Charlotte didn’t need to ask what they had come for. They had come for the sceptre. And they had come for her.
CHAPTER TEN
‘Are you deaf?’ bellowed On’esse as Sadly and Daunt hesitated in climbing off the harvesting raft, snorkel spiders circling the boat with an eager, hungry intent.
‘This is inhuman,’ Daunt called out. ‘I must protest.’
‘Protest all you like,’ laughed On’esse, ‘but protest from the water. You have just as long as it takes my soldier here to reload his gun. All of you, restart your cropping!’
‘Cracked old arsehole,’ cursed Morris, now moving down the tree, but as slowly as he could. Obviously hoping someone else would get to the water first and attract the remaining snorkel spiders’ attention. ‘He’ll do for us all.’
Dick Tull could only agree. He’d had the luck to be on the tree strap, cutting down fruit when the attack started, otherwise he’d be taking part in this slow-motion race to see who would survive. Just so long as On’esse doesn’t notice I’m no longer holding my machete and orders me down too. Commandant On’esse had lost his patience waiting for his raft’s big tripod mounted gun to be reloaded with a fresh shell. He pulled out his pistol and waved it threateningly towards the nearest guard station. ‘You there, push the surface dwellers off your platform — those stands are for us, not these vermin.’
Something moved behind the commandant’s launch. At first, Dick thought that what he was watching was one of the snorkel spiders attracted to the commandant’s still humming engine, but the shape kept on rising and rising. Not a flurry of mandibles, but an orange-coloured carapace mottled with camouflaged yellow stripes, a long flat curve of armour wider than the commandant’s launch and balanced by two huge serrated claws.
‘Tiger crab!’ warned Dick.
‘Not just any tiger crab,’ muttered Morris, abandoning any pretence to be heading back into the water. ‘It’s Old Death-shell back again.’
Now Dick saw what the heavy bore weapon on the front of On’esse’s boat was for. Unfortunately for the camp commandant, he’d already wasted its shell on a hapless Jackelian victim. Desperately trying to reload, the soldier on the bow was near decapitated when Old Death-shell brought down its two claws onto the boat. Struck amidships and stern at the same time, the boat crumpled into three pieces under the tiger crab’s touch, On’esse discharging his pistol as he was flung back by the collapsing craft and the impact of the man-sized claws. His pistol shot rebounded off the shell close to Old Death-shell’s eyestalks, a new black scar of explosive residue joining a hundred others. Old Death-shell wore its previous encounters with the guards and their prisoners of war like medals on its armour, a constellation of scratches and lacerations speaking of how hard it was to kill. Trampling the boat, fair dancing across it in triumph, the tiger crab’s eight legs carried it over the debris and towards the thrashing form of On’esse. Old Death-shell’s left claw lazily swung around into an upper cut, smashing the commandant and sending him flying out of the surface before landing with a splash and a thump towards the bottom of Dick’s tree. Rifle fire from the soldiers on the guard stations raked the tiger crab from behind, and it swivelled around, slamming both claws into a wooden platform and cracking it asunder. The gill-necks that weren’t flattened by the claws tumbled off with the cowering prisoners of war who had reached the trunk’s elusive safety. All around the trees, the guards and convict labour were scattering — perhaps the snorkel spiders too, as Dick couldn’t see any sign of their previous attackers’ bony periscopes. All fear of the water was gone now among the harvesting party. There wasn’t an inch of sentient flesh in the Everglades who didn’t know what to fear now… the most vicious armoured predator on the island had come to dine, and there wasn’t any creature that was off the menu. Old Death-shell danced towards Dick’s tree, trampling over Sadly and Daunt’s raft as if the flatboat was nothing more than a waterlily, the two of them leaping out into the water before the raft splintered into pieces, hundreds of gillwort fruit sent flying.
Sadly and the ex-parson waded backwards as Old Death-shell advanced on their tree, the semi-conscious form of the commandant bobbing in front. Both of them ducked behind the tree, the tiger crab’s claws prodding forward, clacking, each pinching movement enough to cut a bull in half. One of its claws came cutting up, slicing the strap off Morris and sending the howling prisoner falling out of the tree towards the surface. Down below, Sadly and Daunt were shouting in terror as Old Death-shell scuttled forward, closing the gap between them to a couple of feet. Dick was desperately swinging himself around the tree trunk to avoid the claw swishing through the air when a whistling battle cry pierced the swamp. On the tree behind, Boxiron had sliced his climbing strap off, plummeting down towards the tiger crab beneath with his machete raised.
‘No!’ Daunt called from below as he stumbled backwards. ‘Old steamer, you’re not able to shift gears with that limiter welded onto you.’
Boxiron’s strength might have been throttled down, but his fury at the creature threatening his friend was undiminished. Dick took advantage of the steamman’s diversion and released his own belt to fall towards the surface, hitting the warm water and coming up alongside Sadly and Morris.
‘Your friend’s got a death wish, see,’ spluttered Morris.
On top of the tiger crab’s carapace, Boxiron had one metal hand digging into its shell, the other hacking down, trying to force its way into the flesh beyond the carapace joins. Old Death-shell was not reacting well to having a rider, making a furious chirping noise, rubbing its legs together as it was bucking, its claws trying to angle back to sweep this metal parasite off its back.
‘This is my fault,’ moaned Daunt, as he dragged the wounded commandant’s body clear of the lashing tiger crab’s assault. ‘Boxiron shouldn’t be here.’
Dick tried to shove Jethro Daunt away from the gill-neck. ‘Let me strangle the murdering sod.’
Morris grabbed Dick from behind. ‘I would be right behind you, matey. But if we do for him like he deserves, the gill-necks will make everyone in the camp pay.’
With the commandant pulled back onto the tree’s roots, Daunt grabbed one of the raft’s punts floating past and charged the flailing tiger crab, jabbing at the eye stalks. Breaking free, Dick snatched the machete off Morris and ran forward to stand by the amateur’s side, pushing his blade out at the enraged creature. Old Death-shell was not used to this. Prey ran. It did not fight back. It did not attack! Confused, its attention divided between the three of them, Old Death-shell’s left claw withdrew from trying to dislodge Boxiron and snapped out at Daunt. The amateur had waded out of range, but his punt was sliced in half. Dick ran forward, slashing at the black feathery fronds growing like a beard around the bottom of the tiger crab’s shell, then darted back as the creature shuddered in pain.
Daunt scooped up the half of his punt fallen in the water and tossed it up towards Boxiron. ‘Old steamer, give me a lever long enough and I shall move the world.’ The Circlist koan of the blessed fulcrum.
Boxiron seized the punt and rammed it into the gap in the carapace he’d been trying to cut open, driving a metal foot down onto the pole. Lifting up the armour with a terrible ripping sound that sent the tiger crab into a fit of shaking fury, the tear was not much, but enough to expose the soft flesh of its fibrous brain casing underneath. Boxiron lifted a victorious spear of steam into the air from his stack and he cried in triumph, driving the machete down with both hands. Limited in strength, but never in soul.
Chirping in agony, Old Death-shell’s eight legs buckled, its wide carapace collapsing into the everglade’s surface, and there it lay, trembling and shaking as its life leaked away.
‘Were you trying to die?’ demanded Daunt as the steamman slid off the mottled orange and yellow shell.
‘No, Jethro softbody, I was trying to live.’
There was another scream of fury, not the dying tiger crab this time. ‘You dirty surface-dwelling vermin!’ On’esse staggered in front of the tree, snapping shut the pistol he had just reloaded. ‘You dare to save me! To lay hands on me as if I am one of your dirty herd, as if my life is in your hands!’ As he raised his pistol towards the famous consulting detective, Dick threw the machete, its blade rotating once and hitting On’esse in the chest, slamming him back and pinning him to the tree trunk. There was a brief look of astonishment on the commandant’s face as the shock of his death sank in.
‘And that’s my way of saying thank you, you murdering old sod.’
