that has a minimal chance of succeeding without a scout to lead us to Lake Ataa Naa Nyongmo.’
‘Then we must run,’ said Ironflanks. ‘Follow me into the deepest bush and hope that it is enough to slow down Queen Three-eyes.’
They ran. Without the safety of a submersible to escape to and with the long cries of the kilasaurus max growing louder behind them. Into the dense heat of the rainforest, through walls of orchids that quivered and shot out streams of superheated pollen juice, past trees covered in running brown liquid glue where trapped animals shrieked desperately at the fleeing party, across coffee-coloured creepers that had bridged a small ravine in their search for sunlight free of the competition under the canopy. Billy Snow proved surprisingly dextrous, leaping through the twisted vines with his machete, cutting down walls of greenery and opening passages through the trees as if he had been born a feral craynarbian tracker. At times it was not clear whether T’ricola was leading him, or the blind sonar man was leading her.
Ironflanks was getting slower. He was trying to keep his stacks from venting fully, to throw Queen Three- eyes off their trail. But the effort of recycling the exhaust of his furnace was sapping his strength. If he continued at this pace, he would poison his brain with the fumes and be left with a grip on reality even more tenuous than it already was.
Ironflanks stumbled and the commodore caught him. ‘You’ve got to let it out, old steamer, or we’re going to be carrying you the rest of the way.’
Ironflanks’ voicebox trembled as he tried to find the words. ‘She will smell it.’
‘If the thunder lizard hunts by scent she will already have ours,’ said Veryann. ‘Your incapacitation will not serve us.’
The steamman stood up and his stacks whistled as a column of foul-smelling smoke lanced through the canopy above them. As the last trace of smoke left the trail, Queen Three-eyes’ voice sounded in answer, so loud that the ribcages of the u-boat officers shook in their chests.
‘I am sorry my softbody friends, I have doomed us all,’ said Ironflanks.
‘Blame my nephew rather than yourself,’ said the commodore. ‘For it’s his dark treachery that has left us marooned out here. Or blame fool old Blacky for giving him a second chance in the first place.’
‘Are you the dregs from a Jackelian jinn house?’ shouted Veryann. ‘We are not dead yet. Not while we have blood in our legs and weapons in our hands. Now run, or I’ll shoot you myself.’
Menaced by the unsteady pistol of the Catosian commander the party stumbled into life again, Gabriel McCabe taking the lead and putting all the strength of the self-proclaimed strongest man in Jackals into the swings of his machete. Gobs of green sap splashed out across them as they piled ahead, splattering their uniforms with a mess of sticky residue and then, suddenly, they were free of the press of the jungle, a clearing of grassed hills and tall emerald meadows waiting for them. Ironflanks stumbled out and looked around as if recognizing the territory. Then the howl of the kilasaurus max roared behind them. ‘
‘Head for the forest on the other side,’ called Veryann, checking the charge in her pistol. ‘We can get off a few shots when the thunder lizard comes into the open. Aim for the creature’s eyes.’
Knee-deep in grass, they were plunging down one of the hillocks when the trees at the ridge of the hill flowered open, spouting white jets of liquid into the air. For a second the commodore thought that they had triggered some devilish man-eating hardwood into feeding, but the white fountain solidified into a net, scooping up the expedition members and sweeping them off their feet. They were hanging between the trees like a hammock, bound to the sticky material and swaying seven feet off the ground. Just the right height for an offering to Queen Three-eyes. T’ricola thrashed, trying to turn her sword arm on the material, but the harder she struggled, the more the netting seemed to tighten around them.
Crashing through the jungle, the kilasaurus max splintered through the last of the towering trees. She emerged in the clearing; her undersized lizard’s head darting about before settling on the direction of the hills, her nostrils flaring and snorting like those of a stallion. Sensing the ensnared presence of Ironflanks, the thunder lizard dipped down then stretched to her full height and roared at a volume that shook the netting the expedition members lay pinned against. Billy Snow dropped his machete from his left arm to his partially free right hand and tried to saw their cords of bondage but the material turned slippery, oozing a soap-like liquid that made his blade slip. ‘What is this stuff?’ he growled.
Veryann attempted to lower her pistol arm enough to get a shot off against the thunder lizard, but the gun discharged wide, the bullet disappearing over the horizon.
‘This is a rare old mess and no mistake,’ said the commodore.
The webbing of their snare trembled as Queen Three-eyes advanced towards them, roaring gusts of fetid hate from the second mouth in her chest. Reaching the foot of the hillock, Queen Three-eyes’ snout snaked around as she detected a movement in the corner of her field of vision. A line of boulders at the bottom of the hill was swivelling towards her, tracking each thumping footstep. She backed away, sensing the oddness of this place — a clearing so purpose-made for animals to graze across, yet so bereft of local life. Where tiny prey that should be running instead lay paralysed. Where rocks came alive. Too late. Slits opened in the boulders, iron spider’s legs sprouting out, the suddenly mobile rocks spraying Queen Three-eyes with an orange liquid that solidified on contact with the air and sheathed the thunder lizard in a rubber bubble. She pushed against the foul glutinous substance but only succeeded in unbalancing herself, falling over and rolling back down the slope. Now the mightiest creature in the jungle lay as helpless as a toy figurine embedded inside the glass of a child’s marble. The legs in the rocks retracted and the monarch of Liongeli was left thrashing futilely inside the orange enclosure.
‘What is this, Ironflanks?’ demanded the commodore. ‘This is no Daggish trap. Those blessed rocks are machines.’
There was no intelligible reply. Something inside the steamman had snapped and he spouted a static screech of raw machine code, in the same inhuman voice as his people used to sing hymns to the Steamo Loas in their mountain fastness. ‘Look,’ called Veryann, ‘look behind us.’
On the other side of the clearing a line of dark shapes was emerging from the twilight shadow of the rainforest. Metal bodies with the edges of their arms, wheels, legs and tracks filed down to razor sharpness, their rivets extruded into spikes. Iron hands clutching spears frilled with the shrunken heads of thunder lizards, craynarbians and the race of man. One of the figures crouched like a monkey and pointed at the full net containing the
‘Steammen,’ said the commodore. ‘By my stars, they’re steammen.’
‘No,’ said Ironflanks, recovering his higher functions, ‘they’re not.’
It was the first time any of them had heard a citizen of the Steammen Free State sob.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Damson Beeton waddled down the front garden of Dolorous Hall, whistling and happy to be up with the larks. Red fingers of sunrise fringed the skyline behind the capital’s pneumatic towers, most of the city’s mills silent, not yet throwing the dark miasma of commerce into the air. The barge from Gattie and Pierce was pulling towards the isle’s landing, using its single sail to keep down the cost of gas for the boat’s expansion engine.
So much easier to get a start on the day’s tasks this early in the morning. Cornelius and Septimoth were both pretending to be asleep, when in reality they were on the riverbed level of the isle, rattling around the old museum, planning their next move in the great game they had been sucked into within Jackals. All in all, Damson Beeton preferred it when they were causing their mischief across the border in Quatershift. She had more time to herself, then. Not to mention lighter duties and the run of the place when empty.
‘Morning, damson,’ called the delivery boy at the prow. ‘Two boxes for you today, right? And a quart of milk in the jug.’
‘Fresh, I hope, young man,’ said the housekeeper. ‘Where’s Master Jerry Cruncher today?’
‘Called in sick,’ said the delivery boy. The barge bumped gently into the landing and the boy started tying up.
She looked at the man on the rudder and the two bargemen tackling the sail. ‘Not night-fog chest again, poor
