Or perhaps Scaeva simply wanted Lord Cassius more than Mia could imagine.
The girl clung to the wagon’s belly like a leech. But she was safely out of sight for the time being, and so she threw aside her shadowcloak, concentrating only on keeping her grip. She was bounced and jolted, hammered and slammed, her back and arse screaming protest all the while. Dust caked her tongue, gummed up her eyes, caked the dried blood in her hair. She almost slipped a half-dozen times, closing her eyes and praying for strength. The ride seemed to go on forever.
A good five or six hours from the Mountain, the foothills began to even out, and the ride became a little less like torture. The sand grew soft and the drivers laid on the whips. Camels broke into a full gallop, the wagons rushing along behind them, fast as they could go.
Let’s see about that …
Though only Saan hung in the sky, the light was near blinding compared to the Mountain’s belly, and Mia’s power felt thin and feeble. But still, she reached out to the gloom on the wagon’s underside, pulled it about her shoulders again, and held it tight. Calling loud as she could to the shadows, and hoping something else might answer.
“… i believe you asked me to remind you never to call the dark in this desert again …”
“I believe it’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind.”
Mister Kindly tried to purr, voice rippling with amusement.
“… i believe you’re right …”
It was another few minutes before she heard a cry of alarm from the wagon ahead. Shuffling footsteps on the planks above, Luminatii calling.
“Claudius, do you see that?”
“What is it?”
“I see another! Two of them!”
“No, three!”
Beneath the shuddering creak of the timber, the clatter of the wheels, the shouts from above, Mia fancied she heard a distant rumble. A cry from the wagon train in front.
“Sand kraken!”
The scrawny, blood-soaked girl clung to her perch and smiled. She didn’t bother looking—even if she weren’t near-blind beneath her cloak, between the dust from the wheels and the multitude of riders, she wouldn’t have a chance of seeing them yet. But listening close, she could hear them, just as she’d heard them the turn she fought Naev on these same sands. The churn of massive bodies diving through the desert deeps. The faint echoes of distant, thunderous roars.
Big ones.
Coming right at them.
Feeling her way, Mia crawled along the wagon’s belly, up to the Y-shaped timbers that hitched her wagon to the wagon in front. The drivers were swinging the whips hard now, desperate to outrun the behemoths on their tail. Mia knew Ashlinn would be familiar with the horrors of the Whisperwastes and how to keep them at bay, and yes, there it came—the awful rhythm of ironsong. Luminatii began beating on those bloody pipes for all they were worth, Mia wincing at the racket just above her head. She’d no idea if the noise actually had any effect on the bigger kraken, but the offending musician wasn’t taking chances. The cacophony was earsplitting, and Mia was already in a temper. As if to echo her mood, she heard another awful, rumbling bellow.
Closer now.
“… you are making them very angry …”
Mia spat, so much dust in her mouth she could barely speak.
“I’ll make it up to them.”
“… how, pray tell …?”
A white smile gleamed in a dirty, blood-caked face.
“Fix them dinner.”
Jarred and juddered as the wagons bounced through the sands, she crawled out from the axel and onto the hitch bar. Through the darkness over her eyes, she could make out dim shapes in the swirling dust. Perhaps fifteen Luminatii riding around the trains. Maybe twenty soldiers in each wagon, all standing and staring aft. She could hear rumbling in the earth, drawing ever closer.
“Another one!” came the shout.
“West! West!”
“Aa’s Light, look at the size of it!”
Mia grinned to herself, pawing the grit from her eyes. She’d hoped this deep in the desert, calling the Dark might bring a few of the bigger kraken out to play. But from the sound of it, she’d hooked a couple of monsters.
At the sight of their fourth uninvited guest, the Luminatii on ironsong duty began banging on his pipes like a privy door in the wind. Mia cursed again, covered her ears. The racket was worse than annoying, it was bloody painful.
Let’s ring the midmeal bell instead.
She hopped across to the second wagon’s hitch, trying to figure out exactly how the wagons were connected. Leaning close and squinting hard, she made out a metal bar, hooked through a round eyelet, lashed together with thick rope. Quick smart, Mia drew a knife from her boot and began sawing away, occasionally glancing up to the Luminatii in the wagons above.
As one might expect, the men only had eyes for the tentacled monstrosities intent on devouring their favorite faces; not a man noticed the shivering blur perched on the hitch bar below. The ropes were tough, but through feel and elbow grease, Mia sawed them loose, leaving only the hook and eyelet linking the wagons together.
One good jolt …
She slipped under the bar and dragged herself along the middle wagon’s belly. The train struck a rock in the sand, bouncing hard, and she held her breath, waiting for the coupling to burst loose. But both the Luminatii’s luck and the hook managed to hold, and, spitting a mouthful of red dirt, Mia crawled on. She could see next to nothing, but the rumbling was close now. Over the thunder of the wheels, hooves, and ironsong, she heard a heavy twang, realizing the Luminatii were firing at the closest kraken with the crossbows on the wagon’s flanks. Teeth gritted, nails clawing the wood, she crawled up to the coupling between the fore and middle wagons. And sawing away with her blade, she hacked the tethers loose. The only things holding the train together now were luck and a few pieces of worn metal.
And luck always runs out.
The wagons veered west, headed for rockier ground where the kraken would have a hard time following. Mia clung on for grim life to the foremost wagon’s hitch as the ground grew rougher, the wheels crunching, axels grinding as the trains bounced over divots and potholes and clumps of stone. They crested a small hill, camels frothing under the driver’s whips. The train plunged down, hit a deep trough on the other side. Couplings groaned. Soldiers cursed. And in a flurry of dust and gravel and shrieking iron, the rearmost wagon broke free.
Timbers snapping, the hitch bar ploughed into the ground and the wagon flipped upright, balancing on its snout for a few torturous seconds before rolling end over end. The twenty-odd men inside were flung about like toys, screaming and shouting and crashing atop one another, thrown through the tearing canvas or crushed beneath tumbling supply crates. The wagon flipped end over end, skidding to a halt on its roof, a broken, splintered ruin.
Cries of alarm rose from the middle wagon. Screams of horror as something huge rose up out of the sand near the wreck and set to work, maw yawning wide, tentacles flailing. Men and camels running or dying, red sand drenched redder still, their comrades in the fleeing train helpless but to stare and pray. But as ill fortune would have it, one of the Luminatii had the common sense to wonder how the rear wagon had broken loose, leaned out over the tray and saw the couplings between fore-and mid-wagons had been sawn away. He frowned, sure it must be a trick of the light, squinting at the strange … blur that seemed to be perched atop the hitch. Wondering what he was looking at for the few brief seconds it took that blur to rise up, lean in close, and push a gravebone stiletto right into his eye.