Leviathans in the Clouds by David Parish-Whittaker & Steven Savile

Author:David Parish-Whittaker & Steven Savile
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Steampunk
Publisher: Untreed Reads
Published: 2012-12-31T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

1.

The small group walked together towards the hazy silhouettes of the riders, making their way through piles of burnt prawns. Up close, they looked even more unsettling, if thankfully very dead. They had the legs and tail of a terrestrial prawn, but two long appendages in front that terminated in knifelike points. Their mouthparts resembled densely packed pincushions, if the pins were reversed and dripping with mucus. Their only normal parts were the two eyes, but even those were multifaceted and alien.

Dragons seemed positively tame by comparison. Certainly, less disquieting.

The dank smoke from the peat fires curled around them as they walked, stinging their eyes and nostrils. It was oddly silent. Arnaud began coughing once again, but even that sound was cushioned into stillness by the mists and the bog.

But less than a hundred paces away, twelve latter-day dragons were waiting for them.

Five more paces and the smoke unveiled the opeme. As tall as giraffes, their long necks bobbed about, almost appearing nervous. Not that Annabelle believed they were, considering each of the humans would be barely a mouthful. Still, she’d once had a horse that was deathly afraid of butterflies despite weighing in at half a ton. It made her feel a little better to consider that the opeme might have similar instincts.

The humanoid riders displayed no such fear, however. They stood at military attention in a half circle in front of their mounts, long lances held upright. Up close, the riders resembled the Skreelan to the same extent that the opeme resembled birds. They had the long muzzle and lizard like tail, but with small arms and disproportionality thick legs, which lent them the appearance of a slender kangaroo with a reptilian head. Their skin was smooth and grey, more like a snake’s than the rough lizard hides of the Skreelan. As if in protest at this bland uniformity, they sported a number of differently coloured symbols and squiggles, very much in appearance like the graffiti that they had found on Collins’ safehouse.

At first glance their strangest feature was their glassy eyes, which appeared to bulge outwards like a fish. Then Annabelle realised that they were all wearing oversized aviation goggles. They must have made those themselves—anything acquired from human crews could not possibly have fit them correctly.

The lances had a constant flame on the end and a bulb on the bottom, making them look for all the world like a gigantic scallion someone had lit on fire. As they three approached, one of the riders squeezed the bulb on his lance, making the flame shoot up into the air a good twenty feet. His neighbour seemed displeased, whistling angrily and showing rows of small but quite evidently sharp teeth.

Other than that, they only thing that resembled clothing was their rather dapper leather vests which had numerous bulging pockets and a long curved gaff dangling off a lanyard. The rider in the middle whistled abruptly, then pointed at Nathanial with his gaff.

“Human. Come,” he chirped in moderately understandable English.

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