Where was Cadell? David got to his feet, brushed himself down. The Old Man stumbled towards him, his flesh pale, his eyes ringed in dark circles.
“I can’t do this anymore,” Cadell cried. “It’s too much. I’m sorry about your Uncle. You must believe me.”
Cadell blinked, turning his head this way and that, and David was witness to an odd transformation, a swift strengthening of will.
“Are you all right, David? Are you all right?”
“I think I should be asking that question.”
Cadell wobbled to his feet. “I am fine,” he said. “See?”
He took a few shaky steps onto the grass. “Fine.”
David just nodded his head. The movement was too much, he bent over again and dry retched; his stomach had nothing more to give.
“There’s cover by that ledge,” Cadell said and together, dragging Cadell’s bag between them, they staggered towards it. The walking was all the harder for the lack of pursuit. Urgency and strength had bled from both men’s legs. But, both shaking and weak, at last they reached the stony shelter.
“That light around your hand,” David said. “That sad light. What is it?”
“Ah, the candlelight of hubris, boy, history is lit with it. Just one of a hundred ridiculous mistakes.” Cadell said with surprising gentleness. “But the past is done, in this place, in this time, we will find some warmth. Even the lodes generate a little.”
Grass grew under the rocky ledge. The air was warmer too though, surprisingly, not the cloying warmth of rain-battered Mirrlees, but sweeter like the summer evenings of his childhood, the mill fires challenging the stars and the moons, his mother singing and his father home from work. They were idyllic memories that he was not at all certain of, so distant that he could have substituted memory with dream. The past was dangerous that way and invited suspicion.
David dropped to the ground and Cadell followed, kneeling slowly, staring out into the darkness. At last, he grinned. His face relaxed a little, lost some of its bleak pallor. “We’re safe here, for the moment,” Cadell said. “Try and sleep.”
He handed David another syringe. Where had it come from? But he didn’t waste time trying to work it out. The drug in his blood settled him almost at once.
“Thank you,” he said. He knew he shouldn’t be so purely and completely happy but he was. “Thank you.”
Cadell was already asleep.
Chapter 21
Of all the monsters that I saw
The ones come after, the ones before
The worst of them, the worst of all
Is the dread Vermatisaur
Brakes squealed, counter engines roared, and burning oil stung her throat and her nose. The Melody slid to a halt and the engines, fore and aft, wound down. Margaret scowled, she might as well drive off into the gorge. If she’d held off braking any longer, she would have.
Pascal’s Bridge jutted perhaps a hundred yards out above the chasm, ending in curled talons of steel, as though a titanic fist had slammed into the bridge from beneath. She directed her lights into the darkness, wary of the drain on the Melody ’s batteries, and could just make out the other edge of the break: more nubbly lengths of steel crawling with Hideous Garment Flutes.
Margaret sat there, shaking her head. She checked the map, ran it against the one she had in her mind. They concurred. The Caspian Bridge crossed the gorge a little east of here. Wheels spun in reverse, the Melody jerked backwards onto the road. She stopped. From the east, lights, moving fast.
The Perl Bridge then. She would just have to find a way to cross it. The Melody tore a wide circle around the road pulling a rough curtain of dust and smoke behind her and headed west fast as Margaret dared drive towards the Perl.
The cars were closing, their lights growing brighter every time she lifted her eyes to her mirrors. Quarg Hounds, excited by all this activity, ran beside her, their yawls shaking the thick glass of the Melody. She let off a few rounds of her ice cannon and they dropped back a little. Margaret felt tempted to give them a real blast of cold, but she was running low on coolant. So they kept their distance but kept up their pursuit and their howling.
If anyone lay in wait at the Perl Bridge they would know she was coming.
Margaret gritted her teeth, charging her ice pistols and rifles and engaging the preliminary protocols for her carriage’s self-destruct system.
If it came to that, Margaret was damned if she was going to let the Roil take her alive.
She topped the rise and brought her carriage to a halt.
Six cars waited for her at the entrance to the bridge, which extended far out of sight, their cannon and headlights aimed at her. She put the Melody into reverse. A cannon fired a warning shot, Margaret ignored it, slowly sidling back up the road.
Lights flickered in her rear vision mirror. The other carriages had arrived cutting off her retreat.
Well, this is it. Tears of frustration ran down her cheeks. I did my best.
She slammed the carriage out of reverse, and raced back towards the bridge. Cannon fired at her, staring the glass of the front windscreen. Reinforced or not, it couldn’t take too many impacts, the chassis rang with the impact of their shells.
Margaret ignored it as best she could, focusing only on the carriage directly in front of her, firing round after round of her own guns.
It was useless. She could not break through and it was only a matter of time until the cannon found a weak spot in the Melody Amiss . She weaved and fired as many cannon as she could at once, building up speed, aiming at the central carriage.
Perhaps if she had not been so focused upon her enemy she would have seen it coming.
All of a sudden the firing stopped. The Roilings pointed skyward, they lifted their guns to the sky and fired.
The beast tore into the carriages. A raging storm of wings and claws and mouths, its half dozen jaws crashed open and closed. It had been utterly silent in flight, now it shrieked a seismal shriek that was a nail in Margaret’s ears, but she did not stop.
Metal groaned then grew shrill in protest, and Quarg Hounds howled in terror. Cars fell into the chasm beyond the bridge, Roilings leapt for cover. The winged beast rose up, clutching one of the carriages in its claws, letting out a cry that rattled the Melody’s windows, it hurled the carriage back on to the ground. The vehicle exploded, illuming the attacker and astounding Margaret.
The beast was a Vermatisaur.
She could not believe it.
Might as well be staring at one of the Vastkind. Legends filled the air and the shadows, dark malevolent legends.
Several of its snake-like heads snapped at the air. Its huge eyes blazed, bright enough to cast aside the darkness and scatter shadows everywhere.
A terrible joy swelled within Margaret, and a sickening dread.
It roared from a dozen thunderous mouths at once, and dove back towards the carriages, snatching up another. Margaret did not pause, to see what it might do. A gap had formed and shaking, terrified of this sudden hope being snatched away, she drove through it and on to the bridge.
The Vermatisaur watched, through a spare set of eyes, the little human-thing race across the bridge, but did not follow.
There was no need (the creature would die soon enough) nor did it want to risk tangling its wings in the wires that webbed the bridge. Its mate had died that way, leaving it to its solitary angers, its mourning rage of decades.
The human-thing’s time would come. The Darkness was spreading and would not be stopped, what was rightfully the Roil’s would be reclaimed again. With the world retaken, it would fly wherever its will took it, through the boiling shadows and across the plains and ruddy mountains. Fly until another mate called, and the savage wonder of their hungers crowded the skies.