were heavy, weight an aerostat could ill afford. Their presence indicated sailors captured at Shadowclock rather than revolutionaries. The slipthinker translated what the metal-flesher had said — knock the gilt off the gingerbread, an expression of nautical origin meaning to cut a tale short. The slipthinker controlling the mu-body made a snap decision and a pincer snaked out and cut down the iron body.
‘That’s it, mate. Now let me give you a black dog for a white monkey and show you where the
The information raced across the slipthinker council, fleeting from mind to mind like lightning before passing back into the mu-bodies already on the airships as well as those being loaded into the gun-boxes.
Metal-flesher and steamman warrior vanished together into the bowels of the aerostat. There was work to be done.
Earth and flame spouted across the snowy plain as Oliver’s sixer held to the direction he was urging her; the new steed he had stolen was raised in a Jackelian cavalry regiment and thought little of the thunder and chaos of war, while the Whisperer’s gypsy horse just followed because there was a friendly tail in front.
Riding through the confusion of the aerostat bombardment it was hard to tell which way to head. It was only the press of the fey — the concentration of the Special Guard — that allowed him to home in on the eastern flank of the battlefield.
A Jackelian soldier bearing a standard showing the parliamentary colours staggered past, shouting encouragement to a body of troops that was no longer following him. Two of Ben Carl’s rebels dragged a third man through the snow, shouting for the surgeon’s tent. Oliver pointed to the way he had come but they ignored him and blundered forward towards the Third Brigade’s guns. The man they were dragging was dead. Oliver tried to call out to the pair but cannon smoke had swallowed them.
A square of Jackelian infantry emerged from the carnage, their myriad shakos and tunics bearing testament to the fact that theirs was a motley assemblage of soldiers thrown together from the fall of Middlesteel.
An officer in the centre of the square called out to them. ‘Have you seen the shiftie exomounts?’
‘We haven’t come across them,’ Oliver called back.
‘Watch out, there’s a squadron of them riding around here. Lancers.’
The officer started to say something else but a bullet took him from the front and felled him to the ground in the centre of the square — the Jackelians looking in horror at their crumpled lieutenant. From out of the snow a banshee howl preceded a mob of fleeing soldiers, not a charge, but a retreating tumult. Jackelians. The aerostat bombardment had finally broken the army’s spirit. Some of the men on the edge of their square peeled off the formation and sprinted away with the deserters, their red tunics easy prey for any passing lancer.
‘Hold the line!’ Oliver shouted. ‘Hold the line!’
They ignored him, hardly hearing his shouts in their terror and desperation.
‘The sky,’ shouted the Whisperer. ‘Look at the sky.’
Many of the aerostats had fallen silent, drifting higher as if their control lines had been severed, but it was what lay beneath them that stopped the routed soldiers in their tracks. Long trails of smoke and snow cloud had formed into sword-carrying spectres, flowing around the aerostats with the elongated outlines of lions running by their sides. It was as if the heavens had opened and the soul of Jackals had spilled from the sky.
‘The first kings!’ roared the Whisperer. ‘The first kings have returned.’
All over the battlefield heads looked up and saw the ghostly army passing across the sky. Riding officers slipped in their saddles, brawling soldiers caught a glimpse of the sight and stumbled, sackpipers drew breath and their fierce sad music was stilled.
Next to Marshal Arinze, Tzlayloc raged at the Third Brigade’s troopers who had stopped loading their cannons to gawp at the sight. ‘It’s not real, compatriots. It’s not real. You fools, it’s not real!’ He clawed at his skull. ‘Get out of my head, get out of my head now.’
‘Our airships have been silenced,’ said Marshal Arinze staring upwards at the dark shapes gliding through the snow clouds. Stunned by the sudden hush he did not notice that Tzlayloc’s body was growing larger, the skin of the Chairman of the First Committee of Jackals swelling in uneven lumps as if beetles were breeding under his skin.
Arinze clicked his fingers for a telescope from one of the staff officers. The aerostats had been holed by the steammen gun-boxes, but it was damage they could shrug off — how many times had he seen Jackals’ airships take their own weight in lead ball from his guns and still continue to wreak destruction on the ground? Too many to count. Aerostats were invincible, the floating angels of death of Jackals. Every time Quatershift had clashed with its neighbour to the west the RAN had devastated their ambitions, and every time it was the terrible floating wall of Jackals that had laid waste to their place as the rightful masters of the continent. You could not lose with the aerial armada of Jackals behind you — that was an immutable law of warfare, of nature itself.
Arinze turned to Major Wildrake, whose beautiful muscles filled out his Third Brigade greatcoat like rocks. ‘What can silence our aerostats, major? Nothing in the world can silence them!’
Wildrake did not hear. He was hypnotised by the lions running through the sky, just like he had imagined as a boy, just like he had drawn so many times in pencil on his mother’s table.
To the east Oliver turned on his horse to look at the Whisperer.
‘So many minds,’ hissed the fey creature, the illusion of his human warrior’s body flickering. ‘Steammen, shifties, Jackelians. So different.’
Around them many of the Jackelian soldiers had dropped to their knees, tears in their eyes at having allowed their fear to overcome them and turn them coward long enough to flee the front.
‘For the land,’ shouted Oliver. ‘For Jackals!’
All around them the cry was taken up and the soldiers picked up their rifles and turned back towards the Third Brigade’s guns. Near the Whisperer the energy of the land had become inverted in an invisible vortex as his fey power disrupted the natural harmony of the leylines. Oliver grabbed the reins of the gypsy sixer and led them both away from the carnage and towards the press of fey he sensed.
‘No,’ said the Whisperer. ‘Leave me here. I need to concentrate. Everyone must see, everyone must see.’
Oliver nodded and rode off. If the fortunes of war turned again and the Jackelians were driven back the Whisperer would as like be speared by some passing lancer or bayoneted by pursuing Third Brigade troopers.
The eastern flank of the battlefield had lost any vestige of order — there were no columns, lines or formations manoeuvring for advantage in the intricate dance of infantry, artillery and cavalry; instead a sea of steammen knights fought, dotted with islands of Special Guardsmen, centaur-like warriors of the metal trading blows with the onetime protectors of Jackals. Away from the slaughter, a line of elite Third Brigade troops protected the worldsingers of Quatershift. Like their brethren in Jackals they showed no taste for getting their hands dirty while their fey slaves could be marched into battle to die for them. They stood ready to activate the suicide torc of any guardsmen tempted to flee the battlefield.
In front of them: the cruel theatre of the war. Voiceboxes vibrated with anger, the fighting screams of the orders militant breaking across fey bones where the knights could pin down the guardsmen. Standard-bearers lifted the Special Guard’s colours through the sea of deadly steammen, drawing attacks in wave after wave as the knights tried to seize the colours for their mountain halls. A steamman knight that could have been Steamswipe’s twin pulled himself past Oliver’s horse, his flank torn in half by a fey attack. Used to facing their enemies alongside each other, neither force had any strategies for fighting their former friends to fall back upon. It was the raw power of the feymist pitted against the physical strength of warriors who had been forged for battle. It was not warfare. It was murder being done here.
Oliver knew what to do. It came to him without thinking, a remembrance of the people of the fast-time, the strange shades of the land beyond the feymist curtain. His human vessel vibrated with the power of that other realm, the part of him that belonged to his mother turning and recycling the building force. It grew and grew, the strain of it building dangerously high. Shouts sounded from the worldsingers minding the Special Guard who could see the ripples in the natural fabric of the world. They were pointing in Oliver’s direction. Every inch of his flesh was on fire, dimensions that could not exist on Jackals folding around his body, spinning, circling in impossible ways.
