to a sudden stop. He squinted at the badlands around them, nose wrinkled, sniffing the whispering desert air.
‘What is it?’ Mia’s hand drifted to her gravebone dagger.
Tric shook his head, eyes closed as he inhaled.
‘Never smelled the like before. Reminds me of … old leather and dea—’
Bastard snorted, rearing up. Mia clutched his saddle, cursing as the red sand exploded around them and a dozen tentacles burst from beneath the ground. Twenty feet long, studded with grasping, serrated hooks, they looked as dry as the innards of an inkfiend’s needle.
Bastard whinnied in terror as one leathery appendage snaked around his foreleg, another cinching his throat in a hangman’s grip. The stallion fought, snotting and bucking like a wild thing. Mia found herself airborne again, bounced over Bastard’s head and tumbling towards the tentacles’ owner, now dragging itself from the earth and opening a hideous beaked maw. The air rang with a chittering, guttural hisssssssssssssssssss.
‘Sand kraken!’ Tric roared, a little needlessly.fn5
Mia drew her gravebone dagger, lashing out at a tentacle whipping her way. Oily blood spurted, a chuddering roar shivering the earth as Mia tumbled between two more of the dreadful limbs, ducking a third and rolling up into a panting crouch. Mister Kindly unfurled from her shadow, peering at the horror and not-breathing a small, soft sigh.
‘… pretty …’
Tric drew his scimitar, leaped from his stallion’s back, and hacked at the tentacle clutching Bastard’s leg. With the snapping whip of salted cord, the appendage split, another roar spilling from the beast, eyes wide as dinner plates, dusty gills flaring. Its severed limb flailed about, spraying Tric with reeking ichor. Bastard whinnied again in terror, blood spilling from his neck where the tentacle was wrapped and squeezing.
‘Let him go!’ Mia shouted, stabbing at another tentacle.
‘Back off!’ Tric roared to her.
‘Back off? Are you mad?’
‘Are you?’ Tric gestured at her dagger. ‘You plan on killing a sand kraken with that damned toothpick? Let it have the stallion!’
‘To the ’byss with that! I just stole that fucking horse!’
Feinting low, Mia lashed out at another hooked limb, drawing a fresh gout of blood. A flailing backswing saw Tric splayed in the dust, cursing. Mia curled her fingers, wrapping a hasty handful of shadows around herself so she might avoid a similar blow. Those hooks looked vicious enough to gut a War Walker.fn6
Though inconvenienced by the little sacks of meat and their sharp sticks, the kraken seemed mostly intent on dragging its thoroughbred meal – who no doubt begrudged his theft now more than ever – below the sands. But as Mia pulled the darkness to her, the monstrosity spat a shuddering roar and exploded back out from the earth, limbs flailing. Almost as if it were angry at her.
Tric spat a mouthful of red sand and shouted warning, hacking at another limb. The shadowcloak seemed to do Mia no good – she was near blind beneath it, and the beast seemed to be able to see her regardless. And so she let it fall from her shoulders, dived towards the wailing horse, tumbling across the dust. She moved between the forest of hooks and flails, feeling the breeze of the almost-blows narrowly missing her face and throat, the whistling hiss of the tentacles in the air. There was no real fear in her amid that storm. Simply the sway and the feint, the slide and the roll. The dance she’d been taught by Mercurio. The dance she’d lived with almost every turn since her father took his long plunge from his short rope.
A dusty tumble, a backwards flip, skipping between tentacles like a child amid a dozen jump ropes. She glanced to the beast’s open beak, snapping and snarling above Bastard’s screams, the scrape of its bulk as it dragged itself farther from the sand. The smell of wet death and salted leather, dust scratching her lungs. A smile played on her lips as a thought seized her, and with a brief dash, a skipping leap off one and two and three of the flailing limbs, Mia hurled herself up onto Bastard’s back.
‘Maw’s teeth, she is mad …’ Tric breathed.
The horse bucked again, Mia clinging on with thighs and fingernails and sheer bloody-mindedness. Reaching into the saddlebags, she seized a heavy jar of bright red powder within. And with a sigh, she hauled it back and flung it into the kraken’s mouth.
The jar shattered on the creature’s beak, broken glass and fine red powder spraying deep into the horror’s gullet. Mia rolled off Bastard’s back to avoid another blow, scrabbling across the dust as an agonised shriek split the air. The kraken released the stallion, pawing, scratching, scraping at its mouth. Tric gave another half-hearted stab, but the beast had forgotten its quarry entirely, great eyes rolling as it flipped over and over, dragging its bulk back below the sand, howling like a dog who’s just returned home from a hard turn’s work to find another hound in his kennel, smoking his cigarillos and in bed with his wife.
Mia dragged herself to her feet, sand churning as the kraken burrowed away. Flipping the sweat-soaked bangs from her eyes, she grinned like a madwoman. Tric stood slack-jawed, bloody scimitar dangling from his hand, face caked in dust.
‘What was that?’ he breathed.
‘Well, technically they’re not cephalopods—’
‘I mean what did you throw in its mouth?’
Mia shrugged. ‘A jar of Fat Daniio’s widowmaker.’
Tric blinked. Several times.
‘… You just thrashed a horror of the Whisperwastes with a jar of chilli powder?’
Mia nodded. ‘Shame, really. It’s good stuff. I only stole the one jar.’
A moment of incredulous silence rang across the wastes, filled with the off-key song of maddening winds. And then the boy began laughing, a dimpled, bone-white grin gleaming in a filthy face. Wiping at his eyes, he flicked a sluice of dark blood from his blade and wandered off to fetch Flowers. Mia turned to her stolen stallion, pulling himself up from the sands, bloodied at his throat and forelegs. She spoke in calming tones, tongue caked in dust, hoping to still him.
‘You all in one piece, boy?’
Mia approached slowly, hand outstretched. The beast was shaken, but with a few turns’ rest at their lookout, he’d be mending, and hopefully more kindly disposed to her now she’d saved his life. Mia smoothed his flanks with steady hands, reached into the saddlebags for her—
‘Ow, fuck!’
Mia shrieked as the stallion bit her arm, hard enough to leave a bloody bruise. The horse threw back his head with what sounded an awful lot like snickering.fn7 And tossing his mane, he began a limping canter back towards Last Hope, bloody hoofprints in his wake.
‘Wait!’ Mia cried. ‘Wait!’
‘He really doesn’t like you,’ Tric said.
‘My thanks, Don Tric. When you’re done singing your Ode to the Obvious, perhaps you’ll do me the honour of riding down the horse escaping with all my bloody gear on his back?’
Tric grinned, vaulted onto Flowers’s saddle, and galloped off in pursuit. Mia clutched her bruised arm, listening to the faint laughter of a cat who was not a cat echoing on the wind.
She spat into the dust, eyes on the fleeing stallion.
‘Bastard …’ she hissed.
Tric returned a half-hour later, a limping Bastard in tow. Reunited, he and Mia trekked overland to the thin spur of rock that’d serve as their lookout. They were on constant watch for disturbances beneath the sand, Tric sniffing the air like a bloodhound, but no more horrors reared any tentacles (or other appendages) to impede progress.
Bastard and Flowers were allowed to graze on the thin grass surrounding the spire – Flowers partook happily,