by Stephen Hunt
Sadly and the remaining guard were peering around the doorway at the silent shrapnel-embedded walls of the pen, peering horrified through the smoke at the ruins of their brethren’s body.
Corporal Cloake moaned. The last thought that flickered across his dying mind was how damned hungry he was.
Crowds snaked up on the slopes of the volcano, the hangar doors of the island’s destroyed airship squadron held open while thousands of Nuyokians abandoned their city, ordinary citizens deserting their porcelain towers and hexagonal streets for the safety of the Court of the Air’s underground chambers. Daunt considered it something of an irony they would be packing in around the house-sized transaction-engines of the Court, the steam-driven thinking machines maintaining the model of Jackelian society and the supposedly safe course the Court was charting for it. There was nothing safe on the Isla Furia anymore. The city wall overlooking the lake was holding, but only just. Mainly thanks to the fact that the parapet on the city’s jungle side had been breached in so many places that it now made sense for the gill-neck invasion force to concentrate their forces on the breaks to the north-east. Leaking invaders into Nuyok, storming the rubble of fallen battlements. It wouldn’t take long before the Advocacy commanders realized that only token militia volunteers manned the city towers in front of them. Daunt was introducing a new thing to the city today — a terrible lesson for any pacifist to pass on. Guerrilla warfare. Hit and run. It was the only way to slow down such a vastly superior force. Give the Advocacy the impression that every hexagonal tower they faced was a fortress needing to be reduced to rubble, every savage inch bled for, while small mobile companies charged across the streets, harrying the gill-neck invaders. Hope what was left of their defences held until the populace was evacuated.
It was a risky plan, but the only one Daunt had. Every minute he slowed their advance was another minute for citizens to seek out the safety of the Court’s deep vaults. Poor devils. The Nuyokians were like refugees everywhere, all the worse for being dispossessed inside their own city, the city monitors shouting at the crowds to toss aside any possessions slowing the lines down. Wrestling carts of goods away from some and pushing them off to the side of the lawns. They took it in better humour than a similar mob of Jackelians would have — no doubt a side effect of their communal society and particular ideas about ownership.
Morris counted explosions flowering around the collapsing defences on the far side of Nuyok, then looked at the mob herding up the slopes. ‘I don’t like it. That place up there might be laid out like a fortress, but the Court was never built to house so many civilians. The gill-necks will be able to wait us out for as long as it takes for us to starve. Once the hares are inside the warren, there’s no way out that won’t be weasels all the way.’
‘I’ll settle for as long as it takes,’ said Daunt. ‘Time is what we need.’
‘Time for what?’ asked Morris, wiping the sweat off his brow. He had pushed his gas mask back up his helm. ‘You don’t really think Dick Tull and Sadly are returning to the island with a flight of Royal Aerostatical Navy squadrons in tow, do you? And I don’t particularly rate your girl and u-boat skipper’s chance of rousing the nomads of the sea up against the gill-necks, either.’
‘I fear we must have faith, Mister Morris.’
‘When a Circlist parson starts talking of having that, I know we’re in bloody trouble.’ He spat onto the ground. ‘Well, at least the poor gits will be better shielded in the gas mine’s tunnels than inside the city. Porcelain walls might keep you cool from the heat, but they’re bloody shrapnel coffins in a fight, see.’ His last few words were mangled by the detonations of the two giant cannons, their artillery relocated in front of the cable car station and landing shells within the city boundary. It was a hard thing to do, to order gunners to land shells on their own people. But the forces along the jungle-flanked wall had become so intermingled that the impact of the barrage was killing as many Advocacy soldiers as locals. Out beyond the thermal barrier surrounding the island, the invasion fleet was now bridging the killing zone unopposed. More soldiers to pour across the island, more predators to prowl the set Daunt was trapping the citizens inside.
Eventually the sea-bishops hidden among the invaders would track down and eliminate the faked signals emulating King Jude’s sceptre and then there would be only one hiding place left. The volcano. They would throw the entire gill-neck military machine against the slopes, with not a care for the natives sheltering inside. It all came down to time, if only he could buy enough time. Buy it with bodies. What a bitter currency to fund my strategy. A line of detonations stitched their way across the cable car concourse, the distant whoop of gill-neck mortars falling across their position.
Daunt ducked reflexively along with Morris behind the makeshift command post in the volcano’s shadow. A hailstorm of tiny stones and dirt jounced off the sandbags and ricocheted off the cable car station behind them. As the dust of the explosions cleared, Daunt saw that the columns of fleeing Nuyokians had been broken, limbless bodies scattered as though seeds from a dandelion head, wails of moaning rising around smoking craters. The rain of mortar shells on their position had left Daunt with a dusty, gritty taste on his tongue, his clothes covered with a layer of dull volcanic dust. A sudden wave of fatigue washed over him. How long since he had last eaten or slept? Everything was war; it was as if there had never been a time when he had known peace. Daunt couldn’t faint now. This was his slaughter. He would look the refugees in the eyes as they passed. He would feel their fear and taste their pain. The Circle save him, but the ex-parson’s ear was attuned to this carnage now. Daunt could tell the difference between heavy bombards and light gallopers, between the short-barrelled cannons on the rolling-pin tanks, tracks pulling them over the rubble of the walls, and the heavy howitzers that the gill-necks had assembled on the island’s shores. The pacifist had a day of practical lessons to add to his years of book learning. A day stretched into a year, subverting the lessons of the church. From how every battle could be avoided, corrupted into by what means their lost cause might be turned around.
Running across the ground of the mud-trampled parkland opposite, one of the city engineers came skidding past the sandbags. ‘The blasting barrels you requested have been assembled, Court man.’
Daunt turned to the crumpled map of the city he had procured, laid out across a porcelain bench. ‘We don’t have much time. Bring down the towers along this line-’ he tapped the map, ‘-and then this one.’
The engineer looked indignant. ‘You are asking me to destroy our city?’
‘Walls and halls are not your city,’ snarled Daunt. He pointed to the struggling lines of citizenry pouring past their position. ‘ They are Nuyok. Bring these two districts down, collapse their under-streets into canyons and we will force the gill-necks to funnel through this central area. A mountain pass for us to defend, such as the steamman knights held in the Battle of the Gauge Heights.’ The engineer looked as if he was going to argue further, but Daunt silenced him with a jab towards the low buildings on the far side of the parkland. ‘These palaces need to come down too. The Holy Kikkosico Empire’s defence of Los Tarral showed that it’s many degrees harder to assault through rubble than through standing structures.’
‘Those are not palaces,’ the engineer sounded disgusted. ‘That is the great Library Publico of Nuyok.’
‘Good engineer,’ Daunt seized the man by his ceramic chainmail. ‘I have killed thousands of men, women and children today. Let’s burn a few of your books on their shelves too.’
The engineer stumbled back, looking at Daunt as if he was mad. ‘We will clear the shelves, where we can, where we have time.’
‘Who will read them?’ Daunt shouted as the engineer exited the command post. ‘Can corpses read your precious shelves of books?’
Morris pulled his rifle in tight on his shoulder, flashing a look of concern at the ex-parson. ‘You need to rest. I slept an hour at the back of the station on one
of the spare stretchers.’
‘I can sleep when I’m dead,’ said Daunt. He pushed Morris away. ‘Monsters win battles, Mister Morris. That is the real lesson of history. Cold, heartless madmen who march innocents into the mincing machine of war. We face monsters, but what are we? What must we become? Monsters killing monsters.’
‘You won’t get the taste for it, vicar. Not you. For some this is beer and mumbleweed and sex. But you’re better than us.’
‘Better!’ Daunt thumped the map. ‘Everyone in the Northeast of the city will be cut off in a few minutes. My last order to them was to fight to the end. No quarter. No retreat. I am better. You thought we’d have folded by now, surrendered. You gave me odds on it. But the city is still fighting. How many generals could have done that? How many colonels and field marshals could have prolonged the killing here for so long?’
‘You’ll know when it’s time to stop,’ said Morris, sitting down. ‘And that’s better than most.’
One of the Court’s guards came into the post, pushing back a strange black mask that covered his face, an evil grasshopper head made of rubber and leather and twin respirators, one hanging on either side of his visor. He passed a wax-sealed tube across to Daunt. ‘Lord Trabb’s complements sir.’
‘What is it?’ asked Morris as Daunt scanned the message pulled from the container.
‘Bob my soul, but just once I would like to receive some good news today. The Court’s spotters on the rise are reporting the fall of the wall on the south side. Lord Trabb’s worried that the advance of the gill-necks towards us will trigger the Court’s defences. Their automated gun ports on the slopes won’t differentiate between refugees and Advocacy marines right now. It’ll be a hard pounding for everyone.’
‘Then turn the damn things off,’ said Morris.
Daunt handed the tube back to the Court’s messenger, addressing him directly. ‘No. Keep the artillery running. Any stragglers will have to come in under fire.’
Morris looked horrified, his eyes flicking towards the frightened women and children filing past them. Another round of mortar shells scattered across the concourse, militia yelling and screaming over the impacts, trying to shepherd the mob into the safety of the mountain refuge.
‘I won’t pick up a gun myself,’ Daunt told Morris. ‘Because I’m a good Circlist and a better hypocrite. I won’t pick up a weapon because I’ve got you and everyone else to do that for me.’ He picked up the map and left the post, glancing back at Morris. ‘On your feet, sir. It’s not time to stop yet.’
Down the darkship sank, spinning slowly, the only signs of the trench’s fierce depth the occasional animal-like tremor along the craft’s oily floor, something to accompany the creaking from its hull. Unlike a Jackelian u-boat, there were no gas lanterns to light the drop into the abyss, but the craft seemed to emit a hellish red glow which the pilot’s viewing port could translate into a form of vision. The occasional snake-like trench dweller passed the darkship in front of the jagged, falling walls of the trench, moving through a sea of blood.
Gemma Dark came strutting down the narrow cabin, cock-of-the-walk since she had captured Charlotte and Commodore Black. In a rare flash of generosity she had ordered Jared’s shoulder bandaged, although Charlotte suspected that had more to do with a desire to prolong his time under interrogation, rather than any softening of heart towards her brother. ‘You want to know an irony, brother? It was the airships of the Royal Aerostatical Navy that first chased me down here, their depth charges that set off a rock slide, breaking the ancient machines holding my allies locked in a snare of suspended time. Parliament freed them, but my wrecked u-boat was the first thing their scouts came across.’
‘A pity they didn’t gorge their chops on your bitter old bones,’ growled the commodore.
‘Oh, they killed a few of us,’ said Gemma. ‘Stripped our minds and fed on our blood. That was when they realized the similarities between our two peoples. Both of us hunted and harried to the ends of existence, persecuted for who we are. They needed allies to take their first tentative footsteps outside, re-entering our brave new era, and the cause had run out of friends a long time ago.’
‘Only because you’d seen most of them killed, sister,’ muttered the commodore.
‘Not quite as many as I should have done.’
‘You’ve made a bad bargain,’ spat Charlotte.
‘Tell me that when I am sitting on the throne of Jackals as the Kingdom’s first true queen for over seven hundred years.’
‘You won’t be queen,’ laughed Charlotte. ‘You’ll just be in charge of the abattoir for a short while.’
‘We shall see.’ Gemma pulled out Charlotte’s amulet and swung it tauntingly inches from her face. ‘What are you without this trinket? Only a petty housebreaker, and probably not a very competent one without my allies’ tricks to bend weak-willed minds to your thievery. Walsingham tells me that you’re the illegitimate daughter of an industrial lord, that filthy parliament of shopkeepers, tradesmen with their dirty stolen titles. What a fancy pair of doves flapping in my snare. A shopkeeper’s bastard, working with a traitor to the cause… a lapdog and informer for the State Protection Board.’ Behind Gemma, the cliff-face through the darkship’s port had stopped rising past, her darkship turning to reveal the trench floor. Further than any human should have been able to reach, the deep of the dark. It was still, currentless and cold, but not entirely without movement. Charlotte could see the sea-bishops’ seed-city ahead, a vast ebony disk blocking the floor of the trench. Above it, moving sedately with the vast pressure, were darkships, as well as figures wearing diving suits that looked like collections of joined spheres. They were putting the finishing touches on a massive curved arch, jagged, crystalline, an architecture of pure evil. Large enough to pass the seed-city squatting before it through the vault, and with good reason. When the gate was activated, Charlotte’s world would be joined to its dangerous mirror image across the well of infinite possibilities. How many seed-cities would pass through that gate then, how many countless sea-bishops, arriving to feast until every living creature in her world was extinct?
‘Nothing should be able to prosper this deep down,’ said the commodore.
‘Walsingham’s people like to toil far away from the gaze of their enemies,’ said Gemma. ‘And as I have had it explained to me, my allies need the incredible forces of the pressure down here to anchor the energies released when unlocking the portal to their home.’
‘How can you talk like that about helping them?’ asked Charlotte, stunned by the royalist’s disregard for the implications of her words.
‘Why don’t you ask my brother?’ laughed Gemma. ‘We were both born with a price on our head, weren’t we, Jared? The children of rebels with long-lost titles and nothing else except a world full of enemies and assassins and turncoats ranged against us. You want to know why I’ll choose those treacherous reflections of humanity as allies over my own race? Just the chance of getting my hands on my brother would be worth all that I have done in their name and all that I yet will. I would crawl across every cold inch of hell merely for the chance to tweak this jigger’s beard.’
Charlotte found it hard to believe anyone could hate the way this woman could. Beyond reason, Gemma was clinging to it like a life raft. She was hollowed out with hate. ‘Once you open that gate, there will be no closing it. The sea-bishops will come here in numbers beyond legion to feed on us.’
‘Quite so,’ said Gemma. ‘Fortunately there are so many nations around who are entirely superfluous to my coming reign. Those shiftie bastards, those king-murdering regicides on the First Committee in Quatershift, for instance. I think a world without them would be for the better, don’t you? And the Steamman Free State? Where were they when Jackelian shopkeepers were hunting my ancestors, foxes to the hounds, across the moors? An internal matter, can’t intervene. Let’s see how the steammen like a taste of neutrality from their neighbours for a change. The caliph down in Cassarabia, drip-
feeding the cause crumbs of support from his table only when it suited his glorious highness? Well, he likes crafting monsters out of slave flesh, he can meet my monsters and we shall see who comes out best from the arrangement. The Mass must feed, that’s what my little darlings are always saying. Let them!’
Charlotte stared up in shock at the commodore’s sister. ‘You’ve lost your mind.’
‘Just running to the bitter, that is all. Ashes are what the world has given me. I’m only riding my luck and making the best of it.’
‘You can’t trust them!’
‘Am I an idiot, thief girl?’ snarled Gemma. ‘I trust them as much as I trust my dear brother here. But I have worked with the Mass for long enough to understand them far better than you ever will. They are cowards. They are a hundred times as far ahead of us in engineering and technology as we are above the most primitive tribe of polar barbarians, and yet the Mass will never fight until they have overwhelming numbers on their side. Even then, they prefer to sidle up behind you masquerading as your grandmother to slip one of their blood-draining daggers in your spine. They live in fear. Fear that one day they will connect to a reflection of their world carrying a race as far beyond them as they are beyond us. A race that will follow them back to their barren piss-ridden world and burn them out for the plague they have become.’ She bent in close to Charlotte and winked. ‘Every day I’ve lived I’ve faced and fought against impossible odds. The sea-bishops don’t know it yet, but they’ve found the world they’ve been dreading all these millennia. It is ours, and I shall be its sole ruler.’
‘They’re not quite the cravens you take them for,’ said Charlotte. ‘You know what happens when sea-bishops reach a world with a species judged too hostile to be conquered? They detonate their seed-city and all on board die rather than risk capture and having their home traced. Self-sacrifice, all for the Mass. They are experts at judging the odds.’ She pointed to the seed-city, its black expanse approaching closer to the darkship with every second. ‘Does that look like a race of creatures uncertain about their chances of victory against us?’