beast.'
'No!' Purity stepped forward, drawing her sword and holding it above the hovering slat like a divining rod.
'You do not yet possess the skill to use your maths-blade for such a subtle task,' said Ganby.
'Less subtle than a burning spear?' Purity ignored the druid's words and felt her blade flutter above the slat, drawing in the essence of the creature, revealing it for what it was. 'So young,' gasped Purity.
The blade drew in information from the creature's cells, memories imprinted at a primeval level in the thing's brain. The slat was barely two years old – so short a life. Their kind only lived up to five years old. Everything was instinct: its drive, its hunger, its anger, its loyalty, its knowledge – weapons, fighting, obeying – all burnt into it as reflex, the slat fashioned as artfully and intentionally as the edge of a bayonet. Cast not in steel, but in flesh. A living weapon gestated inside a tank alongside thousands of its brethren. The sword probed down the slat's body. No gender, no reproductive organs, just pea-sized hollows where the seed of such things lay suppressed and wizened. This was hardly a creature at all, just a mutilated piece of artificial flesh given a spark of life and set loose to be thrown upon the sabres and rifle fire of the Army of Shadows' enemies.
Purity felt a terrible pity for it, mixed with contempt for the creators of such a thing – that its masters could warp the sanctity of life to such an aim.
'Good,' said Ganby, watching waves of light twisting out from Purity's sword. 'Now the mind. Where are the slats concentrated, what are their armies' weaknesses?'
Purity ran the blade up to the slat's eyeless skull. Had the old goat arranged the slat's torture to goad her into using the sword like this? Just another lesson from the sly druid. Purity's sword began to pulse, shifting its power to match the complex patterns stamped across the slat's mind, picking at the memories that went beyond mere instinct. A dark chamber, the slat using its throat to bounce noise off thousands of its brothers, practising claw strikes against granite posts, seeing the world in reflections of sound. Darkness and light the same. Barely two days old. Feeding, fighting. But weakness? Where were their armies' weaknesses here in Jackals? Finally she saw what she was searching for, the blade blazing with the information it had extracted, turning the possibilities and modelling them, showing Purity a potential way to victory. Could it be possible?
But just the chance of it.
There was still the matter of Kyorin and the nature of his people. Purity began to probe for answers but the slat had realized what she was doing, felt its mind being opened, and began to howl in terror. Purity felt the impulse in its skull before she realized what it was. Another reflex, buried deep, and made as fundamental as the instinct to breathe. The twin poison sacs that fed its fangs with a viper-deadly bite exploded inside its throat, poison coursing back through its veins towards the twin heart chambers thumping within its chest.
The slat's body, still suspended in the air, flexed briefly then fell still: with its last breath it hissed slat, slat, and started reeling off a line of numbers before it fell to silence. Purity's sword dug out the numbers' meaning from the creature's dying mind. The numbers were its name, allocated at birth as its wet, dripping flesh slid out of an open tube. The slats believed that repeating them at death would admit them to the warriors' afterlife. So simple, so brutishly short-lived, but they had still developed a culture passed on in secret throat-clicks – a piece of existence discrete from the all-encompassing control of their masters.
Ganby sensed the expiration of life in the beast and let its body drop to the grass of the clearing. 'Suicide. It killed itself rather than tell us anything.'
'No, it wanted to live,' said Purity, sadly. 'Its own body turned against it.'
Samuel Lancemaster brandished his spear angrily. 'My way would have-'
'Ended the same way,' said Ganby. 'Probably a lot faster too. The slat only realized what Purity was doing to it when she touched its mind. It would have suicided as soon as you tortured its flesh.'
'By the tail of Old Mother Corn,' swore Jenny Blow. 'What is that foul stench?'
Purity pointed down to the slat. 'The same thing happened to the ones that attacked us at Tock House. Coppertracks told me their blood becomes acidic after death, melting their organs and making a post mortem impossible.'
Ganby rolled the decomposing corpse out of the clearing. 'The Army of Shadows doesn't want anyone to gain the knowledge of how their pets are created.'
Purity wrinkled her nose in disgust at the idea as much as the smell. Surely there wasn't a womb mage or worldsinger on the continent who would want to create such a monstrosity as a slat, not even in Cassarabia? 'I don't care how the slats are created, because now I know where the Army of Shadows' weak spot is, where the slats are massed. Where they fear attack!'
The Bandits of the Marsh looked at her, and only the crackle of the fire Jenny Blow had raised sounded inside the clearing.
'There,' said Purity, pointing to the iron moon, a pale red disc in the afternoon sky. 'That's where the Army of Shadows' masters are. Waiting for their new cities to be built and their slat armies to crush the fight out of the last of us before they take permanent residence down here.'
'You want us to destroy an entire moon?' said Jackaby Mention in disbelief. 'Had this beast been up there?'
'I don't think so,' said Purity. 'I only got a brief flash of its memories of the north before it died, but I think it was a guard on their lifting room. The slats have many legions protecting their cable up to the iron moon.'
'My feet have carried me far,' said Jackaby. 'But never as far as a moon. Jenny Blow's breath cannot reach it, nor Samuel's spear, nor even the spells of a cowardly old druid.'
'But I have this sword, and I think it's sharp enough to cut the stake lines that anchor the iron moon to our world,' said Purity. 'You wanted to know how to hurt them: breaking their cable will do that. Now the iron moon is joined to our land, their cable is incredibly taut. Cut the cable and it will whiplash back with all the force of the turning of our world, slice the masters' fortress into pieces and spill the Army of Shadows into the night.'
'A beanstalk,' laughed Ganby. 'Take an axe to the beanstalk and the giant comes tumbling down.'
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Molly watched in horror as the leader of the Kal's revolution pulled Laylaydin to him and sank his newly appeared fangs into her neck, holding the woman tight as she collapsed, the skin around Laylaydin's neck throbbing as he sucked the blood out of her body at a staggeringly fast rate. Molly's spell of paralysis was punctured by the screams of the other natives in the chamber, scattering as a line of slats burst in through the main tunnel entrance, cutting apart the running Kals with bolts from their rifles. The blue-faced Kals nearest the door were dragged to the floor by leaping soldiers and torn apart. Molly was desperately trying to find the other members of her expedition amidst the confusion; she thought she saw the fleeing form of Lord Rooksby hitting the floor as a slat rifle-butt clubbed him from behind. But where were the two shifties? Then a passing bolt of fire skimmed past her eyes and she lost her vision to an explosion of fierce light and a blaze of dots. Molly stumbled, trying to rub the explosion of tears out of her eyes, flinching as a hand grabbed hers.
'This way!' It was the voice of Sandwalker, the nomad Kal, dragging her through the screams and the crackling sound of the slats' discharging rifles.
'I can't see!' Molly shouted, nearly tripping over something soft and fleshy on the floor.
'Duck your head,' warned Sandwalker, the weight of his fingers forcing her head down. 'Keep going, the floor is flat.' His voice was echoing – it sounded as if they had entered one of the water pipes in the cavern's walls.
'What was-?'
'No talking,' snapped Sandwalker in his mind-voice. 'Slats hunt by sound and these tunnels carry noise far. Hold my hand, stop when I stop, go when I go.'
Molly ran with the nomad as fast as she could, trying to keep the sound of her panting low and controlled. Sometimes they climbed up what felt like small slanting passages. There was no sound of pursuit behind them that Molly could hear, but she flinched at a hissing noise. A peppery scent filled the corridor.
'Something to destroy their sense of smell if they track us this far,' said the nomad's mind-voice.
After running for what seemed like hours Molly found her sight coming slowly back to her, although it was
