CHAPTER NINE
Drekki’s cabin resounded to deep, rattling snores. The aetherlamps were dimmed to a dull shine. His table was covered in charts, all carefully lined up to make one large plan of the Fifth Air and weighted down with lead-filled grot skulls to keep them in place. A fresh dotted line plotted their course to the Dead Air.
What dreams did Drekki Flynt dream? To those who’d ask, and to quite a few who did not, he’d speak of nights full of adventure and the glimmer of aether-gold, and he’d build these dreams into rip-roaring adventures, some of which were retold, and embellished and passed on to others in fuggy pubs across the east of Chamon, until they joined the canon of Drekki’s life, and folk could not tell his real adventures from the dreams.
That’s how Drekki liked it.
The truth was sadder. Drekki’s huge, brown hands twitched in his sleep. His brows were drawn down. His mouth was pursed, forever on the verge of shouting out, but his sleep words were grunts and whimpers, full of loss. For the truth was that Drekki dreamt of Aelsling, as he did every night. He saw her as he first had in Rogi Throkk’s workshop, her tresses of pale gold lustrous against brown skin, her eyes as bright as emeralds, her curiosity for the craft of her father obvious and keen, although he always kept her away from it. For Drekki there were no jewels in the realms that could match those eyes. He remembered her laughter. He remembered her smile.
When he woke in the mornings he was heartbroken a little again.
As he slept, the hush of soft rains pattered on the metal of the ship, then grew hard, and heavy, and rattling. Wind moaned through the rigging, plaintive to begin with, demanding soon after, aggressive after that. Drekki slept still.
An aetherlamp on Drekki’s wall began to pulse in warning. A klaxon honked. Only then did the captain wake, and suddenly.
Drekki sat, bonking his head on the ceiling above his cot.
‘Aelsling!’ he shouted. Then rubbed at his face. ‘Ouch.’
The Aelsling lurched. It leaned. Drekki got to his feet, staggering back as the ship pitched. The klaxon continued to wail urgently. Drekki was shrugging on his arkanaut’s gear when a hammering commenced at the door.
‘Enter!’ Drekki hollered.
Urdi Duntsson reeled in. The ship plunged beneath his feet. Behind him the sky was dark, and rain fell in rods that struck the metal. Ice glinted on the endrins.
‘Captain, come quick!’ Urdi shouted. ‘Ice storm. We’re losing loft!’
Drekki staggered out to the door, stopping on the threshold. The rain was barely above twenty-four runkeleln,[44] so cold he could feel the drag of every drop as it fell past his nose.
‘I’d better get me helmet on,’ he said to Urdi, and locked his helm in place.
‘Peep-peep!’ tooted Trokwi.
‘No, my friend, you’re staying here,’ Drekki told his mechanical companion. ‘Too much of a risk for you.’
Drekki stepped out and nearly lost his footing. The deck was a sheet of ice, clear as glass. If it were not for the faint sheen it gave the metal in the light of the engine-ports and aetherlamps, it would have been invisible.
Ice coated the rigging, dragging at it with long, icicle fangs. The endrin-ports were flaring, lighting up the deck. They were burning aether fast. If the weight continued to grow, there was a danger they’d run out of fuel before they ever got to their destination, if the ice didn’t make them founder first.
‘Glass ice!’ he shouted. ‘All hands, on deck! Chop it free or it’ll bring us down!’
Urdi, Bokko and Evrokk were on watch, the dogwatch, latest and darkest of all, before Hysh put out its golden welcome to another day. Bokko was already at the ice with an axe. Evrokk wrestled with the wheel. It was desperately, horribly cold. The bell rang.
Drekki moved. His flight suit crackled and flakes of ice fell from his equipment to shatter on the deck. Warning lights blinked on the back of Urdi’s pack.
‘Pair up!’ he shouted. ‘Keep your fellows ice free!’ Drekki batted at the back of Urdi, before the ice could freeze over the vents on his aetherpack. ‘Get me a hatchet!’ he shouted to Urdi, pushing him off towards a locker near the rear. ‘Helm, increase loft!’
Drekki moved as quickly as he dared around his ship, his feet skating all the time on the sheets of ice, threatening to whip his legs out from under him and dump him over the side.
‘Duardin feet aren’t made for skating,’ he muttered, grabbing hold of the shrouds, and letting the skid of the deck carry him forward until he leant out over nothing. Skies boiled below and above him, the multi-layered tempests of the high airs shifting beneath the keel and endrin tops alike. In Chamon, laminar storms like that could cover several airs, churning the skies up for miles around. Lightning crackled everywhere. Visibility was close to zero, the wide vistas of the sky closed by curtains of frigid rain. Swirls of snow and hail mixed themselves into the storm, but it was the rain that was the danger.
The fore endrin was already coated in ice, the water freezing instantly as it hit the metal, despite the heat the endrins generated. The rain became ominously silent. Now it was hitting ice, and froze even more quickly, a silent killer.
‘Fore endrin coated!’ Drekki shouted. ‘Get axes here now!’
The duardin struggled out of sleep and into their arkanautical gear, and were spilling out of the doors to the ship interior. One of them fell over as soon as they stepped out, their feet flying up as hard as if yanked, their aetherpack slamming into the deck. Drekki could not tell who through the driving rain, which was already coating his helm lenses, but he could see the crackle of earthing aether as others helped up the arkanaut. The pack was malfunctioning.
‘Get away from him!’ Drekki shouted, and ran across the deck. ‘Get away! Get back inside and get that aetherpack off!’
Expressionless faces cast in ironstar, steel and brass turned to look at him. The ship lurched, the endrins moaning with the rapidly accumulating weight. Drekki lost grip under one foot, tottered, skidded, then fell with a calamitous crash. The Aelsling’s prow dipped, that damned ice round the fore endrin dragging her down. Drekki slid along the deck, clawing hopelessly at the slick deck plating. Shouts came from around him as others struggled, and he crashed into a heavy body, lifting up and over them, tangling with them, sliding towards the deck rails. His helmet clanged into a boot, his head smacked into the visor, and stars wheeled round his vision. But he knew his ship, and his hand shot out, grabbing a railing post as he bounced off the gunwales. The arkanaut who had joined him in his unexpected toboggan ride was not so lucky, hitting the rails so hard they bent, and they fell over the side.
‘Arkanaut overboard!’ Drekki yelled. He leaned out. The arkanaut was tangled in the broken rails, but the rails were bending under the weight of their gear, and the coating of ice on them was not helping. He saw now from the beardless mask that it was Hrunki suspended over churning nothingness.
‘Hold tight, Tordis!’ he yelled. The rain fell harder, gluing him to the deck, making the canvas of his outer suit stiff and hard to shift. Despite the labours of his aetherpack and Kedren’s runes, the cold was fierce, and gnawed at his flesh with a savagery that took his breath away. ‘Help here now!’ he yelled. ‘Arkanaut overboard!’
Nobody heard. The wind was cruel, snatching away his words. The hiss of the rain mocked him. He tried to stretch out his arm, but his suit creaked under its burden of ice, and he could not reach.
In her cradle of bent metal, Hrunki Tordis stirred. The rail sagged. Broken fragments of ice wheeled away into the storm.
‘Hrunki, don’t move!’ Drekki urged. Her head lifted weakly, she turned to the side, and instinctively jerked back from the drop, making the weakened rail bend even more.
‘Help!’ Drekki roared.
It came, unexpectedly, out of the dark, a slight arkanaut in a flapping suit shedding ice everywhere. Uzki skidded this way and that, but did not fall. A safety wire screamed off the reel attached to his belt. In his hands was a skyhook, which he thrust at the stricken Hrunki. A little too hard, as it happened, for the tip wedged into her shoulder, and the fabric darkened with blood. That woke her up.
‘Careful!’ Drekki shouted. He yanked his arm free of its icy bonds, used it to push himself up. The freezing shell coating him cracked and fell, and he stood. By the brother gods, he was cold! ‘Grab the shaft, Hrunki. Uzki, pull her in!’
Another duardin arrived, Umherth, by the way he shoved poor Uzki aside and took his skyhook. Uzki wasn’t daunted, but knelt, and snapped a second safety line to the hoop on Hrunki’s belt. The gunner was saved. Now for the ship.
‘Get the ice off the endrins or we’re all dead!’ Drekki roared.
Duardin were running everywhere, sliding into the rigging, catching hold before they slipped overboard, then working their tools against the frozen endrins. The noise of shattering ice was replaced by the dull thwong! of axe heads ringing on metal.
Bokko was up at the cockpit, gesticulating at the endrins. Evrokk was on duty in there; it was hard to get him to rest, but he was the best pilot. Drekki couldn’t hear what they were saying. The racket of the axes, the breaking ice and the wind was too loud. Otherek was closer to the cockpit, and the speaking tubes in his helm amplified his voice.
‘Get clear of the endrins!’ Otherek shouted.
Drekki knew his ship well enough to recognise the building thrum in the endrins housed in their globes. The metal shrouds vibrated with it, shedding their skins of ice. They were going to vent aether. Many of the others did not hear.
‘Get away!’ Drekki said, hauling Urdi back. ‘Gord!’
The huge ogor was close by, bashing at the endrins with a pair of matched hammers Kedren had made for him to knock out dents from the hull.
‘Captain?’
‘Get them away!’ Drekki strode about, yanking his arkanauts clear of the endrins. ‘Get to the back of the ship. We’re going to vent.’
The crew were gathered, and moved out from under the globular casings, all crowding round the back. Drekki stopped by the cockpit on the way.
‘Vent the front first,’ he commanded. ‘Steady!’
Evrokk was working hard. ‘We’re still losing loft.’
‘Bokko’s got the right idea,’ said Drekki. He did a quick headcount. ‘We’re missing two still. Give the signal before you do it!’
Evrokk spun a bunch of wheels on the many pipes crowding the pilot’s station. He reached up and yanked the chain for the ship’s whistle. It moaned at first, the slot blocked with ice, then superheated steam burst out, and it shrieked loud enough for all to hear, giving the three-blast signal for aether venting. The last couple of the crew rappelled from the endrin tops, grabbed on to the staple ladders running down the sides, and thumped onto the deck, slipping and tottering as they ran to the stern to join the rest. Kedren was first, the runesmith’s awkward gait evident even in the driving rain. Then Adrimm, recognisable by his drawn-in shoulders and miserable posture. Then, to his surprise, Drekki counted a third latecomer, making eleven on deck including himself.
‘Evtorr?’ He grabbed the duardin’s shoulder and turned him around.
‘Can still hold an axe, captain. Still know what ice is.’
‘Good lad.’ He slapped Evtorr on the shoulder.
Vents on the endrin globes squealed open. Ice broke. Freezing rain hissed to steam when it fell into the hot, inner workings. Drekki looked up. One of the vents was sealed shut. He hoped the others still worked.
‘Vent endrin one!’
‘Aye aye, captain, venting!’ Evrokk hollered in response.
A glittering cloud of aethershot steam whooshed out of the endrins. In the main endrins, it was the gold itself that did the work, but the machinery that wrung every last bit of loft out of it ran hot, and needed cooling. Water provided that function, water that turned to steam as it sucked heat off the mechanisms, and was diverted to power the airscrews.
The blast of heat was tremendous. Ice melted beneath the endrin’s furnace breath. Water pattered to the deck. Some refroze, but a lot more gushed out of the drains in the gunwales.
‘Shut it off,’ Drekki said.
‘Loft increasing,’ Evrokk said. The Aelsling nosed up.
‘Keep us level,’ said Drekki.
‘Aye aye!’ Evrokk pushed gently on the attitudinal pedals.
The rain was lessening, thank Azyr, though the wind kept up. ‘Evrokk, vent the rear endrin, then keep the coolant flow to a minimum. Let the heat of the endrins keep them ice free.’
Bokko, who was hunched over Evrokk and giving him direction, looked up sharply at that. His ancestor mask had grown an impressive extra beard of ice.
‘We can’t run them dry!’
‘I’m not saying run them dry,’ said Drekki. ‘I’m saying trickle them, keep the ways wet and working. Main job of the water is cooling, and it is so bloody cold up here I don’t rightly see how it makes a grot’s measure of honesty in difference. Crew, to the prow. Knock off any big lumps you can. Umherth, get Tordis inside.’
‘I thought you’d never ask,’ he snapped.
‘You too, beardling, give the oldbeards some help.’
‘Aye aye!’ Uzki said, and snapped off a clumsy salute.
Umherth snarled at Uzki when he tried to help Hrunki, supporting her on the other side.
‘Get away! You stabbed her, you stupid bozdok beardling. Wharf rats belong on the docks. You should never have come with us.’
Hrunki shoved at Umherth as best she could, which was still pretty hard, even though she was injured.
‘You leave him be, you stroppy old whitebeard, because I’d be dead if it weren’t for this particular wharf rat. Come here, Uzki, you help out all you want, because that’s what crewmates do. Help each other,’ she said pointedly to Umherth.
‘All right, all right!’ said Umherth.
Hrunki slapped a heavy arm around Uzki’s shoulders. A grunt of pain echoed in her helm, but she leaned into them both gratefully, and they helped her below.
‘Now, Evrokk,’ said Drekki. ‘Let’s get out of this weather.’
Day came, breaking cold and reluctant over the Aelsling. Drekki, Bokko, Kedren and Otherek made a tour of the boat, wincing at the axe scars in the metal. It was even colder than before. They’d been forced up another hundred raadfathoms out of the rain, and were faring blind in the cloud banks. The thunder crackling below in the still-raging storm suggested they’d made the right decision. At that height they were restricted to arkanaut gear, even inside, and that put them all in a foul mood.
‘This one needs fixing, Bokko,’ Drekki said, gesturing at a deep gash in the fore endrin globe. ‘Gone too deep, almost through the metal.’
Bokko tried to take notes with his pen, but frowned at the frozen ink, and put his notebook aside.
‘That’d be Umherth,’ said Kedren. ‘Arms like pistons, that one.’
Drekki ducked under the shrouds, leaned out, looked up. ‘There’s a few up the sides.’
‘Some on endrin two as well,’ said Otherek. ‘But our main worry is what we do about fuel. We burned two days’ worth of aether in a few hours last night. It’ll happen again. I’ve taken the meteorological readings. Cold and storms in every layer of the Fifth. So we’re going to keep burning at a prodigious rate.’
‘Can’t you magic some more up with your gadgets there?’ Kedren said.
‘If only. I’ve got no readings on raw aether lodes up here. Too stormy for drifts to gather. What there is is diffuse. If I could find a workable amount, we’d never be able to refine enough, quickly enough, with the equipment we have on board to get where we’re going in time. Best we could do is limp back to port.’
‘It’s a pickle, that’s aright,’ said Drekki.
‘You’re mighty cheerful about it,’ said Kedren. ‘That makes me suspicious.’
Bokko moved on with an endrineer’s purpose. The captain, his runesmith and aether-khemist stopped in the lee of the fore endrin globe, up by the turret.
‘Bokko’s mind seems fixed on the right lady for once,’ said Drekki, slapping the icy rails. ‘Khenna’s on the mend. Moaning something chronic about the noise. Poor lass.’
‘Stop changing the subject, Drekki,’ said Otherek. ‘What’s your solution? When you’re cheerful and evasive at the same time, it doesn’t do a lot for my confidence.’
Drekki’s laugh was hollow in his helm. ‘There’s a shortcut.’
‘This is a shortcut,’ said Kedren and Otherek together.
‘This is a shortcut to the shortcut,’ said Drekki.
Kedren and Otherek looked to each other dubiously.
‘Look, my most excellent and wisest of oldbeards,’ said Drekki. ‘Trust me. I have consulted my charts, and made an adjustment.’
‘Oh,’ said Kedren. ‘It’s flattery now, is it?’
Drekki was not dissuaded. ‘It’ll be fine.’
‘You always say that,’ Otherek pointed out.
‘And when is it not fine?’
Neither oldbeard replied. There were plenty of examples of when things were not fine. But they were still alive, and occasionally spectacularly rich.
‘All right then,’ said Otherek. ‘Which way are we going?’
Drekki gave an embarrassed cough. ‘Well. That part you might not be happy about, but I guarantee that when we make it through, we’ll be there before the Dead Air moves again.’
‘Through?’ said Kedren. ‘Which way are we going exactly?’
‘Through the Strait of Frozen Tears.’
‘Funti drukk,’ said Otherek. ‘No one can navigate that.’
‘I can, because I’m–’
‘Yeah yeah,’ said Kedren, ‘we’ve heard it before. You’re Drekki Flynt.’
‘I was actually going to say, I’m friends with Ramarius. He’ll get us through. He hunts there sometimes.’
‘If he’s alive,’ said Kedren. ‘His wings could have frozen solid in that storm.’
‘There were reasons I wanted Ramarius to guide us,’ said Drekki. ‘Not falling prey to things like that storm was one of them. He’ll be back.’