Chapter 279: A Colossal Nuisance

The colossus put its foot on the stairs with a crack.

It occupied the whole wall of the pyramid, a mast’s height of corpses with bayonets sticking out at its shoulders and a crown of skulls, with more undead behind its legs.

The jungle’s cry hammered so hard that every word had to be shouted, and the stench of rot and spoiled molasses came up the stairs.

Mary hawked a gobbet of sap off her lip and flung her cutlass straight at the thing. "Fifteen o’ the bastards, the whole feckin’ lot all trussed up in the one parcel for us! Jesus, Mary and Joseph, would ye look at the size o’ him!"

Just by her side, Bonnet swept the colossus a bow fit for the ball. "Good evening to you, sir! Good evening! What an utterly splen-did, oh, heavens above, you are enormous! A positive honor, sir, a positive honor, I do assure you!"

The reaction was so absurd that Mary hauled him upright. "Will ye stop bowin’ to the feckin’ thing! It’s no lady, it’s a heap o’ dead lads with bayonets stuck in ’em, and it wants us in the ground!"

All meanwhile, behind them, James forgot for one glorious moment his raw forearm, wrenched shoulder, and slapped his left palm across the four barrels at his chest.

"God rot ’em for stubborn!"

The colossus hips lurched, the lead leg lifted on its lashings, and the foot came down on the next steps, bursting it like a cracked cask. The skull crown rocked backward, the hide over its chest pulled tight, and the right fist, with its axe-knuckles, rose overhead.

Then it came down on the stairs, crushing the stone beneath its weight and sending debris tumbling into the darkness as the impact shook the entire pyramid.

Its left hand swept across the stairs at chest height, the half-moon fingers hissing through the torchlight like a scythe through reeds, and all three scrambled higher as the great hand tore across the stairs below them in a shower of splinters and stone.

James watched each limb as he moved. The knees made of lashed thighbones, the hips where the thick vines moved the colossus as slowly as a ship under tow, and his grin only grew wider.

He flung the orders without hesitation. "Hark! Reckon one swat and you’ll burst like a ripe plum, so we’ll not stand toe-to-toe and trade blows like drunken fools! We fight him smart! Mark, the feet, cut them lashings till he’s hobbled! Bonnet, you stick to her like a barnacle, d’ye hear? And me..."

The grin spread wider.

"I’ll bring the thunder!"

Mary was coiled low on the tread, cutlass ready, and she threw her answer back.

"Bloody hell! Right, joints, same as the wee fellas."

Bonnet snapped his heels together, his blade out, and the point quivered, ever so slightly, in the torchlight.

"Oh, perfectly delighted, my dear James, perfectly! And terrified, utterly, thoroughly terrified!"

The left hand dragged back from its sweep, giving Mary her chance on the colossus’s left side. She darted down the steps with her cutlass held low, sprang as the great foot crashed down where she had stood, and brought the blade hard across the ankle lashings.

The cut bit deep, the vines parted with a crack like a backstay snapping under strain, and sheets of foul sap burst from the severed bindings across her ruined sleeve.

The skull crown rocked back, and the right fist rose over her, about to collapse.

James spread his boots wide and drew [Counterargument] into his left hand, keeping [Verdict] low behind him in the stance of a duelist. He thumbed the cock and brought the barrel up against the elbow, into the place where the pike shafts met the lashings.

The shot thundered down the steps, an orange flash against the cold white, and the elbow burst apart under the blast, pike shafts and lashings snapping loose as the crippled fist continued its fall.

It slammed down a hand’s breadth from Mary with enough force to crater the stone beside her, and the shattered stairs exploded beneath her in a spray of jagged fragments that tore open her cheek and spattered her with blood and dust.

Mary rolled away from it all.

She came up out of the evasion bawling, blood bright down her face from the cut and dripped off her chin.

"Mind fire a hair sooner, ye mad bastard, a damned hair!

Smoke curled off the muzzle, and James threw the words across the gap with his teeth bared in a wolf’s grin.

"One barrel, Mark! And three more still hungry for the rest of them!"

The giant rocked back with its right arm crooked, its skull crown swinging toward the right as it struggled to recover its balance. Bonnet was on it at once, stepping in with a gentleman’s lunge and driving his blade into the lashings around the left knee.

"Do forgive me, sir! A thousand pardons! I do assure you, nothing personal at all!"

The raking hand swept for him, and Bonnet bent backward until the half-moon fingers hissed across his chest and ripped his shirtfront open without so much as grazing the skin beneath.

He came forward with the motion, turning the near miss into a riposte that cut into the wrist, then brought the blade straight into the next lashing, each stroke precise, the swordsmanship drilled into him.

"Will ye stop beggin’ the feckin’ thing’s pardon!" Mary roared from the left.

The hand came back in a sweep that filled the whole width of the stairs, forcing James down as the half-moon blades screamed over his hat.

He dropped to one knee, drove [Verdict] point-first into a crack in the steps, and braced his pistol across the hilt, the raw flesh of his forearm burning as he steadied himself against the force of the recoil, then fired the second barrel straight into the wrist.

The lashings burst under the shot, tearing the hand apart as its half-moon fingers smashed against the pyramid, sheared free, and spun shrieking into the darkness. What remained hung from the arm by a few strands of vine and torn hide, swinging there like a broken yard.

The giant hauled itself up the steps with a crack that shook the whole pyramid, dragging its ruined weight higher by sheer force.

Mary raced across the left and brought her cutlass down through the right knee, biting into another vine until it parted under the blade, while James climbed the steps and came up onto the serpent’s stone back, boots finding his stance as he raised himself into position.

The right fist rose again, wobbling at the ruined elbow, and then came down toward Mary with all the weight of the colossus behind it.

James balanced himself, his coat snapping around his legs as he brought the pistol up and fired the third barrel into the chest where the ribs were bound to the pike-shaft spine. The shot tore through the stitched hide and blew the lashings apart, ripping the rib cage loose from its support so violently that the descending fist lost all its force.

Mary dropped off in a spray of sap and gravel and landed in a crouch.

The colossus planted both feet and hauled itself upright, its ruined frame groaning as it raised both arms overhead, and the two enormous fists climbed into the torchlight until their combined shadow swallowed the stairs and left the three of them beneath it in darkness.

"Apart!"

James roared, backing up three treads, while Mary jumped left and Bonnet leapt right.

The hammer came down like cannon fire, smashing into the stairs with such force that stone erupted beneath them and the whole section vanished in a storm of rubble. The shockwave raced up the pyramid and caught James full in the chest, hurling him backward hard enough to knock the breath from him.

Bonnet was up in a heartbeat, darting through the dust and driving his blade across the left knee in a swift remise that bit through lashings and sent the severed rope whipping loose.

By then James hauled himself upright, wrenching [Verdict] free of the rubble as he brought the pistol in both hands, his raw forearm screaming with every movement. He braced himself, found the crown of skulls through the smoke and dust, and fired the last barrel square into it.

The blast tore through the crown in a spray of shattered skulls that flew like swivel shot, snapping the colossus’ head violently backward and leaving arms sagging at its sides.

The colossus rocked back onto its heels, its limbs cracking as the vines strained and whined and the pike shafts splintered under the shifting weight. For a moment the whole monstrous frame seemed to hang there, fighting to remain upright, until its weight settled onto the ruined right leg and the damaged structure beneath it buckled.

James let the empty pistol drop against its strap, wrenched [Verdict] free of the rubble with both hands, and ran straight at the failing giant. He crossed the shattered steps in long strides as the colossus sagged above him, slid beneath the drooping axe-knuckles while they scraped sparks from the stone, and came up inside its reach beside the ruined right knee, his wrenched shoulder screaming as he swung.

[Verdict] tore through the worn lashings and hacked into the stacked thighbones with such force that the blade drove deep, ripping through vines, hide, and bone like a scythe.

The vines ruptured in a deafening snap, the stacked thighbones split under the blade, and the shin tore loose beneath the colossus’s weight.

The whole monstrous frame pitched backward like a mast with its stays cut, hung for one terrible instant over the ruined flight, then came crashing down the stairs in an avalanche of bone, hog-hide, pike shafts, and blades, smashing through the dead piled below and sweeping them along as it went before the wreckage spilled across the plaza in a grinding heap.

Slack lashings lashed wildly through the air, sap burst from the torn hide in foul sprays, and broken bones and iron went skittering across the stones long after the great body had stopped moving.

James bawled after it, [Verdict] dripping. "Mind your head on the way down, big lad! Mind it well! ’Tis a long way to the bottom, and there’s naught but dead men to catch you!"

The three of them stood at the broken edge, heaving for breath, and a ragged cheer went up.

Bonnet whipped his rapier overhead in a flourish so unrestrained it nearly took his own ear off, and he laughed breathlessly into the dark. "Huzzah! Oh, huzzah! Magnificent! We’ve done it, we’ve actually done it, and I’m not in the least bit dead!"

Mary shook her cutlass at the sky, and around the corners of the pyramid came Dunk’s whoop, and Pike’s squeal climbed over it like a stuck pig. Then, from round the corner of the pyramid, came Nub’s voice, slow and unhurried.

"Aye. Good lads. Good lads, the lot o’ ye."

Then the pyramid blossomed white.

A shock thundered down and threw all three to their knees.

Above, the pillar of cold light, laced with jade and blue, punched through the summit and the canopy into the sky until the stars went out, bowed over the island like a wave about to break, then fell, pouring down every face in a flood that swept the plaza and lapped at the trees.

Where it touched the dead, they stopped in mid-climb, then they turned and walked back into the jungle like a congregation about to return home, green ropes sliding after them, vines slithering out of the colossus.

The jungle’s shriek vanished leaf by leaf, the jade fire guttered, the torch burned an ordinary yellow, and Zephy’s cord stopped whining.

The hush came back whole.

James rose and looked up at the peak. Its edge stood black against ordinary stars, with no kneeling shadow bent against the fading glow.

He heard no bells, no chant, nor note from the cord.

"Zephy?!"

Not a soul answered, and the summit stayed dark.