by Stephen Hunt
‘The storm has slowed us down,’ said Sandwalker. He pointed to a distant peak piercing the empty sky. ‘We must make better time towards the mountains or Molly will surely die on the way.’
‘What have you done to her?’ shouted the commodore as Keyspierre stumbled to a stop in front of the expedition. ‘She’s as bruised as a barrel of lemons hauled through a storm tossing.’
The secret policeman unshouldered Molly and lay her body down on the dunes. Sandwalker was immediately at her side with a canteen; trying to give her the derisory dribble of water that remained to them.
Keyspierre squared up to the commodore, throwing the strip of severed guide rope at the u-boat man’s feet. ‘Thank you, compatriot, for rescuing the little author.’
Commodore Black lunged at the shiftie, but Duncan caught him.
‘He’s brought her back out of the storm, man, all the way through the lightning. The bampot didn’t have to do that.’
‘He was as likely using her blessed body as a shield to take any bolts that were coming his way.’
‘I was obliged to render Compatriot Templar unconscious,’ said Keyspierre. ‘Her sickness has left her unhinged. She woke up screaming that I had eaten her hands, then tried to throttle me with the very fingers that were supposed to be inside my stomach.’
‘Why did you do it?’ asked Duncan. ‘You could have just left the lassie to the storm, claimed that she was separated from you.’
‘If you ask me that then you have no code,’ said Keyspierre, ‘and even less idea of what the Commonshare stands for. We are all equal and all equally worthy of saving. No officer of Committee Eight would leave a compatriot behind.’
‘I will carry her,’ said Coppertracks as Sandwalker finished administering the last of their water. ‘This heat has less influence on my organs and my treads can roll as well over the dunes with Molly softbody’s weight across me as with my own.’
Commodore Black laid his hand on Molly’s forehead. Her only response was a small moan. ‘Ah, poor lass and poor us. We’ve fought so hard and come so far and this is the end of us, out here. Molly burning up under the weight of Kyorin’s soul. Your blessed paradise made a hell, Sandwalker, a small taste of the fate of our beautiful green Jackals. My genius has been tested before, but never by a land so fearfully arid and an enemy so cruel as the Army of Shadows.’ The commodore slipped his bottle of medicinal whisky from his pack. ‘But I still have this, even if our water canteens are as dry as a seadrinker hull sailing too close to the magma of the Fire Sea. A rare taste of home so we can remember the kingdom’s lochs and hills before we all leave our parched corpses stretched out here.’
Duncan lunged for the bottle, but the commodore was too quick, moving it to the side and pushing away the ex-rocketman’s hand. Duncan was furious. ‘Are you mad, Jared, wanting a dram of that stuff? With no water you can’t drink whisky out here in the heat of the day.’
‘I may not be an old hand of the southern frontier like you, but I know what drinking whisky in the desert does to a man,’ said the commodore. ‘But here it is, I’m dry, and as great an adventurer as I am, even my brave frame can’t be murdered twice. I’ll keel over from this wicked sun long before I keel over from the stomach cramps.’
Taking a greedy swig from the canteen, the commodore wiped the drips from the side of his mouth and offered the bottle to Duncan and Keyspierre.
‘I’m still going to kill you when this is over,’ said the secret policeman, taking the whisky, drawing a quick measure and then passing it across to Duncan Connor.
‘What sort of filthy wheatman would you be if you did not?’ said the commodore.
Duncan took a nip, made a face and spat the foul-tasting stuff out onto the sand. ‘Sweet Circle, man, I’ve drunk raw jinn distilled by tribesmen that tasted better than that. How much alcohol is in this wee bottle?’
‘Alcohol!’ Sandwalker snatched the bottle, sniffing at it in horror before corking it shut. ‘Fools! You’ve actually brought a solution of alcohol out onto the plains?’ The nomad drew his arm back to hurl the bottle as far as he could, the commodore about to leap on him to save it, when they saw it. ‘You’ll attract …’
The thin branches of what looked like a tree were rising up over the dune in front of them, quivering in the air. A horrendous buzzing filled the empty wasteland and the thin branches became the spread of twin antennae on a giant ant, its chitin a mottled orange, the same shade as the sand, hovering under twin buzz-saw wings, two leathery globes swelling out on either side of its thorax.
Sandwalker tossed the bottle as far and as hard he could, and like a gun hound fetching a falling pheasant, the flying ant curved through the air and snatched the tumbling green glass with one of its six jointed legs. Then the monstrosity flipped around and came straight for the members of the expedition. Everyone scattered, Coppertracks ducking as he reversed backwards at full speed clutching Molly’s prone form, the huge insect’s rotating forewings nearly clipping the steamman’s transparent dome skull in passing.
It went right through the space where the expedition had been standing, scooping up all their piled packs – the potpourri of food scents too strong for the insect to ignore.
‘Our blessed supplies!’ Commodore Black shouted, running up to the crest of the dune after the creature. ‘My bully beef!’
On the opposite side of the dune was a rough circle of ground a lighter colour than the surrounding sands. Fat orange larvae were coming out to feed as the giant ant opened the expedition’s belongings with its scimitar-sharp mouthparts, its antennae flickering in a dance as it scented and sorted the chemical traces coming from each pack. Commodore Black didn’t need to notice the similarity between the flying ant and the slats’ hovering globe ships to know that here was another of the mutations scattered across Kaliban by the terrible Army of Shadows. Where was his blessed gun?
‘Leave our food there,’ ordered Sandwalker as he sprinted up the dune, pushing the commodore’s pistol down towards the sand. ‘That flying ant is only a male drone left to tend the nest’s young. The female soldiers and workers will be out foraging with their queen – there will be dozens of them, more than enough to hunt us down as prey.’
A grand course of action. One ruined by Duncan Connor sprinting up the slope behind them, roaring as if he had just lost his mind, a pistol in one hand and a straight Jackelian cavalry sabre in the other. ‘It’s got her, it’s got her!’
For a moment Commodore Black thought that his friend was talking about Molly, but a quick glance back down the dune showed that she was still resting in Coppertracks’ iron arms. ‘She’s safe, lad!’
Connor of Cassarabia was over the crest of the hill and dashing down in frenzied kicks of sand towards the ant. It was then that Commodore Black saw it. The flying insect had ripped open Duncan’s travel case, scattering bleached white bones across the bronze sand, one of them a skull so small it had to be that of a human child.
The head of the insect darted up as it saw Duncan racing towards the nest and the larvae in its charge. Raising its abdomen and dipping its antennae in warning like a charging bull, the insect took off towards Duncan, but the ex-rocketman triggered the charge in his pistol, blowing out the ant’s right compound eye in a shower of ichor. Off balance now, the ant continued to fly towards Duncan, the Jackelian launching himself into the air and landing on top of the creature’s thorax underneath the twin rotating wings. Now the flying ant was furious. This was prey – prey fighting back! It clumped down onto the dune and angled its wings to blow a sandstorm back across its body, always enough to dislodge any parasite foolish enough to try to pierce its chitin.
In the midst of the gale Duncan yelled an upland battle cry and slammed his sabre down through the join between the head and thorax of his furious mount, decapitating the ant in one swing. As the massive insect’s wings stopped rotating, Duncan was off, smoothly rolling away from the beast’s back and running towards his broken case and the bones lying across the s
ands, slashing at the fat orange larvae as they reared up and tried to lunge at his legs.
Commodore Black and Sandwalker were quickly at Duncan’s side, leaving the others on the crest to gaze down bewildered at the carnage and the giant slain ant, watching Duncan stuffing the bones into his travel case and trying to lock the lid back on it.
Duncan was mumbling at the sand, barely registering their presence. ‘I’m sorry, lassie, I’m sorry they did that to you.’
‘Are you suffering from heat exhaustion, Duncan Connor?’ asked Sandwalker. ‘You could have died. Do you know how dangerous these colonies are?’
‘Don’t look at her, man,’ begged Duncan. ‘She hates people glowering at her now.’
‘Who, lad?’ asked Commodore Black.
‘My wee daughter, Hannah.’
‘These are just blessed bones.’
‘She’s different now, that’s all. Hannah hates people having a shufty at her. Nobody else understands, only her father does, only me, always me.’
‘We have to go,’ urged the nomad, bending down to gather what supplies had survived the larvae’s feeding frenzy. ‘The drone’s mates will return and we must be far away when they do.’
‘It wasn’t my regiment’s fault,’ said Duncan, standing up and clutching the broken case to his chest, ‘when we fired on the raiders with our gas rockets. We didn’t realize the raiding party had already stolen people from the upland villages for slaves. Everyone was wearing sand robes. We thought they were coming out of the desert, not going back towards Cassarabia, not going back.’
Commodore Black gently laid a hand on the ex-soldier’s shoulder. ‘She’s just bones, lad, she’s dead.’
Duncan shook his head. ‘No, it was my wife who died, not Hannah. No one understands that Hannah’s just a little different. My wee girl, my bonnie wee girl.’
But Commodore Black understood now. Why the New Pattern Army hadn’t taken Connor of Cassarabia back into the fold even when the enlisting parties were desperately sweeping every lane in the kingdom’s towns for fresh recruits to face the Army of Shadows. How many years had Duncan been travelling with his daughter’s corpse rotting in a suitcase? Part of him must know, deep down. The part that had been taking coin for suicide callings like the circus of the extreme.
‘We have to protect Hannah,’ insisted Duncan. ‘Protect her from the Army of Shadows. Those black-hearted kelpies will take her for a slave, make her suffer the same as Sandwalker’s people.’
Commodore Black looked at the ex-soldier. ‘We’ll save her, Duncan, we’ll save all our darling girls back in the Kingdom of Jackals and stick our boot hard up the Army of Shadows’ arse while we’re about it.’
Sandwalker retrieved a thin black tube from his torn pack. He rotated its head to reveal a tiny spray hole. ‘We must pass through the territory of the ant colonies to reach the mountains. This will help us survive.’
‘What is it, lad?’ asked the commodore.
‘A synthesized version of the pheromone a queen ant uses to attract her workers and soldiers to her. If we are pursued, one of us must sacrifice themselves for the group. Once the pheromone is applied to a robe, the colony will chase only the one who has been sprayed. If this was my tribe’s caravan, it would be traditional for the oldest and the sickest to be appointed as the lure.’
Commodore Black glanced nervously at the massive bladelike pincers of the dead ant’s mouthparts. If it came to it, who would be selected in such a mortal awful lottery?
Which one of them would have die to save them all?
Molly woke up to burning pain slicing through her head, haunted by the shadows of things she wasn’t quite sure were phantoms, or Kyorin’s memories, or events that were actually happening to her now. She was being carried. Yes, the expedition to reach the great sage. To find the weapon. And to cure her, before her mind fried under the endless heat of the Kaliban sun and the weight of the strange memories.
She was being borne in someone’s arms; her head so weak she couldn’t even turn to catch sight of who it was. But she could see the great rise of a mountain in front of them. So tall, as were the ants. Two giant ants! Coming towards her, as big as shire horses, pincers snicking together hungrily. Molly tried to yell but her throat was too dry. She was placed on the ground and left there. The monstrous pair of ants were still coming forward, six legs apiece, sharp orange legs like lances jabbing at the ground. The head of the nearest ant dipped down, its antennae brushing against Molly’s forehead, marking her scent. This treachery was Keyspierre’s work, it had to be! The dirty shiftie secret policeman was sacrificing her as an offering to these monsters. Abandoning her as food to save his skin.
Now Molly’s paper-dry throat summoned enough saliva to scream.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Even miles distant, Purity could hear the thunder of the Spartiate’s guns as the first shells began to drop on the domed city that the Army of Shadows had built on the coast. Or rather, the dome that had been raised by their slaves’ labours. Purity, the Bandits of the Marsh and their small volunteer army had come across a few of the pits where the slats had tossed the bones of dead polar barbarians after consuming those who had been worked to death. Nothing wasted.
Purity hoped that there were some of the ugly tentacled masters the slats bowed their eyeless heads to inside that dome … and not just because it would make it easier to entice the slat legions away from the hideous white beanstalk anchored in the frozen soil of the north. She wanted the masters to be there because, for just a moment, it would mean that the invaders might feel a fraction of the fear that the Jackelians had while the slats were rampaging across their home.
‘It is working,’ observed Samuel Lancemaster, brushing the falling snow out of his face. ‘The slats are being recalled back towards their city.’
‘They fear an assault from the sea,’ replied Purity. ‘Rightly so – for all the slats know, we might have dozens of u-boats waiting under the ice pack to surface.’
Columns of slats were forming up, emerging like beetles from snow-submerged buildings blasted into the hard ground of what had once been the polar barbarians’ territory. Soldiers appeared in the shadow of their beanstalk, the hideous white appendage disappearing into the snowstorm and the night. No sign of the iron moon here, the baleful rusting eye of the Army of Shadows hidden like the home of the gods on its heavenly mountaintop. Only the occasional flicker of red light as capsules rode up the beanstalk. These were the same capsules Molly Templar had described crossing the celestial darks, now turned into lifting rooms. Purity arched her neck up towards where the giant cable disappeared into the whited heavens. It was at least the circumference of one of the capital’s lofty pneumatic towers.
Yes, Purity had a good view of the beanstalk from the brow of the hill. But by her side the druid Ganby was paying little attention to their target. The closer they got to the drained leylines of the distant north, the more nervous the old man had become. Now he was lying alongside Purity shaking like a jinn-house lush without the coins for his next glass.
‘Would that we did have such an underwater armada,’ said Ganby. He rubbed his face into the snow, moaning as a circle of leathery globes squatting around the beanstalk started to hum into life, rising under their buzzing blade-wings before angling away across the hills.
‘Eating snow won’t make a man of you,’ laughed Jenny Blow. ‘We’ll throw the hearts of a couple of slats on the fire for you later. That’ll fatten you up.’
‘The soil is so barren. They’ve drained the energy from the land. I’m too weak to fight them.’
‘And you thought you had the sweating sickness the day before I met the gill-neck’s prince in single combat,’ said Samuel. ‘Do be quiet, old man.’
‘Is he always like this before a battle?’ asked Purity.
‘Every one I’ve seen,’ confirmed Jackaby Mention. ‘Except this time I believe he may have just cause for his humours.’
‘This is my first battle.’
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‘I know. Your job is to sever the ring of cables anchoring the beanstalk to the ground,’ said Jackaby. ‘The rest you may leave to us.’
The rest. It sounded so easy. The element of surprise might carry them through the defences to the foot of the towering beanstalk, but how long could they last – how long would she last – hacking the anchor cables off it, before the Army of Shadows responded with force enough to overwhelm the small band of attackers?
It was then that Purity saw him, trying to hide down in the crowd of volunteers. Watt! Despite all his protestations, the young cobbler had returned to his old calling in the fleet after all.
She walked towards him, and seeing that he had been rumbled, he gave up trying to conceal himself amongst the crouching line of volunteers.
‘I thought you were going to head into the forests with the other refugees from the port?’
He looked embarrassed. ‘The old steamer can keep them in shoe leather well enough without me.’
‘Your talents might be better off employed back on the u-boat. You’d be safer there.’
‘You’re a fine one to talk.’ He held up a small rifle. ‘I’m not out here to protect you, you know. After I was invalided out of the fleet, I promised myself I’d never die on one of those tin cans. I needed the air, that’s why I’m here.’
The air. It was about to get a lot more bracing. ‘Well, you look after yourself, Watt.’
He reached out and put a hand on her arm as she was about to go back to where the Bandits of the Marsh were waiting. ‘I’ve got your shoes tied up in my pack. I made them myself. I sized them using one of your footprints from the dust back on the shop’s floor.’
Purity laughed. ‘Really? Thank you. I’ll try them on when we’ve cut down the beanstalk. It’ll be something to look forward to.’
Purity walked to the head of the hill and turned about to address her volunteers crouching down on the side of the slope like a hundred and fifty white ghosts, her voice competing against the storming winds and the distant thundering guns of their u-boat. ‘I know many of you are scared, many of you are wondering if you will see your homes again right now. So I’m not going to ask you to fight your way through the slats down there …’
