Third Brigade and Grimhope’s revolutionaries had withdrawn, leaving the roads to the hysterical refugees. Oliver was glad that the Whisperer was maintaining his human form; the true sight of him riding on the back of Oliver’s gypsy mare would have caused a panic all of its own. At the other end of the street a group of riders appeared, Mad Jack and a company of his irregulars. Oliver urged the sixer through the crowds, the press of panicked Middlesteelians making her difficult to control.
‘Major Dibnah,’ shouted Oliver. ‘Where’s our army?’
‘Falling back,’ called the riding officer. ‘Old Guardian Tinfold must have delivered his invite. The Free State’s army has forded the Gambleflowers and is joining up with parliament’s forces. We’re going too. There’s nothing to do in Middlesteel but hide inside the atmospheric stations and take a drubbing.’
Reinforcing his words the shadow of an aerostat passed overhead, causing a stampede among the refugees for the cover of the street’s buildings. Screams sounded from the crush by the doors, people scrambling and slipping over the litter of looting.
‘Dirt-gas,’ shouted a refugee. ‘Dirt-gas!’
Mad Jack turned his steed and delivered a kick to the man’s head, knocking his stovepipe hat to the ground and sending him sprawling. ‘Bloody fool. They’re not loaded with gas-fins. Can’t kill a steammen regiment with dirt-gas.’
Oliver spurred his horse through the gap in the crowds in the middle of the street. ‘This way, major.’
‘Good fellow. The First Guardian has sent word for everyone remaining to follow the Third Brigade out to the east. If we can make a scrum of it with their troopers, the aerostats won’t be able to target us without killing their own regiments.’
‘Yes,’ said Oliver. ‘When the aerostats finish here they’ll head east.’
Mad Jack looked up at the sky. ‘They’re not handling well at all today. Must be shifties on deck. All the same, it’ll be a bloody business when they catch us out on the field. Our regiments aren’t used to sitting under the sharp end of the RAN.’
After the shadow of the airship passed, the throng of citizens returned to the streets as thick as ever. Oliver despaired of clearing the city. He could feel the dense pressure of the Wildcaotyl and the heavy mass of evil that moved across the land as the Third Brigade marched to war with the steammen.
Sitting behind him on the horse the Whisperer growled in frustration. ‘Now I know why you didn’t bring a saddle; you weren’t going fast enough to need one.’ He shut his eyes and imagined an aerostat floating above the streets, dark creatures like devils capering across the fin bays, flying so low that its weapon hatches barely cleared the spires of the Circlist church behind them. With terrified shrieks the refugees stampeded for cover. The cavalry company looked around them in confusion. The Whisperer had not extended the illusion into the riders’ minds, but they understood well enough to take advantage of the space that he had cleared.
‘I have a feeling this aerostat is going to follow us all the way out of Middlesteel,’ said Oliver, their horse galloping after Mad Jack and his irregulars.
With their way cleared by the escaped feybreed they managed excellent time to reach the city markers — the marble globes carved with the portcullis of the House of Guardians. Oliver could see trails of smoke out beyond the low hills of the east downs, towards Rivermarsh. King Steam’s assault on the Quatershiftian legions had begun.
‘They’ve abandoned their lines,’ said Oliver, pointing to fresh ramparts and trenches that had been dug outside the city, now lying empty and unmanned in the snow.
Mad Jack frowned. ‘Then it’s true, the Special Guard have gone over to the shifties to fight. Those fellas fight better in the open than in the confines of the rookeries. Circle, this is a damn bad turn. Now the Commonshare has the two things that have always swung victory our way: our stats and the guard.’
Mad Jack saw the faces of his riders and realized he had voiced the doubts that they felt themselves in this unequal war — their resolve was crumbling.
‘We have something they don’t,’ said Oliver, raising his voice loud enough that everyone in the irregulars could hear. ‘We fight as free citizens of Jackals, not slaves of a king or a first committee or a caliph.’ He pulled one of his belt pistols out and the lion of Jackals on the handle seemed to suck in the light of the afternoon, drawing down rays of sunlight that rotated, blinding the troops with a brilliance they had never known before. ‘We will not suffer the heel of tyranny, we will not bend our knee to unworthy gods, we will not see an evil without striking it down, and we will not pass meekly into the long face of darkness that is endangering our land. Because we are Jackelians — and our soul of freedom can never, never be conquered. Not as long as one free Jackelian has the heart to say, “No! I think my own thoughts. I choose my own leaders. I select my own book of worship and my law shall be the law of the people, not the whimsy of any bully with a sabre sharp enough to slice a crown off the previous brute’s head.”’
At the back of the column a lone voice started singing, the words trembling and slight in the cold wind. Then a second voice picked up the tune, and a third, the song rising in intensity as it rippled through the company. ‘Lion of Jackals’. The song grew louder, louder than the wind of the land; loud enough to drown out the thunder of falling fin-bombs behind them and the cannon clap in front.
‘I can make women see a god-given human form when they look at me, twist dreams like clay,’ said the Whisperer, ‘but you put something in their soul. That’s not a talent that came out of the feymist.’
‘Run your hands through the soil,’ said Oliver. ‘You’ll find your answer in the dirt.’
Another sound drifted in from the south, an unholy wailing like a wolf pack pleading to the moon. Out of the falling snow a line appeared, soldiers in the lobster-coloured uniforms of the regiments, kilts in garish tartan billowing in the cold. With bag-like sashes strapped around their tunics the front line played sackpipes, an unnatural noise, its fierce melody flaying the wind.
‘Uplanders!’ said Mad Jack. ‘By the Circle, I was never so glad to hear a cat being strangled.’
A woman from the head of the column rode up to meet them, the back of her brown coat strapped with three loaded rifles. Not fancy fowling pieces, but workaday Brown Janes, the standard rifle of the Jackelian redcoat. ‘Bel McConnell. Guardian McConnell. I have stripped out every bonnie boy and lass with a taste for a scrap from all the acres from Braxney to Lethness. We’re holding the caliph’s border with nothing but bairns and companies from the clan MacHoakumchild, and I’d rather trust a weasel in a henhouse than rely on a MacHoakumchild.’
‘Wanted to see the capital, eh?’ said Mad Jack. ‘Place ain’t what it used to be. Shifties have got the picnic blankets out for King Steam over at Rivermarsh.’
‘We were following the smoke of it ourselves, laddie,’ said Guardian McConnell. ‘We’ve been marching for days and have got a hunger on.’
‘Let’s inspect the shifties’ spread, then,’ said Mad Jack. ‘Your pipes can play us a merry tune as we ride out.’
‘Are you daft, man?’ said the uplander Guardian. ‘Sackpipes are the music of lament. We’ll play a dirge for the Commonshare and their shiftie-loving downlander friends. No offence meant.’
‘None taken, I am sure.’
It took half an hour to cross the downs, and by the time they crested the hill to Rivermarsh the dark leviathans of the air were moving after them, scudding across an ocean of black smoke where Middlesteel burnt beneath their hulls. Oliver’s sixer whinnied with fright as the vista of battle opened up before them. The Third Brigade and Tzlayloc’s revolutionary army held the west side of the field, King Steam and the remaining forces of parliament the east. Shrouds of smoke surrounded the clashing armies, the crackle of fire from Tzlayloc’s rifles answered by the saw-like whine of steammen pressure repeaters. On the higher ground at the rear of both armies steammen gun-boxes and Quatershiftian artillery fought their own duel, great gobs of earth erupting from the frozen ground and scattering troops as fire licked out from the opposing cannonry.
A fizz of energies punctured the shroud of war as worldsingers and the Special Guard traded blows, the leylines throbbing in Oliver’s sight as the land’s power was leeched out from the bones of the earth. At the far end of the plain gusts of snow moved like phantoms, shapes appearing and whirling around each other, then vanishing into white. The Steamo Loas were losing to the Wildcaotyl, Oliver could feel their fatigue, the presence of Tzlayloc at the rear of his army like the stab of a migraine. The leader of the revolution was different now, fused with his masters, an ant flattened on the boot of giants, his hate for Jackals amplified under their possession and leaking across the battlefield in waves of pure loathing.
Oliver could see Tzlayloc was channelling in the souls of the dead. Drawing strength from the screaming Jackelian on the plain with his leg torn off by a rolling cannon ball; drawing strength from the equalized
