A Darkling Plain

nodded instead. “Wren has Theo to look after her,” he said. “But yes, I’d do my bit, if she needed me. So would Clytie; so would every other Londoner. You needn’t worry about her, Tom.”

“Thank you.”

They stood for a moment side by side. Then Pomeroy said, “Well, good night, Apprentice Natsworthy.”

“Good night, Lord Mayor. You’re sure …”

“Don’t fuss,” said Pomeroy amiably. “I’m perfectly capable of putting myself to bed. And don’t worry too much about the Storm, or Harrowbarrow, or any of the rest of it. London can take it.”

He shambled off, and Tom went slowly home to his own hut, where Theo was to be staying now as well. But as he reached the door, he heard Wren’s and Theo’s voices inside, where they must be waiting for him to return. They were talking too softly to make out any words, but he knew what they were saying. They were telling each other all the things he and Hester had told each other once; all the things that lovers had always said to one another, imagining that they were the first people ever to say them.

Not wanting to interrupt, Tom turned away and went out into the open air again. He walked up into the rust hills, going slowly to spare his heart. The western sky looked bruised. I ought to do something, he thought. I have done so little for New London; just brought trouble, really. I should try to do something about this. It’s my responsibility in a way; a family matter. But how could I hope to stop ODIN? I don’t even know where the Storm control it from…

And then he thought, I might not be able to stop ODIN, but perhaps I could stop them using it on New London.

General Naga was a good man—Wren had often spoken about how he had treated her on Cloud 9; how fair and civilized he’d been. Perhaps he was using the weapon only because he was scared, and desperate. Perhaps he was the sort of man who would listen to reason. If he could meet a Londoner, and hear firsthand about New London, surely he would understand that the Storm had no cause to fear it?

Tom was shaking so much that he had to sit down. Could it be done? He supposed it could. There was fuel enough in the Jenny Haniver’s tanks to reach Batmunkh Gompa. And then he remembered Theo telling him how Hester had rescued Lady Naga. Was she in Shan Guo, even now? Might she be able to help persuade General Naga to listen to what Tom had to tell him?

He walked back to Crouch End. He had been gone far longer than he’d realized; Wren and Theo had fallen asleep waiting for him. Tom went quietly past them to his pack, found paper and a pencil, and wrote a letter for his daughter. He left it beside her and stood looking down at her for a while, listening to her breathe, watching the small, sleeping movements of her fingers, just as he used to when she was a baby. He kissed her forehead, and she smiled in her sleep and snuggled closer to Theo.

“Night night, little Wren,” Tom said. “Sleep tight. Sleep tight.”

Then he went out of the hut and shouldered his pack and left Crouch End, heading for the Holloway Road and the place where the Jenny Haniver was moored.

On the plains west of London, Wolf Kobold stood on his favorite observation post, up on Harrowbarrow’s armored spine. The harvester was stationary, buried in a long hill of loose shale with just a few well-camouflaged gun emplacements and watchtowers protruding. It had traveled only by night since it broke away from the Murnau pack, for although the Green Storm’s armies were collapsing, these lands were still enemy territory; Wolf did not want his trip to London interrupted by any foolish battles.

But tonight, as the suburb prepared to move, a different sort of interruption had occurred.

Wolf swung his field glasses and counted seven … nine … twelve immense bonfires blazing in the west. He was too young to remember MEDUSA, but that was the name that came into his mind. His lookouts—trusted men —had reported a blade of light striking down from the sky and setting off those firestorms. He tilted his head, staring at the stars. They looked innocent enough now.

A nearby hatch squeaked open. Hausdorfer emerged.

“Well?”

“Talked to the radio boys,” said Hausdorfer. “They’ve been trying Manchester, Winterthur, Koblenz. Nothing. Some kind of distress signal from Dortmund, then they went dead too.”

Wolf stared at the burning horizon. “What of Murnau?”

“Can’t say. There’s interference on every frequency now. But it looks like the Mossies have found themselves a new toy.” He waited for an order. None came. “Do you want us to turn back, or what?”

“Turn back?” The notion was mildly surprising to Wolf. He considered it for a while, then shook his head. “Do you know what survived best after the Sixty Minute War, Hausdorfer? Rats and roaches. It’s true. I read it in a history book. Cockroaches and rats. So let the old cities burn. It’s Harrowbarrow’s time now. A time for cunning, creeping things. Fire up the engines. Steer straight on to London.”

PART FOUR

Chapter 40 What Have They Done to the Sky

Hester and her companions had watched from the gun slits of General Xao’s new headquarters as the fire from the sky reached down and touched the cities that were closing in on Forward Command, turning them one by one into plumes of blazing fuel and incandescent gas. Grike was with them but saw nothing. The pulses of energy from the mysterious weapon upset the equally mysterious machines inside his head, making his eyes go blank and his armored body shudder helplessly. Lesser Stalkers, who did not have Grike’s strength or Oenone Zero on hand to tend to them, fared even worse. At dawn the defenders of Forward Command found their battle-Stalkers scattered in the trenches like fallen lead soldiers. But by then it did not matter, for on the western plains, where cities and suburbs and flocks of airships had been massed, there was now nothing but smoke.

“What have they done to the sky?” asked Hester, looking from the window at breakfast time. She was still feeling weak from her head wound. She thought at first that the marbled haze that hung over the rooftops was the first sign of a relapse; something gone wrong with her eye or her brain. But a glance at the frightened faces of Oenone and Pennyroyal told her that they could see it too.

The sun rose, pink and shrunken. Flakes that looked like snow were drifting down everywhere. “Snow?” Pennyroyal complained. “In summertime?”

“it is ash,” announced Grike. ” the sky is full of ash.”

General Xao took advantage of the lull in the fighting to have the Fury repaired. “We cannot make contact with Shan Guo,” she told her guests. “The new weapon seems to have interfered with our radio sets. So I am sending you home to Naga with a message. We need orders. Are we to advance? Recapture the ground they took from us? Or do we simply wait for them to surrender?”

Oenone looked at the columns of smoke rising from the dead Traction Cities. She said, “I can’t believe Naga had such a thing and never told me of it. I can’t believe he used it. All those lives gone. It’s horrible!”

Xao bowed. “Personally, I agree. But let’s not say it too loudly, Excellency. My people are most impressed with the new weapon.”

And it was true; as they walked to the docking pan where the Fury lay, the four companions could hear the cheers and songs of victory rising from the lower levels of Forward Command and from all the trenches and fortifications around about. Gunshots popped like champagne corks as relieved.

Green Storm soldiers loosed off some of the ammunition they had been saving for the cities at the sky instead. When a bullet skipped off the metal pavement a few feet ahead of them, they assumed at first it was a spent round falling. “Sweet Poskitt!” cried Pennyroyal indignantly. “They’ll have somebody’s eye out in a minute!”

Only when a flushed, furious-looking soldier lurched out into their path, working another round into the chamber of his carbine, did they understand that the bullet had been aimed at Oenone.