crashed down. This one passed overhead, and was gone from sight. The earth shook with what Margaret assumed was its landing.
“The bloody things cleared a path for it,” David said. “They’ll be on us in a few minutes.”
Margaret looked at the tower: at all she had fought for. “Then we’d best run,” she said. She pushed David in front of her. “Go, find us the way. I’ll be right behind you.”
And David ran. Margaret primed her weapons. Whatever was coming, whatever her mother had sent, she would be ready for it.
CHAPTER 44
So Stade lived to see his life's work realised. That was a gift, you could say, and a punishment. I would feel sorry for him, but really, the man cut off my fingers. He deserved everything that he got.
Maybe we all did.
THE MIRRLEES AIR FLEET DISTANCE FROM ROIL VARIABLE
Stade stood in the radio room, hunched next to the nervous radio operator. The poor man had had only bad news to report until now. They had received at last a signal from the Underground. In Stade's darkest hours, he had grown to believe that they had travelled all this way and at such dire cost for nothing. And now, as they travelled within a few miles of the mountain that contained the Project, he’d been vindicated.
“We can see you,” a voice murmured over the radio.
Stade frowned. “As can we. Sam, is that you?” he said. “The bulk of the refugees will be at your gates within the hour. I'm afraid that we have the enemy behind us.”
“You are not to approach,” the voice said. “This is Grappel of the Underground, subsidiary of the free state of Hardacre. Our weapons are trained on you. You are not to approach.”
“But I made this,” Stade said. “All of it. I made this.”
“Yes, you did,” Grappel said.
The ships floated above the horizon. Thousands stood beneath them. And they had not moved for hours. Medicine and Grappel stood in the observation tower above the Underground.
“You have to let them enter,” Medicine said.
“These people killed my family,” Grappel said bitterly. “I owe them nothing but death.”
“Those are my people, not soldiers, not your enemy. You can’t leave them to die,” Medicine pleaded. “They don't even understand what's happening. Please don't repeat the crime of my city. Not everyone supported Stade's stance, for many it was a dark time in history, a terrible time.”
“And your people did nothing. The gates stayed closed to us, they trained their guns on us, and we marched. We marched into the north and so many of us died.”
“But the Roil is approaching. You can't leave them there.”
Grappel shook his head. “I can and I will.”
“Think of them as what they are,” Medicine said. “Workers. Enough people to make the Underground what it must be, the last stronghold of the world. You leave them out there, and all you are doing is giving the enemy more troops. They are not your enemy now, but they will be.”
Grappel frowned, lifted a pair of field glasses and looked south. Behind them the horizon was darkening. He walked from the observation platform, and Medicine thought he had lost this argument, that his people were doomed.
A couple of hours later Grappel returned.
“Look,” Medicine said. “If you won't let my people in, then let me out there. Let me die with them.”
Grappel smiled. “You'd like that, wouldn't you? You are right. It doesn't sit well with me, but you are right. These people do not deserve to die, and we certainly do not deserve more enemies. There's a reason why I've elevated you, Medicine. Sometimes you talk sense.
“Let them in, though if one of those airships so much as dips towards the ground, shoot it down.”
Grappel stood at the iron gates, flanked by his guard, as the Mirrlees folk began to enter.
There was a flash of steel and the first guard fell, but not before he grabbed the Verger and tumbled with him.
“Shut the doors,” someone cried.
Medicine began to run to Grappel.
Then the second Verger rose above the crowd and hurled his knife at Grappel. The leader of the Underground crumpled.
Medicine reached Grappel and the Verger turned, another knife in his hands.
“Well, here I'm granted no small mercies,” the Verger said. “First a rebel leader and now a Confluent traitor.”
He pulled back his knife to throw it, then groaned, blood spilling from his throat, and fell to the ground. Grappel stood above the Verger, a bloody knife in his hand.
He looked at his guards. “Medicine is in charge. I transfer my powers to the cripple. It's the end of days, anyway, what does it matter!”
Then Grappel toppled and Medicine was calling medics, leading Grappel to his rooms, then sprinting back to make sure the refugees had entered and that there would be no recriminations. There was no time and too much to do. But later, he swore, they would hunt the Vergers down.
Outside, the refugees milled. They had nowhere to go.
“Get them inside now!” Medicine roared, thrusting his head through the portal, glaring out at the shadow approaching. He felt all the fear within him uncurl. And for a moment he stopped, and was certain that he would turn and run as deep into the mountain as he could go.
Instead, he ran down to the gates and began mobilisation of their heavy weaponry. The machinery already primed began its swift build to lethalness. Whatever happens, he thought, we will make them feel the cost of this conquest.
The Roil mass was already on the horizon and it raced towards them, but this Roil was different, it did not extend as far as the eye could see, east and west. It was a narrow band of dark, no wider than a mile, though that was wide enough. Above it floated huge airships, or creatures like Aerokin, from which were hung vast mirrors, and before it the ground blazed.
This was no scorched earth retreat, but a scorched earth assault. There was no secrecy now, neither his nor the enemy's. The word he'd been receiving — from the few spies they had left — suggested this was only a small finger of the Roil fuelled by these airship engines. In fact, it had broken off from the main body of the Roil, which remained on the outskirts of Mirrlees.
Medicine wondered if it had been Stade, bitter at the loss of his Underground, who had given the game away. Medicine would not have been surprised; he had left the Underground in disgust.
It was someone else who first saw the aircraft to the west of the Roil mass. A small fleet of airships: Mirrlees craft launching endothermic munitions into the guts of the darkness.
Even now, Stade was fighting to protect his refuge.
And then Medicine ordered the guns to be fired as the darkness came into range. And the ground shook as endothermic matter was launched into the Roil, punching holes in the darkness the size of houses, but the Roil did not halt in its progress, just kept up its march towards them.
The Underground doors opened and then, up out of the crowd, the Wit smoke lifted. Men calmly turned the hoses filled with icy water onto the crowd. All through the Roil mass, people fell screaming to the ground.
“In,” Medicine shouted at those still standing. “The rest of you in.”
“Damn it. Fire the cannon. Hurl ice out into the darkness,” Stade roared. “I did not risk all to see the Underground fail, and should we live out this battle, then you never know, the bastards might yet let us in.”
