The rise of the Iron Moon j-3

by Stephen Hunt

  The creature chattered in alarm as a sudden massive eruption of sand startled it, a metal whale rising out of the dunes opposite.

  'That was exciting,' said Starsprite. 'I found some of those sand roots you like to feed to your litter while I was hiding.'

  The little creature warbled in disgust at the unnatural interloper – torn between its ancient instinct to cooperate with other species and the flight instinct that had more recently been imprinted in its blood memories – then it ducked back down to check on its warren.

  'Oh well,' said Starsprite. 'Thank you, it was a good warning call, anyway.'

  Unnoticed by either Starsprite or the half-steamman ship's new mammal friends, the slat scout that had dropped out of the transport's other side pushed aside its rifle and started clicking in satisfaction under the shadow of its sand-coloured camouflage cover.

  Carnivore Tallyle would surely let it have its selection of the next cull's meat for finding the missing ship.

  Commodore Black looked at the wide width of the canal alongside Molly, dabbing at his nose in disgust with a handkerchief. The smell of the brown sludge flowing down its length was overwhelming, worse than any slurry pit or Middlesteel tannery works.

  'You cannot be asking us to swim across that foul mess, Sandwalker?'

  'I am not,' said the nomad. 'What you see flowing down there are pollutants expelled from the masters' processing centres. The acids in the canal would burn your skin off and blind you before you could make six strokes. There used to be seas of this filth when we still had seas. Now even the pollution from the masters' machines and mills is put to use in their automated transport system.' He indicated a series of dark ceramic barges piled with metal plating being swept along by the flow of filth. 'The very last of Kaliban's bounty pulled from her deep heart to be assembled into ships that will carry the masters across to their new home on your world.'

  'This is it?' said Molly. 'This is your plan for getting a head start on the slats?'

  'This particular canal runs all of the way out to the last of the polar mines,' said Sandwalker. 'It passes deep through the desert. And there are the empty barges travelling back towards the mines.'

  Molly looked at the automated barges, small black oblongs chained together in convoys by rusted cables, running unloaded deep into the desert. The barges rode high in the sludge on catamaran-style hulls, tube-shaped engines on each hull powering them forward and leaving a wake of bubbling muck behind. Every barge had a dome the circumference of a barrel rising at the front of its prow.

  Jeanne said what Molly was thinking. 'The barges don't look that big, compatriot. Will they take our weight?'

  'They are powerful enough to float a load of many tonnes down from the mines,' said Sandwalker. 'The real problem we face is that black dome mounted at the front of each barge. It is a thinking machine, similar to one of your transaction engines. The masters grew tired of our sabotage attempts and thefts from the canal system many centuries ago – those domes will detect us if we board a barge, then detonate a cache of explosives moulded into its keel. We will have three or four seconds at most until the barge qualifies our presence as an active threat rather than just a sand vulture landing on its hull, then there will be a quite spectacular explosion.'

  'Now I'm a game fellow for a lark,' said the commodore. 'But I think I shall take my chances with the wicked Army of Shadows and its minions nipping at my heels rather than jump down onto one of those terrible things.'

  'Stealing a barge and its cargo is a rite of passage among the free Kal of the salt wastes,' said Sandwalker. He produced a handful of coin-like objects from underneath his robe. 'You hit the top of the dome hard with this disk, like so, to activate it. The disk also contains a thinking machine – a powerful model designed to subvert the barge's controls. Keep it pressed down on the dome and when the train of barges is under our command, I will re-instruct the lead unit to increase speed and stop when we are far enough into the desert to avoid all but a long-range slat patrol.'

  Duncan unslung the supply packs the commodore was carrying and tied them around his own back, dangling them across his battered travel case. 'If a wee Kal bairn can make the jump…'

  'I will jump first,' said Sandwalker.

  'I'll go behind you,' said Molly. She fingered the coin-like device the nomad had given her. 'I'll take the second barge.'

  The others called out their numbers and Commodore Black came in second to last, his barge in front of Jeanne's. 'What a cruel life this is. I'll match a sabre with any enemy, but now my mettle is to be tested by leaping like a poor frog into the foul burning excretions of the Army of Shadows. What a shameful end for my rare genius.'

  They waited five minutes for the combination they needed. Then it happened, barges were passing on both sides of the canal, the convoy on their side moving closer to the wall of the canal to avoid the barges passing in the other direction. Sandwalker ran towards the edge of the sand-blown embankment, hurling himself off the side. Molly took a deep breath and followed, one step, two, then she flung herself away and out, keeping her eyes locked on the flat oblong of the second barge, as if just looking at its hull would be enough to draw her down safely onto its surface. It tipped to port as she hit with a painful jolt to her ankles, the catamaran blades taking a second to stabilize against her weight, and Molly had to fight not to roll over the side into the burning effluent below. But something else had detected her weight, too, the mound at the front of the barge lighting up with an evil red light and emitting a caterwaul siren. Molly practically flung herself across the dome, slapping her coin on its top. It was as if she had plunged a dagger into a skull, the light inside the dome flaring up and then dying, the siren running down to silence.

  Sirens were rising and falling behind her as the others landed on their barges and struck the sentry machines with Sandwalker's miniature transaction engines. Despite the heat of the sun in the purple sky, Molly was cold with sweat. All the sirens had fallen silent expect one. Something was terribly wrong at the end of the barge train.

  'Your coin, lass,' Commodore Black was shouting. 'Use your coin.'

  Jeanne was standing up behind her barge's dome and she raised an empty hand aloft. 'I slipped on the sand up there, it's gone.'

  'Leap across to my barge, lass. Come on, it's your only chance.'

  Jeanne drew her knife and lashed at the cable holding her barge to the end of the train. 'My barge will kill us all. The people must prevail.'

  'No, Jeanne!'

  But it was too late; the current of the canal carried Jeanne's screeching barge away from them and she opened her fingers in a final farewell. Then there was a flash of light and fire and the walls of the canal rattled with debris, splashes of filthy liquid spattering Molly's barge. Jeanne was gone. Blown to the uncaring winds.

  On the next barge down, Keyspierre picked himself up and looked coldly at Molly, turning his back on her as if she was responsible for his daughter's death. If only Molly hadn't launched them early from the kingdom, if and if, all of the infinite if onlys. Molly collapsed onto her own barge, watching the particles of metal in the sludge catch the afternoon light.

  Borne with the stench towards the heart of the wastes.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  We need to find a sailboat,' said Jenny Blow, watching Samuel Lancemaster's broad muscles bulge with each dip of his oars into the water. Purity didn't consider it likely that they would. They were following the River Ald west, and it appeared as if the desperate refugees who had preceded them had stolen every available boat.

  'We were lucky enough to find this old thing hidden in the reeds,' said Purity.

  'When we get to the coast we may have more fortune in the harbour towns,' speculated Ganby. 'Something to carry us north towards the Army of Shadows' terrible great beanstalk.'

  Purity didn't voice her worries, but she doubted that too. All the large craft would have been used to flee to the colonies in Concorzia; anything small enough for the five of
them to manage would have been seized to flee south or out to one of the isles. While she had been busy at Highhorn, it looked as if the entire kingdom had fallen into madness. Purity had even seen boats burnt in the river, not by the Army of Shadows, but by Jackelian turning against Jackelian. At least the current was pushing them in the right direction.

  'I'll fill some sails fast enough,' said Jenny.

  'My rowing is not quick enough for you?' asked Samuel. 'Or would you prefer to give Jackaby a turn?'

  'I have my pride,' said the black bandit. 'I am not a living paddle to be dropped behind the transom.'

  The conversation stopped, for as they rounded a corner, they discovered the course of the river blocked by a sixpenny steam ferry, its cabin covered in faded advertising hoardings that had seen better days – Smith-Evans' Balsamic Cough Elixir; WW Mackinder's of Middlesteel and her Gold Medal Pianos – and under the passenger bench awnings a group of men waited, rifles and pistols clutched and pointing towards Purity's rowboat. An order to heave to was shouted out from the sixpenny steamer. Were they brigands? Whoever they were, their boat looked sound enough and the twin stacks behind the cabin were emitting wisps of steam.

  'Why do you block our way?' Samuel shouted from the front of their boat.

  'We guard the approach to Wainsmouth,' a man wearing a brown flat cap called back.

  Purity stood up so her voice would carry across. 'Wainsmouth still has people?'

  'More and more every day,' shouted the man on the steamer. 'It is the last free town, unless any of the upland cities are still left standing.' He gazed down, obviously bemused by Samuel's archaic cuirass and tall spear. 'Is that all there is of you? All right, pass on, friend.'

  Samuel rowed them past the passenger boat with three swift, strong strokes while Purity gazed back up at the men.

  A free town, still. Perhaps with an equally free sailboat to carry them north? Their luck was turning at last.

  ***

  The guard on the sixpenny ferry had been correct about more people turning up at the last free town every day. Outside Wainsmouth, the old town walls were packed with crowds queuing up in front of a line of tables for the chance to be admitted to safety inside.

  Names, ages and occupations of those being admitted were recorded in ledgers, along with many other details. Few people seemed to fail whatever criteria were being applied to entry. The family in front of Purity and the Bandits of the Marsh was gushingly grateful that they were to be given sanctuary, the woman full of spite and bile over some village they had tried to enter on their way to the town whose desperate inhabitants had chased them away as thieves, waving pitchforks and birding rifles.

  At one point, a couple of redcoats came trundling towards the town gate in an empty cart pulled by two grey shire horses. There was a short, disappointed exchange of shouts, then the cart was admitted back inside Wainsmouth proper. It sounded to Purity as if the cart had been out scavenging for something, but had found no luck on its search. She hoped it wasn't for food from the farms dotted along the South Downs. The mob of refugees might turn into a besieging army if they were turned away for a lack of supplies now.

  They were a motley collection keeping order among the mob outside Wainsmouth. The country constabulary in their black frockcoats, redcoats from the regiments, even some shifty-looking fleet naval arm tars. But the desperation for food and shelter meant that the crowds were kept naturally pliable by their desire to be given sanctuary. No one protested too much when they were relieved of their packs of food and whatever other provisions they had with them. The rough-shaven men taking down the bandits' details accepted Purity's trade as seamstress without query or question, and although she had to surrender her sack of tinned goods, Purity got her strange sword through wrapped in cloth, and Samuel Lancemaster his spear – collapsed to its knuckleduster configuration and slotted into a carry space in his chest-piece.

  The people on the desk showed a little more interest in Samuel's breastplate, asking him if he had been with the heavy cavalry to carry such a cuirass, but when the bandit demurred, the guards lost interest and waved them all through towards the town gates. Lucky that they did. A couple of nights before, Samuel had told Purity that the armour was part of his body, fused to him. Trying to take it off would be like trying to remove his ribs.

  'Here are your tokens for your first day's meal,' the deskman said. 'Duties get assigned the day after. Go down to the largest warehouse on the quay. There's benches and food inside, servings are on a rota.'

  Once inside the walls Purity had a fine view of the town sloping down towards the port. The large harbour was protected by a sea fort, built down the hillside and into the water, strong round towers connected by iron walkways and pocked by concrete cannon domes. Wainsmouth's waters looked bare of boats, only a couple of fishermen's stubby two-mast trawlers tied up where there were moorings for hundreds. But there was one vessel in the water to fill the majority of the empty berths. It was a u-boat of the fleet sea arm, lying as long in the water as a dreadnought with a conning tower as substantial as a fortress. Her bow had been cast as a regal lion, teeth and muzzle caught in a steel snarl – each of her eyes a cluster of torpedo tubes. Purity gawped. How the commodore would have loved to be here to see this titan of the deep. Triple gun mounts on her forecastle, double water-sealed cannon turrets on the stern. Her name was embossed in cursive script on the black hull, each raised letter painted bright red. The JNS Spartiate. Parliament's ensign, the cross and gate, fluttered on her flagstaff, a red field bisected with a white cross, the portcullis of the House of Guardians on the upper right-hand corner, the lion rampant in the lower left. A vessel that defied all of the kingdom's enemies to take her.

  'A beauty, ain't she?' said a constable standing behind Purity. 'They'll never overrun Wainsmouth while we have her guns protecting the town. Now move along, get yourself fed down at the quay before you block up the way here.'

  'These are the Jackeni of our age,' said Ganby, approvingly. 'People who know how to honour the tradition of hospitality.'

  'I wonder if their hospitality might stretch to giving us a berth on that vessel down there?' Jackaby Mention pondered.

  'These people need her here,' said Jenny. 'How many women and children in this town now shelter under her guns? I can fill the topsail of one of those fishing boats down there just as well.'

  'A pity,' said Jackaby. 'The watchman was right; she is a beauty as fine as any. But you are correct, they need it here. You are ever our conscience, Jenny Blow.'

  'And your bloodhound,' said Jenny. She pointed towards the quay. 'I can smell a stew bubbling in the pot down in the warehouse.'

  'A stew, not a roast?' said Samuel Lancemaster, sounding almost disappointed. 'Well, anything will be better than the jellied chunks of bully I've been picking out of cans since we arrived here.'

  It had been raining earlier that morning and the steep cobbled streets down to the quay were slippery – Purity nearly lost her footing several times. Bare feet are conscious of the land. They feel the bones of Jackals, connect with the blood of the world. You will know when the time is right for shoes. Indeed, and how her friend Kyorin had approved of those words from Elizica. Was that good guidance, now? When the Kals were cooperating with the Army of Shadows, trying to sink their fangs in her throat. She had the blood of queens running through her veins. She had the maths-blade concealed on her back and she had the Bandits of the Marsh fighting by her side. It was time she stopped being the nation's breeding house ragamuffin and began acting like its one true queen.

  Purity thought she detected a pulse of disapproval from the spirit of Elizica of the Jackeni at her pride as she walked towards a cobbler's halfway down the road to the bay; but then, Elizica of the Jackeni hadn't needed shoes, or anything else in the way of clothes, for a very long time. What did she know?

  Purity asked the Bandits of the Marsh to save her a seat at the warehouse. Behind the hexagonal panes of the shop's curved bay windows were all sor
ts of shoes, boots and sandals ranging from the fine to the workaday. But it looked dark inside the shop, and there was a sign reading 'closed' behind the door's sidelight pane. Oh well. She was about to follow the bandits down the rest of the hill when a rustling came from inside the shop and the sign twisted around to read 'open'.

  'There we are,' Purity announced to the air and Elizica. 'Fate after all.'

  There were oil lamps inside, but their wicks stood dry behind glass – saving fuel, but making the room dark and unwelcoming. In the gloom a boy shuffled forward with a stool for her, an apprentice with a wooden stump below the knee of his left leg. His voice had an annoying grating quality, as if he was trying to ingratiate himself.

  'The master bids you sit, damson,' said the boy. 'Be out soon.'

  He hobbled over to the door, locked it and twisted the sign to read 'closed' again. Strange. Why had he done that?

  'Aren't you going to light the shop, lad?'

  'Short of oil, that's so, damson.'

  It was then that Purity heard a knocking outside the cobbler's shop front, someone tapping on the window panes. Had Ganby or one of the others come back to fetch her? She was about to rise to see just who it was when a wet, sickly-sweet rag was pushed down on her face, her head yanked back.

  Purity struggled against the foul stench to reach her sword for a couple of seconds before blackness overtook her.

  In one of the Wainsmouth warehouses, two thugs wearing the ill-fitting uniforms of county constables stepped over slumped bodies. Some were spilled across the long pine tables, others fallen off the benches onto the stone floor. The collapsed refugees were being pulled unceremonially through a door at the back like sacks of grain and dumped on the flatbed of the first of the carts waiting outside.