The Iron Wyrm Affair

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “Britannia!” he yelled, and the mecha screeched in reply, a hellish cacophony. “God and Her Majesty!” And the mecha leapt forward, just as the other mentath, its core-bloated intellect no longer resembling anything human, realised the small insect buzzing at the southeastron edge of Londinium was not smashed, and gathered itself to smite again.

  “Use the cannon!” Clare bellowed, but Valentinelli had already – much to Clare’s relief – decided that such an operation would be advisable. In any case, the cry was lost in the hullabaloo. Metal shrieked, groaning, and the peculiar discharge of the mechas’ cannon – bolts of hot energy, crackling and spitting as they cleaved violated air – did not help matters. Valentinelli had torn the leather straps holding the contacts free of his mecha, as had Sigmund at some point in their wild career across Londinium. The risk of one of the metal discs inside the leather helmets touching their skin and inducing fatal feedback was too immense.

  Especially as the mecha were jolting as they fired. Clare had eight remaining out of a dozen; four had been left at Westminstre – one a shattered hulk, the other three under the control of some doughty Coldwater Guards in their soot-stained, tattered crimson uniforms who had been sent to hold the Bridge against this menace. Good lads, they had ripped the contact helmets free and taken the controls of the mecha in stride.

  The Bridge had been littered with bodies and the smoking remains of shattered mecha, some with intact golden cores glittering. Many of the bodies were sorcerers or witches and their Shields; since charm and spell would not work, their only alternative had been to stand and die.

  The Park was a wasteland of scorch and metal, trees stripped of their leaves and blasted, the lake boiling from the weird crackling cannon bolts. Clare stopped, wheeling; his fellow mecha did the same.

  Wait. They are attacking Buckingham, not St Jemes. That must be where the Queen is.

  Which was a more defensible palace, to be sure, but it rather altered his plans. There was no time to explain; Clare urged the mecha forward, taking over subsidiary control from his companions. The earth quaked as their cuplike feet drummed, mud and metal shards flying. Smoke wrung tears from his stinging eyes, a minor irritant. The other mentath, behind his massive logic engine, had ceased seeking to swat at Clare as if he were a horsefly. Instead, the stirred-hive mass of mecha were running together like sharp metal raindrops on a window pane. Clare could feel them, a painful abscess beneath the skin of Londinium. The city quivered, a patient under the toothcharmer’s touch.

  Force of numbers would drown what a battering of logic could not. The other mentath’s intellect was a smeared explosion of living light, diseased and overgrown, swelling hot and painful in the mindscape of the glowing engines.

  Mud sucked at the cuplike feet, the Park thrashed out of all recognition. The Palace lifted its brownstone shoulders, shattered windows gaping and bits of its masonry crumbling as the huge arachnoid mecha squatted, its spinneret cannon ready to fire. Squealing wraithlike howls, the ghost-snarled brains trapped in their sloshing jars atop the spider bubbling and struggling for release, their screams a chorus of the damned as the other mentath used them ruthlessly to amplify his own force.

  “ONWARD!” Clare roared, releasing Sig and Valentinelli’s mecha. It wasn’t quite proper to force them into the charge, and in any case, he had more than enough to do with his remaining five passengerless mecha so near the immense core and engine burning in the arachnid’s abdomen. Capacitors glowing, its eight feet stamping in turn, the gigantic thing braced itself as the spinneret cannon began to glow. The Other – for so Clare had christened the opposing mentath – woke to the danger a fraction of a second too late, and Clare’s five mecha hurled themselves on the massive arachnid with futile, fiery abandon. Metal tore, screaming, Prussian capacitors shattering and overloaded cores howling at the abuse, and the Other engaged Clare with a burst of pure logic.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  An Awakening

  It was not the weakness in her limbs, Emma decided. The ground itself was quivering steadily, like a pudding’s surface when the dish is jostled. Which was disconcerting, yes, but not nearly as disconcerting as the sounds from above.

  Clacking razor beaks, the tearing-metal and crunching-bone cries of gryphons, hoarse male shouts, and a swelling sorcerous chant that ripped at her ears and non-physical senses. It was a complex, multilayered chant, a prepared Work of the sort that took months if not years to build. Consonants strained against long whistle-punctuated vowels and strange clicking noises, as if the peculiar personal language of the sorcerer had been married to an older, lipless, scaled tongue of dry fire and sun-basking slowness.

  An Awakening chant, of course. She hauled herself up grimly, boots slipping on dew-wet rocks, vines tearing under her hands. The trick, she had discovered, was to push as hard as she could with her legs, silently cursing the extraneous material of her skirts. A minor charm to keep the skin on her hands from becoming flayed helped, but her arms shook with exhaustion, her fingers cramping and her neck afire with pain. The dragon. Hurry, Emma.

  It was a surprise to reach the top of the rocky, almost vertical slope. She hauled herself up as if topping an orchard wall in the days of her Collegia girlhood, and lay full-length and gasping for a moment, protected by a screen of heavy-leafed bushes.

  Shadows wheeled overhead, their wings spread. She blinked, sunlight drawing hot water from her unprotected eyes. The shapes were massive, graceful and fluid in the air, afire with jewel-toned brilliance.

  Gryphons. One, two, good heavens, six, seven – Grayson did not have this many!

  It did not matter. She rolled to her side, peering through the screen of brush. Exactly nothing would be achieved if she rushed into this. The chant was rising towards consummation, its broken rhythm knitting itself together, and she blinked back more swelling water, seeking to make sense of what she saw.

  Lord Grayson’s gryphon carriage lay smashed against the foot of an ancient, ruined, moss-cloaked tower. The hill shuddered, the tower flexing as if its mortar were some heavy elastic substance. A milky dome of sorcerous energy shimmered around an indistinct figure, whose posture was nevertheless instantly recognisable: Llewellyn Gwynnfud, Earl of Sellwyth, his pale hair crackling with sorcerous energy and his hands making short stabbing gestures and long passes as the passages of his memorised chant demanded. A prepared Work this long and involved required such a mnemonic dance, breath and movement serving to remind the vocal chords of their next assay.

  She recognised the tower, too. Dinas Emrys. That’s where I am. Very well.

  The Prime’s five remaining Shields were spread out in a loose semicircle, fending off angry gryphons. Three of the gryphons – two tawny, one black – bore shattered leather and wooden bits, the traces they had used to pull the dead Chancellor’s chariot broken and useless, dragging them down. The remaining four lion-birds were slightly smaller, their plumage not as glossy. Wild, she realised with a shock.

  The gryphons are loyal to Britannia; they must guess his aim. This is bloody good luck.

  Two bodies – masses of fur and blood-matted feathers – lay on the stony ground. The Shields had managed to kill two lion-birds; or perhaps that black one had been lost in the chariot crash.

  Emma forced herself to stillness. She breathed deeply, listening to the chant, judging the structure of the sorcerous dome protecting Llewellyn. The surface of the hill rippled, in a fashion that would make her ill if she thought too deeply on it, so she put it from her mind and concentrated.

  You are alone, and the gryphons will kill you as likely as Llew; their hunger for sorcerer flesh is immense and they are angry. Then there are the Shields; of course they will view me as a threat. That they are occupied does not mean they cannot spare a moment to slay me.

  Her fingers plucked at her skirts, thoughtfully. They felt something hard, plunged into the pocket, and brought forth Ludovico’s dull-bladed knife. Mikal had found a leather sheath for it, and she had tucked it a
way, not trusting that the Neapolitan would not find some way of reacquiring it if it were not on her person. She had never underestimated the man, and she devoutly hoped she never would.

  Already sensitised. Ah. The stone at her throat chilled further, ice banding her neck and her fingers aching as if she had stepped outside on a winter’s day.

  She drew the wicked, black-bladed thing from its dark home, tucked the sheath back in her skirt pocket, and worked her ragged left sleeve up. Braced herself and made a fist, then drew the razor edge lightly over the back of her forearm.

  Blood sprang up in a bright line. A hiss escaped her taut lips. The knife vibrated hungrily, its dulled blade drinking in sorcerous force and the energy of spilled blood. The ground below pitched, a wave of fluid motion unreeling from the tower’s flexing spike. Rock crumbled, and she was almost thrown over the edge of the hill. She jerked forward, the sound of her crashing progress through the bushes lost in a swelling cacophony. The chant swelled afresh, becoming something akin to Mehitabel the Black’s long, slow metal-tearing hiss, and the gryphons re-doubled their efforts. One of the Shields – a slim, tensile blond man – was distracted by her sudden appearance, and there was a tawny blur as one of the chariot gryphons darted forward, beak and claws striking with terrible finality. Human flesh tore like paper under iron spikes.

  Emma ran, every step a jolt of silver-nailed pain up her legs, jarring her back, twisting her neck. The knife, held low, keened hungrily. She bolted for the space left by the Shield’s death, and a shadow drifted over her as one of the wild gryphons dived.

  Rolling. Razor claws kissing her tangled hair, shearing a few dark curls free. She spat a Word, sorcery striking snake-quick, and the gryphon screamed as it tumbled away, a spray of bright-red blood hanging in trembling, crystalline air. Gained her feet in a lunge, the Collegia’s dancing lessons springing back to life in her abused muscles, and the shimmering globe over Llewellyn tensed, preparing itself for a sorcerous strike. The Shields cried out just as the other Prime’s chant rose to a deafening roar, sliding towards a massive organ-noise of grinding conclusion. The tower flexed still further, and it was not her imagination – the masonry was running like water, shaping itself as one nail of a gigantic claw tensed.

  For Vortigern is the Great Dragon, the Colourless One, the Principia had whispered, and the Isle rides upon his back. When he wakes, half the Isle will crumble and Eire become a smoking wasteland. When Vortigern rises, Britannia dies.

  But not, she thought grimly, while Emma Bannon still breathed.

  She went to her knees, skirts shredding against jagged rock, gryphons screeching and one of the Shields screaming a filthy word that did not surprise her one bit. Her left hand flashed out, the bright weak dart of sorcery spattering against the globe-shield. But that was merely a distraction. The Shield nearest her bolted in her direction, his broad hand reaching for her left wrist – but it was her right hand he should have worried about. It flicked forward, the motion unreeling from her hip just as Jourdain had taught her.

  Even in death, her former Shields served her well. The memory of Jourdain’s patience was a sting, there and gone, and she realised how much she missed them all.

  The knife flashed, blood-sorcery on its blade shredding away as it passed through the globe-shield. The shield flushed red, but the knife itself, freed from its cage of ætheric energy, flew true, its dull blade eating a dart of spring sunlight…

  … and buried itself to the hilt in Llewellyn Gwynfudd’s back.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Hardly Bad Company

  I know you, Clare realised, as his mecha landed with bone-rattling force. The arachnid screeched, one of its massive legs twisted and hanging by a thread of metal. That thread was massive in its own right, but the gigantic mecha listed, its mass knocked off balance. Two of Clare’s subordinate mecha tore at the Prussian capacitors lining its abdomen, glass shattering and bolts of energy sparking as they arced.

  Sig’s mecha crouched on the steps of the Palace below, its cannon crackling as he sought to hold back the tide of frog-headed, slump-shouldered mecha controlled by the Other. The Queen’s and Queen’s Life Guard – Beefeaters, Coldwater, and other regiments, scarlet and blue flashing through the smoke and dirt – was behind him, firing rifles in blocks and chipping away at the oncoming wall of metal. No few among them were sharpshooters, and the Bavarian had marshalled them to shoot at the golden discs; if the core was shattered, the mecha would engage in a jerky tarantella before it died, smashing its fellows before sinking to the ground in a crackling, dangerous mass of sharp quivering metal.

  Valentinelli’s mecha dangled, a mess of metal and glass, from the thread holding the almost severed leg. He could not see if the Neapolitan still lived, and in any case, it was academic.

  Archibald Clare had tribulations of his own.

  The arachnid heaved, and one of Clare’s mecha flew, describing a graceful arc before crashing like a falling star in the mess of the Park, a geyser of mud vomiting up from its impact.

  This is not going well.

  His own mecha, its cannon twisted into broken spars serving as grappling hooks, wheezed upright. He had been seeking to climb the leg in front of him and get to where he suspected the Other crouched inside the arachnid, contacts clasped to his own head, battering at Clare with streams of cold logic. If Clare could just get close enough, there was a chance of wresting control of the larger logic engine away from the Other. Who was, he realised, Cecil Throckmorton, still not dead, forcing the brains of other mentaths to obey him, and still utterly bloody insane.

  The oncoming horde of mecha could not be stopped, though Sig and the Guards were valiant indeed. There were simply too many, and Throckmorton’s core was too vast.

  Clare tensed every muscle, the mecha around him wheezing and grinding as its tired gears responded. What am I planning? This is insanity. It is illogical. It is suicide.

  It didn’t matter.

  Clare leapt, the mecha leaping with him. Shredded metal punched into the arachnid’s leg; he pumped his arms, seeking to climb. Gears ground even further, pistons popping, the core at his chest furiously hot, shreds of his mecha falling in a silvery rain. Machines did not become tired, but Clare could swear the metal exoskeleton was exhausted. Shearing, fracturing, the rain of silvery bits intensified as capacitors bled away force, the equations multiplying so rapidly his faculties strained at the corners, seeking to juggle them all and push the Other away. It was a doomed battle, and when the core at his chest shattered Clare fell, narrowly missing spearing himself on spikes of discarded steel and glass. The force of the fall drove his breath out in a long howl, his head cracking against the paving.

  It was a sheer, illogical miracle he didn’t split his bloody skull.

  The shock of the core’s shattering caught up with him, drawing up his arms and legs in seizure. Hands on him, dragging, the smoke of rifle fire acrid, stinging his throat as he struggled to force air into his recalcitrant lungs. Equations spun inside his head, dancing, flailing like the thing above him.

  He went rigid as they dragged him, staring at the massive bulk above him as it yawed, sharply, a ship sailing on thin legs. One leg spasmed, clipping the roof of the Palace, and stone shattered. There was an insect crawling on the vast shining carapace, a thin shadow against the glow of capacitors. Dust choked the daylight, but Clare squinted. He thought he saw—

  “Retreat!” a familiar voice was yelling, a battlefield roar that would have done a Teuton berserker proud. Sigmund’s mecha was a smoking hulk, and it was two of the Guards – hard-faced country boys, one from Dorset if his nose was any indication – dragging Clare along. He tried to make his legs work, but could not. They might as well have been insensate meat, for all his straining will could move them.

  “Inside!” someone else yelled. “Here they come! MOVE!”

  That was a familiar voice as well, and as Clare was hauled through the Palace’s door like a sack of potatoes he wondered just
what Mikal was doing here.

  A deep, appalling cry rose from among the attacking mecha. “Prussians!” Mikal cried, as Sigmund cursed in German. “Fall back! Brace the doors! Move, you whoresons!”

  Well, at least Miss Bannon comes by her language honestly. Clare’s eyelids fluttered. Sig bent over him, something damp and cold swiping at Clare’s forehead. It was a handkerchief, dipped in God knew what. Prussians. The mercenaries. They must be very sure of overrunning us. And yes, mecha are not useful inside the Palace. Some part of the conspiracy wants Victrix captured alive, or proof of her death. A mecha cannot report on its victims as a man may.

  “Mentath.” Mikal, hoarse and very close. “Why am I not surprised? And… where is the assassin?”

  “Big Spinne outside,” Sigmund gasped, for Clare’s mouth wouldn’t open. “Dead, maybe. Wer weiss?”

  Now Clare could see the Shield. Grey-cheeked, blood-soaked, his yellow eyes glowing furiously, the man looked positively lethal. Behind him, Eli conferred with a captain in the Guards, glancing every so often at the straining iron-bound door.

  “That won’t hold for long,” Mikal said grimly. “Bring him. Your Majesty?”

  And, impossibility of impossibilities, Queen Victrix came into sight, her wan face smudged with masonry dust and terribly weary. An ageless shadow in her dark gaze was Britannia, the ruling spirit’s attention turned elsewhere despite the threat to its vessel. “I must reach the Throne.”

  “Indeed.” Mikal did not flinch as a stunning impact hit the door. Several of the Guards were still scurrying to shore its heavy oak with anything that could be moved, including chunks of fallen stone. “Come, then. Eli!”

  “What next?” The other Shield looked grimly amused. Half his face was painted bright red with blood, but at least he had found better boots. He was alight with fierce joy, no measure of sleepiness remaining, and Clare found the iron bands constricting his lungs easing.