Stephen Hunt - The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

Veryann nodded in satisfaction at her subordinate’s efficiency. ‘Let us see if this creature can find us as well inside a wall of smoke cover.’

‘Circle bless the Catosian military,’ said Amelia, resuming her pelt down the trail. And Circle curse the traitor in their ranks. First the sabotage of their u-boat’s gas scrubbers and now this. Someone badly wanted to stop them reaching their destination. But anyone who knew anything about Camlantis must know that their civilization had reached the peak of moral evolution. Who in their right mind would seek to deny the ancients’ secrets to the flawed, feuding nations that had succeeded Camlantis in the millennia since? That left ignorance as the motive. Which one of them wanted to stop the expedition finding Camlantis so badly they were prepared to murder half the crew to do it? Surely one of Bull’s crew wasn’t so afraid of ending up a slave of the Daggish that they were willing to sacrifice half their own shipmates’ lives to force the Sprite to turn about? They wouldn’t earn a pardon that way.

From the direction of the river, the mortars lined up on the u-boat continued to pour a rolling barrage of covering smoke behind them, matching the pace of their sprint with an uncanny accuracy. The howls of the k-max behind them became a confused mess of snarls lost in the acrid smoke as the welcoming sight of the long dark hull of the Sprite hove into view, sitting just ahead, fixed in the river current. Commodore Black waved from the nearest of the two conning towers. Helping the Catosians, the u-boat crew were desperately breaking down the mortars, tossing footplates and barrel piping down into their open hatches. The Sprite was close enough to the jungle that the barge they had used to reach the shore was more useful as a boarding ramp now. A roar echoed through the smoke. Uncomfortably close.

Commodore Black helped Amelia up the last few rungs of the hull ladder. ‘You were meant to be bringing drinking water back with you, professor, not that rare fierce pet of yours.’

‘You know how it is,’ said Amelia, ‘a girl sees it in a shop window along Penny Street and she has to have it.’

The commodore looked over at the shore; the remaining u-boat crew were scrambling across to the Sprite in an undisciplined rabble while Veryann’s mercenary company were falling back in formation, flower-headed bolt rifles at the ready. ‘Well, I’ll not be feeding the wicked thing for you. Veryann, board your people on the Sprite — I’ll be pushing my bishop across our board by myself if you try and lock horns with a k-max.’

Amelia turned to see Ironflanks clanking down the hull. ‘Can your friend out there wade into the water, old steamer?’

‘A kilasaurus will not cross the Shedarkshe,’ said Ironflanks, clutching his thunder-lizard gun and peering at the smoke-shrouded jungle. ‘They have no taste for swimming.’

The last of the mortars was disassembled and the Catosians on board when a head appeared through the thinning fog, a freakishly small razor-lined snout twitching to find Ironflanks, a massive green-scaled body as large as a Middlesteel tower following behind, a tongue snicking out of a second mouth in her chest. This second maw sported a circular buzz-saw rim of teeth opening and shutting in an eager gnashing. Three good eyes and one scarred hole settled on the Sprite and the thunder lizard roared her rage, a sound so raw that it made Amelia’s rib cage vibrate under its fury.

‘Down ship,’ yelled the commodore into the conning tower. ‘Take us out, full speed forward.’

So frenzied were they to put the steel hull of the ancient u-boat between themselves and the thunder lizard, the remaining members of the expedition threw themselves down any hatch left open. Queen Three-eyes saw the steamman disappearing into one of the conning towers and her snout lashed around, aiming for the hatch where Ironflanks had vanished. ‘ METALJIGGERMETALJIGGERRIPANDKILLANDRIPANDKILL .’

Amelia was barely through the conning tower door, followed by the foetid heat wave of the monster’s breath, when the submarine started sinking, water bubbling up past the turret’s portholes. Reaching the pilot room, Amelia saw Commodore Black had got there first, hanging onto the periscope’s arms, twisting the scope around towards the bank. ‘Sweet mercy, Ironflanks, it’s coming into the river after us.’

‘She can’t swim,’ said Ironflanks, borrowing the periscope. ‘Her forearms are meant for hooking down prey, not paddling.’

Unfortunately for the expedition, no one had told the thunder lizard, carefully keeping her balance as she manoeuvred into the Shedarkshe’s currents.

‘Full forward. Down inclination two degrees.’ The commodore turned to his first mate. ‘Flood tube one. Put a fish in the water, Mister McCabe.’

‘You expect me to hit that thing, skipper?’

‘Timed fuse, one hundred yards detonation. Ironflanks is right about one thing; that’s no slipsharp coming after us. Unbalance the beast, give the wicked creature something to think about other than smashing the Sprite to pieces.’

Gabriel nodded. ‘Aft tube, guns. Timed fish with a hundred-yard screw, number two head to load.’

‘Aft tube, aye. Flooding now.’

Amelia watched the gunnery station sailors plotting in a firing solution and flooding the tubes as their loaders reported in. She could almost feel the shadow of the kilasaurus on the boat as their expansion engines vibrated along the hull plating, dragging them fast against the Shedarkshe’s current.

Blind Billy adjusted the controls on the side of his large silver phones. ‘The beast is wading after us.’

‘Clear tube one,’ ordered the commodore.

A clang and a hiss and a torpedo squeezed past the Sprite’s screws, trailing backwards from the submarine.

‘Fish in the water,’ said guns.

‘She’s running smooth,’ reported Billy. ‘And she’s running straight and true. The thunder lizard has seen the trail and is trying to move …’

The torpedo’s explosion was a dull echo on the Sprite’s hull. The commodore clung onto the periscope. Wading through the water after them and already up to her chest mouth, Queen Three-eyes lost her footing in the treacherous flow as the fountaining water from the blast unbalanced her, and spun her away downstream.

Her howl of fury swirled after the Sprite as the tips of the double conning towers disappeared up river. ‘ Comingbackcomingbackcomingbackforyoumetaljiggermetaljigger .’

‘So you were right after all,’ said the commodore to Ironflanks. ‘The wicked thing isn’t made for the water. But let’s put a few leagues between ourselves and the beast all the same.’

‘Will it come after us?’ asked Amelia.

Ironflanks pushed the rim of his safari hat up. ‘I am uncertain. We will be in Daggish territory within a week. Normally she would not be foolish enough to trespass on their lands.’

An uneasy silence fell over the pilot room. The expedition was moving into the heart of darkness with a traitor on board, a turncoat willing to dangle their shipmates out as bait for creatures like the k-max. The Sprite had felt safe once, a refuge from the jungle outside. Now the u-boat was in a vice. A vice being tightened by an unknown hand.

The Sprite’s refectory was long and narrow. Its two huge tables were made of Jackelian oak that had been polished so much by generations of galley boys using leftover cooking oil that you could slide a plate along them, like skating pebbles across a pond.

Amelia entered the galley and glanced around. She had long since stopped being sensitive to the smell of unwashed crewmen now their water was being reserved for drinking rations and the u-boat’s overstretched cooling system. One of the Catosians who had spurned the submariners’ advice and tried bathing in the river still had a rash to show for it. There were smaller predators in the river than devilbarb fish and crocodiles, and only a craynarbian would want to take a bath in the Shedarkshe. Amelia squeezed past Bull’s off-duty sailors and sat next to T’ricola and Billy Snow.