The Wrath of the Lizard Lord (19 page)

‘Listen carefully,’ Napoleon gasped, wincing at the effort of speaking. ‘You must stop the count. He will cause chaos, and France and all Europe will be doomed. Though it pains me to say it, for the good of France you must ensure that my armies are defeated.’

‘Rest yourself,’ Dakkar said, his voice soothing. Images of Oginski, pale and fading fast, flashed through his mind. Gog’s final smile. So much death. He
could
save Napoleon – he must!

‘Listen to me!’ Napoleon said, his voice gravelly. ‘I have been calculating while I’ve been here. My double on the surface knows my plan well. He will march up through France and strike the British and Dutch from near Brussels.’

‘Stefan said to me that the battleground had already been chosen,’ Dakkar said, frowning. ‘He wants to annihilate them all.’

‘He will try to take them by surprise,’ Napoleon said, his breathing ragged. ‘By my calculation, the tunnel he dug will have reached the surface near there.’

‘If he’s marching from Paris, he’ll attack from the west,’ Mary said.

‘If it were me,’ Napoleon said, gripping Dakkar’s hand, ‘I would use the forces I have to get behind the British, to outflank them. And that’s what he’ll do.’

‘But how can we stop him?’ Dakkar said. ‘We have no armies or cavalry!’

‘You have the spark of greatness in you,’ Napoleon said, clasping Dakkar’s fist. ‘One day, men will either fear or celebrate your name. I have faith in you.’

Napoleon’s hold loosened and he gave one last breath before slumping gently into Dakkar’s arms.

Dakkar wept. For Gog. For Napoleon. And for Oginski, who might be dead for all he knew.
If only he were here
, Dakkar thought.
He’d know what to do
.

He glanced up to the skies. The count’s hot-air balloon was a tiny speck in the far distance.

‘I will stop you, Count Cryptos,’ Dakkar said, holding Napoleon’s cooling hand. ‘I swear it.’

Chapter Twenty-seven

Farewells and Forgiveness

A haze of woodsmoke hung over the giants’ camp. In the glow of the fire, men sang and passed food and drink. Gog’s son sat on a huge wooden throne, glowering into the flickering flames.

Dakkar shivered. ‘We’re outstaying our welcome,’ he said as he sat at the door of his hut, watching the remnants of the underworld tribes dancing and telling tales.

‘You can’t blame Gog’s son for resenting us,’ Georgia said, folding her arms and leaning against the hut wall next to Dakkar. ‘To him, there’s little difference between us and the count’s men.’

‘You two wearin’ them ridiculous black uniforms doesn’t help,’ Mary said from within the hut. She sat on a makeshift stool carved from an old log. ‘A girl in trousers? You’ll be carted off to the asylum when we get topside again!’

‘If we
ever
get topside again,’ Dakkar murmured, mulling over the past few days. After Napoleon had died and the last of the Cryptos Guard had fled, somehow Dakkar had imagined a hurried chase to the surface. ‘I thought we’d be there by now.’

Reality had been a little different. The giants had laid out their dead along the shore for the Gacheela to take and spent a long time pulling bodies from the rubble. The bodies of Cryptos guards were treated with customary disrespect and thrown into the bushes for the Saranda. When Dakkar had asked for a cairn of stones over Napoleon’s corpse, the giants had looked at him uncomprehendingly. Without Gog to translate, communication had become more difficult even though Dakkar had begun to pick up some key words of their language.

He didn’t need a translator to tell him that Gog’s son was unhappy. His dark eyes scowled at Dakkar every time their paths crossed.

‘He blames you for Gog’s death,’ Mary said one night as they all sat round a tribal fire eating scavenged fruit from the ruined storehouses.

‘There was nothing Dax could do,’ Georgia said, leaping to her feet.

Dakkar stayed silent, staring at the ground.

A few of Gog’s original tribesmen had survived and they greeted Dakkar with smiles and even offerings of food. Dakkar got the distinct impression that they were watching out for him at least.

The giants’ funeral rites took days. Some tribesmen found feathers and the bones of fallen reptiles. They paced the ruins, shaking the feathers and chanting.

‘I think they’re purifying the area,’ Dakkar said.

‘It needs it,’ Georgia replied, wrinkling her nose at the stink of decay.

The rotting carcasses of reptiles littered the site, attracting small scavenger lizards and some strange flying creatures too. Gweek would flutter off from time to time and Dakkar tried not to think about what it was eating.

‘Couldn’t we just go and find a way home?’ Mary said, as they watched the dancing shaman.

‘I’m not sure I want to venture out into that jungle alone,’ Georgia muttered, shading her eyes and staring across at the distant line of trees. ‘There’s all kinds of beasties who’ve run off there recently – not to mention a few Cryptos guards.’

‘I’m not scared,’ Mary said, folding her arms at Georgia.

‘We’re better off moving in a group,’ Dakkar agreed, ‘frustrating as it is. I’m sure we’ll find a way out of here, Mary, but we’ve got to stick together.’

Dakkar, Georgia and Mary spent their time scaven­ging what they could. They found rifles, powder and ammunition, knives and swords. Mary found supplies of dried meat and tarpaulin covers. She also found some fascinating samples of fossil which Georgia wouldn’t allow on the sub ‘because of their weight’. Dakkar managed to make some new Sea Arrows using bits and pieces from the arsenal.

Finally, after several days, the giants were ready to move. Although they were from different tribes, they appeared to accept Gog’s son as leader. Their numbers had dwindled and while Gog had mentioned at least three tribes to Dakkar, here there barely looked enough for one. Dakkar bade a sad farewell to Napoleon’s grave and followed the giants as they strode across the dead plain that surrounded the now ruined tower.

Their journey back to Gog’s riverbank camp had proved tense but uneventful. The majority of the giants hadn’t seen anything like the
Liberty
before, and when Dakkar and Georgia uncovered it from the bushes and reeds at the side of the river, some were scared. Gog’s son scowled the deepest.

Although time was hard to measure in this night-less world, Dakkar guessed that over a week had passed since the battle at the tower.

‘But we’re ready to leave tomorrow, aren’t we?’ Mary said, pulling Dakkar from his thoughts.

‘It isn’t just a question of jumping in the
Liberty
and speeding off, you know,’ Georgia snapped. ‘We need food – enough for three of us for at least several weeks. We need water. We need to know where we’re going!’

‘That’s not my fault,’ Mary said, shrugging. ‘If Dakkar hadn’t smashed up the nearest Ascender Cage, I’d be back in Lyme now.’

‘How did you get down here, Georgia?’ Dakkar said, ignoring Mary’s jibe.

‘Through a sea tunnel,’ Georgia said. ‘The beasts I tracked from Nova Scotia brought me to an island off the coast of Africa. They swam into a cave which became a tunnel. The current was strong and it sucked me right down. I thought I was going to die.’

‘Oh well, never mind,’ Mary muttered just loud enough for Georgia to hear. ‘Better luck next time.’

Georgia jumped up. ‘You button your lip,’ she snarled, ‘or I’ll do it for you!’

‘Will you two stop?’ Dakkar said, sighing. ‘We’ve got enough on our plate trying to get home.’ He looked up at the boiling clouds.

But what will I find when I get up there?
he thought.
Oginski dead? The count marshalling his reptile cavalry?

The time eventually came for them to depart. Two of Gog’s old warriors accompanied them through the jungle to the river where the
Liberty
lay moored. They had packed her with the black fruit, some dried meat and the craft’s water barrels were full. Dakkar’s Sea Arrows were stowed and ready to use.

Now Dakkar stood on the mossy riverbank, his cheeks flushed, unsure what to say. The two giants waited, giving toothy grins and nodding. Then Gog’s son appeared from the undergrowth. He stared at Dakkar then nodded.

‘You save my father’s life,’ Gog’s son said hesitantly. ‘He gave his for you.’

Dakkar shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘He gave it for you.’

Gog’s son stood deep in thought then nodded solemnly. He extended a hand and Dakkar took it. For the first time, Dakkar saw Gog’s son smile.

‘Are you goin’ to hold hands all day?’ Mary called from the hatch of the
Liberty
. ‘Only, I want to be gettin’ home.’

Dakkar shook his head and climbed on board, giving a final wave to Gog’s son and the giant warriors.

The
Liberty
felt warm inside and the engines pulsed. Georgia sat in the captain’s seat and looked up. ‘Ready, Dax?’ she said.

‘It’s Dakkar,’ Dakkar said.

‘Dax.’ Georgia grinned. ‘Kinda fancy name, I reckon.’

Dakkar shook his head and Georgia pushed the drive lever to
Full Ahead
.

Dakkar sat on the lip of the hatch and waved to the giants as they shrank into the distance to become shrouded by trees along the riverbank. The jungle closed in around them once more.

‘It’s really quiet,’ Dakkar said, scanning the bushes and undergrowth. ‘It’s as if when the tower blew up the wildlife fled from this whole area.’

‘Maybe,’ said Mary. ‘Or perhaps when all them reptiles went back into the woods they ate everything in sight.’

‘Who knows?’ Dakkar murmured. Gweek glided down from the trees, a dragonfly caught in its toothy beak. It crunched at the insect, gulping it down. Dakkar grimaced. ‘And what am I to do with you, little Gweek?’

‘Aren’t you going to keep it?’ Mary asked.

‘And how would I explain it to everyone on the surface world?’ Dakkar said, running a finger along the top of the creature’s scaly head.

‘A bald parrot?’ Mary smirked.

‘It’ll take us weeks to get to England,’ Georgia called from the captain’s seat. ‘If you think I’m having that thing flying around and pooping on my head for all that time, you can think again.’

‘I could make a cage,’ Dakkar said, his heart sinking at the thought of leaving the little creature. Ugly as Gweek was, with its vicious rows of teeth, its leathery wings and scaly skin, he’d grown quite attached to it.

‘If it’s bonded with you,’ Mary said, ‘it’ll follow you. What if it just flies and flies after you across the sea until it dies of exhaustion?’

‘Kill it now then!’ Georgia yelled.

‘Georgia!’ Dakkar snapped. ‘That settles it – I’ll make a cage.’

After much grumbling, Georgia beached the
Liberty
close to the ruins of the tower while Dakkar and Mary searched for suitable branches and sapling shoots to fashion a cage.

‘Don’t go too far into the forest,’ Mary said, staring at the shadows.

Dakkar nodded, staring around at the silent ruins. The heap of rocks still smouldered; a few tiny lizards scampered about in the wreckage. Some distance away, a dark patch in the sand indicated where the bodies of the fallen giants had been. The Gacheela had taken every scrap and, so the giants believed, taken their souls into the skies.

Dumping an armful of green sticks into the lower cabin of the
Liberty
, Dakkar grinned at Georgia, who rolled her eyes.

‘Couldn’t we just make the cage and then leave Gweek here?’ she said. ‘It would escape eventually but we’d be long gone by then.’

Georgia popped her head out of the top of the
Liberty
. ‘If that stupid bird thing of yours so much as farts in here, you’ll wake up to find it roasted on a spit and served up for breakfast!’

Gweek landed on Dakkar’s shoulder, gave a shriek and pecked his earlobe. ‘Ow!’ Dakkar said, rubbing his ear. ‘You know I wouldn’t let her do that! Just keep your head down, that’s all.’

Chapter Twenty-eight

Out on the Ocean

They clambered into the
Liberty
and Georgia set her to
Full Ahead
.

Dakkar climbed down into the lower cabin of the craft, with Gweek sitting on his shoulder. He picked up the sticks and began to tie them together to form a cage. Mary came down and sat with him, tying some more sticks together. Soon they had two sides of a cube. The
Liberty
bounced and skipped across the waves.

‘The sea tunnel is a good few days’ sail from here,’ Georgia called down from the upper cabin. ‘The compass is hopeless so I’ll have to try and remember the way.’

‘Hopeless?’ Dakkar repeated, putting down the cage and climbing up. The compass sat in a binnacle close to the
Liberty
’s wheel. It whirled around, never settling. ‘Why is it doing that?’

Georgia shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s because we’re deep beneath the earth’s surface,’ she suggested. ‘North might be there.’ She pointed upward. ‘Or there.’ she pointed at her feet.