‘Oh, shiiitttt!’
‘I saw your loneliness. I thought you needed a companion.’
‘Oh, my word!’
Gully turned from the tiny object at the heart of the furnace to stare up into the monstrous face of the blacksmith. He looked around the smithy and saw familiar pieces: a mudguard still retaining tiny shreds of red paint; two sprocket wheels; the springs from what had once been a saddle.
‘Me Raleigh bike!’
When the monster opened its mouth to smile, a current of choking heat emerged. ‘It was of convenient dimensions. The spokes proved readily amenable to the fine lacework of feathers.’
Gully was only just beginning to understand: Bad Day had hammered steel to sheets as fine as paper over a smaller core – a core of fire, like Bad Day’s own.
‘Wot’s in there? Wot’s inside of it?’
‘Even a slave bot must have a soul spirit.’
‘A soul spirit?’
‘The essence of being.’
Now that the hammering had stopped, there was a new sound: a buzzing like a wasp, only deeper and louder. The buzzing was coming from the thing at the heart of the furnace. Gully looked at it again and slumped down among the rusting ironwork. He watched in silence as Bad Day hauled himself erect, shuddered, and then reassembled himself, changing from the demonic blacksmith to the clanking robot with the roomy mouth.
The buzzing thing was alive. It was fluttering wings of delicately-wrought iron that were still glowing a shade of furnace red. The bones of its wings had been made out of the spokes of Gully’s bicycle. He spoke, in shock, in wonderment:
‘Wot you just said – about me being lonely.’
Bad Day laughed, but the sound was a hollow thunder. The furnace heat was subsiding at its core. ‘I cannot permit you to leave, yet I am conscious that such confinement might provoke unhappiness. So I constructed a companion.’
Sweat was dripping off Gully’s face like rain. He rubbed at his right elbow, the pain making him aware of it once more.
‘Wot is this place?’
‘A nest of sorts. We daemon bots are nesting beings.’
Gully heard the buzzing as the newly emergent slave bot rose out of the cooling crater. It stretched its wings and then fluttered a foot or two higher, however clumsily, then it began to fall back into the furnace, as if the exertion had exhausted it.
Bad Day reached out its left hand, allowing the bird creature to land on it rather than plummet back into the furnace.
‘It is gauche, not yet complete. The delicacy of feathers were surely a test of my lore. It will, no doubt, improve – learn is perhaps the expression – as it acquires experience.’
Ghork Mega
Alan’s onkkh came to a fidgety halt on a small tor above an unexpected vista of grasses and wild flowers. The beast stretched its long neck in an evident desire to taste the stream of fresh water that gushed over a bed of blue-grey pebbles some thirty feet below. In the distance, easily visible now even with the naked eye, soared the curtain walls of Ghork Mega, two hundred feet high and, reputedly, fifty feet thick. Gatehouse towers, studded with cannon-bedecked rows, soared into the sky. The gargantuan fortification occupied an entire black granite mountain. As Alan studied it through his telescope, he saw how the geography of the city had adopted the natural terrain, making use of the slopes to enhance its own formidable defences.
Alan alighted from the troublesome beast that had borne him through vast distances, and dangers, and across the Flamestruck Mountains. He watched as, honking loudly, it descended stream-wards in a flutter of feathers and a clatter of taloned feet before fighting a path against a rush of others to the stream. When Alan glanced back over his shoulder, he caught sight of Qwenqwo, who had alighted nearby, landing even more badly than Alan had. Alan laughed as the dwarf mage almost upended himself, eventually landing on his rump. He could hear Qwenqwo cursing as he made his way up the slope to flop down onto the dense growth of grasses and flowers by the side of his friend.
‘This march must have been the most blistering torture ever inflicted on the hide of a warrior.’
Alan had to admit that he had never become used to riding such a vile beast. Every bone in his back, bum, and thighs was aching. He had to envy the Shee, who had covered most of the march on their own clawed feet. Alan just allowed himself to fall back into the cool mattress of the sweet scented flowers and grasses, tempted to close his eyes and grab some sleep.
‘I never ever want to see an onkkh again.’
‘You and me both,’ growled Qwenqwo, delving into his pockets to find his trusty pipe and his baccy. ‘A bowl for you?’
Alan shook his head. ‘But I wouldn’t say no to the flagon, when you manage to find it. That’s if there’s a drop left after all that philosophising.’
‘What philosophising?’
‘The whinging that you have subjected all and sundry to for the last twenty leagues.’
‘Ah! That philosophising!’
They laughed together.
Alan muttered, with his eyes closed: ‘Oh for a whole twenty-four hours of rest with the lovely mind-numbing ecstasy of that burning comfort sliding slowly down my throat.’
‘Desist. I am persuaded.’
But still the dwarf mage took his time in tamping down the baccy in his bowl, and then lighting the thing with a stroke of flint, and then inhaling the aromatic vapours of several deep puffs, before he gave his consideration to the flagon. But then, with a rueful grin, he had the grace to toss it to Alan before partaking himself.
‘Not a lot left in this!’
‘I’m looking forward to a refill when I meet up with Siam, who is somewhere out there in the fleet. I saw to that essential requirement before we set out from the Garg’s City of a Thousand Islands.’
Alan took a swig and almost gagged – his dry throat felt like it was on fire. He coughed, wiping his mouth, then passed the flagon back to Qwenqwo, who swigged what was left in it. Alan groaned aloud as he forced himself back into a sitting position, then took a lengthy view of the yawning panorama that confronted them. ‘People warned me that Ghork Mega was a colossus, but the sheer size of it still comes as a shock.’
‘Indeed.’ Qwenqwo groaned, rubbing at his aching back.
‘Man – it must be what, thirty miles in circumference?’
Qwenqwo put his hand out for the telescope and took a long hard look at the mountain city for himself before returning the scope. ‘Did you notice the Tyrant’s Citadel: a fortification within a fortification?’
‘I noticed.’
‘The Black Citadel was built on the very apex of the mountain. So high it gathers its own nimbus of clouds.’
Alan looked through the telescope again at the eerie fortification of the citadel, which looked about half a mile higher than the bulk of the city, with numerous spike-shaped towers among a labyrinth of adamantine black walls. He couldn’t make out a single window to soften the foreboding darkness.
‘It looks pretty impregnable to me.’
‘No city was ever built that bested the Fir Bolg.’
It was reassuring to have such an indomitable friend. Alan folded away telescope, stuffing its brass bulk into his sealskin pocket. ‘Even so, it will take some powerful weapons to break through those fortifications.’
‘Ebrit’s warships have mighty cannons.’
‘We’ll see soon enough!’
Out there in the bay, the prince’s fleet was already manoeuvring into place. Looking out over the formidable walls that confronted them, Alan reflected how the cannons of Prince Ebrit’s warships, which had looked so mighty when he had first inspected them, now seemed less formidable. It was hard to imagine any bombardment that would level this terrible structure. And the threat extended beyond the walls. Within them lurked an enemy more dreadful still.
The mountain tha
t had underpinned the Tyrant’s capital had extensive rocky foothills arising out of the great sweep of the bay. For a landwards attack on the city, such as the Shee were about to begin, they would have to climb a series of steep escarpments. There was tricky ground at every step, with razor-like flint outcrops, and then a final approach that wound, like a writhing snake, up to the massive bulwark of the south gate. All the while the attacking army would be under bombardment from the bronze cannons poking, like the bristles of a porcupine, from the topmost half of the massive curtain walls. And even if they made it to the south gate, which was the only logical approach from where they’d stopped, they had to get past its secondary fortress, which was recessed into a granite cliff and flanked by two massive hexagonal towers, also housing cannons.
There were lamps aglow within the towers, even now in the light of morning, which suggested a prevailing gloom within those heavy walls. They could only worry any potential attacker all the more. Alan wasn’t immune to their fearsome aspect. It was awesome to think that these formidable defences would be the setting for a battle that would soon determine the fate of Tír.
Alan had no need to look for Kate. He sensed her approach through his oraculum as readily as she must have sensed him, and he climbed to his feet, ready to help her alight from her onkkh’s back. When they hugged, it was inevitably an awkward embrace: too many aches and pains. Yet they still gazed into one another’s eyes for a joyous moment.
‘Oh, Lord!’ Kate exclaimed, looking seaward.
Alan followed her gaze to where a break in the clouds illuminated the fleet in a brilliant arc of sunlight.
‘Spectacular, isn’t it!’
The great sweep of bay was dense with the colourful sails and decorated woodwork of what, back on Earth, would have been the equivalent of medieval battleships. But they differed in many respects from any pictures Alan recalled. They were much larger than his admittedly vague memory of sailing ships, more angular, and, to his vision, more complex. It was a mistake ever to think of this world as Earth.
Kate said: ‘Sorry – I stink!’
‘Who doesn’t, after that ride?’
They looked, as one, in the direction of the young Kyra, some hundred yards or so seaward of their position, as she metamorphosed to human form surrounded by dozens of aides.
‘They’re already marking out their encampment on the shore.’
‘It’s fortunate the bay is miles wide.’
The Shee were commandeering a sizeable section of it to accommodate not only the warriors who had shared the hazardous journey north with him, but also the multitude who were coming to shore from the carriers out there in the crowded bay. Alan’s eyes searched in vain through the masses of great cats for the smaller, darker figure of Bétaald, who would be so important in advising Ainé during the coming siege. Alan would meet up with them both soon to plan the opening strategy. He was also looking forward to meeting Siam and Kehloke again when the Olhyiu chief was released from navigating Prince Ebrit’s fleet. From what Qwenqwo had intimated, he too was looking forward to some rest and relaxation with the chief. Alan could imagine the consumption of baccy and flagons.
‘Maybe we need an area to ourselves,’ Alan said.
Kate smiled. ‘Good thinking.’
‘Count me in,’ Qwenqwo said.
Alan looked about them. ‘And Mo, where is she?’
‘With Turkeya, most likely,’ Kate replied. ‘They seem close again.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’
‘I worry about her, Alan.’
Alan also worried about Mo. He knew that he hadn’t given enough time to her concerns on the last occasion they had spoken, but the truth was he didn’t really know what to think. He wasn’t sure he understood what was alarming her, and the distractions had been such he had never found the time to chat further – and from the look of what they faced here, he doubted there would be much time in the future either.
‘We must help her, Alan.’
‘I know, but I don’t understand what’s going on with her and I’m worried I’ll give her unhelpful advice.’
‘I don’t know either, but I aim to find out.’
She hugged him then, a full body hug, ignoring the fact that they both stank.
He said: ‘Do you think it’s something to do with Mark – the fact we don’t know what happened to him?’
‘I suspect it’s part of it. She misses him, and the Temple Ship.’
‘I miss him too, Kate. I miss our friendship. I miss all four of us doing things together.’
‘Me too!’
Alan was aware of Qwenqwo, his pipe now smoked, allowing them the courtesy of leaving them to it. He sensed that the Kyra and Bétaald were also allowing him and Kate the same courtesy. He kissed her, then made an apologetic face. ‘See you later, Kate. Right now I need to talk strategy with Qwenqwo, Iyezzz, the Kyra, Bétaald . . . But you’re welcome to join us.’
‘I think I’d prefer to wash the dust out of my pores!’
He held onto her hand for a moment or two before freeing her to head towards the growing city of tents.
But he was already wondering if, now they were here, he should routinely include Magtokk in their war council meetings. Magtokk knew the Tyrant better than any of them. Who better to prepare them for surprises – unknowns? His tip about the eclipse had made all the difference, encouraging the Gargs to join their cause.
‘Signals of welcoming?’ Qwenqwo interrupted his ruminations, the dwarf mage sidling in to join him now Kate was gone.
Alan’s attentions were directed to the sky, which crackled with exploding rockets, erupting into fireworks, some originating from the aides on land, but most of them coming from the ships in the encroaching ocean. As if in response to a signal, Bétaald and the Kyra joined Alan and Qwenqwo. All four of them stood, inhaling the fresh scents of the wind-swept prairie as they watched the vast fleet of galleons pull slowly closer to the coast, perhaps still three miles distant from the breakwaters below.
Alan asked Bétaald: ‘What happens now?’
‘The remaining warriors will arrive to join us and the siege weapons will be unloaded.’
Alan’s eyes moved back to the enormous walls that confronted them, and within them the spires and towers of the vast proliferation of city buildings, streets, squares and citadel.
The Kyra read his mind: ‘Giant walls harbour predictable weaknesses.’
‘Such as?’
‘The size of the army necessary to defend them: it would have to be vast to be so widely spread.’
‘How vast, do you reckon?’
‘A good half a million troops. And that is merely foot soldiers. There will be forces ranged against us that we cannot yet imagine.’
Alan glanced across to see that Qwenqwo was nodding, as if the Kyra’s words confirmed his own thoughts. ‘How is that a weakness?’ he asked.
Bétaald said, ‘Its vastness provokes logistical difficulties in strategy and coherence. Those logistical difficulties will become ever more difficult as attrition bites.’
Alan didn’t like the idea of a war of attrition, but that was exactly what a siege called for. It was beyond his experience. Even as he mused on it, there was a thundering sound from a row of vessels that had arrived within firing range. They were broadsiding the walls of the city. Snatching the telescope, Alan could get a much clearer view of what was happening: a cluster of a dozen or so of the smaller warships in Prince Ebrit’s fleet must be softening up the target by testing the curtain walls with their cannons. Further out in the bay were the really big ships that would soon come into play: the enormous warships the Carfonese called their Leviathans. Alan studied the complex sequence of firing, which followed an alternating pattern. Even then, the ships heeled over some twenty degrees with each cannonade.
‘But they’re missing the walls. They’re firing
right over them.’
Qwenqwo shook his head. ‘These cannons are too light to do damage to the walls.’ He lifted his pipe from his mouth and spat out some tobacco-coloured saliva. ‘It’s a risky trick that Ebrit’s sailors explained to me: they make the iron cannonballs a mite smaller to allow for expansion, then they heat them in bellowed forges until they are red hot and fire them from their cannons. The heavy bronze cannon are able to fire blazing cannon balls without exploding. These cannonballs are not required to break down walls. What they bear is fire. Their aim is to set the roofs of buildings ablaze.’
Alan thought about that. ‘Why risky?’
‘The forges burn on ships built of wood.’
Alan turned his telescope onto the city beyond the walls. Smoke was beginning to curl into the sky.
‘I see: it’s working.’
Qwenqwo brought out his runestone from a pocket. ‘Fire is a brutal weapon. But it is also a most potent weapon in a siege.’
‘War is war,’ the Kyra spoke.
Qwenqwo gazed down at his runestone within the cradle of his two hands. Alan saw it flicker into life. The runes within it started to glow. ‘But we may confidently assume that our enemy is resourceful enough to counter with some strategies of his own.’
Alan looked at the Kyra, and Bétaald. He realised that between the army that had marched here and the reinforcements coming to land off the cargo ships, something close to the entire army of Shee were here. ‘You’re risking everything.’
Neither Kyra nor Bétaald replied.
‘I’m sorry – have I said something wrong?’
‘You must understand, Mage Lord . . .’ Qwenqwo checked himself and looked up at Alan askance. ‘This is a day so many of our world have prayed for. Many, many indeed were those who never lived to see it finally arrive.’
‘Yet, you seem troubled?’
The Return of the Arinn Page 21
