by Stephen Hunt
‘We’re not a bloody parliamentary committee,’ hissed Molly, taking her seat. ‘We have a job of work to do here.’
A tall man with long black sideburns nodded at her from the head of the table. The camp commander, by the look of the worry lines creasing his forehead. ‘I see that we have our mission’s progenitor with us now. I am Colonel Buller, of the First Corps of Engineers, the lucky soul the House of Guardians have charged with ensuring the success of this undertaking. I don’t suppose you bring with you the parts we have been promised, damson?’
‘I have a crate or two that might come in useful,’ said Molly. And she did. There was hardly a theatrical supplier in Middlesteel that she hadn’t visited in her efforts to craft the disguise she was planning to use on Kaliban. Blue skin dye and white robes to match the natives’ clothing – identical to garments glimpsed in the dreams that assailed her now. Kyorin’s dreams. ‘But not the components for the cannon. They’re in the process of being secured from our new allies out in Quatérshift,’ said Molly.’
‘But secured to what end, Damson Templar?’ asked Lord Rooksby. ‘This entire project is misconceived. It is clear the Army of Shadows hails from one of the unexplored continents of our opposite hemisphere. The very idea that they have travelled here from one of the neighbouring celestial spheres is an arrant nonsense. We should mount this longrange artillery piece we are constructing on a turntable so that we can direct its fire towards the occupied provinces of Catosia and Quatérshift. At least then we shall derive some utility from it beyond fanning the flames of your ridiculous new fashion in novels.’
‘I assure you, my Lord Commercial, the Army of Shadows is far from fictional.’ Molly looked down the length of the table. ‘Where is Timlar Preston?’
‘He seems to be of a rather nervous disposition,’ said Colonel Buller. ‘I have excused him his attendance at our meetings to benefit his health.’
The colonel and Molly exchanged glances. And the excusal, no doubt, did wonders for the productivity of the real work they were doing here.
‘I have been thinking,’ piped up a small narrow-faced man. Where had Molly seen him before? Then it came to her. The literary talk her agent had organized for her to attend last year at one of the theatres in Douglas Lane – he had been one of the other writers in attendance, riding her coattails on the fad for celestial fiction. No wonder Rooksby was chafing. Along with the Royal Society, parliament had drafted in the other obvious advisors to the threat posed by the Army of Shadows … celestial fiction authors. ‘We know that the Army of Shadows originates from the polar wastes. Perhaps they don’t come from the outer darks, but the inner ones! They might have travelled up a tunnel from the centre of the Earth. There are many ancient legends that suggest there is the entrance to a cavern system at the pole that leads to the centre of our world. In which case it is not a cannon we should be constructing here, but a vast drilling machine. One capable of burrowing into the heart of the invader’s empire of the inner core!’
Molly rolled her eyes in frustration, noting the wave of blue energy circling lazily around inside Coppertracks’ crystal skull at a uniform rate. He was bored, but at least he was diverting his intelligence to his mu-bodies scattered around the camp and continuing some meaningful work through his drones. She, meanwhile, was trapped here in this debating society of idiots and loons.
Duncan watched Purity peer down the tree-shaded length of the canal. The Halfshire Navigation’s passage through Highhorn Forest was one of the main reasons why parliament had chosen to site the camp so close to the isolated lumber mill they had built their facilities around.
‘Will they be with the canal boats?’ asked Purity.
Duncan Connor scratched his stubble. ‘I’ve been told that both Oliver and the commodore are safe.’
Duncan didn’t say that they wouldn’t be receiving the long-awaited parts from Quatérshift now if their two friends hadn’t made it back safely from the voyage. Large shire horses pulling flatbed carts were arriving to receive the cargo, Timlar Preston himself anxiously waiting with the project’s engineers to see if all of his components had been recovered and transported back without damage.
‘I can show Jared the new sabre strikes you’ve taught me. Do you think he’ll be pleased?’
‘Aye, that he will.’ Duncan raised a smile.
Purity glanced over to the wagon Duncan had driven up to the edge of the canal, the familiar oblong of his battered travel case stowed under a pinewood seat. ‘You’re not planning to leave us to try taking the recruiting party’s coin again?’
‘I’ve spent too long here, now,’ said Duncan. ‘Helping build this bonnie-looking cannon for parliament. At the very least I want to see if it actually works.’
‘It’ll work,’ said Purity. ‘Kyorin wouldn’t have asked Timlar to help us build it if it wasn’t going to work.’
‘Yes, there is that.’
‘Soon I’ll see Kyorin’s home, probably meet the friends of his he told me about when we were on the run in Middlesteel. He said he’d left a wife up there.’
Duncan nodded. There was about as much chance that he, Molly, or any of them would allow Purity Drake inside the cannon as they were likely to load up the First Guardian himself and blast him off towards Kaliban.
A murmur of anticipation passed around the crowd at the canal docks as the first narrowboat rounded the corner into view, her small steam engine driving a single rear-mounted paddle as she pushed a spear of smoke up through the pine forest’s canopy. The lead craft was followed by another long narrowboat, then another, a low foldable wooden roof in front of each cabin concealing the cargo that had been procured from Jackals’ neighbour to the east. More and more narrowboats turned the curve and hove into view, a veritable armada, and in the lead boat waiting on the cabin step stood the familiar figures of Commodore Black and Oliver Brooks.
Pulling into the lumberyard’s mooring channel the lead craft slowed to a drift and the commodore jumped onto the ground to tie up the narrowboat. Oliver stepped out behind him and headed over to Timlar Preston.
‘We were getting worried you wouldn’t turn up,’ called Duncan to the commodore, leading his horse and cart backwards towards the channel.
‘And you would have been a lot more worried if you had but known what we were facing out in Quatérshift,’ said the commodore, his breath momentarily departing as Purity walloped into him. ‘But I shouldn’t speak of such things in front of you, Purity. Your nights’ dreams are troubled enough without me adding to your imaginings.’
‘I want to hear the truth as well,’ said Purity. ‘Those slats that killed Kyorin, there’s more of them in Quatérshift?’
‘A mortal terrible host of them,’ said the commodore. ‘Crawling all over the north. We were lucky we had that wicked lad Oliver Brooks riding with us, for it was only his dark senses that helped us navigate across the shiftie provinces without attracting the Army of Shadows’ attention.’
Duncan patted his cart’s flatbed. ‘You found the components the shifties had buried?’
‘Greased up inside crates at the bottom of Timlar’s abandoned mine, just where he said they’d be. And that was as near as we came to failing in our task. There were still ores in that mine and the Army of Shadows has a terrible plague of monstrous black slugs the size of houses sliding over the conquered provinces of Quatérshift, eating anything and everything in their path and shitting out a trail of machinery in their wake for their slaves to collect. They were burrowing into the side of the hills where our mine stood like a Circlist vicar making merry with a teacake. If we had arrived a day later with our train of mules, I dare say we would have found the hills and the mine consumed, and Timlar’s cannon parts a tasty dessert to round it out for them.’
‘Living factories …’ said Duncan in astonishment.
‘Not so strange to someone who used to guard the southern frontier, I should say, eh, soldier? Some of the same black arts that devil of a caliph practises down i
n Cassarabia,’ said the commodore. ‘Although the cleverness of the caliph’s womb mages only stretches to teasing living creatures out of his slaves’ wombs. I dare say if he could teach his creations to eat rocks and sand, then shit out swords and pistols after the meal, he would be about it quick enough.’
The commodore watched Purity run over towards Oliver, now that the young man had finished explaining to Timlar what had been retrieved. Work crews moved in to draw back the narrowboats’ wooden roofs and expose the cargo.
‘How bad was it?’ asked Duncan.
‘As bad as it can be, lad.’
‘How can it have come to this?’ said Duncan. ‘These creatures have travelled all the way from another celestial sphere, such an unimaginable distance, and for what?’
‘For a supper long denied,’ said the commodore. ‘Aye, and we are to be their main course. Before I left, before I saw the ruins of the shifties’ country, I was still in half a mind as to the truth of the matter of this Army of Shadows. I thought perhaps that Molly’s imagination had laid her a little too open to the ravings of a slave’s broken mind, poor Kyorin escaped from the polar barbarians of the north or the satraps of Cassarabia. But you only have to see the fate of the poor shifties to know that the perpetrators of such crimes are free of any ties to this green and pleasant place we call home.’
Duncan watched one of the last narrowboats tie up at the lumberyard docks and a party of dishevelled-looking travellers climb out; more shifties by the looks of them. There was a man at their head, silver-haired, accompanied by a beautiful young woman. Timlar Preston seemed surprised to see the senatorial newcomer and the two were soon closeted away for a private conversation.
‘The fruit of our u-boat’s voyage, Paul-Loup Keyspierre – some grand nabob from the shifties’ Institute des Luminaires,’ said the commodore, seeing the direction of Duncan’s gaze. ‘And the girl is his daughter, Jeanne.’
‘A political, then,’ said Duncan.
‘No doubt a good compatriot to survive as head of their hall of science without tripping and falling in the great terror,’ said the commodore. ‘And at least clever enough to see which way the wind was blowing in his homeland. Rats always swim out of a burning u-boat, a long stream of them kicking away from the torpedo bays.’
‘If it comes to it,’ said Duncan, ‘and we need to get Purity away from the hubbub, what’s the port out of Spumehead looking like?’
The commodore shook his head. ‘There’s not a steamer ticket to the Concorzian colonies to be had for neither love nor money. The west coast is as thick with shopkeepers on the run from the storm front as there are flies circling the turd pile fallen out of your fine mare’s rear. If you still remember the way to Cassarabia from your regimental days, you might be better lighting off down south.’
‘If the caliph has any welcome for me, it’s in his torture gardens or on the slave block,’ said Duncan.
‘Is that the way of it, then, the usual fondness of foreigners for our redcoats? Well, if there’s three arms of the compass denied to you now, there’s still east. Quatérshift is as good as rolled up, but you could reach the Holy Kikkosico Empire on the other side of the slopes of the Mechancian Spine, take a caravan across the pampas. But—’ he reached out to touch Duncan’s sleeve, ‘—there’s one blessed thing you must know. Running changes a man. After too many years of it, you wake up not knowing whether you’re home, or just bunking down in an impostor of a place you’re pretending will do for the same.’
‘The Kingdom of Jackals is your home,’ said Duncan.
‘So it is, or should I say so it might have been, six hundred years ago, before Isambard Kirkhill’s gang of shopkeepers seized the land.’
‘You’re not going to run, are you?’
‘No,’ grinned the commodore. ‘I’m a sight too tired to run and a sight too old to remember a new alias. So let the slats come for old Blacky and prize my sharpened sabre out of my cold fingers if they dare.’
Duncan watched as the commodore lumbered over to the scientists he had rescued from Quatérshift, before turning to haul the crates out of the narrowboat, the long boxes still dark from the dust of the mine where they had been secreted.
‘Was I?’ Duncan went back for a second crate, balancing the load across his muscled shoulders.
‘Don’t talk like that,’ spat Duncan. ‘I’d run if I thought it would keep you safe. But it won’t. Those ugly kelpies from the Army of Shadows will arrive wherever we flee to soon enough, and the stronger for having consumed all the nations between us and wherever we end up. We might as well make a fight of it, here, on our home soil.’
‘No, I’m not in the Corps of Rocketeers any more,’ said Duncan. ‘You know that. But I might just have a bonnie cannon to do the job.’
As the cashiered soldier dropped his crate into the cart there was a massive explosion and for a second Duncan thought that one of the canal boats’ cargoes had detonated – some explosive cache fused early – but the shower of leaves and loose pieces of timber was rattling off the forest canopy from above. Whatever had struck Highhorn Forest had fallen well wide of their canal path.
Duncan pushed the precious travel case under his cart in case they were being mortared, dipping his head out as Coppertracks came steaming past. ‘I thought the first gunnery test was scheduled for next week, old steamer?’
‘A message,’ said Coppertracks. ‘I received a message from one of my people seconds before the explosion. It said: “Coming in hard. Landing on my shields.”’
‘Hard!’ Duncan blinked as a piece of blackened bark fleeted off his forehead. ‘Even the dafties of Dennehy’s Circus don’t make landings any harder than that.’
‘I believe the cannon’s vital component promised to me by King Steam has arrived,’ said Coppertracks. ‘Though not in quite the manner that I had been led to expect.’
The steamman was the master of understatement. The task of unloading the components from the canalside forgotten, the project workers began to run towards an unexpectedly felled section of forest.
At its centre, the smoking, silver form of a shell-like capsule lay embedded in the super-heated mud. An imperious steammen voice roared out at Duncan and the others, as they stood clustered around the broken trees and boiling mud, looking at the crash site in amazement.
‘Precisely which part of me being stuck in this foul gloop do you witless ground huggers think I’m enjoying? I am sure some of you possess the sentience to clutch a shovel and begin digging me out.’
Coppertracks rolled forward. ‘Lord Starhome, I presume.’
Skyman First Class Hanning polished the glass face of his heliograph as he waited for fresh signals from the lamps of the lead aerostat in the Revenge’s squadron. Mounted beneath the airship’s chequerboard hull, lower than the gun ports, lower even than the fin-bomb bays, the h-station was a tiny domed nodule, manned by an adept in the code that allowed the Royal Aerostatical Navy fleets to move in synchronized flights.
It was a solitary calling, manning the h-lamps, but the job did have its consolations. Lamp men were always privy to the captain’s orders from Admiralty House – at least when they were communicated in the field, rather than via the wax-sealed written orders handed to skippers before a stat pushed off. The quick wits needed for coding the messages – as well as their confidential nature – meant that h-operators were treated with the courtesies of a petty officer’s rank, even when they hadn’t passed the board exams for such: extra grog, PO’s rations, and spared deck-scrubbing duties. And they got a better view of the scenery and the skies bar all but the wheelman on the bridge, or maybe th
e spotters in the crow’s nest.
Right now, the skyman looked out on as respectable an assemblage of both soldiery and the fleet’s sleek ships as anyone sitting on his wooden seat in the RAN Revenge’s h-station had ever seen. Hanning let his eyes wander to the nearest of the Revenge’s sister craft. There was the RAN Diligence, his first berth as a greenhorn, running proud next to the RAN Flying Fox – the Canny Fox, or Old Canny to her crew – said to be one of the luckiest hawks in the Fleet of the South; never brought down by squall, ground fire, or any of the foes she had ever been dispatched against by the Kingdom of Jackals. Just a couple of the hundreds of airships gathered here today, their shadows a reassuring sight for the earthworms of the New Pattern Army below. And the Circle knows, they were marching in numbers that hadn’t been seen since the Battle of Clawfoot Moor, when parliament’s forces had smashed the rump of the royalist army so many centuries earlier. There was the Heavy Brigade, their exomounts’ green scales glittering in the sunlight; the Twelfth Glenness Foot and the Sixth Sheergate Rangers, redcoat columns two abreast in full marching order; the iron land trains of the Royal Corps of Rocketeers, steam from their black stacks obscuring the racks of Congreve rockets primed and ready for battery fire; the green uniforms of the Middlesteel Rifles, walking in ragged skirmish order at the head of the infantry columns. The tactics of the New Pattern Army hadn’t altered substantially since they had been perfected by First Guardian Isambard Kirkhill centuries earlier, but then why improve on perfection? Besides, the earthworms in the regiments always relied on fighting in close coordination with the Royal Aerostatical Navy, and the Jackelians’ monopoly on airship gas had served their nation well when it came to defence.
Occasionally, one of the clockwork-driven horseless carriages mounted with an oversized version of Hanning’s h-lamp would flicker into life below, requesting an update from the flagship or reporting the findings of the army’s mounted scouts. If the musings of the command staff from House Guards were found to be mildly pertinent they would be circulated lazily among the high fleet’s airships a while later. They did worry and fuss so, the braided and medal-breasted generals of the army – but then, they weren’t drifting hundreds of feet out of range of the effective fire of the foreign brigades which the kingdom’s armed forces were called to suppress. Where the high fleet sailed safely and omnipotently above the fog of war – often adding to it by dropping fire-fins and gas shells onto the battlefield – the poor benighted scrapings of the regiments had to face every hail of shrapnel, hot shell and ball that the enemy tossed at them.
