Snapper was still looking about. She pointed to the maze of Screamer corpses heaped upon the ground.
“Everyone has to keep moving! We need oil and firewood. We need these bodies burned.”
“Beth’s onto it. Never worry.” Toby supported Snapper, waving to Beau. “We beat them. Must have been three or four thousand of the buggers. It’s a bloody miracle.” He held Snapper as Kitterpokkie put a rough bandage upon the shark’s bloody thigh. “Well done lass. Well done. It was a miracle.”
“Guncotton and steel.” Snapper still held her sword. “Guncotton and steel.”
“And a lot of something else.” The man helped her to her feet. “Well done.”
They put Snapper on Onan’s back, and all walked back towards the shattered gates. The big apricot-coloured bird looked wearily back towards Snapper, looking at her in concern.
“Salty cracker?”
“Got them right here, boy. Here you go.”
Beau rode beside her – sword still in his hand. Snapper wiped her own sword with the wrappers from a pack of salty crackers, and nodded to the weary fox-bird.
“You did well.” Exhausted, Snapper watched the man as he rode. “You’ve never been in charge of anything before, have you.”
“No one ever trusted me before.” The man rested a firm hand upon Snapper’s shoulder. “My thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
The cavalry came straggling slowly back into town. Riflemen were at work, dragging dead Screamers into piles where men were heaping them with brushwood and lamp oil. Snapper and her friends rode on into the town, while behind them the bugler sounded recall.
It had been one hell of a day…
Chapter 8
The light of dawn spread sluggishly across a sombre, weary town. Cavalry patrols returned, plodding slowly, the riders and beasts bowed with fatigue. Other citizens and riding beasts had been tugging apart the huge mounds of dead Screamers at the base of the walls, killing any larvae that they found. Smouldering fires burned the bodies, sending out reeking clouds of smoke that clung low against the ground.
It had been a long, hard night of toil.
Up in the Dancing Dugite, Beth, Samuels and Toby were still on duty, coordinating the town’s affairs. Messengers came and went. Tired, dusty patrols reported in from the plains. Snapper’s thigh wound had been cleaned out with whiskey, painted with healing enzyme, painfully stitched and then swathed in bandages. She then insisted upon putting on riding overalls, her second-best pelisse, and refused to go to bed. The shark painfully installed herself on a wicker chair in the beer garden, where she spoke to incoming cavalry and organised for returning shifts of warriors to be met with a hot meal and a very cold beer. She was also good enough to keep waving flies away from Beau, who had fallen asleep on a table.
Kitterpokkie had been out assisting operations, taking notes, measurements and careful photographs. Throckmorton – now properly patched with resin and bandages – had been forbidden to fly until he was completely healed. Kitterpokkie trundled her friend about in a wheelbarrow, carefully inspecting Screamer corpses. She came back mid morning, soot smudged and horribly tired, trudging up into the yard of the pub. The mantis carefully parked Throckmorton in the semi-shade, poured a jug of water over him, then collapsed into a chair. She carefully placed her blackboard before Samuels and Beau.
“Four thousand, three hundred and twelve Screamer cadavers. Each one is a unique mutant, but I believe I have identified four different general sub types. A behemoth class that masses between three hundred and five hundred kilos. A scout class, with a far larger braincase. Spitters, capable of firing bone shards, and finally the general warrior population.” Kitt was so tired that she failed to notice the ice cold cider placed at her elbow. “They carry larvae in a pouch – a sort of crop in the gullet. Between one and three larvae per adult.”
Samuels looked over the sheaf of papers, with their careful drawings and observations. Weights, measurements, even notes from a preliminary dissection. He was deeply impressed.
“Thank you, my dear. No one has ever conducted such a… a study before.”
“I have a photographic record. Very few shots from during the siege, I’m afraid – we were rather too pressed for time. Although the Dugite staff want to paint a mural showing the cavalry charge…”
Finally she noticed the cider. The mantis drank and drank, visibly soothed. She drained the entire tankard, self-consciously wiping her dainty mouth when done. She set the empty tankard carefully aside.
“We are still starved of real information. How frequently do they create larvae? Exactly how long must pass between implantation of a larva, and the emergence of the metamorphosed form? How long before a newly emerged Screamer is capable of breeding?” The girl’s antennae were wilting. “We need all such data if we are to gain an absolute comprehension of the threat.”
Samuels thoughtfully leafed through Kitterpokkie’s drawings.
“Four thousand three hundred?”
“…and twelve.”
“So many?” The crow rubbed wearily at his eyes, trying to think clearly. “How? How did they breed in such numbers?”
Kitterpokkie accepted a bowl of stew and a hunch of crusty bread from the waitress.
“They cannot have merely bred here in the wilderness. The population of game is far too small.”
“Meaning they must have migrated from somewhere?”
“Almost definitely.” Kitterpokkie leaned back in her chair, crossed her claws and steepled her fingers. “And therein lies the puzzle.”
Despite all her attempts to seem constantly alert, Snapper had drifted off to sleep in her chair. New men entering the pub made her blink and come awake. Like the rest of the mortal world, she disliked admitting that she had been asleep. She blinked and wiped her pistol with a rag as though she had been cleaning it. After a few moments, it dawned on her that Throckmorton and Kitterpokkie were also in the beer garden.
“Ah! There you are.”
Throckmorton waved. His leaves were spread to receive the sunlight, and he was slowly draining a pitcher of cider.
“Hello.”
“How’s the – aah – the flying bladder?”
“I have a hole.”
“Well, we’ll get you home soon. You can snooze out on the porch.” Snapper tried to rise, but her thigh sent a sizzle of agony all the way down her side. “Yeah, uh, soon.”
The shark wiped her face, and saw Toby in conference with Beth Baker. She put her spectacles back upon her nose.
“Toby. Any news on the butcher’s list?”
“It’s not good.” The old dog sorrowfully made his way over to the table. “Twenty dead.”
“Twenty one.” Beth Baker found herself a seat. “Jazza Black didn’t make it. Doc was operating, but Jazza didn’t pull through.”
Twenty one dead from a community of five hundred or so. It was a heavy blow. Toby sighed and leaned upon his sword.
“Twenty one. Thirty two wounded, plus thirty more walking wounded, or in Snapper’s case, hobbling…” The old man rose wearily from his seat. “I’d better organise some blood donors.”
Over at the other table, Throckmorton waved his tentacles.
“Throckmorton will volunteer some sap.”
“Thanks mate, but I think it’s mostly the red blooded variety we’re low on.”
Snapper tried to rise. “I can do that for you.”
“You just sit in the bloody chair like you were told.” The doctor had put three parallel rows of twenty stitches in Snapper’s thigh. “He’s got better things to do with his time than bung you back together again. Now quite moving it around or I’ll thump you!”
“It’s itching!”
“Well leave it alone. That’s the enzymes working! Angry bee-mouse royal jelly. Nothing but the finest!” Toby pushed a stone bottle of cider towards Snapper’s hand. “Get that down you. Full of goodness.”
Beth looked off towards the doctor’s office.
“Good man, Doctor Spackle.” The rhino woman scratched at the base of her upper horn. “Even if he does keep trying to make me take that damned vitamin elixir.”
“Is it bad?”
The woman shook her head.
“Tastes like soap that’s been shoved up a Screamer’s arse.”
Toby quirked one brow. “Who does your research?”
Boots clomped wearily up the front steps of the pub. Spurs jangling, a patrol came trudging in from making a long journey up to the eastern gullies. The cavalrymen were dead tired, and their birds and beetle horses stumbled into the corral and drank deeply from the water troughs. The staff of the Dugite, one waitress, now with powder stains on her cheek, and owner Digby, whose arm was in a sling, poured each of the incoming men a beer. Samuels saw Kenda in amongst the cavalrymen and waved him to sit down.
“You went out on patrol?”
“I did.” The tall man’s head was bandaged, but his demeanour was as ever – cool and erect. “We found no sign of Screamers.”
Snapper rubbed at her eyes. “You followed their tracks?”
The patrol commander, a black and white dog with a long collie’s nose, had finished his beer in one immense, deep draft. He signalled to the waitress for another.
“Yeah, maybe twelve or fifteen kilometres. There was a trail until it hit Red-Rock gully. They all seem to have come up out of the river bed.”
Red-Rock gully was lined with boulders, rock and stones. The Screamer horde could have followed the gully and left very little trace. Snapper sat up and scowled, picturing the vast long gully in her mind.
“There’s an ancient road crosses the gully about… nine k’s up. Did you follow the road?” Snapper tried to twist in her chair and point up to the map. “There’s ruins up that way. I’ve combed through them. Pretty empty.”
“Well they’re still empty now.” The collie sat himself wearily down in a chair. “We rode through. No prints in the dust there except our own.”
Kenda straightened his bandage. “There was no sign. We lost them.”
Snapper managed to rise to her feet. She hobbled over to the wall map and inspected it carefully, wincing every time she moved her leg.
“No signs of any large groups entering the gully. So – did they enter in smaller packs? Why? Why the hell would they bother?” She tapped at the map. “If they were just following the gully south, then why exit and head due east to Spark Town?”
Beth joined Snapper at the map.
“More to the point, where did they come from?” The gully ran in one form or another for two hundred kilometres, and eventually led to the barrier cliffs to the north. “Across the barrier?”
Snapper scowled. “Well they can’t be immune to radiation. That must mean there’s another pass somewhere.”
Beau had been asleep on his back, snout open and snoring. A fly was sucked into his mouth, and he woke up, choking and coughing. He sat up in shock with his thoughts scattered to the wind.
“I respect you!”
Beth looked upon the fox-bird with great warmth. He sat blinking and trying to make sense out of the world around him.
“Did we still win?”
“We did!” Snapper’s sword, properly cleaned, was on the table beside her. She needed to get it to a whetstone to restore its frightening razor edge. “Ten to one odds.”
Samuels frowned.
“That won’t happen again unless we can get more ammunition organised. There’s hardly a cartridge left in the entire town.”
Beau slid his old muzzle loading pistols across the table.
“Kitterpokkie managed to make gunpowder out of charcoal and old sugar. Perhaps we can reload our spent brass with that?”
The mantis gravely shook her head. “No, the workshops will need to make proper percussion caps. And we will need gun cotton – nitrocellulose. Sugar powder certainly won’t make the grade.”
Samuels leaned forward.
“What do we need to make caps and gun cotton?”
“Oh, acid and cotton.” The mantis waved a claw. “Cotton we can scavenge – but the acid’s a problem. We need a great deal of the stuff. Normally, it is found in sizzle plants, and they grow to the south.”
“Can you make us some acid out of chemicals or something?”
“It might be possible. But I would require a hefty amount of ancient industrial minerals. Copper sulphate, or some sort of ammonium nitrate.” The mantis scowled. “The only source for such things would be ancient ruins.”
The crow looked to Toby.
“How long would a convoy of acid take to reach us from the south villages?”
“Four hundred kilometres? If we sent a fast courier riding hard with a message…” The old dog creased his brows. “Hard terrain…. Change mounts at the northernmost stop… Four days there? Four days to harvest acid and load a caravan. Twelve days en route…”
Beth scowled. “We’ve been losing those eastern caravans. We might need to head the convoy west, along the old ridge tail. That’s going to add at least six or seven days to the journey.”
The patrol commander shook his head. “That’ll take the caravan pretty close to the brotherhood’s sanctuary.” He saw the question in Snapper’s eye, and gave a shrug. “Just saying. Those guys took off in a real damned hurry just before the Screamers attacked.”
Other people back in the bar listened and scowled. Apparently the thought had surfaced in quite a few people’s minds. Beth considered for a moment, then dismissed the idea.
“We will send some riders to the Brotherhood’s sanctuary. They need to be warned about the Screamers. We will need to ask all the villages for troops once we find out where the Screamers are coming from.” She looked to the others. “How much acid will be available down south?”
Beau tapped thoughtfully at his snout. “They just had their harvest. There might be a late squeezing… One more caravan load? Maybe… two wagon’s worth?”
“How much gun cotton would we make out of that? How many caps?”
All eyes turned to Kitterpokkie. The mantis looked up as if surprised such information were not common knowledge, and then waved a claw.
“Well – the acid is quite concentrated. I would guess about two thousand litres per wagon. Two tons. At best you might manage perhaps… five rounds out of a litre, or five caps? So for two wagons, that would be about ten thousand rounds. For five hundred defenders, that makes twenty rounds apiece.”
Silence reigned. The others all stared at her, aghast. Twenty rounds was nowhere near enough.
Beau finally blinked.
“It would seem that chemicals are a priority.”
There was another long moment’s silence.
Snapper set her glasses on her snout. She clumped slowly forward, flicking an eye to the map.
“We’ll take pack animals when we go. Give me… two days to get equipment made. Then it’s two hundred k’s to the radiation belt, a few days to find a route, a few more days to find the old cliff city…” She moved forward, her leg stiff and sore. “We can be back with some chemicals in about fifteen, maybe sixteen days if we’re fast.”