by Stephen Hunt
‘Tainted! Molly shouted. ‘This is my cannon, and the native you’re so concerned about gave his life to make sure it was constructed.’
‘That is as may be, damson, but the guardians on the committee overseeing this project are firmly of the opinion that the expedition to Kaliban will have far more chance of success if it is appropriately composed of a selection of scientists, ambassadors and soldiers. I think upon reflection you will agree that professionals are better suited to survive the hardships of the journey, as well as scouting the weaknesses of the enemy while finding and negotiating with potential allies. Certainly better suited than writers of penny dreadfuls and—’ he indicated Purity, ‘—shoeless seamstress friends of the author.’
Molly’s face was turning crimson with anger. ‘This is outrageous.’
‘No, Damson Templar, it is expediency. If the tales from our army’s survivors are to be given credence, we are currently facing complete military disaster. Your vision contributed to the marshalling of resources necessary to complete the cannon, and parliament now judges your contribution honourably discharged. We cannot possibly stake our nation’s survival on the fate of a single celestial fiction author.’
‘Parliament now judges,’ spat Molly. ‘I know who’s been pouring poison in the right ears. Oh yes, Lord Rooksby has changed his tune since the RAN was defeated, that dirty snake of a scheming jigger. When I arrived here, he was swearing blind that the Army of Shadows had marched over the polar ice from the other side of the world, not come from Kaliban. He said this cannon was a joke and now he wants to bloody command it?’
‘This is madness,’ protested Purity. ‘You can’t do this to us. Molly was touched by Kyorin, she knows things that are vital to—’
‘Young lady, half my comrades have been touched – touched by the Army of Shadows and lying dead in the killing fields across the border in Quatérshift. I rather think that the House of Guardians is very well-decided in this matter.’
‘We shall see!’ Molly stalked off. ‘We shall see how well they’ve bloody decided.’
Molly ran down the ramp from the firing station, ignoring the sound of Purity still attempting to argue the colonel around, brushing past a gaggle of scientists coming up the ramp. Oliver was in the crowds below, pushing through the spectators from the forest’s mills and manufactories and smelting works. He could see how angry she looked.
‘What is it?’
‘You’re the Circle-damned key, why don’t you ask your friend Purity up there.’
‘Molly – what?’
But she was through the crowd of navvies and heading towards the turntable where Lord Starhome and the test shells waited, the half-steamman craft’s bright hull in stark contrast to the grey iron of the testing shells modelled on his pattern. The turntable was designed so that each shell could be rotated to face the injection-run down to the breech of the spiral-shaped weapon. An operator in the cab of a crane was exchanging shouts with the muzzle loaders as Molly shoved past the soldiers, climbing up the ladder to the turntable.
Lord Starhome was still in the breech-facing position, while a gang of engineers focused their attention on one of the blank shells next to him, preparing to drop heavy sandbags inside a hatch in the shell’s side. Weight enough to match the gang of pirates who had stolen the voyage to Kaliban away from under her nose.
There was a door-sized hole in Lord Starhome’s hull, the living metal flowing around the edges while Commodore Black passed equipment through to Duncan Connor. ‘Have you come to help us, lass?’
Molly climbed across the turntable, ducking under the nose of one of the reserve shells. ‘Help you …?’
‘Coppertracks is inside, he is going to use the keen eyes of his shiny celestial boat to track how high we shall shoot today.’
‘I am not his boat,’ said Lord Starhome, tetchily. ‘I have agreed to cooperate in this endeavour out of my steadily stretched good graces, that and the increasingly slim hope that this primitive explosive slingshot you have constructed will be able to restore me to my natural environment.’
‘Let’s not keep you waiting any longer, then, my lord,’ snapped Molly, slipping the control ring Hardarms had given her over her finger and pressing it against Lord Starhome’s cold, slippery hull. ‘Recognize operator function.’
‘If I must,’ sighed Lord Starhome.
‘Lass,’ said Commodore Black as Molly swung through the opening. ‘What are you about?’
Molly glanced back outside the ship for a second, alerted by shouting. Redcoats were moving through the crowds below, burly-looking provosts; she knew exactly who they were coming to arrest.
‘I’m going to save the kingdom, Jared. Every thick-witted guardian in parliament, every useless civil servant working in Greenhall, and every treacherous thinker in the Royal Society.’ Molly turned to Duncan Connor and Coppertracks. ‘Get off.’
‘Molly softbody, my monitoring apparatus has been fitted into Lord Starhome, I cannot simply—’
But Molly manoeuvred around the supplies stacked in the back of the ship, slipping into the cockpit at the front. ‘Seal the bridge off.’
At her command the walls of the ship flowed like quicksilver, separating her from Coppertracks, Commodore Black and Duncan Connor.
‘Please lass,’ the commodore’s voice sounded from behind the wall. ‘You’re not ready to cast off now …’
‘They’ve left me with no choice. They’re planning to snatch the expedition from under me and give it to that blackheart Rooksby.’
‘Let him have it then,’ cried the commodore. ‘Let it be his wicked bones that are left strewn across the angry sands of blessed Kaliban.’
‘If we don’t stop the Army of Shadows, it’ll be the Kingdom of Jackals that ends up as a desert. Get off, now, all of you.’
‘Please …’
‘Can you load yourself into the cannon?’ Molly asked Lord Starhome.
‘I’m held by the turntable’s clamps,’ said Lord Starhome. ‘But I have a magnificent communications array that includes a light transmission mechanism that would serve to burn them off.’
‘Do it!’
‘An official order to launch? Your whim is my command.’
Molly could hear banging on the other side of the wall and Coppertracks’ voice pleading to no avail with the half-steamman craft, when a hiss of melting metal sounded from outside.
‘I’m the only one that understands,’ said Molly. ‘Kyorin showed me, not them. I have to do this.’
‘I really don’t care,’ announced Lord Starhome in a detached manner. ‘If it means I am free again, oh by the light of my creators, yes. To be free of this place and able to chart my own course again. Nearly there. I’ve melted the port clamp away, time for my starboard chains to go.’
‘Jump out,’ Molly yelled back towards the wall. ‘Unless you’re planning to come to Kaliban with me, you all need to abandon ship now.’
‘You foolish woman,’ a muffled voice shouted back at her, in an arrogant tone that she recognized from far too many tedious meetings at the camp. Lord Rooksby.
‘We are days from being ready for anything but a practice firing,’ called another voice in a Quatérshiftian accent – Keyspierre. They were arguing loudly with Molly’s friends in the back of the craft. She could hear the shifties’ daughter shouting for cutting tools to be brought on board.
‘You’re the fool, Rooksby, to think you could steal this cannon from right under my nose with parliament’s blessing.’
‘You may be inside there, compatriot,’ called Keyspierre through the wall, ‘but the cannon firing mechanism is outside on the cannon and controlled by us. You can stay loaded in the breech until thirst and hunger bring you to your senses.’
‘Show me what is happening outside,’ Molly ordered. ‘Is he right?’
Lord Starhome turned the front of his nose transparent, revealing dozens of engineers and soldiers abandoning their posts, even a couple of Coppertracks’ mu-bodies, all
of them running towards the turntable. ‘Correct enough in the literal sense of his words. Are you ordering me to assist you in firing the cannon?’
‘You know the answer to that, ship.’
‘I shall take your answer in the affirmative, little ground hugger, and allow you to correct me if I have grasped the wrong end of the stick.’
There was a keening protest on the other side of the bulkhead from Coppertracks’ voicebox. It sounded as though the steamman had fainted.
‘He’s not the only one who can spread his consciousness among drones,’ said Lord Starhome, pleased with himself. ‘Quite acceptable. And the drones are not even mine.’
Outside, the mu-bodies the ship had possessed were running for the fuse station at the centre of the iron spiral. On the other side of Molly’s impromptu bulkhead the banging had grown ferocious.
‘Last chance to get off,’ yelled Molly, ‘or—’
She stopped as the sky above the camouflage netting grew dark, rolling scuds of an unnatural crimson storm front advancing at an accelerated pace.
The Army of Shadows had arrived at Mount Highhorn.
Purity sensed the wrongness in the sky even before the soldiers’ shouts sounded the alarm; an instinct gifted to her by that ancient queen from Jackals’ past. She was outside the firing station and heading for Lord Starhome when she looked up; a cloud of darting sail riders riding the ruby storm front in, hundreds of black triangles beginning to peel off and fill the air above – slats whistling over the tree line. Her hand fled to her belt, but she was weaponless. All the sabres and guns she had practised with were in a chest under the commodore’s cot. She made to run back towards the barracks, but the sudden jostle of soldiers and navvies – either running to their stations or running out of harm’s way – pushed her back.
Then, suddenly, Oliver was by her side, moving effortlessly through the crowd.
‘The Army of Shadows is here,’ shouted Purity.
‘Yes,’ said Oliver. ‘There’s one of their flying citadels behind the red clouds, riding the leylines and coming around Highhorn Mountain. When they get above us they’re going to burn the entire camp to the ground and our cannon with it.’
‘How did they know we’re here?’
Oliver pulled her to one side as a great beam of heat struck out from one of the sail riders’ weapons, shredding the camouflage netting above them. ‘Perhaps they followed Lord Starhome’s trail of destruction across the county. Maybe they’ve just reached Halfshire anyway.’
‘If they’re here, then they must have already fought their way through Middlesteel.’
Purity made to run for the barracks again, but Oliver stopped her and pointed to the forest’s edge. ‘Yes, and that’s why we must head into the wilds. No towns. No roads.’
‘I haven’t even got a pistol.’
‘I’ve got two,’ said Oliver.
With the burning netting falling around the clearing the first slats were starting to swoop down, sail rigs passing through the crackle of rifle fire from the soldiers. Purity watched transfixed as Lord Starhome’s long silver length slid down into the breech of the cannon and the firing hatch at the centre of the spiral sealed shut behind the craft.
‘Molly,’ shouted Purity. ‘She’s inside the cannon.’
‘She has to launch before the slats’ flying castle reaches us.’
‘I need to get on board,’ begged Purity. ‘They need me on Kaliban, you have to help me get on board that ship.’
Pushing out of the crimson clouds, the outline of the Army of Shadows’ ugly citadel emerged above them. It was riding the leylines on a dozen blasts of energy, scouring the land below, swarms of eyeless soldiers arrowing out on sail-rider rigs from cavernous maws cut into its rock-like sides. The fortress had a terrible organic quality to it, like a wasps’ nest carved out of granite and metallic ore. There was no refinement to the Army of Shadows’ art. Just raw energy and matter stripped out of the land and turned against any living thing dwelling below. Dozens of leathery black globes hovered around the citadel in the air, held aloft on whining circles of blades that rotated so fast they were a blur to the eye and a buzz upon the ears. Evil red light glowed from hundreds of weapon loops dotting the citadel, while in its shadow, the slopes of Mount Highhorn had turned dark from a plague of Kaliban’s advancing legions. The slats made a horrendous cricketing noise as they drew nearer, the chattering sonar throats combined with the clicking of a thousand fangs rubbing together at the thought of fresh flesh to feed on.
From behind the cannon a solitary figure ran into Purity’s view, the gun’s creator, Timlar Preston, waving his hands wildly to attract the attention of the slats circling above. ‘I recognize you. I recognize you as creatures of learning. There must be no more bloodshed between us. There must be peace!’
Peace. What was the fool doing?
‘You are a sentient race,’ yelled Timlar. ‘We can work together, there is no need for this.’
His calls towards the sky finally invoked a response: a bolt of heat enveloped him before dissipating in a blast of steam to reveal a blackened carcass collapsing to the ground. In the end, the Quatérshiftian genius had achieved peace only for himself.
Purity tried to pull away from Oliver’s grip and make towards the cannon. ‘They’re getting ready to go, I have to travel to Kaliban.’
‘Molly’s already inside the gun,’ said Oliver. ‘It’ll be a miracle if she launches before the cannon’s destroyed. They don’t have time to take on board extra passengers.’
‘I can sense the commodore inside the cannon, Coppertracks and Duncan too. They didn’t even know Kyorin. He came to me, he rescued me.’
‘Maybe he did,’ said Oliver. ‘But the land came to you too, and she came first. You’re part of Jackals and the kingdom is going to need you to resist the invaders.’
‘It needs me here to run away again? That’s what you want us to do, isn’t it.’
‘I’m just a girl.’
Gloom deepened about them in the shadow cast by the crude flying citadel of the invaders. Mount Highhorn was now hidden by billows of crimson clouds boiling out from the ground underneath the unholy war machine. Oliver and Purity began running in earnest now, towards the fringes of the camp where it met a sweep of dense pine. At last it became clear why the sail riders hadn’t landed in force on the cannon. With an enormous roar, a pillar of flame left the citadel and ploughed through the forest like an earthquake, drawing down onto the cannon.
Purity stumbled as the blast of heat from the terrible beam hit her. Behind her, fire burst one of the cannon supports and the metal spiral started to collapse to one side as an earsplitting explosion from the ground answered the flying citadel’s heat weapon. The first eruption was followed by an incredibly quick sequence of follow-on cracks, and it felt to Purity as if the teeth were shaking in her head as each firing ring added its voice to the immaculately timed crescendo. Then the citadel’s heat ray sliced across the huge metal sculpture below igniting the unexpended fuel in the cannon’s reservoirs and the entire cannon lifted off the ground. Pieces of the wave-front weapon blew across the clearing, wedges of shrapnel embedding themselves in the tree trunk Purity and Oliver had taken shelter behind. As if enraged by the successful firing of the cannon, the Army of Shadows’ flying citadel began to rotate, its killing beam of energy twisting across the rest of the project, the hidden timber buildings that had been their home riding into the air in splinters and a firestorm of burning trees.
Purity couldn’t sense the life force of Commodore Black, Molly or the others. Was that because they were dead? Or – she risked a glance from behind the shrapnel-shot tree. There was a thin trail of vapour climbing out from the clearing as if the sky had been scratched up towards the heavens. Had Lord Starhome be
en intact as he was blown out of the muzzle of the cannon?
‘I think they were given the gun before the cannon was hit,’ said Oliver. ‘But I’m not sure. It was a damn close thing.’
‘Molly,’ said Purity, tasting the acrid smoke in the air. ‘Commodore Black, Coppertracks. Oh, Circle, please let them be alive.’
They had gone, left her behind, just like her mother and brother had slipped away from her to die, leaving her to go on alone.
The storm of beasts circling on their sail-rider chutes was gliding lower, ready to mop up any survivors of their flying citadel’s bombardment.
‘Let’s go.’
‘Where?’ asked Purity. She followed Oliver deeper into the forest; not running, but fast enough so they might put the camp quickly behind them and keep up a steady pace for hours.
‘Right now, anywhere but here.’
Oliver nodded. ‘Curse your eyes, but I do.’
‘You can hear Elizica speaking inside my head?’
‘That’s funny, I thought she was inside mine,’ said Oliver.
The light grew fainter all about them – somewhere above the canopy of pine, the sun was setting unseen. Setting on the destroyed cannon project, setting on the Kingdom of Jackals.
‘The slats like to hunt in the dark,’ said Purity.
‘They may see at night,’ said Oliver, drawing his two strange pistols. ‘But they’ve never fought the night.’
Something in his voice struck a chill sliver of fear into Purity’s heart. Those two guns of his seemed to glow like death in the gloom, yet this young man who could overhear her madness appeared possessed by one far deeper than her own. He wasn’t the master of the brace of evil pistols anymore, they were the masters of him.
‘Where does Elizica want you to go?’
‘To die,’ said Oliver. ‘She wants me to go to die.’
