The Art of Hunting (24 page)

The other mercenary threw his cannon down. ‘I want no part of this,’ he said. ‘Let me leave.’

Granger was about to order his sorcerous unit to stand down when the one who’d taken the shell in the breastplate leaped forward and drove his sword deep into the neck of the man
who’d fired at it. The mercenary let out a terrible scream and collapsed in a pool of his own blood, while his attacker jerked its sword free and turned to the other mercenary.

‘Enough!’ Granger roared.

The replicate ignored him. It swung its copy of Granger’s blade in a vicious sideways arc, opening the throat of the remaining mercenary. That man seized his neck, but could not stem the
jetting blood. He dropped to his knees, gurgling and hissing, then toppled forward.

‘Stop!’ Granger cried. He tried to drop the blade, but his hand would not release its grip of the cursed thing. Instead, he felt his arm stir, as – against his will – he
found himself raising the weapon. He stared in horror at the replicate.
It
was making these motions.
It
was controlling the sword. And Granger was now compelled to copy it. He
found himself turning to face Fuller, who stood there white-faced and wide-eyed with terror.

‘Run,’ Granger managed to say. ‘Go now.’

He gasped, staggered forward, sword out-thrust, towards the old man. He could not stop himself. Again he tried to cast the weapon down. His hand remained clenched. He heard Fuller scream. And
suddenly Granger realized that he had plunged the steel deep into the other man’s guts. Blood was already pulsing out of the wound. Fuller grabbed uselessly at Granger’s blade with his
scrawny hands, slicing the skin of his fingers. Some compulsion forced Granger forwards, driving the sword in up to the hilt. He roared, and with his power armour now crackling savagely, he lifted
Fuller clear off the deck. The man had no weight at all, or else Granger now possessed inhuman strength. He merely swung the sword and cast the old man out over the side of the boat.

Fuller splashed into the water ten yards beyond the bulwark.

Granger found himself turning around again, only to discover that he was now face to face with his replicates. All eight of them stood around him and their dead eyes gazed into his own for a
long time. And it seemed to Granger that he saw in those eyes a hint of savage satisfaction.

One of them strode forward suddenly and stopped, its ghoulish face mere inches from Granger’s own. It reached over and clamped its free hand over Granger’s sword hand, squeezing his
fingers tighter around the weapon’s grip.

The world gave a sudden
shudder
.

A great clattering noise rose in Granger’s ears, and he became aware of replicates all around him. Not eight, but many, many more. His addled mind sensed them standing on the seabed around
the assault craft, hundreds of them down there under the brine, thousands perhaps. And more were appearing with every heartbeat. Granger felt his mind being pulled in all directions. Their
perceptions, the perceptions of an army, crowded into him until it was too much to bear.

He cried out in pain and terror. He was losing control.

Control.

He had to gain control over this sorcery.

His eyes snapped open. The replicate was an inch from his face, its teeth bared in a hideous leer, as it squeezed Granger’s hand with brutal force. It opened its mouth and whispered,
‘The sword is limitless. You can be limitless. Do not fight us.’

Granger butted it in the face, smashing its nose.

The blow broke whatever thrall the replicate had over him, for it released his hand and staggered backwards. Granger felt a sudden pressure lift from his mind. He raised the sword as if to bring
it swooping down across the neck of the replicate, and the hellish thing moved to parry with its own sword. He couldn’t stop it from acting independently, but now at least it couldn’t
control him.

The two swords met with a noise like a boom of thunder.

‘
My
mind,’ he hissed through his teeth. ‘Mine!’

He released the sword.

As it fell from his hand and clattered to the deck at his feet, all eight of his copies vanished. The boat swayed suddenly and then settled, moved by the abrupt difference in weight.

Granger’s sword arm felt as if it was on fire. Intense pain crept into his skull from the top of his spine. His chest was tight, suddenly constricted, and his thoughts reeled in a fog of
pain and confusion. He could no longer count on being able to control his replicates. They were starting to exert control over him.

He stared at the sword lying in a pool of blood between the two mercenaries’ corpses. ‘Why me?’ he yelled at it. ‘Why don’t you choose someone else?’

The blade lay there, as innocent-looking as any ordinary weapon.

But Granger could never use the damned thing again. It was too dangerous, already too entrenched in his mind. He could no longer trust his replicates. He let out a deep and ragged breath and
wiped sweat-lank hair from his brow. Without his armour to support him, he might have collapsed.

He found a torn oilcloth tarpaulin in a bilge compartment and used it to pick up the sword by the back of its blade, being careful not to touch the hilt. He carried it to the side of the boat
and held it over the brine.

All he had to do was open his fingers and let it go.

His hands trembled, but he could not release his grip.

He focused, fighting the sword with every last scrap of his will.
Just open my fingers
.
Open, damn it, open!

Finally he gasped and staggered back. As soon as he was clear of the side, the sword slipped from his grip and clattered to the floor of the boat. It lay there, covered in blood, mute, mocking
him.

‘You won’t win,’ he said. ‘You hear?’

Even to his own ears his words lacked conviction.

But he gathered what was left of his resolve and, driven by a kind of numb desperation, set about preparing to leave. After he had heaved the mercenaries’ bodies over the side, he drew up
buckets of brine and spent the next ten minutes washing the deck down. Then he wrapped the sword in a scrap of cloth and stowed it in his kitbag. When he had removed all trace of violence, he
ducked into the wheelhouse to inspect the controls.

At first glance the boat seemed old and poorly maintained. Panels had been removed from underneath the wheel console, exposing a tangle of badly worn hydraulic tubes wrapped in tape. The engine
crank handle felt loose and gritty when he turned it, but the engine itself kicked into life on the second attempt and sounded surprisingly smooth. The smoke streaming from the pipes behind the
wheelhouse ran grey for a few moments, then turned colourless. There was very little vibration from the props, suggesting good alignment, and perhaps even new bearings. He turned the vessel slowly,
listening for any potential problems, but she thrummed as if she was eager to be pushed hard. She would do fine, he decided, provided he could purchase enough fuel for the three-day trip to Doma.
The gauge indicated an eighth of a tank, which would only see him fifty leagues or so. And that wasn’t enough. He set out to find the sea gypsy village Fuller had talked about.

As the light faded, he pointed the boat’s bow at the centre of the bay and pushed the throttle lever forwards. She leaped away eagerly in response, churning the brine to green froth in her
wake.

Maskelyne woke with a start. He was in his cabin and it was late morning. His pillow and sheets were drenched in sweat.

He sat up and clamped a hand against his wet brow and shuddered. His fingers trembled as he poured himself a drink of water from the decanter on the bunkside table. His body felt weak, as if his
dreams had taken a very real and physical toll on him.

What had he been dreaming of?

A man without a face.

He could not now recall. And yet some trace of his nightmare still remained. An unshakeable feeling that something bad was going to happen.

To whom? To me?

He got out of bed and used the head and then washed quickly before going above deck.

The sun shone down from a cloudless blue sky and the sea lay flat around them. The
Lamp
’s engines sounded healthy again and twin tails of black smoke from her funnels left a gauzy
stain far across the north. It looked as if they had made good progress overnight. Maskelyne found Mellor in the bow with Hayn the navigator. The pair were bent over charts spread across a hatch
housing. They appeared to be in disagreement, for Hayn was shaking his head and indicating insistently towards the south-west.

‘Problems?’ Maskelyne asked.

Mellor looked up. ‘The crystal is leading us towards the Gehnal conflux. Hayn wants to go around it.’

‘But you disagree?’

‘What if Gehnal itself is our destination?’

Maskelyne thought about this. ‘Do you have any reason to believe that to be the case?’

The first officer shrugged. ‘If I were going to hide something where nobody would find it . . .’

Maskelyne nodded. ‘You’d put it where nobody dared to go.’

‘It’s just a hunch, but . . .’

‘I’m inclined to agree with you, Mr Mellor.’

‘Captain,’ Hayn said. ‘I propose we head a point west or south-west to confirm the destination. If the device still points to Gehnal, then we’ll know for sure. Otherwise,
it gives us the opportunity to skirt that conflux.’

Maskelyne shook his head. ‘That would cost us a day or more,’ he said. ‘I’m with Mellor on this. Have the helmsman keep us on our current course.’

The young man gave a quick salute. ‘Very good, sir.’

They steamed due south for the rest of the day in glorious sunshine. The dark brown Mare Lux brine surged past the hull. Every so often Maskelyne spotted jellyfish pulsing near its surface and
once a shoal of bright flying fish shattered free of the waves to skim away from some unseen foe. He knew there were giants in the deep out here, whales and sharks and the great squid, but he
glimpsed no such monsters today. Maskelyne remained above deck until the heat in his forehead and the backs of his hands told him he’d suffered too much sun, whereupon he retired to his cabin
to write his journal.

A knocking on the door roused him shortly before dusk. He had fallen asleep with his head resting on the pages of his journal. If any dreams had haunted his sleep, he had no recollection of
them. He opened the cabin door to find one of the deckhands with his fist raised to knock again. The young man looked agitated.

‘First Officer Mellor is asking for you, Captain,’ he said. ‘There’s something unusual on the horizon.’

‘Unusual in what way?’

The deckhand fidgeted. ‘You’d best see for yourself, sir. Half the men think it’s a mirage.’

Maskelyne followed him above decks. The sun was slinking towards the horizon and illuminated high clouds in nacreous and quicksilver hues so that the whole sky seemed ablaze with strange cosmic
gases. He found most of the crew gathered at the
Lamp
’s bow, staring south. He pushed through to see what had so thoroughly ensnared their attention.

It appeared to be a floating city: a great profusion of crystal palaces and temples resting on the southern horizon. The long evening light shone through these structures and caused them to
shine like vast, glorious lanterns. To Maskelyne the effect did indeed seem mirage-like, febrile. But also unsettling.

Something about this struck a chord. Had he dreamed of this place?

He could not remember.

With great shame Maskelyne realized that a part of him wanted to turn the
Lamp
away right now, and flee whatever horrors awaited him in those bright palaces. But his rational mind
interceded. He refused to fear the unknown. Indeed, as a scientist, his job was to seek it out, explore it, shine his light into its darkest corners. For it was the need to understand what lurked
in those dark corners that drove him. And it drove him now.

As the
Lamp
drew nearer to this floating conflagration, he realized that he wasn’t looking at a city at all. Those bright translucent domes were not made of glass. They were
organic, gas-filled membranes.

‘Mr Mellor,’ he said. ‘How long would you say it takes a samal to grow its victim into an island that large?’

Mellor frowned at him for a moment before realization struck. He turned quickly back to the island, his eyes widening with horror. The rest of the assembled men cursed, gasped or groaned.
Finally Mellor shook his head. ‘That’s the largest I’ve ever seen,’ he said. ‘It must be hundreds of years old, thousands even.’

‘And the crystal points directly at it?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Maskelyne couldn’t take his eyes off it. ‘An island that large, here in the Gehnal conflux, would have been noticed by shipping long before now.’

Mellor nodded.

‘But then samal do drift, I suppose,’ he added. He left the rest of his thoughts unspoken to avoid unsettling the men. Nothing of that size had ever been recorded in the Sea of
Lights or its confluxes, and it concerned him that this one should appear now, barely ten days’ sail from Scythe Island. He feared that if they charted its progress they would discover that
it had been moving towards his home. ‘Stop the engines,’ he said. ‘I want my ship to maintain this distance, as minimum, at all times.’

‘You mean to observe it?’

‘I mean to land on it,’ Maskelyne said. ‘I’ll take one of the tenders in tomorrow morning, but we’ll keep the
Lamp
well clear. How many diving suits do we
have?’

‘Three, sir,’ Mellor replied.

‘Then I require two volunteers to accompany me onto the island at first light tomorrow.’

A few of the crew exchanged fearful glances among themselves, but not a man of them protested or complained. Indeed several approached Mellor to volunteer their services then and there.

Maskelyne ordered his men to keep constant watch throughout the night and to maintain a distance of one league. At all costs. The samal in the water below would be vast, and there was no telling
how far its tentacles could reach or in which direction the ocean currents might carry it. They made preparations for the expedition tomorrow, checking the seals on all three diving suits. When
that was done, the metaphysicist sat on a deckchair upon the wheelhouse roof and in the last of the fading light gazed across at that vast and gaseous mass. It covered three or four acres and
supported mature trees among the swathes of distended flesh and mutated veins. The great inflated membranes he had first assumed to be temples had once been skin or other organic surfaces, now
regrown to suit the needs of the parasite in the depths below. He fancied he saw movement in the undergrowth, but that could only have been his imagination, for the samal would consume any
unprotected traveller that set foot upon its domain.