by Philip Reeve
“Don’t listen to him,” Jake warned his companion. “He’s a Mossie! Mr Garamond said—”
“Mr Garamond is wrong,” Theo insisted. “If I was a Mossie, what would I be doing coming to warn you about Harrowbarrow?”
“Maybe there is no Harrowbarrow,” said Will, thinking hard. “Maybe it’s a Mossie trick.”
A snarl of engines drowned out his voice, coming from somewhere to the south-west. A crash and clang of falling debris, too. The Londoners stared. Smoke and clouds of dust and rust-flakes drifted across the southern sky.
“It’s surfacing!” shouted Theo. “It’s reached the edge of the wreck! Come on!”
“What about the Archy?” asked Jake. “We can’t just leave her here!”
“We’ll have to fetch Lurpak or Clytie…”
“There’s no time!” shouted Theo, as the rusty deckplate beneath them shook and shifted, dislodged by the vibrations from the hungry suburb that was shouldering its way through the wreck a mile to the south.
“Well, we can’t fly her!” wailed Will.
“I can.”
“Yes, home to your stinking Mossie friends; we’re not falling for that one!”
“Will,” shouted Theo, “I’m not with the Green Storm! Trust me!” He scrambled into the hangar, staring at the Archaeopteryx. “Is she fuelled?”
“I think so. Lurpak Flint was down here yesterday working on her.”
Theo rattled the gondola door. It was locked, and when he asked for the keys Will and Jake looked blank. He picked up a hunk of metal and smashed the door in, then grabbed a knife from Will’s belt and started to hack at the ropes which anchored the airship. “Her controls will probably be locked,” he shouted as he worked. “But that doesn’t matter. The wind’s with us; even if I can’t get the engines on it’ll still be quicker than running to Crouch End.”
Will and Jake started to object, then gave up and joined him. The airship shivered as the ropes fell away. Theo noticed two rockets resting in racks beneath the forward engine pods. If he could get to Crouch End and persuade the Archaeopteryx’s crew to return with him, there was a chance they could slow or stop Harrowbarrow; he’d heard stories of how a well-aimed rocket, shot down an exhaust-stack or into a track-support, could bring a whole city to a halt. Then New London would have time to escape, and perhaps Theo could find his way aboard the crippled harvester and reach Wren.
The three boys scrambled into the gondola as the untethered airship began to rise. On the flight-deck, Theo found that he could work the elevator and rudder wheels, although he had no way to turn on the engines. Sunlight poked in through the gondola windows as the Archaeopteryx rose out of the top of the hangar, trailing camouflage netting and uprooted trees. The brisk wind boomed against the envelope, already pushing her westward, and Theo spun the rudder-wheel so that her nose began to swing towards Crouch End.
The first rocket punched through the prow of the envelope and tore the whole length of the ship, exploding in the central gas-cell and sending a spume of fire out through her stern. Theo heard Jake and Will scream as the gondola lurched sideways. Struggling with the useless controls, he saw another ship go sliding past behind the sheets of smoke billowing from the Archaeopteryx’s envelope; a small armed freighter in the white livery and green lightning-bolt insignia of the Storm. Machine guns opened up from a nest on her tailfins as she sped by, and bullets came slamming into the Archaeopteryx’s listing gondola, and into Will, smashing him backwards through a shattering window. “Will!” screamed Jake, as Theo dragged him to the deck.
Peering through the smoke, he had a brief, dizzy view of the debris field. Above it, low and menacing, a shoal of white ships circled. The Green Storm had arrived.
46
THE SHORT CUT
The warships circled low over Crouch End; low enough that everyone could see the rockets glinting in their racks and the Divine Wind machine-cannon twitching in the swivelling turrets. A few of the braver Londoners ran for crossbows and lightning guns, but Mr Garamond shouted at them not to be so daft. He hated the Storm, but he knew that trying to fight them would be madness.
Someone tied a white bed-sheet to an old broom-handle, and Len Peabody waved it frantically as the leading ship came down. She was the Fury, the only real warship in the fleet, but none of the Londoners noticed how tatty the other ships looked; they were too busy staring at the soldiers and battle-Stalkers who spilled from the Fury’s hatches as she descended.
General Naga was the first to jump down, relying on his armour to absorb the shock of landing. Straightening up, sword in hand, he breathed in the rusty, earthy air of the debris field, and heard his troops disembarking behind him. He glanced to his right. Two of his ships had landed on top of the big wedge of wreckage there, and others were circling it. A party of his men were herding more Londoners down the track that led from it.
“The site is secure, Excellency,” announced his second-in-command, Sub-General Thien, running to his side and dropping on one knee to salute. “Resistance?”
“One of our armed freighters shot down a ship that rose from the western edge of the ruins. And the gunship Avenge the Wind-Flower was struck by some sort of electrical discharge and destroyed with all hands. She reported movements in the western part of the wreck before she was hit. I’ve sent the Hungry Ghost to investigate.”
Naga strode towards the waiting Londoners. His feet sank into the deep drifts of rust-flakes with crunching sounds, each footstep unpleasantly like the noise Oenone’s nose had made when his fist struck it. He tried again to stop thinking of her. She was a traitor, he told himself sternly. Half the men in this fleet would have mutinied if he had not dealt firmly with her. He had to be strong if he were to save the good earth from these barbarians and their new weapon.
But the barbarians were something of a disappointment. Ragged, unkempt, unarmed except for a few home-made guns and bows which they had dropped when they saw Naga’s force landing. They had vegetable gardens, for the gods’ sake, just like real people! Their leader was a frightened little man with a scrap-metal chain-of-office round his neck. “Chesney Garamond,” he said, in Anglish. “Lord Mayor of London. I’m here to negotiate on behalf of my people.”
“Where is the transmitter?” barked Naga.
“The what?” Garamond gaped fearfully at him.
Naga raised his sword, but the man’s bruised face and swollen nose reminded him suddenly of Oenone, and he lowered it again. His armour grated and hummed as it tried to compensate for the quick shivering of his sword-arm. “Where are you hiding it?” he demanded. “We know the ground station is in London. Why else have you lurked here all these years? Why else did you destroy one of our ships just now with your electric gun?”
“That weren’t us,” said another man earnestly. “That was just power discharging from the dead metal. Your skyboys got too close to Electric Lane. I’m sorry.”
“And the movements the crew reported in the wreckage over there?”
“There’s nothing there except our youngsters on lookout,” said Garamond. “Please don’t hurt them; they’re just kids—”
Naga swung to address his waiting troops. “This savage knows nothing! Find me Engineers!”
“Coming, sir!” A sub-officer ran up at the head of a squad of Stalkers, each carrying a struggling, bald-headed prisoner. An old woman was dumped on the ground at Naga’s feet. He waved his men back and watched her scramble up.
“Where is the transmitter?”
The Engineer looked curiously at him. Naga had the uneasy feeling that she could sense the swirl of guilt and fear behind the stern face he wore. She said, “There is no transmitter here, sir.”
“Then how do you talk to your orbital weapon?”
The way her eyes widened made Naga wonder, just for a moment, if he had been wrong. The Londoners started to murmur together, until his men cuffed and threatened them into silence.
The Engineer said, “They are surprised, General, because the
y all believed it was you who controlled this new weapon. Certainly we do not. We have no quarrel with anybody; we are simply building a new city for ourselves.”
“Ah, yes, your floating city! I did not believe that story when your agent came babbling of it at Batmunkh Gompa, and I do not believe it now. Shut those barbarians up!” he bellowed, rounding on his men. The barbarians stared fearfully at him. A little boy started to cry, and was quickly hushed by his mother. Naga felt ashamed.
When he turned back to the lady Engineer, she was holding out a thin, lilac-veined hand to him. “Come and see for yourself…”
The attack ship Hungry Ghost hovered over the smouldering wreck of the Archaeopteryx and made certain there were no survivors, then veered away towards the south-west to investigate the movements that the crew of Avenge the Wind-Flower had reported before that lasso of electricity jumped out of the debris field to snare them. The Hungry Ghost’s captain took his ship higher, not wanting to meet the same end. Almost at once he saw the mounds of wreckage below him shifting and slithering. He stared down at the movements, not really understanding, until an old track tumbled sideways to reveal the scarred, armoured carapace shoving along beneath it.
The suburb’s lookouts saw the ship above them at the same instant. Silos yawned open in its armour and a flight of rockets tore through the Hungry Ghost, blasting her engine pods off, smashing the gondola in half, ripping off a tail-fin. Smouldering, sagging, she drifted downwind, while Harrowbarrow ploughed onwards below her.
“Damn it! That’s all we need!”
Wolf Kobold’s angry shout made Wren cringe. She was sure that Harrowbarrow must be near the western end of Electric Lane by now, and she had been waiting and waiting for the first sprite to strike. When it did, Wolf would know that she had betrayed him. But for the moment, it seemed, she was still safe. He saw her flinch and came to stand with her, in the corner of the bridge where she had gone to get out of the way of his men.
“Nothing to worry about, Wren,” he said. “It seems my forward rocket batteries just shot down a Green Storm warship. The savages are in London already.”
“Oh!”
“Don’t worry!” He laughed at the look of dismay upon her face. “We have dealt with the Green Storm before. My lookouts say that these ships are old; a ragbag of freighters and transports. Naga clearly doesn’t think your London friends are worth sending a real unit to deal with. We shall crush them easily.”
He shouted instructions at Hausdorfer, and the navigator shouted in turn down the speaking-tubes beside the helm. The suburb increased its speed, and shocks came trembling through the deck and walls of the bridge as it butted massive chunks of rusting metal aside and track-plates and sections of old building went tumbling over the hull or were crunched and crushed beneath the heavy tracks. Wren braced herself against the chart table. Wolf Kobold put his arm around her. “It will be all right,” he promised. “Another hour, we’ll be there. Thank you for this short cut, Wren. I won’t forget it.”
Maybe there would be no sprites, thought Wren. Or maybe they were striking Harrowbarrow’s hull already, dozens of them, doing no harm at all against its thick armour. Maybe all she had achieved by her ruse was to ensure that New London would be devoured even sooner.
And would it really be so bad if it was? It would serve the Londoners right for what they’d done to her. And good might come of it. She imagined Harrowbarrow growing strong and glorious on Dr Childermass’s technology; a hovering city many tiers high. And she could be chatelaine of it all. Perhaps Wolf would make her Frau Kobold, Lady Mayoress of his new city. After her time in the debris fields the thought of a life surrounded by his tasteful furnishings and books seemed quite attractive. And she would tame him, make him treat his workers and his captives fairly…
“We’re entering your valley, Wren,” said Wolf warmly, listening to another report from Hausdorfer, who was taking a turn at the periscope. “The way is clear ahead, just as you promised.”
Theo and Jake ran through some trackless tangle of debris, pushing past wires and hawsers, girders, fallen tier-supports like felled redwoods. Their clothes were singed and charred by the fires they had escaped from as the Archaeopteryx came down. They did not know where they were, or where they were going, and they could not hear each other speak because of the immense din of engines and scraping, grinding, tearing, squealing metal, which seemed to come from all around them, and from the sky above them, and up through the ground beneath their running feet.
A cleft between two rubble heaps ahead. A sort of path – or more likely just a stream-bed, where water sluiced down off the heights of the wreckage when it rained. Jake ran towards it, shouting something. Theo started to hurry after him, and then glimpsed a sign in the debris, half hidden by the scales of rust which were avalanching down the sides of the heaps as they shook and shifted under the weight of the nearby suburb. A crude skull and crossbones. DANGER.
Theo remembered something Wren had told him about Electric Lane.
“Jake!”
Ahead of him Jake was stumbling out through the cleft into a broad, fire-stained valley. “Watch out!” Theo hollered, over the noise which made it impossible to hear even his own thoughts. “Come back! The lightning will get you!”
“What?”
Something got Jake, but it wasn’t lightning. An immense steel snout burst out from the steep wall of wreckage that formed the far side of the valley. Jake started to run back towards Theo, and a segment of clawed steel track came down on him like a giant’s foot; a wheel two storeys tall rolled over him and on, and then another and another. The suburb’s engines whinnied and growled as it dragged itself free of the wreckage and started to turn, making ready to speed east along the valley. Only a small suburb, but from where Theo stood it seemed world-filling; an armoured escarpment pocked and pitted with tiny windows, gunslits, air-vents, hatch-covers and a stitchwork of rivets; people inside it somewhere all unaware of the boy they had just squashed beneath their tracks.
Theo scrambled backwards as the wreckage he stood on began to slide and toss, churned into restless waves. He tried running, but the broad, flat fragment of deckplate he chose to run across began to tilt steeper and steeper, until he was climbing a hill, crawling up a cliff, struggling to keep a finger-hold upon a sheer wall. He fell, struck some other piece of wreckage, windmilled, tumbled down the valley’s side and landed hard in mud and water at the bottom.
He lay there shivering, glad of the brackish water seeping through his clothes because its cold touch told him he was still alive. “Thank God!” he whispered. “Thank God!” And then, opening his eyes, realized that there was not as much to be thankful for as he had thought.
The stunted trees which grew around the edges of the pool he lay in were charcoal statues. Beyond them was Harrowbarrow. A steel tsunami, rolling straight towards him, tumbled debris foaming and frothing ahead of it. Theo pushed himself up and started to run, but from the wreckage ahead of him an immense brightness burst, crackling overhead, flinging his jittery shadow on the rust-flakes at the edge of the pool.
Electricity, in blinding skeins, tied Harrowbarrow to the valley walls. Lightning tiptoed across its metal hide, licked in through windows and silo-mouths, set fire to scraps of vegetation clinging to the tracks and bow-shield. The engine roar faltered and failed and in its place was a crackling, crinkling, cellophane noise, like God crumpling His toffee-wrappers.
In the dancing blue light Theo splashed through the shallows and flung himself at the only thing that was not made of metal – a boulder, dredged from the earth by London’s tracks. He scrambled on to its dry top, praying that his movements and his wet clothes would not draw the surging electricity down on him. Above his head the sky was hidden by a cage of blue fire; Harrowbarrow was scrawled with scribbles of light. Sparks chased through the debris around the boulder’s foot, and the wet mud fizzed. A tree caught fire with a woof, and burned like a match.
Then, abruptly, the storm ceased.
A few last sparks, yelping like ricochets, arced across the gaps between Harrowbarrow and the valley walls. Wreckage slithered down around the suburb’s tracks with a sliding clatter. Smoke shifted slowly, smelling of ozone. Theo remembered to breathe.
Harrowbarrow lay silent, motionless, its armour scarred by smouldering wounds where the sprites had touched.
“Wren?” said Theo, into the silence. “Wren?”
47
THE BATTLE OF CROUCH END
General Naga stood on the sloping floor of the Womb and looked up at New London. He could see himself reflected in the long curve of the tiny city’s underside, and again in one of those strange, dull mirrors that hung beneath it. Why would anyone build such a thing? Could Natsworthy have been telling the truth? Did the Londoners believe that this contraption would actually fly?
He tried to force his doubts aside. He was a soldier; he was used to doing that; but today, for some reason, the doubts stayed, nagging. If this mad city was really all that London’s Engineers had been building, then where was the transmitter which controlled the new weapon? Had Oenone been telling him the truth too? Had he shamed and struck her for no reason?
The soldiers he had sent aboard New London were returning, climbing down one of the steep boarding ladders. The young signals officer he had put in charge of the search ran across the oily floor and saluted. “Excellency, we have found no sign of a transmitter. Certainly nothing powerful enough to reach the orbital weapon.”
Naga turned away. He shut his eyes and saw Oenone smile her small, shy smile and say, “I told you so.” What now? he thought. What now?
“Should we destroy the barbarian suburb?” asked the signals officer.
Naga looked at it. All mobile cities were an abomination; the world must be made green again. But today, for some reason, he could not bring himself to give the order. He was glad of the distraction when another man came racing into the Womb, shouting, “General Naga! The Hungry Ghost has been shot down! There is something approaching from the west!”