The Rise of the Iron Moon (18 page)

‘Get off your knees, you’re Jackelians, you’re—’

A hussar kicked his stallion in front of her. ‘Don’t go disturbing them, now, there’s a good damson. They’re jittery enough this afternoon.’

‘They’re a disgrace,’ said Molly. ‘What do they think they’re doing? How can you allow them to do that outside parliament’s gates?’

‘It’s hard enough to keep our lads from deserting and joining them at the moment,’ said the hussar. ‘If trouble breaks out in the capital now, it’ll take more than the flats of our sabres to turn them aside. Go home, damson, and make sure you have a stout lock on your door, that’s my advice.’

‘Come on,’ said Oliver, tugging Molly’s sleeve. ‘We’ll go down to the river and hail the sixpenny boat.’

Passing under the shadow of Brute Julius the pair arrived before the low iron profile of an iron gunboat moored alongside the House of Guardians’ embankment, its disc-shaped cannon turrets turned towards the opposite side of the river.

Oliver nodded towards the armed sailors on deck across from them as he waved for a riverboat to stop. ‘Ready for war?’

‘Yes,’ said Molly. ‘Ready for war. Again.’

Commodore Black touched Oliver’s sleeve and pointed to the dark silhouettes emerging onto the shale of the Quatérshiftian beach, men and women clambering over large boulders as they left the silent pine forest behind them and headed for the line of dinghies. The commodore pulled a rag off his lantern to show the figures the way through the night. There were about twenty people coming out of the tree line. Burly red-coated marines from the Fleet Sea Arm were holding the craft down in the surf behind Oliver and the commodore, rifles shouldered, waiting for the advancing refugees to board the dinghies. The foreign scientists were exactly where the shifties had promised they would be gathered, with the Army of Shadows currently showing little sign of intervening in the Kingdom of Jackals’ attempt to spirit away some of Quatérshift’s best brains for its gunnery project.

They were a ragged gathering, these refugee scientists, led by a silver-haired man staring thankfully towards Oliver and the commodore with an odd-looking face that managed to be senatorial, proud and ugly at the same time. A lithe-legged beauty accompanied the Quatérshiftian man, at least half his years, looking stunning despite her standard revolutionary citizen’s garb.

‘I am Paul-Loup Keyspierre,’ said the shiftie. ‘Head of the Institut des Luminaires of the People’s Commonshare of Quatérshift. As requested by the First Committee, I and my daughter, Jeanne, have been scouring the country for every engineer and scientist who worked on the old cannon project with Timlar Preston during the Two-Year War.’

‘There’s not many of you here,’ said Oliver. ‘I was told by Timlar Preston to expect maybe forty or fifty people.’

‘You have those who are still breathing, compatriot,’ retorted Jeanne, her short dark hair ruffled by the fierce wind off the sea. ‘In case you have failed to notice, our country is dealing with a full-scale invasion. There may be others on the antique staff list we were given who are still alive, but if they are, they have been completely lost in the confusion of the fighting.’

Paul-Loup Keyspierre gently motioned his daughter to silence. ‘Our new compatriots from the west haven’t seen how bad things are here now, they cannot be expected to understand the nature of the enemy and the difficulties we have faced finding as many cannon workers as we have.’

‘We’ll take the time to deepen our understanding as soon as we’ve got your eggheads safely back to our blessed u-boat,’ said Commodore Black. He waved to the Jackelian marines and they pushed the crowded dinghies out into the surf and began to row back towards the low black hull of the submersible. ‘There may not be much moonlight tonight, but I don’t want to leave parliament’s tub sitting on the surface any longer than I have to.’

Paul-Loup Keyspierre glanced around. ‘This is an old smuggler’s beach, yes? It is good that it is out of the way, but the lack of moonlight won’t help you, compatriot u-boatman. The Army of Shadows hunt and fight at night as well as they do during the day.’

‘This landing may have seen a little smuggling in and out of it,’ admitted the commodore. ‘The odd barrel of brandy lifted from your fine nation by plucky fellows, although admittedly somewhat in contravention of parliament’s wishes and the laws of your revolution. But we’ll leave the fighting to the brigades of your people’s army if we can. They’re trained for it and I doubt if they need the help of old Blacky when it comes to battling the Army of Shadows.’

Oliver unfurled a map while the commodore lifted his lantern over the crinkled surface, revealing a province of northern Quatérshift printed on the paper. ‘We didn’t just choose this beach because it’s out of the way. Timlar Preston buried the components of his prototype cannon inside a worked-out mine five miles inland of here; he salted the parts away when it looked like the Two-Year War was swinging our country’s way, when the RAN was raining fire-fins down around your mills and weapons factories.’

‘I told you something was not right here,’ said Jeanne to her father. She pointed back to the tree line and a handful of Quatérshiftian soldiers appeared leading a train of pack mules. ‘The animals weren’t requested at the rendezvous point because these so-called allies of ours have suddenly forsworn roast beef for mule meat.’

‘So I am to trust you with the lives and fates of Quatérshift’s greatest minds,’ said Keyspierre to Oliver and the commodore, ‘but I am only to be told of these buried components when you arrive to steal them away from my people?’

‘We didn’t quite know whose country it was going to be when we arrived here,’ said Oliver. ‘And the Army of Shadows appears to have enough force on its side that we didn’t need half the parts for Timlar Preston’s prototype cannon falling into its hands.’

‘Old habits die hard it seems, my new friends,’ said Keyspierre, a tinge of sadness in his voice.

‘Your First Committee has agreed to the construction of the cannon deep in the kingdom,’ said Oliver. ‘Well away from the fighting.’

‘Well away for
now
, compatriot,’ said Jeanne. She drew a sharp-looking dagger out of her belt and made a cutting motion across her throat. ‘When you are fighting the Army of Shadows, the front line has a way of quickly shifting well beyond your control; but you will see.’

Oliver rubbed his forehead as if he had a headache developing. ‘I don’t need to see. I can feel them here. The creatures moving about, their hunger …’

‘Don’t you pay no mind to the fey lad,’ said the commodore. ‘Our friends back home are already hard at work on the cannon with your countryman, Timlar Preston. You get yourselves to the u-boat and we’ll all be on our way to see the blessed project soon enough.’

‘No, I am coming with you to retrieve the weapon’s components,’ announced Keyspierre. ‘I have been charged with the success of this project and if there are pre-milled parts for the old prototype still in existence, they will be key to the rapid construction of a working cannon.’

Oliver was about to protest, but Keyspierre cut him short. It seemed there was a hard edge to the middle-aged scientist – but then, it would have been reckless indeed to underestimate anyone who had raised themselves to the top of Quatérshift’s institute of science in the maelstrom of revolutionary politics. ‘I have spent longer than you have avoiding the Army of Shadows’ creatures, young man, searching for all the staff your parliament requested. It may feel a little less like Jackelian looting if it is I who takes away the prototype cannon’s components. Quatérshift never completed the great cannon in time for the war between our two nations. I will not lose the chance to turn such a weapon against our new common enemy.’

‘Take the lass to the dinghy, then,’ said the commodore.

‘I stay with my father,’ insisted Jeanne. ‘All are equal in the Commonshare, compatriot sailor. I am not some Jackelian maid who needs cosseting with silk dresses, expensive fragrances, or soft cushions for a coach ride.’

‘That much I can see, lass,’ said the commodore. ‘But you’ll be equal in death if we come across the Army of Shadows’ beasts.’

Jeanne flashed her dagger angrily at the commodore. ‘Who do you think has been keeping my father alive as we’ve been hunting down every retired scientist and engineer in the occupied provinces?’

‘I take your point, now,’ said the commodore, flinching back from the blade. ‘And it’s sharply made.’

Jeanne looked with disdain at the commodore, Oliver, and the handful of red-coated marines left on the beach to help retrieve the prototype cannon components. ‘Just keep up with us, Jackelian. Everything north of that pinewood forest is slat territory. Our people are getting used to staying out of reach of the slats’ talons. I hope your soldiers are fast learners.’

The commodore watched Jeanne stalk away to the train of pack mules. ‘Just a quick little smuggling run, you said, lad. I should be back in the Kingdom of Jackals, helping Coppertracks, Duncan and that rascal Timlar Preston lay down the barrelling for your blessed great gun. I’m a game fellow, but I’m getting too old for these mortal dangerous jaunts you seem so damn fond of dragging me into.’

‘I bring you along because apart from me, you’re one of the few who ever survives these little adventures,’ said Oliver. ‘You’re damn unsinkable, old man.’

‘Is that what I am? When my unlucky stars put me in the way of every bullet and blade our age has to offer.’

But the age wasn’t finished with Commodore Black yet. There were sights of horror enough to haunt the group on their five-mile journey to the worked-out mine. Memories fit to torment the visitors to Quatérshift for decades to come. The smallest of these barbarities were the cold remains of fires where the slat companies had camped, littered with the blackened bones of the captured citizenry. The shifties might have been starved for years by the failure of the revolution to produce a decent harvest, but there had been meat enough on their bones to satisfy the foot soldiers of the Army of Shadows.

The largest of the outrages was the ruins of the city of Courau, briefly visible from the brow of a forested hill where the party rested, what was left of the place spilling across a wide valley next door to a lake. Its outskirts had been completely flattened by the sweep of war, an inner core of buildings standing intact but still smouldering from the small weapons fire of the slats. Out of the wreckage a new Courau was rising, an evil green luminosity lighting up the rubble as massive domes were raised in the heart of the old town. Made of hexagonal panels, the domes looked like the eyes of giant insects, ripped out and embedded deep in the race of man’s territory. Taking the commodore’s telescope, Oliver saw long lines of Quatérshift’s citizens being marched into the city along the outlying roads, their bodies – many of them were naked – painted viridescent by the tainted light of their conquerors’ eerie constructions.

‘You can’t see from here,’ Jeanne told Oliver, ‘but the slats have branded their prisoners on their foreheads. A single triangle means they are to be kept as slave labour and used to rebuild the city to the Army of Shadows’ template, a double triangle means they are to be farmed. See to the right of the domes, the low glass structures that resemble greenhouses? They are pens where our people are fed slops and fattened. If you were watching during the day, compatriot Jackelian, you would see the slats pulling out the ones they intend to consume. If you were close enough, you could hear the screams of our compatriots begging for the slats to select someone else, anyone else, someone fatter or younger or older or healthier. Fighting each other to be at the back of the pens. The food pens are where the Army of Shadows keeps the children it captures. If you waited for morning you could watch adults throwing children forward when the slats come to select the day’s cull, infants whose parents have already died and have no one left to protect them.’

‘You see now why I came with you,’ said Keyspierre, his voice like steel as he stared grimly towards the conquered city. ‘There is no price I would not pay to lift the hand of this terror from our land. If the cannon the Hero of the People Timlar Preston tried to build during the Two-Year War will turn back this invasion, then I will construct it with my own hands if I have to, one rivet at a time.’

‘Sweet Circle,’ whispered Oliver. ‘This is where their hunger leads … I felt it like a sickness in the north, but I had no idea.’

There was a tear running down Commodore Black’s fat cheek, soon lost in the scrub of his black beard. ‘Ah lad, I don’t need to be fey like you to feel their evil. This is the future we are looking at, for everyone on the continent, unless we find a way to turn them back.’

‘We must unseat them quickly, before their beachhead is established further,’ explained Keyspierre. ‘The Army of Shadows has captured six of our cities in the north, but they have only begun building like this in two of them. The conclusion we have drawn at the Institute des Luminaires is that even using our captured compatriots as slave labour, the slats do not yet possess the numbers to construct more widely. We believe that the Army of Shadows’ rate of advance isn’t currently being dictated by the obvious military superiority of their weaponry over our own, but by the paucity of their forces on the ground.’

Commodore Black laid a hand on Jeanne’s shoulder. ‘You’re not alone in this fight, lass. I never thought I’d be glad of the sight, but as we left to sail for you, Jackals’ roads were packed with regiments of redcoats marching east towards the border, our skies dark with the high fleet’s airships preparing to fly out here.’

‘And King Steam’s knights are coming down out of the mountains to reinforce our regiments,’ reassured Oliver. ‘The forces of three nations to turn back the Army of Shadows, with Molly’s damn great cannon to carry the fight back to the devils’ homeland. To pay them back for what they’ve done to you here.’

Keyspierre seemed briefly encouraged by their words. His nation had often been on the wrong end of the cannons and bomb bays of the RAN’s indomitable airships, and the shifties had taken enough beatings from King Steam’s knights, both before and after the revolution in Quatérshift, that it seemed possible that their three combined armies could stand up to any invasion. Even against beasts like the slats. Even here, hiding in the hilly woods with a view out onto the ghastly scorched remains of one of the Commonshare’s great cities.