A Darkling Plain

and pointing a gun at her and shouting “Stop!” Wren screamed and dropped her jacket. All around her, more gray- clad men were appearing from the undergrowth. She didn’t recognize their faces, but she knew by their getups and their tinted goggles that they were one of Harrowbarrow’s scouting parties. She raised her hands and tried not to let her voice wobble as she said, “I’m Wren Natsworthy. I’m a friend of your mayor.”

One of the men searched her for weapons, more thoroughly than Wren felt was really necessary (surely they must know that you couldn’t hide anything very dangerous inside your bra?). Their leader said, “You come,” and they were off, running quickly through the rough, stumbly country, squeezing through crannies in the walls of track marks and wading across their flooded floors. The men moved fast and easily, and shoved Wren when she showed any sign of flagging. She was exhausted by the time the armored flank of Harrowbarrow came in sight, half submerged in mud and torn-up bushes.

A hatchway opened. The scouts led Wren inside and slammed the hatch cover shut behind her. Then Harrowbarrow went grinding on its way toward the debris fields.

It felt very strange to be back in the streets of the burrowing suburb after all that had happened; very strange indeed to stand in Wolf Kobold’s town hall, on soft carpets, among velvet curtains and fine paintings and the gentle glow of argon uplighters. Wren stared at herself in a mirror and barely recognized the disheveled, weather-beaten young Londoner who looked out at her. “Wren!”

They must have called him up from the bridge. He wore boots and breeches and a collarless shirt with big fans of sweat spreading down from the armpits. He looked thinner than she remembered, and she wondered if it had been very hard for him, that journey alone across the Out-Country. Just for an instant she felt pleased and relieved to see him, and she seized on the feeling and used it to make a smile, a shy, warm smile. “Herr Kobold …”

“Why so formal, Wren?” He came to her and took both her hands in his. “I’m so happy you came to meet us. What brings you here? You are alone? Where is your father?”

“He is still in London,” she lied.

“Do the Londoners know of our arrival?”

“Not yet,” Wren told him.

“Then what are you doing here?”

“I’ve been waiting for you. I knew you’d come…” She let her smile fade, looked as if she were about to cry, to faint. Kobold helped her to a chair. “Oh, Wolf,” she said, “Dad’s a prisoner! After you left, the Londoners thought we must have been in league with you. They locked us in horrible cages, old animal cages from the zoo. Dad’s not well, but they won’t let him out. So I escaped, and I’ve been living in the debris at the edge of the field, waiting and waiting, and I thought you’d never come!”

Kobold’s arms went around her, pulling her face against his chest. Wren managed to squeeze out a few tears, and then found that if she thought hard about Theo and Dad, it made her cry for real. She said shakily, “Harrowbarrow is my only hope. You’ll keep Daddy safe, won’t you, when you eat New London?”

“Of course, of course,” said Kobold, stroking her hair. “By this evening we will be at Crouch End; the Londoners and all they have will be our prize; your father will be safe.”

Wren pulled away from him, looking horrified. “This evening? But you’ll be too late! They are to leave this afternoon! The launch date has been brought forward because of all the fighting… Oh, you must go faster!”

Wolf shook his head. “Impossible. It will take us that long to skirt the debris fields.”

“Show me,” said Wren, wiping her face with the back of her grubby hand.

She followed him along the fuggy walkways and across the dismantling yards, where gangs of men were preparing heavy cutting and rending engines. They climbed the ladder to the bridge and found Hausdorfer at the helm, his peculiar spectacles flashing as he nodded a greeting to Wren. He started to say something in German to Kobold, but the young mayor waved him away and led Wren across to the chart table, where a map of the debris fields had been spread out. Wolf must have drawn it from memory after returning to Harrowbarrow; Wren instantly saw several errors, as well as big blank spaces in the heart of the field, where Wolf had never been.

He pointed at the map with a pair of dividers, tracing a line that wriggled around the northern edge of the main field and then struck in toward Crouch End. “That’s my plan.”

“Why not go straight across the middle?” asked Wren.

“I don’t know what lies there. The wreckage might be impassable. And there are those electrical discharges the Londoners tell stories of—”

“Fairy stories,” said Wren dismissively. “It’s just as you suspected. The sprites are a tale they told us to keep us from nosing about. That one we saw the first day was faked by one of Garamond’s boys hiding in the debris with a lightning gun.” She smiled at him. “Look. If you want to be sure of reaching Crouch End before they get their new city moving, go this way. There’s a sort of valley stretching through the wreckage that will take you almost all the way there. There are no lookouts in that part, either, so you’ll stay undetected longer.”

She picked up a pencil that hung on a piece of frayed string from the corner of the table, and drew a line on the chart for Harrowbarrow to follow; west to east through the debris field; straight along Electric Lane.

The lads on watch beside the Archaeopteryx had heard the muffled engines in the west by the time Theo arrived. They were standing on a high promontory of wreckage outside the hangar, squinting into the murk. As he scrambled toward them, he heard one say, “I can’t see anything. It’s the volcano,” and the other reply, “Or maybe it’s an airship engine. Maybe there’s an airship circling above all this smog—”

“It’s not an airship!” Theo shouted, and ducked as they turned toward him, afraid that they would fire their crossbows at him. But they only stared. The same boys he’d talked to yesterday. He tried to remember their names; Will Hallsworth and Jake Henson.

“Will,” he said, walking toward them with his hands outstretched to show he was not armed. “Jake, there’s a suburb coming. Harrowbarrow. You’ve got to warn the others. Your new city has to move out now.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Jake warned his companion. “He’s a Mossie! Mr. Garamond said—”

“Mr. Garamond is wrong,” Theo insisted. “If I were a Mossie, what would I be doing coming to warn you about Harrowbarrow?”

“Maybe there is no Harrowbarrow,” said Will, thinking hard. “Maybe it’s a Mossie trick.”

A snarl of engines drowned out his voice, coming from somewhere to the southwest. A crash and clang of falling debris too. The Londoners stared. Smoke and clouds of dust and rust flakes drifted across the southern sky.

“It’s surfacing!” shouted Theo. “It’s reached the edge of the wreck! Come on!”

“What about the Archy?” asked Jake. “We can’t just leave her here!”

“We’ll have to fetch Lurpak or Clytie…”

“There’s no time!” shouted Theo, as the rusty deck plate beneath them shook and shifted, dislodged by the vibrations from the hungry suburb that was shouldering its way through the wreck a mile to the south.

“Well, we can’t fly her!” wailed Will.

“I can.”

“Yes, home to your stinking Mossie friends; we’re not falling for that one!”

“Will,” shouted Theo, “I’m not with the Green Storm! Trust me!” He scrambled into the hangar, staring at the Archaeopteryx. “Is she fueled?”

“I think so. Lurpak Flint was down here yesterday working on her.”

Theo rattled the gondola door. It was locked, and when he asked for the keys, Will and Jake looked blank. He picked up a hunk of metal and smashed the door in, then grabbed a knife from Will’s belt and started to hack at the ropes that anchored the airship. “Her controls will probably be locked,” he shouted as he worked. “But that doesn’t matter. The wind’s with us; even if I can’t get the engines on, it’ll still be quicker than running to Crouch End.”

Will and Jake started to object, then gave up and joined him. The airship shivered as the ropes fell away. Theo noticed two rockets resting in racks beneath the forward engine pods. If he could get to Crouch End and persuade the Archaeopteryx’s crew to return with him, there was a chance they could slow or stop Harrowbarrow; he’d heard stories of how a well-aimed rocket, shot down an exhaust stack or into a track support, could bring a whole city to a halt. Then New London would have time to escape, and perhaps Theo could find his way aboard the crippled harvester and reach Wren.

The three boys scrambled into the gondola as the un-tethered airship began to rise. On the flight deck, Theo found that he could work the elevator and rudder wheels, although he had no way to turn on the engines. Sunlight poked in through the gondola windows as the Archaeopteryx rose out of the top of the