“You better take it,” Clay said, passing the weapon to Kriz. “Got more practice.”
Loriabeth retrieved the packs and the rest of the weapons before clambering out to join them on the hull. Clay looked around, seeing they were in some kind of channel perhaps a half-mile wide fringed by dense drifts of icebergs on either side.
“Cuz!” Loriabeth said, rifle trained on the fast-approaching spine. Clay moved to her side, reaching into his pack for a fresh carbine magazine.
“Sh . . .” Sigoral slurred, causing the gondola to rock as he attempted to rise.
“Settle down, Lieutenant,” Clay said, reaching out to calm him.
“Shhip!” Sigoral said, glaring at him with his one good eye and pointing. Clay followed his outstretched arm, at first unable to make out anything of interest amongst the backdrop of icebergs which seemed like just a jumble of angular shadows. Then he saw it, the long dark hull and tall masts of a sailing ship. Not just a ship, he realised, his eyes picking out the sight of people lining the rail. He raised his carbine and trained the optical sight on the ship’s rail, almost immediately alighting on the bearded, gaunt but still-familiar face of Captain Hilemore and, standing at his side, Uncle Braddon. They were waving with furious energy, breath steaming as they called out desperate warnings.
“Seer damn me to the Travail if that ain’t something to see,” Clay said, lowering the carbine.
“People you know?” Kriz asked.
“Family,” he said. But too far away to be any help. He returned his gaze to the front of the gondola, keen to keep an eye on Last Look Jack, but found the huge spine had vanished.
“Went under a coupla seconds ago,” Loriabeth reported, tracking the muzzle of her rifle across the water. “Gone too deep to make out.”
Clay spent a fruitless few moments scanning the water, a hard, chilly certainty gripping his guts. “Is there any way to move this . . .” he began just before the sea exploded.
There was a moment of weightlessness, as if he were floating in a rain-storm, then he realised they had been cast into the air. Through the cascading water he saw sunlight glitter on blue scales before it caught a gleam from something large and yellow, something shot through with red veins surrounding a black slit. Eye to eye with Last Look Jack, he thought, doubting he would ever get to tell the story.
His limbs flailed as he fell, slamming into the water with enough force to dislodge the carbine from his grip. Although the sea had been heated sufficiently to melt the ice, it was still shockingly cold, birthing an instant flare of pain in his chest and head that threatened to drag him into unconsciousness. He could see his companions struggling in the water near by whilst the gondola sank a short ways off. The craft raised itself up on one end before sinking from view, leaving a diminishing patch of foaming water to mark its passing.
The huge spine circled the four of them at an almost leisurely pace for a few seconds then, as if sensing the cold was about to rob him of his prize, the Blue reared up out of the ocean. It rose to at least twenty feet above the surface, though most of its bulk remained hidden from view. Jack began to open his jaws then jerked as something impacted on his skull, producing a bright plume of blood. The monster turned towards the ship, a rattling growl of irritation issuing from his throat. Clay could see a tall, familiar figure in the Crow’s Nest, raising his longrifle for another shot. Jack, however, didn’t betray any particular concern as he once again lowered his massive head towards his prey, jaws opening wide and the haze of new-born fire rising from his gullet.
If there was ever the right time, Clay thought, his hand going to the vials around his neck. Thumbing the stopper from the vial of Blue heart-blood, he raised it to his lips and drank.
CHAPTER 52
Sirus
Veilmist calculated the total death toll resulting from the capture of Feros as amounting to just over forty-five thousand people, plus eight hundred drakes, mostly Reds and Greens. Despite predictions, fighting had been fiercest and most costly north of the port where Morradin’s forces met with well-organised, often savage resistance. The Protectorate Commander had taken the ruthless, if undeniably correct, decision not to reinforce the city itself following the assault on the harbour. Instead he consolidated his remaining forces atop the surrounding hills from where his artillery could pound the attackers with relative impunity, much to Morradin’s delight. “Always more satisfying to defeat a commander who knows his business,” he stated with uncharacteristic cheerfulness the morning after the initial assault. “No sport in it otherwise.”
It required a complex assault by air and land over the course of two days to take the hills, a victory that yielded barely three hundred prisoners, and most of those wounded. Even then the fighting wasn’t over.
The Carvenport refugees used the time purchased by the Protectorate’s stand to construct a redoubt amidst their cluster of hovels. Commanded by a man named Cralmoor, and assisted by a small coterie of Blood-blessed, the makeshift fort managed to fight off a dozen assaults before being overrun by a massed charge of Greens. In the aftermath it became clear that this had been a delaying action designed to allow the refugees’ children to escape. A rag-tag fleet of fishing-boats and small steamers had set sail from a fishing-port a few miles up the coast whilst the battle raged. The White seemed indifferent to the escape of so many and the Blues were not sent in pursuit. Children were no use as soldiers after all.
More useful were the prisoners taken at the headquarters of the Ironship Syndicate, yielding numerous senior managers with heads full of valuable intelligence and two members of the Board itself. Of the three other Ironship Board members known to be in Feros during the attack, two had died in the fighting and the third committed suicide rather than face capture. He had been a large bearded man who somehow contrived to keep his pipe in his mouth even after blowing his brains out with a revolver.