He’s going to make a great overseer one day, I thought irritably, remembering the unnecessarily cruel team masters who had run the Mines of Masaka for Inyene. “It’s a mud-slick—we need to scout its edges to make sure it doesn’t cross our path!” I shouted back, already hurrying to add my pole to Tiana’s own, as we both started tapping the ground, waiting for the sound of hardened thumps.
As it was, even with the light of the lanterns we couldn’t see where our poles met the ground—they just disappeared into the thick white mists, and we had to estimate the exact extent of the mud-slick. After a while, when I was confident that it didn’t completely stand in our way—and that was there was enough room on the hardened earth for the wagons to roll around it, I shouted back to Homsgud that he could continue, but he’d have to bear a strong right.
“Taking bleedin’ forever…” Homsgud muttered as he passed my location, near the edge of the danger, while Tiana and Danig continued their march ahead.
It’ll take all night, I was certain, as the ponies stamped their feet a little nervously in the dark, and then the great wagon wheels slowly rolled past.
“Not this way,” I called to the next group—a double line of Daza, some of whom had poles like me who followed the first wagon. I received an understanding nod and a grimace from several of them as they walked slowly past, for me to repeat the instructions to the next wagon, and the next set of workers.
This really was going to be tediously slow going, I thought with a groan, as I waited for what seemed like forever before our caravan ended, and there came the last member of the group.
It was the heavy stamp of the mechanical dragon, its eyes flaring with that eerie blue right, and with Abioye sitting high between its shoulders. But before I could even speak to him, a repeated call came down the line of people.
“Halt!” they echoed, and another pause began. The air filled with muttering and tense whispering from ahead, but I didn’t think that it was anything serious. There were no shouts and screams for one thing, just the sound of bored and exhausted people.
We waited in the murk for what seemed like another age, until once again the call was passed down from ahead. “Roll!” and the creak of the wagons started up, and the nervous whinny of the ponies. At the back, Abioye and I had a long time to wait before we would begin to move again.
“This is taking too long,” Abioye said irritably into the night. His words sounded oddly muted, as if the deep fogs of the Sea of Mists were hungry for silence.
Well, you did insist on journeying through the night! I could have pointed out but knew there wouldn’t be any point. Instead, I sought to remind him of the dangers of what we were doing.
“If anyone falls into a mud-slick then they could drown in moments.” Which ought to be enough of a deterrence for anyone to even attempt this dangerous crossing. All around us were a thick wall of dense grays and whites, so high that only when I looked straight up, did I see it thinning to a lighter smoke-colored haze. It still wasn’t thin enough for me to see any stars, however.
“I have an idea,” Abioye said, and I saw him reaching down to pull on the levers and turn the strange wheels and handles that guided the mechanical thing. In response, the dragon stepped out high and wide over me, and, as I yelped a little and skittered out of the way, I heard the schlock as Abioye forced its forepaw deep into the mud and reeds I had been warning people about.
“You’ll get stuck!” I burst out, before wishing that I hadn’t said anything—at least if he did get the mechanical dragon stuck, I might be able to convince Abioye to abandon it here!
But Abioye ignored me as the dragon suddenly listed forward, its paw and foreleg apparently going deep into the mire—before stopping. With a grunt of exertion as Abioye pulled on the levers, cogs, and handles, there was a sound of the dragon freeing its foreleg, and placing it farther ahead.
“Just as I thought,” Abioye said. “The mechanical dragon is tall, and strong—she won’t get stuck!”
“You don’t know that,” I muttered, alarmed. But if Abioye even heard me, he did not stop what he was doing. Why had he called it a she? I thought. The mechanical dragons had no gender, as far as I was aware. They were monstrosities. Abominations.
“And I can scout the way ahead much quicker than people with poles!” Abioye continued, pulling on the levers and handles to start moving the mechanical dragon he rose out alongside the caravan. Before he disappeared into the fog though, he paused his strange steed and called down to me. “Narrissea—you’re our official navigator. Do you want to join me?”
Not a chance under the sun or moon, I thought, but technically, I couldn’t refuse him. “Is that an order, sir?” I asked darkly.
The fogs were too thick and the night too deep for me to see Abioye’s facial expression, but his form seemed to stiffen and his voice sounded hurt when it returned to me.
“No, of course not.”
“I’ll guard the rear of the caravan, and swap over with Tiana in a bit,” I offered, trying to let him know that I wasn’t shirking my duties—there was just no way that I wanted to put my trust and faith in one of Inyene’s mechanical monsters!
“Good idea.” Abioye’s muffled voice had hardened, he sounded once again annoyed as the vast bulk of the scale-clad machine slowly clanked and clattered into the gloom.
Just great, I thought to myself. Now Abioye doesn’t like me, AND he seems to trust those vile mechanical things more than me!
Chapter 13
Fire in the Dark
“This…isn’t right,” Ymmen breathed into my mind, which was quite disconcerting. It was worrying when a dragon of his size and grandeur thought something was wrong.
But it could be anything, right? The fact that we’re walking through fenland in the middle of the night. The fact that Abioye is relying on his sister’s monstrosities rather than turning to me, I grumbled. I was exhausted and tired. None of us had slept a wink all day and there was no prospect of any sleep tonight, either. Tempers were starting to fray as we trudged through the Sea of Mists, I thought as I heard another bark of a reprimand up ahead, followed by a yelp of pain from someone—presumably one of the guards was taking his frustration out on one of the Daza.
And there was nothing I could do about it. I grimaced. “You’re right,” I said to Ymmen, safe in the knowledge that none of the others would be able to hear me talking to myself anyway. “There is nothing about tonight that is right at all…”
“No!” Ymmen’s agitation surprised me as his thoughts brought with them the wave of hot emotions. “I expect humans to be stupid, and crossing a bog in the middle of the night is undeniably that...”
Gee, thanks, I almost said—but I agreed with his assessment.
“No, there is something else abroad this night. I sense people. More people,” Ymmen said, and his words shocked me into wakefulness.
“What? Who? Where are they?” I asked, stupidly turning to look around me, although all I could see on three sides where the white walls of the mists, and the slowly retreating yellow haze of the last wagon in our line. I would have to catch up with it if I didn’t want to get lost out here, I thought, picking up my steps as I interrogated Ymmen silently in my mind.