Green Earth Shaking: A Fantasy Adventure Series (Gunpowder & Alchemy Book 3)

by Dan Davis

  One side of the spherical barrier, with Bede and Cedd moving inside it, jerked downward. Then the other side tilted and fell. More earth showered up and out of the sides of the hole. The top of the barrier dropped. The shaking grew worse and the earth piled up around the rim of the hole, like a big circular bank.

  The hole grew. The outer bank of black soil rolled toward the shattered horse line, as it grew wider and taller.

  ‘Go and save Cromwell,’ Archer shouted at the cowering staff officers. ‘Quick.’

  They ran and dragged him and the others away from under the soil, wagon parts and horses while Archer ran forward to Weaver. Her eyes were bright green but her face was white and drained. He was afraid she was going to forget to stop widening the hole and drop them into it.

  ‘That’s enough, Weaver,’ Archer shook her shoulder, hard. ‘Just bury them.’

  The rumbling paused. Then it started again. The sound of it was changed. Instead of flying out, the earth in the bank poured back down into the hole in a long landslide, tumbling down on top of the alchemists.

  ‘It’s working!’ Archer shouted.

  The barrier rose from the hole. A perfect sphere, shimmering and shedding dirt as it rose up above the hole, hovering above the chasm.

  Cedd and Bede stood inside.

  ‘You can never defeat us,’ Cedd shouted. ‘You are children.’

  ‘Children I created,’ Bede shouted. ‘And children I can destroy.’

  ‘Destroy this,’ Writer shouted. She flew right above Archer’s head, clutching Stearne’s mechanical arm to her.

  Cedd shot out his arm and a jet of black lightning shot from Cedd’s fingers.

  ‘Writer, watch out!’ Archer shouted.

  Writer tossed Stearne’s arm hard and high into the air toward Cedd and Bede. After she threw it, Cedd’s black lightning smashed into Writer. She cried out then fell tumbling to the ground on the edge of the crack.

  Archer dropped to one knee, whipped his rifle off his shoulder and aimed at the arm.

  The arm spun and twisted in the air. The brass fingers twitched and the elbow bent and flexed. The captured demon within the vial inside caused the endless motions of the thing, as if it was something alive.

  Following the trajectory, Archer saw that the arm was going to fall short. Archer used what little strength he had left to push some air against it to nudge it into the barrier.

  ‘No,’ Bede and Cedd shouted together.

  The mechanical arm smacked against the side of the sphere.

  Archer, hoping that his weapon was loaded, aimed at the centre of the arm along the barrel and pulled the trigger.

  The butt crashed against his shoulder, the gunpowder sparked and his bullet flew.

  The next moment stretched out and out, like the world was holding its breath.

  Blinded by the smoke of his rifle, Archer felt rather than saw the mechanical arm explode. The blast was like a thousand muskets firing at once. Archer dropped his rifle and clamped his hands over his ears. There was a mighty POP! Air rushed in toward the alchemist’s sphere. A second explosion blasted past him, though it was a softer WHUMPH! The feeling of it thrummed through the ground beneath his feet and smashed into his chest.

  Still kneeling, the blast threw Archer back onto the grass.

  When Archer looked up, the alchemists were gone. The vast hole was filling with soil. Weaver was still on her knees, her power forcing the earth to refill the gulf she had created. All the rest of the earth tumbled in and when Weaver finally stopped there was a great mount of black earth where the alchemists had been. Like a small hill surrounded by wagon debris and scorched earth and horses. The two alchemists were deep down under the earth. Forever.

  Weaver fell face down upon the grass, with Keeper and Burp just beyond her. Archer ran over, fearing the worst. Weaver’s back was rising and falling with deep, shaky breaths. He placed his hand upon her shoulder.

  All was quiet.

  Cromwell’s men were climbing to their feet and hobbling toward Archer. Writer limped over to Keeper, who had his arm around Burp’s neck. The dragon lay on his belly, looking sheepish.

  ‘Are they dead this time?’ Keeper asked Archer. ‘Truly dead?’ Burp growled and nuzzled his enormous head under Keeper’s arm. Archer remembered the fire shooting from the dragon’s mouth and he shivered.

  Archer had no answer for Keeper.

  ‘They lived a thousand years,’ Writer said, limping toward him. ‘Or thereabouts.’

  ‘Well, they’re gone now,’ Archer said. ‘That means Cromwell can pull the army back, reform and fight again.’

  Archer’s ears rang from the blasts, like a distant whistle or the clang of a bell that went on and on.

  ‘They’re dead,’ Weaver said, rolling onto her back. Her face was pale and green. ‘I buried them.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Cromwell was there. Concerned officers were holding him up on either side and helping him forward. He was hurt. He had blood down his face. ‘The last of the great alchemists are now dead or working for me in the Tower. Thank you, my young friends. Thank you. From myself, for saving my life. But I also thank you on behalf of England.’ He shifted his weight and winced for a long moment.

  Behind Cromwell, the redcoats walked back, looking grim, embarrassed. Many still afraid. Officers and sergeants barked orders to collect the hundreds of discarded muskets scattered everywhere and to get back to their proper companies and battalions.

  ‘Please, General,’ one of his men said, close to tears with concern, ‘we must get you to the surgeons.’

  Cromwell ignored the man and instead peered closely at Writer, then at Burp and the rest of them. ‘Now you fine young folk must go ahead of the army. You must head south, for London. Just in case.’

  ‘In case what?’ Archer asked. ‘Sir.’ He was drained and weak. He could not think clearly.

  ‘My army is falling back in disorder. The momentum is with the enemy. We cannot have them taking you. Or your mighty fire-breathing dragon. He is like a landship, is he not? You all have exceeded my expectations and clearly you are powerful indeed. Yet I’ll not risk your capture. No, you’ll go to London and we shall hold back the enemy until you return with Dee’s automata. Get to the Tower of London. You can save England once more.’ Cromwell broke off looking around. ‘You’ll need an escort, someone to get you through the city gates. Captain Smith! You and your company are now ordered to escort our friends to the Tower of London, as fast as you can.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The Captain rode through the mass of officers. The man, once dashing and neat, had become filthy and dishevelled. He seemed to be rather overwhelmed.

  ‘Captain Smith, you shall rouse Dee. Tell him that it does not matter if his machines are not at company strength. Or even half company. A dozen of them could swing the war back to us. Without battlemages to do them harm, those machines are unstoppable.’

  ‘I shall see it done, sir,’ Captain Smith said, sitting up straighter in his saddle.

  ‘And take these children with you. And the dragon, of course. Get them safe behind the walls of the Tower of London.’

  ‘I ain’t going London,’ Weaver said. ‘I’m going home.’

  ‘We should go,’ Writer said to her, then repeated herself to Archer. ‘We should certainly go to London.’

  Weaver crossed her arms, looking defiant. ‘I’ve had enough. I’m going home to the Vale.’ She swiped at her eyes.

  ‘What on earth do you mean, girl?’ Cromwell shouted. ‘If we lose then what do you think the enemy shall do to your Vale? They’ll take that dragon, for a start, and who knows what nasty business with the beast. No, trust me, girl, you’re best off being safe in London until we can see them off.’

  ‘Please, Weaver,’ Keeper said, his red eyes hard as flint. ‘Don’t let them get Burp. We have to get him away from them.’

  ‘Quite right, lad,’ Cromwell said, bobbing his massive head in Keeper’s direction. ‘Captain Archer, I will keep your sharpshooters
with me. Rest assured, I know you have done a fine job. You are a fine officer and a credit to this army and I look forward to your eventual return to us. You have a fine career ahead of you.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Archer said. He had no intention of doing anything of the sort.

  Winstanley mumbled something to Susan, who put her hand upon her husband’s arm.

  ‘Winstanley,’ Cromwell growled. ‘Now your absurd garden on wheels has become matchsticks and mud I think you will like to leave us. Our greatest city is in danger and I know that my men will fight, come what may. You and your wife go and live in whatever mildewed hole you call a home. After I win this war we shall address your ridiculous notions in Parliament and you shall be defeated.’

  Winstanley and Susan looked grim indeed but said nothing. They held each other’s hand. Archer thought he saw Winstanley’s mouth twitch with the hint of a smile.

  Cromwell barely paused before he was addressing the next man. ‘Take care of them, Captain Smith. I know you wish to fight with us but there will be time enough for that. This task is vital and I trust no officer and company more.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Captain Smith drew himself up straighter. ‘I will see the children safely to the Tower, sir. Upon my honour, I will.’

  Cromwell nodded then raised his voice to boom at them collectively. ‘I shall see you in a few days or weeks. Good luck you all.’

  Cromwell was helped to mount his horse, groaning in pain. For a long moment, he looked as if he would fall from his horse and Archer held his breath. The big General recovered and rode north, toward the bulk of his tattered and retreating army, his huge number of staff officers clattering after him.

  Captain Smith shouted orders at his men. They quickly rounded up food, water, ammunition, gunpowder and other stores.

  Archer and his friends gathered by Burp’s wagon as the dragon climbed aboard, the wood creaking under his weight. Archer watched with interest how Captain Smith’s men glanced at Weaver and the rest of them from the corners of their eyes but gave them a wide berth. Everyone knew, now, what the Vale children were capable of.

  ‘They respect us,’ Keeper said, patting Burp on the scaly leg.

  ‘They’re afraid of us,’ Archer corrected him.

  ‘You’re both wrong,’ Weaver said, staring at the man called Sergeant Gore. ‘They hate us.’

  ‘As long as they help us against the Alchemist Dee,’ Writer said. ‘Then they can think whatever they wish.’

  They set off for London.

  Weaver’s Triumph

  She was walking again. Trudging through the evening light on the road to London. Weaver felt strange. Empty, totally drained. As if she had finally used up all of her power and now there was nothing left inside her.

  It seemed like that must have been how the whole New Model Army had felt. There were still a few stragglers on the road that their little procession passed. Mostly, though, the redcoats had been rounded up and organised further in the north where Cromwell was fighting an ordered retreat.

  Their escort was Captain Smith’s battered, much reduced horse company. The horses were tired and apart from a few scouting ahead and to the side, everyone walked their horse, leading them by the reins.

  Keeper drove Burp’s wagon himself, now pulled by a team of four sturdy cart ponies that Captain Smith’s men had rounded up. The axles squeaked and groaned under the weight of the tired dragon dozing upon the back.

  Weaver did not want to go to London. It was supposed to be even bigger than Coalschester.

  ‘Let’s just go home to the Vale,’ Weaver said to Archer. ‘I’ve had enough of this.’

  ‘The Alchemist Dee is up to something terrible in London,’ Writer said, her voice low. She knew everything, as usual but she seemed unusually nervous or upset. ‘We simply must go.’

  ‘Yes but how do you know that?’ Archer asked her. He was always impressed with people that know things. And of course he was smitten with Writer. ‘And who is the Dee, anyway?’

  ‘The new Lord High Alchemist Bacon told me when I was a prisoner,’ Writer explained. ‘Dee is a conjurer and mechanist. He is the alchemist who constructed Stearne’s arm and summoned the demon that powered it.’

  ‘That was my arm,’ Weaver muttered. ‘Before you two destroyed it.’

  ‘Archer shot it just at the right moment, as it touched Bede’s barrier. The shot shattered the vial holding the demon inside. The power was released all at once and it overcame their own strength,’ Writer said. ‘Without that arm, that demon, we would never have beaten them. Even with our powers all together.’

  Weaver was too tired to bother explaining that she had been joking about the arm being hers. She was glad the nasty thing was blown up.

  ‘What was that thing they did to scare away the redcoats,’ Archer asked Writer. ‘And why did it miss us? And Cromwell and his men?’

  ‘One of Cedd’s fear spells,’ Writer said. She glanced at Burp’s wagon. ‘I suspect it missed us simply because they did not wish to cast such as spell upon Burp. There’s no telling how he may have reacted. We and Cromwell simply happened to be near to the dragon. And, once the soldiers had fled, Cedd assumed he could finish us off himself.’

  ‘Last mistake he ever made,’ Weaver said.

  ‘Quite,’ Writer said.

  They walked on, the sun getting lower. The evening air was clear. Spring was well on the way. Weaver wished that the rest of the world would just go away and that she and her friends could keep walking and talking all the way home.

  ‘So Dee is making an army for Cromwell,’ Archer said to Writer. ‘Why do you care about that?’

  ‘From what Bacon says, I suspect that Dee is making a new army for Dee,’ Writer said. ‘But whether the army of automata is controlled by Cromwell or controlled by Dee, it will lead to even more fighting. Even more destruction.’

  Weaver did not want to get involved. She could tell that Archer did not want to fight any more either but he was the sort of person who could not leave something alone. Weaver supposed it was only right that they try to stop bad things happening, if they could. But she was tired.

  They lapsed into silence again and walked their way southward along the road to London. The sun was low over the far hills, the shadows long. Perhaps Weaver drifted to sleep as she walked. She blinked and Winstanley and Susan walked beside her.

  ‘I’m sorry about your wagon,’ Weaver said. ‘It was the only thing I could think of.’

  Winstanley smiled. ‘You used it to smother fires that would have claimed those men’s lives. What are a few plants compared to that? You did wonderfully.’

  ‘Even though it was Cromwell that I saved?’

  ‘Being a pacifist means not wanting even your enemies to suffer violence,’ Winstanley said. ‘I want the man dethroned, mocked and ignored. Not killed.’

  ‘Fair enough, mate,’ Weaver said.

  ‘How are you, Isolda?’ Susan asked her quietly.

  Weaver was glad the Winstanley’s were coming to London. She didn’t know why, exactly, but she liked them. They had been nice to her, she supposed. They had listened to her. They had helped her to remember her true name.

  Isolda.

  The name, her true name, brought with it a tumble of memory. Her mother singing while they hoed out the weeds around the turnips and kale. Her father telling her about what insects were good for the crops and making her laugh by dancing a jig, playing on the whistles he would whittle from green elder twigs.

  Every memory was tinged with sadness. The last winter with them was still a confusion of images and feelings. The cold, the hunger, and her parents pretending everything was going to be well, even when they had known it wouldn’t.

  In the long dark of that winter, her parents had explained why they had no friends and no family to help them. Why, when they had begged for assistance from neighbours, they had been turned away. It was because they had married, against Bede’s wishes. Bede had commanded them to marry other people
and when they had not, Bede had ordered everyone who lived nearby to never speak to her parents ever again. It was meant as punishment for them and as a warning to others against what happened when Bede’s orders were ignored. Weaver knew now that Bede probably thought he was letting them off easy.

  That was why she had gone to Bede’s Tower. That was why she had wanted to kill him.

  Without ever knowing how great her power could be, she had almost shaken Bede’s Tower to the ground in her blind rage. She had failed. Bede had captured her and kept her in the dark, weaving great bolts of cloth. She was alone and miserable until Archer had climbed up the chimney and they had escaped into a new life. A new world.

  Now she finally had killed Bede, or helped to, at least. At the least, he was buried under tons of earth. She didn’t know how she felt about it. Bede certainly deserved it. She did know that she felt sick of fighting.

  ‘I am well,’ Weaver said to Susan. ‘I feel bad about what I did with the shaking the earth. And about what happened to Artemis. But I feel good about everything else. I know that I don’t want to work for Cromwell and the rest of his lot. Definitely not after how he spoke to you and Winstanley.’

  Susan smiled. ‘Don’t worry about Cromwell,’ she said. ‘His words mean nothing to Gerry and me. We know that we have thousands of people who believe as we do. We shall win any fight he picks with us in Parliament.’

  ‘I’m not fighting any more,’ Weaver said to Susan. ‘I decided. No more fighting. There’s enough fighting in the world right? I’ve done enough damage. People are always trying to smash things up and destroy stuff and they don’t need any more help from me. I’ll have to stop them.’

  Susan patted her on the arm and her friends nodded. They had been listening. She knew that they would feel the same.