Clockwork Boys: Book One of the Clocktaur War

by T. Kingfisher

  “Did they ever find the second group?” she asked, as Slate turned to go.

  “No,” said Slate, keeping her voice dead even. “Did they make it this far?”

  The Commander’s scowl deepened. “They did. They asked for two of my men as escorts,” she said.

  “Ah,” Slate said.

  “That was nine weeks ago,” said the Commander. “They went north into the hills. They had pigeons with them. One came back the first week. After that, nothing.”

  “The hills can be treacherous in late winter,” said Slate.

  The Commander stared into her eyes. Slate stared back.

  You may be sharp, ma’am, but you can’t read minds. All my papers are in order and that’s all you need to know.

  In the end, the Commander’s contempt for civilians won over anything else. “We’ll send word to the front to expect you, but I wouldn’t count on that.”

  “Believe me,” said Slate, “I’m not counting on anything right now.”

  Chapter Nine

  “The village up ahead is supposed to have a very nice inn,” said Learned Edmund, consulting his map across the bow of his saddle. “Hot baths, good food, and we can pick up supplies for the horses.”

  “From your lips to the gods’ ears, priest,” said Brenner.

  Unfortunately, as Slate had begun to suspect long ago, the gods did not seem to be listening.

  They were nearly to the first row of houses when a man hurried out to meet them, waving his hands frantically.

  “Some sort of trouble,” Caliban murmured, looking past him.

  Brenner slid a hand down to his daggers. “Yeah. Either that’s a dead body in the middle of town, or somebody picked an awful strange place for a nap.”

  The stranger was middle-aged, dressed like a farmer, his muscles stringy rather than powerful. Thin brown hair hung down in disarray. “Go back!” the stranger shouted, as soon as he was within earshot. “Turn around, go back!”

  “Is there some trouble here?” asked Caliban, resting a hand on the hilt of his sword. “Can we help?”

  Brenner rolled his eyes.

  “He is right,” said Learned Edmund, not sounding terribly sure of himself. “If they are in need of aid, it is our duty to render it…”

  Brenner looked at Slate for appeal. Slate grimaced. If Caliban takes it in his head to help them anyway, my illusion of authority won’t be worth beans. “Let’s see what they want…” she muttered.

  “Help?” said the man, and laughed. His voice was high and hacking. “There’s no help. It’s the blight. You can’t help the blight.”

  “Blight?” Slate sat up straighter in the saddle.

  The man looked up at her with faded eyes, as if unable to quite understand the question. “Blight? Yes…yes. It’s the blight. People got it—we thought it was contained—then they pulled a body out of the well.”

  Caliban drew in a sharp breath. Learned Edmund traced a protective sign across his breast.

  “It wasn’t human. I don’t know what it was. Some kind of animal, maybe. But we’ve all got it now, you see. The whole village—the well water—everyone must have it. They’re starting to drop. You have to get away. Tell anyone you see on the road to stay away.”

  “Is there anything we can do to help?” asked Caliban. There was a flat, fatal note in his voice.

  “No.” The stranger looked away. “We can kill ourselves well enough. Just go away.”

  “May the gods keep you,” said Learned Edmund, sketching a benediction in the air.

  Useless, Slate thought tiredly. Better the gods grant them a quick death and a strong hand on the knife. She cleared her throat.

  “Is there a way around the village?”

  The stranger barely looked at her. “Around the far fields. There’s an ox-road, just down the road behind you. Don’t touch anyone. Don’t let anyone touch you.”

  Slate nodded.

  She thought of all the things she could say, and they all became flat and meaningless on her tongue. She lifted a hand in salute, and then turned her horse.

  The others followed. No one said anything.

  The ox-road was rough and bumpy, but it did indeed swing in a wide circle around the fields. Tan dust rose in a cloud behind them, turning the mules a vague beige. The village in the distance looked like a bruise.

  They passed a farmhouse off to the right. The empty windows stared at them. Slate watched it, fearing that someone might come out, fearing what she might have to do if someone did.

  Brenner reached back into his pack, swung his crossbow forward, and slapped a bolt into it. The sounds seemed very loud, even over the clipping of the horses’ hooves. Click. Click. Tap. Slate would have bet that every ear in the party was riveted on it.

  Click. Skreeeeek.

  Click.

  Brenner will shoot anyone who tries to approach us. And I will let him do it.

  No one came out of the farmhouse. There were crows perched on the fence railing, and she could hear them croaking behind the house. A whole murder’s worth, by the sound.

  Eating something.

  Could just be a dead farm animal.

  She was careful not to look back, when the ox-road swung wide, in case she might find out what they were eating.

  A long time later, they returned to the main road. Slate felt a painful clutch of relief when they rode up onto it, as if somehow the presence of the wider road might protect them.

  It seemed to be a cue to speak again. Learned Edmund sighed. “Those poor people.”

  “Nothing we could do, priest.” Brenner reached out and slapped him on the shoulder. Learned Edmund started, and then offered him a tentative smile.

  “I don’t know why we even bother having wars,” muttered Slate. “The world’s trying to kill us fast enough as it is.”

  Caliban gazed between his horse’s ears, and said nothing at all.

  * * *

  That night they stayed at a posting-house several hours farther on. They had to ride most of the evening to get there, but there was a unanimous feeling that a bath at the end would be worth the time. Slate’s skin felt faintly sticky, as if the death in the village had clung to her like mist.

  Word of the plague had already reached the posting-house. Slate had to explain twice, and then Caliban had to explain again that they hadn’t touched anyone, they hadn’t even ridden through the village, they hadn’t come anywhere near anyone with the blight. The innkeeper finally believed them, probably because Brenner was glowering and even Caliban was starting to look inclined to violence. Slate wondered if he had simply decided that blight would be a less sure death than having his throat slit by large men in desperate need of hot water.

  There was only one copper tub. They drew lots.

  By the time Slate’s turn came around—Caliban offered her his place, out of chivalry, and Slate shot him down out of irritation—it was near midnight. Learned Edmund and Brenner had already gone to sleep, and she could hear Caliban removing his armor in the next room.

  She would have preferred a soak, but a savage scrubbing with pumice and hot water seemed to remove the stink of death from her skin, even if it left her raw afterward.

  A body in the well, they said. Some kind of animal. And an entire village rotting away in hours, or killing themselves to save themselves the trouble.

  “Learned Edmund,” she said, the next morning. “Will you write a message to the Captain of the Guard and tell him what has happened to the village? I assume that he will have received reports already, but I want to be sure. We’ll leave it for the innkeeper to give to the next courier that comes through.”

  Learned Edmund nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, that’s a very good idea.”

  “They’ll have been dead for days before anyone gets that message,” said Brenner, when the dedicate was out of earshot.

  “I know,” said Slate. “I know.”

  * * *

  On the seventh day, they joined up to the trade road an
d traffic began to stream past them. It was all going the other way.

  “Refugees,” said Caliban. He watched a cart go by, dragged by a single elderly ox, piled high with all a family’s worldly goods, followed by more and more carts. Those who did not have ox-carts walked. A strapping young woman, taller than Caliban, walked past with an ancient woman clinging to her back.

  Caliban dismounted and handed his reins to Learned Edmund. He caught up to the tall woman and her…

  “Great-grandmother,” the tall woman informed him. “The rest of the family’s gone.”

  “Fools,” growled the ancient woman. “I told them. I told them to run. We ran before, you know, when I was a girl, and the ones who didn’t died. Stubborn fools. No one ever learns. But I’m not dead yet.”

  “I learned,” said the tall woman. “As soon as we heard the Clockwork Boys were coming, we ran. We got off the main road only just in time.”

  “They’ll chase you if they see you,” said the ancient woman. “Like terriers with a rat. But if you hide in the woods, sometimes they miss you. Not in houses, though. They’ll get you in a house every time.”

  “Where is your village, may I ask?”

  She gave him the name of a village six days away on a horse. She had been walking a long time, it seemed.

  “Thank you,” said Caliban. He held out a coin, and the young woman hitched her shoulder down a little. The old woman’s hand shot out like a bird’s claw and snatched the coin away.

  “Paladin, eh?” she said. She grinned, revealing a distinct lack of teeth. “Must be. They don’t make many farmers that pretty. Hope the god appreciates it.”

  “Please forgive Gran,” said the tall woman, in almost exactly the same tone that Slate said, Shut up, Brenner.

  “There is nothing to forgive,” said Caliban, and bowed to the old woman with exaggerated deference.

  “Ha! Come find me sometime, pretty paladin. I’m not dead yet.”

  “I fear that you would be too much for me, madam,” he said, and took himself back to the others. When he related the conversation, he left that part out. Brenner would have enjoyed it entirely too much.

  “South of here,” said Learned Edmund, looking up the village on the map. “Well south and east, it seems. But I thought the army was holding on the far side of that village.”

  “We’ll find out when we get there,” said Caliban. “Correct, Mistress Slate?”

  “Hmm?”

  “The army outpost.”

  “Oh, them. Yeah. Let’s get moving.”

  The inns were full with people streaming west. There was no traffic going their way. Refugees looked at them with bafflement and tried to warn them off.

  Well…they tried to warn Caliban off, anyway, and occasionally Learned Edmund. Brenner, they gave a wide berth to. They didn’t seem to notice Slate at all. She found this amusing.

  When they stopped at a farmhouse for the night, it was empty. The livestock were gone. Learned Edmund got a bedroom. Slate and the other two men threw bedrolls on the floor in the main room, though they deeded her the place closest to the fire.

  There wasn’t much food, but Caliban insisted on leaving coins to pay for what they took. Slate glanced at Brenner, gave a quarter of a nod, and he pocketed the coins when the paladin wasn’t looking.

  They aren’t coming back for a long, long time. If they’re smart, they’ll run and keep running, to listen to the refugees tell it.

  Two days after that, they found a village destroyed by the Clockwork Boys.

  It was decimated. The houses had been smashed as if a tornado had gone through. Doorframes hung like kindling. Walls had been ripped open to get at the occupants. Even wooden floors had great holes torn in them.

  At first, she thought perhaps it had been a tornado, but the trees around the village were untouched. And tornados did not generally leave human bodies looking so…trampled.

  A fire had broken out in one building, and half the village was burned in addition to being smashed. The ashes were still faintly warm.

  The bodies were not.

  “My god,” said Learned Edmund, almost to himself. “My god, my god, my god. These poor people.” He signed a benediction, over and over, his fingers flickering so quickly it was hard to follow. The prayer is quicker than the eye. Nothing up my sleeve…

  Slate had a hysterical urge to giggle. She knew all about reactions to shock, and she also knew that Learned Edmund would never understand.

  She nudged her horse forward and rode slowly down the middle of the ruined town, bent over so far that her horse’s mane washed over her face like tears.

  “We should look for survivors,” said Caliban.

  “Do it,” she said.

  There weren’t any. She hadn’t expected there to be. The carnage was probably at least a day old—fires could burn for a long time—and any survivors had either stopped surviving or gotten the hell out of there.

  Caliban checked every building anyway. He came out of each doorway with his face grown grimmer and grimmer, his eyes more deeply shadowed, until she had to look away.

  Brenner vanished for a while, and then reappeared, climbing back into the saddle with no grace at all. It was not in Brenner to look sad, but he looked tired and older than Slate had ever seen him look.

  The center of the town had a market square. There were ox-carts arranged around it, as if people had been packing up to leave when the Clockwork Boys came.

  Both people and oxen were still there, but you could no longer tell one from the other.

  She heard the sound behind her of Learned Edmund being sick. A few moments later, she could hear Caliban talking to him in his gentlest voice, low and kind. She could not make out the words, but the tone said: This will pass. Trust me.

  Slate grimaced. I wish someone would say that to me, in a voice I couldn’t help but believe.

  Her horse was restless at the stench, shying away. It was a relief to concentrate on that, to go to a world where the only thing that mattered was the reins and the bit and the space between the horse’s ears.

  By unspoken agreement, she and Brenner rode to the far side of the town, upwind, and stopped just outside of the shadow of the houses. Slate took a deep breath, and then another. Brenner spat in the dirt, his jaw working like a disgusted cat’s.

  Knight and dedicate caught up to them. Learned Edmund’s skin was ashen. Caliban was on foot, leading both horses and the mules.

  “Well,” said Learned Edmund, looking directly at Slate for the first time in a week. “What are your orders?”

  She would have suspected him of some malice—who wouldn’t be at a total loss in the face of this?—but then she met his eyes and saw that they were full of tears.

  It struck her suddenly, how young he was. Nineteen. Chosen for his compassion. He looked much younger.

  She’d killed a man at nineteen. She hadn’t been able to sleep or keep food down for days afterward, and that had been one man, who had richly deserved it, not a whole village mowed down like wheat.

  What are my orders?

  Slate folded her hands neatly over her saddlebow. Perhaps if she arranged them just right, perfectly symmetrically, she wouldn’t have to look up and see the destruction around her.

  Perhaps she would not have to decide.

  Caliban appeared at her stirrup, and set a hand on her leg. She looked down and met his eyes for a long moment.

  “What will you have us do?”

  If I ask, he will take command. He has seen carnage before. He will know what he is doing, and he will know that I am out of my depth, and I do not believe he will think less of me for it.

  I will not ask.

  “I thought the battles were farther south and east. The army’s supposed to be holding them.” She heard her own voice, sounding angry and betrayed. I knew they were supposed to be raiding, I knew it, they told me, but the army was supposed to stop them. My plan hinged on the army not screwing up. She took a deep breath. “I did not expec
t them to be raiding this far down the trade road,” she said. “If we travel past this point, we might be a week or more, through territory held by the enemy.”

  Caliban nodded. “I thought so as well.”

  “So.” Slate drew up the reins. “We cannot continue this way, then. We’ll have to backtrack.”

  “Where are we backtracking to?” asked Learned Edmund.

  “For now, the last village.” It had been mostly empty, but if anyone was left, they would need to be warned. “After that—well, Brenner, do you think we can figure out where we can join up to the smuggler’s road?”

  He looked up from where he had been rolling a cigarette, the paper dangling in his hand. “Are you sure that’s a good idea, darlin’?”

  “No, but I don’t see what other choice we have.”

  He rubbed at his neck. “Yeah, maybe. Somewhere around Six Ells, isn’t it? I’ve never been on it, but if you give me a map, I can probably work it out, assuming they haven’t gone and changed the whole thing.”

  “There’s a smuggler’s road that goes through the mountains,” Slate told the other two. “It’s narrow and in bad repair, but it bypasses the valley. The end comes out just over the Archonhold border, maybe fifty miles from Anuket City. I can’t imagine anyone would send troops down it, so perhaps if we can get on it, we can get to Anuket City without…” She trailed off, gesturing at the destruction around her.

  “I would like to bury the dead,” said Caliban. “Or at least burn them.”

  She looked down at him, startled. He seemed to be addressing her boot, his eyes downcast.

  He knows I’m going to say no. We don’t have time.

  Slate sighed, and learned something else about command.

  If he was in charge, he’d say no, but because he isn’t, he gets to ask.

  “I wish we could,” she told him. “But you know we don’t have time. I’m sorry.”

  He nodded stiffly, and released her stirrup. Slate went back to staring at her hands, and listened to the sounds of creaking leather as the paladin mounted his horse.