The Black Lung Captain - Chris Wooding [30]
Perhaps she didn’t have to deal with this all alone. Perhaps Crake didn’t either.
“Thanks, Silo,” she said.
He pulled back his hood and turned his face up to the rain. Water trickled over his shaven scalp. “In Samarla I was a slave,” he said. “In Vardia I’m the enemy. This might be the first damn place I ever been where I’m just a man.”
He smiled. An actual smile. Jez almost fell over with the shock.
“Freedom makes a feller talkative, I reckon,” he said.
That was when the screams began.
A COMMOTION IN THE CAMP—CRAKE Is MISSING—FREY TAKES TO THE TREES—A WORRYING DISCOVERY
rey dreamed of a meadow on a hill. He dreamed of a young woman with long blond hair and a smile of such innocent beauty that it melted him to see it. Trinica was her name. They were mad with the joy of first love, swept up in each other. He chased her through the tall grass, but she was always one step ahead of him, laughing. Finally he caught her, and she turned in his arms, her nose an inch from his as she leaned forward to kiss him.…
Then she was screaming. Her mouth stretched open, grotesquely wide, exposing rotted teeth. Her breath stank of decay. Her green eyes darkened to black. Hair came away from her head in clumps, the dying locks slithering to the ground. He struggled frantically to let go of her, but his upper arms were gripped by some invisible force. She shrieked in his face, features distorted with horror, her skin white, corpselike. Frey shrieked with her.
He thrashed awake to the sound of screams, shouting, rain. His arms were trapped inside his sleeping bag. Trinica’s howling still echoed in his mind.
Rain hammered against the tarpaulin overhead. A fire flickered nearby, smoking up the air beneath their little shelter. Dark figures moved beyond it, barely visible in the downpour. Frey looked about, trying to reassemble his memories, and found himself in a lumpy, tangled landscape of empty sleeping bags. He’d gone to sleep as soon as he’d had his dinner, exhausted by the afternoon’s trek.
What in damnation is going on?
“Over there!” someone cried. One of Grist’s men.
“Over where?”
“That way!”
“I can’t bloody see where you’re pointing!”
“That way!”
“Which way is that way, shit-wit?”
Frey scrambled out of his sleeping bag, pulled on his boots, and snatched up his revolver. Then he pulled his cutlass from where he’d lain next to it in the night and thrust it into his belt. It wasn’t the smartest thing to sleep with a naked blade—he didn’t want any accidents where bits of his insides ended up on the outside—but he was paranoid about someone stealing it. That cutlass was his most precious possession, after the Ketty Jay: a daemon-thralled weapon given to him by Crake as price for his passage. It made even an amateur swordsman into a champion. Which was good, since Frey was very, very amateur.
He emerged from the shelter into the open and was soaked to the skin in seconds. Wiping hair back from his forehead, revolver at the ready, he cast around for signs of his crew. It was dark beyond the firelight, and the rain made it seem as if everything was constantly in motion. A pistol shot rang out, making him jump. He turned toward the sound, but the trees and shadows foiled his sight.
“Sound your names, damn you all!” Grist cried from somewhere.
“Crattle!”
“Ucke!”
“Tarworth, sir! I’m shot!” The young crewman’s voice wavered fearfully.
“Hodd! Where are you?” Grist demanded.
“Here!” the explorer replied.
“Gimble?”
Frey heard a rustle to his left, and Pinn emerged from the undergrowth, eyes bright, chubby face flushed with excitement.
“I saw it, Cap’n! It’s huge!”
“What is?” he asked, but then Grist yelled again.
“Gimble? Are you there?”
“Malvery!” This time