by Dan Davis
Sergeant Gore laughed behind her, a hacking, gargling sound. ‘You’re going to stop war? How, by killing everybody?’ He looked round at his men and they were grinning too. ‘That’s the only way.’
‘No, you idiot,’ Weaver said, growing angry. ‘By not fighting. By growing stuff instead. Like Winstanley and Susan. Just grow stuff instead of fighting. That way, if everyone is happy then they won’t need to fight.’
‘Hah,’ Sergeant Gore said, coughing out a disgusting laugh. ‘Typical children. You can’t just wish the world into a nice place where everyone is nice to each other all the time. You’ve let this Digger idiot Winstanley bend your tiny girl mind out of shape. You hear that, Winstanley? You and your ugly wife are fools and after we smash old King Charlie we’ll be coming for you and your people, you just see if we don’t. We’ll turf you out of your hovels. We’ll burn your dirty farms. Everyone hates you. You’re a joke.’
Weaver turned and walked back to Sergeant Gore.
‘Oh, upset you, have I? Are you going to cry on me?’ Gore sneered, learning down to her with his hands on his hips. ‘Little girl, you don’t scare me, you—’
She punched him in the jaw, hard, with a great swooping uppercut. Gore’s head jerked up, he staggered off his feet and went crashing down onto his back.
His horse, reins released, bolted away. Weaver’s hand hurt, really bad. Like she’d broken it. She decided it was worth it.
Everyone froze. Stopped walking. Stared at Gore, holding their breath.
Gore rolled over and crawled to his feet. ‘You stupid girl. You think you can take me? Me?’
He stalked toward her and swung a huge fist at her face. Weaver ducked and she shifted to one side as his next one came in. She punched him in the stomach with her uninjured hand and he rocked back holding his side. He stepped back, looking confused.
Captain Smith stalked over, shouting. ‘Stop this at once.’
‘Shut your face, Smith,’ Gore snarled. ‘Take a walk. This ain’t something a gentleman wants to see.’
Captain Smith was terrified of Gore, Weaver saw it now in Smith’s face. The Captain would do nothing. And she did not want him to.
Archer and the others were shouting too. ‘No one do nothing,’ Weaver shouted back. ‘He’s mine.’
‘You’re unnatural,’ Gore said and drew his sabre, slowly. ‘You’re no better than an alchemist. Worse. You’re worse than an alchemist, it’s in your blood. We know what you did. It was you that lost us the battle and I’m going to put you down. I’ll be doing England a favour. What do you think of that, girl?’
Weaver drew her sword from its scabbard. The one Keeper had made her. ‘I think you’re talking instead of fighting. That means you’re scared. I ain’t.’
‘You got magic,’ Gore said, waving the tip of his sword at her. ‘You’ll just magic me into quicksand.’ He glanced at her friends behind her. ‘One of you will trick me.’
‘No magic from any of us, right?’ Weaver said to the others without taking her eyes from Gore for one moment. ‘Don’t need it with you, you fat, useless, nasty, stinking old man.’
Gore snarled, stomped his right foot forward and swung his sword wide and hard enough to cut her in half. She danced back and it whistled in front of her so close the tip pinged a brass button on her coat.
There was no time to recover as Gore came charging towards her, his face red with rage. His sabre flashed down and she brought her smaller blade up to parry it away. They clashed and the shock of the blow drove her sword down as if it wasn’t even there. It jarred her to her shoulder, to her teeth and her arm flew down. Somehow, she stepped sideways just far enough for the blade to whistle by her again, swishing past her nose.
Gore kept moving, charging his massive bulk past her. Weaver brought her sword up just as Gore’s heavy blade reversed and swung backhand towards her belly. She blocked it, the blades clanging, and she leapt backward, breathing hard.
Her hands and arms hurt from the power of Gore’s blows. He was unbelievably strong and he was quicker than she would have believed for someone so huge. He had been fighting for years, since before she was even born, in back alleys and taverns. He knew every dirty trick there was. Gore’s eyes were black pits, lacking mercy or pity or self-control.
But Weaver knew that she was special. Not just because of her power with the earth, she knew she was tough. Maybe Bede had made her this way, through his control of the Vale and through his potions. Whatever the reasons, she was strong and fast and nothing hurt her for very long. She had beat up redcoats before. None as tough as Gore but he had laughed at her when Artemis had been killed.
She watched Gore’s eyes and remembered him leading her toward the enemy, before they shot Artemis. He had known they were there. He had done it on purpose.
Gore had tried to kill her. Gore killed Artemis.
When the next blow came she did not step away but instead leaned her body back and sideways. The edge came so close that it whipped the ends from a few lose strands of her hair and shaved a layer of skin from her cheek. Gore charged, following the blow so as to barge her down with his weight. She darted forward, slipped inside his reach and raised her own sword, swinging her arm over her head.
Gore was not expecting her attack. His mouth was turning from a snarl to a circle of surprise when she smashed the pommel of her sword into his jaw. The force of it knocked her back but Gore twisted and fell sideway, coughing blood. Even as he staggered to his knees, he thrust his sabre at her, trying to stab her leg or her guts.
Weaver flicked his blade out of her way then jabbed the back of his hand with the point of her sword, the point drawing blood. He cried out and dropped his weapon. She put the point of her sword against his neck.
‘Please,’ Gore said, clutching his bleeding hand. ‘Please, don’t. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please don’t kill me.’ He spat out two bloody front teeth.
‘Kill you?’ Weaver said. ‘I ain’t going to kill you, Sarge. I’m a pacifist.’ She leaned down and punched him in the side of the head, as hard as she could. It hurt her hand but he dropped sideways like a sack of dirt, knocked out cold.
She looked up.
Captain Smith was pointing his pistol at her. Archer had his rifle trained on Gore.
Captain Smith’s mouth hung open. ‘I wouldn’t have let him hurt you, Weaver,’ Smith said, stammering.
‘Get Gore out of my sight, Smith,’ Weaver said, walking back to her friends. ‘And take your company with him. Back to Cromwell.’ Burp hissed, spreading his crippled wings on top of the wagon. Keeper was hushing him. ‘I’m fine, Burp,’ Weaver said to him. The dragon growled and his tail flicked back and forth.
‘I most certainly will not,’ Captain Smith said, cocking his pistol and waving his men on. ‘I am in charge here and you are under my protection. Cromwell ordered me to take you to the Tower and that means you do exactly what I say. You are still in my company and I am still your Captain. You will follow orders. Or else.’
Weaver stood with Archer and Writer either side of her by Burp’s wagon with Keeper up on it with him.
Winstanley and Susan held hands and moved to stand next to her and the others, as if they didn’t care about getting hurt.
The horse company, the men that Weaver had ridden with for the last month or so, pulled their swords and carbines and closed in on their group. Their faces, once so familiar to her, looked hard and nasty and like complete strangers. Weaver realised they were afraid.
As they should be.
Weaver laughed. ‘Really? You’ve seen what we can do.’
Writer lifted her hands and the men froze where they were. The ones armed with carbines pointed them straight up into the air and held them there. Captain Smith pointed his pistol right in the air, looking terrified.
‘What alchemy is this?’ Captain Smith wailed. ‘I cannot move!’
‘It is not alchemy,’ Writer explained, her eyes glowing a vivid blue. ‘Every one of you is filled with wat
er. Your blood is water. You are little else but water.’
Archer reached up, his eyes shining white, brought down a roaring storm wind that blasted them from their saddles. The horses bolted off in all directions.
‘This is who we are,’ Archer roared, calming the wind.
‘Do you really think we need your protection, Smith?’ Weaver said.
The men lay where they fell, unable to move. Unable to get up.
‘Let Smith up,’ Weaver said to Writer.
Captain Smith got slowly to his feet, fear in his eyes, and despair on his face. Weaver felt sorry for him.
‘Cromwell will string me up if I let you go,’ Captain Smith said to Weaver.
‘So don’t go back,’ Weaver said to him. ‘Do something else with your life. Try being a gardener. Or a farmer. Look after horses.’
‘You are betraying the army, Captain Archer,’ Smith said, trying it on with him now.
‘I’m not,’ Archer said, his face set hard. ‘I don’t care about an army. I don’t owe you lot anything. I don’t owe Cromwell anything. Who is he to tell me what to do? Why should I?’
‘Get out of here, Captain Smith,’ Weaver said. ‘Don’t come back to follow us because you know what will happen. Tell Cromwell we’re going to London anyway because that is where we are needed. The four of us are stronger than you and your whole company. We’re stronger than you will ever be. We don’t need your protection so you’re better off helping the retreat, right?’
‘Cromwell never wanted them to protect us,’ Archer said to her, without looking round. ‘He wants the Captain to keep an eye on us. But that doesn’t matter. Weaver’s right. We’re strong enough to stop you by force so you might as well go, Captain. Tell him the truth. You lost control. We’re not Cromwell’s anymore.’
‘We never were,’ Weaver added.
Smith grumbled but he went. His men grabbed Sergeant Gore’s inert form and shuffled off after their horses. They trudged away north, back to Cromwell.
The Captain looked over his slumped shoulders as he walked away. ‘You would have made good soldiers.’
Weaver watched them go. ‘That was pretty great what you did with making them not move,’ she said to Writer.
Writer smiled. ‘Yes, I imagine that will come in rather useful, in future.’
‘Like flying,’ Archer said, peering up at Writer with a silly look on his face.
‘Right, come on then, you idiots,’ Weaver said to everyone who was left. ‘I suppose we’ll have to get to London. Quick as we can.’
Even though they were going to this London place and there was going to be trouble, she felt like she knew what she wanted to do, now.
‘Could I have a bit of your Rosemary?’ she asked Winstanley, pointing at the bushy bit poking through his buttonhole.
‘You can have the whole sprig,’ Winstanley replied.
Weaver shoved it through her hair over her ear. It smelled nice.
Another memory of her life before, of planting herbs with her mother. Ever since she had escaped from Bede’s Tower, she had not stopped escaping. She had flown over the Vale, walked the Moon Forest. Even living with Archer in his farm, she had known it would not last for her. She had sailed upon the sea in a storm and hunted for a dragon in the city of Coalschester. Why did she feel as though she was running from one thing to the next? Why did she want to return to the Vale when there was nothing there for her?
‘What did Susan call you earlier?’ Archer asked her as they walked.
‘Isolda. I remembered my real name. It’s Isolda.’
Archer smiled. ‘It suits you.’
Weaver peered at him from the corner of her eye. She reached out and brushed her fingers against his. Archer was surprised for a moment but then he took her hand in return. She squeezed his fingers.
‘Call me Weaver,’ she said. ‘It makes me happy to remember my old name. But I’m Weaver.’
She was with Archer, Writer, Keeper and Burp again. And her new friends, Susan and Winstanley. They were her family. She knew that now.
Two days later, they came across the first of the folk fleeing London. Those folk were heading north away from the city. They were a ragged bunch, pushing handcarts or carrying bindle staffs on their shoulders. Far behind them on the road, winding through hills, was a flow of men, women and children.
‘You’re going the wrong way,’ Weaver told the first group. ‘The war is in the north, it isn’t safe.’
‘The Alchemist Dee has taken the city,’ a scrawny, tough old lady said.
‘I knew it,’ Writer muttered.
‘How has he done this?’ Winstanley asked.
‘He has automata, sir,’ a burly young man said from behind a hand cart. ‘Brass devices, made in the likeness of a man. Only, they ain’t men. They can’t be reasoned with. No more than you can reason with a steam engine. They don’t get tired. They don’t ever rest. Ain’t you heard of them?’
‘Cromwell sent us to fetch the automata,’ Archer said. ‘To help with the war.’
The group scoffed at the sheer lunacy of such a thing.
‘How come a few walking devices can take over a city, anyway?’ Weaver asked Archer, although she thought of Stearne’s arm and shivered.
‘Indeed,’ Winstanley said. ‘The London militia regiment is very well equipped and trained.’
‘That’s right,’ Archer said to the group. ‘Cromwell was expecting less than half company. A dozen machines. Surely an entire regiment of the militia could contain that many man-sized brass machines.’
‘A dozen?’ the group all shouted at once.
‘What, there’s more than a dozen?’ Weaver asked.
‘Listen, girl,’ the old lady said, gripping Weaver’s arm hard with a gnarled hand. ‘There’s thousands of them things.’
‘Thousands,’ Weaver said, picturing thousands of brass arms attached to thousands of whirring mechanical bodies.
‘How many thousands?’ Archer said.
‘What difference does it make how many thousands?’ an old man wailed. ‘Not all the armies in the world can stop them. What can a musketball do against a machine-made man? The militia never stood a chance.’
‘Those brass men got special muskets and all,’ the burly young chap said, nodding. ‘They shoot over and over again, bang-bang-bang, just like that.’
‘We scarpered while it was still going on,’ a woman said from deep in the folds of a shawl. ‘Before the last of the militia got done in.’
‘We was going to go ever since what happened to the children but this was our first chance,’ the old lady said. ‘We went in the night. A few hundreds followed us but last we heard the infernal machines had closed the gates. Everyone else is trapped.’
‘What do you mean about the children?’ Keeper asked, standing up on his wagon. Burp was curled up unseen in the back. ‘What children?’
‘I won’t speak of it,’ the old lady said and she shuffled off. The rest of the group went with her.
The burly man paused as he trundled his cart by them. ‘Last few months, people been going missing all over the city. Especially the street children and the orphans in the foundling homes. They went first. Then children from good families started getting swiped off the streets. No one knows why. No one knows what happened to them. But everyone knows it was Dee what done it. A load of angry folk went to the Tower. The militia refused to shoot the people. Then those devices marched out onto the walls. Then out onto the streets. We ran. You’ll run too, if you got any sense in you.’
‘Wait,’ Keeper shouted after them. ‘Don’t go that way, there’s a war on.’
‘Can’t be worse than back that way,’ the burly man shouted over his shoulder.
Weaver looked at Archer and the rest.
Winstanley’s shoulders were slumped. Susan patted her husband on the arm. ‘It was supposed to be the final battle,’ Winstanley said. ‘It was supposed to lead to peace.’
Archer faced north. ‘Cromwell’s Army w
ill be caught between the King and Dee’s machine men.’
‘Thousands of brass made men?’ Winstanley asked, despairing. ‘I had many friends in the militia. How can men fight machines? Only alchemists could defeat the landships and the alchemists are dead.’
‘There’s just us, then,’ Archer said.
‘We cannot ask you to risk your lives,’ Susan said.
‘You’re not asking us,’ Archer replied. ‘We’re doing what we have to do.’
‘We are the only ones that can possibly help,’ Writer said.
‘How many people in London?’ Keeper asked.
Winstanley shook his head. ‘Hundreds of thousands of people,’ he said. ‘More than a million, perhaps. It is said to be the largest city in the whole world.’
‘If the Alchemist Bacon is to be believed,’ Writer said. ‘They are all in danger from Dee.’
‘No,’ Winstanley said, his face white. He looked old. ‘If he is not stopped then all England is in danger. All Europe, even.’
‘Right then,’ Weaver said. She took the sprig of rosemary from her hair and sniffed it. One day, she would have a garden of her own, back in the Vale, and she would plant rosemary everywhere. And all the other herbs and vegetables and flowers that she could.
‘Peace is good, Winstanley,’ Weaver said. ‘Peace is what we want. But sometimes you have to fight for peace.’ She dropped the sprig onto the road. ‘First off, let’s go save London.’
The story concludes in RED FIRES RAGING
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