CHAPTER TWENTY
In a layer of wind they flew southwards off the highlands and out across the open plains of the Great Hush, with the ship’s tubes burning brightly the entire way.
As the days rolled on the sun arched noticeably higher in the sky, and soon the air grew warm enough for crewmen and passengers to remove the heaviest of their cold weather gear, so that they worked and lounged in open shirts even as their moods grew more sullen. Colourful bandanas and wide-brimmed hats became common sights, along with sungoggles to shield the eyes from the glare.
Ever vigilant, the lookouts watched the plains of the Great Hush rolling below, where the shadow of the Falcon wriggled across endless corrugations of land sporting herds of bison, zels and other creatures they had never seen before, causing bickering over their correct names.
The strange boli trees of the region could be seen everywhere in small isolated stands upon the crowns of hillocks; thick trunks supporting upturned palms of branches fingering skywards. Some stands of boli trees were covered in umber leaves with undersides of silver, so that in sudden gusts they reminded the watcher of sunshine cast across water, but other stands were even more remarkable than that, for their crowns were aflame and smoking like clusters of candles. A natural occurrence, the longhunter Cole explained to them. Shedding their ageing leaves through fire.
All of this, yet still no sign of the kree.
If nothing else, Ash had expected the Great Hush to have been quiet. Yet birds screeched and flapped as they always do. Animals bellowed and roared and chattered with abandon.
Perhaps on the ground it might have been a different story, where contours and range would stretch out these noises into unexpected eruptions of an otherwise quiet day, but up here, flying across it all at a tremendous clip, the sounds came varied and often enough that they were a constant backdrop to their journey.
Cole had smiled when Ash had voiced these observations aloud, how noisy it all was in the Great Hush.
‘Wait until we get closer to the Edge,’ the longhunter had replied, with a crazy glint in his eye.
All the while, through the lengthening days and the shortening nights, the Falcon’s tubes roared on full thrust so that the sound was always in their ears too, leaving behind the ship an inky trail that smeared across the sky in the high winds; the Falcon eating the laqs as fast as she must have been eating through her supplies of white powder.
They crossed a vast marshland submerged in a recent flood, where lines of animals trekked across the silvery waters. Later came a desert surrounded by a crescent of mountains shining brightly in the sun; peaks which glowed brightly behind them by night. Crystal mountains, Cole had explained, reminding Ash of the lights on the moon again, how some claimed they were only a phenomenon such as this one.
After that they passed on into grasslands where the herds appeared less in size and regularity than before, the land emptier, almost desolate. The land of the kree proper.
A jangled mood began to spark across the ship. Cole assured them it was an effect of their nearing proximity to the Edge and the strange qualities now abundant in the air. Squabbles grew common. At night, shouts punctuated the stillness from minds trapped in feverish nightmares. Black jokes developed whenever dispirited men wandered off on their own wearing their belts. Paranoia brewed.
The roll of the sun marked the slow passing of the days.
*
One morning, deep into the Hush now, the shouts of the lookouts alerted them to a trail of white smoke curling low over the plains to the west, prompting all to rush to the starboard side of the ship for an eager look, tilting the deck with their shifting weight.
‘A mullaro wagon,’ Cole said next to Ash, who stood with Aléas by the rail.
‘Mullaro,’ he repeated to their dumb expressions. ‘It’s what the highland natives call longhunters, the ones who go after the Milk.’
‘They’re moving fast,’ Aléas observed.
‘Aye, and putting out a lot of smoke to mask their trail. They must have sighted some kree.’
‘Are they alone out here?’
‘No, lad. It’s most likely a supply wagon. Ferrying some supplies down the line.’
‘The line?’
‘You’ve got two ways of getting your hands on Royal Milk and making it back alive. The expeditions do it the complicated way. They set up a base camp where kree activity is still minimal – we passed that range many days ago. Some of them hold down the camp while the expedition pushes deeper towards the Edge, setting up a string of supply drops along the way. A few remain at each one. By the time they reach the rift valley the group is small enough to remain undetected. From there, they launch an expedition down into the Edge for the Milk, bring it out again, and have it shipped back along the line by wagons like that one. They do this as many times as they can over the course of the winter.’
‘And the other way?’
‘You do it like the odd highland native does it. You go in alone with a string of zels loaded with enough supplies to get in and out again.’
‘Sounds insane,’ came the voice of one of the nearby crewmen.
Onwards the Falcon flew, leaving the wagon and its trail of smoke far behind.
*
Ash was dreaming of the dead again, when he awoke with a start and blinked about him in the darkness of his cabin, wondering why the world was being torn asunder by bursts of noise.
But it was only Kosh snoring again in the bunk above his head, his friend who claimed to be having so much trouble sleeping.
Easy, Ash told himself, breathing deeply while the faces slowly faded in his mind and the ship creaked all about him. Strange dreams in this place, the Hush.
Across the tiny cabin the chair creaked. Ash’s heart skipped a beat as he looked over and saw a still form sitting there watching him in the darkness.
‘Who’s there?’ he croaked like the old man that he was.
He could hear breathing, whoever the figure was. A slow relaxed breathing as though the person had been sitting there for hours, watching over him in a state of peace.
Like a son watching over a sick father.
‘Lin?’ he croaked again.
Another creak of the chair, the figure leaning towards him.
Nico?
But then Ash blinked and looked once more, and saw nothing but the empty chair.
A rap sounded through the door of the cabin.
Let it be the ship’s boy standing there when I open it, offering a cup of hot chee.
He was almost right, for it was indeed Berl standing in the passageway leaning on his crutch. No chee in the boy’s hands, though, only an unimpressed Cole standing by his side, the long-hunter glowing with life as though he had been up for hours.
Cole glanced in at the snoring form of Kosh.
‘You old Rōshun sure like to take it easy.’
‘What can I do for you,’ asked Ash, yanking on his shirt, only then realizing that he had slept late.
‘The captain would like you to join him,’ Berl answered politely. ‘In his cabin.’
*
The captain wasn’t alone when they walked into his cabin without knocking. Meer and the ship’s navigator, Olson, were also there, and they both looked up from the desk, where charts were spread open and held in place by paperweights, Meer and the navigator each gripping a pencil in their hands.
‘Good, you’re here,’ grumbled Trench as the others returned their attention to the desk.
Ash stifled a yawn and stared down at the table of charts, wondering if it was too late for breakfast.
The largest map on display was something Trench had purchased back in Lucksore, pieced together from the accounts of longhunters and the few explorers who had penetrated the continent. Most of it was empty past the Aradèrēs mountains until it came to the Edge itself, the great rift valley still far to the south of them. Down the middle of the continent, the black lines of the rift ran all the way to the edge of the map, and no doubt beyond.
Ash stared at the charts as the captain stabbed his finger at their present position, marked on the navigator’s replica, where Olson had been carefully marking their course in pencil marks and filling in what details he could along the way. ‘We’re in kree country now though you mightn’t think it,’ Trench said, and trailed his finger southwards all the way to the upper reaches of the Edge. ‘And this is where we’re heading. Cole, we need to know where you’ll be going in. Assuming you have a particular route you favour.’
Cole pushed the brim of his hat from his eyes, leaned across the table and studied the chart for a few quiet moments. He traced a finger down through the markings of a forest, past the skirts of a tear-shaped lake, all the way to a horizontal line of black, a tributary of the Edge that ran directly eastwards, a thin finger isolated from the main rift for hundreds of laqs.
‘This tributary here is my usual route. It’s our best bet now. Far enough from the main rift that the kree presence is less concentrated. We’ll still need to leave the ship a good distance away before we approach it though. Unless we want to stir them up like a nest of wasps.’
‘Any idea how many people you’ll need?’ Trench asked.
‘We have four already. For the amount of Milk we need to carry out, we’ll need another four, maybe five able hands with us.’
Olson the navigator tutted with his tongue. ‘That’s a lot of volunteers, considering what you’re asking.’ And he spoke with the easiness of a man who had no intention of being one of them.
‘Well, I ain’t the one who’ll be doing the asking,’ Cole answered, and the longhunter glanced to Ash.
‘How do you get down into the Edge without being detected?’ Meer asked from the other side of the table, tapping his pencil lightly.
Cole relaxed in his stance, crossing one boot behind the other, and levelled his hard gaze on the hedgemonk. ‘Well for that trick, we need to get our hands on a live kree.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘You’re welcome to watch if you like.’