Clockwork Boys: Book One of the Clocktaur War

by T. Kingfisher

  The music skirled. The drums skipped a beat, and the whole column lurched briefly, then took up the step once more.

  They inched closer.

  “God’s mercy,” breathed Learned Edmund, “I think they’re rats.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  They were indeed rats, or at least mostly. There were several varieties, from rotund cotton rats to big-eyed deer mice, and even the occasional chipmunk, but primarily they were plain, ordinary rats, the sort that Slate saw every day going about their business in the alleys and gutters of the capital.

  Unlike those sleek urban rats, however, these were not quietly pursuing their own rodent interests.

  They appeared to be dancing.

  With each beat of the drum, the rats would take a step forward on their hind legs. Their whiskers and tails moved, and they shuffled back and forth to the high skirling of the pipes. A step at a time, hundreds, if not thousands of them, they danced and squirmed and stepped across the rocks and up the opposite hillside.

  That’s really quite horrible.

  A single dancing rat might have been cute, a line of several dancing might have been amusing, but this constant, slithering stream was deeply unsettling. If they stopped and turned, Slate and Learned Edmund would be ankle deep in squirming bodies.

  Now that’s a pleasant thought.

  “Well…” she said, trying to keep her voice even, “I suppose it could be worse.”

  “I think it is,” said Learned Edmund weakly. “That one there doesn’t have a front.”

  Slate looked.

  The back end of a rat, the sort of thing that a cat might leave as a present to its unfortunate owner, was stepping merrily along in the line. The fact that its waist ended in a kind of bloody rag of fur didn’t seem to bother it.

  Slate put a hand over her mouth. The potato wasn’t sitting very well at all.

  Ohhhh…

  Now that her eyes were adjusting, she could see that many of the rodents were much the worse for wear. Some of them were obviously dead, missing heads, entrails, or other vital bits. Some might simply have been badly wounded. Despite this, they capered as fluidly as the others dancers in the line. If the body had feet, it seemed to be able to dance to the music.

  The only mercy to the whole thing was that she had absolutely no desire to sneeze.

  “I’m going to be sick,” said Learned Edmund, and was.

  Slate reached over and held his hair with one hand. She didn’t take her eyes off the line of tiny dancers.

  If the sound of a scholar having the dry heaves bothered the rats, they gave no sign. The column showed no sign of tapering off. Rat after rat came dancing down the hillside, to cut a grotesque saraband across the river.

  A few minutes slid by. By the time Edmund had stopped heaving, and was wiping his mouth, Slate had made a decision.

  “Learned Edmund,” she whispered, “I want you to go back to the horses.”

  “Mistress Slate?”

  “Go to the horses. If we’re not back by noon tomorrow, take them on the road, and go back the way we came. Once you get to a large enough town, send a message to the Captain of the Guard. Tell him we’re all dead and to send someone else to help you.”

  “You can’t be serious!”

  “I’m very serious.”

  “I’m not going to just leave you all!”

  She could have growled with frustration. The music beat in her head like a pulse. “Listen to me, Edmund. Of the two of us, I can’t handle the horses, and I can sneak into places.”

  “But—” He blinked at her. The moon was rising, and she could see his pallor, and the determination of his expression under it. “Sir Caliban is my friend. I can’t let you go alone. You’re—”

  “Expendable,” she said.

  “A woman.”

  “That, too. Regardless. All three of us are expendable. You are not.”

  “But—”

  “That’s an order, Learned Edmund,” she said, and filled her voice with every ounce of steel she possessed.

  He stared at her. She stared back, unblinking. The rats danced and skittered behind him.

  “If they’re expendable, why are you going after them?” he asked her.

  Slate jerked. On her shoulder, a sudden spike of pain, as if small ink jaws had clamped down on her skin.

  No! I’m not betraying the mission! I have to go after them! The odds of success are much better with them than without! And I’m not risking Edmund, see? See?

  Perhaps in response to her frantic thoughts, the tattoo loosened its grip. The painful pressure eased.

  “Go, Learned Edmund,” she growled.

  He rose to his feet, and then, slowly, bowed his head. Slate nearly sagged with relief herself.

  “Where are you going, then?” he asked.

  She rose to her feet, already moving down the slope to the river. The knot in her stomach had loosened. She knew what she had to do.

  “To follow the rats, of course.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Right about the time the Learned Edmund was losing his potato, Caliban and Brenner finally exhausted their mutual recriminations and looked around for something else to do.

  They were hog-tied on a dirt floor, inside an earthen lodge that looked like it was built by a magpie with ambition. The wattle-and-daub walls were studded with junk: bits of straw, feathers, small stones that might have been a mosaic if there had been more of them, snake skins, bright glass and colored string. Nets with glass fishing weights hung from the ceiling, illuminated by the flicker of a fire near the entrance.

  There were also bones. Some were individual bones and some were whole articulated skeletons, from a number of small, unfortunate animals.

  Brenner and Caliban were in the middle of a sunken circular area. Wooden posts rose to waist height around them, holding back the rest of the floor. Their captors had taken their weapons and, for some odd reason, their shoes.

  “You know,” said Brenner, for approximately the fiftieth time, “none of this would have happened if you hadn’t been—”

  “Shut up, Brenner,” said Caliban, who was learning why that was Slate’s favorite phrase.

  “I’m just saying.”

  “You were trying to kill me!”

  “…I was only gonna cut you a little.”

  After they’d been netted, their captors had shoved gags of splintered bark in the men’s mouths, tied their hands, picked them up, and begun to run through the forest. They were inhumanly fast, which made sense because they hadn’t been human.

  Flattened against the bottom of his net, all Caliban had been able to see was a sickening lurch of landscape going by. If he craned his neck, he saw…legs.

  Green legs, with fine swirls of brown hair on the calves, ending in large, cleft hooves.

  That did not fill him with confidence.

  When they had finally been dumped out onto the ground, he looked up into a circle of a dozen faces, none of which were human and all of which were green.

  They looked like deer, mostly. They had long-muzzled faces and broad, flaring nostrils. The spacing of their eyes was wide and unsettling, but the eyes held a deep and uncanny intelligence. Mobile ears flicked back and forth at every sound.

  The males were broad-chested and had antlers. Two of them carried Caliban between them as if he weighed nothing. The females were slenderer, with shallow breasts and patterns of dark green scars circling their eyes. Both sexes wore necklaces, armbands, and loincloths. All carried spears.

  They did not look friendly.

  A spear came in and prodded Brenner, who had managed to work his gag out. He cursed the spear-holder in no uncertain terms.

  The deer-creatures spoke to each other in high-pitched voices, like bird calls. Even the deep-chested stag-men had shrill, lilting voices. It didn’t make them sound any friendlier.

  Another spear poke, this time directed at Caliban.

  He gritted his teeth.

 
; The spear poked again, more insistently.

  Pride had always been his besetting sin. Damn if he was going to scream in front of Brenner, after that little scene at the river.

  The spear got in a solid jab. It didn’t penetrate the chainmail, but there was going to be a bruise under there in the morning.

  Assuming we live so long.

  One of the stag men reached down, grabbed his hair, and dragged his neck back. One blunt-fingered hand made an unmistakable gesture across the knight’s throat. The spear lifted.

  Caliban didn’t break, but his demon did.

  “Nghaa! Ha, ha, ngha’aa, halikaliha!”

  The deer jerked back as one, with squealing gasps.

  “That was either brilliant or incredibly stupid,” said Brenner.

  “I don’t think it was brilliant,” Caliban muttered.

  The deer gabbled to each other, with many hand gestures. One approached and checked the ropes.

  Then the deer left them face down in the center of the floor. Caliban heard the woosh of hides being moved aside, the thump of hooves…then nothing.

  After a while they had an argument. Actually, they had the same argument, in about three variations, about who was to blame for their current predicament. It was somewhat cathartic, but at the end of it, both men were still tied up and Caliban had sand in his mouth.

  About an hour after that, the music started.

  “What’s that?”

  “Music.”

  “Where’s it coming from?”

  “Outside.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Finally, we agree on something.”

  It wasn’t painful to listen to, it wasn’t bad, it was just…uncomfortable. It got in your head and started pushing things around. Every time the music skipped a beat, Caliban felt his stomach lurch.

  His demon didn’t like it at all. Whenever the pipes rose to a crescendo, the muttering voice became a shriek, as if it was trying to drown out the noise.

  What sort of noise can bother a corpse?

  Brenner fell silent. Caliban worked his legs against the ropes, not because he had any hope of getting out—he didn’t—but because his feet were falling asleep. They’d tied him well, and he didn’t have Slate’s reckless disregard for joints.

  “Can you get out of the ropes?” he asked the assassin.

  Brenner pushed against the ropes and got a bit farther than Caliban had, but not enough to make a difference. “No. I’ve been trying.”

  “Hmm.”

  “I really, really want a cigarette.”

  “I really, really don’t care.”

  They lapsed into silence again. Caliban’s cheek was going numb from being plastered against the dirt, and he wiggled around until he could turn his head. Unfortunately, this meant he was looking at Brenner.

  Dreaming God, if you still have any scrap of kindness for your servant, please don’t let him be my last sight on this earth.

  “What do you think they are?” asked Brenner.

  “What?”

  “The things that captured us.”

  “I’m pretty sure they’re rune.”

  “Rune?”

  “Forest people. What you get when dryads mate with stag men for a few hundred generations, or something like that. I’m not really sure.” He’d seen them in illuminated manuscripts, but never in real life. Up until a few hours ago, he hadn’t thought they existed anywhere but a monk’s feverish imagination.

  “Look about right for that.”

  “Yeah.”

  It was strange, but he hadn’t remembered reading that rune were anything but shy and harmless creatures. Apparently the monks had left that bit out.

  “They seem very angry about something.”

  “That they do.”

  “Looks like this is their village.”

  “Does it?” Caliban wondered if he could gnaw through Brenner’s ropes, or vice versa. It seemed unlikely.

  “There was a whole circle of these little dirt huts. They must dig a hole and then build the walls up around it.”

  “Oh. You’ve got better eyes than I do. Or they were holding you right-side up.”

  “Mm.”

  “Don’t suppose you saw a way out?”

  “No.”

  Having thus exhausted the conversational possibilities, they lay there. Caliban wiggled his fingers. They burned as the blood flowed back into them.

  He wondered what Slate would say if she were here, and was extremely glad she wasn’t.

  Assuming she doesn’t take it in her head to come after us…no. She wants to live now, and chasing after mad deer people isn’t a good start on that. And after that charming little display on your part, I doubt she’d walk across the street to save you, let alone stage a daring rescue on a village full of demented deer people.

  Thank the Dreaming God. We’re going to die, but at least she and Edmund will get away.

  Hopefully.

  It was a tiny, mean emotion, entirely unworthy of a paladin, but he was glad that Brenner was here with him.

  “Caliban?” said Brenner, in a rather different voice than anything Caliban had heard him use before.

  “Yes?”

  “I think I’m losing my mind.”

  “What, only now?”

  “Look up around us and tell me if you see what I see.”

  Caliban opened his eyes.

  Rats—and pieces of rats—were lining the edge of the sunken circle. He craned his neck as far as he could, given his position, and they went all the way around, rank on rank. They were shuffling, one step at a time, in time to the throbbing drums. When they crossed in front of the fire, tiny headless shadows danced across Caliban’s face.

  The drum skipped a beat. The whole line of rats stumbled pitifully, and then the beat picked up again, and they fell back into the dance.

  “Dancing rats. Some of them with no heads,” said Caliban.

  “Oh, thank god. You see it too.”

  “It’s very disturbing.”

  “I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks so.”

  “I wonder if they’re going to eat us.”

  “Always an optimist, our paladin.”

  “Shut up, Brenner.”

  The dance was distressingly hypnotic. Caliban watched it until his eyes burned and he had to look away.

  What could call them here? There can’t be this many rats in the village—there have to be hundreds of them—and you can’t tell me that a rat with no head walked here under its own power!

  Step…step…step…lurch…step…

  It might have been the demon riding his senses, or all the years in the service of another sort of power entirely, but Caliban could feel some kind of force to their dance, something rising off the tiny, wretched bodies.

  If it was magic, it was no kind he understood, and yet there was definitely something there.

  I’m not imagining things. The demon feels it too.

  Every time the drum paused, it clenched like a fist.

  Nghaaaaaakalikalaakkalaakngggaaaaah!

  Shut up, demon. I don’t think we want to be noticed right now.

  Ngha ngha…

  Step…lurch…step…step…

  The power was driving the dance, but the dance was feeding the power. Caliban didn’t know how much energy it took to make a dead rat dance—it didn’t come up much at the temple—but all those bodies dancing together were doing something.

  Like water through a millwheel. Somehow they’re getting more out than they’re putting in.

  That shouldn’t be possible.

  Caliban, however, took the view that when something impossible was going on, it was best to deal with it as you found it, and not stand around claiming it wasn’t happening.

  Brenner jackknifed against his ropes. “Can’t you do something?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, something paladin-y!”

  Caliban smiled sourly. “Sure, I can take your confes
sion and grant you absolution so you die with a clean conscience.”

  “Very funny.”

  “I wasn’t joking.”

  Step…step…step…lurch…step…

  “I’m not confessing anything to you.”

  “Suit yourself.” He wasn’t entirely sure he could have done it anyway—the Dreaming God had broad definitions of what constituted confession, but Caliban really didn’t want to die listening to a recitation of the assassin’s sins.

  The door to the earthlodge opened.

  Rune filed in behind the rats. Foreshortened as his view was, Caliban could only see their faces and the heavy antlers of the males, rising like winter trees above their brows. Firelight painted lurid orange across their green cheekbones.

  After a moment, he realized that they were moving in time to the music as well. They were not as awkward as the rats—they froze, ears upswept, at the missed beats, instead of stumbling—but it was the same dance.

  Whatever’s got the rats has them, too.

  “Brenner?”

  “Yeah?”

  “If you’ve got a knife stashed anywhere, this might be a good time.”

  “I don’t. If I did, I’d have used it by now.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Might even have cut you loose, too.”

  “You’re too kind.”

  One of the rune, a stag-man taller than Caliban, stepped down into the circle. The rats parted before him then danced back together to fill the space.

  The rune lifted a knife. His antlers were wrapped with beads. Black and white feathers and bits of bone swung as he knelt down behind the knight.

  Dreaming God, I commend my soul into your hands, assuming you still want it—

  The ropes between his feet were cut. Caliban sagged, partially from relief and partially from the scream of blood back into tormented muscles.

  A surprised grunt next to him indicated that Brenner was receiving the same treatment. Then a heavy hand was lifting him up, and Caliban found himself on his knees, the assassin beside him. Their hands were still tied behind them, but just to sit up was an excruciating relief.

  The stag-man stood behind them, the knife still in his hand. Caliban looked over his shoulder and saw that alone among the rune, the knife-bearer was not moving in time to the music.