“I can't see,” Whistler cried.
“Just hold on,” Jacob replied, grabbing him by the arm. He reached around until he felt was seemed like a chair, and dragged it over to what was once the floor of the Landquaker, but now was the wall. “We're going to have to climb.”
“I'm no good at climbing,” Whistler said.
Jacob felt around in the haze with one hand, still clutching Whistler with the other. He felt what he thought might be a chest of drawers with his feet.
“You'll have to help me lift this up,” he said.
Whistler reached down. “I don't know what I'm looking for,” he said.
“It's a cabinet. Just grab the edge. I'll grab the other side.”
Jacob might as well have told Whistler to stand back, because the boy was little use in hauling the chest of drawers up. He had barely any strength, and he squirmed and yelped as two of the drawers fell out. It was a struggle for Jacob to haul it up, but he managed to get it standing, and pushed it over towards the chair.
“Okay, kid, I need you to climb this,” he said. He dragged the boy over, aware that at any moment he might breathe in too much smoke and pass out. Time was against them. It always was.
“I don't think I can,” Whistler said.
“Trust me, kid, you can. I'll help you. Put your hand here.” He guided Whistler's hands towards the chair. “Climb up on that.” He hauled him up as much as the boy climbed, then guided Whistler's hands to the cabinet. “Grab onto that.” He pushed him up.
“What about you?” Whistler called back.
“Don't worry about me,” Jacob said. “I'll be fine.”
He clambered up the makeshift stairs, joining Whistler there, emerging into what was once the corridor, and now was more of a dusty attic. It was just as dark there, and the smoke was spreading.
“We're going to have to walk across here,” Jacob said. They were walking across what was the wall of one of the rooms. They just had to be careful not to stand on a door that opened inwards, or they would fall back down again.
“How are we going to get out?” Whistler pleaded.
“We'll make it, kid. We'll make it.” It was the same promise he made to Whistler in the desert several months earlier, and it was a promise he desperately wanted to keep.
He took a fit of coughing. The smoke was getting to him.
“Take my mask, Jacob,” Whistler offered.
“No, I—”
“Take it, Jacob!”
He felt the mask being shoved into his hand. He held it to his mouth for a moment, just enough to catch his breath, then handed it back to the boy.
“I need you to wear that, kid,” he said. “Please.”
They saw light streaming in from one of the rooms above them up ahead, but there was a gap between the two walls that they were using as floors. It was not clear if it was an open door that formed the gap, or if it was a hole. All that mattered is that it formed a chasm. They were not even entirely sure there was another side to land on, but Jacob threw something over, and the sound seemed like maybe there was.
“We have to jump,” he said.
Whistle was growing more panicked by the second. “I can't see where we're jumping.”
“Put your foot out and feel the edge.”
“What if I don't make it?”
“You'll make it, kid,” he panted. He just was not so sure about himself.
They leapt across, thankful that there was indeed somewhere to leap across to. The light was so much closer now. In time they were in it, and they could see more clearly, but even there the smoke was thick. Whistler's worry must have doubled then, because he could see how faint Jacob was. He clutched his arm tighter.
Jacob knew he had to hold out a little longer. He had to get Whistler out.
It was at this point that Whistler's bravery kicked in, and he started reaching around for things to climb up on. He found the broken door, but struggled to move it.
“We can make a ramp!” he said.
Jacob helped moved it into place, but everything was that much more a struggle. He felt he had no energy left to give. Not enough to live.
“Come on!” Whistler shouted, pushing Jacob up the ramp. They found themselves in the next room, which had now become the third floor of the building, and the light was stronger now. They could just about see daylight outside, and it was blinding.
Jacob helped Whistler up onto a fallen box, ignoring the pain of the splinters, but it did not seem like there was much else there for them to climb up on. The smashed window up above, which was now a skylight, was still a little out of reach.
“You have to … get up … on my shoulders,” Jacob said.
“I'm not leaving you.”
“You can pull me up after.” Jacob knew he would not be able to. It did not matter. He just had to get the boy outside. That was all that mattered now.
Whistler reluctantly agreed, and Jacob hoisted him up. Despite Whistler's small stature, it was not easy to do. The strength was sapped from him.
“I still can't reach!” Whistler cried, his fingers barely touching the remaining shards of glass.
There was a shimmer of white linen, and Whistler heard Lorelai's voice. “Grab my hand,” she said. He reached up, and she grabbed his wrist, but he heard a thud behind him as Jacob collapsed, falling down.
“No!” Whistler cried. “No, let me go. I have to save Jacob.”
“I'll get him,” Tardo said, appearing at the window as Lorelai dragged Whistler out.
The maran soldier lowered himself back into the carriage and dragged Jacob up. He hauled him up, dragging him outside. Whistler saw people emerging from windows further up on either side, and one of them was Rommond, hauling Brooklyn on his back. Taberah was outside, helping to pull them up.
They all gathered outside and away from the crash site, and everyone was accounted for.
“Hell,” Jacob said, coughing as he came to. “Remind me never to ride a train again.”
37 – AWAKENING
They surveyed the carcass of the Landquaker. The gun was broken off the top, lying half submerged in sand. There were small fires throughout the vehicle, and some surviving Regime crewmen were fleeing the wreck.
“This isn't exactly what I wanted,” the general said. “I had hoped we could salvage it, take it back for our own use. You can breach the enemy's castle, or you can take it and use it yourself.” He shook his head solemnly.
“Well, it's better broken than in their hands,” Taberah said.
Brooklyn rummaged through the ruins.
“Can you fix it?” Rommond asked.
“I do not think I can, Rommond. I think I need to fix myself first.”
“We'll have to leave it here,” Jacob said.
“You can't just leave that here,” Tardo said. “If the Regime doesn't come for it, the Clockwork Commune will.”
“Those scavengers will never get this,” Rommond promised. “We'll haul it back to Blackout.”
They rested at the scene that night, regrouping with some of the tribespeople, who had, with Leadman's help, secured Fort Landlock in the north. The next day was spent throwing ropes around the giant gun, and tying them to whatever was left of Leadman's platoon. He wanted to leave it behind, but Rommond was the one calling the shots. He had a big enough gun to call them.
They drove back to Blackout slowly, and many walked, because there were not enough vehicles for them all. They passed by the mangled remains of many landships lost in the recent battle, and found the Long Spyglass, which they added to their train.
They journeyed for hours, resting little. They sat in the sun, hiding beneath their hats, but Brooklyn was the only one who did not keep his eyes to the sands. He stared with a worried look into the sky.
“What is it?” Rommond asked him.
Jac
ob looked up and saw a speck hurtling through the air. A bird, he thought, but it did not fly like a bird, and it seemed too far up. He felt his heart beat, like those flapping wings might beat against the wind. Something felt very wrong.
People began to gather outside. Eyes turned like turrets to the sky, as if they could shoot down whatever it was that flew there. What ammunition they had in those nervous glares fired like blanks, until all they were left with was the empty shells in their hearts.
“We need to repair that airship!” Taberah shouted, but Cantro did not seem confident that the Skyshaker could even be repaired.
“No,” Rommond said. “We don't know what it is yet.” He whispered this last part, as if it might have incredible hearing, as if it might be some kind of demon, some kind of monster with wicked wings.
Jacob strained his eyes, but the more he strained them, the less it seemed he needed to. Whatever it was, it was coming closer. It was dropping fast. There was now a trail of smoke behind that phantom figure, as if its feet or talons burned, like they might if it had come from Hell.
There was alarm in every face, ringing out from the bell-tower of their eyes. Some of Rommond's lieutenants looked to one another as if they knew exactly what that creature was. They did not look to the general—they feared that he might confirm their terror.
Rommond was already racing towards the Long Spyglass, trying to see while others were starting to turn their eyes way, and looking for places to hide. Jacob was closer to Brooklyn's gigantic spyglass, and though the fear of others infected him, his curiosity was the cure.
He reached the Long Spyglass and placed his eye to the lens. All he saw was cloud, so he had to reposition it several times. Then he saw it, clear as day, as if the clouds no longer tried to hide it, as if they had revealed the conspiracy of the sky.
It was a contraption of the air. A wooden frame with wings and a propeller. Like one of those in Brooklyn's designs. They said they could not get them to fly for long. They said they could not get them to reach great heights. They said that these “aeroplanes” would not change the war. They were wrong.
It was painted a gaudy yellow. Whoever flew it, whoever was mad enough to risk their life in that rickety vessel, did not want to hide. They wanted to be noticed. They wanted to be seen.
Rommond reached the spyglass, panting. He placed a heavy hand upon its frame. “What do you see?” he asked.
But Jacob's eyes were seized by another sight. It was not the plane that held his gaze. It was what the plane was carrying. Ropes strung down from every part of the flying machine, tied to a bulbous iron casing below. A bomb. A giant bomb.
Jacob could not help but remember Rommond's fateful words: “I think the war of the air is over.” No, he thought, it's just begun.
“What is it?” Rommond barked, pushing Jacob aside and casting his eagle eye upon the lens.
People began shouting over, as if they had seen it too, but they could not see it with their naked eyes. Taberah charged up, panting the words: “It's spelling something in the sky, in the smoke.”
Jacob looked up. He could see it too.
It read: The world will wake.
The letters were large. The fear they evoked was even larger.
Rommond stumbled as he took his eye away from the spyglass. He looked at Taberah with apologetic eyes. He did not seek out Brooklyn in the crowd, for to him he felt an apology would seem weak. And to the world, no apology was enough.
“They did it,” he said, faltering and shaking his head. “They … no.”
“Who?” Taberah asked. “What did they do?”
“The Armageddon Brigade,” he said, and then he gestured to himself. “I created a monster.”
Jacob looked into the spyglass again, hoping what he had seen was wrong, hoping his eyes had betrayed him. Yet the only betrayal was that colossal bomb, that tool of destruction that he had seen unfinished beneath the hidden floor of Rommond's submarine, which he thought was locked safely in the vault of the abyss. But it was finished now, and it was not safely tucked away. It was there in the sky, for all to see, and it would be there on the ground, for all to feel, until there was no such thing as feeling. The smoke spewed from a flume upon the plane's back, but through the smoke the bomb seemed to swim. On either side of its metal hull was blazoned the eyes and teeth of a shark, and on the bottom was painted the last words that the living might read before they roused from the dream of life: Worldwaker.
The next book in the series, Worldwaker, will release at the end of summer 2016.
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Have you checked out the Children of Telm series? You can find all of Dean F. Wilson's books here:
US: http://www.amazon.com/Dean-F.-Wilson/e/B007O05FEU/
UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dean-F.-Wilson/e/B007O05FEU/
A final message from Dean:
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed the story so far. Before you go, I'd like to ask you a small favour: if you liked what you read, please leave a review on Amazon. Short and sweet is perfect. Reviews are essential to a book's success, and you could be instrumental in helping to make Landquaker an international bestseller. Thanks! :)
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