The Black Lung Captain - Chris Wooding [84]
He’d been watching for some time now. Usually he wouldn’t trouble to be so careful, but something was amiss. He sensed it, even if he didn’t know what it was.
Perhaps it was the odd behavior of the scrawny one that was perturbing him.
Slag had got used to bullying Harkins. He sensed the fear coming off him, and fear meant weakness. Slag hated weakness and was determined to punish it wherever he found it. But Harkins had been acting different of late. Poking round the cargo hold with that metal beast clanking along behind him. Creeping through the Ketty Jay with a net.
Slag was supposed to be the hunter, not the hunted. This prey seemed to have got confused about his role. It was Slag’s job to remind him.
Slag slipped warily out of the vent onto the top of a storage cupboard. From there, he dropped down onto an iron-bound trunk and then to the floor. He sniffed the air suspiciously. His instincts still insisted that things weren’t quite right, but he didn’t understand why. There was no danger from the snoring fat one, with whom he shared a mutual disdain. Harkins was asleep and helpless. Everything looked normal enough.
Maybe it was because his prey wasn’t twitching and muttering as much as he usually did. But his eyes were closed and his breathing deep, so Slag hopped up onto the bed.
Some of these odd beings slept heavily. Not like a cat at all. Slag could thump about the room as much as he liked and nobody would notice him. But it still took technique to clamber onto a face without waking its owner. Slag was massive, old, and scarred from a thousand fights, but despite his hefty frame he was a master of the art of stealth.
He slipped along the bunk toward Harkins’s head. He could smell the stale breath of his enemy, feel the air brushing past his sensitive whiskers. He slowed, examined the terrain, picked out the best method of approach. When he was ready, he made his move.
Suddenly the ground surged underneath him, as if the bed itself had snapped shut like a set of jaws. He tensed to bolt, but a white sack enveloped him first, tangling his paws and blinding him. He thrashed, but he couldn’t get a proper grip to run, and he felt himself lifted into the air. He tumbled onto his back, upside down, helpless, constrained. He hissed and spat and writhed in fury, but the sack had him trapped.
“Ha!” Harkins cried. “Ha! Thought I was asleep, didn’t you! Well, I fooled you!”
It was a gabble of meaningless sounds to Slag. He was shaken all about in his awful white prison. He twisted and turned, trying to right himself. Nobody did this to him! Nobody! Least of all that filthy fearful prey-thing!
“How do you like that, eh? I’ll show you!”
“Will you shut your damn meat-hole?” moaned Pinn, who’d been awakened by the commotion.
“I got him! I got the cat!”
“Great,” said Pinn irritably. “Throw it in a river or something. Scabby little bag of stink.”
“Throw it in the river? That’s a good idea, Pinn! A good idea!”
“Happy to help. Now, bugger off.”
Slag’s flailing had got one of his claws hooked into the fabric of the sack. He struggled to free his paw but instead succeeded in using it as an anchor to twist himself round into an upright position at the bottom of the sack. Now, with his paws beneath him, he tugged. The fabric tore, but his paw remained trapped by a loop of stubborn thread. He pulled again, and this time a longer tear appeared.
“Erm,” said Harkins.
There was a creaking of bedsprings—Pinn rolling over to look down on the scene. “I hope you didn’t think your pillowcase was going to hold a cat that size, did you?”
Slag’s claw pulled free, but he’d sighted freedom and attacked the rent, slashing and shredding. The scrawny one squealed, and the sack suddenly, terrifyingly, plunged downward as it was released. Slag hit the floor