight that met Granger as he rounded the headland was not what he had expected. Sea gypsy villages were typically small, usually little more than a collection of wooden huts built onto rafts, tended by a flotilla of small boats. The settlement before him now was far larger than that. Indeed, it would be incorrect to call Addle a village at all. This was a bustling town.

  Tin-roofed shacks and crude floating platforms clustered around the town’s perimeter, where scores of pontoons radiated out like the rays of sunlight in primitive cave paintings. At least a hundred boats were moored there, from outrigger canoes to steel-hulled trawlers, dredgers and boilers and even, to hi
s great surprise, exquisite glass barques and gold-spun pleasure yachts. The settlement swelled upwards at its centre, where clustered numerous taller timber buildings with pinched crimson and gold-leaved eaves and tiers of verandas boasting carved arabesques as intricate as lace.

  Trade, Granger noted, was not restricted to the local area, for there were seven deep-water vessels at anchor nearby. And as he studied these vessels his heart began to race. Two of them were dragon hunters. He recognized the heavy steel steamships as private Anean craft, both registered in Losoto. He’d probably encountered these very ships many times during his time in the capital. They were both equipped with pressure harpoons and cranes for offloading meat from the holds.

  Granger’s gaze lingered on the dragon hunters. He could hardly believe his luck. Why were they here and not in Awl? But, more importantly . . . did they have any live cargo aboard?

  There was a chance he might not need to visit Doma at all.

  He gunned the assault craft’s engine and her flat hull skipped across the glooming brine, pounding through the gentle waves and leaving behind a broad wake of inky-green foam. When he drew near, he slowed the boat again and coasted past scores of pontoons, looking for a suitable berth. Dozens of men, women and children worked, rested or played around the moorings and shacks. Sea gypsies were a handsome, wiry race of people, dark haired and sallow skinned and quick to smile. The women had tied bright printed scarves around their heads and carried loops of glass beads around their necks. Many of the men wore wide leather gun belts and patterned leather waistcoats over their naked torsos.

  Granger drove past a boathouse where a man sat outside, surrounded by pieces of an engine – presumably that of the old Valcinder cruiser he spied in the shadows. He passed an open-air restaurant in which crowds of traders had gathered to eat and chat and deal and where gypsy women fried seafood in huge iron skillets. Clouds of steam carried a dozen conversations mingled with the scent of cooked fish. Granger found himself salivating. It had been more than a day since he’d last eaten.

  It occurred to him that such a meeting place might be a good start and so he located a berth for his stolen vessel nearby. As soon as her hull bumped against dry wood, a young man came bounding down the pontoon.

  ‘Normally it’s three sisters for a stolen boat,’ he said. ‘I’ll charge you two since it’s Fuller’s.’

  Granger slung his kitbag over his shoulder and alighted from the boat. ‘Maybe Fuller sold it,’ he said, tying up the stern line.

  The young man laughed. ‘Right.’

  Granger tied the bowline then dug in his pocket. ‘I’ll give you five if you tell me where I can find the captains of those hunters.’ He gestured out towards the bay with a nod of his head.

  ‘Can’t say for sure,’ the young man said. ‘But they’ll probably be at the Saint Jerome. All the deepwater captains drink there. Best ask their men. You’ll find them hawking dragon meat at the market.’

  ‘They have any live stock?’ Granger asked.

  ‘Usually, but they keep that for Losoto.’

  Granger gave him five coins and then set off in the direction the lad indicated.

  The planks and walkways of Addle creaked and bowed under his boots. Most of the town appeared to be built on oil-drum rafts and old rusted barges and even tangled mats of reclaimed wood. Rubbish and green-brown scum clogged the oily gloom between such foundations. Granger made his way past scores of tin-roofed dwellings, past groups of women weaving by oil light and men working metal over braziers or sitting smoking, their dark eyes gleaming in the light of their pipe-bowls. He edged by people wheeling goods back and forth on sack trolleys. Chained goats bleated and dogs barked and children ran shrieking over the roofs, their little feet pattering the tin like rain.

  Soon the buildings became larger and his boots more often rang on metal. And all of a sudden he turned a corner and came upon the market.

  It was an open area in front of the Saint Jerome – a three-storey tea house with sweeping gold eaves and intricate trelliswork. Four lines of covered stalls and canvas tents faced each other across a square in which stood a roped-off area, presumably used for livestock auctions and prize fights. Candles and oil lamps burned everywhere, filling the shops with warm yellow light that seemed at once to add wealth and mystery to the treasures for sale within. The atmosphere reminded Granger of a carnival. Most of the traders sold thrice-boiled fish or woven clothes and scarves and leatherwork, but a few had glittering shelves of trove. Granger idled past, ignoring the odd glances cast his way, one hand clenching the pouch of coins and daggers he’d stolen from the Haurstaf palace. What few artefacts he spied among the tat fetched reassuringly high prices. Provided his own stolen artefacts retained some of their power, he felt it might be possible to negotiate a good deal.

  He found the dragon tent midway along the row of stalls. It was four times larger than any of the others.

  The interior was hot and crawling with flies and full of the rich dense aroma of dragon meat. Granger found himself salivating unwittingly. The particular game on display here held none of the poisons that suffused other marine life. It could be cooked or even eaten raw, without the need to treat it first. And it was delicious. Slabs of meat and strips of scale-covered hide hung on steel racks all around the chopping table where the butcher worked, hacking away at a great shank of red flesh and bone as large as a goat. He was a heavy, muscular man with a face as red as the meat he chopped. If his bloody overalls had ever been white, that time was long past. He wore a tightly fitting cap, spattered with dried gore, to keep the sweat from his eyes. He turned the shank on the table and drove his cleaver into the sinew at one end and then skimmed it down between the bone and the flesh. Then he glanced up at Granger and stopped.

  ‘Help you?’

  ‘This is an odd port for you, isn’t it?’

  The butcher snorted. ‘Fuel’s cheaper here. Everything’s cheaper here.’

  Granger suddenly understood. With the Haurstaf gone and an Unmer regime yet to be fully established, there was nobody around to regulate – and tax – trade. It made sense that the captains would favour this place over Port Awl to resupply their ships. He indicated the dragon meat. ‘This is a blue?’

  ‘Caught three days ago near Doma,’ the butcher said. ‘Slaughtered her yesterday. The meat’s still fresh.’

  ‘You cure it normally?’

  The butcher nodded. ‘We cure what we don’t sell.’

  Granger’s gaze wandered over the cutting table. The wooden surface had been heavily gouged and stained near black with blood. Flies crawled over mounds of red meat and gleaming white sinew. The butcher turned the hank again and cut from it another strip of muscle and fat, leaving the bone bare. He lifted the bone in both hands and threw it into the corner of the tent. A cloud of flies erupted, buzzing angrily, and then settled again.

  ‘You have any live dragons?’ Granger said.

  ‘I told you, this meat was slaughtered yesterday. As fresh as you’ll find anywhere.’

  Granger nodded. ‘My boss needs a living one.’ It had occurred to him that he would seem more credible if he were acting on behalf of someone else. He didn’t look like a rich man, but he looked like someone who might be hired by a rich man. His brine-scarred face gave him a fierce, dangerous look that could be useful in certain lines of underground work. He had also taken care to use the word need rather than want. The likeliest reason for someone to need a living dragon was to fight them in an arena – an illegal practice in Hu’s empire. However, such an implication would answer all the butcher’s questions.

  ‘You’d have to speak to the captain about that,’ the butcher said.

  ‘You have a live beast, then?’

  The butcher lifted another slab of dragon beef from the rack and set it down on the chopping table. ‘We always do, this close to Doma,’ he said. ‘We got this one’s mother in the hold. She’s old, but she’s a hell of a fighter. You know how they get when their calves are taken?’<
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  ‘I can imagine,’ Granger said. ‘What state is she in?’

  The butcher shrugged. ‘She’s alive.’

  ‘Healthy?’

  ‘Healthy enough for what you need.’

  ‘Fine,’ Granger said. ‘Where can I find your captain?’

  ‘Saint Jerome, third floor, look for white hair and a black jacket with blue lapels.’

  ‘His name?’

  ‘Captain Scalton.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  The butcher nodded. As Granger turned to leave, he called after him: ‘I hope your boss has a lot of money.’

  ‘Something better than that,’ Granger replied.

  On the third-floor veranda of the tea house, he spotted Scalton and four of his officers crowded around a table overlooking the market square. They were drinking steaming black tea and smoking fruit tobaccos from floor-standing hookahs and chewing strips of what was probably dragon meat laced with opium. Granger walked right up to them and placed a cloth package on the table. In it were his three Unmer knives: the tempest blade, the quicksilver knife and the prison skull blade.

  ‘Captain Scalton?’ he said.

  Scalton was a slight man with white hair and a long and narrow hook-shaped nose that overhung a neat white beard. His face and hands were spotted with brine marks and his eyes were quick and crowded with humour lines. ‘What’s this?’ he said.

  ‘Part payment,’ Granger said. ‘If you agree to sell my boss that old blue you’ve got in your hold.’

  Scalton exchanged a glance with one of his younger officers. This man leaned forward and untied Granger’s package, revealing the three Unmer daggers. He held one up – the prison skull blade – and then passed it to the captain, who examined it carefully. ‘I’ve seen finer examples,’ he said. ‘But who told your boss I was a collector?’

  Granger smiled inwardly at his good luck. He shrugged. ‘It’s common knowledge, Captain.’