by Stephen Hunt
‘Oliver,’ hissed the Whisperer. ‘Ware the enemy.’
At the foot of the fallen war frame a wave of Wildcaotyl demons were clambering up the steamman weapon, but Oliver did not hear the Whisperer’s warning – his attention was spreading out along the lattice of leylines, travelling along the bones of the world.
The Whisperer swore. These things were hard to fool, inhuman, their minds warped flesh that had been unnaturally multiplied from the hive of Tzlayloc’s body. Their dreams were cold alien things. He focused. With snarls of anger the creatures fell upon each other, seeing Special Guardsmen rather than their own foul forms, tearing into each other.
Oblivious to the carnage being inflicted at the foot of the King’s war body, Oliver started to realign the leylines around him, reforming and re-knitting the strength of the land, drawing the power into himself, a trickle at first – then a stream, then a torrent. Worldsingers on both sides of the battlefield fainted as the source of their wizardry disappeared, their hexes and spells falling apart even as they called them. There seemed an endless reservoir inside Oliver now, a well without an end to soak away the earth’s power. At the edge of the battlefield he could feel the Shadow Bear’s rage simmering at the intervention. Legitimate though, thought Oliver. The poor little fey boy was making good.
Below, the Wildcaotyl fighting each other were weakening, their mosquito barb into the repast of Jackals blocked. Tzlayloc realized the source of the threat as the shapes breeding inside his skin dried up, cracking and halting in stillbirth. Roaring he turned, wading through steammen knights and his own Wildcaotyl children without care, the mass of his horde heeding his call and breaking away from the steammen, flooding towards the fallen monarch’s shell. Captain Flare’s body lay in the snow behind them, his clothes ripped to pieces, his muscles scarred and purple. The Captain of the Guard was no more.
Above Rivermarsh the snow clouds had partially cleared, revealing a blue sky filled with drifting aerostats, their control lines cut and helpless before the whims of wind and weather. The Wildcaotyl were losing their ability to reshape the land now, to impose the cold perfection of the hive on Jackals. The false shadows of the steammen war frames flickered out of existence as the Whisperer turned his attention towards the wave of creatures heading towards him. Wildcaotyl stumbled and scrambled as they felt themselves plunged back into the icy angleless realm they had been exiled to, but there were too many for the feybreed’s illusion to hold.
Beneath his boots Oliver felt the King’s war body tremble. Had his interference with the earth’s power caused a floatquake? Surely not. What he was doing was only a variation of what the worldsingers did, tempering the earth’s passion to control the land that could be pushed towards the heavens on her temper. Earth fountained up in front of Tzlayloc, a geyser of molten worldstuff rising as tall as the chairman of the First Committee and showering burning rocks across the Wildcaotyl. The shambling mountain of flesh that had been Jacob Walwyn fell back, the spray flaming across the children of Xam-ku that had been birthed out of his tissue.
Something else was coming, surfing a wave of the earth’s fury. Oliver felt the bones of the world vibrate, his reformed lattice swept away as a tsunami of earthflow poured out of the hole, sweeping him aside, shattering against the feeding Wildcaotyl. Leylines reformed around the battlefield, impossible complex shapes, swirling around a white sphere hovering before Tzlayloc.
‘Sweet Circle,’ hissed the Whisperer.
Oliver felt a burning on his hip. His two belt pistols were glowing, pulsing to the rhythm of the sphere. ‘The Hexmachina.’
‘Not that. Its twice-jiggered friends!’ said the Whisperer, pointing up towards a cloud of dark spheres plummeting towards them from the firmament. Aerospheres, a rain of aerospheres. The Court of the Air had emerged out of myth; the wolftakers were protecting their flock at last.
Oliver drew his witch-blade as the first wave of Wildcaotyl demons mounted the King’s war body, eager to devour the feybreed who had interrupted their feeding. The Wildcaotyl had been driven into apoplexy by the appearance of the Hexmachina, and now they were boiling towards Oliver and his fey companion.
‘It’s time for Judgement,’ said Oliver.
United with the Hexmachina, Molly Templar felt the battle joined across a myriad levels, the Wildcaotyl immediately trying to subvert her modification of the leylines. They had already been weakened, the enemy starved. She recognized the presence of the strange fey boy from Tzlayloc’s cells. The unnatural barrenness of the earth around them was his doing. He had put a choke hold on the enemy’s windpipe, she could feel the souls of the dead moving uncertainly through the bones of the earth, and with a push of her will she created a puncture for them to escape to where they belonged.
Ignoring the pain of the other operator still burning across the Hexmachina, she pushed back the Wildcaotyl attacks, as if severing the strands of a spider’s web one by one. Memories of the previous conflict between the Wildcaotyl and the seven Hexmachina kept on passing through Molly’s mind, the other operators – the other races – the grasper, the craynarbian, the lashlite, the – she pushed them out, leaving just the memory of Vindex to advise her.
Xam-ku, most powerful deity of the Wildcaotyl pantheon, wrapped itself around her, trying to burn through the Hexmachina’s shields. So, it was still fighting the last war. A millennium of exile had taught the Wildcaotyl nothing. That was their weakness. The perfect order of the hive craved stasis. All end to the bubbling chaotic growth of the tree of life, the world remade in amber in their image.
whispered the Hexmachina.
Molly learnt too. She changed the set of the bones of the world, changed it again and again. Faster and faster. The Wildcaotyl howled as she transformed the great pattern faster than they could adapt to it. Pushing them a little further back into the abyss they had crawled from with each shift.
The thing that did not belong, the dark angel on the corner of Rivermarsh, bayed across inhuman frequencies as it saw its opportunity for total war disappearing before its senses. She – or was it the Hexmachina? – felt a twinge of sympathy for the Shadow Bear. It was intended for only one thing, and what was the point of a bomb that could not explode?
Now the Wildcaotyl strained for their life in this realm – feeling the cold depths of the angleless realm open up behind them – an eternity of hunger, an eternity of waiting, dreaming of nourishment. They flailed desperately, trying to find the souls in the bones of the world, trying to find the life of the land, but the ground around them was barren – it was the young feybreed from the cells, stealing their energy out from underneath their perverted weight on the world.
Oliver ducked underneath the wavering tentacles of one of Tzlayloc’s demons, slicing out with his witch-blade. ‘The shield.’
Weighted cable lines whirled down between Oliver and the Whisperer, three soldiers riding the lines from their aerosphere towards King Steam’s war body.
Nathaniel’s body had changed; he wore the illusion of the incrementals landing around them, a black leather cape and menacing rubber tubes hanging at either side of his hood. Now the Whisperer looked identical to the Court of the Air’s fighting order, but he had plucked an officer’s insignia from their minds for his chest. The soldiers opened fire as they landed, steel boilers strapped on their backs hissing steam as they drew power for their odd-looking guns: thin metal lances connected to rubber belts implanted with crystal shells. No suicide guns these, they fired like a thousand windows being shattered simultaneously, as the shells were pulled through their lances.
They fanned out, firing down into the horde of Wildcaotyl devils trying to scramble up the corpse of King Steam, clouds of rotten flesh and demon-grown blood showering the snow and the side of the collapsed steamman war frame.
In front of them Tzlayloc’s flesh had hived of
f into a swarm of dark insects, attempting to enclose the golden halo of the Hexmachina, but the Wildcaotyl had entered Jackals too early and the seething mass was tiring, slowing, blinking out of existence as they expended the unholy energy they needed to survive. Jacob Walwyn was growing smaller and smaller, collapsing back into his man-shape as rolls of his giant’s flesh peeled off and cavorted in agony around him, being pushed and assailed from all sides: drained by their fey assailant, impaled on the steammen knights’ battle arms, shot to pieces by the black-clad soldiers landing in their midst. Behind the Wildcaotyl the disciplined lines of the Third Brigade were disintegrating as the aerospheres of the Court hovered over the battlefield, emptying fin-bombs into the shiftie ranks.
Marshal Arinze was shouting orders to his artillery to elevate their cannons, but it was too late. The only aerostats in this battle should have been on his side and the Court of the Air was blowing his batteries apart. His skirmishers were trying to meet the black-clad soldiers that had been dropped down around Rivermarsh, but the troopers were falling to the enemy snipers’ long guns and the impossibly fast rate of fire from the interloper’s weapons.
He was about to give the order to the forward companies to fight a rearguard cover while the rest of the Third Brigade withdrew to Middlesteel – the defensive plan they should have stuck with from the start – when one of the Free State’s advancing gun-boxes found the range of the Quatérshiftian general staff. Shells thumped into the hard snowy ground and the issue of whether Arinze’s positions around Middlesteel would hold or not became academic.
On the royal war frame Oliver stood up from the buckled pilot cage. King Steam was deactivate, his body still and empty. Somewhere in Mechancia the seers of the mountain kingdom would be throwing the Gear-gi-ju cogs to locate the steamman child that would be the latest incarnation of their monarch. Across the field Oliver watched the Hexmachina swooping over Tzlayloc’s remaining demons, the golden halo burning their skin, beetles scrambling for the darkness of the cracks.
Oliver glanced across to the enemy lines shrouded in smoke from gun-box fire. The cross that had held the crucified prince was empty! There was no life left in Flare’s body, but his son had disappeared; had one of the Special Guard honoured their commander’s dying wish and rescued the young noble?
At Oliver’s side one of the Court’s warriors pulled down his leather hood, the rubber air tubes dangling around his gloves. It was the disreputable Stave! Somehow Oliver was not surprised. But if this figure was Harry, where was the Whisperer? Nathaniel had disappeared into the confusion of the battle. He had plans, and they did not include the Court of the Air or the worldsingers scooping him up for his cell back in Hawklam.
‘Damson Griggs always said you turned up like a bad penny, Harry.’
‘A bad penny with good timing,’ said Harry. ‘The shifties are being routed.’
‘Looks like they’re retreating back to the deep atmospheric line.’
‘Bloody good luck to them, then, old stick. The incrementals have already paid it a little visit. The only way back home for them now is a long trek to the border and a prayer to their sun god that their worldsingers have found the key to their cursewall.’
‘They’re all going to die, aren’t they?’
Harry shrugged. ‘A message, Oliver. You don’t poke your nose in Jackals’ affairs and expect to keep it on your face.’
‘Your people arranged for the worldsingers who knew how to take down the cursewall to be fingered in the purges, didn’t they? You were never in danger, Harry.’
‘A wall protects both ways, and I was always in danger,’ said Stave. ‘The hunt for us was real. We knew the Court had been infiltrated. The only way for us to find out how wide and deep it went was for me to act as bait. Make the shifties think I knew about their plans and go on the run, see who would come after us. It was far worse than we feared or suspected. The radicals had people in the Court of the Air, in the whistler network, in Ham Yard, in Greenhall, in the regiments and the navy. They called in all their favours to track us down and we followed the chain all the way back.’
‘A few more bodies floating down the Gambleflowers,’ said Oliver. ‘A few more prisoners for the cells of the Court.’
‘That’s the way the great game is played.’
Oliver looked out across the battlefield. It was twilight now. Had they really been fighting all day? He was exhausted; his body still aching with the power of the earth that had flowed through his fey bones. ‘My family paid the price. Our allies, our people, the people in Middlesteel. They all paid the price.’
‘Dear Circle, lad. We would have stopped this if we could,’ spat Harry. ‘That’s what we do. We didn’t know about Shadowclock or the Special Guard or Tzlayloc’s plans for a return to the old ways. When I volunteered to be the bait I just thought this was going to be 1581 all over again – a bunch of Carlist extremists with Commonshare gold jingling in their pockets who wanted Hoggstone’s head on the end of a pike. We watch, Oliver. But we are not omnipotent, we are not gods.’
Oliver stared at the remaining Wildcaotyl fleeing from the radiance of the Hexmachina and nodded. ‘No, Harry, you are right. No gods for Jackals. Never again.’
‘Your uncle knew the risks, Oliver. I’m sorry about Titus, I really am. But you know the man he was. He would have given his life twenty times over to save Jackals.’
The sound of sackpipes floated across the fields of Rivermarsh and Oliver heard a sixer whinny. It was Mad Jack, in the shadow of the steamman war frame. ‘Good hunting, young fellow?’
‘Yes, major. Where’s Guardian McConnell?’
‘There’s a bit of her over there, and a bit more over that way. Damn bloody shiftie cannon took her head off. Met that gypsy filly by the way, mad as hell at you. Wants her horse back.’
Oliver looked around. ‘I believe it ran off.’
‘Ah well, she’s a witch – she’ll call it back to her.’ Mad Jack stared up at Harry and the incremental soldiers. ‘You bally navy types took your time. Marine regiment?’
Harry tapped the gold lion on his leather tunic. ‘Political.’
Mad Jack tapped the side of his nose. ‘Ah yes, enough said.’
‘I would say the Commonshare are losing, major,’ said Oliver.
Mad Jack turned his sixer towards the fleeing Third Brigade troopers. ‘Of course. We’re Jackelians, and this is our land, eh? Best be back at it, there’s plenty of trees between here and Quatérshift and a lot of rope for stringing them up.’
‘Good hunting, major.’
Harry watched the cavalryman kick his horse after the retreating Third Brigade companies. ‘We need to talk, Oliver.’
Oliver nodded. ‘Somehow I thought we might.’
The Court of the Air had weapon-smiths. Mother Loade had been right.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Commodore Black stepped out in front of the two figures fleeing the battlefield, one of them so weak he was staggering – practically being carried by the other. ‘Ah now, Jamie, it seems like you are in the same pickle as I.’
Jamie Wildrake looked up. ‘Well, well, the Duke of Ferniethian.’
The submariner pointed to the semi-conscious body the agent was hauling behind him. ‘Thinking of becoming a royalist, now your wolftaker friends are after you?’
Wildrake dropped Prince Alpheus’s body in the snow. ‘The House of Guardians will pay to get him back. I’ll share the reward with you.’
‘What’s a king worth, Jamie? As much as the reward that was on my head, for the sea boots of poor old Samson Dark? As much as the blood money they paid you for the fleet in exile? A king must be a rare old thing these days – how many of the royal breeding house did your compatriots push into a Gideon’s Collar?’
Wildrake put his hand on his sabre’s hilt. ‘One too few, it seems. Let’s just say noble pedigrees will be at a premium once the Guardians discover how many royals were processed inside the collars. Now get out of my way, fat man.’
>
The commodore pulled his sabre out. ‘You’re right to be blessed worried, Jamie. There are worldsingers lying comatose all over Rivermarsh with faces like they’re sucking on a berry with no juice. You’re duelling on barren ground, Jamie, but even without your witch fighting tricks you’ve still got those fine muscles of yours. Why don’t you show me what they’re worth?’
Wildrake thrust out with no warning, his steel springing off the commodore’s sword.
‘Not bad for a fat man, eh?’ said the commodore. ‘The royal fleet wasn’t fussy, we couldn’t afford to be, could we? Our boats took crew from all over. You remember, don’t you?’
Wildrake stamped down and feinted, following through with a slashing cut, but the commodore turned it with hardly a movement. It was the kind of spare duelling style that would serve a fighter well in the confined corridors of a submarine vessel.
‘Concorzia, the Catosian League, the Holy Kikkosico Empire of – all those different fighting styles, you pick up a little bit here, a little bit there.’
Wildrake moved his sword from side to side, trying to batter his way through the commodore’s guard with his superior strength.
‘I would say the Court’s duelling masters were heavily influenced by the east.’
Wildrake switched the sabre to his left hand and darted in, the ring of steel unheard except by the prone form of Prince Alpheus.
‘One cut, one kill,’ said the commodore. ‘Fast, deadly, versatile. Everything they admire out Thar way. You’re good, Jamie.’
‘Shut up!’ shouted Wildrake. ‘Stop talking and fight me!’
‘Be careful of what you wish for, lad.’ The commodore’s sword nipped out and Wildrake caught and turned it, but not before Black nicked the corner of the wolftaker’s shirtsleeve, a line of red blood traced across the white silk.