Commodore Black laid his hand on Molly's forehead. Her only response was a small moan. 'Ah, poor lass and poor us. We've fought so hard and come so far and this is the end of us, out here. Molly burning up under the weight of Kyorin's soul. Your blessed paradise made a hell, Sandwalker, a small taste of the fate of our beautiful green Jackals. My genius has been tested before, but never by a land so fearfully arid and an enemy so cruel as the Army of Shadows.' The commodore slipped his bottle of medicinal whisky from his pack. 'But I still have this, even if our water canteens are as dry as a seadrinker hull sailing too close to the magma of the Fire Sea. A rare taste of home so we can remember the kingdom's lochs and hills before we all leave our parched corpses stretched out here.'
Duncan lunged for the bottle, but the commodore was too quick, moving it to the side and pushing away the ex-rocketman's hand. Duncan was furious. 'Are you mad, Jared, wanting a dram of that stuff? With no water you can't drink whisky out here in the heat of the day.'
'I may not be an old hand of the southern frontier like you, but I know what drinking whisky in the desert does to a man,' said the commodore. 'But here it is, I'm dry, and as great an adventurer as I am, even my brave frame can't be murdered twice. I'll keel over from this wicked sun long before I keel over from the stomach cramps.'
Taking a greedy swig from the canteen, the commodore wiped the drips from the side of his mouth and offered the bottle to Duncan and Keyspierre.
'I'm still going to kill you when this is over,' said the secret policeman, taking the whisky, drawing a quick measure and then passing it across to Duncan Connor.
'What sort of filthy wheatman would you be if you did not?' said the commodore.
Duncan took a nip, made a face and spat the foul-tasting stuff out onto the sand. 'Sweet Circle, man, I've drunk raw jinn distilled by tribesmen that tasted better than that. How much alcohol is in this wee bottle?'
'Alcohol!' Sandwalker snatched the bottle, sniffing at it in horror before corking it shut. 'Fools! You've actually brought a solution of alcohol out onto the plains?' The nomad drew his arm back to hurl the bottle as far as he could, the commodore about to leap on him to save it, when they saw it. 'You'll attract…'
The thin branches of what looked like a tree were rising up over the dune in front of them, quivering in the air. A horrendous buzzing filled the empty wasteland and the thin branches became the spread of twin antennae on a giant ant, its chitin a mottled orange, the same shade as the sand, hovering under twin buzz-saw wings, two leathery globes swelling out on either side of its thorax.
Sandwalker tossed the bottle as far and as hard he could, and like a gun hound fetching a falling pheasant, the flying ant curved through the air and snatched the tumbling green glass with one of its six jointed legs. Then the monstrosity flipped around and came straight for the members of the expedition. Everyone scattered, Coppertracks ducking as he reversed backwards at full speed clutching Molly's prone form, the huge insect's rotating forewings nearly clipping the steamman's transparent dome skull in passing.
It went right through the space where the expedition had been standing, scooping up all their piled packs – the potpourri of food scents too strong for the insect to ignore.
'Our blessed supplies!' Commodore Black shouted, running up to the crest of the dune after the creature. 'My bully beef!'
On the opposite side of the dune was a rough circle of ground a lighter colour than the surrounding sands. Fat orange larvae were coming out to feed as the giant ant opened the expedition's belongings with its scimitar- sharp mouthparts, its antennae flickering in a dance as it scented and sorted the chemical traces coming from each pack. Commodore Black didn't need to notice the similarity between the flying ant and the slats' hovering globe ships to know that here was another of the mutations scattered across Kaliban by the terrible Army of Shadows. Where was his blessed gun?
'Leave our food there,' ordered Sandwalker as he sprinted up the dune, pushing the commodore's pistol down towards the sand. 'That flying ant is only a male drone left to tend the nest's young. The female soldiers and workers will be out foraging with their queen – there will be dozens of them, more than enough to hunt us down as prey.'
A grand course of action. One ruined by Duncan Connor sprinting up the slope behind them, roaring as if he had just lost his mind, a pistol in one hand and a straight Jackelian cavalry sabre in the other. 'It's got her, it's got her!'
For a moment Commodore Black thought that his friend was talking about Molly, but a quick glance back down the dune showed that she was still resting in Coppertracks' iron arms. 'She's safe, lad!'
Connor of Cassarabia was over the crest of the hill and dashing down in frenzied kicks of sand towards the ant. It was then that Commodore Black saw it. The flying insect had ripped open Duncan's travel case, scattering bleached white bones across the bronze sand, one of them a skull so small it had to be that of a human child.
The head of the insect darted up as it saw Duncan racing towards the nest and the larvae in its charge. Raising its abdomen and dipping its antennae in warning like a charging bull, the insect took off towards Duncan, but the ex-rocketman triggered the charge in his pistol, blowing out the ant's right compound eye in a shower of ichor. Off balance now, the ant continued to fly towards Duncan, the Jackelian launching himself into the air and landing on top of the creature's thorax underneath the twin rotating wings. Now the flying ant was furious. This was prey – prey fighting back! It clumped down onto the dune and angled its wings to blow a sandstorm back across its body, always enough to dislodge any parasite foolish enough to try to pierce its chitin.
In the midst of the gale Duncan yelled an upland battle cry and slammed his sabre down through the join between the head and thorax of his furious mount, decapitating the ant in one swing. As the massive insect's wings stopped rotating, Duncan was off, smoothly rolling away from the beast's back and running towards his broken case and the bones lying across the sands, slashing at the fat orange larvae as they reared up and tried to lunge at his legs.
Commodore Black and Sandwalker were quickly at Duncan's side, leaving the others on the crest to gaze down bewildered at the carnage and the giant slain ant, watching Duncan stuffing the bones into his travel case and trying to lock the lid back on it.
Duncan was mumbling at the sand, barely registering their presence. 'I'm sorry, lassie, I'm sorry they did that to you.'
'Are you suffering from heat exhaustion, Duncan Connor?' asked Sandwalker. 'You could have died. Do you know how dangerous these colonies are?'
'Don't look at her, man,' begged Duncan. 'She hates people glowering at her now.'
'Who, lad?' asked Commodore Black.
'My wee daughter, Hannah.'
'These are just blessed bones.'
'She's different now, that's all. Hannah hates people having a shufty at her. Nobody else understands, only her father does, only me, always me.'
'We have to go,' urged the nomad, bending down to gather what supplies had survived the larvae's feeding frenzy. 'The drone's mates will return and we must be far away when they do.'
'It wasn't my regiment's fault,' said Duncan, standing up and clutching the broken case to his chest, 'when we fired on the raiders with our gas rockets. We didn't realize the raiding party had already stolen people from the upland villages for slaves. Everyone was wearing sand robes. We thought they were coming out of the desert, not going back towards Cassarabia, not going back.'
Commodore Black gently laid a hand on the ex-soldier's shoulder. 'She's just bones, lad, she's dead.'
Duncan shook his head. 'No, it was my wife who died, not Hannah. No one understands that Hannah's just a little different. My wee girl, my bonnie wee girl.'
But Commodore Black understood now. Why the New Pattern Army hadn't taken Connor of Cassarabia back into the fold even when the enlisting parties were desperately sweeping every lane in the kingdom's towns for fresh recruits to face the Army of Shadows. How many years had Duncan been travelling with his daughter's corpse rotting in a suitcase? Part of him must know, deep down. The part that had been taking coin for suicide callings like the circus of the extreme.
'We have to protect Hannah,' insisted Duncan. 'Protect her from the Army of Shadows. Those black-hearted kelpies will take her for a slave, make her suffer the same as Sandwalker's people.'
Commodore Black looked at the ex-soldier. 'We'll save her, Duncan, we'll save all our darling girls back in the Kingdom of Jackals and stick our boot hard up the Army of Shadows' arse while we're about it.'