The Black Lung Captain - Chris Wooding [36]
IT WAS ON A damp, cold morning that they buried Gimble.
The rain had stopped at dawn but the cloud cover was still unbroken, a low gray roof over the land. They put the dead man into the earth in the spot where they’d made last night’s camp. An anonymous place among the trees and creepers, where the air was chill and fresh, rich with the scent of soil and leaf.
Grist said a few words in Gimble’s memory while the others stood around sniffling and coughing. Most of them had caught colds in the night, and several were sipping a hot remedy that Malvery had whipped up. When Grist was done, they laid on Gimble’s chest the severed claw of the creature that had killed him. It seemed fitting, somehow, to show that his death had been avenged.
Not that the poor sod’ll know anything about it, Frey thought, as Gimble’s crewmates began to fill in the grave.
Last night’s other casualty, the eager young Tarworth, was in better shape. He was limping along, using a rifle as a makeshift crutch, but his spirits seemed high. Frey saw him joking with Ucke as they set out. Ucke grinned, showing his uneven mouthful of scavenged teeth.
Pinn looked shifty all morning, but nobody said a word about his little mishap with a pistol. Frey’s own pistol had been lost during his flight from the beast, so he’d taken Gimble’s twin revolvers. Nobody seemed to mind, and Gimble wouldn’t need them.
Their pace was slow, for Tarworth’s sake. Hodd assured them they’d be at the crash site by mid-afternoon, but even that seemed too long. Last night’s attack had made them wary, and they jumped at every rustle of leaves. Yet despite the sound of animals all around them, they caught barely a glimpse of the local wildlife. The animals heard or smelled them long before they arrived, and made themselves scarce.
“See, boys?” said Grist. “They’re more afraid of us than we are of them!”
Speak for yourself, thought Frey. You didn’t see what attacked the camp.
At midday, they found the village.
It was dug into a hillside, half buried by the slope of the land. The trees had thinned out and there was little undergrowth. Sunken trenches with walls of stone blocks formed enclosures and yards. Oversize doorways led into passages, tunneling into the hill. Scattered about were crude huts of rock and packed mud, their roofs fallen in. It was an abandoned place, empty of life.
“Your lost tribe?” Grist asked Hodd.
“Sadly not,” said the explorer. He blew his nose on a handkerchief. “This is a beast-man village. Home to the savages that inhabit this island. I passed it last time I was here.” He swept the buildings with a disinterested gaze. “They have been well documented by explorers before me. Come on. The craft isn’t much farther.”
They ignored him. Several of them wandered off to investigate the huts. Frey stayed back. Dead as it was, the village was uncomfortably roomy, built for people much bigger than the average Vard. He didn’t like the size of some of those doorways. “So there are beast-men?” he asked Hodd. “That much is true?”
“Oh, indeed,” said Hodd. “I have seen some from afar. They walk like men, but they are more like animals.”
“What are their women like? Are they like animals too?” Pinn asked, nudging Malvery in the ribs.
Hodd merely looked puzzled. “Their … women?”
“What happened to the beast-men who lived here?” Frey asked, changing the subject before Pinn could get really lewd.
Hodd sniffed. “Perhaps driven away by a rival tribe. They are a violent sort.”
“Cap’n!” Jez called. She was waving from the doorway of a hut.
Hodd rolled his eyes. “Must we waste all this time? I told you, there’s nothing you’ll find that the Explorer’s Guild doesn’t already know. Beast-men have been thoroughly, thoroughly researched. There’s simply nothing more to say! An exploratory dead end!”
“Ah, let ’em have their fun,” said Grist. He spat out the butt of a cigar and put a fresh one in his mouth.
“ ‘Ooh, look at this! Look at that!’ ” Hodd mocked sourly, in cruel imitation. “There’s nothing worse than watching amateur explorers at work.”