Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale (40 page)

Everyone stood silent, waiting for
something to kick off. But ultimately nothing happened except for
the smell of the Skinkk blood cooking Gargaron’s skin.

8

Hawkmoth strode forward, his staff
held before him as if he were marching into battle. ‘Attack me!’ he
commanded Gargaron. ‘Strike me with all your strength!’

Gargaron frowned. ‘I might knock
you into your next life should I do that.’

‘
Fear not, giant. Rashel and
Lancsh will take full brunt.’

‘
I do not see the
point.’

‘
Drenvel’s Bane might be tempted
from sleep if it could savour full scale battle.’ Hawkmoth gripped
his staff with two hands, bracing his feet in the dirt. ‘Now strike
me!’

Gargaron were reluctant. ‘I hardly
think striking an old sorcerer constitutes full scale
battle.’

Hawkmoth laughed. ‘Try me then,
puny giant!’

Gargaron sighed. Then he wound
back his hammer hilt and lunged at the sorcerer.

Hawkmoth showed all the surprise
of someone not expecting a giant to move at such blinding speed. A
sunflare later, he were catapulted away into a mess of
shrubs.

Gargaron’s first
thought were, ‘
Oh Thronir! I’ve killed
him.
’ And he dashed after
him.

Hawkmoth lay there tangled, dazed,
peering up at him. ‘You have a good arm, giant.’ His voice sounded
somewhat croaky. ‘How be the hammer?’

Gargaron shook his head and held
it up for Hawkmoth to see. ‘No change.’

Hawkmoth were not put off. ‘Again
then,’ he said, getting his breath back and allowing Gargaron to
haul him free of the shrubs. ‘This time I shall be ready. And this
time don’t hold back.’

9

As morning lightened, all sat
around eating of their own particular breakfasts, Gargaron still
wiping blood from his palm. Each of them silent, Gargaron and
Hawkmoth especially so; the hammer had failed to rouse.

‘
Perhaps Skinkk blood be not the
secret,’ Melai suggested.

‘
Aye, would seem so,’ Gargaron
said. He looked across at Hawkmoth. ‘Any thoughts,
sorcerer?’

‘
Sadly no. But I am reluctant to
rule out Skinkk blood altogether. There is certain to be some
element we are missing.’

Locke chewed down his dried sea
moss, and cracked open his sea clams. (As far he claimed, his clams
could stay shut and fresh for an age, though by their stink,
Gargaron were of a mind to question the crabman’s claims.) ‘This
war hammer may not have awakened,’ Locke said, grinning as he
slurped back clam meat, ‘but I must say, I quite enjoyed watching
your attempts at rousing it.’

After breakfast, with Drenvel’s
Bane put away (there were more pressing things to worry about than
a stubborn old hammer), Gargaron spread his map out upon the grass
and dirt and showed the others what he had found during the night.
He sat back when he were done to allow them time to digest
it.

‘
It certainly be an intriguing
idea,’ Locke commented keenly.

‘
If anything sees us through this
mission in greater haste,’ Melai said, ‘then I am all for
it.’

‘
What say you, sorcerer?’ Gargaron
asked.

Hawkmoth nodded, sipping some tea
he had brewed for all. ‘T’would cut our journey to Sanctuary by
half. Though, there be something you ought to know about the
place.’

Gargaron frowned. ‘Do
tell.’

Hawkmoth again sipped his tea.
When he had swallowed he spoke. ‘Days leading up to my departure
from home, I sent off my zeppelins in the hope that I would make
contact with folk like you lot, survivors of this Ruin. The idea
then, once I had hopefully recruited you to my cause, were to have
us all fly on to Sanctuary. My hope would be that by the time we
gathered at our destination we would prove such a formidable force
that my old Order would have no choice but relinquish Mama Vekh to
us.

‘
However, my problem were that I
did not have enough zeppelin’s to fetch you all to me, so I began
to search for faster ground routes, alternative paths, shortcuts,
that might have you reach Sanctuary in greater haste. Other than
consulting my maps, the swiftest way to uncover such information
were to begin dispatching reconnaissance drones. One of these I
sent to Appleford town, to this terminus of which you speak,
Gargaron. I must say, the news it returned to me were none too
encouraging.’

‘
What were its report?’ Gargaron
asked intrigued.

‘
The terminus lies intact. The
garetrains undestroyed. But the place is overrun by
something.’

‘
What sort of something?’ Locke
asked, a gleam in his eye, as if he were in some mood for a
stoush.

Hawkmoth sipped
his tea, steam drifting about his face. ‘My drone could not
describe it. Only that there be some
presence
there.’

‘
Dark Ones?’ Gargaron
asked.

Hawkmoth shrugged. ‘Possibly.’

‘
So, tell me your concerns,’
Gargaron said. ‘Be this spot too dangerous for us?’

‘
Where ever we traipse be
dangerous these days.’

Locke eyed the sorcerer closely.
‘You claim the garetrains lie undestroyed.

‘
Aye.’

‘
And if we get them running, our
journey to the Bonewreckers may be cut in half.’

‘
Again, aye. Though if we get
there and find some foul beast in our path then we will have wasted
two days travel. One day getting there, and a day rerouting to our
original path.’

Locke considered his. ‘A fair gamble
then.’

‘
I agree,’ said Gargaron, folding
away his map. ‘And if there be something in this terminus waiting
for us, then we shall simply have to make a meal of it before it
does us.’

‘
I second that,’ Locke said
smiling wide.

‘
Me too,’ Melai said.

Hawkmoth drained the rest of his
tea. ‘Right then,’ he said with a sigh. ‘To Appleford we
ride.’

1

IT were a long day in saddle and
much ground did they cover. Close to five hundred leagues by
Hawkmoth’s calculations. Gargaron slept through much of it, dozing
in his saddle. He had not planned on it, but had found his head
nodding not long after they had left their overnight camp. And not
far on, he had succumbed entirely to the tug of exhaustion. He were
awoken at midday by Melai to allow him to quench any thirst and see
to any hunger but he sipped little and nibbled less and were off to
sleep again.

‘
He slept not a wink last night,’
Hawkmoth reported, ‘and he is likely still healing internally from
his burns.’

So they left him in slumber,
slumped forward against Grimah’s broad shoulders, snoring into the
horses necks, drooling. Melai sat at first upon the steed’s rump
but the constant side-to-side movement irked her. So she climbed up
onto Gargaron himself and settled herself there upon his
back.

Late afternoon they crested a hill
(marked on Gargaron’s map as Devil’s Knee) that were strewn with a
hundred mountainous boulders, and Hawkmoth called for his company
to a halt.

2

Roused by the sudden cessation of
movement, Gargaron opened his eyes. Naturally, he attempted to tap
into his Nightface, to pick up on what it had recently observed.
But there were darkness there.

He remembered that his Nightface
were gone for good.

Yawning, he pushed himself up into
his saddle, displacing Melai who were seated upon his shoulders.
She leapt from her perch and flapped into the air. ‘Oh, the
sleeping mountain awakes!’ she said and the others turned their
attention on him.

Gargaron looked around, a little
bleary eyed, a little disoriented. ‘Where be we?’

It were a sunny afternoon,
although, westways, monstrous storm clouds hurried eastways’n’north
across darkening skies, threatening to blot out Melus and Gohor.
Devil’s Knee hill and its immediate surrounds were silent. Just
wind dragging its chilled fingers through the long grasses and
enormous boulders. As had become the norm, no sound of bugs, nor
ornithens.

‘
That there be Appleford
Terminus,’ Hawkmoth told him, indicating the station building
beyond the base of the hill. ‘Built during the golden age of
railcourse travel.’

It were indeed a majestic old
thing. High arches ran along its sides in place of walls. And a
replica garetrain were suspended on a steel frame above the
entrance hall. Vacant ticket booths could be seen running away into
the darkened interior where the northwun and southwun railcourses
converged. Modern lamp posts trailed the street outside.

Away from station, in the northwun
railyards, one of the monstrous garetrains were parked. A number of
its carriages had been knocked off track. By the looks of it, they
had been assaulted by boulders that had dislodged (perhaps during a
boom shake) and tumbled downhill. Parts of the terminal itself had
sustained similar damage; there were evidence of sections of the
building having been crushed, areas where the old roof had caved
in.

The station lay on the outskirts
of Appleford Town where Gargaron saw townhouses and shops situated
around a vast circular track. He had heard that folk in this region
were fond of racing mountain hounds. And most towns hereabouts
bragged hound tracks.

No-one spoke for a while. Perhaps
all were hoping to catch sounds of some slumbering beast, or the
hiss of Dark Ones, or a snickering of witches waiting in ambush.
Yet the Terminal, like the town, looked deserted, and but for the
breeze moaning through its arches, the place were as quiet as
ghosts. There were no movement down there, other than dust on the
wind. And like Appleford Town, it were sullied with carcasses of
the dead. Folk who had succumbed to the initial shockwaves, or been
torn to bits by packs of Dark Ones, lay decomposing where they had
fallen.

Grimah’s ears were pulled back, he
hefted side to side, uneasy. Gargaron gently pressed his palms
against the sides of his mount’s two heads, hoping to glean from
the horse what troubled it. It seemed Grimah had sensed naught but
a foul odour on the air, though there were something alien and odd
about it.

‘
Where be this beastie then you
spoke of, Hawkmoth?’ Locke asked.

Both Hawkmoth and Gargaron
deployed their spyglasses. Gargaron focused his on windows, arched
doorways, hoping to spy creatures hidden beyond in the gloom. Areas
where the terminal roof had collapsed gave light to interiors where
ordinarily there would have been none without the aid of lanterns
or glowstones. He saw and detected no creature nor
witch.

Hawkmoth scanned the length of the
building. Unlike Gargaron’s spyglass, Hawkmoth’s had the ability to
switch between light spectrums and pick up on arcane planes. Yet,
he, like Gargaron failed to detect anything out of the ordinary. It
unnerved him more than it brought him relief. Something were amiss
here. And he could not say what.

‘
What do you see?’ Melai asked
them both.

‘
I see naught,’ the giant answered
her.

‘
As do I,’ came Hawkmoth’s
rely.

Locke sighed, as if disappointed.
‘Oh, so whatever menace may have been here has since fled. Or
perished. Saving us the job. Pity.’

‘
Let us not be too hasty,’
Hawkmoth warned. ‘I may have detected naught with my spyglass but
my senses tell me something lurks down there still.’

‘
Something
does
lurk there,’ they were surprised to hear Melai say. ‘I hear
its whispers, I can.’

All eyes went to her. ‘Whispers?’
Hawkmoth asked her.

‘
Aye,’ she said, her brow furrowed
as if finger nails picked at the insides of her skull. ‘Though… it
be a language I do not know.’

Locke frowned. ‘Intriguing. You
can converse telepathically?’

‘
No, I cannot. With none but my
home trees, that is. I simply hear it on the breeze.’ Her troubled
eyes scanned the terminal thoughtfully, as if she were listening in
on some private conversation the others could not hear. ‘This thing
knows we’re here,’ she reported. ‘It watches us as we
speak.’

That sent a cold creeping
sensation up Gargaron’s spine. And they all gazed down hill as if
the entire station now were suddenly alive and sentient and
waiting.

‘
Can you ascertain what this
creature be?’ Hawkmoth asked her. ‘Is there more than
one?’

‘
Sorry, no. I have spent too many
years sheltered amongst Mother Thoonsk to understand what I am
hearing, let alone offer a guess as to what I think it might be. As
for numbers… it’s difficult to tell… But aye, there be more than a
single entity down there.’

‘
Dark Ones?’ Gargaron asked
her.

‘
I am not certain.’

‘
Witches?’ said Locke.

‘
I cannot tell.’