Devi Valley, June 22nd, III Leeland:16
Black clouds hung low over the narrow valley, their gray bellies lit with capricious white flashes of lightning. They drenched the land below in a monochrome rainbow, dampening the shadows and colors of noontime as if a child had drawn the trees and grasses with a lead pencil on unbleached paper. The rough wooden houses and workshops along the river creaked and rattled in the chill wind, bracing for the coming storm. Only the new steel rail bridge, crossing a broad river in the center of the valley, was impervious to the wind and dark; all other things shrank before the lurking fury of the clouds.
The lightning flashed again, briefly illuminating people scurrying back and forth in the little settlement by the river. Deep, sharp booms came echoing down from the north, the direction of the lightning. The people moved swiftly, clumsily, carrying their possessions and livelihoods toward the safety of the eastern ridge and its three cave openings. Many glanced briefly and fearfully in the direction of the great, rolling noises, but all soon returned to their tasks.
They knew the roll of thunder heralded more than rain and wind.
The close, booming noises sounded again, preceded by no lightning. They erupted in a steady, rhythmic pattern—seven explosions, and then silence. Scores of high, sharp cracks filled in the empty space from the north and from the south, coming in waves of noise. Flashes could be seen near the ground on the lower slopes at either end of the valley, arriving just ahead of the rolling tide of sound. The flashes formed long, ragged lines, splayed out in arcs around the rocky slopes.
A speckled goshawk dived out of the sky, gliding downward amid the stabbing air currents. She swooped low to the ground, flapping occasionally and riding among the turbulent eddies and vortices of low air. She threaded through the awkward buildings of the little settlement and emerged to the north, up and over the great steel bridge. Metallic pillars and girders flashed beneath her, lit regularly with oil lamps, but they were gone in a moment. Small, gray figures on the bridge looked up, then turned back to their tasks on its surface and pilings.
The goshawk spared no thought for the groundlings. She swept low over the open fields of grass, speeding on her way like a feathered meteor.
The tiny man riding on her back urged her on, rubbing a hand under her feathers and whispering into her ear. He twitched the reins slightly, and she rose up, bearing off to the east. The flashes of fire sprang up from the eastern ridge again, and the hawk shuddered as the roll of sound sent waves of ragged, tearing energy through the air. The sound hurt both the hawk and her rider—but the little man was sworn to a duty, and the hawk would bear him where he asked. It was their agreement of love.
Large, dark shapes moved in the flat land below the line of intermittent light and sound on the slopes. They were coming from the north.
Dibble Dafstool landed Arcraw on an empty pole-mounted perch, about halfway up the skirts of the eastern ridge, just as the big guns roared out again. Their muzzles spat light and death down into the darkness beneath the clouds. The men and women around them clutched rags to their ears against the terrible noise. After each big gun in the line had fired, its crew sprang up and began to reload, while the ranks of small gunnars rose and took up their positions again. The wind howled around them, and drops of heavy rain began to arrive out of the black sky. Dibble patted Arcraw briefly, then slid down the thin pole and ran to find Gog the Hammer.
The towering human warrior stood impassively in the wind and rain, peering out into the noon darkness through a pair of field glasses. His long, blond hair and beard whipped backward as if he were on the deck of a ship in a storm. He wore a suit of fearsomely crafted steel armor, its heavy form accentuated with graceful points and curves. He was the only human wearing steel. All the others wore simple, light wool uniforms bearing the insignia of a white snake in the shape of the letter “S.”
“Down a bit,” said the huge warrior to a much smaller man nearby. The smaller man, wearing an expensive black coat and cloak, a neatly trimmed beard, and short hair, raised a speaking horn to his lips and called out adjustments in degrees and angles to the crews. Dibble headed for their feet.
“How many more rounds do you think?” asked the smaller man.
Gog shrugged impassively. “Depends on how fast they want to move. Maybe… two.”
The smaller man shuddered visibly. “Then what?”
“Then the dying happens up close,” replied the armored warrior. He shifted slightly, moving the weight of a broad, six-foot steel sword higher up on his shoulder. “Go back to the finery, Gunnar. Rufus doesn’t want you chopped up yet.”
Dibble cleared his throat as loudly as he could. “Par’n me, gentlemen. Rufus Snugg sends ‘is regards an’ asks if ye’d be so kind as ta’ send me back wi’ fresh news o’ the picnic ye’re ‘avin’ this end o’ Devi.”
Gog looked down ponderously at the tiny scout. Dibble wore brown mouse-leathers and tiny flight goggles, and his build was comparatively lithe and slender, but he otherwise looked like a six-inch tall version of a human.
“Badly,” replied the huge man shortly.
Gunnar knelt down, placing his face closer to Dibble’s level. “Greetings, friend Dibble. My laconic colleague isn’t omitting much in this case. It takes a lot of shot to bring down one of those monsters. The big guns do the trick, but we’ve only got seven of them left—two more misfired about an hour ago. And, uh, they’re getting closer on every advance.”
The line of small guns roared out again, the muzzle flashes advancing down the line like a single spark.
“Good,” remarked Gog. “Three of them dropped. Keep focusing on individual targets.” Cries of command went out from the sergeants, and the small arms were handed back to the loading crews. Freshly loaded guns came forward.
Dibble peered out into the darkness. He could see the hulking shapes farther down the slope. They had paused for a moment. Beyond them, out in the darkness beneath the clouds, a great mass of gray forms could be seen, their armor dull in the weak light. And there was something else in the sky, present just faintly at the edge of vision, beneath the clouds. All that Dibble could make out were vast, terrible wings.
“Go, Gunnar!” said Gog sharply. “Men will be dying here soon. We know how to work your machines. What’s in your brain mustn’t be smashed out on the rocks.”
It began to rain.
✽✽✽
Jonathan Miller, son of George Miller, grandson of Walter Miller, considered that he really would have been better off as a miller. Millers might lead lives of maddening, pedestrian consistency, but they also rarely encounter anything more dangerous than a heavy sack of flour or an errant mill stone—which, though it might well claim a hand, will not murder your friends, eat you alive, or warp your perception of the world into some fragmented nightmare indistinguishable from reality. Jonathan wondered if he should go back in time and just be a miller, and then remembered that you can’t do that.
You probably can’t do that.
He thought these thoughts while propelling his tall frame, as fast as he safely could, through a tidy, well-lit tunnel beneath the eastern ridge of the valley. Medium length blond hair, which he normally parted and brushed back in the universal style of the middle manager, now flopped unhelpfully over his blue eyes. Next to him ran a short, gray person who was the King of the Goblins, and tucked into the pocket of a sash at his chest was an even shorter woman—six inches tall, with a tiny steel lance and a temper every bit as brief as her stature. How and why these two unusual people came to be in Jonathan Miller’s company is a matter to which we shall return in due course, but, to begin the scene with the barest of context, one must appreciate that it was all extremely improbable.
At Jonathan’s feet, a pair of steel rails ran the length of the tunnel, bound every few feet by slabs of wood.
They passed out of the small tunnel and into a larger, taller chamber. Here, lit by numerous oil lamps, was a workshop filled with the marvels of the age. Scores of great egg-like structures, ten feet tall and nearly as wide, each emblazoned with a white “S,” stood in quiet ranks in the hall. At another time, they would have steamed and fumed as fires burned beneath them and air was pumped in through copper piping. Their fumes would be sucked out through channels in the ceiling fed by clever ducts. The eggs could be tilted over on heavy pivots, allowing brightly glowing molten steel to flow out into clay channels. Men and women would have labored in the heat to operate the fining eggs and divert the liquid steel to molds in the rooms below. Now—the eggs were quiet, their bellies empty, their attendants fled.
But in the center of the workshop were the true marvels. Great, gleaming, steel-clad engines stood on wheels and steel rails side by side, each nearly thirty feet long with a broad, cylindrical boiler, a snug cab at the rear, and a long tender full of coal and water tanks. A line of twelve sturdy carriages, loaded with crates, sacks, and other mysteries, were carefully connected behind each engine with heavy steel couplings. A considerable number of very short persons with gray skin, squat heads, and outrageous hats were clambering all over the two engines, preparing them to move once again. The Number One Engine was already emitting a healthy plume of smoke. Jonathan had ridden its sister, the Number Two, not long ago. Yet he still shuddered in amazement and excitement at the sight of them, even as he rushed forward on other, far more urgent business.
A cry of surprise and joy erupted from the small gray people as Jonathan hurried in from the tunnel. It was not for Jonathan. The goblins—for they were goblins, a curious fact which we shall explain in some further detail when Jonathan Miller has finished with his urgent business—immediately clambered down from the engines and ran forward to mob around their King. There were exclamations of relief and wonder, as though some long-lost friend had returned quite unexpectedly, or a sandwich long supposed to have been devoured turned up under a stray napkin on the table. But, though the King of the Goblins smiled warmly at his subjects, he politely untangled himself from them, following Jonathan as they made directly for one of the many stone portals around the perimeter of the large workshop.
The ground shook, and dust filtered down from the ceiling.
Through the opening they ran, and up the stairs, well-lit with more oil lamps. Startled scholars, rushing down the steps with armfuls of long copper tubes, sheaves of loose papers, or books, jumped out of his way. Some greeted him hurriedly, but they soon scurried on. Jonathan, the King of the Goblins, and the very small woman together made their way in the opposite direction. From somewhere in the distance, carried through the rock, they could feel the thump of the big guns, still firing to the north.
At the top of the stairs was a young lady in a white blouse carrying a writing board crammed with sheets of pale hemp paper. Her name was Elizabeth Karn. Miss Karn started visibly when she saw Jonathan and his companions.
“Mr. Miller!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here? We thought you were in Green Bridge!” She looked closer at the goblin. “Is that…”
He cut her off. “Yes. This is King Simon. I need to get to Vault Three, Miss Karn—right away.”
She walked with him briskly down the long hall. To one side, the great metal doors of the library stood open, and within Jonathan could see a small army of librarians and laborers hurriedly removing ancient books and tubes from the long ranks of towering shelves. Their movements were rushed, frantic, jerky. Bosses shouted instructions too loudly. Pebbles and dust drifted down from the ceiling, disturbed by the vibrations of the big guns. The library was magnificent, mysterious, ancient—but this was not Jonathan’s destination.
“You picked the worst possible time to arrive here,” Miss Karn remarked, her face pinched in a mask of fatigue and care. “Rufus and Mrs. Snugg have been preparing the evacuation for the last week, but the steam engines just arrived last night. Unless you fancy a long interview with Hobb the Wise—or whoever’s commanding those… things… in the north—you’d better get in one of the carriages in the next hour. Rufus hasn’t said so, but it’s plain they’re the last way out by ground. And I don’t think you’d care for the alternative route.”
Jonathan nodded curtly. “We have to go to Vault Three first,” he insisted.
The passage, nearly fifteen feet tall and broad enough for a team of pack horses, ran straight and true for nearly two hundred feet, with large portals opening on both sides into dimly lit vaults. Within could be seen strange collections of crafted metal objects, tubes, wires, glass panels, and other artifacts too strange for him to name. To Jonathan, they radiated an obscure menace, like a monster outside his bedroom door—improbable, but real. Eight months ago, when he first saw them, he would have been at a loss even to identify their nature.
Now that he knew their nature, they frightened him even more.
Miss Karn stopped outside one of the openings in the stone, and Jonathan and his companions stopped with her. Ancient writing was carved over the portal, indecipherable to him, and a translation written on a sheet of hemp paper was pinned to one side.
The Uellish translation read: Vault Three: Local Node.
Miss Karn gestured impatiently. “Forgive me, Mr. Miller, but I absolutely must get back to the library. We can only save a fraction of what’s in there, and I have very specific instructions from Professor Weaselbeer-Yourfork.”
He nodded and turned away.
“Mr. Miller,” she said over her shoulder as walked away. “Merrily Hunter is here. Professor Stoat too. They arrived two days ago.”
He felt a wash of surprise, bordering on panic, but shook it off. “If you see her,” he replied, keeping his voice tightly under control, “tell her I’m in Vault Three.”
They went in.
✽✽✽
“What are you doing in my steel finery, Cyrus Stoat?”
“I thought I might find some history here. You never know where you’ll find some history.”
“You’ve used that line before. Repeating the same feeble joke over and over again is a symptom of a disintegrating mind.”
“Colerto himself would have to repeat his jokes to you, Veridia. It takes a sustained assault to break through your sense of humor.”
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“Colerto’s jokes couldn’t break through a news sheet, Stoat, and neither can yours.”
“Have you ever actually read Colerto?”
“I had my people summarize some of it for me after the first dozen times you dropped his name. His comedy is contrived and obscure.”
“You’re just reciting the critics’—”
“Hold this,” she interrupted him, placing a small bundle in his hands and writing several lines of encrypted text in a ragged-looking account book.
Cyrus looked down at the bundle. It giggled.
“You use a personal pronoun when referring to an infant human, Veridia. You’d know this if you possessed the slightest shred of humanity.”
She glared at him ferociously. “I’ve nursed Marius at my breast for eight months, Cyrus,” she growled. “Where were you in that time? Don’t you dare question my humanity.”
Veridia Snipe’s face was drawn, and her black hair was tied back in a ferocious bun. Her narrow, pinched face somehow looked even more severe than it did normally. Her white blouse and dark gray suit were dusty and smudged with dirt. Cyrus had never seen Veridia look dirty before—and he had seen her in some exceedingly personal circumstances. Cyrus rubbed at a week’s growth of stubble on his face and adjusted his own worn shirt and coat. This might be the last time in his life he felt more put together than Veridia Snipe.
A new voice interjected. “Both of you will stow your personal problems. You’re obstructing the evacuation of my finery.”
“Yes, Mrs. Snugg,” answered Veridia automatically. She took back Marius.
Cyrus eyed the speaker warily. Nicola Snugg was in her middle years—about his own age, he reckoned, though it was impolite to ask—and wore a conservative gray walking dress. Her hair was done up in rings and coils, and she wore a necklace of pearl and silver. At its center was a small gold pendant, inlaid with diamonds that formed a hissing snake in the shape of the letter “S.”
“And you, Mister Stoat. Don’t you have something to do other than distract my operations director? It’s not clear to me why you’re here at all.”
“That’s Professor Stoat,” he corrected automatically, starting slightly at another round of thudding explosions from the north. “And I’m here specifically to bother your operations manager. She has something of great personal value to me.”
Veridia opened her mouth again—no doubt to say something irritatingly clever—but she was interrupted.
“Cyrus!” came a cry from behind them. All three turned. Merrily Hunter stood in the door to Veridia’s small office. Cyrus smiled.
Merrily was one of the few people in the world who pleased Cyrus more than she irritated him. This was not to say she lacked irritation—she was, for instance, irritatingly beautiful, athletic, and skilled. She had shoulder-length, chestnut hair and green eyes with an irritating tendency to set off distracting feuds between would-be lovers—notwithstanding the gold band on her left ring finger. Her slim frame supported hips and shoulders that were surprisingly broad and strong, and she was dressed in form-fitting leather hose and a black velvet coat. She even managed to wear the fresh scar on her left cheek with style. But Cyrus was prepared to forgive these irritations, as she was one of his finest students, and would one day make him proud as an Applied Historian.
“Jonathan is here!” she blurted. “He’s with Simon! They’re going to the vaults!”
Cyrus sighed dramatically. “Will stupidity never cease? No. No, it will never cease, so long as there are square-jawed farm boys with more hair than brains—”
“Skip to the end, Cyrus,” interrupted Veridia.
He glared at her for a moment, but then skipped to the end.
“Let’s go see your husband and the King of the Goblins,” he said to Merrily, “before they break what’s left of my greatest discovery.”
The management offices in Devi Valley were in one of the new buildings by the river, in the new settlement that was called ‘Beatrice’ by its owners. To reach the finery complex, Cyrus and Merrily walked all the way through the settlement, enduring a deluge of rain. He elbowed through the light stream of workers and their families hurrying into the caves, glaring into submission anyone so foolish as to stand in his path. Merrily trailed along behind him, apologizing occasionally.
They passed through the fining chamber, where the two steam engines were slowly heating up. It looked as though the Number One was further along; it could probably make way within an hour. The Number Two was still quite cold, by the look of it. Cyrus spared a few grudging moments of admiration for the two engines. He himself may have discovered the fining complex, and the chemical recipes of the new black powder were waiting there to be read and applied—but it was the imagination of Rufus Snugg that leapt from the giant, broken wheel shafts in the great vent chamber to a machine that turned fire into motion. Cyrus shook his head as he stumped along, wondering what other machines might have started into motion with that leap of the mind.
At the top of the passage to the vault level, Cyrus encountered a familiar figure—this one wearing a wide-brimmed, floppy hat, very much like his own. Prunella Weaselbeer-Yourfork was well into her sixties. She and Cyrus had been colleagues at Triad for decades before she took leave to come lead the researchers here three years ago. Prunella was worn and gaunt now; even more than he recalled.
“Professor,” he greeted her.
“Professor,” she replied coolly. “Welcome back to my dig site. And Mrs. Hunter,” she added, with a slight nod at Merrily.
Cyrus brushed past her a bit impolitely, forcing her to turn and follow him. “Time is short, as you can tell, Professor.” The ground shook again, six distinct booms vibrating the room in quick succession. “I understand Mr. Miller and the King of the Goblins have gone to Vault Three.”
She nodded sourly. “They have. And they shut the door. I’d go in through one of the upper passages, but there’s really no time and I have no one to spare. I’ve heard Yannosh the Hairy was forced out of Fort Beatrice this morning.”
“I heard that as well,” affirmed Cyrus, still moving down the vault passage. “The time we have left here is measured in hours. If the Republican Guard don’t get us from the south, then…” he trailed off, and shuddered involuntarily.
Weaselbeer-Yourfork stopped walking. “Do as you will, Stoat,” she said shortly. “My people, and whatever we can save from the library, will be on the Number One Engine. She should be moving within the hour. Be there, if you care to go on living. The Number Two may not heat up in time. I do hope to see you again in Peacock Hall, Professor.” With that, she turned abruptly and stalked away into the dimly lit vault passage.
“Take heed, Merrily,” warned Cyrus. “Weaselbeer-Yourfork may have developed a sudden taste for melodrama, but she’s not far off. You and Miller had best get on the Number One.”
She looked apprehensively back into the darkness. “I don’t know why he’s here at all. And King Simon! I’d have thought he’d be back in the Gray Kingdom by now. His people were searching for him all over the north. Especially The Gizzard.”
Cyrus shrugged. “Everything a man does is mysterious until you know the reasons for it, and then it’s generally stupid.”
They reached the door to the third vault. The portal itself was some ten feet wide and twenty tall. It was sealed shut with a huge door of ancient, pitted metal. Despite the age, it looked exceedingly stubborn. Cyrus sighed dramatically and raised his fist to pound on the immovable slab.
It opened, the vast metal sliding on marvelously crafted—and newly-oiled—hinges. On the other side were three people.
Jonathan Miller was a tall young man with broad shoulders and a shock of straw-colored hair that was rather in need of a trim. He had several weeks’ growth of beard, and his clothes were travel-stained and ripped in places. His face, though pleasing, wore a nearly perpetual look of surprise and confusion. Just now, this expression was amplified by the sudden and unexpected appearance of his wife.
With Jonathan in the doorway was Simon, King of the Goblins—short even for a grayskin, his frame not especially muscular, and wearing a ragged veil over the lower half of his face. His head bore a hat of woven sticks, adorned with the trophies of three years of kingship. These included a rather bedraggled cork, several bits of coal, some steel gears, quite a number of fresh flowers, someone’s foot, and a hunk of some strange, dull green material with tiny, glistening silver strands running through it.
Riding in a pouch just behind Jonathan’s shoulder was a tiny woman. Her torso and limbs were willowy even for her small size, and her face had a chiseled look, the proportions somehow thinner. Her long, black hair was tied back in a ponytail, and she had a pair of miniscule goggles dangling around her neck.
“Jonathan Miller,” said Cyrus, adopting a sudden posture of nonchalance. “I see you are once again in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Jonathan gaped. Merrily gaped. Cyrus smirked. King Simon looked up at Jonathan urgently, but said nothing. The very small woman poked her mount in the side of the head with her lance.
“Gi’ on wi’it, ye daft biggie,” she said acidly. “We already wasted i’nnuf time wi’ dead machines. Kiss yer girl and let’s git ta’ th’ library.”
Jonathan stepped forward, trying forlornly to adopt a posture of masculine bravado and reaching for Merrily. Merrily stepped back back, stopping him short just as another ripple of distant thuds from the big guns shook the ground and produced a rain of pebbles from above.
He stammered something unintelligible, then regained his composure. “Merrily, we have to get out of here. There’s a book out there we need to find.”
Cyrus groaned. “Another book? By all the Nine Black Gods of Broob, if I have to chase another book around the world, I swear I’ll renounce my tenure and retire to a monastery to play leather drums and sing chants to the old guy in the sky until—”
“It’s just down the hall,” interrupted Jonathan, already moving in that direction.
“Oh. Well, that’s different.” He followed as Jonathan brushed past him, heading back toward the library. “Would you care to explain? I’ve had about as much cheap suspense as I can digest in one day.”
“I know what it looks like,” volunteered King Simon. His voice was light and melodic, and he spoke Uellish with a faint accent that was very different from the maniacal speech of the goblins working on the engines downstairs. They hustled down the wide vault passage while they talked; the lights outside the library could be seen in the darkness ahead.
“That’s most helpful, Your Majesty,” growled Cyrus, “but why? There’s death to the south of us, even bigger and nastier death to the north, something with wings up there that I don’t even want to think about, and the last two trains out of Hell are warming up downstairs. I’d like to know why the three of you felt compelled to come all the way out here, all by yourselves, just to find another gods-damned book.”
They reached the door to the library. There were noticeably fewer librarians now, as most had already fled downstairs. Those that remained were hastily packing books into the last of the wooden crates, each marked with the white snake in the shape of an ‘S.’ Elizabeth Karn looked up sharply.
“We don’t need any more hands, Professor,” she barked, her voice tense. “The Number One is loaded with everything that will fit, besides workers. As it is, some of them will have to wait for the Number Two, but it won’t be warmed up for hours. There are seats waiting for you. You should go!”
Cyrus turned to Jonathan and King Simon. “Well. You heard this bright young lady. We should go. Why are we not going?”
Jonathan took a deep breath. “There isn’t time to explain all of it.” The guns shook the rock around them once again, emphasizing his point. “We found something at that dig site, Professor—the one outside Roosterfoot. Devi got in through the old wall and brought out… some kind of wire. Simon could use it to talk to the thing inside, and he found out what was at this place. The tunnels under Roosterfoot were a way of… moving information from one place to another. And there was something alive in there, Professor. Simon could talk to it. Don’t ask me why, and don’t ask him either—or wait until we’re safely away. I promise you won’t like the answer he gives you.”
Cyrus took a few seconds to absorb that. “Does this have to do with Rolly’s calculations?”
There was a surprising pang as he said it, and he could see the faces of Jonathan and Merrily fall as well. Somehow the loss was still sharp.
Jonathan nodded. “Yes. You told me there were gaps in what he found. The thing under Roosterfoot didn’t know much, but it knew that there was another one like it here, that had access to information. They’re old, Professor—older than this place is. Simon was sure that Herberta and Professor Tentimes could use what it knew to complete the sums.” He looked for confirmation at the King of the Goblins, who nodded confidently.
Cyrus shook his head in frustration. “Hearing part of the truth is worse than hearing none of it. This… thing that was ‘alive’—that you keep referring to as an ‘it’ rather than ‘he’ or ‘she’—is it in the library?”
Jonathan shook his head. “No. It was in Vault Three.”
Cyrus stamped his foot. “Then why are we in the library?” he demanded.
Devi piped up, then. “B’cause th’ thing in’ the thaird vault was dead!” she revealed. “Dead an’ cold as a th’ bones o’ a mouse from las’ year’s herd.”
“AND WHY—"
“Because,” interrupted Jonathan sharply, “the… thing… under Roosterfoot said the Dawn Imperials kept written backups of all their kaplswed. Whatever that all means.”
“They are in twelve sealed tubes,” added Simon. “They are marked with a circle in the center of two equal lines crossing at right angles. It showed me.”
“What—” began Cyrus.
“Later,” interrupted Jonathan. “Trust me, Cyrus. Miss Karn was right—we have hours left, maybe less.”
Together, Jonathan, Merrily, Cyrus, Simon, and Devi looked out at the vast library receding into the darkness. The last of the librarians were leaving with their crates. Miss Karn had already gone. Thousands of tomes and tubes remained on the enormous metal shelves—maybe tens of thousands. Merrily’s hand drifted toward Jonathan’s, as if on its own; but she did not touch him.
“Simon,” said Cyrus. “You and Merrily go search the crates in the Number One train before it leaves. We’ll start up here.”
They began to search. Time was difficult to measure underground. But perhaps an hour later, Simon and Merrily returned from the workshop, shaking their heads. The Number One engine had gone, they said. The Number Two was still warming up.
Shortly after that, the big guns stopped firing.
✽✽✽
On the ridge above the finery, Rufus Snugg peered through a pair of damp field glasses into the whipping rain and lightning. All he surveyed was chaos.
To the south, Fort Beatrice was burning. He could see the small band of survivors perched on a nearby hilltop, making their last stand. A long line of skirmishers, spread out to avoid massed gun fire and advancing behind cover, was peppering them with arrows and bolts. The little band was doomed; he could see it already. They may have the advantage of firearms, but they were too few—and the Republican Guard had learned how to fight against his gunners, even if they could not yet replicate them. The most he could hope for from the southern defenses now was a bit more time.
He turned his gaze to the north. The big guns were silent, the artillery park abandoned. Even in the wrack and wrath of the storm, he could see smoke boiling up where Gog’s men had set off the last of their powder to blast away some of the enemy. Now a long, thin line of mercenaries was straggling along the ridgetop to the last of the redoubts—just a small ring of stones at the top of a hill, but enough for determined gunners to hold for a time. At least—it would be so against any reasonable enemy.
The enemy they faced was unreasonable.
Giant-Men. Children’s spook-stories had walked out of the north—proud, tall, strong, fearless, and gleaming head to toe in mighty steel armor. Snugg’s small arms were of limited use against so much steel, and the Giant-Men themselves were hardier than any human soldier. His man Gog the Hammer had learned, over a week of skirmishing north of the valley, how to bring them down a few at a time—but the lessons came too late, and not enough of the big guns were available, nor enough of the black powder. The numbers of Giant-Men had grown, too, as Gog had slowly been pushed back.
Now there were no more big guns—just a tiny hill fort and a few score light skirmishers with long arms.
Something else had appeared from the north, too; something so unreasonable that his rational mind rebelled at the very idea of it. It was, simply, preposterous. He could see it now—a huge, winged form gliding slowly through the driving rain, oblivious to the heavy winds and whipping lances of water. It had no business being aloft at that size. Gunnar had done the calculations over and over, concluding that it was a physical impossibility. The bones and flesh were too heavy, the wings too small to support its supposed mass, much less provide lift.
And yet there it was, breathing gouts of fire down at the retreating soldiers.
“The enemy has a dragon,” remarked Rufus, “and all I have are balloons.”
His nine balloons were inflating now, just below the ridge top, sheltered from the rain under a sharp overhang. Each was nearly fifty feet in diameter, with a small reed basket suspended beneath and a hot coal brazier ready to perch on a platform above the basket. They were made of silk, imported from Brasse at fabulous cost. Some of the very last of his laborers pumped frantically at great bellows, forcing hot air from fires into the balloons to inflate them. These men knew there was likely no exit for them; they were pumping for their families. Each could carry three adult humans and one goblin—up. Up, and then wherever the wind chose to blow them; to safety, or to doom.
“The Number One engine is away,” reported Colonel Ratwurst, standing nearby. The little mercenary officer had a canvas cloak and a wide hat against the rain, but still looked every bit as miserable as Rufus felt. Rufus turned his field glasses to the valley floor. Iindeed, there was the engine and its train, chugging steadily across the bridge through the rain, and toward the long, inclined rail track on the western ridge. “The crews are trying to fire up Number Two quickly,” continued Ratwurst, “but they’ll risk damaging the boiler if they heat up the steel too fast. If it stops on the hillside or in the tunnel, it will roll back down. And if it stops anywhere else, the Giant-Men will get them.”
They both look up the valley, to the great winged beast circling high in the air.
“Preposterous,” muttered Rufus.
The rain drove into their eyes.
“Well,” he remarked at last. “As a matter of fact, I do have something more than balloons.”
“What’s that, Rufus?” queried Ratwurst.
Rufus turned through the rain and smiled lightly. He nodded down to a sharp crevasse in the ridge line, in which there could be seen faintly through the rain a large, elegant triangular shape, like a dart.
Ratwurst followed his gaze, and his eyes widened.
“Preposterous, indeed,” murmured the little colonel.