Tome of the Undergates - Sam Sykes

‘I never asked you to take a life,’ Asper protested.

‘You don’t even think that it might be necessary!’ Kataria spat back. ‘If you had your way, we’d all sit around praying to some weak round-ear god for an answer while they sodomised us with steel!’

‘Don’t talk to her like that!’ Dreadaeleon piped up, trying hard not to wither under her scowl. ‘She’s right to have conviction, even if it is in imaginary beings on high.’ He blinked, eyes going wide. ‘Did I say that part aloud or think it?’

A hand cracking against his head made a proper answer.

‘Who told you to even scurry out of your hole, rat?’ Gariath growled. ‘You were meant to eat filth and drink your own tears. The Rhega,’ he thumped his chest, ‘were made to kill and die.’

‘Plenty of time for the latter,’ Denaos replied, holding his arms out wide. ‘Humanity didn’t fight its way to the top of the food chain to be condescended to by lizards.’

Well, that figures, Lenk thought to himself. The one time he musters the spine to confront someone, it’s one of our own.

‘Useless. .’ the voice muttered.

Agreed. He blinked. No, wait. Don’t talk to it.

‘Fight.’

Fight back! Resist! It’s madness, you know it’s madness! You aren’t mad! You can-

‘NOW.’

The voice came with a sudden insistence, a frigid howl that drowned out the sounds of argument, the sounds of clinking chains. The voice left no room for fear or for thought as it gnashed its teeth, fangs sinking into his brain, grinding his skull between them, filling his mind with fury.

‘Command.’

‘S-stop …’ he whimpered.

‘Lead!’

‘Hurts-’

‘KILL!’

‘STOP!’

He didn’t know how loud he had screamed, but everyone had snapped to attention. He didn’t know what expression he wore on his face that caused them to look at him so.

He didn’t care.

‘Dread,’ he snarled, pointing to the chain, ‘burn them.’

‘Right. .’ the boy said, swallowing hard and moving towards the links. ‘But I need time to-’

‘NOW!’

No time even to stutter an agreement, the cold rigidity in Lenk infected Dreadaeleon as well. His fingers knotted together in a gesture that was painful to watch, his lips murmured a language that was painful to hear. Lenk watched him open his eyes, watched the crimson energy flower from behind his eyelids as tiny electric sparks began to dance along his sleeves.

‘Enemies.’

‘Right,’ Lenk muttered, spying the hatchet-bearing pirates move to the chain on the Linkmaster. ‘Kat.’

‘Uh-huh,’ she replied, already drawing the fletching to her cheek. The arrows sang in ugly harmony, wailing from her string to catch them in the throat and chest. She wasted no time in turning a smug grin upon Gariath. ‘I win.’

‘What. .’ Asper asked, her voice as hesitant as her trembling hands, ‘what should I do?’

‘What can you do?’ Lenk replied coldly, his mind focused on other things.

No cry had arisen from the Linkmaster, none of the collective panic that had plagued them upon Gariath’s appearance, not so much as a harsh word from Rashodd. The pirates simply took a collective step backwards, their expressions unnervingly serene. Even Rashodd appeared not at all displeased as failure loomed in his iron-clad face.

Why?

They parted like a wave of flesh, opening up a space at the railing. Lenk’s eyes widened.

The siege engine.

It rolled to the railing, a mass of iron and wood whose immediate purpose he could not decipher. A ballista? Of course, how else would they have got the chain across? Then why weren’t they firing it?

‘What are they waiting for?’

No answer was heard over the sound of Dreadaeleon’s chant as it rose to an echoing crescendo. The sparks that were birthed on his sleeves grew into full electric snakes, crackling eagerly as they raced down his arms and into his knuckles. He extended his fingers, trembling as though they sought to jump free of their fleshy prisons, and knelt down to press two single fingers against the chain.

‘Yes …’

It came too quick for anyone to scream, the lightning leaping from his fingers and onto the chain with electric vigour. Men became insects in a hail of sparks, tattoos lost amidst the blackening of skin. They collapsed, fell into the water and were lost to the tide.

‘Good.’

‘Gariath,’ Lenk muttered.

The crimson hulk stared down at him for a moment, eyes narrowed, challenging him to give an order. Whatever the others had seen in Lenk that made them obey, he didn’t see it or didn’t care.

Inside his head, Lenk’s mind clenched, as if agitated that the dragonman would not obey. Whether he finally resisted out of inner discipline or pure fear, Lenk kept such ire from reaching his lips. He did not break his stare from Gariath’s black gaze, did not back down.

And when Gariath finally did move to the chain, he did not care why. He looked, instead, to the deck of the pirate ship and their siege engine. He spied the shadow there again, the man with the bone for a head who looked like some displaced spectre amongst the crowd. Again, the man met Lenk’s gaze, again the man smiled.

The dragonman hooked his hands into the mother chain’s clawed head, gripping it firmly. Snorting, he gave it a great shake, dislodging a corpse caught by the wrist in its links, throwing off the pirates who still tried to set foot on it. Lenk watched with narrowed eyes and empty thoughts.

Gariath grunted, muscles straining, wood cracking as he began to pull.

The shadow of a man held up a hand, waved it.

‘No.’

Sailors flocked to the railing of the Riptide, roaring challenges at their calm foes.

Two Cragsmen rushed to the engine, pulled a rope.

‘No!’

Gariath’s wings unfurled like great sails, the wind filled with a shower of splinters as the chain’s head came tearing loose. With a great iron wail for its lost charge, the mother chain collapsed into the sea and its little linked children followed, clinking squeals, while the Riptide drank the wind and tore away from its captor.

Men cheered. Denaos and Kataria shared an unpleasant cackle at the victory. Dreadaeleon managed a smile, looking to Asper, who managed a sigh of weary relief. Gariath snorted disdainfully, folding his arms over his chest.

It was too soon for Lenk to rejoice, not while his ears were fixed to a sound.

The siege engine came to life without boulders or spears or arrows. It shifted upon its wooden wheels, an iron monstrosity of spikes and blades, swinging back and forth. It sang.

A church bell, he suspected, by the look and sound, but forged from a mould more misshapen than was intended for any godly instrument. Its chorus was no echoing monotone droning, but something of many voices that sang out in horrid, discordant harmony.

A shriek banged against a moan, raucous laughter scraped against agonised weeping, a wistful sigh ground against a violent roar. The bell spoke. The bell sang. And it did not fade from Lenk’s ears, even as the Linkmaster shrank in his eyes.

‘That was it?’

Lenk turned to see scorn in Gariath’s eyes, the dragonman looking down at him with scaly lips pulled into a snarl. The young man regarded him coldly, forcing the horrid song from his thoughts long enough to meet him with an equally contemptuous look.

‘You got to kill someone, didn’t you?’

‘I barely bled,’ Gariath replied.

‘That’s. . a problem, is it?’

Gariath regarded him carefully for a moment before snorting. He turned, forcing Lenk to duck the sweeping tail that lashed out spitefully behind him, and began to stalk along the deck.

‘Don’t call me again,’ he grunted, ‘unless there’s real blood to be spilled.’

‘One wonders,’ Asper said snidely as he passed, ‘just how much blood needs to be spilled before it qualifies as “real”.’

Gariath did not reply, did not even seem to notice her or the bodies he crushed under his feet. That only seemed to cause her face to contort further, teeth grinding behind her lips. Her voice still brimming with ire, she turned to Lenk.

‘I’m going to help the men remove the bodies, someone has to-’ She hesitated, flinching, and seemed to exhale her anger in one long, weary sigh, offering the young man something of a smile. ‘At least it’s over and we’re safe.’

‘Yes, isn’t that interesting?’ Denaos commented as he walked away. ‘Violence solves yet another problem.’

‘That doesn’t mean I have to like it.’

‘You don’t, of course,’ he replied, ‘but what would you have done differently?’

She looked down, rubbing her arm. ‘Nothing, I suppose. ’

‘Then let us content ourselves with the present, bloody and body-strewn as it may be.’

‘Don’t act like you’re some great warrior,’ Kataria snarled at his back. ‘You were more than willing to run away when it was still an option.’

‘I was,’ he said without turning around. ‘And if we had done as I suggested, there’d be much less dead and we’d all be happy.’ He offered a limp-wristed wave as he headed for the companionway. ‘Let us consider this the next time we all decide that I’m not worth listening to.’

Asper muttered something under her breath, fingering her pendant as she walked towards the sailors who were already pulling up bodies, sighing over their companions and tossing their fallen adversaries over the railing. Dreadaeleon made a move to follow, but staggered, leaning on the railing.

‘I can. .’ He paused to take a deep breath, a thin sheen of sweat on his brow. ‘I can help. I’m. . just a little winded, is all. Strain and all that. Just. . just give me a moment.’

‘Take all the time you need,’ she said coldly. ‘There will be a lot of prayers to be said. I wouldn’t want you to subject yourself to that kind of ordeal.’

He made an awkward attempt to follow her after an even more awkward attempt to retort. Instead, he was left furrow-browed and sneering as he stalked the opposite way, leaning heavily on the railing.

‘As though it’s my fault I’m surrounded by the ignorant masses.’ He stopped, glowering at Lenk. ‘You swing a big piece of metal and make a mess on the deck and you get a smile.’ He poked himself hard in his sunken chest. ‘I electrocute three men as humanely as possible and I’m the heathen?’

‘Well,’ Lenk replied, admiring his own blade, ‘you must admit. . it is pretty large.’