Stephen Hunt - The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

‘Head for the forest on the other side,’ called Veryann, checking the charge in her pistol. ‘We can get off a few shots when the thunder lizard comes into the open. Aim for the creature’s eyes.’

Knee-deep in grass, they were plunging down one of the hillocks when the trees at the ridge of the hill flowered open, spouting white jets of liquid into the air. For a second the commodore thought that they had triggered some devilish man-eating hardwood into feeding, but the white fountain solidified into a net, scooping up the expedition members and sweeping them off their feet. They were hanging between the trees like a hammock, bound to the sticky material and swaying seven feet off the ground. Just the right height for an offering to Queen Three-eyes. T’ricola thrashed, trying to turn her sword arm on the material, but the harder she struggled, the more the netting seemed to tighten around them.

Crashing through the jungle, the kilasaurus max splintered through the last of the towering trees. She emerged in the clearing; her undersized lizard’s head darting about before settling on the direction of the hills, her nostrils flaring and snorting like those of a stallion. Sensing the ensnared presence of Ironflanks, the thunder lizard dipped down then stretched to her full height and roared at a volume that shook the netting the expedition members lay pinned against. Billy Snow dropped his machete from his left arm to his partially free right hand and tried to saw their cords of bondage but the material turned slippery, oozing a soap-like liquid that made his blade slip. ‘What is this stuff?’ he growled.

Veryann attempted to lower her pistol arm enough to get a shot off against the thunder lizard, but the gun discharged wide, the bullet disappearing over the horizon.

‘This is a rare old mess and no mistake,’ said the commodore.

The webbing of their snare trembled as Queen Three-eyes advanced towards them, roaring gusts of fetid hate from the second mouth in her chest. Reaching the foot of the hillock, Queen Three-eyes’ snout snaked around as she detected a movement in the corner of her field of vision. A line of boulders at the bottom of the hill was swivelling towards her, tracking each thumping footstep. She backed away, sensing the oddness of this place — a clearing so purpose-made for animals to graze across, yet so bereft of local life. Where tiny prey that should be running instead lay paralysed. Where rocks came alive. Too late. Slits opened in the boulders, iron spider’s legs sprouting out, the suddenly mobile rocks spraying Queen Three-eyes with an orange liquid that solidified on contact with the air and sheathed the thunder lizard in a rubber bubble. She pushed against the foul glutinous substance but only succeeded in unbalancing herself, falling over and rolling back down the slope. Now the mightiest creature in the jungle lay as helpless as a toy figurine embedded inside the glass of a child’s marble. The legs in the rocks retracted and the monarch of Liongeli was left thrashing futilely inside the orange enclosure.

‘What is this, Ironflanks?’ demanded the commodore. ‘This is no Daggish trap. Those blessed rocks are machines.’

There was no intelligible reply. Something inside the steamman had snapped and he spouted a static screech of raw machine code, in the same inhuman voice as his people used to sing hymns to the Steamo Loas in their mountain fastness. ‘Look,’ called Veryann, ‘look behind us.’

On the other side of the clearing a line of dark shapes was emerging from the twilight shadow of the rainforest. Metal bodies with the edges of their arms, wheels, legs and tracks filed down to razor sharpness, their rivets extruded into spikes. Iron hands clutching spears frilled with the shrunken heads of thunder lizards, craynarbians and the race of man. One of the figures crouched like a monkey and pointed at the full net containing the Sprite’s officers. The arm indicating the catch was slipped through the bloodied sleeve of an airship captain’s uniform: the fate of the shattered aerostat’s crew had become clear.

‘Steammen,’ said the commodore. ‘By my stars, they’re steammen.’

‘No,’ said Ironflanks, recovering his higher functions, ‘they’re not.’

It was the first time any of them had heard a citizen of the Steammen Free State sob.

Damson Beeton waddled down the front garden of Dolorous Hall, whistling and happy to be up with the larks. Red fingers of sunrise fringed the skyline behind the capital’s pneumatic towers, most of the city’s mills silent, not yet throwing the dark miasma of commerce into the air. The barge from Gattie and Pierce was pulling towards the isle’s landing, using its single sail to keep down the cost of gas for the boat’s expansion engine.

So much easier to get a start on the day’s tasks this early in the morning. Cornelius and Septimoth were both pretending to be asleep, when in reality they were on the riverbed level of the isle, rattling around the old museum, planning their next move in the great game they had been sucked into within Jackals. All in all, Damson Beeton preferred it when they were causing their mischief across the border in Quatershift. She had more time to herself, then. Not to mention lighter duties and the run of the place when empty.

‘Morning, damson,’ called the delivery boy at the prow. ‘Two boxes for you today, right? And a quart of milk in the jug.’

‘Fresh, I hope, young man,’ said the housekeeper. ‘Where’s Master Jerry Cruncher today?’

‘Called in sick,’ said the delivery boy. The barge bumped gently into the landing and the boy started tying up.

She looked at the man on the rudder and the two bargemen tackling the sail. ‘Not night-fog chest again, poor lad?’

‘Beer-night head is more like it, I reckon,’ laughed the delivery boy, stepping onto the isle with two crates balanced under his arms.

‘Empty boxes are over there,’ said Damson Beeton. As the boy looked towards the end of the pier, the housekeeper reached out and snapped the lad’s nose bone back through his brain case. Instant death. ‘The correct counter phrase was “that night-fog is the devil,” young man.’

The three assassins abandoned their pretence as the crew of the delivery barge. They were reaching for secreted weapons, fingers wrapping around pistol butts and marlinspikes, when Damson Beeton stepped across the gap with a grace that belied her near seventy years. Targeting the fastest of the bargemen she kicked the pistol he had managed to draw out into the river, then cart-wheeled past, placing a needle kick just above his heart on the way towards his two friends. Just as he was wondering why his heart was no longer beating, the old woman’s hand chopped out, breaking the heavy marlinspike in his other hand in two, converting her motion to embed a foot in one of the remaining two killers’ guts. The last one standing punched out towards where her throat should have been. He was quick. And trained. A style that marked him as a topper, one of the elite cadres of assassins that floated around the capital’s orbit.

She seized the two halves of the marlinspike as they fell and slammed them against his eardrums, then swivelled as his winded companion launched himself at her side. Oh, they were good. A normal man would have been left rolling on the floor of the boat, clutching his sides as the internal bleeding left him incapacitated. This one just came back for more. Luckily, she had more to give. She used his own momentum to break his spine against the sail, then gave mister no-hearing a little something to take his mind off the pain in his ears, seemingly brushing his knee with the tip of her boot. It was enough to collapse him down towards the barge’s seat, where she pulled the hidden garrotte wire out of the sleeve of his river-man’s jacket and twisted it around his neck, tightening it until he turned purple.