Текст книги "Black Halo"

Автор книги: Sam Sykes

Соавторы: Sam Sykes
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Thirty-Two

MERCY IS FOR THE DENSE

The din outside the cabin was enough to shake the ship. There had been the clash of metal and the roar of battle, a brief moment’s pause before the shuddering wail that caused the panes of glass to crack in their portholes and the doors to threaten to buckle under the pressure. Now, the snarling, roaring, grunting, clanging, hissing ruckus of fighting had resumed in earnest.

Each noise clamoured to be heard over the others, and each told Kataria nothing in their haste to tell her everything.

The din inside her head was still more aggravating. The fear, the doubt and the frustration that twisted inside her skull like so many screws were bad enough without the voice of instinct, of the Howling, of the shict she knew to be speaking to her through it, echoing in her brain.

Survive, it told her. Shicts survive. Shicts preserve. Shicts cure. You are a shict. You have a duty to your people. She found it hard to ignore the voice. Ignore the human. Her duty is to live and die. Your survival is worth more.

Especially when she couldn’t find the will to agree with it.

The will of the unseen shict came with nearly every breath, and was as impossible to ignore as it was to stop breathing. Yet for every time it bade her to look within herself, she found her eyes all the more pressed on the pale, bound figure in the corner.

Asper was still alive, though her shallow breathing and still body did not do much to support it. The priestess did not move, did not speak, did not so much as shiver anymore. The soft weeping and violent trembling had left her body and left her nothing more than a pile of limp bones and skin that muttered the same thing on soft, silent breaths.

‘You let it happen,’ she whispered. ‘I gave everything. I did everything right. You just let it happen.’

What could I do?Kataria thought to herself. How could you not have known what he was? How could you not have known to stay silent?

She is human, the Howling answered her. There is no instinct in her. She survives through other methods that she does not have now. You are a shict. You have instinct. You survive so that all shicts may survive. You have a duty to your people.

The thought was hers and not hers, a dormant, feral logic awakening within her. And it came more and more frequently, with more and more urgency. It was no longer shared knowledge. It was no longer instinct. The Howling was all her people condensed into a single thought.

It was impossible to ignore, yet impossible to grasp. The unseen shict’s will brushed her only in fleeting thoughts, prodding the Howling to awaken and tell her of his location. Nothing more was offered, no advice given or instructions handed down. She racked her mind, searching for a possibility for escape, to reach him.

And then, she would look at Asper, and forget everything.

She would hear the priestess’ sobbing, see the priestess’ agonised tears. She would forget that she stared at a human, one of many. She would forget that Asper should mean nothing to her, forget that she should think of herself, her people, her duty. She would remember Asper was her friend.

That Asper was the reason she was not lying on the floor and sobbing.

And nothing more than that: she recalled no words of comfort, remembered no reassurances of safety. The Howling would speak to her in these moments of lapsed clarity, and it would begin anew.

Survive, it implored as it knew she should. You must survive. We must survive. You must-

Her bones rattled in her flesh as the wooden pillar trembled with the force of the purple fist slamming against it. A harsh, grating growl filled her ears and drowned all other thought.

‘What’s taking so long?’

Kataria felt slightly comforted to know she wasn’t the only one wondering.

It seemed too mild a comparison to think that Xhai paced the cabin like a nervous hound as she stared at the door. Hounds, as far as she knew, didn’t show nearly so many teeth when they growled.

Hounds, too, had instinct. When they sensed danger, they acted, even in spite of their master’s orders. Xhai clearly sensed danger, clearly wanted to act, but remained in the cabin. She had been given an order and was determined to obey it. As vague as that order might have been, she rigidly clung to it as though it were the word of a god, or whatever equivalent longfaces worshipped.

Him, she reminded herself. They …she worshipshim.

‘What do you think it is, then?’ Xhai grunted at her. ‘Your pinkies come to take what the Master owns?’

Kataria did not answer, for it was clear Xhai didn’t want one.

‘We should have killed all of you,’ she muttered. ‘Netherlings don’t need pink things.’

Whatever caused Kataria to speak up, she was certain it was no instinct.

‘He seems to disagree,’ she said.

‘The Master needsnothing,’ Xhai snapped. ‘He wants. He wants everything.’ Her gaze became hard and looked straight through Kataria. ‘He deserves everything.’

‘If he had everything he needed,’ Kataria replied, ‘he would want nothing.’

While she had known she should have stopped long before saying that, Xhai’s incoming fist only confirmed that. She jerked her head to the side, saw Xhai pull back knuckles red and embedded with splinters.

‘If he needed any of you,’ she snarled, ‘I wouldn’t have watched all the cold, weak bodies of those he wanted fed to the sikkhuns when he was done with them.’ She sneered. ‘When I drag your body to the pits, overscum, I’m going to make sure you’re still warm.’

‘I’ll go laughing,’ Kataria replied, meeting her scowl with an even stare. ‘Because the thought of a longface who desperately wants to lick her Master’s feet being relegated to garbage removal is just hilarious.’

Xhai’s hand shot out and caught her by the throat as her fist cocked back. Kataria made certain to smile broadly at the longface, knowing this would be the last time she would do so with all her teeth.

‘ I DON’T CARE!’

They both glanced to the side as Asper threw herself onto her back, her scream hurled at the ceiling from a face stained by tears.

‘ I DON’T CARE ANYMORE!’ she shrieked. ‘ YOU LET IT HAPPEN! YOU ABANDONED ME! LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN, THEN! TAKE IT! TAKE ALL OF IT! I DON’T CARE!’

‘So soon?’ Xhai released Kataria and stalked over to the prone woman. ‘You’re not supposed to snap this early. Wait until the Master can do more.’

‘Get away from her,’ Kataria growled after the long-face.

Think of yourself, the Howling insisted. Think of your kin. Think of your duty. You have to-

‘Leave her alone!’ Kataria howled, jerking at her bonds.

She is nothing. You have to survive. You have a duty.

‘Asper!’

‘I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care,’ the priestess sobbed, shaking her head violently. ‘I want it all to end. I don’t care for who.’

‘It doesn’t end now,’ Xhai muttered, rising up and nudging her with a toe from her spike-covered boots. ‘The Master doesn’t want it to. His is the right to-’

She paused suddenly, then leapt backward, astonishment on her angular features.

‘What,’ she grunted, ‘the hell is wrong with you?’

Asper’s arm looked as though it had suddenly contracted and gone through the worst bouts of an infection, the blood pooling in it and painting it red as sin. It was far too deep a crimson to be anything normal, Kataria thought, all the more disturbing as it throbbed, pulsed and tensed even as the rest of the priestess’ body lay unmoving.

‘Take it,’ Asper whispered. ‘Take it all.’

Xhai could muster nothing beyond an alarmed stare, looking to the door with a newfound longing for her master to return. Kataria’s eyes were locked on Asper, struggling to find the words to speak, the question to ask through the murmurings in her head. And yet, even as the Howling spoke with urgent fervour, she could still hear the sound.

Hinges without oil creaked. Something slid through a narrow frame. A pair of feet hit the floor.

She saw the porthole’s window swinging on its hinges and the shadow sliding beneath it, into the darkness at the edges of the overhanging lamp’s light. She only barely saw him, a shadow within a shadow in his black leathers, and only barely recognised him. His face was too long, his eyes too hard. And the smile he gave her as he noticed her staring had never unnerved her before.

Denaos raised a finger to his lips. She nodded, saying nothing, as he slunk about the halo of light. A rope slid into his hands like a snake, his fists drawing it tight. He rose up behind Xhai like a black flower and angled the garrotte over her head, his hands unnaturally steady.

He had only just begun to lower it when an eerily gentle smile split her long face.

‘I knew you’d come,’ she whispered.

His eyes widened just a fraction before he struck. The garrotte snapped down swiftly, finding the tender flesh of her throat and drawing tight. She snarled, thrusting her elbow back and into his ribs. He reeled, but refused to let go, pulling himself closer, hands shaking as he strained to pull the rope against her windpipe.

‘I knew it,’ she said, her voice only slightly raspy, ‘because I know you, because I know me. I know Iwouldn’t leave my foe with just scars to remember me.’

He suffered another elbow, gritted his teeth. It was frustration and not pain that was evident in his face as he pulled so hard that the garrotte creaked in protest.

‘What the hell are you madeof?’ he snarled.

‘And I knew they couldn’t kill you,’ Xhai continued, ignoring his words and his rope alike, ‘I knew you weren’t dead …’

Her hand lashed up and over her shoulder, gripping his throat in a vice of purple fingers.

‘Because I hadn’t killed you yet.’

His cry was a weak and pitiful thing against her roar as she yanked hard. He flew out from behind her and out before her with such swiftness as to suggest that, at some point, his innards had been replaced with soft wool.

That theory, and his all-too-fleshy body, were mercilessly dashed as he came crashing down upon the wood.

That should have worked, shouldn’t it?he asked himself, not certain who would answer. I was certain it would.

Everyone makes mistakes, he reassured himself.

Is that her foot above me?

It is.

I should move, shouldn’t I?

He needed no answer to spur him into a roll. Her spike-encrusted boot came smashing down where he had just lain. He sprang to his feet in time to see her pull her foot out, chunks of wood still clinging petulantly to its twisted spikes.

‘That’s fine,’ she said calmly. ‘We’ll take our time with each other, get to know one another.’ She smiled with something that was obviously intended to be warmth. ‘When one of us kills the other, I want it to mean something.’

She leapt at him, just as the knife leapt to his hand. With surgical precision, he slashed it up and against her brow. Like a shattered dam of purple flesh, the blood came weeping out in great rivulets, pouring into her eyes and rendering her blind. She shrieked, swung a fist, seeking him. He sprang backwards and continued to do so as she flailed too wildly.

His retreat came to a sudden halt as he felt his back meet the pillar his companion was tied to.

‘Not a lot of room to move here,’ he muttered.

‘You talk like it’s myfault,’ Kataria snapped. ‘Kill her quick and it won’t be an issue.’

‘I’m not getting near those hands of hers.’

‘Then what are you going to do?’

‘Run, maybe? Probably die. I’m not sure yet.’

‘You didn’t think of a backup?’

‘I didn’t.’

‘ Why not?’

‘Oh, come on! What were the odds that strangulation wouldn’t work?’

Anything she might have replied was lost in a howl of metal and a wail of cloven air. He looked and leapt just in time to avoid the massive wedge of metal that served as her sword from taking off his head. It bit deeply into the pillar instead as he scurried around it and the shict bound to it. He grabbed Kataria about her midsection, glancing around her and avoiding her offended scowl, much more concerned with the white eyes painted red narrowed at him.

‘I’m assuming she won’t kill you,’ he said, darting behind the shict as Xhai shot out a fist at his left, ‘or she would have already.’

‘You can’t know that!’ Kataria shouted to be heard over the sword being wrenched free.

‘It’s an educated gamble,’ Denaos said, twisting back behind her as Xhai lashed her blade out to catch him on his right. ‘If she can’t kill you, then you make a very good shield.’

‘I can hear you, you know,’ the longface said.

She swung again. He leapt again. The blade did not so much strike the pillar as shatter it completely. The ropes were slashed, sending Kataria falling to the ground. Splinters sprayed in all directions, a haze of dust and shards assaulting Xhai’s already stinging eyes and sending her into a blind, howling fury.

When he looked down, Kataria was staring at him with vast and empty eyes.

‘I could have died,’ she whispered. ‘And if I had, there would be no one left to help you.’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t let you die.’

‘Then help me find my knife.’

‘Asper isn’t well,’ Kataria said, rising to her feet and slipping her rent bonds. ‘You have your people. I have mine.’

Before he could protest, she sprang to her feet and darted past the flailing longface, shoving the cabin door open and disappearing. Though he knew he ought to feel it, the urge to curse her as a coward was decidedly faint.

The pang of regret at not having fled first: decidedly not.

A snarl seized his attention. Xhai kicked the last remnants of the shattered pillar out of her way, advancing toward Denaos, her eyes shining through a face painted with blood and adorned with splinters. Her smile was one of contentment, unconcerned with the red dripping over her lips to stain her teeth. His face was one of fervent panic as he backed away and searched for any way past her that didn’t end in disembowelment.

‘No,’ she answered his wild gaze. ‘No more chases, no more interruptions. This is where one of us dies.’ Even reflected in the blade she levelled at him, her smile was possessed of macabre affection. ‘I’m glad it ended this way, Denaos.’

The rogue did not cry out as he was backed up against the wall, did not think to beg or plead or make deals. There was no room in her face for that. What else he saw in there – the tinges of joy, of desire, of lust – he was determined not to take as the last thing he saw before being gutted.

Thus, when he saw the slender form of Asper stalking towards the woman on shaking feet, her body trembling, her arms still bound behind her, he focused on her immediately.

‘I fought for so long,’ the priestess whispered, though to who was unclear. ‘I wanted so badly to believe there was a reason I should.’ There was a sizzling sound; a wisp of smoke rose from behind her. ‘I wanted to believe that the Gods wanted me for something other than this.’

Xhai glanced over her shoulder at the woman and snorted before returning her attentions back to the rogue.

‘There are no gods,’ the longface said.

‘There are,’ Asper whispered.

An arm extended from her shoulder: a black, skeletal limb bound in a red glow that pulsated like a decaying heart.

‘They just don’t care.’

The sword fell from Xhai’s grasp the moment Asper laid that red-and-ebon hand that belonged to something that was not her upon the longface’s neck. It was a gentle grasp, no more force behind it than that a wife would use to rub her husband’s shoulders. Five fingers rested lightly upon the netherling’s neck.

And Xhai screamed.

The longface fell to her knees, every muscle visible bunching up and tearing beneath her flesh. Her jaw threatened to snap off with the force of her wail, her eyes threatening to boil out of her skull and dribble in thick yolks into her mouth.

‘ NO!’ she shrieked. ‘ NO!’

‘I told myself that, too,’ Asper replied, shaking her head as tears poured down her cheeks. ‘I tried. But there’s nothing to be done.’ She choked on a sob. ‘They abandoned me. I did everything for the Gods and They just let that … let himhappen to me. What’s the point in resisting now? What does anyone care?’

‘I … won’t …’

Xhai’s arm rose up as if to stop her. There was a loud snapping sound as an invisible force very visibly shattered her hand, causing her fingers to seize up in agonised curls. Asper’s arm reacted immediately, fed on her suffering. The flesh of her shoulder seemed to dissipate into sizzling wisps as the crimson spread farther up her arm.

‘This hasn’t happened before,’ she said, ‘but why wouldn’t it? Why wouldn’t everything be taken from me, flesh and soul?’

‘S-stop …’ Xhai whimpered.

‘I can’t … I told them to take it,’ Asper whispered. The crimson light spread like a stain of paint. The fur wrapped about her chest sizzled and fell off, her left breast bathed in translucent crimson, exposing blackened ribs below. ‘To take it all.’

‘And … I … said …’

Xhai howled, lashing out her uninjured fist that struck Asper against the jaw like a purple sledge.

‘ Stop!’

She continued to howl, to hammer, flailing wildly behind her and screaming even as her forearm trembled and shattered like her hand had.

‘ STOP! STOP! STOP! STOP!’

Asper did, her grasp shattered under the hail of blows. She collapsed, weeping, heedless of the looming purple shape as she rose up. Xhai stared at her through trembling eyes, looking from her to her ruined arm. Her face quivered, jaw hung open, as though on the brink of asking why, of demanding how, of weeping along with the priestess.

Instead, when her mouth found her voice, it was only a scream that came out.

‘ QAI ZHOTH!’ she howled.

And nothing more came of it as a force exploded across her back.

She buckled under the attack, tried to look over her shoulder and caught a glimpse of the tall man in black leather holding up her master’s chair. Her eyes, and her face, were driven back down as he smashed the chair against her back again and again. It cracked, splintered, shattered in his hands, and still he brought it down upon her until she no longer moved and he was left holding two hewn chair legs.

He set them down six blows later.

Panting, Denaos spared only as much attention for the netherling as it took to confirm that she wouldn’t get up. Once that was clear, and after he had given her rock-hard flesh a kick for good measure, he turned his attentions to his companion.

‘Asper,’ he whispered gently.

She was curled in on herself, trying to bury her left arm under the whole of her shuddering body, weeping violently. With some trepidation, he knelt beside her, wary to touch her after what he had seen, wary to even look at her.

Kataria had run. He could, too. Asper was safe now. There was no reason to stay here. He could escape now, too. She wouldn’t want him around, either, when she finally looked up. He was a coward, a thief, a brigand. She had called him these before. He had run from her before. He could do so now. It would be easy.

That was what he told himself.

That was not what he did.

He placed a hand gently on her, paused as she recoiled from his touch. Undeterred, he gently rolled her over.

And resisted the urge to scream.

She stared up at him through one tear-stained eye. The other was nothing more than a black socket bathed in crimson light. Her naked breast rose and fell with each breath as the ribs where the other one should be shuddered. Half a pair of lips whispered in shuddering words to him as half a black jaw moved up and down with mechanical certainty.

‘I think …’ she said. ‘I think there’s something wrong with me.’

Thirty-Three

TO OUR PEOPLE

His head was burning. If he knew nothing else in the darkness that he had been plunged into, he knew this.

And the voice that accompanied it, hot with emotion.

‘ Could have been so easy …’ it sizzled on his skull, ‘ it all could have been so easy. You could have been away now and we could all have been happy. You could have forgotten her, forgotteneverything. It would have hurt, but you would have survived. Now?’

The darkness became bright, angry red inside his head.

‘ Now I’ll watch you die.’

Lenk’s eyes snapped open. He knew they were open, even if he wasn’t quite sure whether he was awake or even alive. His eyes swam and his head rang. He could see purple shadows moving through great red sheets. He could hear the distant cracking of the sky. His head was still burning, his face still dripping with sweat.

That might have been because of all the fire, though.

The wave of heat that rolled over him returned him to his senses. The wave of crackling orange flame came rolling shortly after. He scrambled to his hands and knees, crawling hurriedly behind the mast before he could feel anything more than the vague sensation of a branding iron tickling his rear end.

Ample reason to figure out what was going on, he thought.

He peered around the mast and was greeted with a sight of carnage. The great red tongues that came lashing out of thin purple palms had long forgotten Lenk. Behind the veil of fire, his face painted orange with the heat, Sheraptus snarled and drove the flames skywards, leaving the deck charred beneath him.

His target, the source of his fury-screwed face, became apparent as the night sky was set alight.

A man, he was at least vaguelysure it was, sailed overhead, the fire licking at his heels as leathery wings carried him over the deck. Those netherling females not lying in various states of cinders, icicles or both surrounded their master protectively, angling drawn bows towards their target.

The man’s hand flashed, in and out of his coat, and produced three scraps of paper. Only when he hurled them did Lenk realise that they were folded into the angular shapes of cranes. That realisation was not quite as interesting, Lenk thought, as the fact that their little papery wings were flapping of their own accord.

The man spoke a word. Whatever language, whatever command, the folded cranes heard and obeyed. Instantly, they turned from white to silver, from dull to shining, from angular to wickedly sharp. Spinning through the air, they found three purple throats and dipped steel beaks into tender flesh.

Bows clattered to the deck. The ensuing gasps and breathless screams as the netherlings clutched at severed windpipes went unheard. Sheraptus appeared less than concerned with the females, thrusting his fingers, and the ensuing whip of lightning, at his elusive prey.

‘Why is this such an issue for you?’ he cried to be heard above the crackling electric blast. ‘I’ve never heard of you before. Why are you so obsessed with me?’

‘Your eradication is a service to more than one power. You are a violator,’ the man replied sharply. ‘In every sense of the word.’

‘Meaning?’

‘I met your victim.’

‘Which?’

‘You took everything from her, including her name.’

‘It comes down to females again?’ Sheraptus snarled, thrusting a finger and sending a jagged blue arc over the man’s bald, brown head. ‘Are vaginae truly so scarce on this world as to be worth this much trouble?’

Lenk took it as his good fortune that the longface’s attentions were so focused elsewhere. His eyes were drawn past the robed figure to the doors of the cabin, just as his thoughts were drawn to Kataria, undoubtedly inside. It would be a simple matter of crossing, infiltrating and retrieving with Sheraptus so distracted.

As simple as matters involving wizards can be, at least.

As if on cue, he felt a familiar hand, far too scrawny and sweaty as to be particularly worrying, on his shoulder. He turned to see Dreadaeleon’s sweat-slick visage and purple-circled eyes staring intently at him.

‘You’ve been busy,’ he noted.

‘It’s incredible.’ The intensity of the boy’s grin raised some concern in Lenk. ‘All of a sudden, the weakness … it was gone! I … I can cast again, Lenk. I can channel it. It feels …’

His eyes went unnervingly wide as he rose up. His pelvis, Lenk noted, was far too close to Lenk’s face beforethe boastful thrusting began.

‘Look! Not a drop of moisture, not a trace of fire, not a wisp of smoke!’ the boy proclaimed loudly. ‘Look! Look!’

‘No! No!’ Lenk seized him by his belt, pulling forcibly down. ‘Now, listen, the longface is distracted and you’re feeling …’ He paused, shook his head. ‘We’re not talking about that anymore. Denaos very clearly didn’t make it or he’d have let us know. We’ve got to go in and-’

‘Save them,’ Dreadaeleon said, nodding. ‘I can feel it, just thinking about it. The power … I can feel the surge. Isn’t that fascinating? Venarie is internal, to be sure, but it’s ruled by thought and logic, not emotion. For it to work this way is-’

‘Can you go out and get burned alive or something distracting?’ Lenk asked. ‘That … bird-man-thing can’t hold him off forever.’

‘The Librarians are trained to great feats of endurance and power, Lenk,’ the boy replied. ‘He can do more than you or I could.’ He winced. ‘And, you know, I’m technically obligated to help him as a member of the Venarium.’

‘ Treason, treachery, betrayal,’ the voice, frigid and sharp hissed inside Lenk’s head. ‘ They are useless. We are-’

‘ Dead,’ the voice, feverish and burning roared inside Lenk’s brain. ‘ You’re dead. You had your chance. You’re going to-’

‘ Ignore that. Focus on duty. Focus on-’

‘ Her. She’s dead, too. You’re all dead and-’

‘Enough, enough, enough,’ Lenk growled to all assembled. ‘I can do this without any of you.’ He glared at Dreadaeleon. ‘If you’re going to be useless, I can do it without you, too.’

‘Useless?’ The boy mopped sweat off his brow, flicked it at Lenk. ‘Do you think I got this from jogging in place all this time you’ve been unconscious, vulnerable and oh-so-stabbable? I’ve been setting on fire, freezing into ice, frying into blackness and otherwise harmingthe longfaces. There were ten more on this deck before you woke!’

‘Eleven.’

The longface came shortly after the word, leading in with a purple fist that drove into Dreadaeleon’s jaw and sent him sprawling to the deck. Lenk had scarcely enough time to blink before her hand jerked backward and slammed him against the mast while she took a moment to drive a foot into the writhing boy’s ribs.

‘He’s already-’ Lenk began to protest.

‘No,’ the longface interrupted, smashing her fist into his face.

He felt the bone-deep quake, felt his skin ripple across his flesh with the force of the blow. His vision did not so much swim as struggle to keep from drowning, eyesight fading as he saw first the remorseless, uncaring long face, then blackness, then her drawn-back fist, then darkness again.

He felt the knuckles connect with his jaw, even if he didn’t see them.

Perhaps he was still dizzy from his previous awakening, he thought. That’s why this was so easy for the longface to beat him so savagely. Perhaps this one was just particularly strong, or perhaps they had all been stronger than he suspected. Or had he always been weaker than he thought?

By the fourth blow, and the torrents of glistening red pouring from his nose, his thoughts shifted to something else.

Sword, he told himself. Need my sword. The head … where is it? Sword, head, sword, head … someone …

‘ We need no one,’ the voice rang across rime.

‘ No one will come for you,’ the voice hissed across fever.

And they, too, faded, with every blow the longface rained on him. His neck felt like a willow branch, his head like a lead weight. His arms were impotent as he tried to shield himself from her attacks. He felt bruises blossoming under his skin, cuts opening on his brow, his jaw. Eyelids fluttering, he stared at the longface as she stared back, appraisingly.

‘Huh,’ she said. ‘Don’t stop to talk before you kill ’em and they just fold right up, don’t they?’

She might have had a point, as the only words he could muster were vain pleas – whether to her or someone else, anyone else, he didn’t know – through blistered lips and a tongue swelling with coppery taste. She didn’t seem to be listening, in any case, as she knelt down before him and pulled a jagged, short blade from her belt and brought it down in a vicious chop.

He caught her arm as a tree branch catches a boulder. His wrist threatened to snap under the pressure, trembling as she strove to bring the blade down towards his soft throat, which twitched so invitingly.

Out of the corner of his eye, Lenk took a quick, despairing stock. Dreadaeleon lay fallen. Gariath was still far over the edge. Denaos was dead, Asper likely with him and Kataria …

Kataria was standing there, not twenty feet away.

She was scrambling across the deck hurriedly, pausing only to snatch up a fallen bow and a pair of arrows. Her eyes were on the companionway at the opposite end of the ship, ignoring Sheraptus hurling curses and fire at the sky, the Librarian spewing frost back at him.

She didn’t even see Lenk.

‘Kat!’

Not until he screamed, anyway.

She skidded to a halt, looking at him with worrying confusion. She seemed to recognise him in another instant and frowned, either at him or his situation, he wasn’t sure.

‘Kat! Help!’

His plea for aid twisted in his throat and became a shriek of agony as the longface’s blade came crashing down into the tender meat of his shoulder. He fought back against her still, but even as he kept the blade from biting deeper into his flesh, the jagged teeth sawed at him. His ears were filled with the sound of each sinewy strand snapping under it so that he was only scarcely sure he was still screaming.

‘ KATARIA!’

‘ Gone,’ a voice said sorrowfully.

It was right. He saw, in fleeting glimpses, the shict cringing, then turning and fleeing into the confines of the companionway. She didn’t even look behind her. She hadn’t even heard him.

‘ She did,’ a voice hissed angrily. ‘ She betrayed us.’

‘ Betrayed you,’ another said. ‘ Abandoned you.’

‘What now?’ he gasped through blood and tears. ‘What …?’

‘ Fight back.’

‘ Give up.’

With a blade in his shoulder, his companions gone and the very reason he came to this ship of blood vanishing into shadow, one option seemed much more tempting than the other.

He never got to make the choice, however, as Dreadaeleon staggered to his feet and, from there, staggered into the longface. Kneeling as she had been, she toppled over with a grunt of surprise, releasing the blade and focusing her attentions and fists on the boy.