Pilgrim

The other three ships in the fleet had similar problems — at least, that’s what their last communiques had reported. The Ark crew were aware of the faint phosphorescent outlines in the wake of the other ships, but that was all now. So here they were, hurtling through deep space, in ships that responded to no command, and with cargo that the crews preferred not to think about. When they volunteered for this mission, hadn’t they been told that once they’d found somewhere to “dispose” of the cargo they could come home?

But now, the crew of The Ark wondered, what would be disposed of? The cargo? Or them?

It might have helped if the commander had come up with something helpful. But Devereaux seemed peculiarly unconcerned, saying only that the vibrations soothed his soul and that the ships, if they no longer responded to human command, at least seemed to know what they were doing.

And now here he was, tapping at that keyboard as if he actually had a purpose in life. None of them had a purpose any more. They were as good as dead. Everyone knew that. Why not Devereaux?

“What are you doing, sir?” Chris asked. He had picked up the fork again, and it quivered in his over-tight grip.

“I …” Devereaux frowned as if listening intently to something, then his fingers rattled over the keys. “I am just writing this down.”

“Writing what down, sir?” the other officer asked, his voice tight.

Devereaux turned slightly to look at them, his eyes wide. “Don’t you hear it? Lovely music … enchanted music … listen, it vibrates through the ship. Don’t you feel it?”

“No,” Chris said. He paused, uncomfortable. “Why write it down, sir? For who? What is the bloody point of writing it down?”

Devereaux smiled. “I’m writing it down for Katie, Chris. A song book for Katie.”

Chris stared at him, almost hating the man. “Katie is dead, sir. She has been dead at least twelve thousand years. I repeat, what is the fucking point?”

Devereaux’s smile did not falter. He lifted a hand and placed it over his heart. “She lives here, Chris. She always will. And in writing down these melodies, I hope that one day she will live to enjoy the music as much as I do.”

It was then that The Ark, in silent communion with the others, decided to let Devereaux live.

1 Questions of Conveyance (#ulink_84ba1e9e-667b-5b54-9d00-5f222ac0a262)

The speckled blue eagle clung to rocks under the overhang of the river cliffs a league south of Carlon. He shuddered. Nothing in life made sense any more. He had been drifting the thermals, digesting his noonday meal of rats, when a thin grey mist had enveloped him and sent despair stringing through his veins.

He could not fight it, and had not wanted to. His wings crippled with melancholy, he’d plummeted from the sky, uncaring about his inevitable death.

It had seemed the best solution to his useless life.

Chasing rats? Ingesting them. Why?

In his mad, uncaring tumble out of control, the eagle struck the cliff face. The impact drove the breath from him, and he thought it may also have broken one of his breast bones, but even in the midst of despair, the eagle’s talons scrabbled automatically for purchase among the rocks.

And then … then the despair had gone. Evaporated.

The eagle blinked and looked about.

It was cold here in the shadow of the rocks, and he wanted to warm himself in the sun again — but he feared the grey-fingered enemy that awaited him within the thermals. In the open air.

What was this grey miasma? What had caused it?

He cocked his head to one side, his eyes unblinking, considering. Gryphon? Was this their mischief?

No. The Gryphon had long gone, and their evil he would have felt ripping into him, not seeping in with this grey mist’s many-fingered coldness. No, this was something very different.

Something worse.

The sun was sinking now, only an hour or two left until dusk, and the eagle did not want to spend the night clinging to this cliff face.

He cocked his head — the grey haze had evaporated.

With fear — a new sensation for this most ancient and wise of birds — he cast himself into the air. He rose over the Nordra, expecting any minute to be seized again by that consuming despair.

But there was nothing.

Nothing but the rays of the sun glinting from his feathers and the company of the sky.

Relieved, the eagle tilted his wings and headed for his roost under the eaves of one of the towers of Carlon.

He thought he would rest there a day or two. Watch. Discover if the evil would strike again, and, if so, how best to survive it.

The yards of the slaughterhouse situated a half-league west of Tare were in chaos. Two of the slaughtermen had been outside when Sheol’s mid-afternoon despair struck. Now they were dead, trampled beneath the hooves of a thousand crazed livestock. The fourteen other men were still safe, for they had been inside and protected when the TimeKeepers had burst through the Ancient Barrows.

Even though mid-afternoon had passed, and the world was once more left to its own devices, the men did not dare leave the safety of the slaughterhouse.

Animals ringed the building. Sheep, a few pigs, seven old plough horses, and innumerable cattle — all once destined for death and butchery. All staring implacably, unblinkingly, at the doors and windows.

One of the pigs nudged at the door with his snout, and then squealed.

Instantly pandemonium broke out. A horse screamed, and threw itself at the door. The wooden planks cracked, but did not break.

Imitating the horse’s lead, cattle hurled themselves against the door and walls.

The slaughtermen inside grabbed whatever they could to defend themselves.

The walls began to shake under the onslaught. Sheep bit savagely at any protuberance, pulling nails from boards with their teeth, and horses rent at walls with their hooves. All the animals wailed, one continuous thin screech that forced the men inside to drop their weapons and clasp hands to ears, screaming themselves.

The door cracked once more, then split. A brown steer shouldered his way through. He was plump and healthy, bred and fattened to feed the robust appetites of the Tarean citizens. Now he had an appetite himself.

Behind him many score cattle trampled into the slaughterhouse, pigs and sheep squeezing among the legs of their bovine cousins as best they could.

The invasion was many bodied, but it acted with one mind.

The slaughtermen did not die well.

The creatures used only their teeth to kill, not their hooves, and those teeth were grinders, not biters, and so those men were ground into the grave, and it was not a fast nor pleasant descent.

Of all the creatures once destined for slaughter, only the horses did not enter the slaughterhouse and partake of the meal.

They lingered outside in the first of the collecting yards, nervous, unsure, their heads high, their skin twitching. One snorted, then pranced about a few paces. He’d not had this much energy since he’d been a yearling.

A shadow flickered over one of the far fences, then raced across the trampled dirt towards the group of horses. They bunched together, turning to watch the shadow, and then it swept over them and the horses screamed, jerked, and then stampeded, breaking through the fence in their panic.

High above, the flock of Hawkchilds veered to the east and turned their eyes once more to the Ancient Barrows.