buildings, desperately gathering valuables or loved ones, or rushing in panic about the streets, trying to understand what was happening to them. The destruction wasn't limited to the buildings, either — even those who had safely evacuated their homes could not escape the effects of the quake, as they found themselves fleeing dark, jagged rents in the streets themselves, bunting and lanterns falling and fluttering about them like dying birds.
It was utter calamity and confusion. The people of Solnos hadn't the slightest clue what was hitting them. But Kali did. From her vantage point on the hillside, she could see it, even if she couldn't quite yet take it in.
'Okay,' she said with a levity she didn't feel, 'that's a new one.'
To the west of the town, in the midst of its farmlands, massive machines were drilling out of the valley floor. There were three of them in all, emerging one after the other, the first already risen to the height of the ridge on which Kali stood, filling the sky and dwarfing her with its mass. The machines resembled, of all things, giant fir cones. The comparison was hardly apt, however, because these were not the products of some unbelievably huge, nightmare tree, but things of metal which spouted steam as they rose. Things which crackled with electrical energy. Things which Kali had no doubt had been
She could only stand stunned beside Horse as the second and third machines rose to join the first, churning slowly out of the ground with a deafening crunching of substrata and roots, carrying with them great scoops of soil, shrub, and even whole trees, sloughing from their sides in lethal downpours. Rising ever higher, they inevitably became visible to the town beyond the ridge, and Kali's gaze flicked to the people of Solnos, who as one had momentarily forgotten their immediate concerns to stop and point, or scream.
As one, the massive machines had begun to turn slowly on their vertical as well as horizontal axis so their pointed peaks would eventually face towards the ground. As they did this they emitted a siren sound that reminded Kali of the last, desperate calls of some dying leviathan, or of some impossibly loud and haunting foghorn, blaring endlessly into the night. The sound drowned out everything, even the clatter of the crumbling hills.
What in the pits of Kerberos were these things? The style of their construction and the runes Kali could make out carved into their eaves were dwarven, and the devastation they'd caused upon emerging suggested they had lain underground for millennia. Their history and reasons for construction were only two of the questions that intrigued her, though. What had brought them to the surface? Who or what controlled them? And why?
Kali turned her attention back to the west of town, to the farmlands. There, a number of Solnossians, little more than dots from her vantage point, were scurrying across the fields, their tools abandoned. Kali had no doubt that when these most unexpected of crops had emerged from the ground, the farmers had been as staggered and transfixed as their neighbours in town and now that they had collected themselves to flee, reaching safety appeared to be almost impossible.
The fields were nothing less than a disaster zone, subsiding not only into the three gaping pits that the machines had created but into rents in the ground like those that had split the streets of Solnos. Even as she watched, Kali saw two of the fleeing figures sucked into oblivion, clawing desperately for purchase as they went, and she knew that things were only going to get worse. Beneath all of them was the subterranean expanse that she had only just escaped, and if Quinking's Depths collapsed further, Solnos might as well say goodbye to anything or anyone this side of the ridge.
Kali mounted Horse and spurred him down the hillside towards the fleeing figures. She frowned, the fleeing men and women were some distance apart, and to aid them all she and Horse would have to perform some pretty fancy manoeuvring.
With a 'hyahh!' she drove the bamfcat toward the nearest group, shouting at them to raise their arms as she leaned sideways to scoop the first of them up. The man arced up onto Horse's back, landing with a thud in the saddle, and Kali repeated the rescue with a second farmer and a third. She could carry no more behind her for the time being and reined Horse away from the landslips and to the safety of a patch of stable ground.
Kali had no choice but to ignore their pleas about rescuing husbands, wives or brothers and wasted no time, turning Horse again and scanning the fields for those in the most immediate danger.
One group of five or six — in the chaos it was difficult to tell — were struggling, their escape route cut off by a fresh fissure. Attempting to backtrack, they were once more caught in the middle of the subsidence.
Another 'hyaah!' sent Horse hammering towards them and, almost as if he had read her mind, the bamfcat deployed more of his natural armaments. The extra horns which had just sprang from Horse's body were, for once, meant neither as defensive or offensive appendages but provided hand and footholds for the group of farmers it would otherwise have been impossible to carry. Quite what the farmers made of the great armoured beast as it pounded towards them she'd never know, but as they staggered back before his fearsome sight, Kali had to indicate as best she could what they should do. Thankfully, in their desperation, the men and women seemed quick learners, and as Horse galloped into their midst, they leapt for and clung to the armoured protrusions.
'Hang on!' Kali shouted and, wondering vaguely if there was some kind of obscure world record for the number of farmers dangling from a bamfcat, she quickly reined Horse around once more, riding him into a jump across the fissure that had earlier stymied the farmers' flight.
The bamfcat roared triumphantly as they arced over the collapse, and, as they thudded down on the other side Kali, too, let out a whoop. But it wasn't over yet.
'My girl!' One of the women pleaded as Kali dropped them off with the others. 'Please, she was frightened, she ran, I couldn't reach her…'
'Where?' Kali said, already turning Horse.
'She ran
Kali stared back into the chaos, seeing no sign of the girl but spotting instead another group of stranded victims, whose escape route was blocked by fallen trees. They were attempting to hack through the barrier of vegetation but their going was slow and all the while, behind them, the ground broken by the machines was growing ever larger.
Kali swallowed. She had no choice but to ride to help these people, and all she could do was hope she'd spot the youngster on route — the problem being, if she did, what the hells was she going to do then?
A second later, the dilemma became stark reality, a scream managing to make itself heard over the strange wailing of the machines. Kali stared hard and spotted a small figure struggling on the edge of the pit in the shadow of the first of them, and cursed. There was no way she could reach both the girl and the others in time, and for a moment she reined Horse's nose left and right, left and right, tortured by the decision to save the lives of a whole group or of one, however young. Thankfully, it was a decision she didn't have to make, the sound of further heavy hoofbeats signalling the arrival of a second horse by her side.
'You take the girl!' Its flame-haired rider shouted from her solid white mount. 'I'll fetch Treave and the others!'
There was no time to think about who the woman was or where she had appeared from. Once more Kali booted Horse's flanks and steered him towards the girl. But if her chances of success had been precarious so far, they had just gotten a lot worse.
Kali found herself weaving Horse through the masses of soil that poured from the machine hanging above the girl in a deadly rain, at one point even having to turn him abruptly as a tree — crashed back to the ground directly in their path. It was a close run thing with far too many near misses and, the further in she rode, the thicker the falls became, leaving Kali with no choice but to ignore the painful hammering of falling detritus on Horse's hide and on her own, far less protected flesh. At last, though, she reached the girl and scooped the dishevelled, but miraculously unhurt, child up behind her, turning Horse for the return trip.
But again, she cursed. What seemed like a whole field by itself was falling in a solid curtain that would be impossible to pass without being crushed. Nevertheless, Kali spurred Horse on, leaning forward as she did to whisper in his ear, 'If ever there was a time for you to do your thing, my friend, it's right now.'
Horse was of the same mind, galloping straight ahead. One moment the bamfcat, Kali and the girl were heading into the roaring soilfall and the next they were heading away from it, on the other side.
Kali kept Horse at a gallop until they had reached the waiting farmers, slowed him to a trot, and stopped beside the anxious mother to swing her daughter down into her arms. She dismissed the woman's thanks, but not ungraciously, being more concerned with the fate of the one who had come to aid her in the rescue attempt. She
