Part 30 (1/2)

And all the while I concentrated. I was calling on help. The sea rose alarmingly on either side.

Sam was suddenly on her feet and in the fray. Gila tossed her a knife and she caught it automatically, staring at it. The elderly lady grabbed it from her and turned to stab, but the heron-like creature in the eyepatch was back, squawking and las.h.i.+ng out with a deadly beak. There was barely room to stand or for us all to stand safely.

And still I concentrated.

Pirates were coming down from the Kristeva . They yelled out angrily - reinforcements. Julia was sending them down, armed to the teeth, climbing hand over hand to help out.What a noise we made! We small, resilient band!

And then, inevitably, we capsized.

The two boats rode up in a sudden swell. And suddenly all fights were broken up as we were flung into the water. The reinforcements jumped off their ladders to haul us aboard.

But by then I had succeeded.

I had called up a reinforcement of our own. And nothing could send him back now.

I dived deep into the water and saw him. He was coming for us.

How wonderful the water felt.

I swam back to the surface, where the others struggled and flailed.

'He's coming!' I shouted, waving my hooves so they would all notice and realise my success.

'Who?' I heard the Doctor shout.

They turned to look. All of them turned to look.

Behind us, dwarfing the bulk of the Kristeva herself: the humped purple back and sheaf of fins cutting a swathe through the sea. How they all stared! How their jaws dropped! They all ceased to struggle after that.

He opened his gigantic maw as he bore down on us all. There was barely time to shout.

The oldest, biggest fish in the world, had come at my bidding. I had pulled a few strings to get him there. Oh, what a success.

We saw his mouth open and it was like the gateway to heaven. It was huge.

I was pulled in. I plunged gladly into his overarching maw. I turned head over heels, flippers over sh.e.l.l over hooves. I caught a glimpse of the Doctor, spinning through the water, and the old woman, sans wheelchair and then...

Then the maw of the sea beast clamped tight shut and it was dark and smelly and hot and the water he had swallowed slewed us around, in the tight compression of his ma.s.sive guts. We were compelled through the force of his monstrous peristalsis to pa.s.s through the miles of his tubing and pipes and, at last, we were swallowed. Fetched up neatly in the dark of his stomach. I couldn't tell how many we were, but we few lucky swallowees were safe, at least, from the pirates. I had done my job.

Then, there was a grand, cresting, violent lurch, and the behemoth plunged and surged ever deeper, towards the bottom of the sea.

Chapter Twenty-Six.

In the Belly of the Beast

What a motley crew they made. It was the only word for it. Julia of the Kristeva had a.s.sembled the roughest bunch of scavengers and rogues in all of Hyspero to tend to her and go about her work. They were cheap and desperate and they took every opportunity to bait the poor, bedraggled prisoners who lay, dripping, exhausted, hopelessly outnumbered on the none-too-clean deck of the s.h.i.+p. Captain Julia stood among them, arms akimbo, laughing along with her rabble.

Around her were cl.u.s.tered the most trusted members of her crew. The beaky, crazed-looking heron creature, a Sahmbekart, reptilian and coloured a glittering jade, a bipedal tiger and, looming closest over the captives, a shaved bear. Luckily Major Angela could not see this particular specimen. Sam thought she would feel terribly betrayed if she knew that one of the crew was part of her own little family.

But Sam was still reeling in shock from what she had seen, and what had just occurred.

'He's really dead; she said to Gila. 'This time, he's really dead. That Jaws thing... it...'

Gila nodded and said gruffly, matter-of-factly,'I think you're right.'

To Sam, their whole quest suddenly seemed pointless. With the Doctor, Iris and the Mock Turtle abruptly, intractably dead. She had seen each of them swallowed. And then the beast had surged away, quickly as it had come, leaving them sh.e.l.l-shocked and numb, watching in its wake.

Sam had had just a glimpse of the monstrous fish's vast, purple, s.h.i.+ning scales, and then that terrible maw. Teeth standing high as dustbins and water cras.h.i.+ng through the gaps between. The jaws had clamped shut against them, once the Doctor, Iris and the Turtle were swallowed, and the fish was gone, splintering the two small boats to wreckage as it went.

The survivors were lucky not to have been sucked under in the pull of its departure. Sam must have swallowed gallons of water. Right now she wanted to throw up.

Julia snarled at them, and tossed her head. 'My mother's going to be disappointed. She wanted me to bring you all in alive.'

This was too much for Sam. Without even thinking, she hauled herself up and flung herself bodily at the Captain of the Kristeva .

Julia was caught unawares and staggered under the impact. Her trusted heron-like lieutenant wrenched at Sam and the girl felt herself pinned to the deck, by the weight of wet musty wings. She rolled and groaned and lashed out with arms and legs and saw, briefly, dazedly, that Julia was drawing out her blade. Sam yelled and saw Major Angela throw herself blindly into battle, producing a short, deadly sword from somewhere or other and screaming about not being taken without a fight.

They were terribly outnumbered. Sam thought very clearly, We're all going to die.

And then she thought.Where's Gila?

And there he was. Right behind the Bearded Lady, pitching and cannoning into the melee. He took down three of the henchmen in a series of deadly blows and then they were all upon him. He flashed his strong, coruscating tail (He has a tail now? Sam wondered, as the heron let his grip slip and she rolled away, to join in the battle) and he brought down the tiger with a crash. In the rumpus there was a bewildering, kaleidoscopic mora.s.s of hides and feathers and skins and blades. Sam struck out, fighting her way closer and closer to Julia, determined suddenly to somehow force the gloating captain to call off her dogs.

Gila fought happily. He parried and thrust, feinted and dived. Gouts and spurts of variously coloured blood arced out across the air. There were screams but he let nothing confuse him. This must be like the old days for him, Sam thought: a proper punch-up.

And then, at the pitched battle's height, they all saw Julia take her blade with a curious, graceful calm, push her way through the crowd to Major Angela, who was las.h.i.+ng out sightlessly and making a good job of it.

Julia took her rapier, sliced it through the air, and stabbed the Bearded Lady neatly through the chest. Nothing to quite finish her off, but enough to make her stop and think.

Angela squawked once and dropped to the wooden floor. Before she even hit the deck her blood had soaked the white of her uniform jacket.

The fighting stopped.

'Take them below,' the s.h.i.+p's Captain sneered. 'And you three just think yourselves lucky I'm under instructions to take you in alive. I'd like to keelhaul you all for this.'

They were gripped then, and held, and forced to watch as Julia swept away. Then they were led off, below, into the dank of the Kristeva's hold.

When they woke up, they found they were lying on ground that was moist and fleshy, naturally. But they were surprised to find that they weren't drowned, or swimming in some horrid imbroglio of intestinal acids and juices. The Mock Turtle was first awake, and had dragged the Doctor and Iris to a pink-floored, low-ceilinged cell where they could wake in comfort and find themselves wringing wet and battered, but oddly alive and out of danger.

So they woke, almost together, and looked around. And they were shocked to find the s.p.a.ce lit by an odd, pinkish iridescence. The light pulsed gently as if to a distant, regular heartbeat.

'Swallowed; said Iris gloomily.'Swallowed and sunk. Oh, Doctor.WeVe really gone and done it this time.'