City of Ruin - Mark Charan Newton [165]
The looming peaks sailed towards the ship, and small dark objects could be seen above and below, skittering and darting about in ragged patterns of flight.
‘What are those things?’ Randur asked, his voice slightly muffled by the mask.
‘Those vessels, they are called Giasty – literally earth cities, although little lives there. The structures you will see on them are, in fact, largely constructed of human bones, which should, I hope, give an indication of how they view your species. Human bone is valued as a building resource in our world. And those things you see flying about are called Mogilal – they are quite a menace. And, I fear, they have been waiting for us.’
‘Are they the creatures you are fighting?’ Randur asked.
‘My world is, yes.’ She unsheathed her blades with a zing, and Randur took a step back as their arc whipped past his face. If Artemisia herself was anything to go by, these other creatures would probably be violent.
‘Should we be doing anything to help?’ Randur glanced towards the girls, whose gaze was locked on the drifting island. He drew his own sword, and Eir, alert to his gesture, followed suit, but the dismissive glance from Artemisia suggested that such weapons would be of little use.
A fizz across the sky, a high-pitched whistle, and something slapped into the ship below. Artemisia hastily put on her own mask, fabricated from the same red mesh. She seemed to wait for . . .
Two deep thuds, then stillness.
Another object streaked across on an upward trajectory, visible white trails carving up the sky . . . towards the ship, above the ship, then the Hanuman clustered around it and screeched, and something exploded in a smoke-plume. Bits of flesh began to litter the deck.
Artemisia began shouting orders in some unknown language, waving her swords at the Hanuman who seemed utterly stunned by what was going on. A flock of them clustered as one mass, and waited overhead. The next projectile they dealt with better: slowing it significantly, then gently steering it away from the ship till it dropped over the side.
The warrior turned to the three humans. ‘Do not move. Do not inhale when they explode. Do not remove your masks or you will not be able to speak afterwards.’
They nodded in silent affirmation as Artemisia took several big strides towards the centre of the deck. The sun was nearly below the clouds, extending the woman’s shadow bold and long.
Time after time the Hanuman steered the projectiles away from the ship and into harmless oblivion, and occasionally there were explosions from down below, well out of sight.
Both blades drawn, Artemisia waited like a prophet as the Hanuman circled in the air above. Her hair stirred in the wind.
The land masses came close enough so that Randur could perceive settlements on them, weird esoteric homesteads and other structures that cluttered up the rockscape. They seemed too bizarre to be real.
A smaller fragment of land peeled away from this one, then drifted like a bubble towards the Exmachina. A shadowy figure stood on top of it.
Across the intervening sky. Then alongside.
The figure banked alongside the large vessel and hopped aboard with a thud as it touched the deck. As tall as Artemisia, white-skinned and gold-armoured, the thing took three steps forward and Artemisia backed away cautiously, enticing it further into the centre.
Then it happened strangely:
The combatants slowed and juddered in and out of time and location, flickered from one part of the deck to another, appearing each time in different fight poses as if racing and grappling with each other through incomprehensible zones of space, a fight spiralling through dimensions that were impossible.
The third pose: blades locked at the far end of the ship, silhouetted against the red sky.
Flicker.
The fourth: amidships, two strokes from the stranger and both connected with the deck; and Artemisia severed its arm,