Chris Wooding - The Black Lung Captain

'Have it if you want, Cap'n, but that wasn't what I called you over for. Look.'

He crouched down next to her. There was a small circle of stones on one side of the hut, and a shallow fire-pit with the remains of a fire inside. She held her hand over it. 'Still warm.'

Frey tried it too. Faint heat came from the embers. He sat back on his haunches. 'Huh,' he said, neutrally. 'Place isn't as deserted as we thought, maybe?'

'I think they were passing through. Took shelter here last night.'

Frey thought about that for a moment, then got to his feet. 'You want this necklace or not?'

Jez waved him away. 'It's yours.'

Frey walked back to Grist, running the necklace through his hands. Grist was smoking, as ever. Hodd tapped his feet impatiently and looked skyward.

'Oh! A necklace!' Hodd crowed. 'Just like the other thousand in the Explorer's Guild archives.'

Frey ignored his tone. 'How much do you think it's worth?'

'That? Next to nothing. If it doesn't come with an Explorer's Guild Seal of Certification, there's no way to convince anyone it's not some fake.'

'Seal of Certification?'

'And they'll only give you that if they've first given your expedition a Seal of Recognition.'

'Seal of Recognition?'

'And they only give that to people who can afford their extortionate membership fees and who are willing to pay them a tithe on all expedition profits.'

'And I'm guessing you haven't been paying?'

Hodd sniffed. 'I'm a little behind.'

Frey rolled his eyes and tossed the necklace over his shoulder.

'Might I have a word, Frey?' Grist said. He and Frey walked away a short distance.

'What's on your mind?' Frey asked.

Grist pointed with the two fingers that held his cigar. A short way off, Crake was leaning against a tree, throwing up.

'Your daemonist. He is gonna be able to do what he says, ain't he?'

'Don't worry about that,' said Frey. 'Not a lock in the world that Crake can't get through, given time and tools.'

'Aye,' said Grist, doubtfully. 'Well, I hope so.'

'Did you know there are still beast-men around here?' Frey asked.

'Fascinatin',' said Grist, not fascinated at all. 'If they show their faces, we'll kill 'em. Now round up your crew, eh? We'd best get going.'

Hodd hadn't been exaggerating his skill at pathfinding. He strode confidently ahead of the group, leading them through passes, across streams, up slopes. 'Ah, yes,' he'd say to himself. 'Quite, quite.' After several hours of that, he stopped on a low ridge and put his hands on his hips. 'Here we are.'

Frey was next to join him on the ridge. He swung off his pack, dumped it on the ground and stretched. 'So we are,' he said. 'Good job, Hodd.'

The ridge was six or seven metres above the forest floor. Before them was a narrow, tree-choked defile hemmed in by steep mountain walls on three sides. Clearly visible in the undergrowth was the vast black flank of an aircraft.

It was the size of a Navy frigate at least, and possibly bigger. Most of it was obscured by the trees that had grown up around it, but Frey could clearly see a great split in its hull, bent girders rusting beneath. There was the edge of the foredeck, rimmed with spikes, some of which had broken off. Huge rivets studded the bow. A chain snaked out of the trees, the links thicker than a man's arm. It lay there like some fallen edifice of dirty iron, the sad remains of a time long past.

There were gasps as the others made their way up to the ridge.

'Behold!' Hodd cried. 'A vessel of the mighty Azryx!'

Frey had to admit, he'd never seen anything like it, and he'd seen just about every aircraft there was. But the more he looked, the more he thought that it wasn't that old. How long had it been lying here? Thousands of years? Not at the rate the rust was eating it. Frey didn't know much about trees, but he reckoned it wouldn't take more than thirty or forty years for them to regrow after the devastation caused by the crash.

He surveyed the damage to the craft. It had almost torn in half, but that suggested to Frey that it had gently, inexorably, sunk to the ground rather than ploughing bow-first into the defile. It had broken under its own weight on the uneven ground. A crash at speed would have ripped the craft into twisted chunks, and caused much greater destruction.

Jez walked up next to Frey. He turned to her to ask her opinion, but he stopped when he saw the look in her eyes, the horror on her face.

Jez, pale at the best of times, had gone white.

'What's wrong?' he asked.

'That's no Azryx craft,' she said, quietly. But Hodd heard her anyway.

'Of course it's an Azryx craft!' he protested. 'What else could it—'

'I've seen one of those before.'

'Preposterous!' Hodd trilled, indignant.

Grist held up a hand to silence him. He was staring intently at Jez, brow furrowed. 'You've seen one? Where? When?'

'Years ago,' she said. 'In the north.' She looked away, and suddenly she seemed very small. 'That's a dreadnought. It's a Mane craft.'

Manes, thought Frey. What in all damnation have I got us into?anes, thought Frey. What in all damnation have I got us into?

The narrow passageways of the dreadnought swallowed the light of their oil lanterns. Rusty iron and tarnished steel pressed in on them. Grim metal walls. Pipes streaked with mould. They'd only gone a few dozen metres from the rip in the hull where they'd entered the craft, but already it was like they were entombed. Lightless, hopeless. There was a scent in the air, beneath the tang of burning oil from the lanterns and the smell of Grist's cigar. Decay, and something else. A dry, musky, unfamiliar odour that set his senses on edge.

Hodd led the way, followed by Grist and his bosun Crattle. Frey, Silo, Crake and Jez brought up the rear. The rest stayed outside on lookout duty.

Nobody spoke. The only sound was the shuffling of feet and the sniffle and snort of runny noses. Anxious eyes strained in the lantern light. Pistols twitched this way and that. The forest had been hard on their nerves, but this was worse.

Frey was scared. There were things that man wasn't meant to mess with. Like daemons, for example. Seemed dangerous to play with forces like that. He'd never had a big problem with Crake doing it, but that was mostly because he made sure not to think about what the daemonist was up to. Thus far, Crake's tricks had been useful and generally harmless. Like the ring Frey wore on his little finger, or Crake's golden tooth that could bewitch the weak-minded, or his skeleton key that opened any lock.

But Manes? There wasn't a freebooter alive who didn't give a secret shiver at the tales of the Manes. Stray too far north and you might get caught in the fogs. And with the fogs came the Manes, inhuman ghouls from the Pole. Shrieking and howling, riding their terrible dreadnoughts. They'd kill you on sight, or worse, turn you. You'd be one of them to the end of your days. And that might be a very long time indeed. They all knew the story of the boy who lost his father to the Manes, only to meet him and kill him thirty years later when the Manes returned to his hometown. Changed though his father was, he hadn't aged at all.

Manes. Their nature was mysterious, their purpose unknowable. That frightened people. More than the Sammies who might be building a great air fleet to the south, more than the strange and hostile people of Peleshar with their bizarre sciences, more than the rumours that came out of New Vardia, of disappearing colonies and sinister portents. Nobody knew for sure what the Manes were, or what they wanted.

He checked his crew. Silo was typically inscrutable. Crake looked ill. But it was Jez who worried him most. She had a stricken expression on her face. Maybe he should have left her outside with Malvery and Pinn, Ucke and Tarworth. But no: he wanted clear-headed and reliable people in here with him, and these three were the best he had.