Blood and Iron (5 page)

‘The Silent Wind,’ said Dar-Ell-Ji-Larriah in wonder. ‘What are they doing here?’

Where the Emperor’s Warriors advertised their strength and power in the polish and decoration of their strong bodies, the Silent Wind were panelled in dull grey and green. They wrapped oiled silk around their joints and rubbed carbon black on their hands and feet where metal showed. They moved through the station unchallenged, the polished crowd parting like tree branches blown by the wind.

One of them approached Wa-Ka-Mo-Do’s compartment.

‘Disembark. This train has been commandeered for the Emperor’s business.’

The words were spoken with quiet authority.

Jai-Lyn was already moving to leave the train. Wa-Ka-Mo-Do put an arm at her elbow to halt her.

‘Wait,’ he said, holding out the metal foil scroll that declared his status and right to passage. ‘I too am on the Emperor’s business.’

The Silent Warrior pushed it back.

‘That is none of my concern, this train is required immediately.’

Wa-Ka-Mo-Do looked down at the matt-grey hand, looked up into the eyes of the warrior.

‘Come along, Jai-Lyn,’ he announced. ‘We shall leave now.’

Dar-Ell-Ji-Larriah and his companion were already making their way onto the platform. Wa-Ka-Mo-Do and Jai-Lyn followed them out into the blossom-filled daylight.

All around, the station was filled with angry, confused and bewildered passengers. It was rapidly emptying of the Silent Warriors, who slipped on board the waiting train. At the end of the platform, Wa-Ka-Mo-Do could see two more of the Silent Wind climbing into the control cabin. The regular driver stood on the platform, looking confused.

The doors of the train closed, and it accelerated rapidly from the station in a swirl of cherry blossom.

‘What’s happening?’ wondered Jai-Lyn.

Wa-Ka-Mo-Do jumped at the amplified sound of her voice, then turned his ears back down to normal level. He had been listening to the conversations around him. For the moment he said nothing, thinking on what he had heard. One of the Silent Wind had mentioned the word softly as he climbed on board the train. He had heard the name echoed from around the station.

Ell.

Wa-Ka-Mo-Do wondered what it meant. Ell was a city somewhere to the south, only a hundred miles from Sangrel, the place where he himself was headed.

Ell. Something had happened in Ell.

Kavan

Kavan and Calor walked south.

The landscape here twisted around itself, the valleys curling around the rolling green hills, their rocky interiors exposed in cross section by ancient quarries dug by long-forgotten robots. There were paths and roads made by robots that had roamed the countryside hundreds of years ago in search of metal with which to make their children. Occasionally Kavan and Calor passed by an old stone shelter or pile of stones or some other marker.

‘We are being watched,’ said Calor. ‘Two Scouts on the hilltops. Not that experienced, you can see the sunlight reflect from their bodies.’

‘I’ve seen them,’ replied Kavan. ‘I wonder if they’re watching the Storm Trooper ahead.’

The stone path they followed was rising up to the head of a valley.

A black figure stood in the middle of the path, six grey infantry-robots behind him. He held up a hand as Kavan approached.

‘Greetings, Kavan.’

‘Hello Tams. My army marches south. Join us.’

Tams searched back along the path.

‘No, Tams. Here she is.’ He pointed to Calor.

Tams seemed disappointed.

‘A bluff, Kavan. A pity, seeing how times have changed. Spoole himself is coming north. We are to escort you to meet him. You’re a hero now, Kavan.’

‘Artemis has no heroes, Tams. That I am declared one goes to show just how hollow a shell Artemis has become. You must realize that?’ He looked at the other robot, seeking acknowledgement. When none came, he continued, ‘I’m raising my last army to march on Artemis City itself.’

‘No, Kavan.’

The voice came from behind him. He turned to see five more Storm Troopers standing there, rifles pointed at the ground.

‘Sorry, Kavan,’ said Calor. ‘I didn’t see them. Maybe I’m not so experienced either.’

‘Everyone underestimates how quietly Storm Troopers can move when they want to,’ said Kavan loudly. ‘Don’t they, Forban? We fought together in Stark, I think. You served with me in the last battle in the North Kingdom.’

‘I did, Kavan.’

Forban’s rifle remained pointed at the ground, but it could easily be swung in Kavan’s direction. Kavan pretended not to notice.

‘You are a true Artemisian, Forban. I wouldn’t expect you to follow Spoole and the rest. Join my army.’

‘You no longer have an army, Kavan. The battle with the North Kingdom was a battle too far. Barely fifty robots survived the final onslaught. Too many Artemisians were melted in the petrol pits . . .’

‘Their metal will be recovered,’ interrupted Kavan. ‘The battle ended in victory.’

‘Too many minds were lost,’ said Forban. ‘It’s over, Kavan. Now that Artemis controls all of Shull, it’s a time for consolidation, not conquest. You were a great leader when we were expanding, but your job is done. We need robots like Spoole to lead us now. Fall in, Kavan, we march to meet him.’

Forban waved a hand. The grey infantryrobots shouldered their rifles and fell into position.

‘What if I refuse to follow?’ asked Kavan.

‘We pick you up and carry you.’ Behind Forban, the other four Storm Troopers had shouldered their rifles and were marching up the stone path to join their companions. ‘If you continue to fight, I will have your mind removed from your body.’

‘Very well, I will follow.’

‘And what about you?’ Forban asked Calor. ‘Who do you follow now?’

The Scout looked at Kavan uncertainly. Ahead, she saw the grey infantryrobots looking at each other as they stood, arms sloped, awaiting the order to march. The infantry had always had an affinity with Kavan. After all, didn’t he wear the body of an infantryrobot himself? The Storm Troopers, however, had never been quite so loyal. Six infantryrobots and six Storm Troopers. And one Scout. The odds were on Forban’s side.

‘Well,’ prompted Forban. ‘Which will it be? Artemis, or Kavan?’

‘Aren’t they the same thing?’ asked Calor. Kavan smiled at that.

Forban pointed his rifle at Calor’s head.

‘I wouldn’t do that,’ said Kavan.

‘Why not?’

‘There are Scouts up there in the hills. If they see you shoot one of their own they will be very unhappy. And they will talk to each other. How far do we have to walk through these hills?’

‘I do what is best for Artemis.’

‘Forban,’ said Kavan. ‘I led an army across Shull. Listen to my advice. Let her be.’

Forban looked from Calor to Kavan and back again. Slowly he lowered his rifle.

‘Very well. We march. Watch the Scout.’

The Storm Troopers took a step forward. The grey infantry remained still. They were looking unhappily at each other. Forban rounded on them.

‘What’s the matter?’ he shouted. ‘Didn’t you hear the order? We are to escort Kavan to Spoole! He is a hero!’

Still the grey infantryrobots exchanged looks. Eventually one of them stepped forward.

‘What does Kavan say?’

Kavan pointedly looked from the heavily armed and armoured Storm Troopers, to the thin shells of the infantry. When he was sure that everyone there had got the point, he gave his answer.

‘For the moment, Forban and I are in agreement. We march south.’

Kavan and Calor, Forban and his troops marched south.

The signs of long-abandoned robot inhabitation seemed to rise and fall across the landscape like tides on a beach. Long ago, robots had followed the Northern Road through this land, bringing news and devices from the Top of the World, carrying the metal they quarried from these hills back up there by way of trade. Kavan had heard something about the history of this land as he had fought his way north, but he had seen little, if anything, of its former glory. The robots who had built these roads and the half-collapsed buildings that stood by them were long gone.

The hills rose and fell as they marched, the Storm Troopers beat a path through the wet turf, shouldering aside boulders, slashing at the twisted and weatherblown plants that clung to life in the thin soil. The infantryrobots marched on, eyes fixed upon Kavan, who walked silently in the centre of the group, his thoughts elsewhere.

Calor’s gaze constantly searched along the top of the surrounding hills when they walked through valleys, it flicked from boulder to tree when they walked the high moors, watching the movement all around them.

Because word of Kavan’s reappearance was spreading. Calor saw the flickers of sunlight at the top of the hills. Scouts, looking down at the grey and black bodies that marched south, relaying messages back and forth to others who marched nearby.

Forban noticed them, and he spoke into a radio just out of Kavan’s earshot. Half an hour later, a squad of twenty Storm Troopers marched in from a side path and joined them.

Kavan and the infantryrobots now found themselves surrounded by the black marching bodies. The air was filled with the percussion of metal on rock, the hum of electromuscle working and the prickling of electricity. Feet were covered in grey dust, mud and moisture.

And then Calor raised herself up on tiptoes in a dancing, skipping movement, looking over the tall heads that surrounded them. She jumped and spun, dodging through the dark press of bodies, her hand blades slightly extended as she did so.

Four Scouts were running up to join them. Calor dropped back to speak to them, and now Kavan found himself walking alongside an infantryrobot. Coal, his name was.

‘You’re outnumbered, Kavan,’ said Coal. ‘Forban has been on the radio, calling up yet more Storm Troopers to join in the escort duty. They have always been more loyal to Spoole. You need to find more infantry! They will support you!’

‘Move away there! Get back to your place!

Forban appeared at Kavan’s side. The infantryrobot stared at Kavan significantly and then fell back to his place in line.

‘We are bearing a little too far to the west,’ said Kavan.

‘There is an old road over this way,’ answered Forban. ‘It runs south across the whole of Northern Shull. Didn’t you notice when you marched these lands?’

‘It runs north, not south,’ said Kavan. ‘All the way north to the Top of the World. The robots of these lands believed that Alpha and Gamma, the first two robots, were made up there. Their descendants travelled down the Northern Road to populate Shull.’

‘Do you believe that, Kavan?’

‘I
know
it’s not true. I have seen the proof, up on the northern coast. There is a building there, I have been inside. I know that robots evolved here on Penrose.’

‘I think . . . hey, who are you?’

Calor had rejoined the middle of the party, but there was another Scout with her now. They were both speaking to one of the infantryrobots that trudged along. The new Scout looked at Forban for a moment and then turned and quickly ran off, body flashing in the sunlight as she dodged between the black bodies of the Storm Troopers.

A quarter of an hour later they joined the Northern Road, a grass-grown expanse of broken stone, long stamped down by the tread of many robots.

A squad of forty infantryrobots was waiting for them there. Kavan recognized their leader as Gentian, a woman who had served under him in the past. Forban gave no sign of being either pleased or disappointed at their presence.

At the approach of the escort party, the infantryrobots picked up their rifles and joined the procession, heading south.

Spoole

Spoole leaned on the stone balustrade, looking out across the vast landscape of Northern Shull spread out below him, and he felt, for just a moment, his power.

All that he could see, he commanded.

Except, of course, he didn’t. Spoole was too much of a realist to think otherwise. It was part of the pattern twisted into his mind, a realization that there was a time to lead and a time to step aside.

The difficulty, of course, was knowing when that time was.

The robots who had built this citadel had not been able to tell. Whoever had built this place must have been way in advance of the other civilizations that inhabited these mountains. Why, they must have been well into the Stone Age whilst the surrounding tribes were still struggling through the Iron Age, and yet, despite that, they were long vanished.

The citadel was an island of rock at the edge of the Northern Mountain range. The builders had taken a mountain just like any of the others around it, and had chipped and hammered and dug and blasted away the surrounding stone, isolating their peak from all the others save for three stone arches leading east, west and south that they left to serve as bridges. But this had only been a prelude to their greatest feat of engineering.

Spoole had heard Kavan’s reports of the reservoirs that lined the mountains of Central Range. He had seen them himself as he had travelled north but he hadn’t appreciated their use until he had visited the citadel. The robots who made this place had used water to carve their home. The water that had been hoarded behind dams was directed down sluices and aqueducts towards this place, carrying rain and snowmelt and channelling it to just the right point, then they had let the water run over hundreds of years, smoothing the pillar that supported the great city until it shone dully in the sunlight, the bands of rock clearly visible, climbing in tilted shelves almost a mile into the sky.