“Don’t look like no iron I ever saw.”
His cousin stepped closer to one of the objects, a shiny black device about two feet long. It had a grip and trigger like the others, and a narrow cylinder fixed to its upper side. Loriabeth touched a tentative hand to the object before taking a firmer hold and lifting it clear of the rack. “Got a barrel, right enough,” she said, turning the object over in her hands. “Small bore, though. And it don’t weigh much for a weapon.” She raised the device to her shoulder, a smile coming to her lips as her eye came level with the cylinder. “A spy-glass,” she said, a certain anticipatory delight colouring her voice. “Could shoot out a pigeon’s eyes with this.”
“Not a speck of rust,” Clay saw, running a hand over an identical weapon.
“Preserved by the vacuum,” Sigoral said from the base of the ladder. “These could have been stored down here for a very long time.”
Kriz moved deeper into the chamber and returned carrying a much larger device. It was longer than the one in Loriabeth’s hands and had a barrel with a bore larger than any shotgun Clay had seen. Kriz paused to retrieve a drum-shaped object from a near by rack and slotted it into the weapon’s underside with a loud clack. That done, she returned to the ladder and began to climb up.
“At least show us how this works,” Loriabeth called after her, patting the weapon she held. Kriz failed to respond and Clay quickly followed her up the ladder, Sigoral and Loriabeth close behind.
He found Kriz standing close to the edge of the island’s crest, the weapon raised with its stock at her shoulder. On either side of the road the lake continued to roil as the massed Blues thrashed their long bodies, making their positions easy to mark despite the gloom.
Kriz began firing almost immediately, the weapon making a percussive popping sound with every shot, six in all loosed off in quick succession. Clay saw six bright waterspouts rise up amongst the Blues. There was a one-second delay then the water beneath the surface blossomed into a bright shade of white before erupting upwards in a series of explosions. Clay could see flashes of red amid the rising water, and the sight of one Blue cut in half by the force of the blasts. The beast’s two constituent parts trailed blood as they cart-wheeled amidst the spume before plummeting down to land on the road with a wet crunch.
As the lake becalmed into dark unbroken placidity Kriz lowered the weapon and favoured Clay with one of the few smiles he had seen on her face. “Not . . . hungry now,” she said.
? ? ?
The weapon’s stock gave a faint pulse against Clay’s shoulder as he pulled the trigger, a ten-foot-high geyser of water erupting in the centre of the black circle visible through the spy-glass.
“Over four hundred yards,” Sigoral said, eyebrows raised as he looked at the weapon in his own hands. “Barely any recoil, or smoke.”
Clay saw that he was right, lowering the weapon to see a thin tendril of greyish vapour escaping the barrel. They had remained on the island until the lights came again, catching a few hours’ fitful sleep. Come the dawn Kriz began to educate them in the weapons from the armoury. Loriabeth, as might be expected, took to the task immediately, quickly learning how to load one of the carbine-like guns with a surprisingly small box that slotted into its underside. Clay watched her fire off fifty rounds before the box emptied. The weapon was apparently capable of reloading its chamber without the need for cocking or levers. Also, unlike any other repeating fire-arm he had seen, it ejected no cartridges. When removed the box was empty.
“Ever see the like?” he asked Sigoral.
“There were persistent rumours of a self-loading rifle being developed in the Emperor’s workshops,” the marine replied. “But I doubt it could compare to this.” He smoothed a hand along the weapon’s stock. “This . . . is a thing beyond our time, Mr. Torcreek.”
A cacophonous burst of gunfire came from the right where Kriz was acquainting Loriabeth with a different device. It was much larger than the carbine-like weapons, bearing a vague resemblance to a longrifle in the dimensions of its barrel and stock. The similarity ended there, however, for it quickly became apparent this weapon could outrange a longrifle by a considerable margin, and fire a great many more bullets. It also produced more smoke than the carbines and the calibre of its barrel was at least twice the size. It was loaded via a drum that contained at least two hundred rounds. But its most salient feature was the fact that it would fire continuously at one pull of the trigger, emptying its copious magazine in a concentrated stream lasting all of ten seconds.
“Well, how about that,” Loriabeth said, a broad grin on her face as she lowered the weapon, smoke leaking from the barrel. “Could take me a whole pack of Greens with this.”
In addition to the weapons the armoury also yielded an additional pack of ingenious design, resembling a rolled blanket in the way it curved across Kriz’s back. It appeared to have been fashioned from the same material as her belt, as were the set of clothes it contained which Kriz had been quick to swap for her borrowed garb. The clothing consisted of a loose-fitting, all-in-one garment that covered her from shoulders to knees. A deep fold at the neck could be formed into a cowl to cover her head. The pack also contained a pair of shoes which at first appeared little more than flimsy slippers, but subsequently proved impervious to rigours of the road.
“Clean?” Kriz asked after a long day’s march, brows furrowed in response to Loriabeth’s query.
“Yeah, how do I clean it?” She hefted the large weapon Kriz had given her, miming running a cloth over it. “All guns need cleaning or they’ll foul up.”
This seemed only to baffle Kriz more and she replied with a shrug.
“Perhaps it requires no cleaning,” Sigoral said. Although clearly impressed by the weapons, the Corvantine’s unease was obvious. The cause wasn’t hard to divine, for Clay shared much the same sentiment. Beyond our time . . . They were like the Spoiled now, primitives struggling to understand seemingly magical novelties. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling.
“We need to trance again,” he told Kriz, miming the motion of injecting Blue into his arm. She drew back a little at the hard insistence in his voice, but once again replied with a shake of her head.
“It appears she has secrets to keep,” Sigoral observed, eyeing Kriz carefully. “What exactly she’s doing down here, for instance. And where exactly we’re going.”
“She’s in the same fix we are,” Loriabeth said. “She needs to get out. Right, hon?” She turned to Kriz, raising her voice and pointing a finger at the featureless sky above. “You got a way out, right?”