The Trials of Trass Kathra Read online

  But she couldn’t. Finding herself lying face down on the deck above, her sodden form gasping, the creature was gone.

  Kali picked herself up, but her problems were only just beginning. The stresses she’d witnessed tearing the ship apart below were far more evident above, and the ship pitched suddenly and dramatically, flinging her across the deck and almost hurling her into the sea. Except there was no sea. Clinging onto the rail, Kali looked down the precipitous drop of the hull to the part of the maelstrom in which it was caught. A section of one of the swirlpools churned right below her – or maybe above, in the constant skewing of the world it was difficult to tell – battering and lashing the ship while all the time staring back like some unblinking, giant, malevolent eye.

  But the swirlpool was no eye, she knew that now. It was a mouth to the hells. A mouth that was fully capable of swallowing the ship whole. And the only reason it hadn’t yet done so was that it vied with maybe a hundred others that made up the barrier around Trass Kathra.

  A hundred.

  And the ship was caught in the heart of them all.

  As it was pulled from one to another, increasingly battered and twisted, the sound of the swirlpools’ roaring hunger almost, but not quite, drowned out the sound of dull, periodic explosions and screams from along the deck.

  Redigor and his people. And the hostages. It had to be. Despite her enforced delay, they must not yet have made it off the ship.

  Kali began to move towards the screams. Reaching their source was not easy, however. Even as she forced herself off the rail against which she’d been thrown, the ship pitched again, and she found herself staggering back towards the hatch from which she’d emerged, slapping into it and then onto the deck as a crash of water soaked herself and the deck about her. This time, for good measure, the ship turned, too, its bow being forced around by the edge of an adjacent swirpool, and the creaks and groans of its protesting bulkheads began anew. There wasn’t much time. The ship was coming apart.

  The sky revolved giddily, and Kali found the only way to negotiate the wall in which the hatch sat was to allow herself to slide along it, carried by the water that flooded towards the stern. This, too, turned into a treacherous exercise as the ship dipped violently, transforming what had been a level, if unstable, deck into an acutely angled slide. Again, Kali let herself go with it, gaining speed as she skidded down, then, at the last minute, grabbed onto another passing rail before she impacted with what would have been bone-crunching finality against one of the deck stanchions.

  “Woo!” she cried, feet dangling and kicking in mid-air.

  She jerked herself aside as two Final Faith brothers, presumably having been engaged in some last minute business at the bow, sailed past her, robes flapping as they plummeted to their inevitable end. Their sudden departure from the ship reduced the numbers she had to deal with and she didn’t feel the slightest guilt in taking pleasure from their demise. It was the silly bastards’ own bloody fault for coming here in the first place.

  This handy method of reducing the opposition was only momentary, however, and the ship’s bow crashed back onto the water with an almighty belly-flop that jarred every rivet in the hull and loosened yet more of its plating. A sheet of seawater splashed down onto the deck and Kali was punched off the rail and found herself spiralling along, caught in a series of crashing waves and rolling banks of water. This time she could not avoid being slammed into one of the stanchions, and the wind was knocked out of her, leaving her briefly dazed. But when she recovered her orientation, she found the waters had carried her to the part of the deck from which the explosions and screams had been coming.

  Kali hid behind the stanchion and stared at what she saw there.

  The explosions came not, as she’d expected, from disintegrating parts of the ship, but from explosive bolts that secured the mysterious, cigar-shaped objects to the deck. As these detonated, Redigor’s men were tugging the canvas sheeting from them, revealing large, dark metal objects the purpose of which Kali couldn’t make out for the throng gathered about them. One thing was likely, though. From the desperation with which they worked, these things were a way off the sinking ship.

  Kali’s attention turned to the throng. Something was wrong here. Counting Redigor’s people and the hostages – who were being forcefully jostled amongst them, still in chains – there seemed far too many potential survivors, especially as it seemed one of the cigar-shapes had been damaged during the voyage. Redigor himself was already scowling at this and, among his men, shouts of recrimination and accusations of negligence were being bandied around. This got them nowhere, of course, because it was clear that there could be only one conclusion to this realisation.

  Some people would have to be left behind.

  Oh Gods, Kali thought. The hostages. If it was a choice between his own men and the hostages, Redigor would surely dispose of them here.

  She was about to break cover, simply take a chance and go all out to save them, when she faltered. A bright blue flash in the middle of the throng was followed by a scream, and the body of one of the Faith thudded to the deck, as a smoking and charred heap of meat. Others around him backed off, muttering fearfully, and this revealed the cause of the first flash as it happened again.

  It was Redigor. Fists burning, the Pale Lord was frying his own people, any and all of them who tried to clamber onto the objects out of turn or objected to the fact that they seemed not to have a place there. For these, their desperation to escape the doomed ship overrode their fear of their leader, but it was a bad choice, a fatal choice.

  What disturbed Kali the most about it was that Redigor smiled as he so casually doled out their deaths.

  No, that wasn’t quite true – what disturbed her most was why Redigor was favouring the hostages over his own people. If he was so intent on saving them and taking them with him, surely that suggested they had a purpose that went beyond their being hostages or simple prisoners. But what?

  The ship twisted again and groaned beneath her, louder than ever before, and Kali knew it could not take the stress it was suffering for much longer. As waves crashed about her and parts of the ship’s superstructure broke away to crash onto the deck, she moved closer to the desperate gathering, keeping to cover, trying to see if there was any way that she herself could find her way onto one of the mysterious objects of salvation.

  There was none, however, and she could only look on as the objects revealed themselves fully. Groups of Redigor’s people – the hostages scattered amongst them – were positioned beside each of the ‘cigars’ and, now that Kali could see more clearly, she watched as each in turn began to unfold, transforming from their original shapes into something quite different.

  Kali knew immediately what she looking at – flutterbys. The deceptively charming name for elven troop carriers. Triangular shaped wings extended from the objects’ sides, retractable blades from their tops, and, from the main bodies of the objects, riding platforms in the form of interlacing metal struts on which passengers were clearly meant to stand. The flutterbys fully deployed, they sat on the deck of the ship like a swarm of giant insects.

  Impressive, Kali thought. They looked original, too, and she reflected that while she had never physically come across one, Bastian Redigor clearly knew where to look.

  The flutterbys were filling up now, but there remained far too many people to be accommodated by them. But, as before, Redigor was ensuring that the numbers became more manageable in his own, inimitable fashion. The whole group fell into chaos as more of his own men died thrashing and screaming, and Kali thought it the ideal moment to make a dash for one of the machines to guarantee her own passage off the sinking ship.

  But she paused. The balance of numbers between Redigor’s people and his hostages was favouring the latter now, and for her to take a place in one of the pods meant one of the hostages would not make it, and she couldn’t condemn them that way. Of everyone on board, with the possible exception of Redigor himself,
she was the one most physically capable of surviving the ship going down, even if she didn’t yet know how she was going to manage it.

  She was sure something would pop up. It always did. But it was going to be one hells of a rough ride.

  The last flutterby being boarded, now, Kali bit her lip as she watched Redigor and his personal retinue, accompanying the last of the hostages, step into position. Just as the last, a man whom she’d swear she’d last seen as one of the press-ganged, stepped onto his foothold, he turned and spotted her hiding behind her cover. For a second their eyes met and Kali wondered if he would reveal her presence to Redigor. He did nothing, however, apart from nod as if wishing her luck.

  She was going to need it. As the flutterby rose from the deck, turning in a sweeping circle to head towards the island, the ship groaned beneath her as if poisoned to its core.

  Suddenly the whole of the stern, where the flutterbys had been, began to break away from the hull, a rift opening from below decks that spread upwards until it began to tear the deck itself asunder. As decking warped, popped and tore under her, revealing the equally torn lower decks spilling their contents into the sea, Kali joined those few of the Faith whom Redigor had left behind alive in running towards the bow and relative safety. That they had such commonality of purpose made it all the more irksome when one of them – clearly acting above and beyond the call of duty – grabbed her and demanded to know what she was doing there. She flattened the idiot and threw him over the side.

  The deck buckled as she and the others continued to run, sending a wave of wood and metal nipping at their heels, but while it caught up to and brought down a number of the Faith, Kali herself leapt for the safety of a handrail to one of the upper decks. It provided only a brief respite from the surging destruction below, however, and a few seconds after grabbing onto it, it, too, buckled and fell.

  Kali cursed. The first time in her life she had been on a sinking ship and it didn’t even have the decency to sink properly, which was to say slowly and languorously beneath the waves. At least then she might have had a chance to formulate some kind of plan, perhaps even grab a drink and sing a rousing song or two as the sea proceeded inexorably towards her feet. But no – the increasing stresses from the swirlpools all around were tearing the ship apart, and the screams, rather than songs, that came from all around her reflected that fact.

  A scream from one Faith as the deck suddenly opened and then closed again beneath him, cutting him in two at the waist. A scream from another as a stanchion broke from its mooring and decapitated him instantly if not cleanly. A scream from a third as the deck rail against which he hoped to gain respite broke away, plunging him into the maelstrom below.

  Screams. Screams everywhere.

  And then, just like that, the ship broke cleanly in two. The hull finally gave way to its stresses and parted right in front of her, bringing Kali to a skidding halt. She was suddenly surrounded, overtaken, by screaming, flailing forms as the Faith who had been following in her wake flung themselves desperately across the widening gap. One or two reached the opposite section of deck cleanly, somersaulting and continuing to run, some didn’t quite make it, gaining precarious handholds and dangling desperately from struts exposed by the rent, while still others missed their mark completely and plunged into the churning mass of hull and water that waited beneath.

  Kali didn’t know what had made her halt in her tracks but the decision had proven to be the right one. The irony was that what they all – herself included – had thought to be the safer half of the sinking ship was not that at all. The final battering that had broken the ship’s back had been caused by the confluence of two massive swirlpools challenging each other for their prize, and as Kali watched the bow of the ship was immediately taken by one, while the stern was swept away by the other. As the distance between the two halves of the ship grew, the stern section a quarter of the way around the periphery now and receding all the while, the bow was already being pulled directly into the heart of the furthest maelstrom. She could see the figures of the Faith who had made it across realising their situation and flinging themselves off the sinking ship into the water, but this was the worst thing they could have done, serving only to accelerate their deaths as their tiny forms were sucked beneath the surface in advance of the much larger wreck. Not that they would have survived that much longer, because the bow of the ship was already tipping forwards as it succumbed to the terrible forces in which it was snared, and only a few seconds later it sank beneath the waves.

  Kali turned to look about her, and realised she on her own now. As the stern half of the ship listed beneath her, she was sent tumbling across the deck to its far rail, so that once again she was staring directly into the hungry sea. The list was only the result of the ship finding its natural position, however, and as it began to circle the sloping rim of the swirlpool she would, had it not been for the deafening roar of the chaotic sea, have found it almost relaxing, like being the sole passenger on some weird carousel.

  But there was only one way this ride was going to end, and as the stern section spiralled gradually but inexorably ever deeper into the giant, watery crater, Kali bit her lip, deep in thought. One by one she assessed the circumstances of her situation – sinking ship, swirlpool, middle of the ocean a long, long way from home – and it didn’t take her long to reach a summation of her predicament.

  Farked. She was farked. All she could do was ensure that as the stern section began to sink she stayed as far from the all consuming water as she could, and when she could do that no longer... well, she was just going to have to make it up as she went along.

  Round and round the wreckage went. And down and down. Its descent into oblivion more gradual but no less inevitable than that of the bow. Kali was backing up in what remaining space she had, the churning surface of the swirlpool literally lapping at her feet, when something burst through the surface of the water some hundred yards away.

  It was some kind of machine that sped towards her, pumping the discoloured sea through membranes that seemed to drive its solid and barnacle covered frame forward. She didn’t have the remotest idea of what it was but she did know who was sitting in what could only be the driver’s seat.

  Jerragrim Brundle grunted as, with the whine of some unknown engine, the strange machine slewed up onto the deck and skidded halt beside her. It still pumped out the water it had used for propulsion. Its streamlined shape was etched with dwarven runes and, though simple, its controls were far more complex than anything anyone on the peninsula could produce. Kali grinned. This was the aquatic equivalent of the mole machine she had found many months before, and she wanted one. Hells, did she want one.

  “Are you gonna continue grinning like a loon or are yer gonna jump aboard?” Brundle demanded. He flicked his head toward the water. “Cos if yer haven’t noticed, we don’t have a lot of time.”

  Kali slammed her hands on her hips. “Oh, so now it’s all rush. Just where the hells have you been for the past two weeks?”

  “Close by, smoothskin. Close by.”

  The dwarf looked down.

  And Kali looked at the machine. She noticed that some kind of breathing tube protruded from its control panel. There appeared to be one for a passenger, too. “Are you telling me that this thing’s been attached to the hull all this time?”

  “As tight as the piles up me arse.”

  Kali pulled a face. “How did I know you were going to say something like that? Couldn’t you have just said ‘limpet’?”

  “Why?”

  “Because... oh, never mind.”

  The waters began to slosh and slap over them, threatening to wash the machine off the deck. The last remains of the ship tipped dangerously as it began to be pulled down to the heart of the swirlpool.

  “Are you coming, or what?” Brundle asked with some urgency.

  “What do you call this thing, anyway?” Kali asked as she settled herself into the space for a second rider.

 
“Scuttlebarge. Now hang on.”

  Whatever response Kali might have had emerged only as a startled yelp as Brundle slung the scuttle barge around and, with a roar of its engine, it shot nose first into the churning sea. Kali scrabbled for the breathing tube, convinced that it was simply going to slip right beneath the waves but, as soon as it was waterborne, the membranes that pumped the water rotated in their housings so that they pointed straight down, and the machine gained its buoyancy on the surface with the force of their thrust. They didn’t remain there once their job was done, however, rotating once more into a position half way between the two, and with a kick that threw Kali back in her seat the scuttlebarge began to skip across the sea.

  To say that it was a bumpy ride would be an understatement. But Brundle appeared to be an expert pilot. Despite being continuously slapped and drenched by waves, more than one of which threatened to knock her overboard, forcing her to hold on tighter, Kali couldn’t help but be impressed by the way the dwarf handled the scuttlebarge, playing the tumultuous surface of the sea with practiced ease, going with the flow here, using it to gain momentum there, never once hesitant as he threw the machine into each new manoeuvre.

  The one thing that did come as a surprise – and caused a small lurch of shock – to Kali was that rather than piloting the strange craft to avoid any swirlpools in their path, Brundle aimed it straight for them. What appeared to be a suicidal ploy was nothing of the kind, however, as at the very last second on approaching the first of the maws, Brundle veered the scuttlebarge to starboard so that rather than heading right into the swirling water it skirted its rim, using the power of the swirlpool to carry them around the maw. Once on its other side, Brundle gunned the pumps of the craft so that they flipped over the crest of the maelstrom and then immediately flung her around so that they were carried along in the rim of another, this one swirling in the opposite direction. After successfully achieving this a couple more times, it became clear to Kali what it was he was doing – using the coriolis effect of the swirlpools to catapult the scuttlebarge between them. It could not have been the first time he had attempted such a task.