They had gotten perhaps a dozen lengths down the road, barely into the trees, when the smell of rosemary reared up and hit Slate full in the face.
This was no elusive hint of magic, no subtle warning. This was an assault on the senses. Slate felt like she was drowning in a violent, if herbal, sea.
She dropped her reins, gagging. Her throat burned and her eyes watered. She knew that she was breathing, because she could hear the horrible gasping noises she kept making, but there did not seem to be any air in her lungs.
“What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” Caliban’s horse banged into hers and her leg got pinned between them, but that was a minor concern. The paladin reached across and grabbed her shoulder. “Slate! Slate, my god, what’s wrong?” He shook her, which didn’t much help matters.
“Got to get off the road,” she rasped, through a throat gone thick and bubbling. “Get off the road! Now!”
“What foolishness is this?” demanded Learned Edmund.
“Do it!” Brenner said, turning his horse awkwardly and riding for the cover of the trees.
Caliban, to his credit, did not ask questions. He grabbed Slate’s reins and brought both horses to the edge of the road, then slid off to lead them into the woods. It was a good thing, because Slate was in no condition to lead anybody anywhere. She wrapped her arms around her head, wracked with coughing, while that godawful overpowering reek of rosemary sank into her bones.
They were deep in the trees, set far back from the road, when Slate slid off her horse. She staggered, nearly falling. Something held her up—a tree trunk, a paladin, she couldn’t tell and it didn’t matter. She could not stop coughing, and danger was coming, down the road, stinking of magic.
“Shut—me—up—” she managed to choke out.
Caliban stared at her. “What?”
“Too much—noise—stop—” She rolled her eyes up at Brenner in mute appeal.
He didn’t fail her. The assassin pounced, knocking her down, and curled himself around her head. She choked helplessly into his midsection, pounding weakly on the forest floor and his shoulder with her fists.
“What are you doing? Are you mad?” Caliban hauled at Brenner’s arm.
“Get down!” the assassin growled.
“You’ll smother her!”
“If I have to, yes! Get down!”
“But—”
Slate gathered the very last shreds of air in her lungs and gasped “Down—quiet—that’s an order!”
Obedience was a habit that prison and possession had not broken. Caliban sank to his knees, one hand still on Brenner’s elbow.
Down the road, three abreast, a column of Clockwork Boys came marching.
They were huge. They were horrible.
There were a great many of them.
The basic shape was centaur-like. Some had four legs, some had six. They stood between eight and ten feet tall.
Slate had seen drawings before, but she hadn’t known how much faith to put in them. The drawings were all strangely geometric, depicting enormous creatures made out of slabs and blocks, like nothing Slate had ever seen.
The brief glance she got, in the space between Brenner’s arm and ribcage, showed that the artists had not been so far wrong after all.
The Clockwork Boys were the color of old ivory. Their heads—if it was anything so normal as a head—were blunt wedges, like a squared-off horse head. Slate caught a glimpse of what looked like inlay—carving—something.
Gears. They’re covered in gears, like barnacles. It’s how they move, somehow—but it doesn’t make sense. They’re alive, but they’re a made thing, but nobody could have made that, surely—
She understood now why the artificers were tying themselves in knots.
The creatures could not exist, but they did. And they could smash apart a building or an army column with equal ease.
How did the army ever kill even one of them? I suppose you could take it apart with hammers, like a stone wall, but it would take hours…
They have to be stopped.
They expect us to stop them.
If she had not been about to choke to death, the sheer insanity of it all would have made her laugh. Or cry. Possibly both.
Impossible, uncaring, the Clockwork Boys slammed down the road. Their feet pounded the ground like hammers.
They were abreast of the trees now. Brenner curled more tightly around her, blocking her view.
Slate was going to suffocate. She was going to die with her face jammed into Brenner’s ribcage, which was not a way she’d ever wanted to go. She thrashed weakly, involuntarily, despite every nerve screaming at her to lay still, lay still, let the danger pass, don’t make a sound…
A black-gloved hand covered her throat. He didn’t squeeze—yet—but Slate could feel his fingers like bars of iron, ready to close the moment she began coughing again.
Panic seized her, and under it, relief. Good old ruthless Brenner. He won’t let me kill us all. He’ll kill me first.
Slate had to admit that dying with Brenner’s hands locked around her windpipe was a death she’d seen coming. Could be a lot worse. Brenner was a very efficient killer, even if he couldn’t ride a horse.
“It’s okay, darlin’…” he whispered into her hair, “I’ve got you.”
His voice was really quite soothing, given that they were talking about her impending death. She would have laughed if she had enough air.
She could not keep track of time. She breathed through her teeth and Brenner’s shirt for eternity and he said things to her that he had never said when they were lovers.
“It’s okay. I’ve got you. It’s okay.”
Possibly if he’d said those things when they were lovers, things would have turned out differently…Yes. Because strangling on your own spit while monsters walk the roads is the perfect time to re-litigate old relationships.
“I won’t let go.”
Don’t, she willed him. Don’t. I’ll kill us all. Don’t let go.
He didn’t let go.
The end of the column passed.
A long time later, the scent of rosemary faded.
A little time after that, Brenner released her throat.
Slate took a deep breath, coughed it out, took another, and that one went down normally. She could smell other things, which in this case was mostly Brenner. He smelled like leather and cigarettes, and that was wonderful, because it wasn’t rosemary.
The assassin helped her politely to her feet.
“She knew,” said Learned Edmund, staring at her. He was holding the horses’ reins bunched together. Slate wondered if the horses had been too stupid to run or if the scholar had somehow soothed them. “How did she know?”
“Word of advice,” said Brenner, slapping leaf-litter off Slate’s back. “If our Slate starts choking and sneezing and tells you to do something, do it. Don’t ask questions.”
Caliban was staring at them. His expression was indescribable.
“What?” asked Slate, wiping at her nose.
“You two,” said the paladin slowly, “have a very odd relationship.”
“Oh, come on, if your friends aren’t willing to strangle you, what kind of friends are they?” asked Brenner.
Caliban turned away, shaking his head.
“So those are the Clockwork Boys…” said Learned Edmund, almost to himself.
“Big ugly bastards, aren’t they?” said Brenner.
“I should have been better prepared,” said the dedicate. “The last correspondence that we received from Brother Amadai included a drawing of one. But I could not picture the scale. I thought perhaps they were the size of a man, no more…”
Slate shuddered. She’d only caught a glimpse through Brenner’s arms of the creatures, and it had been enough to give her nightmares. She snuffled into her sleeve.
When she got back to her horse, there was a handkerchief draped across the saddle.
Chapter Ten
They struck out north, thro
ugh the woods, looking for the smuggler’s road. It was a stupid idea—they didn’t know how far it was, or what it would look like—but the other two alternatives were to go back, behind a marching column of Clockwork Boys, or forward, through territory that the Clockwork Boys were raiding, and there was just no way.
Slate had been entertaining a faint illusion that between the three of them—Caliban, Brenner and herself—they might be a match for a Clockwork Boy. She’d never seen one, after all, and she had a lot more faith in Brenner’s knives than a soldier’s sword. The sight of the column had squashed that flat. It would be like trying to kill an elephant made out of stone.
She had a persistent vision, though, of Caliban standing before one of the gear-riddled monoliths, his sword held upright before him, like a hero out of an old story. It bothered her, not least because Caliban had been just such a hero. She could see him meeting his death that way again, on his feet, with his sword before him.
Getting maudlin. Getting sentimental in my old age. I shouldn’t care how any of us die anyway—we’re all just looking for ways to fall down. If we even make it to Anuket City, I’ll be impressed, and if we do, I’ll be dogmeat as soon as I walk through the gate.
All this time, Slate had been expecting to die in Anuket City. She had personal history there that wasn’t going to lie quiet.
They’ll be so very glad to see me. One more loose end to tie off. Messily.
For all her fatalism, it had not truly occurred to her that the Clockwork Boys might get her beforehand.
Heh. What everybody told me was the great threat actually is the great threat. Who knew?
“How the hell do we fight something like that?” asked Brenner.
Nobody had to ask what he meant.
“You don’t,” said Caliban. “You run, unless you have an army with you.”
“They do not float,” offered Learned Edmund. “Most of those who escape, I am told, have been able to get into deep water. They walk along the bottom unharmed, but they cannot reach you if you swim.”
“That won’t work for me,” said Caliban, sounding more clipped than usual.
“You can’t swim?” asked Slate, bemused.
He did not meet her eyes, which was strange. “I do not do well with deep water.”
“An exorcist afraid of drowning,” said Brenner. “There’s irony for you.” Caliban ignored him.
“I said, it’s ironic that an exor—“
“I heard you.”
“You two stop bickering or I’ll scream bloody murder and call the whole lot of them down to put me out of my misery.”
“That seems excessive,” said Learned Edmund.
“Does it? Does it really?”
Learned Edmund fiddled with the reins in front of him and said nothing, which was the way that Slate liked it.
* * *
For Caliban, the Clockwork Boys had been less revelation than confirmation. He was a temple knight, not a soldier, but he had seen siege engines before. The Clockwork Boys were living siege engines. Monstrous, like no construct of wood and metal that he had ever seen, but not profoundly shocking.
What had shocked him far more was Slate and Brenner.
If the Clockwork Boys had not come down the road when they did, he would have probably pulled his sword on the assassin. The man’s gloved hands had literally been around Slate’s neck.
And then she had ordered Caliban to stand down and the Clockwork Boys had gone stomping by and he had realized that the forger and the assassin shared some knowledge he didn’t.
If it had been left up to Caliban, they would all be crushed under clockwork by now.
Slate knew that. Slate called on the assassin to help her, not me.
Because she had trusted Brenner to do what needed to be done, and not Caliban. And she had been right to do so.
In his heart of hearts, he had been feeling superior to the two of them. Not just because they could not ride horses worth a damn, but because he was a knight and they were criminals. Slate was in command, but Caliban had always known that if she floundered, he could step in and lead.
And if I had, just then, I would have killed us all.
Worse, even as he’d been silently judging the forger and the assassin for being what they were, it was Slate who had been willing to sacrifice herself to save the rest of them. Slate who’d been begging the assassin to keep her from giving them away to the enemy.
All the platitudes he’d mouthed over the years about self-sacrifice, and here he was being shown up by a forger who’d been arrested for treason.
As for Brenner…well. He still didn’t know what to think of Brenner. The assassin was a weapon and Slate clearly had no qualms about using him as such. Even on herself.
Caliban rode his horse close beside Slate’s and could hear the rasp as she inhaled. He listened to it like a penance.
I am a fool. Still.
Pride. It always came back to pride.
By now you think I’d have learned.
She glanced over at him, lips quirked. “What? Afraid I’ll fall off the horse?”
“Should I be?”
“Oh, probably.” She pressed the flat of her hand against her forehead. “My sinuses feel like they’re full of lead. But we need to get farther away from the road before I fall down.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Not your fault.”
“No. Before…” He gestured behind them. “I didn’t know what you were doing. I should have realized Brenner hadn’t just decided to murder you in the middle of the afternoon. I made it harder. I’m sorry.”
To his surprise, she laughed. “Don’t worry about it. There’s always a good chance that Brenner will decide to murder me in the middle of the afternoon.”
“I resent that, darlin’,” said the assassin, riding up on the other side. “The middle of the afternoon’s when I like a nap. I’d at least wait ‘til evening.”
“Well, I’d hate to interrupt a nap.”
Caliban shook his head in disbelief. Slate grinned at him, then sneezed again, and then Learned Edmund called that the game trail they had been following had just vanished into a tangle of branches and mud and Caliban rode ahead to see what, if anything, he could do to help.
Riding through the woods was even worse than riding along the road. Slate got so used to having branches slap her in the face that she stopped even flinching. It was too early for mosquitoes, which was a small blessing, but just the right time for frequent rains. Water dripped off leaves and found its way unerringly down the back of her neck, no matter how many layers of clothes she wore, and her feet were so cold so much of the time that she started to wonder if she was wearing her socks wrong.
Don’t be stupid. They’re socks. There’s only the one option.
Still…
They had to lead the horses much of the way. Caliban led them, but even the tireless knight wasn’t used to this sort of travel. He held them on a mostly straight course, and that was all that anyone could hope for.
The horses were actually another set of problems. Slate was used to simply handing the reins to a stableboy or the farmer’s son and walking off. Apparently, there was a lot more to keeping horses around than that.
You had to take their tack off and rub them down and check their hooves and their legs and feed them and water them and make sure they were tied to something where they’d be comfortable and not break their necks trying to run in the middle of the night. And then you had to rub the tack down, and fix bits and put oil on other bits, and by the time you were done, over an hour had elapsed when you weren’t eating and weren’t sleeping and weren’t getting any closer to your goal at all.
Then in the morning you had to get up and do it all over again, pulling saddles on and bridles and shoving things in horses’ mouths and tightening straps and then the horses would puff their bellies out so that you didn’t tighten it very tight, except that if you fell for that, Brenner generally slid off the horse an hou
r later, and there’d be a lot of swearing and brandishing of knives.
Mules were worse. Mules were like horses who could plan.
Caliban dealt with the animals with his usual patience, but there were seven of them, and that was a lot of horseflesh to be tending every evening. Slate started helping, which required him showing her a lot of things, usually three or four times.
She never did figure out what a horse’s hoof was supposed to look like, but that was okay, because it never actually looked like that anyway.
That aside, she actually found that she liked Caliban a lot better when they were taking care of the horses. He didn’t mope, he didn’t overthink, and there was almost no way for the conversation to segue dangerously. “Is this a rock in this hoof?” did not lead gracefully to “So, you over killing all those people yet?”
And he spoke to the horses the same way that he had spoken to Learned Edmund, in the gentle, trustworthy voice.
“Good girl,” he said to Brenner’s mare. “Come on…easy, easy…good girl. Such a pretty girl you are.” And the horse would let him check each leg for swelling, lift each hoof, quieter under his hands than she had ever been under Brenner’s.
Slate couldn’t blame her. There was something about that voice. I’d let him check my feet, too, if he talked like that to me.
Hell, I’d let him check a lot more than my feet.
Which was idiocy, of course. Caliban was polite. He was always polite. And when they touched—as it was nearly impossible not to touch sometimes—it was impersonal. She could imagine him treating an elderly nun exactly the same way.
She wondered if the hypothetical elderly nun would be as vaguely annoyed by it as she was.
Not that it would have done her any good if he had been interested. There were no inns. There were no farmhouses. Consequently, there was no privacy.
They slept on the ground, in bedrolls. It was cold and the fire went out a lot because nobody was particularly good at banking it.
Brenner, entirely unconcerned about privacy, made a few quiet advances about ways to keep warm. Slate made a few quiet rebuffs, and finally suggested he go see if either of the other two were interested.
Clockwork Boys: Book One of the Clocktaur War Page 13