by Tom Pollock
She couldn’t fight it, not down here – down here all the Mistress needed to do was scratch Electra’s glass skin and expose a live wire, and the methane in the tunnels would do the rest.
Waiting felt like being torn slowly in half.
After too many hours the tunnels grew a fraction lighter. Lec could see the dirty shimmer of the night-time city in an opening at the far end, and an unmistakable sound filled the air: the swishing rush of the river.
Lec shrank back up an access way as the wolves pressed on past. She groped with her fields until she found a rusting metal ladder.
Fresh air hit her like hope and she scrambled from the manhole. A monolithic redbrick building reared up in front of her and she tried to get her bearings. There was the river, in all its churning deadliness, and spanning it, a bridge with fat suspension cables, and—
Lec went utterly dark in shock.
Spilling across the bridge, jostling each other like fire-flies in an updraft, were hundreds of glowing figures. But it wasn’t the figures themselves that shocked her; it was their colours – white and yellow, mingled together so closely that their individual lights were almost indistinguishable.
Together! Lec stared in disbelief. A skinny figure, a mere sliver of shadow amongst all that light, walked before them, waving them onwards with his railing.
And finally Lec realised she was looking at an army. That was why the Wire Mistress was here. Sodiumite and Blankleit weren’t just walking together; they intended to fight together.
A few yards away, the first Scaffwolf bounded up onto the Embankment, landing lightly on its steel paws. Electra dropped back behind a parked car. For a moment she hesitated as a part of her saw the coming battle unfold through her grandmother’s eyes, the wolves pouncing on the unprepared white figures and the ambers who’d sided with them, their fangs rending glass and wire—
For a second Lec imagined the massacre with satisfaction. Then the second wolf landed, shaking the tarmac, and she made her choice.
She turned and ran up the middle of the road, blazing out the semaphore with every vestige of voltage she could muster.
Filius, you’re under att—
Her filaments shuddered as the steel wolves overtook her.
CHAPTER 36
‘I wish the priests would get a bloody move-on. I’d cut them out of that armour if—’
‘Fil!’
He looked up. ‘What?’
‘Does that mean anything to you?
His gaze followed Beth’s pointing finger. ‘It’s some yellow Lampie,’ he muttered. ‘I can’t see who. What’s she do—?’ He paled and reversed his hold on his spear.
‘Get ready,’ he whispered to Beth. Then he arched his back, sticking his ribs out and bellowed in a voice louder than all the city’s din, ‘WE’RE UNDER ATTACK!’
The Scaffwolves came first, baying and slavering, bounding past the empty steel skeletons of their handlers. The weight of their paws tore great rents in the road.
The Sodiumites linked fields, every vein blazing with suppressed static. They stumbled as they danced, struggling to place their feet right as the ground shook. Beth felt her hackles rise at the electricity in the air.
The first shockwave sheared away the lead wolf’s front legs and with a whimper of steel it crashed muzzle-first into the road – but others leaped over it, kicking the bones of their packmate into the river as they charged.
Two hundred yards. One-eighty. One-fifty. Beth gauged the distance. Time slowed and the pack’s headlong rush became a series of freeze-frames. Each jagged tooth and ragged metal claw fixed in her mind. She saw the glass dancers, stepping in another war-waltz – too slow, too slow. Fifty yards.
Beth shut her eyes and tensed herself for the impact.
‘Oi, Bradley!’ a voice yelled out. ‘What the hell do you think I got you those powers for?’
Beth snapped her eyes open. Her view was filled side to side with snapping howling jaws.
In Mater Viae’s name, fuck it! she thought.
She hurled herself forwards and the mêlée took her.
Beth hears my shout and I’m running, a warcry bleeding from my lips and lost in the wind. My speed smears the streets, turns the river to quicksilver. I can taste the fight in my gullet. Sodiumites vanish behind me in scars of light. Only foes stand before me now; only flashing fangs. Only prey. My lip twists. I am the savage street.
I snarl.
I may be no kind of general, but I can hunt. I fall on the wolves, and they fall to my spear.
Beth’s ears sang as metal teeth sheared past them. It was a tornado of steel and she was in the eye. She sprang from strut to strut, from muzzle to back. Her balance was instinctive. Her sweat slicked her path through the air. The Urchin Prince and his spear were everywhere, as pervasive as grey smoke. And by his side a huge beast, twice the height of a man, like a bear made out of swarming rats and pigeons and the city’s rubbish, tore at the underbellies of the wolves.
Lithe feline shapes darted through the fray: Fleet’s war party. The skinny moggies hissing and scratching at the steel skeletons were almost comical, though Reach’s monsters seemed to take them seriously enough. They chased vainly after the Cats, grasping for them, twisting their legs up and dislocating joints. Their motions looked panicky.
They’re scared of them, Beth thought. They’re scared of the Cats, and that’s screwing them up.
Beth’s army cheered on their champions as metal giant after metal giant collapsed, their limbs confused by the infamous Cats.
But they weren’t the only ones who fell. Glass figures were caught in steel jaws. Bright amber flares reflected off steel: the last shouts of the dying. Beth bunched her legs and fired herself from the hindquarters of one animal right at the face of another. It snapped, but she twisted out of the way. Cold metal struck her palm and she seized it, clinging grimly to the scruff of the wolf’s neck. Terror and exhilaration ran through her. A familiar voice welled up out of her memory: I had arms that could crush steel girders.
She reached forwards and seized the corner of her wolf’s mouth. The beast bucked, mashing its jaws together, but the teeth were too widely spaced to puncture Beth’s hands. Knuckles white, she felt the steel give under the pressure of her fingertips. Gritting her teeth, she gripped harder, and pulled.
The wolf screamed, a shocking animal howl of pain as she fish-hooked it.
The beast’s jaw flapped sideways, connected only by a thin ribbon of scrap-iron tissue. The wolf whimpered and crumpled forwards onto the tarmac.
Beth lay for an instant, blinking stupidly amidst the steel bones.
I did it, I brought a Scaffwolf down.
Iron fangs met in her shoulder, and she screamed.
Beth goes down, and something lurches sickly inside me, but I can’t help her. The space between us blurs with metal. The bear that is Gutterglass roars and crushes one wolf, and then morphs into a giant fist, which smashes another. Fangs tear his side, and he haemorrhages worms.
Under the railway bridge, a ring of Sodiumites is spinning wildly in a devil-dervish. Strange shadows coalesce and divide on the pavement. The air stinks of cordite. An avatar of pure light springs outward from the heart of their circle and grapples a scaffolding giant to the ground. A second later it gutters out, but its work is done. The molten slag that was once the giant is welded to the road, jutting curves of metal like frozen waves.
A claw falls towards me. I parry and strike back. I risk a glance back under the bridge. The five glass women who raised the avatar lie flat, drained of their light. They have no more such devils in them.
Beth’s scream made the air around her vibrate. The wolf shook her, its teeth rending her shoulder, a horrendous, sawing to-and-fro pain. She could feel the consciousness begin to seep out of her. The hand held to her breast was smothered in viscous, oily, black-streaked blood that clotted under her fingernails.
Play dead, play dead. She didn’t know what put the thought in her head. She
went limp. Play dead.
In a few seconds, she wouldn’t have to pretend.
The wolf dropped her, the impact jarring her body. It straddled her, metal-pipe muzzle stretched wide …
… and never shut it.
Beth blinked up in astonishment. The hinges at the corners of its makeshift jaw squealed with the effort, but the Scaffwolf couldn’t close its mouth. Clouds of rust gusted from the animal’s nostrils.
‘Da, lads! Da! Very many good!’
Beth winced as she rolled onto her shoulder. Through the waves of sickening pain she saw Victor standing on the pavement a few yards away, greatcoat flapping wide, waving his torch as though conducting an orchestra. All around him eager Blankleits stood, bright as miniature stars.
There was a manic glint in the Russian’s eye. ‘Now boys, my good boys, more,’ he demanded. ‘More.’
And the glass boys adjusted their peaked caps and bent their backs, perspiring pure light from their brows.
The wolf’s jaws opened wider and wider, the hinges screeching resistance. Beth watched in horrified fascination as the two halves of the animal’s muzzle suddenly inverted, and with ear-splitting protestations Reach’s monster was turned inside-out.
Woozily, Beth stood up. Gusts of vodka-tainted breath washed over her as Victor stooped to inspect her shoulder. She could already feel it healing, the cement in her blood scabbing the wound.
‘What are you, Tsarina?’ he muttered, almost hypnotised by the strangeness of her blood. ‘They no teach this Goddess medicine in Spetsnaz.’
Behind him she could see more wolves prowling, their jaws glinting in the light of their foes. She shoved Victor angrily away. ‘They’re surrounding us!’ she shouted in his face. ‘Come on.’ She ran for the orange glow of the Sodiumite ranks. Heat washed over her neck as the Lampmen jogged in her wake. Pain throbbed through her as her wounded arm swung.
Goddess, she thought, who’s a bloody Goddess?
Reach’s initial wave has faltered. His wolves whirl, gnashing the air, but they are far fewer than they were. Then again, so are we. I break into a run, shattered glass biting my feet. A trash-tiger bounds beside me and a ragged cheer goes up from our side – only two or three audible voices, but a chorus of silent ones, glowing back off the clouds. They think we’re winning.
But now the handlers move, swaying metal skeletons, shambling unsteadily up the road, their footsteps pealing like bells. They crouch amongst the wreckage of the wolfpack, sorting the scrap with fingers too small and clever for their massive hands. Instead of fingernails they have wrenches and sledgehammers and shears, and quickly, cunningly, they reconnect the joints. Shoulders rise on haunches, supporting half-reconstructed skulls.
The fallen wolves shake themselves and drag themselves snarling from the tarmac while our dead remain as dust on the ground.
A rebuilt wolf rears in front of me, still groggily shaking its head. I spring off its shoulder and slash a handler through the kneecap. He falls, but his fellows are already rebuilding him. It’s Metal-Medicine, and we have no answer to it.
‘ZEKE!’ I manage to bellow, just before the animal I used as a springboard takes me in the stomach. ‘WHERE ARE YOU?’
The air moved against Beth’s skin, stirred by heavy wings. All along the riverfront, hands clapped over the stone embankment, water droplets glimmering on their fingers. In all manner of shapes, dressed from a dozen centuries, stone figures pulled themselves jerkily into view.
They had trudged, slowly, to get here; the mud on the riverbed still clung to their feet. But now a regiment of statuary stood on the Embankment. Through the gaps eroded by time and the elements in their armour Beth could see bared teeth and throats pulsing as they sucked down air.
The Pavement Priests were building up to something.
Beth looked in through the eyeholes of one. His eyes were stretched wide with effort.
Then, as one, the Pavement Priests vanished.
What—? Where—?
A screeching clang answered her. Across the road, a scaffolding giant had fallen to its knees, gripped by a nude bronze and a stone scholar. Their hands blurred, tearing metal like paper, and Beth found herself gaping as the slim bronze woman in front of her twisted her hips and ripped the metal skull from the giant’s shoulders.
The pair of statues vanished again, and reappeared to scythe the knees from another Handler.
A crazy hope filled Beth like warmth.
How come you never see statues move? she thought in wonder. Is it because they move too slowly, or is it because they’re much, much too fast?
The riverbank was a battlefield. The Pavement Priests flickered, vanished and rematerialised on top of their enemies, their sheer weight dragging the metal monsters down. The air was alive with panting, praying and screaming.
The priests took casualties. Real blood ran from their wounds, black and sticky with lack of water. She surveyed the battle, a terrified elation burning in her throat. She dared to hope the Pavement Priests might be turning the tide.
It isn’t happening. The priests aren’t turning the tide.
As I fight I can only glimpse the carnage. The poor stoneskins are running out of steam, slowing down like toys with their clockwork spent, and all over the road the wolves are tearing them down. Statues litter the battlefield, close-fitting tombs.
Perhaps a quarter of the wolfpack remains, and a small huddle of their handlers. It will be enough: already those clever fingers are reworking the scaffolding joints.
Where’s Beth? I can’t see Beth anywhere.
My spear feels heavier than I remember, and it’s only then I notice the flesh of my right arm is torn. Pain pours through my shoulder, almost as if it’s been waiting for me to notice the wound so it can jump out and surprise me. The scaffolding giants shake the streets with their footsteps.
Already the wolves are circling. Raw fear swills around my stomach. There’s only one thing left to do.
‘Fall back,’ I shout, ‘fall back to the river!’
For a second, Glas stares at me. Then he nods and reforms as a giant rubbish head, shrieking in the voice of a hundred rats, ‘FALL BACK! FALL BACK!’
My soldiers, glass and flesh and stone alike, waver, then they’re all sprinting as fast as they can towards the water. Pavement Priests with severed limbs are dragged by Sodiumites, fields wrapped around them like fishing nets. I stand, urging them on until the last Lampie has passed me, and as I turn myself and hare off on its tail the Scaffwolves howl joyously and race in pursuit.
It’s less than a hundred paces to the riverbank. The distance dissolves. I can feel the chill breath of the wolves on my back. As the first of my army reach the water’s edge they mill about in confusion. Some look back my way with perplexed, betrayed expressions. I know what they’re thinking: if the wolfpack traps them against the river, they’ll all be slaughtered.
I catch Gutterglass’ eye. We’ve only got one chance at this.
‘BREAK RIGHT!’ I bawl as Glas shouts, ‘BREAK LEFT!’ and I bound into my army’s ranks and start almost throwing glass bodies westwards up the riverbank. Glas is more efficient, morphing into a giant hand that sweeps scores of Pavement Priests in the opposite direction.
Glass girls and boys are screaming, pale yellow light flashing haphazardly. A priest is crushed to bloody gravel under his fellows. But a gap opens up in the middle of our ranks. The wolves try to check their charge, but their momentum is too great and as they barrel past they twist to snap at our ankles. Their metal paws pulverise the concrete barrier and they splash into the glittering river beyond.
Ragged breath tears through me. I give Glas a smile.
The wolfpack stirs, swishing ankle-deep in the water, turning, making ready to pursue us. But then they stop.
One of the handlers looks down at the surface of the river, and I know what he sees: the reflections of Metal Men and Scaffwolves are surrounded by other reflections, hundreds of them, some besuited, others dungareed, or wear
ing battered camouflage. They are reflections without originals, reflections that smile grimly as the welding torches they’re wielding spit and flare into life.
I jump onto an empty pedestal on the Embankment just in time to see a Mirrorstocrat touch his torch to a wolf’s reflection. As he does so the real wolf shrieks horribly and its muzzle glows first white-hot and then begins to melt.
My ears are still ringing when a heavy stone hand claps me on the shoulder. I look up into Ezekiel’s face; he’s congratulating me on the feint. I nod absently. Below me the wolves are trying to back out of the river, but their reflections have been chained and muzzled, and though they strain at them they might as well be trying to tear away from their own shadows.
Feeling a little sick at what I’ve got the Mirrorstocracy to do, I turn away—
—and what I see freezes me in shock.
In the dim light on the other side of the road, a Scaffwolf stands alone. A girl mounted on the beast’s back is watching me. Her hair is bound in a silk scarf. Her face is streaked with metal and dried blood. Somehow she projects pure loathing; implacable hatred emanates from her shape. Almost lazily, she extends an arm towards our ranks.
‘No!’ I mean to shout it, but I don’t even know if I make any sound.
Tendrils of barbed wire, hundreds of snakelike strands, are unfurling at ferocious speed. A Sodiumite girl younger than me barely has time to flinch before wire crunches her neck apart.
Oh no. Oh Thames, no: the Wire Mistress—
More tendrils, more broken bodies, more death. Reach has sent his high priestess to see us wiped out.
I shove myself towards her, but my legs are reluctant. ‘You’re the only one who can stop her!’ I shout at myself, although frankly, that’s optimism gone barking bloody mad. She’s got a host, so she’ll be at least as strong as me.
The Mistress’s host springs from the back of her wolf and runs towards us. A buzzing cloud of gleaming metal surrounds her and I imagine those tendrils dipping into the river, stirring up the water into foam and obliterating the Mirrorfolk and the wolves’ reflections.