by Stephen Hunt
Jeanne re-emerged from the woods and shook her head at her father. 'Just the slugs, this time. No sign of any slats or slaves coming to pick up their shit.'
'I didn't sense it,' said Oliver. 'It was as if-'
'They lack even the wit of cattle,' said Keyspierre, 'but they are creatures of the Army of Shadows, nevertheless. If you stand in one's way it will attempt to consume you, but they are so insentient that you can walk up behind one and freely put a torch to it – then their greasy skin burns like lamp oil. Usually, we'd set fire to the whole filthy pack of them, but the slats are aware when we kill them and come calling to see who has been making mischief. The beasts are living mills, organic factories churning out the building blocks of the Army of Shadows' machines and cities. Teams at the Institute des Luminaires have been studying the creatures' excretions when we have managed to steal them, but we have so far divined little of the parts' purpose or secrets. We are like monkeys cracking open a fine watch and marvelling blindly at the cogs and gears as we shake them out onto the dirt.'
'It's not the parts that are squeezed from their arses that I'd be mortal worried about,' wheezed the commodore, pointing to the entrance of the old abandoned mine in the hills. 'If they're inside the hills making a feast of them, they might be inside the mine. It could be the parts to Timlar Preston's great beast of a cannon they're putting on their supper menu.'
Oliver seemed hypnotized by the sight. Any campaigning force lived off the land while it fought, but Quatershift wasn't being looted, it was being infested, the landscape remade as a hell by the Army of Shadows. The words of the ancient warrior woman who had appeared like a ghost before him drifted back to mind. Even together, the two of you are not enough to defeat that which you will face. Molly should have been here with them, not back in Jackals; she could have put this in one of her books.
Jeanne motioned forward the shiftie troops holding the train of mules. 'Let's scoop the cannon parts up. Keep your eyes open for slats, compatriot Jackelians, and try not to get killed inside the mine. I won't be able to watch your backs so well when I'm digging.'
CHAPTER SEVEN
Molly stepped out of the mail coach, the only passenger to alight, and looked around. Halfshire was one of the kingdom's last ancient border counties before the uplands began in earnest and there wasn't much to its acres except for pine forests and isolated farms nestled in the shadows of crags like Mount Highhorn. She absently raised a hand to stroke the flank of one of the four midnight-black mares tethered to her coach; the horse she was touching was looking suspiciously down at the steamman trailing up the path towards them.
'I thought you might arrive via the canal,' Coppertracks called out.
'It's hard to get a berth on any narrowboat, now,' said Molly. 'Even carrying full parliamentary papers. With the merchant marine grounded, every mill owner and shopkeeper from Hundred Locks to Calgness is shipping their goods by the waterways. Prices have gone through the roof.'
'Are things that bad?' asked Coppertracks.
Molly nodded her head back to the mail coach's escort. A troop of Benzari Lancers, stocky mountain people from the hinterland south of the Kingdom of Jackals. Hardy little warriors who competed fiercely for the few vacant places in the Royal Benzari Regiment each year. Ferociously loyal to their regiment's oath and deadly with the curved blades hanging from their black breeches.
'That's who parliament are trusting to keep open the Great Middlesteel Road. There hasn't been a desertion from the Benzari Regiment since they were formed.'
'Have you heard any news of Oliver and the commodore?' asked Coppertracks.
'No, but things are turning to the worse in Quatershift. The news sheets are full of how the shifties sent their Third and Seventh Brigade to the north and both forces just vanished without a trace. Sixty thousand men gone, the country's been split in two by the Army of Shadows.'
Coppertracks raised an iron hand towards the sprawl of makeshift barracks; manufactories and buildings that had been raised inside the forest clearings, hidden from the sight of whatever eyes the Army of Shadows might have high in the sky by green netting hung between the trees. 'We only have a handful of the experts on Preston's list, and without those parts buried in his mine we'll have to attempt to mill the cannon components ourselves. We can do that, but it's time we don't have-'
Molly waved her hands to quieten down the nervous steamman. If she knew Coppertracks, he had been working day and night without a rest. He was pushing himself to the point of exhaustion to complete the massive cannon. 'Let's trust the commodore knows the old smuggling routes out of Quatershift as well as he boasted he did.' Molly glanced up at Mount Highhorn, its grassy slopes bare except for crimson fingers of light from their strange new red moon. 'I can't see supports for the cannon being installed?'
'This isn't one of your celestial fiction novels, Molly softbody. The cannon will not tower up the side of that mountain. It's flat.'
'Flat?'
Coppertracks pointed to the heart of the forest below. It was hard to tell where the ancient forest began and the new canopy of camouflage netting ended. 'It resembles a seashell, a spiral winding around itself. There has never been a cannon like it before. Timlar Preston is one of your people's greatest minds. During the Two-Year War he was designing his wave-front cannon to be hidden inside a mountain, far from the reach of airship bombs. We, unfortunately, don't have the time to excavate the mountain here, so instead we're lying the spiral gun's barrelling down across the forest floor. Yes, the fellow is truly a genius.'
'I think Timlar had a little help,' said Molly.
Poor, dead Kyorin. He should have been alive to see his desperate scheme bear fruit. They began walking down the path to the forest camp, Molly's coach and escort turning back along the trail. Up above the slope's melting snow stood the honeyed stone of a squat round Martello fort, a rusting airship tower rising behind its walls. The fort was manned with redcoats now, but the airship dock hadn't seen any traffic for a long while. The fort had no doubt been abandoned long before the camp was established, a relic of the ancient Jackelian civil war reoccupied by rough circumstance.
The camp might be hiding from view, but as Molly walked closer to the trees she could hear the hammering of steel and the hiss of gas torches. 'Has Duncan got over his disappointment?'
'He works as hard as any other welder or smelter in the camp. He may not admit it to himself, but he's clearly more usefully deployed here than fighting with the regiments,' said Coppertracks. 'He and Timlar Preston share their passion for rockets together; that is a small consolation. I think it is Purity we must worry about.'
'People here don't suspect…?'
'No, the false citizen code we acquired for her is solid. And as a seamstress for the cannon's rubber lining she is as accomplished as any of the factory children that have been drafted in here. But Purity is changing. She is so possessed by the Loa that it is now impossible to see where she begins and that which rides her ends. The other softbodies here can sense the difference. They don't know what it is, but they feel it all the same.'
Molly sighed, looking up at the evil new moon of the comet in the sky, before entering the cool, shadowed cathedral of the forest. 'Everything's changing, old steamer. And not for the better. We just have to hold it all together long enough for this cannon to be completed.'
'I tossed the cogs last night,' said Coppertracks, 'to read the auguries of our project in the trail of Gear-gi-ju.'
'And what did you see revealed?'
'The single skein,' said Coppertracks. 'The non-duplicated circuit. This project is both our peoples' last hope of survival. Without its success the race of man and the people of the metal will be exterminated by this Army of Shadows.'
'No pressure on us, then,' said Molly. Damn Kyorin. The murdered slave was right and the final vision the Hexmachina had sent to Molly had been right – and she would so much rather they'd both been mistaken about everything.
'I fear for the timely com
pletion of the project,' said Coppertracks. 'If Oliver and the commodore fail to bring back those components from Quatershift; if my people fail to deliver what we need to see you safely to Kaliban… so many chances to fail, and there are other problems here, problems of our own making.'
Molly raised an eyebrow.
'The evening's project review meeting is about to begin. Come. See for yourself…'
Coppertracks led Molly under the canopy of trees, dappled shadows falling across an entire town that been raised in miniature here, hidden in the lee of Mount Highhorn. Raised on her word and that of the escaped slave still haunting her memories. Molly suddenly felt very small, a vessel for something so large that it overwhelmed her humanity. All that scale, pitted against a tiny voice of doubt that was wholly her own: what if I'm wrong? What if Kyorin was mistaken, or just a dupe of the Army of Shadows, released to sow confusion and distract the kingdom from the fight for life in the defence of its homeland? Just who – or what – were they building this peculiar cannon for?
The building Coppertracks led Molly to had been constructed so recently she could smell the freshly logged pine. When the steamman opened the door and she saw who was arguing around the table inside, she gasped with shock. 'What is he doing here?'
Coppertracks indicated a vacant chair and the empty space next to it for him to tractor up to the table. Opposite, a group of scientists sat with Lord Rooksby at their head. Rooksby looked angrily at Molly – her assistance to Coppertracks at the Royal Society presentation obviously not forgotten.
Coppertracks tuned his voicebox to a whisper. 'You know how parliament likes to work. Every opinion on a project as important as this one has to be balanced by an intellectual counterweight so all views can be considered.'
'We're not a bloody parliamentary committee,' hissed Molly, taking her seat. 'We have a job of work to do here.'
A tall man with long black sideburns nodded at her from the head of the table. The camp commander, by the look of the worry lines creasing his forehead. 'I see that we have our mission's progenitor with us now. I am Colonel Buller, of the First Corps of Engineers, the lucky soul the House of Guardians have charged with ensuring the success of this undertaking. I don't suppose you bring with you the parts we have been promised, damson?'
'I have a crate or two that might come in useful,' said Molly. And she did. There was hardly a theatrical supplier in Middlesteel that she hadn't visited in her efforts to craft the disguise she was planning to use on Kaliban. Blue skin dye and white robes to match the natives' clothing – identical to garments glimpsed in the dreams that assailed her now. Kyorin's dreams. 'But not the components for the cannon. They're in the process of being secured from our new allies out in Quatershift,' said Molly.'
'But secured to what end, Damson Templar?' asked Lord Rooksby. 'This entire project is misconceived. It is clear the Army of Shadows hails from one of the unexplored continents of our opposite hemisphere. The very idea that they have travelled here from one of the neighbouring celestial spheres is an arrant nonsense. We should mount this longrange artillery piece we are constructing on a turntable so that we can direct its fire towards the occupied provinces of Catosia and Quatershift. At least then we shall derive some utility from it beyond fanning the flames of your ridiculous new fashion in novels.'
'I assure you, my Lord Commercial, the Army of Shadows is far from fictional.' Molly looked down the length of the table. 'Where is Timlar Preston?'
'He seems to be of a rather nervous disposition,' said Colonel Buller. 'I have excused him his attendance at our meetings to benefit his health.'
The colonel and Molly exchanged glances. And the excusal, no doubt, did wonders for the productivity of the real work they were doing here.
'I have been thinking,' piped up a small narrow-faced man. Where had Molly seen him before? Then it came to her. The literary talk her agent had organized for her to attend last year at one of the theatres in Douglas Lane – he had been one of the other writers in attendance, riding her coattails on the fad for celestial fiction. No wonder Rooksby was chafing. Along with the Royal Society, parliament had drafted in the other obvious advisors to the threat posed by the Army of Shadows… celestial fiction authors. 'We know that the Army of Shadows originates from the polar wastes. Perhaps they don't come from the outer darks, but the inner ones! They might have travelled up a tunnel from the centre of the Earth. There are many ancient legends that suggest there is the entrance to a cavern system at the pole that leads to the centre of our world. In which case it is not a cannon we should be constructing here, but a vast drilling machine. One capable of burrowing into the heart of the invader's empire of the inner core!'
Molly rolled her eyes in frustration, noting the wave of blue energy circling lazily around inside Coppertracks' crystal skull at a uniform rate. He was bored, but at least he was diverting his intelligence to his mu-bodies scattered around the camp and continuing some meaningful work through his drones. She, meanwhile, was trapped here in this debating society of idiots and loons.
Duncan watched Purity peer down the tree-shaded length of the canal. The Halfshire Navigation's passage through Highhorn Forest was one of the main reasons why parliament had chosen to site the camp so close to the isolated lumber mill they had built their facilities around.
'Will they be with the canal boats?' asked Purity.
Duncan Connor scratched his stubble. 'I've been told that both Oliver and the commodore are safe.'
Duncan didn't say that they wouldn't be receiving the long-awaited parts from Quatershift now if their two friends hadn't made it back safely from the voyage. Large shire horses pulling flatbed carts were arriving to receive the cargo, Timlar Preston himself anxiously waiting with the project's engineers to see if all of his components had been recovered and transported back without damage.
'I can show Jared the new sabre strikes you've taught me. Do you think he'll be pleased?'
'Aye, that he will.' Duncan raised a smile.
Purity glanced over to the wagon Duncan had driven up to the edge of the canal, the familiar oblong of his battered travel case stowed under a pinewood seat. 'You're not planning to leave us to try taking the recruiting party's coin again?'
'I've spent too long here, now,' said Duncan. 'Helping build this bonnie-looking cannon for parliament. At the very least I want to see if it actually works.'
'It'll work,' said Purity. 'Kyorin wouldn't have asked Timlar to help us build it if it wasn't going to work.'
'Yes, there is that.'
'Soon I'll see Kyorin's home, probably meet the friends of his he told me about when we were on the run in Middlesteel. He said he'd left a wife up there.'
Duncan nodded. There was about as much chance that he, Molly, or any of them would allow Purity Drake inside the cannon as they were likely to load up the First Guardian himself and blast him off towards Kaliban.
A murmur of anticipation passed around the crowd at the canal docks as the first narrowboat rounded the corner into view, her small steam engine driving a single rear-mounted paddle as she pushed a spear of smoke up through the pine forest's canopy. The lead craft was followed by another long narrowboat, then another, a low foldable wooden roof in front of each cabin concealing the cargo that had been procured from Jackals' neighbour to the east. More and more narrowboats turned the curve and hove into view, a veritable armada, and in the lead boat waiting on the cabin step stood the familiar figures of Commodore Black and Oliver Brooks.
Pulling into the lumberyard's mooring channel the lead craft slowed to a drift and the commodore jumped onto the ground to tie up the narrowboat. Oliver stepped out behind him and headed over to Timlar Preston.
'We were getting worried you wouldn't turn up,' called Duncan to the commodore, leading his horse and cart backwards towards the channel.
'And you would have been a lot more worried if you had but known what we were facing out in Quatershift,' said the commodore, his breath momentarily departing as Purity wal
loped into him. 'But I shouldn't speak of such things in front of you, Purity. Your nights' dreams are troubled enough without me adding to your imaginings.'
'I want to hear the truth as well,' said Purity. 'Those slats that killed Kyorin, there's more of them in Quatershift?'
'A mortal terrible host of them,' said the commodore. 'Crawling all over the north. We were lucky we had that wicked lad Oliver Brooks riding with us, for it was only his dark senses that helped us navigate across the shiftie provinces without attracting the Army of Shadows' attention.'
Duncan patted his cart's flatbed. 'You found the components the shifties had buried?'
'Greased up inside crates at the bottom of Timlar's abandoned mine, just where he said they'd be. And that was as near as we came to failing in our task. There were still ores in that mine and the Army of Shadows has a terrible plague of monstrous black slugs the size of houses sliding over the conquered provinces of Quatershift, eating anything and everything in their path and shitting out a trail of machinery in their wake for their slaves to collect. They were burrowing into the side of the hills where our mine stood like a Circlist vicar making merry with a teacake. If we had arrived a day later with our train of mules, I dare say we would have found the hills and the mine consumed, and Timlar's cannon parts a tasty dessert to round it out for them.'
