Page 37 of The Book that Broke the World

“At least wait to see if it can get through the wall,” Arpix growled.

Grudgingly, Clovis halted before the line traced out with widely spaced marker stones. She stretched her neck from side to side with audible popping sounds. A claw like a black scythe broke from the first sphere, showering the ground with pieces of the container. A horrified shriek and several gasps went up from the humans. Arpix shouted orders at them.

The sphere fell apart, leaving the cratalac standing amid the remnants of its shell, shaking loose pieces off its carapace.

“Now that’s ugly,” Clovis muttered.

The cratalac shared more in common with the skeer than with humans or canith, but where the skeer were white this thing was black shot through with a grey so close to that of the dust it seemed almost invisible in these places, as if it were a collection of black fragments in motion. Moreover, where the skeer had clean lines and simplicity, this beast was a nightmare of hooks and bristling hair and clawed limbs and jaws framing dripping mouthparts. It loosed another spine-shaking scream as two more of the spheres started to break.

Rather than focus its attention on the skeer who had captured it and rolled it unknown miles to a strange location, the cratalac aimed its fury at Clovis and those behind her. Those behind her currently being Evar and Arpix, as the others were retreating towards the tunnels, taking Kerrol with them.

Evar thought Arpix should go with them. In fact, looking at the cratalac, he was pretty sure he should go too. Not only was the thing larger than a skeer, it also evoked some primal horror in him that the skeer did not. It put him more in mind of a spider: its too-many legs and the alien way in which it moved them made his skin crawl. It reminded him strongly of several Escapes he’d encountered before but was somehow more loathsome in a deep, visceral way that sidestepped his intellect.

Clovis didn’t share Evar’s hesitation. As the cratalac scuttled forward, passing through the city’s protection without hesitation, she charged to meet it. The creature moved with unnerving speed. Clovis threw herself into its clutches in a way that, whilst it must be calculated to increase her chances, was something Evar knew he would never be able to do. He would have danced at the margins of its reach, seeking to wear the thing down.

The savagery of what followed was unexpected even after seeing the thing fight its way out of the sphere. Clovis’s white sword flashed; she turned and twisted amid a forest of limbs; black body parts flew in various directions, trailing arcs of ichor.

Evar found himself advancing despite his fear, but the suddenness of the instant in which Clovis was caught shocked him into a stumble. The cratalac raised her from the ground, pinned by the two curving horns of its jaws. Dripping mouthparts punched out and fastened on her chest, eliciting a cry of pain. Evar sprang forward, slashing with his knife at the nearest of the insectoid’s limbs. For a few frantic moments the cratalac shook Clovis like a dog with a rabbit, the horror of it cut short by a flash of white that left her sailing through the air with rag doll limbs. Half her armour stayed behind, hanging from the creature’s remaining jaw-horn, the iron plates torn away or twisted.

“Clo!” Evar shot back, trying to reach her without exposing his spine to the enemy. The cratalac didn’t give chase, but instead, thrashing and hissing, it stomped a half-circle with foreshortened limbs. Two of the other spheres were now in pieces, their occupants screaming at the sky, and the last four were breaking. “Clovis!” Evar scooped up her sword before reaching her.

“Uh...” Clovis struggled to her knees. An ugly wound ran from her shoulder across her chest, blood pulsing bright crimson from torn flesh.

“C’mon!” Evar hauled her up, even as she reclaimed her blade, half carrying her towards the tunnels. In moments the cratalacs would shake off the last of their cages and sedation. In fact, the tattoo of footfalls behind them suggested at least one had already fixed its multiple eyes on their retreating forms.

Among all this, Evar realised with shock that he’d just passed Arpix, the frail human standing his ground though he seemed more bookish than even Kerrol and wasn’t carrying so much as a sharpened stick to defend himself with. Evar slowed, his stride shortened both by the realisation they weren’t going to outrun the cratalac that had given chase, and by the thought of what Livira would say if he abandoned her friend.

He tugged Clovis’s sword from her hand and turned with her. She would want to face her death head on, the same way she’d faced her life. Arpix stood a few yards closer to the advancing cratalac, one of the fresh ones, his arm raised to throw a rock at it. Evar roared at him to get back, but the human ignored him, instead throwing his missile. It missed the cratalac’s head and impacted what might be loosely described as the shoulder. It should have been impossible to miss at that range but fear does unwelcome things to your muscles. In any event, hitting the cratalac square in the head with a rock five times the size and thrown three times as hard would probably have had little effect from what Evar had seen.

The beast came on without pause, a broken moment away from scooping Arpix up and shredding him. Arpix turned to run but he had no chance of escape. Amazingly, just before it reached him, the cratalac collapsed drunkenly, screeching worse than ever. The armour in a wide area around where Arpix had hit it was falling away, the flesh beneath smoking.

Arpix reached Evar and slung Clovis’s other arm over his shoulders, taking some of her weight. A third cratalac was skirting the convulsions of the second, angling towards them but still shaking off its own sedation.

“Can you do that again?” Evar asked.

“No.”

“Get her to the tunnels.” Evar shrugged off Clovis’s arm and readied himself in the cratalacs’ path, white sword angled across his body.

More cratalacs freed themselves, two tearing apart the one that Clovis had maimed. Others approached Arpix’s victim then backed off as if alarmed by its condition or the sharp, metallic stink rising from it.

Evar retreated slowly, giving Arpix and Clovis the time they needed.

At last, after what seemed an age, a shout came from behind him. Finding himself unexpectedly alive, Evar backed off rapidly, and when two cratalacs sighted him and began to charge, he ran like hell.

Evar reached the nearest tunnel mouth with his pursuers growing loud behind him, their scrabbling run accelerating in that final phase in which prey becomes food. He dived through the narrow gap in a hastily erected barrier of ancient timbers, dead thorn bushes, and rusting railings.

The whole lot exploded behind him as the first cratalac burst through. Ahead of him he could see flickers of flame and the motion of bodies, multiple humans and two canith retreating.

“Run!” They should have been deep in the mines by now, not wasting time on barricades. “Run!”

The first cratalac filled the tunnel, its cries of fury deafening as it struggled to advance in the narrow confines while battling with the debris snared among its limbs. Evar opened a gap on it as he caught up with Arpix and Clovis.

“It gets... small,” Clovis managed.

“They won’t fit in further on,” Arpix said, sharing with Evar the task of moving Clovis. “We need to get deeper.”

They pushed on through an underground system Evar hadn’t yet visited. Already he had to bend low and the sides were starting to close in. The human’s torches were bundles of dry leaves and produced more smoke than light. With little visibility, little room, and the terrifying cratalac screams echoing around, Evar felt his grasp on the situation slipping. Panic began to fill him—panic at being trapped with cratalacs in the dark, panic at the state Clovis was in.

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