“Then do to sky what you want sky to do to you.”
Rommond forced a smile. “You look well,” he said. Much of the machine had been removed, and the man was clearly visible underneath. The short hair suited him, though Rommond knew that Brooklyn would not like it, and would want to grow it long again.
“You look well too,” Brooklyn said. “I look deeper though, and you not look so well there.”
“I'm better than I was.”
“Brogan has big worries. You too. More than is your share.”
“A leader takes on the problems of all of those he leads.”
“I see many leaders now. Easier to share many burdens.”
A tear rolled down Rommond's face. “It has been lonely without you.”
“I had much company,” Brooklyn said. “Spirits never leave. But I only wanted to hear one voice—my general's. I am glad to hear your voice again.”
Rommond smiled and squeezed Brooklyn's hand. “You don't know how happy this makes me feel. I … I was nothing without you. I'm surprised I made it this far these last few years, these last few years alone.”
Brooklyn was silent and stoic, but Rommond saw through that outer shell, like he saw through the outer casing of machinery that had surrounded Brooklyn. When Brooklyn was choked up, he did not speak. He kept the sorrow deep inside, to save others from having to feel it with him. But Rommond no longer wanted to escape the pain. So long as they were together, he was sure he could fight it, that they could win.
“I have to ask—”
“I know.”
“—what did they do to you?”
Brooklyn was quiet for a moment, and in that time he could not keep Rommond's gaze. The eyes were another way to communicate the sorrow, so he closed them and turned away. Yet he could not keep them closed for long. Whatever he saw when he did, it clearly frightened him. It frightened Rommond too.
33 – THE WALL IN THE EAST
The clean-up and rebuilding of Blackout started almost immediately. Militia were put in place, but there were not enough trustworthy people to police the streets. The Resistance had organised themselves to resist, not to rule. Even the Treasury, weakened by the attack, were unable to restore total order. Various claimants came forth, and Rommond was frequently called in to settle disputes, which he settled more often than not by taking out his gun.
Rommond was finally informed about Taberah, and he was crestfallen. Had he not had Brooklyn back, it might have shaken him completely. They consoled one another, and Jacob thought he overheard Taberah's tears one night. What she could not say to him, she said to Rommond. He might have felt rejected by this, but he was just glad that she spoke to someone, that she shared with someone.
Jacob sat with the general and a few of the crew, and he almost felt like he had somehow become part of the inner circle. He remembered his old life, and he did not miss it.
“A lot has changed,” Rommond said. “Many have fallen.”
Jacob raised his glass. “To those no longer with us.” He could not help but think of his own child, snatched by fate. Whatever was demonic in the invaders, there was devilry in nature herself, for such an outcome to be ordained.
Rommond looked at Brooklyn. “To old friends.”
“And new ones,” Lorelai said, sitting down with them. She had earned a place at the table for her work on Brooklyn, but Rommond grumbled, and cast a distrustful look at her.
“So Blackout is ours again,” Jacob said. It felt strange to say it. He had not thought in terms of ours or theirs, only what was his, and what was not.
“What's left of it,” Rommond said. He had been brooding on the fate of the city ever since it had been recaptured, as if there were a thousand little battles still to be fought on every street.
“People will resist,” Brooklyn said, his voice soft, contrasting sharply with the mechanical monstrosity he had been previously.
“For some, we are the Regime,” Rommond replied. “Our authority will be seen as just as much a vice as that of the Iron Empire. Yet we do not rule as harshly.”
“I'm not sure we rule at all,” Jacob pointed out, as he surveyed the carnage in the city, and listened to the looting in the nearby streets. “Isn't that the Treasury's job here?”
“We've routed them,” the general said, “and those who remain are few, and are not as loyal to the Baroness as they were to the previous Grand Treasurer. We've cost them a pretty penny. It is lucky it did not cost us our lives.”
“What next then?” Jacob asked. “Do we try to rebuild here? Fend off another wave of the Iron Guard? Surely they will come in force to retake Blackout.”
Rommond looked to Brooklyn, as if for advice. It had been so long since he had received any. For many years he had sought advice from the dead, and the only thing they had to say to him was: Do not join us.
“Spirits are more restless than ever,” Brooklyn said, looking aside, as if a host of beings sat by his side. “They say balance has changed.”
“So it has,” Rommond said. “For years we played defensive, holding the demons back, until our front line got pushed further and further into the west, until we no longer had a front line to defend. We lost our capital, but now it is regained. The time for defence is over. Now is the time to attack.”
Jacob almost expected to hear a cheer from Taberah, but she was not there. The battle for Blackout had been won, but the battle in her body was lost. Wills were broken, and faith was shaken, and Jacob knew not if she, who helped so many avoid giving birth to demon spawn, could recover from her loss, or if it would consume her, like it had done so in the past.
“Where next then?” Jacob asked.
Rommond led them to the eastern ramparts, where he produced a large, baroque spyglass, and held it up to Jacob's face. “Look over there, to the east.”
Jacob looked, but saw little but red desert.
“Strain your eyes,” Rommond said. “Don't let the spyglass do all the work. We've had them enhanced. Brooklyn has increased their magnification quite a bit.”
“I see a black dot.”
“That dot is what we made to hold the demons back. It was our barrier, our barricade, against their sweeping advances. A great railway gun, colossal, like the handgun of a god, so great in fact that it could barely move at all. So we built a track for it, from the northern mountains to the southern sea, and it patrolled that route, and could be brought to any location on that track at great speeds. If they invaded in the north, we'd have the railway gun there swiftly. If they invaded in the south, we'd send it down with haste. A single, monstrous gun, to hold back a multitude of monsters.”
I guess it didn't work, Jacob thought. He felt it best not to say it.
“When we lost that weapon,” Rommond said, “Blackout's fall was virtually secured. Sure, we dug in deep in our capital, and held them off for weeks, but the railway gun held them off for years. It allowed us to reinforce, and to shore up our other defences, and to research and build new tools and weapons. It was our great dam, holding back the tide, our great wall, keeping the enemy at bay. Now that wall, the Iron Wall, separates the west, where we still resist, from the east, where resistance has been thoroughly crushed, and where the Iron Emperor alone reigns supreme.”
The general paused and took a deep breath. “It is time to tear down that wall.”
“Sounds like quite a goal.”
“We'll do it brick by brick if we have to,” Rommond said. “Only, each brick is one of our lives. Yet so long as the Iron Wall still stands, the Iron Emperor still rules, for how can we retake the east if that bastion, a bastion of our own making, stands in our way? It is a wall of iron tracks, and we can try to go up north and bypass it, but they will see us from afar and be waiting for us there, and we can try to go down south and even go by sea, but the railway gun has a vast reach, and they will reach us there. There is only one gate through that wall, and that is the gun itself.”
“What did you call it?” Jacob asked.
“What I wanted to do in the sky, I already did on the ground. When the demons advanced on that weapon, we made the earth rock, and ears rend, until we got reports back that many of their armies had been routed. So there was really only one name we could give it, only one title befitting of what it could do, and what it will do again when it is back in our control.”
Jacob looked to the general with anticipation, but Rommond kept his eyes fixed firmly in the east. When at least he returned his gaze, his voice was hush, as if the memory of that gigantic barrel, on its enormous frame, hauled on colossal wheels upon a seemingly never-ending track, had all but silenced him. Yet when the words came out, they came like the shells of a railway gun.
“The Landquaker.”
The next book in the series, Landquaker, will release in early 2016.
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Have you checked out the Children of Telm series? You can find all of Dean F. Wilson's books here:
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UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dean-F.-Wilson/e/B007O05FEU/
A final message from Dean:
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed the story so far. Before you go, I'd like to ask you a small favour: if you liked what you read, please leave a review on Amazon. Short and sweet is perfect. Reviews are essential to a book's success, and you could be instrumental in helping to make Skyshaker an international bestseller. Thanks! :)
Skyshaker: A Steampunk Dystopian Adventure (The Great Iron War, Book 3) Page 17