Wrath of Kerberos (24 page)

There was a sudden stink of ozone and then lightning was striking the ground all around them. Kelos quickly threw up a shield against the rain of actinic fire. Looking up at Kerberos, he grinned.

“Nice try, you bastard. But guess what? We don’t need you anymore. Ladies and gentlemen, please ready yourselves; this may be a bit of a bumpy ride.”

The azure dragon breathed its last and Kelos took the creature’s escaping lifeforce and intermingled it with the power rising from its cooling blood. Then, sensing each and every one of his companions around him, holding their faces in his mind, he began to reverse the spell that had brought them to this godforsaken world.

There was a quiet that put Kelos in mind of a small country church on a weekday afternoon. It was strangely calming, although when he looked around him, the scene was utter chaos. Hearing nothing but the sound of his own heartbeat, he smiled. This was true power, true sorcery; in comparison, everything he had done before had been nothing more than tricks to please the simple-minded. On his return to Twilight he would be lauded as the highest mage on the peninsula. None would be able to equal his power. He could feel the very fabric of existence in his grasp. The ground was crumbling beneath them; the sky was falling with a sigh; stars tumbled and sang and Kelos saw, just for a moment, exactly how everything was put together.

And it was only a simple matter, then, of opening a door and ushering his companions through.

P
ART
T
HREE

A H
ISTORY
L
ESSON

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN

H
E WELCOMED THE
shock of the cold water, letting the sea into himself as he sank into its depths. He called to his brethren, but though they had seemed to surround him just moments before, now there was no sign of them. He looked down at himself and saw that his flesh was changing: its dark hue growing pale, the claws with which he had so joyously shredded the flesh of his enemies receding. He felt diminished, empty. He was the only one of his kind. He was alone. He was–

Silus
.

On remembering his name, everything else fell away like the wisps of a dying nightmare. The last thing Silus could remember was the harsh brightness of the desert and the dragon looming over him, amber blood gushing from a tear in its throat. Now he found himself drifting, looking down into the depths of the ocean. From somewhere nearby came a slow repetitive
thud
, like the beating of a vast heart.

A flash lit up the water twenty yards to his right. A shockwave buffeted him. Tendrils of blood snaked from his nose, drifting around his face as he blinked away the blotches crowding his vision. When the murk cleared, Silus saw a rain of debris falling slowly to the seabed far below. Turning amongst the shattered spars, shredded cloth and scattered weapons were many bodies, and dismembered parts. Men clawed at their throats as they were sucked down into the darkness, their last breaths escaping them in streams of silver bubbles. They fell through water inky with gore. Shoals of quicksilver fish darted through the blood and viscera, feasting on the offal, some even brave enough to take bites out of men not yet dead.

Silus moved to help, but before he could reach any of the drowning men there was another flash, closer than the first, the explosion stunning him for a moment so that he could do nothing but watch as a sinking ship, trailing bodies in its wake, tumbled towards him.

Sensation returned to his limbs and he darted out of the way of the tumbling vessel, only to become caught up in its wake, dragged down with the lithe, pale bodies that spilled from the dying ship. Just before the darkness became absolute, Silus pushed himself away, striking for a surface painted scarlet, ochre and green by the fires that raged above.

As he emerged, Silus was assaulted by the sounds of battle. Not that he could see the conflict, for a dense fog hung over everything, heavy with the stink of gunpowder. Vast shadows moved within the pall, occasionally emitting gouts of fire, illuminating the water and showing Silus the broken bodies that floated there.

“Silus!” It was Katya, swimming through the dead towards him. “Thank the gods, you’re alright.”

He hugged her so hard that he almost dragged her under.

“Where’s Zac?” he said.

“With the others. Come on.”

She led him to a rowboat, its oars missing and its hull blackened by fire. Within were huddled their companions, starting with each fresh explosion, staring into the fog with fearful expressions. Illiun had survived the assault of the dragons, although of his people only Hannah, Shalim and Rosalind had survived.

“I’m presuming,” Silus said as he scrambled into the boat, followed by his wife, “that this isn’t what you intended, Kelos?”

“No.”

There was a peal of thunder and the water erupted ten yards off to starboard, lifting the boat on a swell that threatened to capsize them.

“Well then, do something!” Silus shouted.

“I can’t,” Kelos said. “The only reason I managed to perform the sorcery in the first place is because I had the blood of a dragon. Here, I don’t have enough power to do it again.”

With a roar, a line of fire arced over their heads, before silence descended. A break in the fog briefly showed them the dull copper disk of the sun and, just beginning to move before it, the azure glow of Kerberos. To port and starboard, shadows loomed, rearing up like cliffs. But cliffs don’t move, and when two vast galleons hove into view, their flanks bearing down on them, panic began to break out in the small vessel.

“Row!” Ignacio shouted.

“With what?” Katya said. “We don’t have any oars.”

Gun ports opened alongside each ship, and they were close enough now that Silus could see the spark of fuses being lit.

He dived overboard, quickly filling his lungs with water, drawing the very essence of the ocean into himself. Positioning himself directly beneath the rowboat, Silus closed his eyes. He focused on the flow of blood through his veins and the movement of the water around him, and opened up a channel; a strong current taking him in its grasp, the water blood-warm and echoing with the beat of his heart. Silus raised his arms and the rowboat was borne aloft on the back of a wave that quickly curled down the narrow channel between the two great ships, just as the sliver of sky above them began to disappear.

The boat sped out onto open water, the power of the wave quickly diminishing. Behind them, the ships’ cannons fired, the galleons erupting in flame, blown to matchsticks in an act of mutual destruction.

“I don’t think that those were Final Faith ships,” Dunsany said. “Just what the hell is going on here?”

“It seems,” Silus said, pulling himself back into the boat, “that Kelos has landed us in the middle of war.”

Ahead of them, the water was crowded with ships. Vessels of all sizes jostled against each other as bodies flung themselves from deck to deck, swords flashing as boarders were repelled and corpses pitched into the churning waters below. Cannon fire punctuated the roar of hand-to-hand combat, ships sinking swiftly as they were holed below the waterline, only for others to just as quickly take their place. Silus had never witnessed naval battle before, but he had always imagined it would be more graceful than this; neatly regimented fleets dancing around each other as they exchanged fire, each side taking their turn as though playing some civilised game of strategy. This was as bloody and chaotic as any land war; perhaps more so, for out on the open water there was nowhere one could retreat to. Once battle was joined, it was all or nothing.

In the confusion, it was difficult to tell who was fighting whom. The combatants appeared to be human, though one side was unnaturally tall – lithe, pale figures who moved with a graceful sure-footedness – while the other was stockier and shorter. It was these latter who appeared to have the upper hand. What they lacked in martial skills and finesse, their ships more than made up for with payloads of heavy munitions. Their cannon balls were barely slowed by the hulls of the enemy vessels, but punched straight through ship after ship before finally falling into the sea. On some of their ships were mounted vast crossbows, their projectiles, when fired, skewering men horribly, their points opening up as they punched into flesh so that the victims could be reeled quickly in and brutally dispatched. Seeing this, Silus couldn’t help but be reminded of the stories he’d heard concerning the whalers of the Sarcrean islands.

A stain was spreading from the waters of the battle, lapping up against the rowboat in oily red waves. Two men were swimming towards them, shouting for help as they floundered. Ignacio rose and held out his hand. One of the men grasped it, babbling his thanks as he tried to gain purchase on the slippery boards, only for Ignacio to lean in close and open up his throat with a dagger. The other man, seeing the fate of his comrade, began to back-paddle, but he was tiring swiftly and the second time his head bobbed beneath the surface, it failed to re-emerge.

“You... you... Ignacio, how could you?” Katya said, her voice quavering. “Zac saw that.”

“And he’s seen worse,” Ignacio said. “Katya, we don’t exactly have a lot of room to move around on this useless dinghy. If we take on any more people, we’ll sink. Someone has to think of these practicalities.”

“Kelos, why did you even bring Ignacio and his new friends with us?” Katya said, exasperated.

“Trust me, Katya, it was as much an accident as me landing us in the middle of a war!”

Ignacio looked back at the handful of Swords who had made it through the time rift with them, but his comrades had nothing to say. They looked just as stunned as everybody else; their righteous ire quashed by everything they had seen.

“That man you just killed,” Kelos said. “Was it just me, or didn’t he look a bit like a... well... an elf?”

“And those short chaps with the deadly cannons...?” Dunsany said.

“Gods, I’ve sent us back to Twilight alright, but we’re in completely the wrong era. This must be the last great war between the elves and the dwarves. I’ve read of the fierce naval battles they engaged in. The dwarves came to naval combat late, but they quickly took to it.”

The boat began to pitch wildly as something beneath them pushed its way to the surface.

For a moment Silus thought that it was a deep-water leviathan, come to find the source of the detritus that was raining down into its territory. But as dark water rolled from the back of the huge barrel-like body, it revealed not flesh, but wood.