The Black Lung Captain - Chris Wooding [38]
He surveyed the damage to the craft. It had almost torn in half, but that suggested to Frey that it had gently, inexorably, sunk to the ground rather than plowing bow-first into the defile. It had broken under its own weight on the uneven ground. A crash at speed would have ripped the craft into twisted chunks and caused much greater destruction.
Jez walked up next to Frey. He turned to her to ask her opinion, but he stopped when he saw the look in her eyes, the horror on her face.
Jez, pale at the best of times, had gone white.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“That’s no Azryx craft,” she said quietly. But Hodd heard her anyway.
“Of course it’s an Azryx craft!” he protested. “What else could it—”
“I’ve seen one of those before.”
“Preposterous!” Hodd trilled, indignant.
Grist held up a hand to silence him. He was staring intently at Jez, brow furrowed. “You’ve seen one? Where? When?”
“Years ago,” she said. “In the North.” She looked away, and suddenly she seemed very small. “That’s a dreadnought. It’s a Mane craft.”
THE DREADNOUGHT—CURIOUS CARGO—FREY GETS A SHOCK—JEZ SNEAKS OFF—FLASHBACKS
anes, thought Frey. What in all damnation have I got us into?
The narrow passageways of the dreadnought swallowed the light of their oil lanterns. Rusty iron and tarnished steel pressed in on them. Grim metal walls. Pipes streaked with mold. They’d gone only a few dozen meters from the rip in the hull where they’d entered the craft, but already it was as if they were entombed. Lightless, hopeless. There was a scent in the air beneath the tang of burning oil from the lanterns and the smell of Grist’s cigar. Decay, and something else. A dry, musky, unfamiliar odor that set his senses on edge.
Hodd led the way, followed by Grist and his bosun, Crattle. Frey, Silo, Crake, and Jez brought up the rear. The rest stayed outside on lookout duty.
Nobody spoke. The only sound was the shuffling of feet and the sniffle and snort of runny noses. Anxious eyes strained in the lantern light. Pistols twitched this way and that. The forest had been hard on their nerves, but this was worse.
Frey was scared. There were things that man wasn’t meant to mess with. Like daemons, for example. Seemed dangerous to play with forces like that. He’d never had a big problem with Crake doing it, but that was mostly because he made sure not to think about what the daemonist was up to. Thus far, Crake’s tricks had been useful and generally harmless. Like the ring Frey wore on his little finger, or Crake’s golden tooth that could bewitch the weak-minded, or his skeleton key that opened any lock.
But Manes? There wasn’t a freebooter alive who didn’t give a secret shiver at the tales of the Manes. Stray too far north and you might get caught in the fogs. And with the fogs came the Manes, inhuman ghouls from the Pole. Shrieking and howling, riding their terrible dreadnoughts. They’d kill you on sight or, worse, turn you. You’d be one of them to the end of your days. And that might be a very long time indeed. They all knew the story of the boy who lost his father to the Manes, only to meet him and kill him thirty years later when the Manes returned to his hometown. Changed though his father was, he hadn’t aged at all.
Manes. Their nature was mysterious, their purpose unknowable. That frightened people. More than the Sammies who might be building a great air fleet to the south, more than the strange and hostile people of Peleshar with their bizarre sciences, more than the rumors that came out of New Vardia of disappearing colonies and sinister portents. Nobody knew for sure what the Manes were or what they wanted.
He checked his crew. Silo was typically inscrutable. Crake looked ill. But it was Jez who worried him most. She had a stricken expression on her face. Maybe he should have left her outside with Malvery and Pinn,