Chris Wooding - Retribution Falls

‘I have something!’ Crake announced. Frey jumped in his seat at the sudden noise.

‘What is it?’

Crake was moving the compass around experimentally. ‘One of the needles is moving.’

Frey brought the Ketty Jay to a stop and took the compass from Crake. Jez glanced at her pocket watch again, mentally recording how far they had travelled on this new heading.

Crake was right. Though the other needles, numbered 2 to 4, were still dormant, the first needle was pointing in the direction that the Ketty Jay was heading. As Frey twisted it, the needle kept pointing in the same direction, no matter which way the compass was turned.

The number sets corresponding to the first needle had changed, too. Whereas all the others were still at zero, these had sprung into life. The topmost set read 91. The bottom set, the one preceded by a blank digit, read 30. They were not moving.

‘The top one started counting down from ninety-nine,’ said Crake. ‘The bottom one just clicked to thirty and stayed there.’

‘So what does it mean?’ Frey asked.

‘He doesn’t know what it means,’ Jez said.

‘Do you?’ Crake snapped.

Jez turned around in her chair, removed her hairband and smoothed her hair back into her customary ponytail again. ‘I’ve some idea. The topmost digits were counting down when we were moving, and now they’re not. I’d guess that they show the distance we are from whatever the arrow is pointing at.’

‘So what is the arrow pointing at?’ Crake asked, rather angry that he hadn’t worked it out first.

‘Something ninety-one metres ahead of us,’ Frey replied helpfully. ‘So now what? Can we go around it?’

‘I’d rather not deviate from the charts if we possibly can,’ said Jez. ‘They’re very precise.’

‘Alright,’ Frey replied. ‘Then we go very, very slowly, and let’s see what’s up ahead. Crake, read out the numbers.’

He settled back into his seat and pushed the Ketty Jay forward at minimum speed. Crake stood behind him, eyes flicking between the compass and the windglass of the cockpit, where there was still nothing but fog to be seen.

‘Needle’s holding steady. The other set of numbers is still at thirty. The top one is counting down . . . Eighty . . . Seventy . . . Sixty . . . No change anywhere else . . . Fifty . . . Forty . . .’

Frey’s mind was crowded with possibilities, tumbling over each other in a panic. What was it that waited there for them? The entrance to the hideout? Or something altogether deadlier?

‘Thirty . . . Twenty . . .’

He was so taut that his muscles ached, poised to throw the Ketty Jay into full reverse the instant that anything emerged from the murk.

‘Ten . . . Five . . . Zero.’

‘Zero?’ Frey asked.

‘Five . . . Ten . . . The needle has changed direction. Now it’s pointing behind us. Twenty . . . Twenty-five.’

‘Let me have a look,’ Frey said, and snatched the compass from Crake. The needle was pointing directly behind them, and the numbers were counting up towards ninety-nine again.

‘Um,’ he said. Then he handed the compass back to the daemonist. ‘Well. That’s a puzzle.’

‘Perhaps those numbers didn’t mean distance after all,’ Crake suggested churlishly, for Jez’s benefit. Jez didn’t reply. He went back to reading them off. ‘Ninety . . . Ninety-five . . . Now the numbers have reset to zero, and the first needle has joined the other three.’

‘I suppose that means we’ve gone out of range.’ Frey suggested.

‘But there wasn’t anything there!’

‘That’s fine with me.’

Jez called out a new heading, and Frey took it.

‘You might see a—’ she began, when Frey yelled in alarm as the flank of a mountain emerged from the fog. He banked away from it and it slipped by to their starboard side.

‘—mountain,’ Jez continued, ‘but there’ll be a defile running out of it.’

‘I didn’t see any defile!’ Frey complained, annoyed because he’d suffered a scare.

‘Cap’n, I’m navigating blind here. Accuracy is gonna be less than perfect. Pull back closer to the mountain flank.’

Frey reluctantly did so. The mountain loomed into view again. Jez left her station to look through the windglass.

‘There it is,’ she said.

Frey saw it too: a knife-slash in the mountain, forty metres wide, with uneven walls.

‘I don’t much like the look of that,’ he said.

‘Drop to nine hundred, take us in,’ Jez told him mercilessly.

Frey eased the Ketty Jay around and into the defile. The mountains pressed in hard, narrowing the world on either side. Shadowy walls lay close enough to be seen, even in the mist. Frey unconsciously hunched down in his seat. He concentrated on keeping a steady line.

‘More contacts,’ said Crake. ‘Two of them.’

‘Two needles moving?’

‘Yes. Both of them pointing directly ahead.’

‘Give me the numbers.’

Crake licked dry lips and read them off. ‘First needle: distance ninety and descending. The other number reads fifty-seven and holding steady. Second needle: distance . . . ninety also, now. That’s descending too. The other number reads minus forty-three. Holding steady.’

‘Minus forty-three?’ Jez asked.

‘A little minus sign just appeared where that blank digit was.’

Jez thought for a moment. ‘They’re giving us relative altitude,’ she said. ‘The first set of numbers show the distance we are from the object. The second show how far it is above or below us.’

Frey caught on. ‘So then the ones ahead of us . . . one is fifty-seven metres above us and the other is forty-three metres below?’

‘That’s why we didn’t see anything the last time,’ Jez said. ‘We passed by it. It was thirty metres above us.’

Frey felt a mixture of trepidation and relief at that. It was reassuring to believe that they’d figured out the compass and could avoid these unseen things, at least. But somehow, knowing where they were made them seem all the more threatening. It meant they were really there. Whatever they were.

‘Crake, keep reading out the distances,’ he said. Crake obliged.

‘Twenty . . . ten . . . zero . . . needle’s swung the other way . . . ten . . . twenty . . .’

Frey had him continue counting until they were out of range and the compass reset again.

‘Okay, Cap’n,’ said Jez. ‘The bottom’s going to drop out of this defile any minute. We come down to seven hundred and take a heading of two-eighty.’

Frey grunted in acknowledgement. There was enough space between the mountain walls for a much bigger craft to pass through, but the constant need to prevent the Ketty Jay from drifting was grinding away at his nerve and giving him a headache. He dearly wished he hadn’t indulged quite so heavily the night before.

Just as Jez had predicted, the defile ended suddenly. It fed into a much larger chasm, far too vast to see the other end. The fog was thinner here, stained with a sinister red light from below. Red shadows spread into the cockpit.

‘Is that lava down there?’ Frey asked.

Jez craned over from the navigator’s station and looked down. ‘That’s lava. Drop to seven hundred.’

‘Bringing us closer to the lava.’

‘I’m just following the charts, Cap’n. You want to find your own way in this mist, be my guest.’

Frey was stung by that, but he kept his mouth shut and began to descend. The fog thinned and the red glow grew in strength until they were bathed in it. The temperature rose in the cockpit, drawing sweat from their brows. They could feel the radiant heat of the lava river flowing beneath them. Pinn came up from the mess to complain that it was getting stuffy down there, but Frey barked at him to get out. For once he did as he was told.