Land of Hope and Glory
Page 20
‘They’re abandoned,’ Charles replied. ‘That’s what I was told. The Rajthanans were driven out by the crusade.’
Saleem bit his bottom lip. ‘My father said there’re demons inside them.’
‘No,’ Jack said. ‘They’re avatars – like machines.’
Below them, at the base of the slope, ran a north–south road. As they watched, a squadron of cavalry appeared and trotted past.
‘Looks like the Rajthanans are pushing into this area,’ Jack said. ‘We’ll have to wait until nightfall.’
He was anxious about the delay, but there was little choice. They’d spent more than a day getting across Hampshire. They’d kept to the hills and forests, travelling only at night and keeping an eye out for Rajthanan patrols. Three days had passed since they’d left the village and the army might now be close behind.
There were twelve days left before Elizabeth was executed.
‘What about the poison?’ Saleem asked.
‘Sattva’s not poisonous,’ Jack replied. Not as far as he knew anyway.
They found a shallow cave, hidden by vines and bushes, and slept through the humid day. Jack took the first watch, then handed over to Charles in the early afternoon.
As he slept, Jack dreamt he was back at Ragusa, on the muddy plain, running. The guns flashed but everything was silent. Despite the chaos and destruction and bullets and shot, he heard nothing.
His battalion was far ahead of him – it was hard even to see them in the battle smoke. A few feet before him a body lay in the mud – Private Robert Salter, staring straight up, dead eyes reflecting the grey light. Jack stumbled and fell to his knees, then bullets pelted the ground around him and he got back up and ran on.
More bodies. Lying all around him. He had to dodge to avoid stepping on them.
He saw Sengar and Kansal, lying close together, their tunics and turbans stained with mud. He saw William – the older William. Then he saw a woman. It was Katelin, her long blonde hair splayed out as though she were floating underwater. Her face was drawn, as it had been in her last weeks, but she was still beautiful. The Celtic cross necklace hung to one side, against her shoulder. He felt sick. He stopped to look at her, but the bullets rained about him and he had to continue.
He tripped on a body and saw it was Charles, and nearby lay Saleem. He tried to shout, but couldn’t make a sound.
He staggered on. One further body emerged from the fog. He slowed. Even before seeing the face he knew it was Elizabeth . . .
He woke with a start, sweating and gasping.
‘Easy.’ Charles crouched beside him. ‘You all right?’
Jack nodded. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked around. It was growing dark, the light faint on the cave walls. ‘We should go.’
They woke Saleem, who blinked and scratched himself. ‘I’m hungry.’
‘There’s nothing to eat,’ Jack replied. The day before they’d shot a couple of hares and cooked them over an open fire. But they couldn’t waste time hunting now.
Jack loaded the pistol and Charles the musket, then they left the cave and looked down over the plain. The sky was darkening and merging with the charcoal landscape. The mills were indistinct crenellations and the fires were brighter now, livid red in the gloom.
They skidded down the slope, the smell of smoke and sattva growing stronger. At the bottom, the road ran along the top of an embankment. They scrambled up the side and paused, looking both ways. When they saw nothing in either direction, they crossed quickly and went down the other side.
They jogged across the plain. The ground was barren – coarse grass and rocks. Fragments of coal lay everywhere. There were no trees, nothing to give them cover. But at least it was a dark night and the moon was shut out by the smoke.
After a few minutes, Jack heard the distant clop of horses behind and to the north. He stopped and looked along the road. He couldn’t see far in the thickening dark, but after staring for a moment he made out grey traces of dust. The sound grew louder, the horses drawing nearer.
‘What is it?’ Charles couldn’t hear the sound yet.
‘Patrol, I reckon,’ Jack said.
He glanced around the flat and desolate plain. The first of the mills would take at least fifteen minutes to reach, even if they ran. But closer, standing alone, was a two-storey stone tower topped by a brass rod – a sattva link. It was the only place nearby he could see to hide.
They sprinted towards the tower, the brittle ground crunching like snow beneath their feet. Jack led them around the base of the octagonal structure until they were out of sight of the road. He panted and leant against the wall, sensing the quiver of a strong stream in the air. The smell of sattva coiled out of an arched entryway at the base of the building. He wondered for a moment whether there would be any guards inside, but he doubted it – normally they would be posted outside the entrance. And there would be no operators within either. Even though he’d never used the link himself, he could tell by the size and shape of the tower that it was a way station and not a terminus.
The jingle and clop of the horses grew louder. He edged around the wall and looked back. Ten horsemen cantered past along the road. He could just discern the red-brown of their uniforms – Rajthanan cavalry. They didn’t slow their pace or even look in Jack’s direction.
He slipped back around the tower and saw Saleem standing beside the entryway, staring up into the darkness.
‘Keep away from it.’ He didn’t want Saleem to do anything stupid. For extra effect he added, ‘There’s one of your demons up there.’
Saleem stepped back quickly, his fingers fiddling with the bullet hole in his tunic as if it were an old wound.
Jack peered ahead to the jagged row of mills. The buildings were closer now, but still partially concealed by the dark and the blotches of smoke. Two red fires flickered like a pair of watchful eyes at the top of one of the nearer towers.
‘Which way now?’ Charles asked.
‘Over there, I reckon.’ Jack pointed to the open ground between two clusters of mills.
They struck out across the plain, with one silent gathering of mills to the right and another rising from the gloom to the left. The ground suddenly changed to gravel beneath their feet. When he looked down, Jack could tell they’d come to a road – he saw the faint trace of the route snaking away across the flat land.
He stopped, listened carefully and heard more horses coming towards them. Squinting, he saw the wisps of dust from the hooves and the dark patches of the animals moving against the even darker background.
‘Another patrol.’ He looked around. The nearest mills weren’t far – less than five minutes away if they ran. ‘Follow me.’
They sprinted across the open ground. Jack hoped they hadn’t been seen. It was dark, so they might be lucky, but on the other hand they would stand out clearly on that empty plain. The breath became tight in his lungs and the familiar pain wormed across his chest.
A ten-foot-high stone wall stretched around the mills for as far as he could see. An arched entrance lay less than fifty yards away to the right. He looked back and made out the horses cantering along the road. They were close enough now for him to see the red tunics of the riders.
With his throat burning and his legs aching, he finally reached the arch. Charles and Saleem drew up beside him. Cracks fanned across the wall and the parapet was shattered in places. Pillars stood to either side of the entrance, listing slightly to the right, and a statue of the elephant-headed god Ganesh squatted above, also tilted to the side.
Jack glanced back and his heart lurched when he saw the riders leave the road and strike out towards them.
‘Think they’ve seen us.’ He nodded towards the arch. ‘In there.’
They ran through the opening and came out in a silent, cobbled street that was lit by the red gleam of the two floating fires. Crumbling stone buildings formed a hacked line against the night, and a wide crater lay across the middle of the street.
Jack heard a distant, regular thumping. It sounded as though some of the mills were still working – although that seemed unlikely, given that the place had been abandoned.
Five Rajthanan horsemen clopped through the arch and into the street. Their leader raised his hand to halt them and then scanned the surroundings. Pain jabbed Jack in the chest and he heard Saleem breathing hard behind him. He drew the pistol from his belt.
The riders spoke to each other for a minute, but Jack couldn’t make out what they were saying. Finally, the leader ordered them back out of the entrance and Jack heard the horses trotting away.
‘Have they gone?’ Charles asked.
‘Think so,’ Jack replied. ‘Wait here.’
He crept back down the street, keeping close to the walls and the thick shadows. When he reached the arch, he pressed himself beside it, then looked out. He could see the plain, with the hills they’d left behind in the distance, but nothing else. He stuck his head out further and spotted the horses disappearing in the direction of the road. It looked as though the Rajthanans had given up – perhaps they’d been unsure about what they’d seen, or decided that three people on foot were no danger and not worth pursuing.
Jack went back to Charles and Saleem. ‘They’ve gone. For now, at any rate. We have to keep moving. They might be back at any time.’
They all glanced up the street. The ruined buildings melted towards the earth and the walls were pocked with holes. Sticky soot bled over the stonework. The ground was gored by shell craters and spent round shot lay scattered about like giant animal droppings.
‘What happened here?’ Saleem asked.
‘There was a battle for the mills,’ Charles said. ‘But the Rajthanans were beaten.’
Jack remembered the news reports. About a month after London fell, the mutineers had marched on the Thames basin and routed the Rajthanans.
‘Which way now?’ Charles asked.
‘We’ll go through the mills.’ Jack nodded up the street. ‘It’ll be slower, but it’ll be easier to hide if we need to. There’re too many patrols about.’
‘Are the Rajthanans back here?’ Saleem asked. ‘I mean, here in the mills?’
‘Looks deserted.’ Although Jack could still hear the faint, monotonous pounding. ‘Keep your eyes peeled, all the same.’
They sneaked forward, picking their way around the holes in the road and staying in the shadows as far as possible. The buildings were all the same – large rectangular blocks with no decoration, save for cupolas and spires that floated far above. Giant entryways and shattered walls opened on to gloomy interiors. Smaller roads led away to the left and right, but Jack ignored these and kept straight ahead.
The air was thick with coal smoke, and tiny tremors continually crossed Jack’s skin. They’d passed into a sattva stream so wide it was more of a lake.
He noticed Saleem holding his arm up to his face and breathing through his sleeve.
‘Poison,’ Saleem said when he saw Jack looking at him.
‘Sattva’s not a vapour,’ Jack said. ‘You can’t breathe it in. It’s everywhere. In everything.’
Saleem’s eyes widened as he looked at the invisible enemy all around him.
‘Anyway,’ Jack said. ‘Sattva smells sweet. Can you smell anything sweet?’
‘No,’ Saleem replied.
‘Then there’s nothing to worry about.’
Jack could smell sattva, but he knew it was too weak for his companions to make out.
Most Europeans, if they thought about it at all, believed sattva was a gas or a type of wind. But Jhala had told Jack, ‘Sattva is what you English call an element. It is a part of matter. But the purest part, the closest to the spirit realm.’
Saleem gingerly lowered his arm and breathed in the smoky air, but his eyes stayed wide and glassy.
They set off again and after a quarter of an hour they reached a point where a wide boulevard intersected the street. Jack waved Charles and Saleem into the shadows behind him and peered around the corner. Smashed trees, stripped of all their leaves and most of their branches, lined the boulevard. A battered structure, which must once have been a fountain or statue, cowered in the middle of the road. The streets were otherwise empty in all directions.
Saleem gave a short gasp. Jack shot back into the shadows and had his pistol out in a second. The lad was standing deeper in the gloom beside a broken wall, looking down at a pile of rubble.
‘What is it?’ Jack whispered.
Saleem just pointed and said nothing.
Jack and Charles walked over and soon saw the grey-white bones of three skeletons. The flesh had been completely picked clean, and rusted scimitars and muskets lay nearby. Jack couldn’t tell whether they had been Rajthanans or mutineers, as both sides carried the same weapons.
Jack and Charles crossed themselves.
Then they heard a metallic scrape from somewhere behind them. It sounded like a hollow drum being dragged across the ground.
‘What was that?’ Saleem’s breath shivered.
Jack gazed down the road, but everything was still and silent, save for the perpetual muffled rumble in the distance. He cocked the hammer of the pistol, while Charles slid the musket from his shoulder.
There was another scrape, this time longer and deeper, like a growl.
Jack spotted movement near the corner of a side street. Something large was clambering over a pile of collapsed stones. At first he thought it was an elephant, but then he saw feelers and stalks protruding from the front of the shape, and the dull reflection of red light on black iron. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
‘A demon.’ Saleem said.
‘No,’ Jack said. ‘It’s a train avatar.’
‘But there’s no train,’ Saleem said.
It was true – the beast was hauling itself along entirely independently of any carriages. Jack had never seen that before. There had to be a siddha somewhere nearby controlling the creature. He glanced up and around, trying to see whether there was anyone on the roofs above.
The avatar snorted and puffed, smoke streaming out from its sides, then it turned into the street and clawed itself towards them like some giant crustacean.
‘Follow me.’ Jack charged across the boulevard and into the shadows on the far side. His chest tensed and ached once again.
After they’d run for a few minutes, he looked back and saw that the avatar was still coming towards them, and was now increasing its speed. It jerked along at a pace almost as fast as they had been running. He frowned. He could still see no sign of any Rajthanans, but the avatar had to be receiving instructions from someone.
He scanned the surroundings, his mouth dry. There was a giant arched entrance nearby. Going in there would be risky, but at least they would be out of view and away from the avatar.
They slipped across the street and into the shadowy interior. As his eyes adjusted, Jack could see they were in a vast, empty chamber. Iron girders criss-crossed far above and the walls rose in thick stone pleats. Far away at the other end of the hall lay a further arch, out of which floated a pounding noise and the scent of coal and sattva.
Keeping to the edge of the wall, they made their way across the chamber and stole up to the second opening.
Both Charles and Saleem drew their breaths in sharply as they peered around the side. Before them was an even larger hall, dominated by a steel leviathan more than a hundred yards long. It looked something like a whale and something like a giant caterpillar, its body consisting of thousands of metal ribs, through which Jack could see the flicker of frantically knitting needles. At one end, a fanged maw chewed the air. There was a ring of metal slicing against metal and a chugging roar. On one side, like a wound, a hatch lay open, revealing a coal fire within. The red light fr
om the flames was the only illumination in the chamber.
‘What on earth—’ Charles whispered.
‘It’s a mill avatar.’ Jack had seen one before, in Paris. ‘It makes things – cloth, steel, all kinds of things.’ He remembered seeing the raw materials fed into the creature’s mouth, with the finished substances excreted at the other end.
The Rajthanans prized these beasts above everything else. The creatures grew fat in the rich streams of sattva that crossed Europe – fatter even than the avatars back in Rajthana. The Rajthanans would do anything to protect the sattva supply that kept the things alive. Jack knew they would never give up England and its sattva.
‘I thought the mills were abandoned,’ Saleem said. ‘Why’s it still alive?’
‘Don’t know.’ Jack gripped the pistol more tightly. The Rajthanans might have fired the creature up again – and if they had, they might still be somewhere nearby.
He heard a tortured screech and a wheeze of steam. Looking back, he saw two train avatars silhouetted in the archway to the street. Their feelers swayed as they checked the air and their inner fires glowed through the joins in their carapaces. For a moment he considered running past the beasts and back to the road. But the avatars could move fast – much faster than he’d thought possible. Would they attack? He’d never considered this possibility before. In fact, he’d scoffed at those who were afraid of the creatures. But the beasts had claws and mandibles and he wasn’t sure now what they might be capable of.
‘We’re trapped,’ Saleem said.
‘We’ll fight them.’ Charles swung the musket from his shoulder.
‘No.’ Jack put his hand on Charles’s arm. ‘We’ll find another way out.’
He led Charles and Saleem around the edge of the chamber containing the giant mill avatar. He stuck to the thickest shadows and peered through the hazy dark, wondering whether there were any Rajthanans nearby. The sound of the avatar was deafening – a ceaseless shrieking and roaring – so there was no chance of him hearing the approach of any enemies.
As they drew closer, the mill avatar became restive. It writhed within its harness of chains, which hung from the distant, invisible ceiling and suspended the beast five feet or so above the floor. It emitted a deep groan, like a fog horn, and tried to turn its mouth in their direction. Stalks and feelers at the top of its head quivered. The chains shook and rattled and the avatar bucked and strained in the harness, but was unable to break free.