The Iron Princess

by Niall Teasdale

  ~~~

  Stealing a uniform for Jun to wear proved to be quite an easy task once they made it to the supply camp. Soldiers had accidents or took damage. Replacements were needed at times, so the camp had a supply of clothes. They even got to pick out the right sizes and Jun was rather pleased with the boots.

  ‘So, why do we need Jun dressed up as an imperial soldier?’ Ayah asked. She was keeping her voice down, but it seemed like there was little chance of them being noticed. There were sentries about, but it seemed like the Army felt the chances of anyone attacking this camp at the rear of their main lines was slim. The camp was quiet, almost too quiet.

  ‘Because,’ Xian replied, ‘of this.’ They had been moving through the camp for a few minutes to get to where they were. The two wagons they had arrived at – one of which Xian put her hand on – were being kept away from the main encampment. They looked like typical wagons except not quite. Ayah had got kind of used to wagons while travelling with the circus and these ones seemed to have overly complex suspension systems. The axles were attached to the rest of the cart by big arcs of metal rather than just being attached to the body.

  Ayah walked around to the back and pulled aside the canvas cover. There were six large barrels in the bed of the cart. Her eyes widened. ‘Is this–’

  ‘Thunder Water,’ Xian said. ‘These wagons were to be pushed up to the gates and detonated if the breaching of the walls didn’t work. We’re going to use them for something else before the breaching of the walls can happen.’

  ‘You want me to drive one of them somewhere?’ Jun asked.

  Xian nodded. ‘I’ll guide you. If it were me driving, we’d almost certainly get stopped.’

  ‘But they’ll see you.’

  ‘No,’ Suyin said. ‘They won’t see her because she’s a spirit.’

  ‘Fox spirit,’ Ayah added. ‘But don’t let that worry you. She’s been great to me.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Xian said. ‘We’re going to need horses and harnesses, but I know where they are kept.’

  ‘And what will we be doing while you and Jun are delivering that package?’

  ‘Oh, that’s easy. You see all those barrels about fifty paces over there? You’ll be pushing the second wagon over to those.’

  Ayah frowned at the shadowy shape of casks some distance away. ‘There has to be… dozens of them at least.’

  ‘Yes,’ Xian said, her lips curling into a malicious grin. ‘When that lot goes up, you’ll be able to hear it in the Iron City.’

  1st Day, First Jenshu.

  ‘If this works,’ Suyin said, ‘I still have a problem.’ All three of the girls were pushing the wagon across the open field toward the loose barrels of Thunder Water. For a princess, Suyin was definitely not worried about getting her hands dirty.

  ‘What’s that?’ Ayah asked.

  ‘Everyone in Istollam knows who I am. I can’t stay here.’

  ‘I would not say “everyone,”’ Nareel responded.

  ‘Enough then. I figure everyone in the circus knows by now.’

  ‘Maybe. They all know something, but General Marsan was trying to keep it quiet. Talk it over with Herra Taravel when we get back into the city.’

  ‘Well, that’s just it. I was thinking that I should just leave. Not go back into the city.’

  ‘You have things in there you’ll want to take with you,’ Ayah said. ‘Clothes. Your fiddle. And you need a place to go. Come back to the city and we can work things out from there.’

  There was a pause and then Suyin said, ‘Okay. Do you think this is close enough?’

  Ayah stopped pushing and checked where they were. There was no more than three or four paces left between the wagon and the barrels. ‘Probably.’ She climbed up onto the back of the wagon and, very carefully, pulled the stopper out of one of the barrels. Then she pushed a length of cloth into the hole, leaving about two feet of it hanging over the edge of the barrel, and jumped down. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ she said as she pulled the canvas cover back into place. ‘If Xian’s even half right about what this can do, we don’t want to be anywhere near it when she sets it off. Besides, I have somewhere to be.’

  ~~~

  Jun was not feeling especially confident about his disguise as he slowly drove the second wagon toward the command encampment. Xian had been going over what he needed to say and do almost all the way there. Even if he could not see her, he knew she was there, right beside him on the bench seat. He was not quite sure what to make of being guided by a spirit, but he had to admit that she was one and she was guiding him.

  ‘Just remember,’ Xian said from the empty air, ‘you’re just doing your job.’ Then she went silent as Jun eased the horses to a stop beside the pair of sentries.

  ‘What’s this?’ one of the soldiers asked. He was speaking Astoleen, the language of the Iron City and the Empire. Another good reason for Jun to be doing this since he had grown up in Astollar. It was also not too long before dawn now and the sentry sounded weary. Jun knew how he felt.

  ‘No idea,’ Jun replied. ‘Barrels of something.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re hauling?’

  Jun frowned and attempted to look tired. It was not especially hard. ‘Look, General Guang sends an order to have some barrels brought over here and I get dragged out of bed to do the hauling. They don’t tell me why and I don’t ask because the order comes from General Guang and you know how much he likes having his orders questioned.’

  The sentry gave a grunt of displeasure. ‘I thought the general was in bed, not giving orders.’

  Jun leaned forward and down toward the man. ‘Seems to me like someone didn’t get around to handling this yesterday. When the officers screw up, it’s always those down the chain of command who suffer for it, right?’

  ‘That’s the truth. Okay, get it moving. Maybe it’s ale to celebrate our victory.’

  Jun twitched the reins. ‘If it is, I doubt I’ll see any of it.’

  ‘Well done,’ Xian said when they were past the checkpoint. ‘We want this at the back of the largest tent. You see it?’

  Jun nodded. ‘Then I take the horses back to pick up the girls?’

  ‘Yes. I doubt the sentries will worry you, but I’ll keep an eye on you until you’re past them. Then I need to check on Ayah.’

  ‘This plan has a lot of moving parts. You’re sure it’ll work?’

  ‘It would have fewer complications if Ayah hadn’t had to kill Guang, but I don’t think we’ll have any further problems.’

  ‘I still can’t believe Ayah took out one of the most despised men in the world.’

  There was humour in Xian’s voice when she replied. ‘She did. She’s tougher than she looks.’

  ‘Yeah. She certainly is that.’ Jun pulled on the reins and put his foot on the brake lever and the wagon slowed to a stop. ‘This good?’

  ‘This will do perfectly. You unhook the horses while I take care of the fuse. Tomorrow morning, Guang’s colonels are going to be in for a nasty surprise.’

  ~~~

  Sergeant Zhìyuan had been General Guang’s personal servant for some time now. He had been with him at Garia City and he knew the man’s predilections quite well. He was not surprised, therefore, to find a girl lying on the floor of Guang’s tent. He was a little annoyed with the blood which had soaked into the rug near her face. The general knew how long it took to get blood out of those rugs.

  The general was still in bed, which meant he would have to be woken. General Guang always slept like a baby, but he usually slept significantly better after he had broken some prisoner or other. Woman or man did not enter into the equation. The general was an equal-opportunities sadist: he just liked to see people in pain and Zhìyuan spent some considerable effort every day on ensuring that he was not the target of his general’s attention.

  In this case, there was no option. Zhìyuan stepped over the girl’s body and over to the bed. He suspected something was wrong almost immediately. There was
something odd about the general’s hair and his face seemed redder than normal. The ‘almost’ was important. The ‘almost’ cost Zhìyuan everything, because in the second or so it took for him to realise precisely what he was seeing, Ayah rose from her position on the rug and ran her sword through the soldier’s back.

  Zhìyuan stared dumbly at the point of the sword and his own blood dripping from it. He tried to cry out, but nothing would come. Then he heard the voice, soft and feminine, in his ear.

  ‘You know, if you’d bothered to check whether I was alive, I’d have just hit you and you might have lived through this,’ Ayah said. Then she ripped her blade free and Sergeant Zhìyuan was no more.

  ~~~

  As usual, General Guang’s colonels, the senior commanders of each regiment of the Third Army, were gathered in the big tent which had been set aside for the daily meeting Guang liked to have to ensure all his people were on the same page of the battle plan. They had tea and the big map of Istollam the intelligence service had provided, and they were used to having to wait for Guang to arrive since he liked to make an entrance.

  Enough time had passed, however, for people to start wondering what was keeping the man. Colonel Hop had particularly good news for the general this morning and so was rather keen for his superior to turn up. There would be praise and Guang’s praise was worth a lot. Hop was in charge of the mining and artillery. His miners were all set up to blow the walls once the Thunder Water was in place which would happen when it got dark. It was a full day ahead of schedule and Hop was pleased.

  ‘Where is he?’ Hop asked aloud. He had been asking the same question in his head for some time.

  ‘He had one of the prisoners taken to his tent last night,’ another colonel replied. ‘You know what he gets like. Are your people ready?’

  ‘Yes. We’ll have those walls down before morning.’

  There was a grunt from somewhere to Hop’s left. ‘That’s going to mean an early start.’

  ‘He’ll want them to come down at dawn,’ someone else said.

  ‘That can be arranged,’ Hop responded, smiling.

  ‘I’m afraid it can’t.’ Everyone turned at the sound of a woman’s voice. Hop’s eyes widened at the sight of a very pretty woman with long black hair, dressed in a quite formal red gown one might see in the court in the Iron City. She stood there, very upright, with her hands clasped before her and a slight smile on her face. ‘The walls will not be breached at dawn. General Guang will not be angry, however, so don’t worry, Colonel Hop. General Guang is never going to be bothering any of you again.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Hop asked. ‘How did you get in here?’

  ‘Those are not the questions you should be asking, Colonel,’ Xian replied.

  ‘What should I be asking then?’

  ‘What was I doing before I came in here, obviously. And the answer is that I was lighting a fuse.’

  ‘What–’ Hop’s eyes just got wider and he bolted to his feet, the porcelain teacup he was holding shattering as it hit the ground. ‘Everyone, get out before–’

  ~~~

  General Marsan was back up on the gatehouse, looking out over the field of battle. Not that you could really call it a field of battle when the battle largely consisted of artillery barrages and the imperial miners digging. And Marsan was not exactly sure that he should call himself a general either. He was well enough to stand but there was no way he could fight. He was up on the battlements so that his troops could see that their general was still on his feet. Morale needed all the boosting it could get.

  Marsan was fairly sure they had another day, perhaps two, before the city was completely under the control of the Imperial Army. He did not have the troops to hold them off, especially if the walls came down, and he had come up with no stratagem which would actually work to avoid that eventuality. There were ways to counteract miners – generally by digging into their tunnels with your own – but he did not have the people to achieve that and the imperial miners had come up with a very clever way to diminish the time required to do their job.

  No, all he could really do was to keep the men’s morale up and wait for–

  There were gasps from the men watching over the wall and Marsan turned to look just before an enormous crack shattered the air. It appeared that the sound – like a lightning strike very closely followed by the rumble of thunder – had come from the huge fireball which was now rising and dissipating above the massed army.

  ‘What, by all the spirits, is that?’ Marsan asked.

  Keeva, who had accompanied him up to the roof with a worried expression on his face, turned from the wall and looked his way. ‘I have no idea. Wait. Thunder Water?’

  The rumble of the explosion was still dying away. ‘It certainly sounds like thunder,’ Marsan replied. ‘Isn’t that roughly where we thought Guang’s command tent was located?’

  Keeva’s mouth twitched as he tried to keep a smile off his face. ‘We can always hope so.’

  ~~~

  Jun kept a tight grip on the horses as the roar of the explosion died away. The animals were scared for sure, but they were also not dead. He thought they should be a bit more grateful. Equally, he had been around horses for long enough to understand that they did not do abstract thought very well.

  ‘Spirits,’ Nareel said, her voice soft. Everyone could now see the ball of flame rising above the small hill they had taken refuge behind. ‘This is not a power men were meant to have.’

  ‘And she hasn’t even set off the big one,’ Ayah commented. ‘There are a lot more of those barrels at the other camp.’

  ‘When do you think–’ Suyin began, and then another baleful roar of thunder engulfed them. They were in a little valley, more a scrape in the plains around the city really, but they were surrounded by hills on three sides and still the sound was almost deafening.

  ‘You’re right, Nareel,’ Ayah said when she could hear again. ‘Men shouldn’t have that kind of power, but they do.’

  ‘Spirits save us all,’ Nareel said and, perhaps because the universe sometimes refuses to go where a good story demands, Xian did not appear among them as she said it.

  Epilogue

  Istollam, 2nd Day, First Jenshu, 207.

  There had been something of an attempt to rally the imperial troops to continue the attack. The removal of all the most senior officers along with their adjutants and almost all their support staff, and the destruction of a vast amount of the army’s supplies was just too much. There was no clear chain of command and that led to individual regiments and companies retreating toward the coast ‘to consolidate their position.’ Eventually, the whole army was withdrawing and signalling for the ships to come and pick them up.

  Ayah, Xian, Suyin, Nareel, and Jun slept rough for a night and emerged from the little valley they had concealed themselves in to find the Imperial Army gone. There was still evidence that they had been there – tents left behind being the most obvious thing, along with a couple of broken catapults – but the people were gone. Mostly.

  They rode the carthorses back toward the city gates and passed the supply camp on the way. That was when the true nature of the destruction they had unleashed became apparent. Where the barrels had been, there was a huge crater excavated into the dirt. The barrels and the cart were just gone, but there were fragments of wood sticking out of the ground over a hundred paces from the crater. Most of the camp had been demolished and scattered through the debris you could occasionally spot a body. Or parts of a body.

  ‘It’s horrible,’ Ayah said as they rode away. ‘We did this. We–’

  ‘No,’ Suyin said. ‘This is Siyu’s doing. We simply turned his own evil against him.’

  Somehow, that did not make Ayah feel too much better.

  It just got worse when they arrived at the city’s gatehouse. The gates were closed and the guards did not seem to want to let them in. ‘We’re under orders,’ one of the guards shouted from inside the stone walls. ‘No one comes in
until we’re sure the imperials are gone.’

  ‘They’re gone,’ Jun called back, ‘otherwise we wouldn’t have risked coming here through what used to be their lines, would we?’

  ‘A full military assessment is underway to deter–’

  ‘That seems unlikely,’ Suyin said. ‘We’ve seen none of you while riding here. Perhaps your assessment would go better if you sent out scouts.’

  ‘That’s not my call,’ the soldier replied. ‘Back away from the gates or our archers will–’

  ‘Young man,’ Xian said, taking a step toward the gate and glaring up at the arrow slot the voice appeared to be coming from, ‘if I have to come in there to argue with you personally, you are going to regret it. Now, either open the gate or talk to your commander.’

  ‘I’m not going to–’

  ‘That’s enough, Sergeant.’ It was Captain Keeva’s voice interrupting this time, from inside the gatehouse. ‘Open the gate and let them in.’

  ‘But Colonel Gothram’s orders–’ Apparently, this man was part of the city’s militia and not directly under Keeva’s command.

  ‘Colonel Gothram isn’t here, is he, Sergeant?’ Keeva did not sound happy. ‘Get that gate open and those civilians inside. Then get them an escort up to the city hall because General Marsan will want to see them immediately. No, on second thoughts, I can’t trust you with a basic understanding of command structure. I’ll escort them to the general. You can stay here and guard the gate from the army which has stopped besieging the city!’

  The gates were opened shortly after and Keeva was waiting inside when the party came through. ‘It’s like trying to command children playing soldier,’ Keeva grumbled as Xian approached him.

  ‘It’s a common issue with militias,’ Xian replied with a grin. ‘How is General Marsan? I know he was wounded.’

  ‘Weak. He’s not taking enforced rest well. He insisted on being on the battlements yesterday and he paid for it. Unfortunately, that means Gothram is making too many military decisions. Pero seems to have convinced Gothram that this is some ploy by the Empire to make us feel safe so they can take us by surprise. He’s convinced there are spies everywhere.’