creations setting up the cannon. ‘Rely on them as loaders and they’ll be fine for a few shots, until one of ’em has a funny turn. Before you know it, a shell will be slotted in nose facing down-ways rather than up-ways, followed by an explosion that’ll tear the gates off the town walls. Every few years you get some green-arsed colonel that sets up a battalion of automatics, promising a revolution in warfare. They’re usually cashiered out after the steamers have bayoneted a few too many of our own side’s redcoats, that’s if the officer’s pretty head hasn’t been sabred off by one of his automatics.’
The Nuyokians had obviously reached the same conclusion as Morris. As soon as the two cannons were nestling behind the walls, their barrels raised over the battlement like metal giraffe necks, the automatics lined up and marched back down the streets towards the volcano. Human artillery crews swarmed over to crew the weapons. Daunt looked up at the volcanic slopes of the Isla Furia. Somewhere up there, Boxiron was recovering in the Court’s healing tank. Still oblivious to the world and the turn of events that had brought the forces of an entire nation hammering on the walls the steamman and Daunt had taken refuge behind.
It didn’t take long for the city’s two cannons to add their fury to the fusillade from the Court’s volcano launchers, the length of the barrels recoiling back along their pneumatic segments, shortening as the great guns rocked on their carriages. They sucked in the air after each ear-splitting shot, dozens of the gunnery crew mounting the ramparts’ steps with hand pumped water hoses and spraying down water that sizzled and turned to steam along the length of the pieces. Nuyok’s long-guns sounded more like instruments of war than the mock eruption from the volcano, but the flowers of destruction that blossomed among the distant fleet was distinctly less impressive than the savage impact of the Court’s hidden launchers. Still, the artillery crews cheered wildly, while all along the ramparts the armed citizenry joined in, hollering and waving their rifles in the air.
Hovering above the volcano’s slopes, the squadron of aerospheres turned as if tracking something. The reverberation of a darkship clapped above their ears in the sky while the weapon assemblies beneath the Court’s airships traded electrical lightning between their dishes, a web of burning energy traced in the air above the city. The darkship passed through the lattice, a second later shattering into an explosion of waxy fronds, leaving the air above the lake filled with smoking, drifting strips of an oily dark substance. Boxiron created a similar effect when he held his monthly bonfire of all the newssheets and periodicals which Daunt subscribed to.
There was a second clap, another darkship operating in the air, this one flying underneath the web of deadly energies cast by the Court’s globular airships. At first Daunt thought the darkship had been affected by its proximity to the energy web, its mantaray shape diving into the lake’s waters. But it regained a semblance of control and skimmed out towards the distant harbour gate, bouncing like a tossed stone and clearing the inlet before ricocheting off the sea and back into the sky. In its wake, Daunt saw the evidence of the curious cargo it had deposited before fleeing. A slick of pollution bubbling to the lake’s surface, followed by a bobbing school of egg- shaped objects, each constructed of the same inky substance as the darkship.
‘That thing’s laid some spawn,’ said Morris.
‘Bob my soul, but I believe you are right,’ noted Daunt.
The slick crawled up towards the shore of the basin, forming an unctuous crescent in the corner of the lake. The eggs appeared to be rolling towards land. As they touched down on solid ground, they each sprouted six pincering legs and the rise of the volcano turned dark at the foot of the shore. The Isla Furia’s queer invaders were moving up through the beard of tropical woodland and into the crevices of the mountain. Swooping downwards, the Court’s squadron of aerospheres came in to investigate, their weapon assemblies rotating as they dived, preparing to lash this peculiar black army of fist-sized marching spheres with the energies stored in the airships’ capacitors. A hideous screeching sounded from the little eggs as the airships plunged to fifty feet above the shoreline.
Where have I heard that infernal sound before? Then it came to Daunt. Inside the crystal machine of the sea-bishops when they were attempting to plunder his memories. It was a hideous murdered baby noise, far worse than fox baying. With a sudden flurry of explosions, the eggs that were still bobbing in the inky pool on the lake rocketed upward, breaching the fuselage of the Court’s squadron of aerial vessels. The aerospheres began to twist and judder, a flight of birds that had ingested a swarm of wasps and were now dancing with the pain of stings in their gullet. Then the spherical hulls of the Court’s airships started to buckle and warp, the weapon dishes underneath discharging at random before each of the craft detonated. Showers of burning metals and hull plates glanced off the lake, hissing and burning, floating briefly before sinking.
‘There goes the bloody RAN,’ said Morris in mocking reference to the Kingdom’s force of airships.
Moans and wails mixed with angry curses along the wall. Daunt could sense the change in the population’s temperament. It wasn’t surprising. The Court of the Air had arrived from far beyond the unbreachable Fire Sea, benefactors who had helped end the Nuyokians’ isolation, their periodic famines and dependence on erratic rainy seasons for their crops. The Court had squatted in the volcano’s remains for centuries like fire gods, protecting the islanders in return for their humble labours. And here their benefactors were, being lain low by the invaders. Daunt looked up from the flaming devastation spread across the lake’s surface. He had been distracted long enough for the scuttling eggs to have formed into narrow black fingers crawling up the slopes, advancing towards the throat of the volcano. Oblivious to the creeping threat below, the volcano’s guns were still raining a furious toll of destruction down on the armada halted beyond the thermal barrier.
The Court continued its shaking volley in mimicry of an eruption, right up until the top of the volcano was seething black with the fist-sized invaders, then the spider-legged eggs started leaping over the edge, the rolling barrage of superheated rocks violently halted by clouds of exploding trespassers. Daunt could imagine the eggs rolling down the vent of the crater, twisting the launchers into ragged lines of punctured metal with their explosive fury. Others leaping into the nest of gantries and stations and blowing apart walkways and murdering the Court’s personnel by the dozen with each detonation. Surely Boxiron would still be safe, deep inside the rocky chamber alongside the fruits of the Court’s super science and their great transaction-engines? The sea-bishops wouldn’t want to waste the time digging their precious sceptre out of a mountain’s worth of rock fall, would they? Daunt could hear the rolling firecracker detonations echoing inside the vent, the louder explosions of the Court’s launchers silenced, overwhelmed by this ugly black tide flowing up the slopes, filling the crater’s space with fury. As the last of the swarm disappeared over the edge a sudden silence settled over the island. No barrage from the fleet, no shelling from the Court’s launchers, no small-arms fire from the wall. The distant cheeping and whistling from the jungle beyond Nuyok’s walls, monkeys and birds, filled the quiet. The chirruping was added to by shouts along the wall, defenders pointing to the boiling ocean beyond their shoreline. Daunt raised his telescope for a better look.
Outside the thermal barrier the same class of metal war machines the gill-necks used to entangle the Jackelian convoy’s flagship had surfaced. Starfish! They were spinning around, launching ordinance up and over the thermal barrier. Daunt wasn’t sure what they were throwing across the barrier protecting the island from the ocean, but he was certain it meant no good for their chances of keeping the city in human hands. Daunt passed the telescope across to Morris and the old Jackelian adventurer swore under his breath.
‘Do you recognize what they are tossing over the barrier?
‘Our fleet sea arm call them rolling-pins, on account of what the buggers look like,’ said Morris. ‘Landing boats, good for crossing the seabed and advancing up a shore. A big steel tube with caterpillar tracks on either end, spiked with guns and lances. I wouldn’t want to be one of the Court’s soldiers dug in on the beach — they’ll do a roll and crush job on their positions down there.’
‘I trust the city’s walls will hold the machines at bay?’
Morris shrugged. ‘They’re not much good as a ram against walls this thick and high, but they won’t need to be. Each rolling pin will be carrying thirty to fifty gill-necks, depending how tight they’ve packed their marines in. There’ll be sappers with explosive charges, snipers, grenadiers, and portable artillery pieces and assault troops pounding on our walls within the hour.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘We’ve lost our big guns up there as well as our Jack Cloudies. There’ll be too many rolling-pins coming in for the few u-boats the island’s got patrolling inside the barrier to pick even a fraction of the armour off.’
‘What would you say a realistic estimation of our chances are?’
Morris patted his gas-rifle. ‘With these fancy shooting irons, we’ve got seven or eight times the gill-necks’ rate of fire, but-’ he indicated the citizenry lined up along the battlements, ‘-you’re talking about one of the world’s great powers lining up against us out there. The Nuyokians are a game bunch, but they’re not professional soldiers, they’re farmers and shopkeepers with guns and a couple of weeks’ militia training every year. Even with the Court’s soldiers as our backbone, we’re outnumbered a thousand to one. So what are our chances, vicar? I would say our
