Hannah raised her empty catapult arm towards the creatures" attack, as if the whine of the magnetic accelerator alone would be enough to stop them.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN.
Jethro looked up, near hypnotized by the shining steel short sword about to be brought down on his shoulder by Stom urs Stom. From nowhere a spinning bottle knocked the mercenary"s blade aside and yells of anger erupted from the watching Jagonese crowd, breaking Jethro"s focus.
"Filthy wet-snouts!"
"We don"t need your justice here, we"re a civilized people!"
"Go home, you jiggers!"
One of the mercenaries holding Jethro released her grip on him and raised her turret rifle towards the swelling mob, threatening a response to the growing hail of garbage and the insults of the locals. The mercenaries menacing Boxiron with their weapons glanced nervously between the steamman and the rabble surrounding them.
Just as it seemed as if the situation was going to boil completely out of control, Colonel Knipe and a group of police militia stepped out of the crowd, pistols drawn from the belts under their velvet-lined cloaks.
"Do not hinder us," Stom urs Stom warned the police militia. "This is the will of the First Senator."
"I have no doubt it is," barked the colonel. "But those that hold to the police oath follow the laws of two millennia of Jagonese civilization, and you can remind Silvermain that the staff of office his senatorial rod carrier bears for him is not yet a dictator"s sceptre."
"Your orders?" the mercenary pinning Jethro down asked Stom. The ex-parson had a painful view of the barrels facing each other to either side of him. Hand-sized police pistols versus the mercenaries" ma.s.sive turret rifles. He knew who would come off worse if matters escalated on the street. Jethro and Boxiron"s rescuers would be cut to ribbons.
"Your writ only extends to guarding the battlements and the coral line," snarled the colonel. "Hermetica"s streets are still under police jurisdiction, unless the senate wishes to vote for martial law to be imposed."
There were loud ugly bays of agreement from the mob standing behind the militia officers and Jethro sensed a riot about to break out if the Pericurian officer didn"t back down.
"Withdraw," said Stom, sheathing her short sword. Her mercenary fighters kept their weapons trained on the crowd and the militiamen as they backed away. "You can be ordered to follow the will of the First Senator as well as I, colonel."
"I"ll be sure to follow any legitimate written order of the senate, as long as it bears the high judiciary seal of three judges. We"re not Pericurian savages here, ursine. Vendetta and a.s.sa.s.sination are cla.s.sed as murder on Jago, not politics. Now sod off back to your master like a good little wet-snout."
The mercenaries warily withdrew back down the street, the colonel"s officers forming a line of connected staffs to prevent the mob of townspeople from following after the soldiers. Jethro felt the tension leave the Jagonese crowd as if it were air escaping from a balloon.
Boxiron lurched over to where Jethro was picking himself up from the cobbles. "I am going to need to have my body seriously upgraded with heavy plate if we"re to be dodging turret-rifle fire, Jethro softbody."
"Be sure to buy a couple of pounds of reinforced steel to cover my arms," said Jethro.
Colonel Knipe approached the pair. "What have you been doing to have the First Senator set his pets on you, Jackelian?"
"I"m afraid, good colonel, I have entirely failed to discover the ident.i.ty of the cabal of plotters intent on destroying the First Senator"s new cities."
"There"s a coincidence," sighed the commander of the militia, nervously tapping his mechanical leg with his pistol barrel, "you won"t find those plotters inside our cells, either. It"ll take the First Senator about a week to fix the judiciary list to have three of his lickspittles sitting on the court bench at the same time. That"s how long you"ve got to leave Jago unless you would see your soul following that of the archbishop along the Circle."
"Sound advice, good colonel."
"Take it, Jackelian," urged Knipe. "Otherwise the wet-snouts will be feeding you to the creatures beyond the wall and all I"ll be able to do about it is try to find that drunken sop of an amba.s.sador your people have posted here and urge him to lodge a diplomatic protest about your treatment."
With the colonel"s stern rebuke ringing in his ears, Jethro was following Boxiron as he used his bulk to push open a path through the Jagonese crowd still jeering after the departing mercenaries when he spotted Father Baine moving through the crush towards them.
"Jethro Daunt!" The priest raised a hand through the jostling mob. "Over here."
Moving to the side of the street, Jethro listened to the young father"s description of a panicked message from Chalph urs Chalph and how the ursine was desperate to find him.
"I sent Chalph looking for you at the records office," the churchman concluded breathlessly. "Do you have any idea what he might have meant by the things he said, Mister Daunt? What letter he was talking about? He is always quick to anger, that one, but I"ve never seen Chalph looking so out of sorts before."
Jethro glanced at Boxiron, then at the young priest. "It is nothing that augurs well, I fear. We"ll search for him back at the records office, then at our hotel. You look for him at the trade mission, good father, and anywhere else you think he might be."
"Is this to do with the archbishop"s murder?" asked Boxiron as they ran back towards the records office.
"More than our young ursine friend realizes, I believe," said Jethro. "We need to find him as badly as he thinks he needs to find us."
"Running low-"
"I"m out-"
"There"s one on your leg-"
Hannah flailed an iron foot at the pair of charging ursks, her leg inside the pilot frame having to push twice just to get the RAM suit"s limb to move she was leaking hydraulic fluid from a torn knee seal, flecks of black oil splattering her skull dome as the suit"s foot finally responded and piled into the snarling monsters launching themselves against her.
"Get behind me, la.s.s." The commodore"s voice echoed inside the cabin, his suit looming up by her side. "Old Blacky"s still got a couple of these wicked sharp disks left." As if to prove his point, a rotating silver shard cut down one of the ursks trying to clamber up her leg. "And I don"t need the sights on these metal coffins we"ve been fitted for to see my aim true."
"We"ve got to get out of here!" cried Hannah. "The trappers are almost out of ammunition."
"Not down there, Hannah," said the commodore. "Don"t ask that of me. If the mist did not hide their terrible sight from us, you would see the valley"s running black with ursks. Ah, I"ve faced many dangers before, but this is as dark as any of them. My brave body stuffed into this strange foreign walking machine like a juicy filling in a steak pie for thousands of wicked sharp-clawed monsters to pick at."
Hannah was about to shout back that the expedition"s camp was only seconds away from being completely overrun, but an eerie wail sounded over the brow of their hill, cutting her words off, followed by another wail answering in the distance. Then another and another, each further away.
The commodore"s voice echoed in her cabin. "What in the name of the seventeen seas is that fearful racket?"
Tobias Raffold laughed. "That"s what the hollowed-out skull of an ursk sounds like when you blow a tune through it, you old sea dog."
Was it Hannah"s imagination, or were the waves of ursks coming at them abating? Yes, the attack was tapering off, the shapes skirting the edge of the mist slinking away. Then, a sudden wave of bamboo spears came leaping out of the mist like flying fish. An ursk rolled into sight at the edge of their hill, growling ferociously at two adult ab-locks, the pair of abs howling back and thrusting at the ursk with their bamboo spikes. Hannah realized that the trappers" release of the ab-lock cubs from the cage earlier had been more than a temporary diversion they"d been sending terrified adolescents reeking of ursk scent back to the ab-lock caverns nearby.
"Stow your supplies," ordered Tobias Raffold. "Pack up the steam tap. The abs and ursks are running on instinct now, and we need to take off while their l.u.s.t to taste each other"s blood is still running stronger than the urge to crack open a handful of RAM suits."
The grips on the large iron feet of Hannah"s suit started slipping on the gore of the slain ursks littering the cold basalt around the camp. Hannah was never gladder to pack up her share of supplies and follow the line of trappers into the whirling white cover hugging the wolds" slopes. Leaving behind the m.u.f.fled echo of a full-scale battle between the ab-locks and the ursks rising from the hidden depths of the valley.
Everything east of the wolds where the ab-locks made their home was virgin territory to the trappers, becoming colder and colder the further away the expedition travelled from the sh.o.r.es of the Fire Sea. Their progress slowed as the trappers had to scout out suitable blowholes for their portable steam tap to recharge the RAM suits. Occasionally Tobias Raffold would stop and point towards some track or rock and make noises indicating that another party might have pa.s.sed this way a long time ago.
To Hannah, these signs looked just like the rest of the landscape. They were relying as much on her mother"s notes of where she thought William of Flamewall had headed, and, perhaps more worryingly, the fragments of lost Pericurian scripture that had been recovered from his lover"s original voyage into the interior"s darks. Hannah hoped it was just her Circlist distaste for following prophecy and scripture making her hackles rise every time Ortin urs Ortin pointed at some feature of the landscape and announced a match corresponding to the holy fragments in his possession. How had Hannah"s mother felt coming this way all those years before? Unless she had run into the ursks or the ab-locks and not no, better not to dwell on that possibility. There were so many dangers out here. A storm the day before had nearly separated them, and Nandi had needed to use the flare launcher on her suit"s ankle to shoot a bright burning star into the mist to warn the others she was in danger of becoming lost.
After two more days of travel, the dark outlines of the Cade Mountains loomed large on the horizon and Tobias Raffold announced that the expedition had now travelled as deep into the interior as anyone had ever journeyed and returned to tell of.
"Here be monsters," the commodore announced, miserably. That drew a laugh from the trappers the hard, coa.r.s.e men knew that you didn"t have to venture beyond the capital"s battlements to come across those.
The Cade Mountains formed a circular range that had been reached by explorers from all four points of the compa.s.s when the Jagonese civilization had been at its height during the long age of ice. It was a sobering thought that even at the height of their nation"s glory, the Jagonese hadn"t explored beyond this point. Snow and ice covered the bleak, rocky plains leading up to the foothills, long billowing lances of heated steam marking the presence of geysers and blowholes from deep below the surface. Some small comfort when traversing the bleak landscape it was as if arrows were pointing to each recharge point for their suit"s foul-smelling chemical batteries.
Approaching the mountain range, the expedition"s members took the most direct route across the ground in front to increase the chances that they were following a trail others might have chosen before them. They hardly needed the Pericurian amba.s.sador"s interpretation of his people"s scriptures to identify the next landmark on their travels.
"The Eye of Adarn!" said Ortin urs Ortin, excitedly. "I say, it must be."
Hannah raised the magnification array in front of her eyes to get a better view of the incredible sight. And there it was! Hannah wasn"t hallucinating. There really was an eye staring down on them from one of the slopes of the Cade Mountains, a single lidless...o...b..as milky white as a maggot, a dark pupil lazily floating inside. The horrific detached eyeball had to be size of a house, a nest of throbbing white fleshy creepers dangling below it, anchoring the thing to the rocks and flowing down the jagged slope of the mountain.
"And Adarn urs Adarn, seeing the horror of what his children had wrought, plucked out his eye and set it down on the slopes to forever watch over the dark lands his progeny had made of their green forests. Then he cast himself into the fires of the sea, bearing the guilt of his kindred no more."
"The eye," whined Commodore Black, "the evil eye."
"I have never seen anything like it," said Tobias Raffold. "That thing looks like an animal, not a plant. But what in the name of the Circle is it living on up there?"
There were superst.i.tious mutters from his trappers, the crude men giving voice to their fears; forebodings pretty much in line with the commodore"s feelings. Tobias Raffold cursed his workers for girls and shouted at them to hold their peace. Perhaps, Hannah pondered, he was considering the price he might extract from the Jackelian Zoological Society if he could manage to transport such a uniquely hideous thing back to the capital.
"It"s looking at us right now," said Nandi. "I swear it is."
"We have our way," announced Ortin urs Ortin. "The Gateway of Amaja is watched over by the Eye of Adarn. Our pa.s.sage lies below that eye."
Hannah felt a frisson of fear shiver down her spine at the thought of trekking towards the foot of the Cade Mountains with that terror gazing at them every step of the way.
As if confirming the amba.s.sador"s directions, a flight of cawing birds arrowed overhead, heading towards the slope and the sickly white orb staring at the expedition. Hannah cursed her suit"s sticky, malfunctioning leg and she forced it forward to follow the trappers.
Jethro Daunt"s first thought when he and Boxiron returned to his hotel to find the door already open, was that Stom urs Stom and her free company soldiers had used the hours he had been searching for Chalph to circle back and attempt another arrest. But although their door had been forced, there was no sign of Stom"s mercenaries inside.
A bone-like crack echoed around the room as Boxiron slipped up a gear in response to the obvious ransacking of their quarters. Tables lay overturned, drawers pulled out, their contents and those of Jethro"s travel chest discarded in random piles across the floor. The steamman"s skull turned quickly as he scanned the room, working his way through his combat senses, before he pointed an iron finger towards the large ursk skin that had been sent to them by the colonel of police. "A residual heat signature, Jethro softbody. Someone is hiding there..."
Despite having been discovered, n.o.body moved from underneath the fur. Boxiron drew closer and grabbed the edge of the hide, still spotted with dried blood from where the ursk had been shot down by the city"s defenders, giving it a fierce yank. The fur pulled back to reveal the limp body of Chalph urs Chalph lying on his side. A pair of ornamental duelling rapiers that had been displayed on Jethro"s wall had been ripped off and used to skewer the poor young ursine, one through the stomach, one through the spine.
Jethro knelt down and felt for a pulse on Chalph"s thick-furred wrist. Much to Jethro"s surprise, his touch was answered by a faint throb, a flutter slowing to an end that was close.
"Chalph," said Jethro. "Can you hear me? Who did this to you?"
The ursine said nothing, but his eyes slowly focussed on Jethro Daunt, as if seeing him from the other side of the world. Chalph"s mouth opened, a stream of blood released, running down his chin. "I am-"
"I am here with you, Chalph," said Jethro, trying to recall what he knew of the Pericurian people"s faith. "I am standing witness for you outside the hall of Reckin urs Reckin."
"Sorry," hissed Chalph, the single word escaping through clenched fangs as though it was the whisper of his departing soul.
Jethro shook his head. "Not your fault."
The ex-parson waited for almost a minute, holding the unstirring body, saying nothing. At last Jethro gently shut his friend"s eyelids. "May your next vessel pa.s.s along a happier path." The ex-parson glanced up at Boxiron, the steamman standing as motionless as a statue, and slowly made the sign of the Circle over his heart. "He"s moved along the Circle"s turn, there"s nothing we can do for him."
"There is," said Boxiron, his voicebox quivering with contained rage. "When we find the ones responsible for this. But you know who caused his death, do you not? I see it by the way you are not moving to search our chambers for traces of his killer"s ident.i.ty."
"Working revenge in Chalph"s name will not benefit him," said Jethro, sadly, standing up over the corpse. "I"m sorry, good ursine. I believed you would live to see this affair through, live to walk through your home"s glades."
"Was it the free company brutes?" demanded the steamman. "Did they come here looking for us, only to find this poor young softbody instead? Or was it the guild"s thugs paying him back for helping his church friend escape their service?"
The ex-parson of Hundred Locks said nothing and the steamman pulled the blades out of the body and started to roll the corpse up inside the large ursk skin. Jethro"s troubled eyes turned to vexation. "Old steamer, please tell me you"re not planning to dump his body?"
"The dark ca.n.a.ls of this warren of a city are at least good for that," said Boxiron.
Jethro walked to the window and pulled aside the curtain, glancing down into Hermetica"s streets. "We shall certainly not just dump Chalph"s body. The scriptures of the Divine Quad contain exceedingly specific burial rites."
"You deny his G.o.ds..." said Boxiron.
"His G.o.ds, but not his right to believe in them. The Pericurian trade mission should receive his remains."
"If we are found with a corpse in our rooms we will be handing the First Senator another excuse to toss us over his battlements."
"His paranoia needs no excuses now," said Jethro, "and we have a duty to the living as well as the dead. We have to find Father Baine exceedingly quickly."
"Is our foe eliminating everyone who has helped us?" growled Boxiron.
Jethro Daunt sighed, popping a Bunter and Benger"s aniseed drop in his mouth. "If I am correct in my fears, good steamman, then the killings in this city have barely even begun."
A mile from the jagged rise of the Cade Mountains, the expedition members were labouring through the tail of a steam storm blown far inland by the howling winds, the heat of it melting the snow on the rocky plain, leaving knives of treacherous ice in its wake. One small mercy emerged from the storm: the waves of billowing steam blocked the ever-watching gaze of the terrible, ma.s.sive eye halfway up the mountain slope.
It was during the storm that Hannah stumbled unexpectedly across something frozen in the ice an oval of rusting girders jutting out like whale bones on top of broken caterpillar tracks, the decayed treads so eroded some of them were little more than shadows of rubble in the snow.
"I"ve seen one of these before," said Tobias Raffold, his dome, like Hannah"s, retracted for a better look, despite the bitingly cold wind. "Outside one of the empty cities down south. It"s a land hauler like one of our horseless carriages back in the Kingdom. The Jagonese used them to cross the wilds once."
"Around the time of William of Flamewall," said Nandi, excitedly. "Look how little is left of its hull that level of corrosion puts it squarely in the period we"re interested in."
"Ah, the poor wretches," sighed the commodore. "And we"re to end up sharing the same fate."
"Chin up," observed Ortin urs Ortin. "We have the advantages of modern RAM suits and rapid-fire weaponry on our side."
"You"ve a blessed unhealthy faith in the trappings of modernity," said the commodore. "In my experience a foot of sharp steel is your best friend in a tight spot, no capacitor to decharge on you when your back"s against the wall, no clockwork lock to jam on your rifle."
"An easy comment to make, dear boy, when your nation is the sole keeper of a navy of airships ready to pummel all your foes to pieces from the sky."
"Not in my mortal name," the commodore muttered.
Hannah looked ahead. The storm was changing direction, the rise of the towering Cade Mountains revealed through the shifting curtain. The baleful eye was still watching the expedition from on high and there was something else revealed at the foot of the slope. An oval of darkness bordered by something that appeared too regular to be a natural rock formation.
"There!" called Hannah.
It was what they were looking for, it had to be.
Hannah pushed her RAM suit as fast as she dared across the treacherous ground until she was standing in the shadow of the mountain, the Gateway of Amaja revealed as a light-less tunnel sixty feet across its entrance. The portal was bordered with raised mouldings around its rim, mouldings of winged cherubs holding hands children of the race of man alternating with ursine cubs all of them with curled hair and fur clearly marked against a panel of what appeared to be grape vines.
Hannah watched Nandi retract her skull dome, reaching out of her suit to touch the mouldings with her own fingers. "It"s hardly weathered at all. I"ve never felt anything like it before a ceramic of some sort, but mixed with metal? And it"s cold to the touch the mountain stone is warm in comparison."
Hannah spotted something. "There"s something scratched on it over here. I think it"s written in old Jagonese."
Nandi brought her suit alongside Hannah"s. "It is old Jagonese." The academic looked closer, mouthing the translation out loud as she read. "To. Enter. Is. To. Die."