Dill had sunk to the elbows in broken bones. He coughed, blinked.
That smell.
Not of weapons or war, but of the Sanctum corridor, the Ninety-Nine: the long-dead archons that inspired his dreams of battle.
He rose unsteadily, smacked bone-dust from his clothes.
But these were not the bones of angels, but of people. Thousands of people. Millions. Discarded in this pit, heaped like the feast-pile of an eternal banquet.
Rachel scrambled down to join him, sending a further landslide of bone fragments down the slope.
Dill couldn’t speak. He stood gawping at the crumbling mountain, gasping in the chalky air, still searching in vain for some sign of Deep. But there was nothing here. Only bones. Three thousand years of bones.
And, from the darkness all around, the continual sound of hammers striking metal. Of industry.
Or forges?
“Dill?” Rachel shook him gently. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t understand.” He looked at her. “Where are the soul-lights? The ghosts?”
As she shifted her weight, something snapped under her foot. “These are old bones,” she said. “Ancient. Further up, the remains are fresher. But there’s no flesh, no shrouds.” She picked up a smaller bone that might have been a finger and examined it. “There are marks on it, scratches. The flesh has been scraped away, picked clean.” She glanced up. “The sun’s moved on. It will grow darker again soon. We should get off this…” She let the sentence die. “We should get to the bottom.”
A sharp rapping sounded from further up the slope. Carnival was sitting there on a pile of skulls, her raven wings outstretched. In each scarred hand she clutched a long bone, using them like drumsticks to beat on a skull between her knees. “Not the best idea,” she drawled, her eyes brimming with malicious glee. “That’s where they’re coming from.”
Dill spun round. At first he saw nothing but darkness, then gradually he became aware of the lights.
The dead were coming.
26
ATTACKED
RAGS, HE’D INSTRUCTED,and rags they fetched. There was no shortage of rags in this godforsaken hole. They tore strips from blankets and strips from gabardines, soaked them in mud, and set to work stuffing them into every vent in the Tooth’s enormous hull. This would minimize the effect of the gas the armada was sure to use on them. Scarves were also collected and set aside, ready to dip in urine and then cover their faces. The Heshette women were already gathering buckets of the stuff. The urine, Devon had explained, would help counter the poisons they might breathe.
It wouldn’t, of course, but the opportunity to have these savages breathe their own piss was too good to miss.
Bataba oversaw the operation with stern diligence, while a dozen sour-faced Heshette escorted Devon outside. All carried spades. Devon clutched a lamp, a hammer, a nail, and a stub of a candle in his one hand.
“Only twelve of you,” he said as they stepped through the door and into the blinding force of the desert sun.
“Wouldn’t want you to leave before the fun starts,” Mochet snarled. He wrapped his scarf around his head.
Devon huffed. “As if it were possible to man the engines and simultaneously navigate! An airship cannot be flown single-handed.” He cringed at his own feeble joke. “And I feel hurt that you would expect me to flee such fine company.”
“I expect you to shut up.”
Devon squinted through his own scarf, one he imagined was full of lice. The stained gabardine Bataba had given him smelled of smoke and dung.
Deepgate’s advance armada had arrived at a position to the south of them, almost five hours ago. Since then they had been massing, stretching their communication line, bringing more ships forward for a concentrated assault. Seventeen warships now, with more on the way. When it became apparent they were in no hurry to attack, Devon had decided to use the extra time to his advantage.
Sightglasses flashed on the warship decks, but from that distance the aeronaut spotters would be unlikely to make out much detail. Devon kept his stump hidden in the sleeve of his gabardine nevertheless.
They think we’ve merely crashed. Once their advance force is ready, they’ll dump lime-gas and incendiaries all around the Tooth, smoke out as many of these savages as possible for their crossbows to pick off. The Poisoner nodded to himself, satisfied.They think they have all the time in the world. Which means they think Sypes is already dead.
Flanked by Heshette, Devon slipped and skidded his way down the sand drift before passing into the shade underneath the Tooth’s hull. Vast, earth-clotted tracks loomed over him, large enough to allow the group to clamber between their cogged wheels and reach the remains of the animal pens and the stricken warship on the far side. Goats had been crowded into a makeshift corral to one side where they bleated and pushed each other. Bells tinkled.
The Birkita ’s gondola had been totally stripped. Looters had ripped teak planks from the aft deck and stacked them in piles. Rope and cable lay in coils beside heaps of pots and pans and kitchen utensils. Furniture was strewn everywhere. Plush chairs, richly veneered cabinets, tables and bookcases listed in the sand. Four Heshette warriors had found the captain’s drinks cabinet and now squatted in the sand, wasting fine wines down their bearded throats.
Inside, Devon almost lost his balance when he reached out with his stump to grab the doorframe. Cursing, he made his way along the corridor towards the engine room. Sand mounded the decks and—ridiculous as the notion was—he wished that Fogwill could have been present to comment on the mess. It would have been the last complaint that giddy plum ever made.
They found the tanks of liftgas stored in a cage in the engine room. Pipes from two of them led up to valves accessing the envelope above. Twin axles protruded from the rear of the engine, through gearboxes, to the propellers on the aft deck. Oil glistened like sweat; hydraulic tubing veined the walls. A network of further pipes spread from vents in the engine and disappeared into channels on either side of the room, to feed the airship’s ribs with hot air. Devon set down his equipment and breathed a sigh of relief; everything appeared to be intact.
“Find some tubing,” he said to Mochet. “As much of it as you can. You can strip these, and these. Drain the fluid and run lines from these other tanks into the hot-air pipes. Here, here, and here, as many as you can. Just cut the metal and wrap the joins tightly. It doesn’t have to be perfect.” He surveyed the room. “We’ll need strips of cloth, lots of them. And as much ballast as you can shovel aboard. Sand and rock will do; anything heavy.” He looked Mochet up and down. “How much would you say you weigh?”
Discoloured teeth split Mochet’s beard. He threw his spade at Devon’s feet. “Dig, Poisoner.”
So Devon shovelled sand into the port corridor along with eight of the Heshette, while Mochet and the others laboured inside. One-handed, the work was awkward for Devon. Most of the sand ended up in the faces of his comrades. Occasionally he waved his stump at them in apology. He was a cripple, couldn’t they see? The sun blazed directly overhead, falling between the Tooth and the quarry wall, ruthlessly devouring any shade and cooking the sand under his ill-fitting moccasins. Through the gauze of his scarf he peered into the white-hot sky, expecting the armada to appear above the upper edges of the Tooth any minute. But there had so far been no calls from the Heshette lookouts.
Grudgingly, Devon went back to work. When he’d put aboard as much ballast as he could stomach, he hopped back into the gondola to check on the progress inside. Two of the Heshette diggers exchanged a glance, then threw down their spades and followed him.
“Don’t worry,” Devon said as they muscled up beside him. “I’m sure Mochet can take care of himself.”
They followed him anyway.
The men inside had almost finished connecting the tubes to the hot-air pipes. Mochet leaned against a support strut and toyed with his knife while he watched the progress with hooded eyes.
“Busy?” Devon as
ked.
Mochet grunted. “Push me harder, Poisoner, and my knife will test the limits of your blood’s endurance. Your very existence is an insult to Ayen.”
“You speak for your goddess, then? Is your shaman aware of that?”
The warrior bared his teeth, but did not reply.
Devon gathered up the equipment he had assembled from the Tooth and stepped back outside the engine room into the midship companionway, with Mochet hounding him.
“Hold this to the deck while I hammer,” he said, giving the nail to Mochet. “At an angle—like this.”
Mochet obeyed. “Miss your aim, Poisoner, and I’ll use the hammer on you.”
Devon struck the nail partway into the wood, then pushed the candle on top of it so that it stuck out at a shallow angle from the floor. Then he opened the lamp and eased oil over the wax, just an inch from the wick. Next he took the strips of cloth the Heshette had found, soaked them in lamp oil, and made a long fuse, which he fed back into the engine room. He doused the floor and walls around the fuse with the last of the oil.
When he was satisfied, he turned to Mochet’s men. “We need to open the valves now, gently. Let the gas flood the ribs. Open all of the tanks, but not too much. Just a few turns, until you hear the hiss.”
All of the Heshette heard him clearly, but Mochet relayed the instructions regardless. They twisted open the valves on the liftgas tanks and withdrew into the companionway.
“Now,” the Poisoner said, “light the candle.” He handed Mochet a pouch of flints. “I’ll wait outside.”
The warrior seized his arm. “No, Poisoner. You’ll stay until it’s done.”
Five minutes later Devon glanced back at theBirkita from the shadow of the Tooth’s hull. Her ribs were slowly filling out; he hoped it was fast enough.
Bataba met them inside. A wet scarf covered his face, and he offered another damp rag to Devon.
Devon sniffed it. “You have enough of these for everyone?”
“We do.”
“And one for Sypes?”
Bataba nodded.
“Excellent.” The Poisoner rubbed hand and stump together. “You can keep that one. I’ll risk the gas.”
Chalk-faced, Fogwill gripped the control panel on the bridge of theAdraki, fixed his eyes on the tilting horizon, and concentrated on keeping what was left in his stomach still in his stomach. His throat felt raw. How could there be anything left? He had already vomited far more than he remembered having eaten, and even brought up things he wasn’t convinced he had eaten. Abruptly, his insides lurched and something rumbled further down.
The airship captain glared at him, a veteran whose eyes held no sympathy for the Adjunct’s delicate condition. Fogwill tried to smile back. He wasn’t keen to use the ship’s commode unless there was no alternative. Mark Hael had taken some delight in informing him how it worked.
Blackthrone baked under a parched sky. Eighteen warships had now gathered above the Tooth, turning slowly to the west as the wind changed. Vents above the bridge windows blew a hot, metallic breeze that failed to dry the sweat from Fogwill’s brow. Engines droned on all sides like persistent flies. At the sound of a whistle, Hael put his ear to one of the com-trumpets on the wall.
After a moment he said, “We’re now approaching the Birkita . She’s been stripped. A group of Heshette were spotted fleeing back inside the Tooth.”
“The Presbyter?” Fogwill ventured.
The commander relayed this question and waited for the reply: “Too far away to tell.” He turned to the captain. “Flag the armada to hold steady above the Birkita at four hundred feet windward, maintain formation, and keep us within signal distance. I want two-thirds payloads of lime-gas fused and ready to drop at my command, full complements of crossbowmen in position, and incendiaries primed for a cook-up when the bastards split. Keep me informed of changes in wind direction and speed.”
Fogwill swallowed. “This gas…is fatal?”
“Depends how much of it is breathed,” Hael said.
“Then I’m afraid I can’t allow you to use it.”
The commander shrugged. “It’s the best way to flush them out. That thing down there looks too solid for incendiaries.”
The Tooth did look impenetrable. Fogwill had heard of the machine, but had not seen it until now. Few people had. It towered over the quarry cliffs behind it, shimmering in the harsh light. Dark holes pocked its dazzling-white hull; sand drifts smothered its base on the nearest side; smoke-scorched funnels crowned its tapering summit. Skeletal arms at the front held massive columns of cutting wheels over a huge, dusty scoop.
Fogwill studied it with awe. This vast machine was in truth a holy relic, abandoned by Callis nearly three thousand years ago after construction of the foundation chains. It had last moved under the direction of Ulcis’s Herald himself. He remembered that crippled angel locked in the temple dungeon, and swallowed hard. Three thousand years. How many souls since?
Missionaries who had seen the machine spread fervent rumours that it possessed some vestige of divine awareness. Looking at it now, Fogwill found it hard to give credence to those rumours. The Tooth was impressive, yes. But sentient? Hardly. And yet the machine did seem to evince some latent power, as though it was waiting, watching from those openings in its hull.
My imagination. It is the Heshette who are watching us.
The Adjunct shuddered, but was unable to shake off his unease. Something else was bothering him. The Tooth looked altogether too…complete. Too unmarked.
Too ready.
“Why would Devon come here?” He spoke his thoughts aloud unintentionally.
“Water. It’s one of the few oases in this region we haven’t poisoned.” Hael sneered. “A holy site.”
“But he would easily have been able to reach the Coyle, taken a skiff downriver. Why would he fly against a headwind, and straight to the heathens?”
“He was avoiding the Coyle garrisons. Sandport, Racha, Clune are inimical ports for a fugitive. No doubt he expected to find the Tooth unoccupied. The Heshette are nomadic, and infrequent visitors to Blackthrone.”
Fogwill shook his head. Devon wasn’t stupid. There had to be another reason. He looked down at the Tooth, at the massive blades that had cut sapperbane from the mountain so long ago. Thousands of tons stripped from the mountain, processed, and forged into chains. Abruptly his unease grew to fear. “Would your gases and incendiaries be able to stop that thing if it was moving?”
The aeronaut commander turned slowly. He appeared to consider this for a moment, then shook his head. “He wouldn’t be able to operate it.”
“This is Devon we’re talking about, remember?”
Hael grunted. “The Poisoner missed his one good chance to flee. He’s a fool—or already insane.”
“A fool who evaded a citywide manhunt, kidnapped the Presbyter, and stole an airship from under your nose.”
Evidently the commander did not like to be reminded in front of his men. “We have him now,” he growled.
Fogwill couldn’t tear his gaze from the machine’s cutters—sharpened cogs powerful enough to shred sapperbane. And chains? Darkness take me, I know what you are planning, Devon. Sypes…forgive me, you would understand what I must do . He turned to the warship’s captain. “Start the attack now.”
“Belay that order,” Hael said. “Do not presume, Adjunct, to issue commands aboard my ship.”
Fogwill hitched himself up straighter on his stool. “I am your superior in the service of the Church, Commander.”
“Not aboard this vessel.”
“Then,” Fogwill lowered his voice, “I humbly request that you relay a message for me back to Deepgate. I believe thatis within my rights aboard this vessel.” He didn’t wait for Hael to acknowledge him. “Tell Clay to wake up the regulars and sober up the reservists. I want every last one of them dragged naked from the whorehouses if need be, and as many more volunteers or conscripts as he can find. They are to be armed and ready for a grou
nd assault against the city. The cavalry divisions are to be re-formed, every ex-military beast that’s lugging coal is to be found and requisitioned. Then I want him to scour the Poison Kitchens for whatever those chemists are hoarding, and have the lot brought to the abyss perimeter and scattered in piles, ready for deployment. I want the sappers brought out of retirement—pay those bastards whatever it takes—and I want them undermining the Deadsands towards Blackthrone as though they were digging another abyss. And then I expect the city’s carpenters and smiths to drop everything and to undertake new contracts for the temple. We need heavy offensive ordnance, mangonels, scorpions, siege engines, whatever they can come up with. Tell them I want weapons powerful enough to stop a god.”
“Siege engines? Mangonels? Scorpions?” Hael’s tone had become mocking. “Words from old men’s tales—how are they to build such things?”
“Our history,” Fogwill said. “We warred before. A hundred years ago, two hundred. With the river towns, bandit strongholds, on the fringes of the Deadsands.”
“History?” Hael snapped. “Deepgate has no history. Sypes has it all locked up in his damn books.”
“Then they can use their brains for once. Just look at that thing. We’ll need to breach it like a citadel. Instruct Clay to get everyone working right now, day and night. I don’t care what the cost is. We have a war on our hands.”
Grudgingly, Mark Hael relayed the message through a trumpet to the signalman.
“Now, Commander Hael.” A hollow ache had taken root in Fogwill’s chest. The Presbyter would understand, approve, but still…I’m sorry, Sypes. “When do you suggest we attack?”
The commander got no chance to reply.
“Sir!” the captain said. “The Birkita ’s lifting. She’s running.”
Fogwill leaned across the control panel to see the warship rise from behind the Tooth.
“She’s coming up fast,” Hael said. “He’s flooded the ribs with liftgas. Close on her. Instruct the men to ready grapples, and flag the other ships to burn high, staggered to strike if we miss.” He sprinted towards the port companionway door, turned back once, and spat, “So much for your war.”