Hilemore landed with a jarring impact that left him winded and immobile. He lay there, chest heaving as he tried to will strength into numb limbs. “C’mon, Skipper,” Scrimshine grunted as he put Hilemore’s arm over his shoulders and hauled him upright. “Not quite time for bed.”
The twelve-pounder lay on the mid-deck, smoke rising from the barrel which had shattered down to the breech. Steelfine stood next to the remnants of the gun platform, his taper still in hand and much of his clothing hanging from his massive frame in charred tatters. As Hilemore limped closer he saw that the Islander’s face was blackened and his eyebrows appeared to have been singed away.
“All right, Number One?” Hilemore asked him, drawing a blank gaze, Steelfine’s eyes blinking in the ashen mask of his face. “A little deaf perhaps?”
“Apologies, sir,” Steelfine replied in a hoarse bellow. “You’ll have to speak up. I think I may be a little deaf.”
Hilemore grasped his shoulder briefly and moved away, straightening his back and forcing the limp from his leg. “Let’s get some buckets over the side, lads!” he called out. “I want this blaze extinguished in five minutes!”
Morning brought still waters and no sign of any drakes. Incredibly one mine had survived the night, bobbing indifferently on the surface a short way off to starboard. “Got ’em all, d’you think?” Scrimshine wondered, cocking an ear towards the deck. “No call that I can hear.”
“I’d prefer not to wait and find out,” Hilemore said, raising his voice to a moderate shout as he turned to Steelfine. “Unfurl the sheets, Number One.”
Damage to the fore-deck was severe but not fatal, leaving the Dreadfire with a blackened prow and partially denuded deck. The loss of two more crewmen was of far greater concern, not least in the fresh wave of guilt it left in Hilemore’s breast. To have followed me such a long way and receive an ugly death as their only reward. Added to the guilt was the inescapable fact that they now had two less bodies to work the rigging. Hilemore considered it an odd piece of good fortune that they didn’t possess more sails since working a fully rigged vessel of this size would have been impossible with so few hands. Even so, progress was painfully slow, every course change a trial of frantic rope pulls and hands made raw by hauling canvas.
They gave the burnt body of their crewmate to the King of the Deep after they had been underway for a good few hours. Hilemore entertained the faint hope they had denied the fellow’s flesh to any Blues that might have lingered at the scene of the battle. The fiery spectacle of Mount Reygnar grew on the horizon as they followed the winding channel through the ice. Hilemore trained his spy-glass on the volcano to watch the red-orange gouts of lava cascade over the lip of the crater to flow in sluggish rivulets down its flanks to the sea. The base of the mountain was perpetually shrouded in mist now, the waters raised to the boiling-point by the continuing tide of lava.
“Pondering the question as to how we’ll get by that thing?”
Hilemore turned to find Braddon had joined him at the prow, his shrewd gaze focused on the blazing mountain. They could hear it as well as see it now, crying out with a throaty, booming roar every time it spewed up another gobbet of molten rock.
“We’ll keep to the fringes,” Hilemore said. “It’ll take some careful sailing, but I think we’re equal to the task.”
“More worried about the gas. There’s volcanoes in south-west Arradsia given to coughing up all manner of foul humours.”
Hilemore knew that the Contractor was right but also knew they had no alternative. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t share this knowledge with the men, Captain Torcreek,” he said.
Braddon gave a small shrug. “As you wish . . .”
His brow furrowed and his shoulders took on an involuntary hunch as a boom sounded from astern. From the length of the echo Hilemore judged the source to be a few miles off. He and Braddon hurried aft, Hilemore training his glass on the distant maze of bergs. “That a cannon?” Braddon wondered.
“No.” Hilemore’s glass stopped as it alighted on something between two large bergs. Something large jutting out of the water to a height of at least twelve feet. “It was the mine we left behind.” He watched the huge spine slip below the water. It didn’t kill him, he thought. Of course it didn’t.
“Captain!” Preacher called down from the crow’s nest, pointing to something off the starboard bow. Hilemore didn’t require the glass to find the object of the marksman’s alarm. The water some twenty feet across appeared to be boiling, though there was no steam. Huge bubbles rose and burst on the surface, which soon began to swell as something very large rose from the depths.
“Last Look Jack brought a friend,” Hilemore murmured, a wry, despairing grin forming on his lips. I should have had them make more mines.
CHAPTER 48
Clay
This is impossible. Clay held Kriz as she shuddered, blood still pouring from her mouth in a dark torrent. This can’t happen.
Silverpin gave a soft laugh, Clay looking up to find her standing with her arms crossed and a triumphant grin on her lips. “If we can fuck in here,” she said, “why do you imagine we can’t kill too?”
Clay clamped down on his burgeoning rage, returning his gaze to Kriz and seeing the light begin to dim in her eyes. “The trance,” he said, pulling her closer. “End it.”
Kriz just stared up at him in agonised incomprehension, her convulsions coming in shorter, weaker spasms now.
“Feel free to leave if you like,” Silverpin said. “But she stays. Her mind thinks this is all real, you see. Shock I expect.”
All real . . . “No,” he grated. “Nothing here is real.”
He closed his eyes and concentrated, the grey void around them transforming into Nelphia’s dusty surface. My mindscape, he thought, turning Kriz over and taking hold of the knife embedded in the back of her neck. I decide what’s real here. He pulled the knife free with a quick jerk of his wrist and concentrated on the gushing wound left by the blade. It’s not bleeding. He summoned the image of Kriz, healed and undamaged, willing it into being. The blood faded away and the wound vanished, Kriz letting out a moan of agonised relief, though she still lay limp in his arms.
“Oh no,” he heard Silverpin say in a hard, intent voice. “I don’t think so, Clay.”
He took a firmer hold of Kriz and surged upright, raising dust as he whirled away with unnatural speed. Silverpin cast a brace of knives after them, aiming for Kriz. He summoned a blast of wind to deflect the spinning shards of metal and sank into a crouch, Kriz still clutched in his arms.
“My mind,” he told Silverpin. “And I don’t remember inviting you.”
He raised a hand, summoning a gun to fill it, the Stinger he had lost within the mountain. Silverpin leapt as he fired, tumbling across the mindscape like a surface performer as the bullets raised dust in her wake. She came to a halt as the Stinger clicked empty, laughing again in the face of Clay’s rage. He could feel the trance fading fast, cracks appearing in Nelphia’s surface.
“Your mind is my mind too,” Silverpin called to him. “My home, you could say. Call me greedy, but I’ve never been fond of sharing.”