The Art of Hunting (39 page)

The galleon toppled and crashed into the sea. There was a great cracking of timbers, an implosion of foam and debris, and then suddenly the ship was gone, dragged under the boiling waters.

All around them other ships were being destroyed as the great worm’s tentacles reached further into the armada and smashed through vessels and dragged them down into the stinking brine.
Its many mouths lashed out and seized crewmen and lifted them high, only to devour them whole and screaming. Larger it grew, and larger yet with each passing moment, until it seemed to Ianthe that
its tentacles and necks filled an area of ocean much larger than the entire imperial armada.

Warships opened fire. Their shells and cannon shot caused no visible damage but only drew the Uriun’s glutinous arms towards the offending weapons. As the creature continued to destroy the
emperor’s ships and dash them apart upon the dark waters, a queerly pregnant silence fell over the scene, punctuated now only by the occasional distant cry or cannon report. And then even
those sounds finally stopped. Not a man of Howlish’s crew spoke.

The Uriun’s thrashing slowed and then it paused, as if finally sensing the quiet that had descended upon the ocean. And then, slowly, it began to coil itself inwards again. Thousands of
tentacles and necks became hundreds and then scores and when it had shrunk to the size at which it had appeared from the depths, it slipped below the debris-choked waters and waited there several
fathoms down, those odd lights still rippling across its flesh.

Where minutes ago the sea around them had been filled with ships, now nothing remained but a few scraps of wood and cork and sailcloth.

‘The Haurstaf didn’t attack,’ Ianthe said. ‘Even when that thing—’ She stopped suddenly.

Nera was sobbing into her hands.

‘You heard them?’ Ianthe said. ‘What did they say?’

‘They begged us to pull the creature back,’ she replied. ‘They
begged
.’

Paulus grunted. ‘By the time the Uriun got hold of their vessel,’ he said, ‘it was too late. They had moments left. A psychic attack against us would have been futile, vengeful
at best.’

‘You betrayed them,’ Ianthe said. ‘You
used
them.’

He wheeled to face her, his expression hard. ‘This is war, Ianthe. We must use whomever we must.’

‘Including me?’ Ianthe said.

Her question stopped him. He stared at her for a few moments, then blinked and said, ‘Of course not. Ianthe, why would you think that?’

But she had already seen the glimmer of fear in his eyes.

‘We are not landing in the imperial palace,’ Ygrid said.

Siselo scrunched up her face and whined, ‘But it would be amazing.’

‘It would attract considerable attention,’ the dragon replied. ‘My decision is final.’

They had been flying all night through the freezing air. Conquillas’s daughter had wrapped herself in a woollen shawl, lashing it to the dragon’s alloy saddle hoops to form a sort of
crude papoose. The garment had seemed woefully thin to Granger, and so he’d covered her with the remains of his cloak. Siselo had slept soundly enough, although he had endured a bitterly cold
night hunched against the serpent’s spine.

Now he welcomed the warmth of the morning sunlight on his face. He could see the Anean coastline ahead of them and noted with satisfaction that Ygrid had not flown directly for the capital, but
had brought them to a wild and unpopulated stretch of the country. Ahead, the land rose sharply from the sea, the steep slopes grizzled with forest but thinning to ochre grass and scree and bare
rock higher up. Wisps of mist still rested in small bays and inlets along the shore or pooled in the valleys between the hills, but it was lifting fast. Clouds tumbled over scoured rock summits,
ragged and cotton-like with pockets of blue sky showing through the greys and whites.

‘There is a mine up ahead,’ Ygrid said. ‘But the earth was spent many years ago and the road is hardly used now. I will set you down there.’

Siselo looked indignant. ‘Are we supposed to walk all the way to Losoto? How far is it?’

‘Eight miles,’ Ygrid said.

‘Eight miles!’ the girl wailed. ‘But that will take forever. Can’t you drop us closer, Ygrid, please?’

‘That’s fine,’ Granger said. ‘We’ll reach the capital by noon.’

‘But I don’t want to walk all that way,’ Siselo protested. ‘Why do we have to walk when we can fly?’

The dragon ignored her protests. She swooped over the tops of the waves and reached the shore. Her vast green wings rippled in a sudden wash of sunlight as she soared over the treetops, rising
to follow the sweep of the land so close beneath them. Granger glanced back to see vortexes of mist uncoiling in their wake. The highest forest branches swayed. Now the rushing air carried the
scent of blue pine and fresh rain.

Ygrid banked to her right and skirted the top of a forest ridge. The land below them fell away again. She turned left, now moving inland along a narrow valley through which a stream flowed. At
the head of this valley, above the tree line, Granger could see a trail running east through a natural cleft in the hills. The rock walls on either side were peppered with rectangular mine
entrances.

With a series of great thumps of her wings, the dragon landed on a broad scree-strewn slope before the cleft, rearing back as she did so. Then she crouched and allowed her two passengers to
dismount.

Granger was grateful to have solid earth under his feet once more. He let his kitbag slide to the ground and stretched, trying to massage the pain from his neck and shoulders. His power armour
hummed lightly and the engraved whorls on his boots began to alter subtly as they drew power from the very land itself.

Siselo walked a few yards up the slope, then turned to Ygrid. ‘What if I need to call you?’

Ygrid huffed oily fumes. ‘Then call me,’ she said. ‘But never for trivial reasons, child.’

‘How do I know what’s a trivial reason?’

The dragon lowered her head until her snout had almost pressed up against the girl. ‘Call if you are about to die,’ she said. ‘Otherwise, don’t.’

Granger frowned. ‘How can the girl contact you?’

Ygrid’s eyes narrowed on him. ‘There are . . . secret means. You need not trouble yourself with the details.’

‘It’s a whistle,’ Siselo said. ‘My father gave it to me. All the dragons nearby know to come when they hear it.’

Ygrid glowered at the girl and growled, ‘You are too quick to trust people, child.’

Siselo rolled her eyes. Then suddenly she grinned and ran forward and threw her arms around the serpent’s foreleg.‘Thank you for carrying us here, Ygrid.’

Ygrid grumbled and huffed and raised her head, tilted her chin to peer down at the child. It seemed to Granger that the serpent smiled. But then her expression darkened and she swung her equine
face down again until her huge yellow teeth loomed before Granger like an impenetrable gate. ‘If any harm comes to her,’ she said. ‘You will answer to me, Colonel.’

Granger nodded.

Siselo was already making her way up towards the mine road, so he picked up his kitbag, slung it over his shoulder and followed her.

The Uriun accompanied the
St Augustine
and the
Ilena Grey
to Losoto. Ianthe could see the worm down in the brine below the two ships, a great dark mass that
did not so much follow them as they approached the Anean peninsula, but rather grew to keep pace with them. By nightfall its shadow stretched behind them for as far as she could see, and also
extended to port and starboard so that it seemed as if they were riding the crest of some strange undersea wave.

This is but a tiny fragment of it
, Paulus had said.
Any larger and it could easily devour the whole world.
The worm that had grown so large around them now represented seven
years of the full creature’s life. It was, Cyr explained to her, the part of the creature that had grown in the last seven years. Or would grow in the seven years to come. Ianthe wasn’t
quite sure. But she understood it to mean that for every heartbeat during a particular seven-year period, the creature’s head or tentacles revisited this current moment in time – what
Ianthe regarded as the present. The duke called the process recursion.

But you must not fear it
, he said.
For it will always obey its creator’s will.

The sight of the monster had so overwhelmed Ianthe that she had taken to watching their progress from the
St Augustine
’s bow, where the winds filled her lungs with clean cold air
from the north. And so she was there the next morning when the lookout sighted land, gazing out at the grey horizon and warming her hands around a mug of tea.

Paulus must have heard the cry too, for he joined her shortly afterwards. He was clutching the fourth of Fiorel’s ichusae, the bottle filled with amber gas. He rested a hand upon her
shoulder, but Ianthe thought the gesture seemed forced. There was a nervous tension between them that she sought to alleviate.

‘Do you suppose it gets cleverer each time?’ she asked him. ‘The worm, I mean.’

‘Cleverer?’ he said. ‘In what sense?’

‘When a future head revisits the past,’ she said. ‘It will have two minds.’

‘Being in possession of two minds does not grant a creature more intelligence,’ he said, ‘particularly when they are both the same mind at different times in that
creature’s life. It would be wise beyond imagining, however, if Fiorel had given it the capacity to acquire wisdom.’

‘It can’t acquire wisdom?’

‘A pack of dogs can’t learn to read any better than an individual dog.’

For the rest of the morning they sailed on with the Uriun beneath them and by noon they could make out a great white city on the shore of the Sea of Lights. Losoto was larger than any city
Ianthe had seen before, although most of it appeared to be flooded. Acres of partially submerged buildings sat in shallow water. Most were mere shells, roofless and window-less, with their
foundations steeped in brine and their walls crusted with brown ichusae crystals. The streets between them had become canals. East of this there loomed a massive industrial building, the city
harbour, and an ugly stone fort situated atop a rocky promontory. The harbour was empty of ships. Not even Losoto’s fishermen had elected to stay.

As they drew nearer, Ianthe could see people gathering on the waterfront – ordinary citizens of Losoto. And she could also sense them in the busy streets and houses behind, thousands of
them, tens of thousands. Evidently Emperor Hu had not ordered an evacuation.

‘Do you see any Haurstaf?’ Paulus said.

She didn’t answer.

‘Ianthe?’

‘No, I don’t see any.’

‘They’ve gone,’ said a voice from behind.

Ianthe turned to find the slender blonde figure of Nera standing there, heartbreakingly pretty, her pale hands clasped at her chest. The psychic wore a patterned woollen shawl around her
shoulders.

‘They fled north,’ she added. Then she looked up at Paulus. ‘Emperor Hu has taken them with him. He abandoned the city after you destroyed his navy.’

Paulus frowned. ‘Hu isn’t there?’

Nera shook her head.

‘Well, where the hell is he?’

‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘They won’t say.’ She hesitated a moment. ‘The Imperial Army has left with him. The whole city is undefended.’

Ianthe rested her hand on Paulus’s arm. ‘Then there’s no need to attack,’ she said. ‘Can you send the Uriun back to where it came from?’

He made no reply.

‘Paulus?’

He shook his head. ‘Fiorel gave us the worm for a reason.’

‘To destroy Hu’s navy.’

‘To be a symbol of Unmer power.’

She grabbed his arm. ‘Call it off. Please.’

‘It is too late.’

He pointed to the shore a hundred yards ahead of them, where the Uriun’s tentacles reached the outskirts of Losoto. A swarming mass of them began to crawl through that maze of broken and
flooded buildings in search of food, pulsing with luminescence. Ianthe heard a single gunshot from the west, followed by the sound of a man screaming. And then, before her, the roofless husks of
buildings began to collapse under the weight of the creature’s countless pushing limbs. Two houses and then four and eight and soon scores of walls were falling to dust and rubble.

Those curious citizens who had gathered on the waterfront now started to panic. Hundreds of them turned and ran from the oncoming monster; they filled the streets like a sudden outrushing of
water. Many fell under the pressure of those behind and were trampled. Others screamed, frantically kicking and fighting each other to escape. And as the tide of people poured up the market streets
that rose behind the shore, the Uriun reached the stragglers.

Ianthe could only look on in horror as hundreds of the creature’s mouths lashed out and struck at men, women and children. It seemed to blur, its limbs continually shifting between the
real and the incorporeal. It crushed the fleeing people and pinned them to the cobbles by the hundreds, shivering as it fed. Other tentacles broke through doors and shattered windows and slithered
inside the shorefront buildings.

‘Can’t you stop it?’ she cried.

Paulus watched with awe and did not reply.

Now the houses on the land were starting to fall as the Uriun pushed further ashore, a great wave of flesh that flowed over the harbour wall and the promenade and the seafront buildings. The
great worm stretched all along the coast, extending further even than the limits of the city. Buildings crumbled under its weight. The streets became slippery with blood. And still it crawled
inland, turning block after block to rubble.

Duke Cyr came running up to them. ‘That’s enough,’ he said. ‘Open the fourth bottle.’

‘Where have you been?’

‘End it now, Paulus.’

Paulus hesitated a moment. Then he pulled out the stopper from the last ichusae and held the bottle high. From its mouth poured a stream of amber smoke that soon engulfed the three of them. He
threw the bottle into the sea. The brine around them began to bubble and steam, but the mist was building so rapidly they could no longer see ten yards from where they stood upon the
St
Augustine
’s deck. A rank smell filled the air, like rotten vegetation.