100

Seven

“Frost! Was there truly cavorite on that thing?” Otto ran over, his eyes wild. “Why did you set it on fire?” His eyes darted to Ezra, and he started, as if noticing him for the first time. Ezra’s lip twisted up on one side. The rune master recovered himself, gave Ezra a little nod, but continued to address Ansel.

“Well for starters I didn’t really have a choice,” said Ansel, passing a hand over his eyes. Everything ached, now the adrenaline had left his body.

“He did not,” rumbled Ezra. Otto looked at him anxiously, then shifted his eyes back to Ansel, as if it was easier to pretend Ezra wasn’t there. Ansel could see Mange and some of the deck hands listening to one side.

“Mammon said it might rise from the dead,” he said, quietly. The rune master scoffed.

“Surely you don’t subscribe to such peasant-like superstitions! Frost, I’m surprised at you, I thought you were more intelligent! That cavorite could have saved us! Such a waste!”

“I didn’t see you on the sands,” said Ezra, standing up. Half the rune master’s age, and wiry as rope, he still managed to appear menacing. Or perhaps it was just his robes. Otto took a step back, as he looked up at the young inquisitor’s scowl. Ezra’s voice took on a hard edge. “You or any of the officers. Think carefully, think twice before you insult me.”

“No, no,” said Otto, alarm in every pore. He backed up again, tripping over a coil of rope. “I did no such thing! I would never! Just talking to Ansel here. Very brave you were too, lad, those men owe you their lives.” He nodded at Ezra then, making a little dipping motion with his knees at Ezra, and then scurried away.

“I see your campaign of friendliness continues,” said Ansel. He rubbed at a dirty patch on his leg but then realised it was a bruise, not dirt. Ezra did not look amused.

“Peasant-like superstitions!” He snorted, glaring at Otto’s retreating back. “It’s men like that who have no idea how protected they are, no idea how close to the edge we are. This is not Stonehaven! Light, even in Stonehaven we feed the bone-fires often enough. So fat men can drink their wine in comfort and spew their pseudo-intellectual ignorance. Pah.” Ezra spat over the side of the ship. “If he knew what I had seen, if he knew what I–”

“Come on,” said Ansel, cutting him short. “I’m gonna check on those men. And see if I can find something to eat.”

Ezra grunted, and trudged after him, his robes flapping in the headwind.

The wounded were laid out in the mess. The Sky Lion was too small to have a doctor amongst the crew but Jethro the cook had some experience with wounds, and was attending to them as best he could. Kip was assisting him, trying to keep blood and other fluids from dripping onto the tables with limited success. Ansel suspected these injuries were beyond poultices and kitchen remedies, but Jethro was all they had. There wasn’t even much water to spare, someone would have to go thirsty so these wounds could be washed out. On the bright side all of the men were conscious. They looked up as he and Ezra entered.

“Ansel!” Jethro cried out, fluttering his hands. “There’s some food in the pot! There on the barrel. Kip! Get Ansel some food.” Kip rushed off and returned with a bowl of stew which he thrust mutely at Ansel.

“Thank you,” he said, a little surprised. Kip smiled and vanished into the adjacent storeroom, giving Ezra a wide berth. Ezra helped himself with a grimace, then disappeared back into whatever dark corner of the ship he liked to eat in, without so much as a word.

Ansel settled himself awkwardly at a vacant bit of table, unsettled to find himself the centre of attention. Jethro turned back to his ministrations. Two of the rescued men were watching him, the third, staring glassy eyed at the swaying ceiling.

“Doing alright?” Ansel asked them, between mouthfuls of stew.

“Thanks to you,” said one of them, and Ansel shrugged, embarrassed.

“Someone would have done it for me,” he said. After all, he had only carried the one, and with Louis.

“Perhaps,” said the other, shifting uncomfortably. Jethro had bound his leg and secured it with a rough splint. He would not be walking any time soon. “Others would have left us to die.” The cook bustled over and offered him a mug.

“Got no ale,” Jethro said. “But this should take the edge off. Best I can do. Drink up.”

The wounded man swallowed the concoction with a grimace. Ansel ate quickly, not in the mood for company, and departed below decks to sleep. If he had learned anything while onboard the Sky Lion, it was that sleep was precious, and no opportunity should be squandered.

There was no water to wash in and he felt grimy, covered in sweat and filth. Despite his discomfort he was exhausted. He soon fell into a deep, dreamless slumber, soothed by the rocking motion of the ship.

Talcott shook him awake an hour before sunset. The youth handed him a mug and said: “Captain wants you on watch before the sun hits the sand.”

“Thanks,” said Ansel, sipping the tepid liquid. Talcott was watching him with an intensity Ansel found a little unsettling. The young lad had a funny look on his face.

“What?” he asked, handing back the empty mug. “What is it?”

"I was just wondering–”

“What?” demanded Ansel, slipping his shirt over his head. Talcott’s cheeks grew pink. He looked like he might burst.

“Who would you rather marry?" he blurted out. The ship lurked in the wind, and they were knocked against each other. Talcott’s eyes, wide and brown, were right in front of Ansel’s, their noses almost touching. "Mammon or the kraken?"

"The kraken,” said Ansel, without hesitation, pushing the lad away with one firm hand.

“Good choice,” said Talcott. He disappeared up the ladder to the deck, balancing the mug on one hand with an air of general satisfaction.

Ansel followed him yawning and shaking his head.

Up on deck the sun was sinking towards the western horizon, the vivid blue of the day dimming. A hush had descended on the world, vast, quiet and oppressive. Curving shadows lengthened as the dying light leeched the sands from red to grey. The temperature had cooled, and the wind dropped to almost nothing. The fleet was moving with agonising slowness and the air on deck was tense. Ansel could see it in the set of the men’s shoulders, in the worried faces, glancing down. Ansel’s palms grew sweaty as they gripped the railing. If a monster burst from the sand now, they were doomed. They would sail away at walking pace. So the crew worked in silence, casting furtive glances at the ground, the clouds, the sky. Twilight approached, and with it that tingling sense of danger that seemed to accompany the half-light. They all felt it, like a static charge of unease tickling their spines.

Mammon and Boaz alone created a disturbance, seemingly in the midst of some angry conversation. The weight of their words hung heavy in the air, and Boaz’s face was red and sweaty. He turned from Mammon as Ansel walked the deck.

“Frost,” he bellowed. “Get up there. Watch. Now.”

“Aye, captain,” said Ansel, and he started to climb the rigging.

“Don’t worry,” said Mammon to Boaz, seemingly continuing their conversation. She was leaning precariously over the rail to watch the landscape passing below. “Any creature will go for the fattest vessel first. I have told you before. And your watch is talented.”

Her eyes slid to Ansel who had reached his post in the crow’s nest. He tore his eyes away from her mocking face, pretending not to hear, through her words carried clearly through the still desert air. He knew Boaz thought he was lucky, he had heard the crew whisper. Airmen were superstitious, whatever the rune-master thought. Luck, it was just luck. But after all it had been Ansel who had spotted the monster that had taken the Trillium and Ansel who had fired the flare before the kraken attack. It had been Ansel who had first sighted land. Alright. Perhaps he was lucky, or perhaps he just had good eyesight. He did not care. In truth he preferred to watch. At least he was doing something. Not waiting helplessly for the death in a stuffy cabin below. If it was his time to go he wanted to see the manner of his end approach with clear eyes.

He settled down to watch.

From his vantage point, he had a good view of the endless expanse of the desert, and of the fleet fanned out behind them. The Celestine was flying off their starboard bow, so close he could hear the snap of her ropes, and the occasional subdued calls of her crew. Below and behind was the Warspite, with the Lazy Magpie, the Red Sun and the Storm Lotus flying in formation behind. The Bright Terror was close, off their port. Ansel could just make out Marlow’s figure striding the deck with some restlessness. The Valiant lagged behind. The largest ship, she was sailing so close to the sands that Ansel feared she would scrape her keel, even though he knew it was a trick of perspective.

The Valiant would be the next victim, he thought clinically, and was appalled at his cynicism. Twelve ships had left the safe harbour of Stonehaven, and now they were eight. He doubted that was the end to it. Ansel turned his eyes to the desert, keeping them off the fiery ball of the sinking sun. Sunspots in his eyes would destroy his ability to spot anything dangerous.

Somewhat to his surprise, the watch passed uneventfully. Day slipped into night, and the stars came out one by one. The stars made him feel strange. They were alien, different from the ones he knew from home. More than anything, they drove home just how far they had travelled. Those unfeeling stars bore mute testimony to the fleet's passage, their light cast in silver bright enough that the ship’s shadows ghosted up and down the dunes in slippery black. All heat had left the desert with the sun and Ansel’s teeth chattered. He watched till his eye’s ached, and at midnight climbed back down the netting with stiff fingers.

He slept a few more hours and then was up again with the dawn to watch once more.

This pattern continued for a few days.

On the fifth day another giant centipede burst from the sand and destroyed the Valiant, killing all who sailed on her. This time they were unable to slay the monster, and there was no rescue party. The wreckage of the Valiant was left behind, unmourned as they fled. The winds had picked up and the remaining ships were able to outfly the creature, but it was a close thing. Indeed, it seemed likely the beast lost interest in them, or they crossed some unseen boundary in the sand.

The next day the desert sands turned to scrub dotted with little stunted bushes. On Mammon’s instruction, the fleet headed east.

“There are mountains ahead,” she said. “We need to turn towards the sea once more.”

“The ships can sail over mountains,” said Boaz. “Is this wise?”

“I do not know whether or not it is wise,” she said. “Or the capabilities of your ships. But the mountains are high, and the winds treacherous. I think it likely you would not survive the trip.” Boaz looked as if he would argue.

“The lady is right,” said Otto. “We do not have the cavorite to fly high. Captain, the risk–”

“Am I your guide or not?” asked Mammon, her voice, clipped. “Do as I say.”

The fleet adjusted their course and bore south-east once more. Sand and scrub gave way to hard, baked earth crusted with dull grey-green lichen. It was a wonderful sight. Everyone, Ansel included, was thoroughly sick of looking at sand. In the distance a cluster of wild antelope were spotted, and once, what looked like ruins – marble pillars lying in the dirt, broken arches and the rusted remains of some great circular gate. Some of the crew wanted to investigate but after some debate Marlow decreed no. They could not afford to waste the cavorite on idle curiosity.

“What is it?” Boaz asked the savage woman. “The ruin? Do you know?”

Mammon replied with characteristic nonchalance.

“A dead place,” she said. She turned her back on the distant ruins, as if they disgusted her, and then seemed to change her mind. “It is the remains of a kingdom,” she said. “A haunted place, a pathetic hole in the ground built by cretins – the descendants of whom are scattered or destroyed.” Mammon smiled, as if the thought gave her pleasure. Her uncanny eyes burned with some strange emotion.

“Where do your people live?” asked Boaz. “We have seen nothing. Not settlements. No villages – just these ruins?”

“We live below ground,” she said, squinting up at the sun with distaste. “We only come out at night. After all, we are the children of the Night.”

“Enlightening,” said Ezra, to Ansel, as they sat eating their midday meal, but he said it very quietly.

As they flew almost due south the oppressive heat lifted, giving way to the merely unpleasant. The dry baked earth transformed into sprawling salt plains. White and shimmering, they were seen long before they arrived. Giant salt mounds were piled where they had evaporated, or been blown by the wind. Sunlight bounced off the ice-white crystals, the glare so intense Ansel was forced to wrap a cloth around his head to look through. Great cracks criss-crossed the pans, and a shrill wind hissed, filling their noses with the sharp chemical scent. The smell hit Ansel in the back of the throat with a stinging bite.

The crystal salt plains seemed to mark some kind of boundary. Once across it the land was richer, more fertile. Dotted with scrub, the red sand had turned to earth speckled with tufts of coarse grass. Two days after the Valiant was destroyed they arrived once more at the coast, and at a mighty river. It was a feast for their eyes.

The water clove through the red soil to pour itself with rumbling vigour into the sea. They anchored the ships there, and drank the fresh water until their bellies bloated. They slept that night, lulled by the tandem roar of the river and the crash of the breakers.

When the morning came the airmen washed themselves thoroughly, cleaned their clothing and swabbed the decks of their vessels in good cheer. All the barrels were filled.

“How far till we find cavorite?” asked Marlow, as the captains and inquisitors once more congregated on the decks of the Sky Lion. Mammon shrugged, the white and gold of her hair streaming behind her in the stiff headwind. She reclined in the shade, the very picture of relaxation. Whatever strain the crew was under she did not seem to notice or care.

"Soon," she said. "Maybe. Follow the coast south till we reach a great bay guarded by mountains, and there is nothing but ocean further."

And with that they had to be happy.

“Soon,” mimicked Ezra, when her back was turned.

“It is a good thing we return to the ocean,” muttered Ansel. He had seen the remaining store of cavorite and it was not encouraging. “At this rate our keels will be in the water before we are done.”

“Then let us pray we have left the monsters of the deep in our wake,” said Ezra. But they all knew that was unlikely. Ansel prayed nevertheless, as did most of the crew.

The fleet set off, somewhat refreshed. The seven ships struck out almost due south, with the sea to their right and the continent to the left. The wind blew southerly, and for several days they had to beat their way against the prevailing wind, as their cavorite supply dwindled.

At last, the wind shifted to favour them.

They picked up speed and in the distance, they could see another large river spilling out from a parched landscape of scrub bushes.

“We are getting close!” Mammon said, her face more animated than Ansel had seen so far. She leaned over the railing, pointing, laughter bubbling on her lips. She was almost falling over the side. “Look,” she cried.

The southern side of the river was dotted with high stone towers. Apart from the desert ruins these were the first building they had seen, the first hint of civilisation. Although civilisation might be going a bit far, Ansel conceded. The architecture was interesting, like nothing Ansel had ever seen before. Piles of rock. craggy and rough, rose from the earth into turrets and spires. Walkways and battlements lined the banks, all of them facing the north. Several brown–skinned savages came out to look at the airships as they sailed overhead. They shouted and waved, their guttural tongue snatched away in the breeze.

“The high runes!” shouted Boaz, and they were lit, the ships bobbed upward, clearing the fortifications with ease. Mammon looked down poorly concealed glee, as one of the savages fired a flimsy looking longbow at them.

"Friends of yours?" asked Boaz, leaning on the rail and watching the arrow fall into the bush.

"No," said Mammon, and she grinned again, her expression fiendish. “Nothing your weapons can't take care of. Shoot them!”

“No,” said Boaz, his eyes on the people below. “They are no threat. It would be a waste of ammunition.”

“That’s right,” said Mammon. “No threat. No threat at all.” And she laughed again, waving over the side to the confused savages far below.

The fleet sailed on, heading south.