Stephen Hunt - From the Deep of the Dark

They weren’t waiting for Charlotte, though; rather, the echo of the ghost carried in the Eye of Fate. They didn’t see Charlotte Shades standing before them, they saw Elizica of the Jackeni.

‘There goes my scheme for a nice quiet bit of sneaking into the gill-necks’ realm,’ muttered the commodore. ‘Not with this horde of rascals by our side.’

‘That plan never had a chance,’ said Maeva. ‘I have just talked to Poerava. She says the Advocacy closed its borders to us a day after the darkships attacked. No nomad is welcome to trade in the cities of our ‘civilised’ neighbours now. We might as well be surface dwellers for all the welcome we will receive among them.’

‘The time for subterfuge is nearly done with,’ said Charlotte. ‘The sea-bishops are gathering their forces for the final confrontation. Might of arms will serve us better now.’

‘Is it not enough that you want to drag my poor old bones with you to steal one of the demons’ wicked u-boats to carry us down into their nest of evil?’ moaned the commodore. ‘Now I must fight a pitched battle against the Advocacy first.’

‘The seanore warriors will fight the battle,’ said Charlotte.

Commodore Black did not look happy at the news. ‘Tell me that the darkship you want us to steal is close by and unguarded, lass, and its helmsmen out frolicking for human blood disguised as locals.’

Charlotte shook her head. ‘The sea-bishops scout force is few in numbers and concentrated around the nations’ existing centres of power — the capitals of the Kingdom and the Advocacy… the gill-neck city of Lishtiken is where we will find our craft.’ Elizica could sense the jiggers there, their presence a cancer gnawing away at the world, a cold weight pressing down on the skin of existence, slowly consuming and corrupting the world’s flesh. Charlotte put her hand on the commodore’s shoulder to steady the old u-boat man’s nerves. ‘The Advocacy’s forces are being prepared to assault the island. Every gill-neck soldier we can pull away from that battle is a soldier well diverted. And while the Advocacy capital at Lishtiken is being besieged, we will have our opportunity to sneak in and seize one of the darkships the sea-bishops use to shuttle between the capital and their seed-city at the bottom of the trench.’

‘It is time,’ urged Elizica. ‘Address the seanore, address them as their war leader!’

A shelf of stone served as a stage, netting strung up behind hung with trophies slipped through by clan leaders. Charlotte strode forward, unpinning one of the rotor-spears. As she turned around, she felt the fire of the Eye of Fate spreading across her chest. Her form was changing; or rather the onlookers’ perception of it was altering. The Eye of Fate cast its spell, the ultimate piece of showmanship from the Mistress of Mesmerism. Rather than her willowy frame, they saw before them a figure of legend. A trident sharp enough to pierce armoured steel, a round shield with the moulded head of a lion and a helm with a built-in rebreather mask. This was different from any of the illusions she had cast before using the gem. They had been paltry things, accompanying sleight of hand; convincing a single person that they were at home eating a meal that didn’t exist, rather than on a stage. Now Charlotte was inside the light and haze of the trickery, she could see herself as they saw her. A myth breathed into life, the phantom forms of two savage lions slowly pacing around her.

Charlotte raised her rotor-spear as Elizica raised her trident. ‘Hear me, braves of the seanore. Once there was no difference between you and those that call themselves the Advocacy. Both lived in the sea of life and flowed with the current and the schooling fish. But there is a difference now. You have passed on the old songs. You have remembered the terrors of the deep of the dark, the night that clings to the scar cutting the world. The Advocacy has not. They have lost their connection to the waters of life, swaddled in glittering artificial walls and protected by the tick and tock of their machinery; they have made superstitions of the old songs and fools and witches of those that keep their faith with them. And now we have come to where we have come. Darkships cut the waters once more, and within the comforting warmth of their walls, the Advocacy has not felt the trench’s chill.’

Among the assembly the nomad war leaders were jabbing their own bodies with the sharp edges of their shock-spears, working themselves up into a berserker fury, swaying and moaning to her words. There was more than one sort of mesmerism and her words held a power all of their own.

Charlotte continued. ‘Within the clatter of their machinery, the Advocacy is deaf to the songs that could have warned them. Their people have paid the price for such folly. The Judge Sovereign and the Bench of Four are not their own people anymore, darkness lives within them, the stealers of shapes and eaters of souls swimming with their bodies and seeing with their eyes and lying with their tongues. The ancient enemy has begun to spread the same sickness among the surface dwellers of the Kingdom of Jackals. Soon, the surface-dwellers’ airships and wheel-ships and u-boats will move completely subservient to the enemy’s bidding too. Then the sea-bishops will plunge the world into war, so that there will be only bloated corpses and weeping widows to stand against them when they unlock the gates to hell and unleash their legions upon us.’

One of the war leaders leapt forward. ‘My rotor-spear is thirsty for the blood of these demons; will they bleed if I cut them?’

‘They bleed well enough,’ said Charlotte. ‘The sea-bishops rely on confusion and cunning and the cleverness of their machines. They rely on a force of numbers that would be enough to turn the sea black with their legions. But those numbers are still denied them, so now is the time to strike.’

‘I will slay a hundred of them and count it a disgrace to slay so few!’ yelled a seanore.

‘My rotor-spear will pass through the guts of five at a time and return to my hand pleading for another throw!’

‘We advance on Lishtiken!’ yelled Charlotte.

The assembly dissolved into a mob as pledges of blood and carnage erupted across their ranks. Charlotte looked at the sea of eager faces, a forest of rotor-spears jabbing up towards the carapace panelled dome above. How can I do it? Lead these people against the Advocacy? We’ll be facing war machines, submersibles, trained armies — it will be a slaughter?

‘These are not simple fools that follow you,’ reassured Elizica. ‘They know the might of the Advocacy’s military far better than you. They have rubbed up against it for centuries. Those pledges and boasts are like the war masks that cover their faces: they use it to conceal their fear. They will follow you because they know the nature of the enemy. They will follow because they understand that if they lose, it will not just be the end of their way of life, it will be the end of all life. Their children, their wives, their husbands, their parents, their kinsmen and their hunting partners, all of them will be hunted down without mercy and their life-force ripped from them like marrow sucked from fresh whale-bone.

‘They understand perfectly that the enemy may live, or we may, but both cannot. It is a binary choice from which no sentient creature may turn its face. Do not think these people savages, do not think them fools. They have honour and they have prospered in cooperation with the balance of the sea for far longer than I have survived. To lead such warriors as these to their fate is not a tragedy; it is a privilege the like of which you will never be given again. There is no glamour being cast here and I stand revealed before them only because it is right that a warrior knows the cause they are being asked to fight and die for.’