Beasts of the Walking City

by Del Law

  He shrugs, as if to say well, here we go.

  “This is going to get rough,” I shout, leaning over to Capone. He nods and grips the edge of his seat with white knuckles.

  A blast of tracer fire speeds past us from the Tel Kharan ship and another bursts below us, rocking the podship. The Kruk pilot bellows, cranks the music higher and lets loose green gas from the sacs under its arms. His hands fly across the controls.

  We plunge back down at the city, level out, spin through a gap between some taller buildings and then swing about and drop into the street. The Tel Kharan ship passes over us, going too fast to stop. Capone leans over and vomits onto the floor, and then Kruk lift us into the air again in the Tel Kharan’s wake.

  The Tel Kharan ship flies at us again, and the Kruk whips us around to face it. He throws more power to the engines and charges at the other podship, despite Ercan’s shouts to do exactly the opposite. Both the Kruks are howling now from all of their heads and the nurse Kruk is pumping her fist in the air to the music, and Ercan, Capone and I are coughing and struggling to breath from the gas.

  As the two ships close I can see the petrified looks on the faces of all of the mages in the external netting before the Tel Kharan pilot breaks away, pulls down and to the right and clips an old iron gargoyle off a roof as we shoot past them.

  It goes down hard into a big parking lot.

  The Kruk swings around in a long circle to come back at them, but I reach forward and put my hand on his hindquarters. He looks at me with wild eyes, and I shake my head. “There,” I shout, pointing at the far Residential section, this one with tall houses topped with steeply peaked and gabled roofs. “I want to take them out, too, but we’ve got to get there!”

  The Kruk blinks, shakes himself in frustration. But then he nods.

  • • •

  We put down in a small square, tiled in old blue slate and surrounded by older homes. A fountain still sputters water erratically from the mouth in the shape of a giant goat’s head.

  Councilor Ghat is there to meet us. She’s a dark-skinned older human, much like an older Kjat, with long white hair, bright violet eyes, and she’s got the commanding presence of the general she had been once, before going into politics. She wears a grohver rider’s thick enameled armor and as we climb out of the ship her grip on my arm is firm and resolute, a warrior’s grip.

  “Ercan Kerul. Blackwell. A beautiful ship you have there! You might not remember me, Hulgliev, but I certainly remember pulling you out of the mangroves one night some years back. You’re not easy to forget.” The knife at her chest was an old one, battered and scarred about the hilt from a lot of use. The armor she wears does nothing to cover a thick white scar that crosses her throat from side to side.

  “I was grateful for that ride,” I say, grinning. “It would have been a long walk home.”

  “So it would have.” She smiles. “I was disappointed to hear you’d gone over to that fat, flaming witch, Blackwell. Glad to learn that not everything I hear is true.”

  I nod, flattered.

  “Councilor Ghat,” Ercan says. “Thanks for meeting with us.”

  “Please, Ercan. You know any Family support…” She holds up a hand as Ercan opens his mouth, “…even if it’s unofficial support is a godssend for us.” She led us into one of the smaller houses on the square. The smaller Kruk helps Capone along. He’s pale and still working to get his balance back. Men and women, human and Kruk and a white Halfromen throw netting over the ship to camouflage it. A minute later, the Tel Kharan ship passes high overhead but doesn’t slow.

  Ghat pulls out a chair for herself and sits, gesturing for us to do the same. The rough table here is covered with city maps, and a slender human woman with pale hair and eyes the same color as Ghat’s is making notes on them. They’re troop positions, locations of the Akarii—as I’d guessed, it looks like they hold the Residence, the Alabaster Tower, and the Chambers, but I'm surprised to see they have pulled back from the Warrens and are holding at Hechinger’s Bridge.

  Ghat puts her heavy, booted feet up on the table and pushes back in her chair. “So tell me, oh Mr. Kerul. Why is your family holding back? Where are the rest of your troops? You all made a pledge some years ago, if my memory still serves me. In fact, I think I signed the motion next to Family Chair Abeloc himself, the old lecher, just before he died.”

  Ercan nods. Someone hands him tea and he sips at it. “Kerul is considering its move, Councilor. I wish I could say I had better news. I can say that Chair Shoi wishes to help you, but the senior members of the Families feel there are many factors to discuss.”

  “As ever.” Councilor Ghat’s violet eyes glitter fiercely. “Kerul considers a great deal. But will it act is what I want to know! And when! All of us know that it’s only a matter of time until Nadrune gets the Old City under control, and then she’s going to move into the main Residential areas. You tell old Donhovan to get off his fat ass and do something for us for a change. That mansion of his up there in the mountains is going to get pretty chilly if he has to get his power feeds all the way from Tilkasnioc. Yours too, Ercan.”

  Ercan tries unsuccessfully to suppress a grin. I’m guessing Donhovan’s ass was probably pretty fat. “I’m not waiting, Councilor. My own forces are moving in now, and the first of them will be here within three days. My associates here also have some men we can use in the next several hours. It’s not a lot, but we think they can make a big difference. I wanted to work with you to figure out the best way to deploy them.”

  The floor lurches under us as we speak, lifting up and sideways. Ercan and Capone grab ahold of the edge of the table, but Ghat just reaches out and catches her tea before it slides off the table. She runs her fingers through her hair. “How are your men getting into the city?”

  I reach over and point to a spot on the map. “It’s kind of a long story, but I can get them to here. They’ll be well armed with some weapons the Tel Kharan aren’t used to.”

  Ghat studies me shrewdly. “Earth weapons?”

  I nod. Capone leans forward. “We got tommy guns, iron pineapples that will knock them on their ass, doll.”

  Ghat looks at Capone quizzically, but nods. “How many men?”

  “I got say thirty guys who can take a hit, real made guys, see? They know what they’re doin and they will go for the jugular. Maybe twenty more guys that got the right attitude and know how to pull a trigger and won’t fuck up too bad. This other gang won’t know what hit em.”

  “A small force could make a difference, if they're strong,” Ghat says. The floor lurches again and my stomach drops, and it feels like we’re rising up some in the air. A mug slides off the table and shatters on the floor. Then the movement stops.

  I think I know what’s going on, and it looks like Ercan does too. Capone is looking around trying to figure it out.

  “It’s working?” Ercan says.

  Ghat looks at the woman who was making notes on the map, who touches her fingers to her knife. The woman nods. “Yes,” Ghat says. “It’s going to take more time, though. Two of the other districts, the ones that are organized enough, are trying the same thing.”

  “Tryin what, Dollface” Capone says. “You guys make your own earthquakes or somethin?”

  “To move the city,” I say. “To get it to walk.”

  Ghat nods, looking at Capone curiously. “Do you have this on Earth? Most of Tamaranth was formed a few hundred years ago when seven of the largest walking cities of the time settled down here. My district is one of them. We’ve got mages working now to see if we can get the old mechanisms running again, and an old sage who says she knows how it all worked.”

  Capone sits back in his seat, his eyes wide. “Sheesh,” he says, shaking his head. “I got a lot to learn.”

  Ercan leans forward. “That’ll help you evacuate?” he says.

  Ghat shakes her head. “That’s what the other districts are thinking.”

  “But you’re not?”

&nbs
p; “We’re evacuating anyone who doesn’t want to come along now, through the tunnels before they flood. This area is thick with them, and while most of them run toward the Bane and the Lie, there are some that head off into the outskirts. But I’m going to park this district right in the mud at the mouth of the fucking lagoon, Ercan. Cut off that fleet from getting in and out, and Nadrune will have to move in and out by podship alone. She doesn’t have a lot of those, so it’ll slow down her next wave. We keep her out at sea until we can get more help. Maybe Kerul will make up it’s mind by then? Or maybe the Fjilosh will finally answer my calls?

  "Either way, it hamstrings her for awhile and if nothing else it’ll really piss her off. If she gets my city in the end, she’s going to have to pay a lot for it.”

  “Nadrune’s whole city can ride the lei,” I say. “Can’t she get past you?”

  Ghat shakes her head. “She can lift off, but she can’t put down anywhere, and a city-ship that big will need to put down every couple of days. It’s not a flying city, and the Akarii don’t build those ships to sit on land. The lagoon isn’t deep enough. And she wouldn’t get high enough to get over me either, I don’t think.”

  “She’ll have to go through you.”

  “She’ll have to try. I’m calling in all of the mages I can get, and what’s left of the City Guard and the grohvers will be with me. We might get some of the old district weaponry online, too.”

  She grins, as the floor lurches again. “We’ll take the fight right down Nadrune’s hot throat. Now what I could use is for you to keep the Tel Kharan busy while we’re getting out there. If you can hit the Residence, draw their fire, keep them busy enough so they don’t get in the way of us getting out there? That’d make a big difference. We’re going to be pretty vulnerable until we’re in place, and it won’t take her long to figure out what we’re up to.

  "I need her looking at you, not us for a little while.”

  I look at Ercan and Capone. Capone nods. “I think we can help with that,” I say.

  And of course, as Ercan knows, I’ve got my own reasons for wanting to get closer to the Residence, too.

  33.

  A quick podship trip later and I’m leading Capone back through the corpse road behind the abandoned noodle shop. It takes a little time to find the right path to the San Francisco opening, and I have to dial back from the opening I’m normally used to taking to see Sartosh to the right time and place. It’s night, and I make my fur dark so I’m not the first thing his men all see when we step out of the alley.

  Three large trucks from the Lexington Hotel, Chicago, are idling in the street when we emerge. A menacing guy with a sweaty round face and white fedora steps out of the passenger’s side of the first one. He’s got his hand inside the front of his jacket. “Well, well,” he says. “Mr. Alphonse Brown. I couldn’t tell if Easy Eddie was fucking with us or not.”

  “Frankie,” Capone says. “Thanks for coming.” Frank Gallucio was Capone’s bodyguard for awhile. He was also the guy who gave him those scars on his face, but that’s another story.

  “How the hell did you get off the rock, Al? I couldn’t believe it when he told me. And fucking San Francisco?”

  “I still got my ways, pally,” Capone says, patting him on the back. Frankie doesn’t look like he likes getting patted on the back. “Look, there’s not a lot of time. I kinda want to talk to the boys before we get started, see? We got a big job ahead of us here.”

  Frankie studies Capone, evaluating him.

  He seems to come to some decision, nods his head and then turns back to the trucks. He makes a circling motion with a finger in the air, and the doors on the back of the trucks slide up. Guys in suits and fedoras pour out into the street, somewhere between forty and fifty of them. Though many of them look pretty tired, like they just travelled halfway across the country without much sleep, I’m happy to see they’re all pretty heavily armed. Al gathers them all in the street.

  I keep my hand on Semper’s knife, just in case.

  “What I got to tell you, you are not going to believe,” he says. “We are goin somewhere you guys have never before been to, and we are gonna do some stuff that you have never done before. And we’re going to make a lot of fuckin money in the process.”

  Capone’s already a much different person from the one I pulled out of the cell. His eyes are focusing more clearly. His speech isn’t slurring. And like Ercan, he’s a great speaker—charismatic and compelling. I can tell he’s used to spending time in front of reporters and cameras, and then he tells them they’re all going to step into a trash can and come out in another world. A place where cities can walk and airplanes don’t have propellers and where they have Beasts that can talk and travel through time. The men start to look at each other and grumble. “These guys throw lighting around like you would not believe,” Capone says. “My guy there says they can’t stand up to a bullet, but we’re gonna need to hit hard and fast, cause they have a lot of firepower behind em anyways.”

  Frankie has been frowning for a few minutes. He looks over the grumbling men, and then walks up to whisper in Capone’s ear.

  “Yes, Frankie, I am feelin ok. Very ok, actually.”

  Frankie’s frown etches itself deeper into his face. “Do they got flyin saucers there, too?” one of the men calls out from the back of the group.

  “And little green men?” says another. “I hear those guys can be a real bitch.”

  “How about King Kong, they got him too?”

  The men start to talk among themselves. Frankie throws up his hands and says “Al, you can’t really expect these guys to buy this stuff, can you? I mean, we all heard from Mary you ain’t been doin too good in there. That rock is a hard fuckin place, we get that. Maybe you need some rest since you just got out and all.”

  Frankie’s got his hand inside his jacket again.

  Capone looks over to where I’m standing and nods.

  I step out of the shadows then, pigment back to normal, and move over to stand next to Al.

  I draw Semper’s knife and tap into San Francisco's fat leiline here and throw up a ward around all of us and the trucks too, one of the more kaleidoscopic ones that shimmers and crackles crimson and gold.

  Then I give them all a big, toothy smile.

  “Yes, Frankie” Capone says. “Yes, I do expect you to buy this stuff.

  "I expect you to be buyin it hook, line and goddamn sinker.”

  34.

  I have to stretch out the opening to the corpse road to get the trucks through. If that sounds easy to you, then I invite you to try it sometime, but I manage. I bring them through a truck at a time, and we pick up a few mages who were hunkered down behind the noodle shop, waiting for us. The men are all disoriented, and it will take them awhile to adjust; I'm told it's like really bad jetlag the first time. They’re standing in the streets and staring around at what I’m sure looks bizarre to them—the strange, oblong shapes of even the basic Tamaranth buildings, the many moons in the sky, the explosions and magefire down near the residence. The air is thick and hot and smells like the lagoon. A Tel Kharan podship flashes over us, and the men all scatter like chickens do when a hawk passes over. I hear Frankie cursing over and over again to himself as he stares around him, mopping his face with a fancy spotted handkerchief.

  We wait for the call from Ercan, and get the trucks ready by cutting small openings along the sides so the men can see, and shoot, out. The tide’s been going back out for a while now and the water in the streets is only a few inches deep, and while we’re watching it continues to drain.

  Before long, I can feel something up through my feet. It feels like explosions far off, but it’s too regular for that, and it’s getting louder really fast. The buildings start to shake, and the sign falls off the noodle house. The men look around with wide eyes, and Capone looks over at me. I nod.

  “That’s probably it,” I say. “Get everyone into the trucks.”

  My knife chimes. “Get ready,
” Ercan sends.

  He’s not kidding, because just then, with a great echoing groan, Ghat’s entire Seventh District steps right over us then, blocking out the sky. One of the great feet crushes what had been an old bookstore across the street. Entire buildings and vehicles are falling off the side of it as it goes. Water gushes down from broken water pipes and sewers. As it passes over, I can see the great girders holding it all together straining from the immense weight of it all, and places around the working legs where massive gears spin, though several of the legs are dragging.

  Aether crackles around the underside of it like lightning in a storm cloud. Dirt and black bricks and pieces of slate rain all down around us like hail. A big house explodes when it hits the street, and flying glass slices through the noodle shop and other shops on either side of the boulevard. We all duck for cover.

  I shake my head. I’d seen wild cities walking way out in the northern grasslands, but never up this close. Imagine a big block of New York City standing up on say twenty or so legs and walking off? It’s not so different.

  “Thanks for the warning,” I send back, as part of a pneumatic train hits off to my left.

  But my face cracks into a grin. I can’t help it—after all this waiting, my pulse is racing at the chance to actually do something useful.

  The drivers start up and I climb onto the step by the driver’s side of the first truck, and we speed through the streets toward the Residence. I’ve got my nose in the air, my tongue out—nothing else smells like the Old City, even when it’s under attack—and for some reason that’s cracking the driver of the truck up, but I cut him some slack. He’s only been in my world for a few hours so what does he know.

  The mages bring up wards around the trucks and we swing around into one of the long boulevards. We can see the shimmering wards around the Residence at the far end of it. My truck and the second truck swerve into alleys on opposite sides of the boulevard, and the third truck speeds ahead of us. It races up to the Residence and turns, and all the men inside the back open fire.