Col was five paces away, but he couldn’t help grinning. ‘You ate them all, then?’
Mr Gibber didn’t understand the grin. ‘This is no joke, Porpentine. I’ve been given a new life. I want to be a better person.’
‘Sorry, I can’t wait,’ said Col. ‘We have to stop these Imperialist troops before they storm Liberator.’
‘Let me help.’ Mr Gibber propped himself up on one arm and one leg. ‘I hate them too. They kicked and stomped on me. That’s why I hid under here.’
He blew muddy bubbles out of his nostrils, and began to crawl after Col. He was moving much faster than the last time Col had seen him.
‘Let me prove I’m a better person. I can help you.’
By now, the rest of the team was thirty yards away. Mr Gibber sounded genuine, but he was still a liability.
‘Another time,’ said Col, and hurried to catch up with the others.
He caught up sooner than he expected. The rest of the team slowed to a halt as the deck of the walkway sloped down suddenly over their heads. Three feet, two feet . . . lower and lower.
By the time Col came up, they were all on their hands and knees.
‘Can’t we crawl?’ he asked.
‘Not even that.’ Dunga pointed ahead. ‘It gets worse.’
‘No way through,’ said Jarvey with a groan.
‘What, then? Out in the open?’
Riff snorted. ‘And fight a whole army face to face?’
They crossed to the side of the scaffolding and looked out. They had passed beyond the silver-and-black vehicles now; the soldiers here wore grey uniforms and stood massed in squares a thousand strong. Their rifles were curiously ornate, with carved wood and inlaid silver, but looked every bit as deadly as the rifle Dunga bore.
‘We have to find a way,’ muttered Cree.
The others looked to Col and Riff, as the ones most likely to come up with a plan. But not this time. Col’s mind stayed empty, and Riff shook her head in frustration.
Time passed. Outside, the megaphone voices boomed more orders, then fell silent again. The orders were obviously not addressed to the soldiers in grey, who remained standing to attention, rifles sloped against their shoulders.
Then a different voice called out in a language they could understand. ‘I’m coming to help!’
It was Mr Gibber still crawling along after them. He had covered the distance at remarkable speed, considering his broken arm and leg.
They shushed him to silence. Luckily, the nearest square of soldiers was forty yards away. Mr Gibber continued to approach without another word.
They were all watching him except Dunga. Peering out through the scaffolding, she gave a sudden low whistle. ‘What’s that?’
Even Mr Gibber turned to look. Something was approaching outside the walkway – a type of vehicle they hadn’t seen before. At the front was a steam-powered traction engine, with a footplate and a driver.
‘It’s going our way,’ said Col.
‘Heading towards the tower,’ Cree agreed.
‘I wonder . . .’ said Riff.
It was moving very slowly, parallel to the walkway at a distance of twenty yards. Now they could see what it was hauling: a long, low trolley on wheels, laden with straw inside a perimeter of wire netting. The rounded tops of two huge glass flasks stuck out high above the straw, glowing with eerie brightness.
‘If we could sneak on board . . .’ said Riff.
‘Hide in the straw,’ muttered Cree.
‘Catch a lift,’ said Jarvey.
Col clicked his tongue. ‘We need it to come closer.’
‘I can help,’ said Mr Gibber.
Before anyone realised what was happening, he had crawled out through the scaffolding and was heading straight into the path of the traction engine. He looked like some creature from the muddy depths as he flopped along on his one good arm and one good leg. With every movement, he let out a groan or a howl of pain.
The driver slowed down and shouted at him. Mr Gibber bellowed back and kept moving. He only stopped when he was right in front of the engine’s wheels.
At the last minute, the driver swerved – closer to the walkway, right next to the scaffolding.
‘Yes!’ breathed Col. ‘He’s done it!’
‘Get ready,’ ordered Riff, as the traction engine went past.
The side of the trolley was now just a couple of yards from the side of the walkway. They scrambled through the scaffolding and jumped up onto the wire netting above the slowly turning wheels.
For one split second, they might have been visible as they went over the top of the netting. But no one was nearby, no one was watching. They plunged down and burrowed into the straw. By the time the traction engine swerved back to its original path, they were completely hidden from view.
‘Thank you, Mr Gibber,’ murmured Col.
Col rolled over. He had someone’s leg weighing on his shoulder and someone’s head against his knee. The straw was surprisingly cold, and the chill seemed to come from the two huge flasks.
He slid a hand through the straw and touched the surface of the nearest flask. No doubt about it: the glass felt like ice.
He pushed aside the straw to take a look. The brightness behind the glass was overwhelming – and now he could see exactly what it was. The flask was full of balls of light, packed side by side as if floating in some transparent liquid.
‘I know,’ whispered Riff. ‘It’s what they fire from those tubes.’
She was the head against his knee, observing the same view through the glass.
The trolley trundled on for fifty yards. But their hopes of reaching the tower were dashed when they began a slow, gentle curve to the right.
‘We’re moving away,’ muttered Riff.
‘Where are we going?’ Col wondered.
‘What do we do when we stop?’ asked Jarvey. It was his leg weighing on Col’s shoulder.
For the present, they could do nothing but wait. Col shifted Jarvey’s leg to the side, but he was happy with Riff’s head against his knee.
After a while, there were hisses of steam from the traction engine, and the trolley began to slow down. Col risked raising his head and saw at once where they were going. One of the great brass tubes reared up against the sky ahead. Of course – the balls of light in the flasks! They were delivering supplies of ammunition.
He ducked his head back down when he realised there were soldiers all around. He passed on the news to Riff and Jarvey, who repeated it to Dunga and Cree. Dunga and Cree had burrowed all the way across to the other side of the trolley.
‘We’re closer to the tower,’ Jarvey whispered.
‘But not close enough,’ said Riff.
The trolley shuddered to a halt. Col heard the clink of weapons and the creak of boots . . . then someone shouting orders. The soldiers seemed to have come up right beside them. Did they suspect something? Col gripped the hilt of his sword.
Bad move! He hadn’t realised that the tip of the blade stuck out from the straw. It must have flashed in the sunlight, because there was a sudden shout of surprise.
‘Qu’est-ce que c’est?’
The barrel of a rifle came through the wire netting, probing into the straw. Col felt Riff stiffen. She must be trying not to cry out as cold metal dug into her flesh.
In the next moment, he struggled to repress a gasp himself. A second rifle had pushed forward and made contact with his calf.
Cry or no cry, the soldiers were sure there was something in the straw. The rifle drew back from Col’s calf, then pushed forward again. This time it prodded his thigh.
It was the end for their plan of reaching the tower. Now they could only sell their lives as dearly as possible. Col waited for Riff’s command to spring out an
d start fighting.
Instead, he heard a faraway noise of singing. Somewhere, on another part of the battlefield, a multitude of voices rose up like a choir.
The battle-song of the svolochi!
Col could have laughed out loud. A whole new army had joined the fight against the Imperialists!
The soldiers had heard it too. They grunted with surprise and called out questions. The rifles withdrew from the straw.
Then the megaphone boomed from the tower again: fresh orders from the generals. The orders were repeated in French, German, Russian and Turkish.
There was instant commotion. Nearby officers barked their own orders; soldiers clicked heels, wheeled around and marched off.
Had they forgotten there was something in the straw? Even if they hadn’t forgotten, they seemed to have lost interest – or their officers had. Unit after unit marched off in the direction of the singing.
‘We helped them and now they’re helping us,’ Riff breathed.
‘I bet Unya made it happen,’ said Col.
Still they hardly dared to believe the danger was gone. They waited as troops marched past in a never-ending tide.
They raised their heads above the straw only when the sounds of marching faded into the distance. Many troop formations still remained, still standing to attention, but none so close as before. Col looked out towards the tower; Riff looked up at the brass tube soaring above them.
‘Let’s put that out of action first,’ she said.
It turned out easier than expected. On Cree and Dunga’s side, the trolley had pulled up next to a canvas shelter erected round the base of the tube. Cree and Dunga slipped unobserved over the top of the netting and in through the flap of the shelter. Col, Riff and Jarvey wriggled their way across between the glass flasks, and followed behind.
There were Imperialists inside the shelter, but Cree and Dunga had already dealt with them by the time the others arrived. Three men lay doubled up on the ground, no match for the Filthies’ fighting skills. They wore padded jackets, balaclavas and gloves so thick and heavy that their hands looked like paws.
Col looked around at stores of flasks, canisters and rubber-sealed jars. The place was unnaturally cold, and their breath made clouds of mist in the air.
Dunga dusted her hands over a job well done. ‘What next?’
‘Tie them up.’ Riff turned to point to an array of taps, pipes and other apparatus at the base of the tube. ‘Then wreck this stuff.’
‘It’ll be a pleasure,’ said Cree.
‘Then what?’ asked Jarvey. ‘Are we still trying for the tower?’
‘Don’t know.’ Riff sucked in her cheeks. ‘First, I’m going to look out and see what the Russian Filthies are doing.’
Col followed the direction of her gaze and saw a line of rungs that ran up along the top of the tube’s sloping barrel.
‘Me too,’ he said.
Riff scampered up rung by rung like a monkey; Col climbed after her, a little less acrobatically. They came out above the canvas of the shelter and continued on past knobs, pipes and attachments of every kind. The brass tube was like a tree trunk covered in metallic growths and vines. Col hoped that he and Riff would pass for just another couple of attachments if anyone happened to see them from a distance. The diameter of the barrel hid them from anyone closer in.
Riff went up to the very top, and Col halted on the rungs below her. He looked out to where the svolochi advanced in an arrowhead formation across the middle of the battlefield. They must have streamed back down through the Romanov’s engine-room, because now they emerged from underneath the hull.
‘See!’ cried Riff. ‘They’ll split the enemy troops in two!’
Col nodded. Whether or not it was a deliberate strategy, the svolochi were driving a wedge between the main Imperialist forces. The amplified voices of the generals in their tower boomed out orders to avert the threat. Blue, grey, green and red-uniformed troops wheeled and manoeuvred and got in each other’s way. The fighting had swung in favour of the revolutionaries.
Col extended his survey across the whole field. On one side was the cloud of yellow gas he’d released himself; the Imperialist troops had abandoned that area completely. On the other side was Liberator looking much the worse for wear. The balls of light appeared to have melted metal where they hit, so that parts of the superstructure sagged down like coagulated liquid. Everywhere the hull was pitted with scars and blackened with residue. However, the scoops had mostly survived; only two hung down broken on the ends of their cables.
Riff’s gasp of indrawn breath called his attention back to the svolochi. The generals had brought a new force onto the battlefield, surging forward from the direction of the Turkish juggernaut. It was the start of a counter-attack.
‘What are they?’
‘Don’t know. Cavalry.’
‘Those aren’t horses.’
‘No, dogs. Monstrous dogs.’
‘Where are their riders?’
The dogs came forward at fearsome speed: square-headed wolfhounds covering the ground in huge, springy bounds. Wide bands of fabric encircled their backs like saddles, but no one sat in the saddles.
Then Col realised that the riders rode not above but below. They were strapped in under their mounts’ bellies, their helmeted heads just visible in the space between the great pistoning forelegs. They lay alongside some kind of long-shafted weapon.
Soon the nature of the weapon was revealed. As the hounds leaped towards the svolochi, rockets shot forth from under their chests. The svolochi had no answer. First the rockets smashed into them, then the dogs did. The dogs began snapping this way and that, white froth flying from their slavering jaws.
The svolochi wavered but fought back. They must have taken rifles from the Russian soldiers and officers, because most of them were armed. They stopped singing and drew their lines closer.
‘Yes! Go on! Keep moving!’ Riff urged them forward.
But the advance had come to a halt, and the svolochi were now on the defensive. Little by little, they had to give ground. The wolfhounds they managed to shoot served as their only means of protection; they crouched behind the shaggy-coated bodies and aimed their rifles over the top.
Now the megaphone voices blared into life once more. New activity stirred, new deployments started up in other quarters of the battlefield. With the surprise attack from the rear blocked off, the generals were going back to their own plans. Once more the siege was under way.
This time it was the turn of the silver-and-black vehicles. Since Col had last seen them, they had moved up to the front line facing Liberator, along with the green-uniformed soldiers who carried the hedgehog-like devices. Two hundred vehicles were in the first wave of the new offensive.
Col couldn’t see the drivers, but he imagined them pedalling madly as they lay with their backs flat to the ground. The swarm glided forward like two hundred beetles in crescent formation.
Shooting from Liberator’s scoops and portholes, the defenders hit and halted maybe a dozen. But twelve out of two hundred was nothing. The swarm parted to pass around the immobilised vehicles, then recombined and flowed on the same as ever.
We’re just outnumbered, thought Col.
The swarm advanced right up to Liberator’s rollers and vanished briefly out of sight. When they reappeared, they were smaller, shorter than before. They had left their torpedo-shaped snouts behind!
They sped frantically away, no longer in close formation, but dispersing, escaping. The defenders continued to shoot from the scoops and portholes, but they could do nothing about the snouts.
Kerrr-umph!-umph!-umph!-umph!
A series of muffled explosions shook the bottom of the juggernaut, shook the ground, even shook the brass tube and its rungs. There was little flash or fire, just a dull shock that
spread out in ripples. For a moment, the air went blurred and everything seemed to dissolve.
When the scene steadied and became solid again, Liberator had settled lower to the ground like an old, tired dog bedding down. The bottom part of its hull had folded up in huge corrugations; its rollers had ceased to exist. It tilted at an angle of several degrees, and another two funnels had collapsed.
Col felt it as a blow to his own body. But we’re still upright, he told himself.
Meanwhile, the offensive was entering its next phase. As the wheeled vehicles merged back in among the Imperialist troops, the green uniforms stepped forward with their hedgehog devices. Once again, rifle barrels stuck out from Liberator’s portholes and over the edges of the scoops. The juggernaut might have reached its end, but its defenders were still fighting.
The green uniforms advanced only part of the way across no-man’s-land. They knelt down, placed their devices on the ground and did something that involved a sudden jerk of the arm, as if pulling a cord. Then they stepped back – and the devices began to move forward under their own power.
‘What are they?’ Col heard Riff mutter.
‘More bombs?’ he suggested.
‘I don’t think so.’
As the devices moved forward, they jetted streams of grey smoke into the air. Soon the streams of smoke joined together in a dense, impenetrable mass. Already large parts of Liberator were hidden from view – which meant that the Imperialist forces were also hidden from Liberator’s view.
‘They’re creating a smokescreen,’ said Riff.
Megaphone orders rang out, officers barked supplementary commands. The entire body of Imperialist troops marched forward across the battlefield.
It was the final assault. The advancing front line remained a constant hundred paces behind the smoke-producing devices. Further back, other troops carried sections of ladder – many sections to combine into many ladders.
‘Ow!’ Col protested as Riff stepped on his hand.
‘Down!’ Her tone was urgent. ‘Move!’
‘What are we—? ’
Liberator Page 32