Cloud Castles (39 page)

A hundred yards down slope a new rush of horrors was bursting out of the tormented wood, and we overtook Alison as she crossed its path. She half turned at the sound of hooves, and screamed aloud as I reached down to haul her up behind. The big horse hardly checked at the extra load. ‘Where did you
get
this?’

‘Courtesy of Le Stryge – and my straggling romantic notions. But I think he likes me better—’ I broke off as the horse sprang suddenly, clearing a low boulder and carrying us beyond the main stream of the oncoming horrors. We landed with hardly a jolt, though Alison hung onto every bit of me she could reach. One of the things sprang in our path, a big-headed biped with gaping jaws, bloated genitals and no eyes I could see before I cut it down. ‘And he came when I called, the way my sword does. Maybe the Spear helped, too.’

Another pack of creatures boiled up around us, flowing out of a narrow gully above the shelf. The first one went down under those heavy hooves, the second to Alison as it tried to rake the horse’s haunch; the ones on my side scattered before the sword could reach them, and the horse clattered into the gap. He wafted us along those last few vital strides like the breath of a gale, bounding and unstoppable. At last we burst out of that nightmare undergrowth into the clearing where the wreck of the helicopter still smoked, and the
Dove
rolled and swayed at her moorings. But in the space between, the
Raven
, less securely tethered and with its engines still warm from flight, was already feet off the ground and rising steadily. We galloped forward over the open ground, but even the dangling mooring lines were already out of our reach. Lutz was a poor pilot, though, trying to bank the craft about like one of his private planes. The control surfaces flapped, the rudder went hard over and the great airship
rolled like an elephant in a mud wallow; its stern dipped sharply. Suddenly the stern lines were trailing – and I urged the horse on, stood in my stirrups and grabbed. Ponderously the tail lifted, and I was abruptly twirling around forty feet off the ground, kicking my legs about to get my feet on the rope, thrusting the precious Spear into my belt. Then I was face to face with Alison, grinning wildly and shinning up her rope as if there was no
tomorrow – which, come to think of it, there wasn’t. Unless we got the Graal back in one piece.

And Alison.

I went shinning after her, monkey on a stick fashion. It mightn’t look very graceful, but it kept me too busy to look down. I was afraid I’d impale myself on the Spear, but somehow I never quite did. We were more than half way up when the engines’ drone became uneven. The airship’s roll increased suddenly, swinging Alison out and me back in, then the other way around, never close enough to the gondolas. I thought for a moment they were trying to dislodge us, but if they’d seen us they could just have cut the cables; it was plain idiot piloting.

It almost did the job, all the same. We swung back and forth, slowly but with an utterly sickening motion. I nearly yelled as I saw Alison lose her foothold on the line and begin to slide down, but she got it back almost at once. Then the same thing happened to me, and I wasn’t so lucky; I slid, gathering momentum with the rope burning my fingers, and barely managed to stop by more or less wrapping it round my legs. That fetched me up with a jolt and left me swinging head down over the abyss. I was a lot higher now than I’d realized; we were almost level with the barren summit of the Brocken, and a more terrible sight I didn’t want to imagine.

Among the tentacles of the beast, still lashing in agony, the whole crest of the mountain was unfolding, earth and stones rattling away in slides to reveal a churning organic mass, seething like a mass of maggots, white in liquid brown putrescence. Once, maybe, those had been individuals, bodies with minds. Now they were lumps of cells whose writhings reflected only the wounded will they housed. And even with that thought the mass changed, split. Across its lower edge near the tree line a great gash opened and ran, vomiting a rush of pale liquid
down among the trees. I was sure they’d become part of it, somehow, some kind of sense organ – maybe even, through photosensitivity, a gigantic eye. I was afraid for Mall and Jyp, and that wonderful horse; nowhere looked safe beneath that thing. Then the new trench opened and lifted, the crest changed shape, seemed almost to tilt back. In ice-black silhouette the monster opened its mouth and bellowed its pain and wrath beneath the sickle moon.

Parts of that undulating crest lifted, others sank. The boiling surface heaved itself into the semblance of a face, eyes tight shut, blunt nostrils flared, thin lipless mouth gaping in that deafening shriek of self-pitying agony. Whose face, I couldn’t say; but it was recognizable, individual, human in every line, though the stuff that made it was in constant motion. It was as distinctive as a moulded death mask, and it lived. A memory, maybe, a haunting semblance of somebody the creature had once known; or of what, or who, some part of that awesome malevolent intelligence had been. But whatever it had been, now it was a mask of primal torment, a face from the rack or the flaying or the wires and clamps. It held its form, that monstrous thing, and it wailed, a rending, sobbing howl of infinite pain and implacable anger. The tentacles it had shaped for itself, like a wounded sea-anemone, flailed and beat at the forest as you might at the unbearable pain of an eye injury. And then they lashed up into the skies around, barely below us, and the wind of their passage shook the airship still further. The nose dipped suddenly, the swing changed, and I arrowed in towards the gondola, close enough to risk a hand to grab its mounting struts.

I caught it, let go the rope and clung on with everything but my teeth. I reached out a foot and kicked down the door handle, hooked back the door and swung in, landing with a crash on the metal floor as the door slammed again behind me. The Spear went skidding down to the end of the car, under the spiral ladder leading up into the ship. The next thing I knew I was being jumped on by two bloody figures in guard uniforms, evidently a couple of Lutz’s thugs who’d been left to nurse their wounds. They weren’t in prime condition, but then neither was I, and I couldn’t shift them. We swayed and bounced from side to side of the car, skidding on the flooring, hauling and punching at one another to little effect, while I kept catching glimpses of Alison, white-faced, struggling to swing back in. Finally I
managed to sway us back against the door, and at the cost of being half throttled I freed a hand for the handle. The door rumbled back and hung there, there was a sudden rush of air and the game plan changed. Now it was throw or be thrown, with me clinging onto the frame and hammering at the others as they tried to dislodge me without being tipped out themselves. Suddenly the curly-haired thug on my left let go with a squawk as a pair of legs wrapped themselves around his neck, and flailed at them with his unwounded arm. Next moment he was gone, and my heart froze as a faint cry died away in the dark. The other man tried to take advantage, but I threw him back against the far side of the frame; he rebounded with a knife in his fist. But even as he raised it, Alison swung through the door and her boots caught him right in the stomach and threw him against the far wall with a very decisive crash. He slumped down and lost interest.

I grabbed her, hauled her in and held her, hard. ‘That’s
twice!
Ye gods, girl—’

‘Let go!’ she hissed. ‘They saw something, or heard it maybe. One of them climbed up from the forward car!’

I let her go and ran for the Spear. But as I scooped it up, somebody swung down through the hatch, and his boots almost landed on my back. He’d probably have broken my neck; but I threw myself aside, slipped and fell, and then so did he as he landed, and I ran him through. Another one clanked down and went for Alison, who met him running, sword to sword. I scrambled up, and the next pair of boots retreated hastily up the ladder. I swarmed after them into the dim belly of the airship, but as I stuck my head through the hatch there was a burst of fire around me, and I ducked and dropped back hastily. A furious shout came
aft.

‘Du Sau-Idiot! Kein Schuss mehr! Willst du die ganze Schiff im Brand setzen?’

Do you want to set the whole ship on fire? God, yes, these things were full of hydrogen! I caught the sides of the hatch and catapulted myself up. This was the spacious area for the horses, with rows of mesh-sided stalls and tethers, but it was a strange stuffy place with a dead feel to the air, a skeleton of spindly structural members surrounded by the great gas balloons, stinking of impregnated canvas like an old-fashioned tent, only worse. They killed the drone of the engines, muffled
the clash of the metal catwalks and the singing vibration of the lines of bare control cables flexing overhead, bulged out over them in deep concealing shadows like heavy clouds.

My adversary was backing away, trying to holster a long parabellum revolver, but he dropped it and snatched out his sabre. It was the lieutenant, and he had a nasty gleam in his eye as he weighed me up, battered, tired and bleeding. I put the Spear down carefully; I didn’t fancy any sudden spouts of flame in here. I had the idea it wouldn’t necessarily act as a casual weapon, anyhow. From below there came a hoarse cry and a sliding thud; I couldn’t help looking back, and the lieutenant was on me with one of those vicious slashing cuts to the face. I turned it, hacked at him and drove him back a few steps. Boots clanged on the ladder behind me, and Alison, as I was sure it would be, flew up through the hatch. But she hardly spared us a glance, and ran along the catwalk aft. There was a sudden twang and rattle, and one of the cables overhead vibrated violently. The lieutenant swore hoarsely and tried to drive me back with a furious attack. I stood my ground and parried, then dodged behind the hatch as his sword clanged on the upright cover. With the moment that gained me I risked a look around and saw Alison leaping up to slash at one particular cable among the mass; it had a deep notch in it already.

‘Leave him!’ yelled Alison. ‘Come and help!’

Easier said than done; he closed with me, locking hilt to hilt, and tried to knee me in the groin.
‘Typisch!’
I sneered in his face. ‘No swordsman, just a street goon in a fancy uniform! A knife in a parking lot, that’s your weapon – in the back, most likely!’

He snarled and tried to free his blade, and what developed was more like a back-street rumble than a duel. It spilled us back and forth across the floor in a furious twisting clinch, banging each other’s heads against the structural members, trying to tip each other off the catwalk and in among the webs of netting, while Alison hacked away at the cables. I managed to get my knee up into his stomach, trying to wind him, but he punched his sword hilt into my face and sprang to his feet. He missed his balance and staggered backwards, arms windmilling. But not far enough; he caught himself, sword above head, and aimed a chopping down stroke I wasn’t sure I could stop.

Then his eyes widened, Alison yelled a warning, there was a tremendous singing twang and something
whipped through the air – a length of thin wire cable. It hissed right over my head; but it caught him square across the chest, coiled itself around him with constrictor force and cracked taut. I heard bones break. The airship gave a violent lurch, and the engines droned violently. Something whined loudly, then stopped with a thud. The wire slackened, then went taut again, releasing its mangled captive. The body slid down the tilting floor and fell limply through the forward hatchway; there was a muffled cry.

Alison ducked down beside me. ‘You’re not hurt? That was the starboard rudder cable I cut, it’s locked hard to port now. This ship’s not going anywhere any more—’

She stopped. There was a growing smell of burning. From behind us came the rising hum of a stalled electric motor, and little bursts of crackling. ‘It’s snagged the winch!’ cried Alison, and sprang up, just as something fizzled and a spray of sparks erupted up under the catwalk. In the sudden glare I saw Lutz rising from the forward hatchway, a perfect entrance for the Demon King – monocle gone, white hair flying, florid face suffused with blood. I didn’t need to read the desperation on it; he had a very modern little automatic in his hand. If he wasn’t going anywhere, neither were we.

Desperately I twisted around to shout a warning, but even as I drew the breath I heard the shot. I saw it strike, actually saw the spatter of blood and fragments punched from the base of Alison’s ribs, saw her whirled around by the impact and fall on her side with a soundless gasp of anguish. By some miracle the shot didn’t go into the gas-holders, but another might; and he was swinging round to aim at me. The lieutenant’s pistol lay on the deck, but I didn’t dare fire it. I might still have something to lose. So instead I threw it, and it took Lutz nicely on the chin. He staggered, fell backwards across the hatch and away down the suddenly tilting catwalk, dropping his own gun. They skittered off together into the dark.

I was up and after him. But as I passed the hatch I peered quickly down into the gondola, saw the lieutenant’s mangled body at the foot of the ladder – and something a lot more chilling. The side door was flapping open, as the airship slowly wavered and rocked; and each motion sent the Graal, in its metal cage, sliding that little bit further down
the floor towards it. I was about to leap down after it, when a dry cough stopped me. Lutz, fingering a bleeding chin, stood barely a sword’s length away, his handsome features twisted in a positively impish smile; the tic at the corner of his eye spoiled it.

‘Wenn man nur wusste …’
he began, half laughing. ‘If you only knew just what
things
I have been through, all the nasty, tiresome, dirty, filthy, degrading, plain damn
stupid
things I’ve had to do to get this far …’

‘I can guess. Sucking up to that thing down there. And leading other people into the net.’ We were circling it now, that lashing monster; but we wouldn’t circle forever. We were losing height already, and soon we’d be within reach of those tentacles.