The Curse of the Ice Serpent (3 page)

‘Of course!’ he replied, straightening his back and clapping his hands together. ‘Now, call that reprobate brother of mine to my study. We must plan!’

‘And, if you remember,’ Georgia said, raising one eyebrow, ‘get him to give you that explosive dog back …’

CHAPTER FOUR

LURKER IN THE DEPTHS

The secret sea cave that lay deep within the cliffs beneath the castle echoed with Borys’s delighted laughter.

‘I’d heard about this incredible craft,’ he said, as he clambered aboard the
Nautilus
, ‘but the rumours and descriptions from our spies didn’t do her justice!’

‘We tried to keep her as secret as possible,’ Oginski muttered, throwing an almost comic look of alarm at Dakkar.

We were spied on by Borys and Tomasz and I didn’t even notice?
Dakkar thought.

‘A truly amazing invention, Frank.’ Borys ran his palm along the polished, watertight boards of the submarine. ‘Such craftsmanship too.’ He looked over to Dakkar and Georgia. ‘I bet these two had more than a hand in her construction.’

Dakkar felt his cheeks flush with pride in spite of himself. Even Oginski appeared flattered by his brother’s praise.

‘I consider Dakkar and Georgia my partners when it comes to developing the
Nautilus
,’ he said, a smile playing around his lips. ‘They’re brilliant students and even more original thinkers.’

The
Nautilus
bobbed, straining at her mooring ropes like a spirited young whale, eager to take them all out to sea. The submersible was essentially a long wooden tube made of close-fitting burnished planks. A tower rose out of its middle, housing a hatch in its top. She looked like no other vessel on the seas.

‘I’ll need to know everything,’ Borys said, climbing up the ladder on the side of the tower to get inside. ‘Maybe you could take me out in her, to begin with.’

‘That makes sense,’ Oginski said, but Dakkar noticed that his smile had faded and the haggard lines of pain and worry had returned.

The exclamations and murmurs of delight continued inside the
Nautilus
as they climbed down into the tower.

‘So this is where the captain sits,’ Borys said, tapping the chair in front of the helm. He peered through the porthole at the view ahead of the submarine. ‘This engages the engine?’ He gripped the brass lever at the side of the seat.

‘Yes,’ Oginski said, sliding into the chair. He pointed to a brass handle. ‘And that’s the ballast control.’

Borys frowned for a second, rapping his knuckles against the inside of the craft. ‘Ballast?’

‘The hull has two skins and a gap between …’ Oginski began.

‘The gap fills with water, making the submarine heavier,’ Dakkar finished the sentence for him. ‘So she can submerge.’

‘And that’s how she sinks,’ Borys concluded, beaming. ‘Wonderful!’

‘And when we want to surface, we pump the water out,’ Oginski said, clearly flattered again. ‘Allow me to demonstrate. Georgia, could you release us from our moorings?’

Georgia scurried outside, untied the
Nautilus
and scrambled back inside, closing the top hatch behind her. They all crowded around Oginski in the control room at the base of the tower and watched the water rise around them.

Dakkar grinned as he noticed Borys grip the back of Oginski’s seat with whitened knuckles.
Not so self-assured after all
, Dakkar thought.

‘Here we go,’ Oginski said, turning the ballast wheel.

They sank into the dim underwater light then Oginski pushed the lever to
Full Ahead
and began to turn the wheel.

‘But how does one see down here?’ Borys said, squinting into the gloom.

Oginski gave a tight smile and turned a wheel mounted in front of the power lever. Outside, eight glass orbs rose out of the deck at the bow and stern of the
Nautilus
. Each contained a fluorescent jellyfish that cast a bright glow around the craft.

‘The jellyfish never dim,’ he said. ‘It was Dakkar’s idea.’

Once more, Dakkar felt a surge of pride and gave a smile, staring down at his feet as his cheeks flushed.

‘Such ingenuity,’ Borys said, peering out at the bubbles that frothed around the porthole. ‘Look!’ he cried, letting go of the chair and pointing to a shoal of silver fish flitting past. ‘Beautiful.’

Oginski spun the wheel again and headed towards a dark shadow that showed the entrance of a sea cave.

‘Originally, we used a second chamber to exit the cave,’ Oginski explained. ‘But with this larger vessel it was necessary to open a wider tunnel into the sea.’

‘That must have been dangerous,’ Borys said, still staring out into the cloudy waters.

‘It was a tricky job. We had to use the Sea Arrows to blast through the rock,’ Dakkar said and then winced as Georgia jabbed him with her elbow.

‘Sea Arrows?’ Borys said, glancing over to Oginski. ‘I assume they’re some kind of explosive device you can fire underwater? Wonderful!’

They entered the mouth of the newly excavated tunnel, where pale blue fronds of seaweed danced with the ebb and flow of the sea. The weed emitted an eerie glow that illuminated the tunnel.

‘We cultivated the seaweed,’ Georgia said, pointing outside. ‘Encouraged it to grow in the tunnel.’

The
Nautilus
gave a sudden jerk as if she’d been snagged by something. Borys stifled a panicky yelp as bars loomed out of the gloom before them.

‘Don’t worry, brother,’ Oginski said, grinning at Borys’s discomfort. ‘A hook on the
Nautilus
’s hull snags a chain that lifts the gate. When we come back in, it’ll fall closed again.’

The barred gate began to rise as the
Nautilus
drew nearer. A loud clunk reverberated through the craft, telling them that the gate had clicked open.

‘Amazing,’ Borys stuttered, mopping his brow with a lacy handkerchief.

Suddenly the closeness of the passage vanished and they plunged out into the open water, the
Nautilus
rocking slightly with the new currents.

‘Dakkar, if you could take the helm, Georgia and I will show my brother the engine room,’ Oginski said, rising from his chair and giving Georgia’s pistols the briefest glance.

Georgia nodded and gestured to the hatch at their feet that led down into the main body of the submarine.

Dakkar slid into the warm seat and gripped the wheel, listening to Borys’s continued cries of wonder as they climbed down through the hatch. He grinned and stared out into the waters.

He watched shoals of fish flit by and laughed as he sent the
Nautilus
ploughing through them. A pod of dolphins swept past the window, looping over and under the craft, making Dakkar dizzy as he tried to keep track of them.

The dolphins scattered suddenly as if in panic. Dakkar’s smile froze as a flash of silvery green blotted out the seascape. He glimpsed a round, staring eye and long teeth. Then they vanished into the thick jungle of swaying weeds on the seabed.

Dakkar pulled the thick bung out of the speaking tube on his left. This was another new development. Huge lengths of tubing with a cup at each end snaked from the captain’s seat into each cabin. When you talked down them, a person at the other end of the tube could hear you. The heavy stoppers were there in case the room at one end became flooded and the water rushed up the tube.

‘Oginski,’ Dakkar called down the tube, ‘can you hear me?’

There was a moment’s pause and then a reply. ‘What is it, Dakkar?’

‘We’re not alone down here,’ he said.

‘Not alone?’ Oginski sounded puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’

But Dakkar couldn’t answer. A confusing tangle of muscled flesh, teeth and staring eyes exploded from the weed below, heading straight for the
Nautilus
.

CHAPTER FIVE

TRAPPED

Dakkar sent the
Nautilus
spiralling into a dive. He could hear the creature’s tough hide scrape the planks of the craft.

‘Dakkar, what’s happening?’ Oginski yelled from below, forgetting to use the speaking tube.

‘Something big has taken a dislike to us!’ Dakkar yelled back. ‘Load some Sea Arrows!’

‘We can’t!’ Oginski shouted. ‘You know they’re kept in the explosives vault back at the castle. I didn’t expect to have to use them. Just head back to the cave!’

With a hiss of exasperation, Dakkar slammed the drive lever to
Full Ahead
. The sudden acceleration pushed him back in his seat. Glancing out of the window, he saw the creature clearly now. It looked like some kind of enormous eel, wriggling its way towards them. The
Nautilus
was big but this monster made her look like a toy. Dakkar dragged his gaze forward, focusing on the entrance of the sea cave and hoping he could outrun the massive eel.

The dark cave entrance and the gateway grew clearer as the
Nautilus
hurtled towards them. Dakkar gripped the wheel, aiming the craft at the centre of the narrow entrance. The eel swam closer, teeth glinting in the silvery light. Dakkar ignored it. If his aim faltered slightly, he would plant the
Nautilus
firmly against the rock of the cliff and that would be the end of them all.

The tunnel mouth loomed around them, gaping to swallow them up. Dakkar allowed himself a fleeting smile of triumph. It vanished as another shape flitted across his path. A small, human shape.

Instinctively Dakkar swung the wheel to avoid hitting whoever it was but something thumped against the hull. Turning the wheel in this confined space was not a good idea. Dakkar wrestled with the steering but the craft crashed heavily against the tunnel wall, bouncing from side to side as she careered onwards. Every bump and crack made him wince. He could hear the yells from below as Oginski, Georgia and Borys were thrown around the cabins. Luminous seaweed slapped at the portholes and whipped the hull as the walls of the tunnel flashed by.

A metallic clunk told Dakkar that the gate to the cave had slid back in place then, in a cloud of bubbles, the
Nautilus
burst from the tunnel into the sea cave. Dakkar dragged the lever to reverse, his stomach lurching as the craft slowed.

‘I think we’re safe,’ he panted, as Borys peered cautiously into the control room from the hatch below.

‘For now,’ Borys replied, looking pale and shaken.

Within an hour, they all met in Oginski’s study. Dakkar and Georgia sat warming themselves in front of a roaring hearth. Gweek, appreciative of the extra heat, fluttered around the room, landing every now and then on someone’s head or shoulder. Borys had insisted on making everyone some hot spiced port and now he stood by the fire, cupping a warm glass in his hands.

‘That was a close call,’ he said and took a sip of his drink.

‘It was an eel,’ Dakkar said, nodding. ‘A huge eel.’

‘And it’s still out there,’ Borys said, his face stony. ‘I hate to say it but this has all the hallmarks of Tomasz. Like all the Brothers Oginski, he takes delight in breeding the most monstrous beasts and using them for his own ends.’

‘Not all of us enjoy making such monsters but, I agree, it has to be one of Tomasz’s creations,’ Oginski said, twirling his glass so that the firelight played on the ruby liquid inside. ‘That creature … it was so huge. We have native species that grow to considerable size but never that big. It’s unnatural.’

‘I saw something else too,’ Dakkar said, shivering in spite of the fire and blankets. ‘A human figure. I think we hit it.’

‘A Qualar?’ Georgia said.

‘It couldn’t be,’ Oginski murmured. ‘The Qualar are our sworn allies.’

‘The Qualar?’ Borys looked puzzled.

‘It seems you didn’t find out everything about our dear brother Kazmer,’ Oginski said with raised eyebrows. ‘The Qualar are a race of undersea people. They look like humans but have scales and green skin. Kazmer conquered them and treated them like slaves. He relied on the Qualar to herd and direct his monsters.’

‘But they rose up and overthrew him,’ Dakkar added. ‘Their king, the Shoal Lord of Qualarium, declared us friends of the Qualar. They would never work against us.’

‘There’s a similar race of mermen,’ Borys said, taking a sip of port. ‘The Inuit natives of Greenland call them Qalupalik. They’re small and primitive – but vicious. They rely on their strength of numbers to overcome larger enemies. Tomasz has them under his control.’

‘If they’re out there,’ Dakkar muttered, wandering over to the window and peering out into the gloomy twilight, ‘the seas aren’t safe.’

‘Tomasz won’t give up,’ Borys said, narrowing his eyes. ‘Not until he has captured me and found the Thermolith.’

‘Then we should get the first punch in,’ Georgia said. ‘These mermen are another reason why we should go and get the Thermolith before Tomasz does.’

‘I have a map showing where the Heart of Vulcan is hidden,’ Borys said and hurried out of the study up to his room.