‘Cauls!’ he shouted at the Gastroi. They turned, the second only partway out, staring at him with those coarse, blank faces.
‘I cannot breathe the water,’ he told them, as simply as he could. ‘I need cauls. As… as many as you can. Please, I…’ I don’t want to drown. Any death but that. But he held that part in, for fear of their contempt. Their baffled stares persisted for another few seconds before one of them nodded, and the one left inside peered about, as though hoping to see a stack of the filmy hoods just waiting for them.
There was a bellow, and abruptly the leading Gastroi disappeared from the hole’s vantage point in a spray of blood. Stenwold fumbled for the snapbow, trying to remember if he had loaded it. The second Gastroi had turned, hands raised, but someone ran her through with a short-spear, ramming it up under her ribs. She gave out a harsh, choking cry and swiped at her unseen attacker, but then a second assailant darted in – a nimble little Onychoi – and gashed the entire length of her side with a hooked knife. She fell back through the gap and two small Onychoi scuttled over her instantly, heading for Stenwold. Behind them, the opening was darkened by a Kerebroi man with a full-length spear in his hands.
Claeon’s killers, Stenwold had just a moment to think. The little spearman went for him, but the final Gastroi, who had been standing still enough to escape notice, lunged in even as he tried to strike, catching the small man by one bicep. The knifeman darted past, and Stenwold pulled the snapbow’s trigger. The explosive sound of the weapon’s air battery came as an infinite relief, and the Onychoi was punched right off his feet, dead without ever knowing why.
The third Gastroi’s face revealed a bleak desperation and, as Stenwold watched, he turned his art on his enemy, and whatever had scored through the walls clipped the surviving Onychoi’s arm off effortlessly. As the maimed and screaming creature dropped to the ground, the Kerebroi’s spearhead lanced into the big, slow man’s neck. Stenwold had raised the cut-down snapbow again, seeing the Kerebroi not even flinch, not even recognizing the piece as a weapon.
Then Tseitus had run him through.
The Ant had appeared through the circular gap, wearing a nightshift that was drenched to the knees, and holding something that was as close to a Lowlander shortsword as he had been able to manufacture down here during his years of captivity. He struck twice more, swift and efficient, reminding Stenwold that, however long this man had worn the gown, he had been the child of a warrior city-state once.
‘Your Fly says… we must go,’ Tseitus managed to gasp, breathing heavily. He had surely not fought, not even a backstabbing blow like that, for many years. Laszlo chose that moment to appear, and viewed the carnage with a grey face.
‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this,’ he said faintly. The Gastroi, of course, had been his own recruits for this business.
‘Laszlo, what is going on?’ Stenwold demanded. The water level outside was rising, and began slopping over the lower edge of the hole.
‘Echinoi, they say,’ replied Laszlo casually, the name obviously meaning little to him, but Stenwold saw again that spiny orange tide in his mind’s eye: its inexorable advance on the Benthic train.
‘We have to get out of here,’ he said flatly.
‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell everyone!’ Laszlo almost shouted at him. ‘Come on, we have to find Wys and her lot!’
He darted off, half running and half flying, leaving Stenwold and Tseitus to follow as best they could.
The Stations had been thrown together by many hands and with only a loose plan, so Laszlo was leading them through gaps between rooms, unfinished spaces where the walls were a patchwork of metal and shell and carefully measured pieces of stone, but every so often they would break out into the Stations proper, the public face of Mandir’s realm, there to go skittering across a marketplace or a sleeping hall. The normal business of the Hot Stations had been suspended and they saw locals frantically gathering up their possessions, while others were arming themselves, with fear and dread on their faces. Here and there, parties of armoured Greatclaw Onychoi lumbered laboriously through the panicking crowd, blades and mauls to hand, and all heading somewhere with obvious purpose. Laszlo paused to watch one troop go by. He had dropped to the ground as soon as he saw them, but nobody was taking any notice of any of the fugitives.
‘Stuff it,’ the Fly swore mildly. ‘Where’s Wys, the wretched woman?’
‘Laszlo, where are we going?’ Stenwold demanded. ‘It’s not as if we can just kick a door down and walk out of here.’
‘I have cauls for us, but only one each.’ Laszlo passed him back one of the translucent hoods, while still scanning the crowd. ‘But we need Wys – Nemoctes, if we have to, but Wys is best.’
‘This is like a circus,’ Tseitus complained, just as the screaming began.
At first Stenwold could not see what was happening, but all of a sudden people were fleeing from the little plaza, and the wash of water struck against his calves, freezing him in place. The local inhabitants were dashing for every available exit, but the three landsmen made no move until the Echinoi arrived.
Stenwold saw the colour first, the violent red-tinged orange of them. For a moment it was nothing but a gaudy blur to him, and he could not put a shape to it, but something came oozing out of a gap in the wall, bristling with spines. Its topside bright-hued, its underside a pallid white that seethed with suckered limbs, it unrolled first one arm out into the marketplace, and then another. A five-limbed lump of a monster, it dragged itself over the ground as if pulled unwillingly on strings, its hide waving with dark-tipped spikes. No head, no front, no back, there was nothing of it that admitted any kinship, or anything at all but an inexorable hunger.
And after it came its kinden.
The Echinoi were coloured just like their beasts, in purples, reds and oranges, and there seemed little of the human about them. Their skin was like notched rind, their faces noseless, with eyes like black buttons and mere slashes for mouths. They wore armour of copper and some kind of pale hide, and although some had long, hooked swords made of bronze, their barbed fists looked savage enough in themselves.
They moved swiftly but awkwardly, and that alone was what saved the landsmen. The first three or four rushed for them, wordless and expressionless, but they seemed almost over-fast, out of their own control. Tseitus smashed one across the face with his makeshift blade, and Stenwold was able to simply sidestep another. He gave the creature a shove and it lost its footing and fell past him, although it was back on its feet almost instantly. As they beat a quick retreat he had the fleeting thought: they are used to fighting in water only. I have been told how they are the only sea-kinden that have no use for the air.
Then someone was bellowing at him to get out of the way, and he turned to see Mandir, of all people, and a band of his warriors. To the Man of the Stations’ credit, there was no order right then, to recapture the landsmen. The Echinoi were all that Mandir had eyes for. He had a dozen of the big Onychoi, and most of them bore the tube-barrelled weapons that Stenwold had noticed before. The heads of the bolts protruding from them were more like axe-blades than arrows. Other men there, of several kinden, had the curved falx swords and two-pronged spears, and there was even a couple of crabs crouched before the line, their pincers wide in threat.
The Echinoi had got into their stride and rushed the line with their crawling, many-limbed beast coursing through the water behind them. Mandir barked a single word, and his warriors loosed their weapons. The shock of concerted release staggered even the great Onychoi, and the sound of a half-dozen spring-loaded plates being released sounded uncannily like a volley of snapbow shot. Tseitus said they made good springs, Stenwold thought numbly, as Laszlo tugged at his sleeve. The broad-headed missiles were a momentary blur in the air, and then most of the Echinoi were down. Stenwold saw limbs cut clean away, enormous gashes ripped through corrugated orange hide. One was beheaded entirely, the truncated body standing with sword upraised before dropping to its knees.