Stephen Hunt - The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

War chants sounded from the armada of rafts in the river. One of the craynarbian witch doctors, identifiable by his fur-covered antlers, was calling on the worldsong, twisting the power of the rainforest-covered land to the tribe’s own end. In front of their boats the fast-flowing waters began to froth and bubble. Shouts from up in the battlements of Rapalaw Junction urged the dispatch of more gas shells from the garrison’s arsenal.

‘That’s not good,’ said one of the Catosian fighters.

The storm of darts from the tribe’s spring-guns had momentarily abated and Bull leapt up. ‘ The Sprite , boys, to the Sprite .’

‘Not with her!’ A sailor pointed at Amelia. ‘Not with the Jonah!’

‘Oh, for Circle’s sake.’ Amelia took the initiative, pushed up and began to run towards the u-boat.

Out on the river Ironflanks twirled around in an obscene mockery of the craynarbian sorcerer’s spell calling, almost perfect imitations of the jungle’s animal-song echoing from his voicebox — tree monkeys, paradise wings, redcats, hunting spiders. Across the wide, deep river birds exploded into the sky and the creatures of the canopy howled and hooted back. Spooked into action by the flare-up of life in the jungle, the submariners broke for the Sprite’s boarding gantry as a panicked mob. In contrast, the Catosian mercenaries fell back in two disciplined lines, one rank kneeling and firing, then stepping back through their comrades, smoothly reloading their carbines as the second rank poured fire back down the shoreline.

Out in the river the witch doctor’s chants were finally answered by an eruption of winged fish, a cloud of purple scales and rainbow fins bursting out of the water, fluttering off the walls of Rapalaw like bats, others of their number bouncing across the river, skimming into the sailors still fleeing after their Jonah. Poison-barbed fish heads buried into the striped shirts of the Sprite’s crewmen, tiny razored mouths gnawing at the flesh of their victims.

‘Ironflanks,’ Amelia cried, ‘back to the boat!’

She tried to drag one of the fallen sailors towards the conning tower hatch, but his face was swelling like a balloon, the skin of his bloated fingers turning rigid as his throat muscles expanded and slowly strangled him.

Veryann appeared and rolled the dying man into the river with a kick. ‘The toxin from the flying fish is fatal — there’s no cure.’

Over the top of Rapalaw Junction’s walls the thud of launching gas shells at last sounded, fingers of yellow gas trailing behind each projectile. Where they landed, clouds of noxious fumes mushroomed out, fountains of mustard tentacles curling up as far as the town’s ramparts. The redcoats looking down on them had leather masks with locust-like goggles strapped under their shako hats now, a single tube swaying from the front of each soldier like the snout of an anteater. Amelia could smell the sickly-sweet gas already, the taste of cinders and the promise of burning lungs hanging in the air. Its presence in the wind made her skin itch and she had to fight to hold down her panic. Dirt-gas was meant to be humane — first unconsciousness for an oxygen-starved brain, then a quick smothering of the target’s lungs — but she did not want to put their aerial navy’s propaganda to the test.

Plunging into the safety of the conning tower Amelia turned to watch the scene of horror through a porthole; curtains of gas drifting across the river and masking the town’s walls, sailors and Catosians running through the hail of devilbarb fish, spinning as their bodies were caught and pierced. The crackle of rifle fire echoed eerily through the mist, then out of that grim fog of death came Ironflanks, the steamman striding backwards with his four arms flickering in a dance of steel. His hunter’s hat had been mounted with the antlers from the craynarbian witch doctor, still bloody where they had been removed — with some force, Amelia imagined — from their owner’s skull. Three enraged craynarbian fighters followed from the fog, thrusting their spear-like spring-guns towards the steamman while he croaked at them in the voice of a rainforest moon-toad. Over their faces the feral shells had strapped on something that looked like a wet slug, a sack of pulsing black flesh. It was their answer to the redcoats’ dirt-gas.

Bull Kammerlan ducked through the tower’s hatch, the bloody body of one of his crewmen draped over his wide shoulders. ‘Masks! Some of them have got gas masks. They’ve been gassed outside the junction for centuries and now the damn feral shells have finally found a way to even up the odds.’

Amelia had a sneaking suspicion that Bull’s slave raids along the river might have educated the tribes in the use of gas as much as the defenders of the trading post, but she held her tongue. Pushing through the surviving sailors, Veryann appeared, replacing her carbine in its leg holster. ‘The tribe’s spring-gun darts are harmless against our hull, but if they should turn their improvised grenades against the boat …’

Amelia slid down a ladder into the pilot room. Commodore Black was hanging onto the periscope, watching war rafts emerge from the curtain of gas, heading straight towards the Sprite .

‘Make ready for diving stations,’ called the first mate. ‘Everyone inside. Rapalaw will have to fend for itself.’

‘The feral shells are mortal stirred up about something, lads.’ Black reached over to the wall and pulled out a speaking trumpet from its bracket. ‘T’ricola, I’m looking at you for some cheery news on our scrubber assembly now.’

Billy Snow flicked a switch on his console and the craynarbian engineer’s voice vibrated out of a voicebox above them. ‘ Two minutes more, skipper, maybe five .’

‘Gabriel?’ The commodore looked across at his first mate.

‘Diving stations aye, commodore. We’re locked and sealed.’

‘Time to show our teeth,’ said the commodore.

Amelia borrowed the periscope. The war rafts were larger now, almost on top of the u-boat. ‘They’re too small to hit with torpedoes, Jared?’

‘I would not be wasting my precious glass-tipped fishes on these beasts, professor,’ said the commodore. He turned to Billy Snow, the blind sonar man’s head heavy with an iron dome and cables hanging off his skull. ‘Port lances?’

‘Can you not hear them humming for you, skipper?’

‘Those crabs up there are close enough to my lovely old lady now, Billy. Let them hear the hum too.’

Billy’s fingers punched the console in front of him. Outside the hull there was a low hiss as pneumatic tubes opened, pushing out a series of serrated spikes from the u-boat’s two conning towers, twin crowns of metal thorns emerging from the Sprite .

‘Wild power,’ said Amelia. ‘Sweet Circle, you’re carrying a capacitor on the Sprite .’

‘The power electric,’ said Billy, throwing down a switch.

She remembered the strange burned tiles she had seen exposed after their engine-room fire; it appeared they were insulation against more than just the cold of the open ocean. Amelia returned to the periscope. Beyond the u-boat, the river was lit by an undulating circle of lightning flickering from the Sprite’s two towers, the waters burning, devilbarb fish fried in mid-flight, the blow-barrel grenades of the wild craynarbians detonating as the chambers of explosive sap were joined by the force electric. Pieces of wooden raft and smoking craynarbian exo-shell rained down around the u-boat, dead river creatures floating up to the surface of the Shedarkshe before being carried downstream, towards Jackals. ‘It used to work better, the wild power,’ said Billy. ‘Something that people could control and direct. For peaceful uses too, not just war. But the world changed.’