A Darkling Plain

Haniver and her passengers toward it like a dark star.

Chapter 18 That Colossal Wreck

After a few hours the fog thinned, and Wren was able to see properly for the first time the landscape that she was flying over—or rather flying in, for Tom was still keeping the airship as low as he dared, hiding her behind the steep fans of dried mud that towered between London’s old track marks. As far as Wren could see, the land around her was not much different from the plains the cities rolled across back on their side of the line. The Green Storm had cleared these eastern steppes of Traction Cities, but they had not yet built settlements of their own. Sometimes, through clefts in the walls of the track mark, the distant lights of forts or farmsteads showed, far off across the churned, weed-tangled land; but if they were keeping watch at all, they were not watching for a single small airship.

London’s wake ran ruler straight toward the east. Each of the city’s tracks had plowed a trench two hundred feet wide and often almost as deep. Tom steered the Jenny along the northernmost one until the ribbon of sky above him started to turn pale. Then he set her down to wait out the hours of daylight.

Later, sitting watch on the silent flight deck while he slept, Wren looked up into the sky and saw dozens of Green Storm airships pass over, very high and heading west. Then the rhythmic wingbeats of a flock of Stalker-birds caught her eye, also flying west. She pointed them out to Wolf Kobold, but he said, “Nothing to worry about. Routine troop movements.”

As angry as she had been at him the night before, Wren felt glad that he was there with them; glad of his soldierly certainty; his confidence. And already, as Harrowbarrow fell behind, he seemed to be softening, just as Tom had promised. His voice and his expression had grown gentler, and when Wren asked him to do something, he obeyed meekly, as if conceding that, aboard the Jenny Haniver, she was the expert.

He was right about the birds, though. None came low or close enough to see the Jenny’s russet envelope amid the red earth of the track mark.

That night they flew on, and the next day passed in the same way, except that there was a deep, clear pool of water close to where Tom set the airship down, and Wren swam in it. The water was numbingly cold, its surface filled with bright reflections that shattered ahead of her. She turned on her back and floated, feeling her swimming dress balloon around her, listening to the silence. Her old life, Vineland and Brighton, seemed impossibly far away.

Stones scampered down the steep wall of the track mark and plopped into the water, spreading rings of overlapping ripples toward her. Wolf was clambering between the trees that jutted from the track wall. He saw Wren and waved. “Just taking a look!” he called.

Wren swam ashore and changed quickly into her clothes, making sure that the Jenny Haniver was between her and Wolf. When she emerged, wet haired and shivery, she could not see him, but when she scrambled up to the top of the track mark, she found him lying on a flat, grassy ledge, peering through a pocket telescope across the Storm’s country.

“What can you see?” she asked.

“Nothing to worry about.”

He handed Wren the telescope and she put it to her eye. Southward, a plain of brown grass rolled away toward distant blue hills. A cluster of the Storm’s silly wind turbines flickered in the sunlight above a small static. Farther east something else was moving; a long, low town, Wren thought at first, then realized that it couldn’t be.

“Supply train, heading west with provisions for their armies,” said Wolf. “They’ve laid railways all the way from the mountains of Shan Guo to the Rustwater. That’s how I got home from London last time: hiding in a freight car. Most of the trains aren’t manned.”

“What, not even a driver?” asked Wren, focusing on the black electric locomotive at the front of the train, a blunt, windowless thing, charging along like a bull.

“The engine is the driver. A Popjoy Mark XII Stalker, controlled by a Resurrected human brain. Some poor dissident or captured soldier whom the Storm have turned into a train engine. They aren’t worth getting sentimental about, Wren. They’re savages, and it is either them or us.”

Wren knew he was referring to the night battle, apologizing, or explaining. She tried to think of a riposte, but nothing came.

“Look, it’s slowing,” said Wolf, taking back the telescope. “Must be a bridge or weak bit of rail there. That would be a useful place to climb aboard, if we ever need to.”

“What do you mean?”

Wolf grinned at her. “If anything goes wrong with your airship, we’ll be walking home. A lift aboard one of those trains will cut weeks off the journey.”

Wren nodded. She knew he was hoping to unsettle her, and refused to let him. “Look,” she said, pointing. “The trees grow close to the rails there. You could hide there while you waited for a train.”

Wolf laughed, pleased by her show of bravery. “I like you, Wren! There are no girls in Murnau who would make a journey like this and stay so cool about it. You are—how would you say it—cold-blooded.”

“Must take after my mum,” said Wren.

“Not far now,” Tom announced, as he started the engines that night. Wren had gone aft to catch up on her sleep in the stern cabin, but Wolf was pacing the flight deck, pausing from time to time to stare out over the control panels into the blackness ahead, waiting impatiently for a glimpse of London. “We’re close,” he said softly, as if to himself. “We’re very close now…”

Sails of dried mud thrown up by London’s tracks blotted out the night sky. Twice the sounds of the engines woke birds, which came flapping past the gondola windows and startled Tom. The second time he cried out, and brought Wolf springing to his side.

“It’s all right,” Tom said sheepishly. “Nothing. Just birds. I was in a fight with the Storm’s flying Stalkers, years ago. I’ve been nervous of birds ever since.”

“You’re a brave man, Herr Natsworthy,” said Wolf, relaxing, going back to his pacing.

“Brave?” Tom laughed. “Look at me. I’m shaking like a leaf!”

“Even brave men feel fear. And the things you’ve done … Wren has told me some of the wonderful adventures you had when you were young.”

“They didn’t feel wonderful at the time,” said Tom. “I was just scared stiff, mostly. It was only luck that brought me through alive. Every time I tried to do anything, it all went wrong…”

They flew on. After a few hours Wren relieved Tom at the controls. He switched on the coffee machine and shook Wolf, who was dozing on the window seat. “Coffee?”

The young man frowned. “What time is it? Are we at the debris fields?”

“Not yet.”

“Dad?” said Wren from the pilot’s seat. “Dad, look!”

Forgetting the coffee, Tom went to stand beside his daughter, leaning over the banks of control levers to peer out through the nose windows. The sky was pale, the first hint of dawn starting to show behind the distant mountains. Closer than the mountains, black against the sky, stood a squat, windowless tower, blocking the track mark ahead. For a panicky instant Tom wondered if the Green Storm had built a fortress here to guard the wreck of London.

“It’s a wheel,” whispered Wolf, staring over Wren’s shoulder, fascinated.

As Wren eased the steering levers back and the Jenny rose, and the rounded thing slid by beneath her, Tom saw that the other man was right; it was buckled, corroding, shaggy with weeds, but unmistakably one of London’s wheels. Beyond it the Out-Country mud was strewn with immense, dark shapes; more wheels, lengths of twisted axle, strange melted masses of metal flung out from the exploding city. Cast-off tracks were strewn across it all, like ruined roadways leading toward the mountain of scrap that was just coming into view through the mist ahead.

Tom held his breath. He remembered the last time he had seen London, blazing and wracked by explosions,