That fight was for Sen. This was Awa Babo's role and only moments remained. The rest fell to Craley.
The Rot hammered further at the Ator that held Daveron, but he drove it back with a heavy spray of buckshot fired from multi-cannon mouths. It beat at his Gnomic war-riders around Gellick, but he turned his Gnomics up to burn it away with projectile revelatory fire. It swept in toward the leaning tower, attempting to crush Mare a second time, but another Aigle swept a diamante cutting beam through the sky and eviscerated it, breaking its fall on its hull.
Through the eyes of his Gnomics already working on Mare at the tower top he watched the renewed surge of power skip and crackle, arcing jerkily to the mountain. There the fiery giant of the Saint flickered in and out of existence, trying to scythe through the Rot with silver spikes as long as an Aigle deck, and failing.
Back across the city, the Rot buckled upward as a vast Drazi fist shot up from Grammaton Square and tore its stomach open. It convulsed and tried to yank away, tearing at the grapnels hooked into its middle. Awa Babo watched with disgust and bated breath as one by one they plucked free.
The Rot bunched, squeezed, and tried to leap away, but failed.
Awa Babo felt the knots of Seem/Sharachus far above hold, as numberless spider threads in that massive web held. If it weren't for that yoke it would have already escaped, but now it couldn't escape, so instead it turned its frenzied attention on the Saint.
It lashed the Saint with its tongues, and fastened on to his arm. It opened its bloody black throat to bite down, and buffeted by irregular flows on the veil, the Saint didn't stand a chance.
ALAM
Craley sprinted in the wake of the Balast charge, leaping over shredded bastion fort walls, bloodstains, and patches of sprinkled gunpowder. Tearing along Gilungel Bridge before Awa Babo's Ators arrived, she saw there were no bodies left; all of them had been absorbed into the Drazi horde. By the end she saw Daveron lying huddled to the side and ran on, even as the first lines of a black rain sliced down and soaked her through, and the thunder of raging tongues boomed nearby.
Somewhere ahead was Mare, streaking like lightning up to the Aigle. In any moment the palace would revolve just long enough to admit her through, and Craley had to be right on her heels.
Across the bridge she found an Adjunc waiting for her, molded by Lord Quill's Drazi into a creature with a deep broad back. She'd never seen one before, hadn't even been in the city since she was an infant, but she was loving every second. Rich experiences were everywhere, the wildest ride of her life, filling out the gaps left by a lifetime of imagining the world from dry old books.
"For the Saint!" she cried, and leaped upon the Adjunc. It took off at an instant gallop, its many legs beating on the road and hammering her thighs with its piston-like shoulders. Clinging to the lumpen jut of its upright torso, up close to the all-seeing chemical eyes in its head, she felt the sense of Lord Quill pulsing through it.
Hurry, Quill's voice said. Hurry, Craley.
The beast tore by shattered buildings and burning shells. Clumps of Indurans and Balasts fighting Molemen flew by on either side. She overtook the back half of Feyon and Mare's mixed-caste army and blasted through to the Balast tide at the lead, closing now on Mare herself at the front. She could see Mare standing in her saddle and screaming out the Saint's name into the rain.
Craley galloped past her too, storming across the Aigle palace's courtyard and bowling through the last few Adjunc on the entrance ramp just as the great Aigle began its revolve, and dived.
There was no time, only brilliant streaking moments as she leapt from the flying Adjunc's back, through, and in.
She hit the inner wall hard on her shoulder and fell, leaving her Adjunc half-way crushed behind her. The metal-walled hall went dark and filled with the wounded beast's screaming as its lower body was smeared away through the mechanism.
Craley sprang to her feet with spikes drawn, then ran into the Aigle's corridors, down paths she'd marked out for years in schematic plans of Mjolnir making, headed for the gear chamber at the Aigle's center, where even now the Spindle Alam would be standing with a ratchet in his hand as the palace spun, waiting for the Molemen to descend.
* * *
The simplest path, his father had always said.
Alam clung to a slow-turning screwpole while the Aigle jolted violently, wheeling swiftly as it once had to fire ballistae at enemies in the Yoked Empire's dust. He could only hope it was enough, and Mare would reach the entrance in time before the Molemen could revert it. There would be moments only.
The grinding ceased briefly when the dial locked on the King's tower, and Alam threw the lever back to halt the revolve. His heart thumped in his chest and he pulled out his ratchet, praying it would be enough. This was for his father, and for Sen, and for them all. This was to make them proud.
A pair of red-suited Molemen ran through the entrance, sharp halberds pointed his way. He let out a cry and rushed to meet them, ratchet held high. With one long arm he rolled the halberd of the first and struck him in the temple with the ratchet, even as the second thrust at his belly. Alam braced for the impact that would core him through the middle, but the blow never came.
A misericorde spike from nowhere deflected it to the side. Alam's momentum carried him into a fall onto the Moleman he'd just struck, but he barely noticed as his shoulder crunched into the floor, because there was something unbelievable happening beside him.
An Appomatox decked out in silver armor stood over the sighing body of the second Moleman, wielding twin spikes with an ease and grace that Alam had only ever seen once before, in Sen himself.
This figure looked down at Alam and winked. It was a female, and a bizarrely pretty one at that.
"Get up and help if you like," she said.
A second later the gear chamber was overrun. Alam barely had time to stand before a wailing crush of Adjunc burst through the hall's tight aperture doorway and flung themselves toward him.
The Appomatox moved like liquid silver, like gears in fluid, unfathomable motion, spinning under a blow, curling up through the four clashing limbs of the first Adjunc's chest undercarriage and stabbing her spikes in and out of it three, four times between the ribs, as fast and smooth as if they were pins in a piece of soft cheese.
Alam stared open-mouthed as the beast dropped flat to the floor, all motion stilled, even as two more rounded in from the sides. Adjunc were next to impossible to kill, and she'd done it in seconds, without taking a single scratch. While he was still reeling, the Appomatox threw one spike which impaled one of the other Adjunc through the head, sending it snuffling and kicking onto its side, while she somersaulted over a sweeping blow from the other, somehow grappled a wrist-lock on one of its limbs, snapped the bone, and used the creature's own momentum to send it hurtling into a churning wall of gear-teeth, which chewed into its skin at once and drew it in.
The Appomatox sprang after it and spiked it three times to stillness, then withdrew her spike, turned, and grinned at Alam.
"I'm Craley Shark. Sen sent me. We have to run now, OK?"
Alam nodded dumbly. Had this been part of the plan? He didn't remember any mention of a Craley Shark or an Appomatox. Two more Molemen came rushing in, both with halberds, but the balletic Craley somehow slipped in between them with a rolling grace unlike any caste he'd ever seen, slamming her spikes through the Molemen's brains with backward blows that looked almost like an afterthought as she passed them by.
They dropped. Craley stood in the entrance.
"Alam, come on."
Alam looked aghast at the carnage the gear chamber had become in less than a minute; dead pink Adjunc bodies and red-tubed Molemen and still-snuffling Mogs. He would have died here. He still might.
He started to run.
Craley was already far ahead down the metal-walled corridor when he emerged from the gear chamber, with two more Adjunc lying fallen in the space between them.
"How did you-?" Alam began
, but Craley was busy spiking a Moleman in the chest.
'This way," she called and started off again. Alam sprinted after her.
They hurtled at full speed down the twisting warren of corridors, and Alam was barely able to keep the silver blur of the Appomatox in sight. She led them weaving swiftly out of the areas Alam knew and inward, deeper into the maze of the Aigle until he emerged panting into a familiar open space. It was the inner ostlery courtyard where the Pinhead had taken him to be lashed. The Appomatox was standing in the middle looking up at the sky.
Alam looked up too, and saw the black clouds of the Rot split open in a darting tongue that came shooting directly toward them, though at the last moment it was hit from the side by a bright flash of light, followed by an explosion that ripped the tongue into wet shreds.
Alam stared. "What in the Heart's happening?" he shouted, over the grinding roar of the Aigle palace as its revolve kicked back in.
"The Rot's really going crazy now that Seem's got it trapped," Craley said, as if that explained anything, "but Awa Babo's protecting us for the minute. We have to get to the top."
Alam stared at him bewildered. "The Rot's what? And Awa Babo? Isn't that the Moleman god?"
"He's just coming now," said Craley flatly, pointing up.
A blast of hot air blew in from above, and Alam flinched. For a moment he thought that the whole palace was collapsing inward, as a dark flat ceiling muscled another descending tongue to the side, then closed across the courtyard like a giant lid. It blocked out the black sky and came to rest on the courtyard's high walls with a solid, resounding crunch.
"Berthing points, they were designed to stack like this," Craley said, pointing to the corners. The look of glee on her face was lit by a curious white effulgence glowing from this new ceiling. Alam could only stare, as pieces of distinct knowledge fell against each in his mind, and he began to comprehend what he was seeing.
This was another Aigle skyship? It was impossible, as no Aigles had flown for millennia, but here one had just landed on top of the King's palace like a bird in its nest. Even now a long thin rope was unspooling from a gap that had opened in its base, with a platform at the bottom like a flattened bucket.
He looked back at the Appomatox, trying to get his jumbled thoughts into some order. "Is that an Aigle?"
"Authentic Mjolnir Federacy," Craley Shark answered brightly. "It's quite a long story. For now we just need to get in and up. The others should be waiting."
"What others?"
The ladder reached Craley and she took hold of it. "Your friends, the other generals. Now come on, unless you want to stay here."
Across the ostlery cloister a fresh rush of Molemen and Adjunc poured out of the palace's warrens and made for them. Alam ran for the platform, leapt as it began to rise, and caught the base with his hands.
"Everything's so colorful, isn't it," Craley called with a grin, seated comfortably as they winched upward and Alam pulled himself up into the bucket, rising just clear of the halberds the Molemen flung up at them.
"What?" Alam shouted back, trying to stabilize himself by bracing his long limbs against the bucket's low walls.
"The sky, the palace, all of it. There's so much noise, it just makes me feel alive! I've imagined it all for so long. Books don't do it justice."
Alam could only think to say, 'What?' again, so instead said nothing. He finally got into a seated position and peered over the bucket's rim, to where Adjunc were scrabbling amongst themselves below, trying to climb each other's backs in some odd mirror of the stacking Aigles, though already they were far out of reach.
He looked up at the hole in the base of the second Aigle. Craley Shark was grinning wildly, and winked when she saw him looking. He shuddered, and up they went. The line sped up for the last stretch, then they passed through the black metal plating of the Aigle's base and the opening scissored closed behind them. Craley vaulted over the bucket's edge and dropped onto this new floor with a clang. Alam tentatively rolled out and set his feet down, though he didn't relinquish his white-knuckle grip on the rim.
He was inside another Aigle.
Around him was a wide and tall black galley, lit by a curious white glow and framed with black metal just like the palace, though here it wasn't corroded and panel-beaten many times back into a warped shape. This machine was fresh and smelled like gearing oil.
The galley was mostly empty but for a cluster of creatures whose caste he didn't recognize. They looked a lot like Molemen without any fur, pink and wrinkly and seemingly half-formed, with melted-looking fleshy faces. A cluster of them pattered up and started rubbing his skin, and he backed away.
"It's all right, they're just Gnomics checking for wounds," Craley said, then turned to the Molemen-things. "He's fine, Awa, trust me."
"Who's Awa?"
Craley grinned a wide white-toothed grin. "Some say he's a god, but really he's a machine. As I said, I'm Craley Shark, sort of Sen's daughter. It's so good to meet you, Alam." She extended her hand, and numbly Alam shook it. "Sen told me all about you, of course. I'll tell you everything you need to know, but for now we need to move. We have to get to the top. Come with me?"
"Daughter?"
Craley waved a hand noncommittally in the air. "Sort of, but you'll understand all that soon enough. This way." Craley ran through a gaggle of the half-Molemen to a hollow chute in the side of the galley, stretching up behind the wall like a large chimney. Alam followed. They stepped across a small gap and onto a solid metal platform. Above them the chute reached into darkness, like the inside of the Abbey cathedral.
Craley tapped him on the shoulder. "Hands and feet inside the carriage at all times, like a bi-rail train."
Alam pulled his hand off the wall, where he'd been unconsciously listening through the metal to detect the cogwork driving this great machine. He couldn't feel anything though. Even less of this made sense the further they went. Just an hour ago he'd been beating Collaber and rousting off the others; now he was in some kind of dream with Sen's sort-of-daughter and a whole other Aigle. He wondered if this was actually a vision, brought on as he lay dying on the gear chamber floor.
But why was it so strange?
"What's happe-" he started to say again, but then the platform suddenly began to rise. The walls dropped and up the platform rose. Alam crouched instinctively, touching the metal floor for balance, which seemed to amuse Craley greatly. She watched him and nodded happily, as though approving of this display.
The platform sped faster and the walls rushed by. This was some kind of cannon and they were going to be fired out of it. His ears popped and he clutched at them.
"Wait for it," Craley said, then the walls dropped away and they were shooting up a kind of gantry crane, with a view out on the city that was unbelievable.
Burning districts spread out like a twinkling jewelry box, under assault by the Rot's inkblot black tongues, scooping deep into the land, even as strange brown tongues shot back up into it. The Levi river was a strip of dark silver spotted with hundreds of revelatory lights, carried by hundreds of ships with their sails hanging to either side like wings, but what ships? Silver missiles gleamed up from the ships and pin-cushioned the Rot's tongues. In numerous places there were huge pools of shimmering red and orange, like crocus-blooms, that burned as if on fire from within and seemed to be yanking the Rot's tongues down.
His eyes opened so wide that the ash and smoke in the air stung them, but he couldn't shut them, nor close his slack jaw, even as the platform came to a jerky halt. There were more Aigle skyships hovering in the air, and huge skyship-like things on the land as well, crawling across the Levi's dark side and firing jagged lights up into the Rot.
Everywhere the city was falling apart; buildings lay smashed across streets wherever he looked, their shapes dashed by the Rot's tongues. Down at HellWest the King's frigate was burning, as the strange flock of bird-like ships sailed by. In the grounds at the palace's base castes of all kinds fought, alongs
ide more of the Molemen things driving weird metal wheels and creatures with brown skin that seemed to be burning alive.
And none of that was to speak of the shimmering silver web that seemed to shine through the very black of the Rot, encompassing the sky as if spun by Auroch the World Spider herself. He looked at Craley, whose grin seemed to be even wider than before.
"That's nothing," Craley said, and pointed. "Look there."
Alam looked, saw, and almost fainted. Standing on the horizon twice as tall as the mountain, dressed in bright blue armor and wielding spikes that tore rips into the fabric of the Rot, was a giant vision of Sen, standing next to a pillar of fire shooting up from the volcano.
"Heart's balls," he muttered.
Craley laughed. "Indeed, and he needs you still."
The platform came to a stop and a cold ash-filled wind whipped across Alam's face, tugging at his scrivener's stovepipe jacket and almost knocking him off balance. Craley stepped in and took Alam's wrist, placing his hand firmly on a banister circling the platform's exterior. Alam gripped it like his life depended on it.
"Over there is the King's skinning tower," Craley shouted over the wind and pointed. Alam looked out. The gantry they were in had nothing on any side but a dark rope bridge hanging across the distance, connected to the tallest tower of the King's palace. The top of it seemed to have exploded, with the roof missing and half the walls gone, and a cluster of bodies at one side. One of the Aigle ground ships was leaning against it haphazardly.
"That's where Mare and all the others are," Craley went on. "We have to get over there, and this bridge is the fastest way."
Alam made a noise that wasn't a word but some kind of confused burble.
"Just think of climbing the Abbey tower. It's no different to that. Hurry, but don't let haste trip you up."
The Rot's War Page 41