‘You tell Broad,’ shouted the pensman. ‘You tell him when they publish the story on the Pitt Hill murders that I want the by-line. It’s not to go to anyone else. It’s my damn story.’
‘I’ll tell him,’ promised the commodore, as he and Oliver scrambled along the passage and into the darkness. ‘And you’ll get the whole blessed front page too.’
Nickleby passed his pipe over to Count Vauxtion to relight. ‘Do you smoke?’
‘I prefer brandy,’ said the count. ‘But you can’t raise a decent vintage in Jackals. You lack the soil.’
‘Yes,’ said Nickleby. ‘I remember the brandies that used to come over from Quatershift. Haven’t seen one in years. No flask on me, I’m afraid. Not even jinn.’
Red sigils had appeared on Lord Wireburn’s oily surface, sweeping down in a circular pattern like a clock. A hum of static was streaming from Steamswipe’s voicebox, as if the life of the old warrior was leaking out into the stale air of the cave-in.
‘That sounds like a tune,’ said Count Vauxtion.
‘He is approaching deactivation,’ said Lord Wireburn. ‘He is singing to the Steamo Loas. Calling their blessing. He remembers only the low-level languages now; too much of him has been destroyed. He has asked me to apologize to you for not being able to sing a little in your tongue. So you also might know their blessing.’
‘How long do we have left?’ asked Nickleby.
‘Three minutes perhaps,’ said Lord Wireburn. ‘The barriers I am bypassing are not intended to be lowered lightly. It is only the wisdom of my dotage that allows me to override the constraints of my architecture.’
From the other side of the light rock fall came the sound of rubble being removed. Count Vauxtion pulled his delicate sabre from his cane and rested it on his knees.
‘I doubt if they will get through in time,’ said Nickleby.
‘I shall keep my sabre to hand in case,’ said Count Vauxtion. ‘Some of the Third Brigade are no doubt talented diggers, the number of ditches they had to shovel while convicts…’
‘Of course,’ said Nickleby. ‘Well, I with my pipe and you with your sabre. I would say we are both content.’
* * *
Outside in the mine pit a vortex had formed, a tornado of black energy whirling around and sucking Commonshare soldiers, brilliant men and equalized into its maw. Hands clung desperately to the side of the excavation, as tools, rocks and clothes were pulled up towards the putrid-smelling whirlwind.
A terrified soldier ran towards Marshal Arinze, his rifle forgotten, shouting appeals to the sun god that the Commonshare had long since banned. He pushed past the officer and lifted into the air as Arinze shot him in the back. ‘Stay at your posts, compatriot soldiers. Hold to them fast.’
By the officer’s side two of his worldsingers tried an invocation but a coil of darkness whiplashed out from the pit; piercing their foreheads; and they collapsed back, steam boiling from a tiny hole in each of their skulls.
Tzlayloc appeared and the marshal grabbed at him. ‘Compatriot, my people are being slaughtered in there.’
Tzlayloc laughed, pointing to the whirlwind speeding up. ‘You have such little faith in the cause. Your soldiers are not dying, they are being saved — they are feeding the Wildcaotyl.’
As he spoke the whirlwind exploded towards the cavern roof, six separate storms of insects darting and twisting around each other. The citizens of Grimhope and their allies covered their ears as a hideous chattering filled the cavern, drowning out the terrified screams of the troops below.
Each cloud looped around and plunged down into the excavation, heading for a single tunnel. Miners and their masters broiled as the stream of insect-shaped energy swept down the chambers and towards the source of the force that was being revealed below ground. At the rock fall the Wildcaotyl were hurled back. A wall of translucent silver outlines was standing sentry beyond the frantically digging soldiers and miners — the Steamo Loas safeguarding their chosen champion. The Wildcaotyl apparitions hissed in rage through tarantula-like fangs. These thin vapours of steammen deities were lesser spirits; they could devour the knight’s death guard, but not in the few seconds they sensed was left on Lord Wireburn’s flickering display.
Turning as one, the Wildcaotyl poured down the airshafts and found the rubber curtain of the atmospheric terminus. Beating through the station valves they splattered against the walls, mile after mile of the vacuum-filled transport tunnel sprayed with a trembling skin of unholy energy. Then they waited, ignoring the whisper of atmospheric capsules speeding past.
Stones tumbled down from the rock fall exposing a small triangle of space between two boulders.
‘What can you see?’ a voice sounded on the other side of the obstruction.
Count Vauxtion smashed his fist into the nose that pressed itself up to the space, shaking his hand in pain as the soldier on the other side of the caved-in rock fell back.
‘You should have impaled him with your sabre,’ said Nickleby.
‘There speaks a true jack cloudie,’ said the count. ‘Warfare is more than pushing fin-bombs out of an aerostat bay. Sometimes it feels good to close with the enemy with nothing but your bare hands. It is a matter of honour.’
‘Yes,’ said Nickleby. A line of pale lifeless faces looked up at him accusingly from a dead street, the cards with the names of the places the corpses had been discovered hung around their necks. ‘A matter of honour.’
Shouts of anger sounded on the other side of the rock and the thud-thud of the engineers and soldiers clearing away the fall grew louder.
The pensman glanced down at Lord Wireburn cradled in his arms — the crimson light flickering across his face as the sigils rotated around. Would the holy relic be able to fire now if the Third Brigade engineers broke through? He doubted it.
‘What say you?’ Vauxtion called out through the gap. ‘What say you of honour, my compatriots, my countrymen? Is there any honour still left in our beautiful home, or has it been crushed under the boots of the Third Brigade? Has honour yet to be allocated by committee 4302, or was the last of it marched into a Gideon’s Collar to pass away under the blow of a steel spike?’
The muzzle of a gun pushed through the gap and Vauxtion seized it, striking the weapon back into its owner’s face before pulling the rifle through into their chamber. He caressed the ugly black gun’s lines, checking the crystal charge loaded into its barrel. A look of disappointment settled on the count’s face. ‘Functional, at best. A tool for intimidating farmers and menacing bakers’ boys. There is more workshop artistry in a Jackelian redcoat’s Brown Jane, more craftsmanship in a lady’s purse gun.’
Vauxtion tilted the rifle through the gap and discharged it, the retort of the charge echoing around the small space like thunder. Nickleby coughed and waved the pungent smoke away with his mumbleweed pipe. The count tossed the empty gun contemptuously onto the floor.
‘I do apologize,’ said the count.
‘Think nothing of it,’ said Nickleby. He drew a deep breath on the pipe. ‘These are rather difficult times.’
‘Quite. You realize that when the bludgers on the other side of the rock were my soldiers, we never would have been squirming around under the dirt like thieves digging into your basement. We would have marched across the border in the same old way, marched like men, then battled your new pattern army with our king’s military trinity: cavalry, infantry and artillery. By the glory of the sun and all that is holy we would have fought like
‘And we would have seen you off in the same old way,’ said Nickleby. ‘With the red-coated scrapings of the gutter, the threat of the lash on their back and the promise of a large tot of jinn when it was all over.’
Vauxtion smiled and nodded, then turned his attention back to the rocks tumbling down on their side of the divide.
The pensman heard the scraping of an iron manipulator hand behind him.
‘Ni.c.kle.by, h.ear m.y wo.r.d_s.’
It was Steamswipe, half-crushed, half-decapitated. Somehow the knight had managed to regain enough of his functions to communicate in the higher languages.
‘We a.r e a.ll c.lo.se to d.e.ac.ti.v_atio.n. The K.eep.er of th. e Et_e.rn.al Fla_me w.ill cle.an.s.e u.s all.Y.ou m.u_st sing. S_ing t.o p.lea.se th.e Loas.’
‘I am afraid I wouldn’t be much good at the hymns of your people, old steamer,’ said Nickleby. ‘I simply don’t have the voicebox for it.’
‘T_he.n yo.u m.ust in.to.n.e the ma.nt.ra of y.our k_in_d. O.ur ti.me i.s at an e_n_d.’
