Chris Wooding - The Black Lung Captain

'Can't you do anything?' Jez pleaded.

Malvery grimaced regretfully and patted his shotgun. 'Best I could do is make it quick.'

'Anyone seen Crake?' Frey asked, panicked. Something was out there, in the forest, and his crewman - his friend - was missing. He didn't give a toss about Grist's folk, but Crake was a different matter. He called into the night. There was no reply.

Crattle appeared, having followed Jez's calls. He stared down at Gimble, then at Frey.

'We need your doctor,' he said. 'Tarworth's shot.'

Malvery got to his feet. 'Lead on.'

'We need to stay together!' Frey insisted.

'They've got wounded,' Malvery said. 'I can't help this feller, but I might be able to help the other. You lot find Crake.'

'I'll make sure he gets back to you safe,' Crattle told Frey.

'What about your crewman? You're just gonna leave him here in the mud?' Frey demanded of Crattle, slightly appalled.

Crattle gave Frey a hard look. 'Don't matter what anyone does for Gimble now. My concern's with the living.'

Jez looked up from where she knelt by Gimble. His ragged breathing had stopped while they argued. 'He's dead anyway,' she said, her voice flat. She got up. 'Let's find Crake.'

'Good luck, eh?'Malvery said. He went off with Crattle and was swallowed up by the rain.

Frey rubbed water out of his eyes. The forest looked the same in every direction, but he could still vaguely see the firelight from the camp. 'Alright,' he said. 'He can't have gone far. We circle the camp. Keep that light on your left. And stay together. I'm not losing anyone to this forest, you all hear me?'

'Yes, Cap'n,' mumbled Pinn, who'd been rather sobered by the sight of Gimble's guts.

Frey led them away from the dead man. His mouth was dry and his temples throbbed. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt this exposed. The rain, the dark and the cacophony of animals and insects conspired to foil his senses. If something was out there, they'd never see it coming.

When he was a child, he'd go sneaking through the corridors of the orphanage at night. Usually it was for a dare; sometimes it was because he needed the toilet and he hadn't gone before bedtime. Either way, the punishment for being caught out of bed was severe. But it was never the staff that he feared, or the prospect of a thrashing. It was the monsters that came out when the orphanage was dark and quiet. The whispering things that scraped and creaked and stalked him, waiting behind every door, hiding in the corners.

That kind of fear, that unreasonable, primal, overwhelming fear, he thought he'd left behind with his childhood. But here it was again. And this time, there was no doubt the monsters were real.

Damn it, Crake, where are you? he thought.

Why wasn't he answering? Crake was a smart fellow, the smartest among them. He'd have a good reason for keeping his mouth shut. Was he being stalked, even now, and he didn't dare call out? Was he lying unconscious somewhere, having slipped on a rock or fallen down a hole?

Or was he like Gimble, lying in a muddy tangle of himself, rain falling on his blind, open eyes?

Frey's mind flinched away from the image. He didn't want to think about that. It was he who brought them to this place, and they were his responsibility. Time was, his crew would have told him to stuff it if they didn't feel like risking their hides on a treasure hunt. But that time was past now. They trusted him to lead them, and he felt the weight of that trust. Coming to Kurg had been his choice. If Crake died, it was on his shoulders.

He called out Crake's name, but he got only silence.

Answer me, you bastard.

'Er, Cap'n, should you really be yelling like that when there's a gigantic horror out there wanting to tear out your kidneys?' Jez asked.

Frey reluctantly conceded the logic of that. 'Can you see anything?' he asked. 'You've got better eyes than the rest of us.'

'Not much,' Jez replied. 'Rain and trees.'

'We should—' he began, but then something lunged across their path in a flurry- of leaves. Pinn, who was standing behind Frey, fired reflexively. They caught a glimpse of something furry and fat, the size of a large dog, burrowing into the undergrowth.

Frey looked down at himself. There were two holes in the armpit of his coat, where the bullet had gone in and out. He looked back at Pinn, who grinned sheepishly.

'I'm pretty sure that wasn't the thing that did for Gimble,' Frey said. 'Now that we've established there are other creatures and people in this forest, let's all think about aiming before we fire, shall we?'

'Sorry, Cap'n,' Pinn said.

'Well, I reckon we solved the mystery of how Tarworth got shot,' Jez said.

'That wasn't me!' said Pinn. Then he thought for a moment and a guilty expression crossed his face. 'Or maybe it was,' he added.

'Let's keep that between us, eh?' Frey said. 'And you'd better hope that poor bloke isn't dead.'

'No, I reckon I only shot him in the leg,' said Pinn cheerily.

Frey was about to reply when Jez seized his arm. 'Cap'n!' she whispered.

The urgency in her voice made him freeze. She was looking off to their left. Slowly she raised her hand and pointed. 'Over there.'

Silo moved around the side of them, crouching, shotgun held in both hands. He was staring at the same point as Jez. Frey peered into the forest, following Silo's line of sight.

The leaves swayed under the pounding of the rain, but nothing moved except the shadows. At first, he couldn't see anything. But then he saw what was not moving.

Eyes. Eyes, set half a metre apart. The eyes of something huge.

It burst out of the foliage with a roar. Massive and shaggy, a monstrous approximation of a bear, but much larger than any Frey had ever heard of. Short tusks thrust forward on either side of a mouth that was all fangs and no lips. There was no snout to be seen, just that pair of eyes. Shark's eyes, round and dead and soulless.

Its sheer, unstoppable size panicked them. Frey heard Silo's shotgun, but they were already scattering out of the way of its charge. Frey flailed through branches, slipped and went face-down in the mud, landing chest-first on a tree root. Gasping at the pain, he rolled on to his back.

The creature had reared on its hind legs, pawing the air, twice Frey's height or more. To his right, he could see Pinn behind a tree, taking aim with his pistol. The creature screeched as the bullet found its mark. It thumped down on to its forepaws, shook itself, then lifted its head and fixed Frey with a glare of terrible intent.

'It wasn't bloody me!' Frey protested. Then he got to his feet and ran.

He could hear the creature pounding after him, and he sprinted with all the strength in his body. 'Cap'n!' someone shouted, but it sounded like it came from kloms away. Rain-lashed boughs flashed past. His boots skidded on ground that was alternately slick and sucking. The creature came crashing in his wake with a rattling growl. It had its sights on prey now, and it wasn't going to give him up.

Pinn, you bastard, I'm gonna get you for this!

He stuck his revolver out behind him, glanced over his shoulder. and took a potshot at the monstrous shadow surging through the sodden dark. If it hit, it had little effect. He turned back just in time to catch a branch across his forehead. Stars exploded before his eyes. He staggered back from the surprise impact, dazed and blinking.

The creature smashed through the foliage behind him. He spun to face it. It came to a halt with a roar. Close enough to smell its bad-meat breath and the musky, wet stench of its fur. He flung himself through a screen of leaves as a massive paw swiped at him. He scrambled to his feet on the other side, his revolver lost somewhere in the mud. He didn't stop to collect it.