Roil (11 page)

Of all the monsters that I saw

The ones come after, the ones before

The worst of them, the worst of all

Is the dread
Vermatisaur

Brakes squealed, counter engines roared, and burning oil stung her throat and her nose. The
Melody
slid to a halt and the engines, fore and aft, wound down. Margaret scowled, she might as well drive off into the gorge. If she’d held off braking any longer, she would have.

Pascal’s Bridge jutted perhaps a hundred yards out above the chasm, ending in curled talons of steel, as though a titanic fist had slammed into the bridge from beneath. She directed her lights into the darkness, wary of the drain on the
Melody
’s batteries, and could just make out the other edge of the break: more nubbly lengths of steel crawling with Hideous Garment Flutes.

Margaret sat there, shaking her head. She checked the map, ran it against the one she had in her mind. They concurred. The Caspian Bridge crossed the gorge a little east of here. Wheels spun in reverse, the
Melody
jerked backwards onto the road. She stopped. From the east, lights, moving fast.

The Perl Bridge then. She would just have to find a way to cross it. The
Melody
tore a wide circle around the road pulling a rough curtain of dust and smoke behind her and headed west fast as Margaret dared drive towards the Perl.

The cars were closing, their lights growing brighter every time she lifted her eyes to her mirrors. Quarg Hounds, excited by all this activity, ran beside her, their yawls shaking the thick glass of the
Melody
. She let off a few rounds of her ice cannon and they dropped back a little. Margaret felt tempted to give them a real blast of cold, but she was running low on coolant. So they kept their distance but kept up their pursuit and their howling.

If anyone lay in wait at the Perl Bridge they would know she was coming.

Margaret gritted her teeth, charging her ice pistols and rifles and engaging the preliminary protocols for her carriage’s self-destruct system.

If it came to that, Margaret was damned if she was going to let the Roil take her alive.

She topped the rise and brought her carriage to a halt.

Six cars waited for her at the entrance to the bridge, which extended far out of sight, their cannon and headlights aimed at her. She put the
Melody
into reverse. A cannon fired a warning shot, Margaret ignored it, slowly sidling back up the road.

Lights flickered in her rear vision mirror. The other carriages had arrived cutting off her retreat.

Well, this is it.
Tears of frustration ran down her cheeks.
I did my best
.

She slammed the carriage out of reverse, and raced back towards the bridge. Cannon fired at her, staring the glass of the front windscreen. Reinforced or not, it couldn’t take too many impacts, the chassis rang with the impact of their shells.

Margaret ignored it as best she could, focusing only on the carriage directly in front of her, firing round after round of her own guns.

It was useless. She could not break through and it was only a matter of time until the cannon found a weak spot in the
Melody Amiss
. She weaved and fired as many cannon as she could at once, building up speed, aiming at the central carriage.

Perhaps if she had not been so focused upon her enemy she would have seen it coming.

All of a sudden the firing stopped. The Roilings pointed skyward, they lifted their guns to the sky and fired.

The beast tore into the carriages. A raging storm of wings and claws and mouths, its half dozen jaws crashed open and closed. It had been utterly silent in flight, now it shrieked a seismal shriek that was a nail in Margaret’s ears, but she did not stop.

Metal groaned then grew shrill in protest, and Quarg Hounds howled in terror. Cars fell into the chasm beyond the bridge, Roilings leapt for cover. The winged beast rose up, clutching one of the carriages in its claws, letting out a cry that rattled the
Melody
’
s
windows, it hurled the carriage back on to the ground. The vehicle exploded, illuming the attacker and astounding Margaret.

The beast was a Vermatisaur.

She could not believe it.

Might as well be staring at one of the Vastkind. Legends filled the air and the shadows, dark malevolent legends.

Several of its snake-like heads snapped at the air. Its huge eyes blazed, bright enough to cast aside the darkness and scatter shadows everywhere.

A terrible joy swelled within Margaret, and a sickening dread.

It roared from a dozen thunderous mouths at once, and dove back towards the carriages, snatching up another. Margaret did not pause, to see what it might do. A gap had formed and shaking, terrified of this sudden hope being snatched away, she drove through it and on to the bridge.

The Vermatisaur watched, through a spare set of eyes, the little human-thing race across the bridge, but did not follow.

There was no need (the creature would die soon enough) nor did it want to risk tangling its wings in the wires that webbed the bridge. Its mate had died that way, leaving it to its solitary angers, its mourning rage of decades.

The human-thing’s time would come. The Darkness was spreading and would not be stopped, what was rightfully the Roil’s would be reclaimed again. With the world retaken, it would fly wherever its will took it, through the boiling shadows and across the plains and ruddy mountains. Fly until another mate called, and the savage wonder of their hungers crowded the skies.

An ice pellet struck its wing, the cold burning enough to bring it back to the present. Wings shifted, curled, and carried it in lazy predatory beats towards these odd man things.

It owed them no allegiance. Furious, it snatched up another carriage and dropped it onto one racing over the hill. They exploded satisfyingly. The Vermatisaur’s pores swelled with the heat, deeper brains activated and with them deeper rages. Its eyes scanned the city.

There! Another carriage. The beast descended, swift and deadly.

By the time it was done, not a single carriage remained, and the little one had crossed the first span of the bridge and was deep in the tangles of metal where it could not follow.

All that activity after ten years made it hungry. It circled the city, eating what it could find, mouths gulping down anything that moved, its massive tail knocking over tower and wall. When it was done almost nothing lived in the city.

Sated and heavy, the beast clawed its way through the air, back to its resting place atop the tower, sinking down on the stone. Hot winds wafted around the Vermatisaur, fluttering the tips of its leathery wings and tail. It settled slowly, coiling its many limbs around the top of the shattered tower. Glass and metal detonated beneath its new fed weight, and the ruined floor groaned but held.

Pleased and full, lord of its domain once more, the Vermatisaur let out a manifold cry from its mouths that shook the city to its foundations and came back to him in a dozen pleasing echoes.

And then the city fell silent and still.

S
Old Men
. B
Old Men
. C
Old Men
. Old Men.

David dreamt of Cadell crouching in the snow, shovelling dead birds into his mouth. “Still hungry,” he whispered. “And all that’s left is you.”

Cadell turned and his lips curled hugely: a mouth that opened and opened. “Come inside, little bird.”

Someone shook David awake. He blinked, and looked up into Cadell’s face. The man appeared as wretched as David felt, his clothes were muddy, his lips cracked, bruises stained his face. “Time to go, David. We’ve got to keep moving.”

David’s head pounded, he was sure the sleep had done him some good but he couldn’t pinpoint how, other than to carry him from one state of wretched exhaustion to another. Cadell helped him to his feet. David blinked out at a day almost indistinguishable from any other, but for the occasional dead bird – David was sure there had been more of these, last night – and small heaps of shrivelled insects on the ground, there was no evidence of what had gone on the night before. No evidence but for dead bugs and birds
and
the sickening pounding in his head.

His back hurt from sleeping on the cold hard ground, another ache to add to his collection.

Rain fell, but only lightly: an early morning sun shower. Nothing new in that.

Cadell put a steadying hand on David’s shoulder and consulted some maps. The Engineer appeared at once exhausted by last night’s events and energised, as though they had given him new purpose. He scanned all that cartography then folded the maps away and jabbed a finger east, past the field and back at the scrub.

“We’re not too far from the railway and it would be best, I think, if we returned to it. Perhaps followed the line a while. It will get us to Chapman quickly. So we’ll keep it to our left until Lake Uhl, then we’ll take the road, where it veers west to Uhlton. The trip should take us two days, if we maintain a good pace. As we now have no transport, I believe I have business to attend to there.”

“What business?” David asked, splashing a little of the cold water on his face. The closer they got to the Roil, the more their plans went awry and the less this seemed to be about escape than plunging headlong into danger.

“What business?” he asked again, and Cadell rounded on him.

“The sort I don’t feel like talking about right now,” Cadell snapped.

David must have given him a shocked look, for the engineer’s gaze softened and he relented. “David, there is much I must tell you. A lot of it I am not proud of, I am afraid. It is not easy for me to give voice to this, but I must tell you, at least some of it, I guess.” Cadell’s eyes shone imploringly from a grimy face, and he sat down. “I’m trying to save this world.”

David laughed. “Cadell, people don’t save the world.”

Cadell nodded at this, though he failed to hide his disappointment, David couldn’t tell if it was with himself or David’s response. “But, you see, I am not a person. Not any more. Not in the way you would understand it. I am old, David, you know that, but do you have any sense of what that entails? I have lost count of the years that separate me from my first life, and time has dissolved so much of my arrogance and purpose – and the task that I must perform demands a surfeit of both. You will never understand what it is like to have all your friends, your family, not just dead, but as dust. Forgotten.”

David disagreed. He knew what that was like. Yearned for it. His friends and family were gone, taken from him, all he had left were the memories and they hurt. He did not know how he could take another step, but he did, and another, took another breath and another. He had lost everything and yet his heart kept on beating. It didn’t seem fair.

Cadell wasn’t looking at him now, but at the Lode: at the corpses of the Quarg Hounds. “Even I do not bear the task of remembering them well. I plunge into the past and it is little more than a ragged gloom about me. Faces have faded in the white noise that is my life. Reasons have grown dim and still I have lingered, hoping that it would not come to this, and arrogant enough to believe I could halt it. But live long enough and your worst fears are realised.

“I speak of arrogance, but mine is nothing compared to that of my people. Born of the Seedship, we shaped this world, changed it. And in that change the Roil was made, though we did not notice it for many years. You see we inhabited the poles of this world, built our metropolises there, and the Roil, that first time, hid.

“We were too busy in our splendour, a race of gods, every one of us a Master Engineer. A people of leisure, unprepared for the pure horror of it all. And it was horrible, not some progression as you see it now, but a fiery seizure. All along the spine of the world, volcanoes spewed forth heat and with it the Roil. Everything we made was ruined and transformed.

“So we made war, we made the engine and rebuilt this world’s laws. Ice not fire became our weapon. The cold. And it is a cruel weapon, cruellest of all. Heat is life, David, its absence is death.

“We built the engines and the lodes, each section fought for with more fury than you can imagine. And once it was done we unleashed them on the world and it nearly destroyed us.” Cadell raised his hands to take in the world. “The universe, even such a small patch of it as this, is a complex thing. No orrery can do it justice. There are thousands upon thousands of little balances and trade-offs. Trip one of them, and you trip them all. The change may be sudden or swift – and even a hundred years in the lifetime of a world is less than a blinking of an eye.

“We swept those checks and balances away as though they were nothing more than irritants of no consequence. You cannot imagine what it was like, but when it was done, the Roil was gone and we remained and, somehow, survived.

“I grew old in that world and have lived the ages since, my duty this, as it is the duty of all the Old Men: should the Roil ever rise again I must stop it. At the beginning, before it could ever pose a threat. And I have failed.

“David, I’m terrified. Death does not scare me, but what I can do does. And if I don’t...

“In Uhlton, there is one who has an understanding – an understanding, mind, little more – of my secrets and he has called me, and called me in the two years I have hidden in Mirrlees and I have not come. Now I will. He has grown bitter. Still he will help us.”

Cadell brightened, slapping David jovially on the back.

“Well, as we have no food, nor are we likely to come across any. I suggest we forgo breakfast and get straight to the walking part.”

“Walking is certainly better than running.”

“That it is, David. That it is.”

Regardless, David’s body protested as though it were not. As they made their way through the verdant to the point of rotting countryside, he struggled with one endlessly unnerving thought.

What on Shale could be worse than the Roil?

It took them several hours to find the railway. Time enough for David to question seriously Cadell’s sense of direction. The land around the Lode was thick with mushy scrub and streams, and they moved at what felt like a crawl.

When they finally found the line, Cadell released a long breath. “We should be safe along these tracks,” he said. “I doubt anyone will be using them again for a long time.”

They walked all day, stopping to rest, only when the walking became too much for David, which was often. Cadell, on the other hand was unfazed by the rigours of the journey. He walked swiftly, sometimes getting dangerously ahead. But he would always turn at the last moment, sensing, perhaps, that he was almost out of sight, and wait until David caught him up.

David was relieved when, at last, the sun setting low and wet behind them, they reached a deserted workers’ cottage, built close to the line.

It had been recently occupied. There were still cans of food in the cupboards, mushrooms and sausages and even a bag of onions hanging above the kitchen sink. The building was simple, a single onion-smelling room with two beds, both with yellowing pillows, but it was shelter from the rain and the only other tenants were fleas, which were heaven compared to Quarg Hounds.

David was asleep almost before his head hit the lumpy pillow.

He woke to morning light and the smell of breakfast cooking on the fire. Onions and sausages crackled. David’s stomach rumbled, but it was the syringe by the bed that drew his gaze first.

David couldn’t remember just who it was that had first introduced him to Carnival (some sordid adventure after his mother’s death, too much drink, a place that felt safe, then became something else). However, the moment of its absorption was still vivid: the flood of calm, the release of all that guilt and fear replaced with joy.

And if the guilt and fear always came back, like a tide, a rushing wave all too quick to return, it could be pushed away again.

He’d lived in that cloud for almost two years, or the cloud had become him. Sometimes David couldn’t separate himself from his hungers, the act of scoring and the ejection of doubt and dread with the injection of Carnival.

He attended to his hunger swiftly, and without embarrassment.

“I found some tomatoes growing in the garden out the back,” said Cadell, looking up from where he was hunched over a frying pan. “Are you hungry? Do you want something to eat?”

The simple domesticity of the scene struck David harder than perhaps anything he had experienced in the last few days. His voice failed him.

Cadell frowned. “Well?”

“Just try and stop me,” David said.