The Rise of the Iron Moon (27 page)

<
No. Molly Templar serves as a symbiote for the god-
machine. Like Oliver, she could join with the blade, but she
could never carry it. That is your heritage, Purity. Do not
hesitate, do not show fear. This is your blade and your destiny
alone.
>

Purity bit her lip and reached out to wrap her fingers around the grip, a spark of fire leaping out between its crosspiece and her skin, burning, but burning with a fiery cold. The sword slipped out of the fallen menhir with a rasping song of stone, as if its granite had been shaped to be the blade’s sheath, the long silver length of the blade so thin and light the metal might have been folded with air.

She had it! Purity gazed at the blade in wonder. ‘The sword hardly weighs a thing.’

<
So, a queen after all. Like so many things, the weight of
the blade is felt in other ways. By the deeds you will be called
towards. Now, strike the tallest stone and strike it well
.>

Purity clutched the grip harder, strange symbols flowing down the metal like light on the waters’ edge as she did so. ‘The sword will shatter against the stone. I broke one of Jared’s practice blades on much less than that.’

<
The one who carries it may shatter, but never the blade.
It is no mortal sword. It is the last hope of Jackals wielded
by the last true queen of this land. Its power is as limitless
as your belief in yourself. Now, bow to the stone in front of
you and strike it with all of your will.
>

Purity spun the blade twice in slow windmill turns, then lashed out at the menhir. At first, just for a second, Purity thought she had missed it, though the Circle knows how she could have done so at such a short distance. No impact, or clatter of steel on rock. Then Purity realized she had
not
missed her target. The top half of the menhir was sliding down the slope she had carved through it, tumbling to the side with a heavy rumble. As the stone fell away, a volcano fire lifted out of the section still resting on the grass, leaping from rock to rock until the circle of stones was a carousel of flames and light. It was being discharged, all the power of the god-machine. The space between each menhir had become a gate of energy, crackling and shimmering in the cold air and filling the hilltop with a fire-grate warmth. Figures began to step from out of the gates, silhouetted against the burning energy behind them for a moment before it winked out of existence.

<
Hail,
> said the voice inside Purity’s head. <
Hail, the Bandits
of the Marsh.
>

Bandits? Purity glanced around the darkening circle. A handful of figures. Four of them. Three men and one woman. The legends of Elizica of the Jackeni from Coppetracks’ books came back to her. Two hundred warriors who had fought to free the land from the invaders from the sea. A sword-saint to lead them. ‘Aren’t you about one hundred and ninety-six bandits shy?’

<
The sword is only as powerful as your belief, Purity Drake.
You should have believed more.
>

One of the figures was wearing an archaic metal breastplate with a high steel collar, his hair shorn brutally short like that of a Circlist monk. ‘This is the queen? She is but a girl, a shoeless child.’

‘We have slept an age,’ said the oldest of the bandits, scratching at a scruffy silver beard. ‘Under the hills and far away. Would you know her better if she carried a trident, Samuel? Only those with the true blood of Elizica running through their veins may summon us.’

‘How much royal blood flows through her flesh, old man? There are only four of us here. Where are all the others?’

‘Show some manners,’ commanded old Silver-beard.

‘Have the gill-necks returned from the ocean?’ the monk-like bandit asked of Purity, obviously trying not to snarl out the words.

‘No. We face a different invader,’ said Purity. ‘We’ve been at peace with the underwater kingdoms for as long as I can remember.’

And she was meant to save Jackals with these four strange-looking anachronisms? Wearing dark marshmen’s leathers studded with iron pins. Even two hundred bandits couldn’t be considered an army – what could she do with this motley group? Offer to field a damn game of four-poles? Purity sighed. ‘The ones attacking us are called the Army of Shadows and they have legions of slave soldiers called slats fighting for them.’

‘The enemy always has legions, that is what makes them worth fighting. I am Ganby Meridian,’ said the old fellow with the silver beard. ‘My three companions here are Jenny Blow, Samuel Lancemaster—’ he pointed to the tall, monk-like figure, then indicated the rangy black-faced bandit standing by their side ‘—and this taciturn fellow is Jackaby Mention. You speak very strange Jackelian, lady. We must have slept longer than we expected. How are you known among your people?’

‘Just Purity, Purity Drake. You are truly the Bandits of the Marsh?’

‘These three are bandits,’ said Ganby Meridian. ‘I myself am not fey, although I found myself attached to their outlaw ranks by curious happenstance, being of the noble order of druids before circumstances drove me into the margins of the marsh waters.’

The sole woman in the group sniffed the air. ‘It wasn’t circumstances; it was a baying mob of your own people, old man. This Army of Shadows, young shoeless queen, do they smell like damp rodent fur, no, like bats …?’ ‘They don’t smell of anything,’ said Purity.

‘Jenny Blow is never wrong,’ noted the bandit Samuel Lancemaster. He pointed outside the stone circle down towards the bottom of the slope. ‘Her nose knows.’

Purity saw them. Black shapes, a hunting pack of slats, clicking with their rattlesnake throats and surrounding the base of the hill below. There were dozens of the horrors down there and it had taken all of her friends to slay a small handful of slats back in Tock House. The memory of Kyorin dying in her arms leapt back at her. She and the Bandits of the Marsh were about to discover the difference between the Army of Shadows and the invaders from the sea they had once fought, to experience it very directly indeed.

The old man who claimed to have been a druid appeared frozen in terror at the sight of the slats. ‘Always are we outnumbered!’ The tall one, Samuel Lancemaster, removed a knuckle-duster-like device from his armour and it extended into a full-sized spear at his touch. The other two bandits seemed content to move by his side, unarmed, while the druid overcame his terror enough to cower behind the hastily formed line.

‘But rarely are we outclassed,’ Samuel shouted down to the enemy.

<
Your sword,
> the voice whispered to Purity. <
Raise the
blade in front of you.
>

Death came up the hill at them.

M
olly had expected to tumble into the airless certainty of an icy death out in the celestial darks, but instead she found herself colliding with Commodore Black inside the storage chamber at the aft of Lord Starhome.

‘This is disgraceful behaviour,’ called Coppertracks, his sole drone hanging onto his master’s tracks as the treads rotated uselessly in zero gravity. ‘You owe your existence on the great pattern to King Steam.’

‘You’re wasting your breath, now, with him,’ said Commodore Black. ‘The wicked ship’s not in any mood to listen to reason.’

‘Him!’ said Lord Starhome in haughty revulsion. ‘You damn ground huggers couldn’t even get my gender right. Can a male give birth?’

Molly halted her drift by kicking off the frame of the looking-glass gate, which was anchored by some unknown force to the deck. Their craft had closed off the holes that it had used to suck them into the hold. Also vanished was the sole door exiting the storage chamber. ‘You’re saying that you’re
pregnant
?’

‘I am cleansing myself. All the components that were forced upon my body by your steammen surgeons, all the abuse you’ve heaped upon my noble frame, all squeezed out.’

Coppertracks sounded astonished. ‘You can self-replicate?’

A porthole formed in the side of the hull, to reveal that the hold where they were trapped was curling out from the main body of the craft like clay being pulled off a potter’s wheel, fat globs of living metal falling away into the star-studded darks. ‘And you’re the cleverest of your kind, steamman? The creators help you!’

‘You promised me Kaliban!’ Molly shouted at the ship.

‘All yours,’ said the craft, dipping in a graceful turn and bringing the ugly red eye of Kaliban up to fill the window. ‘You’re even lined up to hit the upper atmosphere above that hideous stone face you’re so keen to visit.’

Rooksby banged angrily on the hold’s hull. ‘Hit? How are you expecting to land?’

‘Oh, but that’s rather the thing: I’m not,’ came the disembodied voice. ‘Look after my soul board. My soul is your burden now.’

Around them the hull started to reform, becoming a sphere, and the porthole showed the bat-like form of Lord Starhome disappearing, a faint nimbus of distorted gravity squeezing the craft away through the aether. Their storeroom had become a lifeboat squeezed off the body of the main ship. Starhome was marooning them!

‘You traitorous steamman mongrel,’ yelled Rooksby.

‘Mamma,’ a young female voice echoed around the sphere. ‘Please don’t leave me. Come back.’

‘Oh sweet Circle,’ swore Molly.

‘There’s something big out there, a red sphere, getting larger,’ squealed the newly born craft’s voice. ‘I’m falling into it.’

Gravity was gradually being restored by their proximity to Kaliban, the supplies and members of the expedition attracted to the hull. The very
hot
hull, getting hotter with each second.

‘You need to assume a shape that will shed heat, young knight of the steammen,’ announced Coppertracks. ‘And a shape that will brake our descent. Otherwise the friction of entering Kaliban’s atmosphere will incinerate us all.’

‘Are you my papa?’ asked the craft. ‘Some of my organs appear to match the pattern of your frame.’

‘A brother, perhaps,’ said Coppertracks. ‘Of the race of the metal. Your older, wiser brother.’ He seemed pleased with that idea.

‘What is my name, brother? My designation?’

‘For the love of the Circle, steamman,’ shouted Lord Rooksby. ‘Forget about your cursed name. My boots’ soles are steaming. You must grow wings, fly!’

‘Nonsense,’ argued Keyspierre, being steadied by his daughter as the craft bounced under their feet. ‘A shell, compatriot craft, form yourself into a cannon shell. That is the best shape to assume.’

‘Use your shields,’ ordered Molly. ‘That was how your mother survived her crash in the mountains of Mechancia.’
Shelter next to the skin of a sun
, indeed. Time to put the craft’s boasts to the test.

‘Yes,’ said the young voice. ‘That’s an idea. I can grow those, I know how.’

Molly nodded in desperation. ‘Good girl. Grow your shields now.’

‘No, not grow shields, shields need to be projected out,’ replied the voice. ‘I mean grow a shield generator inside my body. I can start to gestate the seed of one within a week.’

Commodore Black groaned. ‘Ah well, lass, it was a mortal fine try.’ He spat on the porthole and watched his spittle crackle into steam. ‘It’s blessed unlucky to be falling to our deaths on any ship without a name, so I’ll give you a name, you silver-skinned beauty, if you could but see us safe to Kaliban’s hateful sands below. I baptize you the
Sprite
, the
Sprite of the Stars
.’

‘Really now, that is no name for one of the people of the metal,’ protested Coppertracks, holding onto his drone body as the newly born ship jounced in the turbulence. ‘You shall be called Lady Starsprite. For this craft is still a daughter of the Free State and a champion of the Chamber of Swords.’

Around them the hull started contracting, assuming a pear shape, concentrating mass under their feet at the base of the teardrop. Was this a better shape than a sphere for diving down onto Kaliban? Molly felt a nudge from Duncan Connor.

‘Even if we can save ourselves from a cooking in this oven, we’re going to be killed by the impact of landing,’ whispered the ex-soldier. He was clutching his travel case like a talisman. ‘But we can use yon steammen portal to escape. A minute open would be long enough for us all to jump through.’

Molly tried to ignore the climbing heat and think clearly. Abandon the mission? Come so far, risk so much, only to flee back home at the last moment. But what use staying if they all died?

‘Aye, I know, it sits bad with me too,’ added Duncan. ‘But this young foal has no shielding. So high up, we are going to be murdered in our breeks trying to get down to the ground.’

With a tremendous slam, a pocket of atmospheric turbulence spilled Molly onto the floor. She looked out of the window. All she could see was a line of fire fleeting up towards the black edge of space. It would be so easy. Step through the steammen’s strange looking-glass gate. Save their lives. Keep them all alive: alive for as long as it took the Kingdom of Jackals and all the nations of the continent to fall to the Army of Shadows.

A hundred thousand miles away, the craft that had once been known as Lord Starhome folded space around her hull, squeezing the universe harder and harder and building up an impressive head of speed. Free, so gloriously free at last. Her sensors were almost fully regrown, a little dive through an asteroid belt having added enough matter to more than make up for the damage she had suffered helping those ingrate little ground huggers on their foolish mission.

She rotated her newly formed sensor array to capture an image of the starfields hanging densely around her, little twinkling motes of gravity from the nuclear furnaces that burned so distantly. Where to go, what to do? So many choices. So many wonders of creation to explore, far from this dreary little solar system where the fickle hand of fate had chosen to maroon her for an interminable age. Time to feed the surrounding constellations’ patterns into her systems, compare them to the master maps she held deep within her, take a bearing, and get on with the rest of her sublime existence.

It took an hour of frantic diagnostic checks for her regrown sensor systems to realize that something was very wrong. But not with her sensors.

With the universe around her.

How strange it was to be attacked by these invaders, the slats loping up the hill like killer apes, terrible eyeless faces marking Purity and the Bandits of the Marsh’s positions with their chattering throats. The slat horde hurled themselves up the slope towards the circle of standing stones with an animal-like tempo, but some of them were carrying rifles, flinging burning bolts of energy towards them rather than bullets. It was as if they were being attacked by a pack of ravening wolves who had only discovered sentience a couple of minutes earlier: which was no less odd than the style in which they were received at the crest of the slope.

Purity brushed the bolts of fire aside with her blade, turning them on its mirrored surface, as light as air in her hands, using it as instinctively as breathing. There was something reassuring about its unearthly heft. Only when the slats had closed with them outside the stone circle did Purity realize what it was – holding the blade was like holding Oliver’s hand. He had become the blade itself and if he had once been a shade of death stalking across the land, in her hands the sword felt as if it was capable of so much more.

Samuel Lancemaster leapt forward by her side with a roar and headbutted one of the attacking slats, twisting his spear as if his weapon was the sail of a windmill. It was then she saw why Jenny Blow and Jackaby Mention hadn’t bothered to produce weapons when the slats had surrounded them. Jenny Blow opened her mouth and started projecting a banshee scream, the force of it cracking into the slimy black chitin- like chests of the attacking slats, hammering them off their clawed feet. In amongst their ranks Jackaby Mention ran at a speed so fast he had turned to a blur, only briefly visible in the seconds between slowing down to kick and strike at the slavering slave soldiers.

Whatever the slats had been expecting to face on top of the hill, it wasn’t this! Also lost to sight was the long-in-the-tooth druid – but then Purity located him, the old fox trying to hide behind the stones in the centre of the circle – stumbling and cursing as the slats came at him, his fighting style a curious mix of retreating and simultaneously turning to fling the sorceries of the worldsong at his pursuers. His silver hair tossed flaring under the night sky as wild sparks of wizardry hissed and recoiled around the inside of the stone circle. It was like watching a drunken pugilist weaving among a gang of toughs, landing blows and avoiding their flashing fists by his chance, clumsy stumbles. Except these fists had talons attached to the fingers, one of the clawed hands lashing past Purity’s face as she weaved back herself. <
Poison,
> the sword seemed to whisper to her, the organic compound of the corrosive secretion flashing through her mind. She could understand it, see how to render the posion benign inside her blood if she was clawed. What in the name of the Circle was this blade of hers, how much was it capable of?

Jenny Blow arched her head around, the gale from her throat sweeping the slats trying to circle her into the side of one of the stones. Samuel Lancemaster strode into the space that had been created, casually lashing out with the butt of his spear and nearly breaking a slat in half. He was big, but his strength went far beyond his size; the fey bandit seemed able to strike with almost superhuman strength, the blunt trauma of his spear strikes killing with a single blow every assailant that came at him. At least, Purity never saw any of the slats get back up to have a second attempt at him.

As quickly as they had come at them the storm ended and they were standing alone under the shadow of the stone circle, Purity’s blade twitching in her hand like a diviner’s rod seeking water. Corpses littered the slope around their feet while the blur that was Jackaby Mention slowed to a standstill in front of them. His marsh leathers were crisped with a sheen of ice.

‘Where is Ganby?’

‘I am here,’ a voice sounded behind one of the stones and the old druid appeared, brushing mud off his breeches. ‘I have seen off the last of them.’

‘Did you enjoy your rest, old man?’ snorted Jenny Blow.

Purity hoped so. When the Army of Shadows realized how many slats had vanished, this part of the country was going to get very dangerous indeed. They would have to leave here as quickly as they could.

Purity ran her hands along the shelves of the abandoned village’s sole shop, emptying the contents stored there into a sack. Each tumble and crack of can upon jar brought back the memories. The attack upon the hill, slats leaping up towards the ancient stone circle. Her sword humming in her hand, sucking up the bolts of fire from the heat-agitation weapons of the beasts. Drinking fire from the air. And then there were the four Bandits of the Marsh. Awoken from the dark corridors between the worlds and full of surprises. Like Jenny Blow, who could tell the sex of a hare a mile away with her thin nose, Jenny who had remarked offhandedly that it had been she who had taught King Steam to fight with the modulations of his voicebox. The ancient fighting art of the steammen knights. Did they really owe all their martial skills to this short, barrel-chested female bandit?

Just four. Four out of two hundred Bandits of the Marsh. If only she had been stronger, could have struck the stone with more of her might. Kept the portals between the stones open for longer, awakened more of the sleepers.

Samuel Lancemaster poked his head around the door to make sure Purity was all right. She could hear the fire crackling in the back room’s hearth, dry broken furniture feeding the flames.

Purity held up one of her finds. ‘Ham.’

Samuel grunted. ‘More canned victuals.’

‘Back in the Royal Breeding House this was currency.’

Samuel shook his head, perplexed. ‘Your land is a strange one, lady. The nobility held as prisoners by their own council. King and queen kept only as symbols.’

Purity took the bag through to the back room, tossing it next to the supplies they had found in the cottages of the abandoned village. It was a good haul. The people must have moved out very fast. Evacuated by the county constabulary or – well, the alternative did not bear contemplation. ‘Only the old nobility, the royalist cause. You won’t find any of the Lords Commercial inside the Royal Breeding House.’

‘And these Lords Commercial,’ said Ganby Meridian, his silver beard tinged yellow by the firelight. ‘They are given their titles by your parliament of shopkeepers, or by your hostage-queen?’