Blood and Iron (16 page)

‘It is difficult to think that such things can come to an end, Ka-Lo-Re-Harballah.’

‘I fear they have ended already,’ said Ka-Lo-Re-Harballah, gazing at the green-panelled humans by the balustrade. They had finished their contemplation of the view and were walking back to the Emperor’s Palace. They seemed to march almost in step.

‘Come, let us enter the Copper Master’s house, Ka-Lo-Re-Harballah. I’m sure that things will not be as bad as you describe.’

‘Perhaps not.’

Wa-Ka-Mo-Do placed his foot on the steps leading up to the white house, but Ka-Lo-Re-Harballah touched a hand to his elbow.

‘Before we do . . .’ Ka-Lo-Re-Harballah seemed to be struggling with his conscience. ‘I do not like to say this, Honoured Commander, but I would speak the truth. You are an outsider, one of the Eleven from the High Spires. Robots famed for their skill on the battlefield, robots who proved themselves in the past when Yukawa had enemies on its borders, but who are rarely required in these more, shall we say,
settled
times.’

‘That may be so, Ka-Lo-Re-Harballah.’

‘Indeed. I am sorry to say this, Honoured Commander, but do you not feel that you are a strange choice for such an important command as this?’

‘Explain yourself, Ka-Lo-Re-Harballah,’ said Wa-Ka-Mo-Do sternly, though the same suspicions walked his own mind.

‘I am sorry, Honoured Commander, but animals walk abroad in Sangrel, dissent is rife among the population. Surely this is a job for a commander of the Imperial Army, one versed in politics, one who knows the area? A robot such as La-Ver-Di-Arussah? Yet when the call came, no such robot was found to be suitable.’

Wa-Ka-Mo-Do said nothing. Emboldened, Ka-Lo-Re-Harballah spoke on.

‘I wonder why the Emperor has had you sent here, and I feel it is because it will not matter so much if you fail.’

The young robot gazed directly into Wa-Ka-Mo-Do’s eyes.

‘I fear that you are to be made a scapegoat, Honoured Commander.’

Susan

Susan knelt in the making room, twisting the metal of the Storm Trooper who sat before her.

She hated the Storm Troopers, hated the thick feel of their wire in her hands, hated the sharp feel of the potential current in there.

‘There we are ladies, you may put down the minds.’

Susan remembered the first time she had put down a half-completed mind, the horror she had felt at seeing the wire untwist and the potential life die. Now it was such a common occurrence she felt nothing except an emptiness inside, like someone had scooped out all the living parts of her body, leaving behind nothing but the metal shell. She felt like a ghost.

There were nineteen other mothers in Susan’s making room, all of them women who had been captured from Turing City, all of them united by their hatred of her. They hated her for her friendship with Nettie, hated her for what she had been back in Turing City: the wife of Karel. They thought Karel was a traitor, because of who his father was. Yet was it Karel’s fault that his mother had been raped by an Artemisian soldier? After all, it was no more than what was happening to them all now.

The twenty Storm Troopers in the room filed out, their wire cooling on the floor where the women had dropped it. Susan could feel the current surging in their strong bodies, and she hated it. She hated their arrogant swagger, hated the way they looked at the women, at everyone, like they were inferior beings. Didn’t they realize that such thoughts weren’t the Artemisian way? She wanted to scream that truth out to them, even though she wasn’t an Artemisian herself.

Nettie waited until the last of the Storm Troopers had left the room; she listened to their heavy tread ringing down the metal corridor. When she was sure they were out of earshot, she spoke up brightly.

‘Now ladies, what have we learned?’

The women looked at Nettie with contempt, all of them except Susan. Nettie had never woven a mind herself, yet she was responsible for training them all how to weave minds for Artemis. But there was something else, Susan recognized. Nettie was always at her brightest when she was unhappiest.

‘I don’t get it,’ said Diehl, more in frustration than anything else. ‘The minds will be strong, but they won’t be able to think properly.’

Some of the other women murmured agreement.

‘Don’t worry about that ladies, it doesn’t matter,’ said Nettie. ‘Is the basic pattern sound?’

She looked at Susan for help.

‘It’s sound,’ said Susan, ignoring the looks of the other women. ‘It just doesn’t make any sense. Seriously, Nettie, I really don’t understand. Why are we doing this?’

‘Nyro’s will,’ said Nettie, and she smiled at them all.

The women said nothing. They had learned long ago that Nyro’s will was a euphemism for orders from Artemis command.

Nettie looked back to the doorway of the making room, and there was a flicker of uncertainty in her eyes.

‘Listen,’ said Nettie, ‘Please! Don’t make a fuss. It could be so much worse. Really! The other women are making two minds a night now, you know that, don’t you? I had to push to get this assignment for you ladies. Really, I did!’

‘We know,’ said Susan. The other women made grudging noises of agreement. ‘We believe you, we’re grateful, honestly. But what is going on?’

‘No one will tell me,’ said Nettie, and she sagged suddenly as a wave of misery overwhelmed her. ‘I don’t know what’s happening! Everything is confusion within the city. Something happened up in the north. Something bad. Spoole and the Generals returned to the city much earlier than expected and suddenly everything has been put on a war footing. We have stepped up production of everything: minds, robots, metal.’

‘It will be Kavan,’ said Diehl. She looked around the assembled women. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘You’ve all heard the soldiers talk as we kneel before them. They think that Kavan is some sort of hero. Another Nyro, almost, and you know how much they think of her.’

‘Not all the soldiers,’ said another woman. ‘The Storm Troopers aren’t so keen on Kavan.’

Kavan, thought Susan. He was the robot who had destroyed Turing City. He had killed her child and had taken her husband away from her. Now, maybe, he was returning to Artemis City.

She wondered what she would do if she ever met him.

Kavan

The Uncertain Army moved south like a silver tide flowing through the valleys of the central mountain range.

Just like a tide, reflected Kavan, for he had as much command over the army as he had over the waters. The robots sloshed forwards and backwards, rushed up into the surrounding hills and mountains, spilling over the edges, sometimes never to be seen again, sometimes to come trickling back in metal streams.

The trouble was, there was no certainty up here amongst the high peaks. No one really knew who was on whose side, and just where all of this was going to end up. Not even Kavan. There were too many variables.

When Spoole had retreated, he had taken as many of the Artemisian troops back with him as would follow: he didn’t want them deserting to join Kavan’s army as it advanced. All those little mountain kingdoms that Kavan himself had so recently conquered suddenly found themselves drained of their new rulers, found themselves free once more. Free to take back their own land and lives, to refortify themselves, to run away, higher into the mountains and safety. Free to launch attacks on the Uncertain Army.

Or even, in some cases, to join it. After all, wasn’t Kavan intending to attack Artemis itself? For some, it didn’t matter that the Army was led by their former conqueror, it was enough to follow it to where it was going. For safety, for revenge, for profit.

Then there were those troops who had found themselves unwilling conscripts in the Uncertain Army, who took the chance to slip away, in ones or twos, in squads and even platoons, to seek freedom, or perhaps to set themselves up in one of the abandoned kingdoms, maybe to rule over those who still remained, or merely to find somewhere to hide whilst the events unfolded without them to the south, waiting to join the victors later on.

Whichever side that was.

Finally, there were those who still saw Kavan and his army as the enemy. Whether Artemisian soldiers loyal to Spoole and the Generals, or the remnants of the armies of the Northern Kingdoms who still held out in the high caves and passes, swooping down occasionally to fight their guerrilla war, there were still enough robots to ambush and bomb and trap and attack Kavan and his troops. Sailing down from the skies beneath silver parafoils, rolling rocks in avalanche down the mountainsides, pouring petrol to fill the streams, filling the air with iron filings and chaff, ricocheting cannonballs from the rocky walls, igniting magnesium flares that filled the night with harsh light that burned out the eye cells, or simply attacking in a chatter of rifle shot and a clatter of knives and awls, Kavan found his progress constantly slowed and frustrated.

As if he was wading against a tide of his own design.

And yet, it didn’t seem to make any difference to the size of his army. If anything, it continued to grow. A constant stream of robots found their way to him, offering advice and allegiance.

Robots like the one that stood before Kavan at the moment.

Calor had brought her to meet him. She wore an engineer’s body: blue panelling, the machinery beneath it adapted, tuned, altered from the standard pattern that Artemis imposed on its robots. Oddly enough, this didn’t upset Kavan. He recognized the Artemisian State’s need for engineers. So long as they helped to advance its cause he never felt a need to understand them.

‘Her name is Ada. She says her mother was a Raman, her father an Artemisian.’

‘And do you follow Nyro’s way?’ asked Kavan, looking at the robot’s elongated body.

‘I do,’ answered Ada. ‘Should my parentage cast doubt on my loyalties? Your mind wasn’t twisted in Artemis, either, Kavan. It’s not about where you were made, it’s what you believe in.’

Kavan noticed the way Calor was looking at him, as if surprised at what she had just heard. She covered up her confusion. ‘I found her up there,’ she said, pointing to the rocky peaks to the west. ‘She was making her way towards you.’

‘I was,’ Ada said, ‘I’ve been looking for you. You’re making a mistake, Kavan.’

Kavan took a closer look at Calor. He could hear the hum of the current running through her body. Scouts always pushed themselves too hard. In Kavan’s opinion they were already half mad when they were made: you never knew which way they would jump. Calor now belonged to an army whose direction changed by the hour. No wonder she was tense. ‘Perhaps you should walk with me a while, Calor,’ he suggested.

Calor shook her head.

‘Got to get back to the mountains, Kavan. Keep watching your path.’

‘As you wish,’ said Kavan. He watched her silver body as she sprang up the side of a cliff, jumping from ledge to ledge, scrabbling with her claws for purchase in the smallest cracks. Showers of stones rattled to the ground behind her, marking her passage.

Kavan turned back to Ada.

‘You said I was making a mistake? Do you think that Spoole and the rest are the true leaders of Artemis?’

Ada’s blue eyes flashed. Whether in humour or anger, Kavan couldn’t tell.

‘Of course I don’t,’ she said. ‘You’re the right robot for the job. It’s just that you’re going about it the wrong way.’

‘Go on.’

‘You’re thinking like you’ve always done, Kavan. It’s not your fault; it’s the way your mind was twisted, to think of leading soldiers to the expansion of Artemis. Well, the conditions no longer apply. The continent is conquered and you’re not in full control of this army. Although there are many who believe in you, there are just as many who don’t. You don’t have the backing of Spoole and the Generals any more, even the backing that they gave you under duress of circumstances. You’re the right robot for the job of overthrowing the Generals, but not for the job of getting this army down to where it’s needed.’

Ada’s blue eyes flashed again, and this time Kavan saw the humour there. He was reminded of Eleanor, his old second in command. But whereas she was twisted a warrior and had always subtly challenged him for leadership, Ada was an engineer. She would be more interested in getting the job done.