disk, like so, to activate it. The disk also contains a thinking machine – a powerful model designed to subvert the barge's controls. Keep it pressed down on the dome and when the train of barges is under our command, I will re-instruct the lead unit to increase speed and stop when we are far enough into the desert to avoid all but a long-range slat patrol.'
Duncan unslung the supply packs the commodore was carrying and tied them around his own back, dangling them across his battered travel case. 'If a wee Kal bairn can make the jump…'
'I will jump first,' said Sandwalker.
'I'll go behind you,' said Molly. She fingered the coin-like device the nomad had given her. 'I'll take the second barge.'
The others called out their numbers and Commodore Black came in second to last, his barge in front of Jeanne's. 'What a cruel life this is. I'll match a sabre with any enemy, but now my mettle is to be tested by leaping like a poor frog into the foul burning excretions of the Army of Shadows. What a shameful end for my rare genius.'
They waited five minutes for the combination they needed. Then it happened, barges were passing on both sides of the canal, the convoy on their side moving closer to the wall of the canal to avoid the barges passing in the other direction. Sandwalker ran towards the edge of the sand-blown embankment, hurling himself off the side. Molly took a deep breath and followed, one step, two, then she flung herself away and out, keeping her eyes locked on the flat oblong of the second barge, as if just looking at its hull would be enough to draw her down safely onto its surface. It tipped to port as she hit with a painful jolt to her ankles, the catamaran blades taking a second to stabilize against her weight, and Molly had to fight not to roll over the side into the burning effluent below. But something else had detected her weight, too, the mound at the front of the barge lighting up with an evil red light and emitting a caterwaul siren. Molly practically flung herself across the dome, slapping her coin on its top. It was as if she had plunged a dagger into a skull, the light inside the dome flaring up and then dying, the siren running down to silence.
Sirens were rising and falling behind her as the others landed on their barges and struck the sentry machines with Sandwalker's miniature transaction engines. Despite the heat of the sun in the purple sky, Molly was cold with sweat. All the sirens had fallen silent expect one. Something was terribly wrong at the end of the barge train.
'Your coin, lass,' Commodore Black was shouting. 'Use your coin.'
Jeanne was standing up behind her barge's dome and she raised an empty hand aloft. 'I slipped on the sand up there, it's gone.'
'Leap across to my barge, lass. Come on, it's your only chance.'
Jeanne drew her knife and lashed at the cable holding her barge to the end of the train. 'My barge will kill us all. The people must prevail.'
'No, Jeanne!'
But it was too late; the current of the canal carried Jeanne's screeching barge away from them and she opened her fingers in a final farewell. Then there was a flash of light and fire and the walls of the canal rattled with debris, splashes of filthy liquid spattering Molly's barge. Jeanne was gone. Blown to the uncaring winds.
On the next barge down, Keyspierre picked himself up and looked coldly at Molly, turning his back on her as if she was responsible for his daughter's death. If only Molly hadn't launched them early from the kingdom, if and if, all of the infinite if onlys. Molly collapsed onto her own barge, watching the particles of metal in the sludge catch the afternoon light.
Borne with the stench towards the heart of the wastes.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
We need to find a sailboat,' said Jenny Blow, watching Samuel Lancemaster's broad muscles bulge with each dip of his oars into the water. Purity didn't consider it likely that they would. They were following the River Ald west, and it appeared as if the desperate refugees who had preceded them had stolen every available boat.
'We were lucky enough to find this old thing hidden in the reeds,' said Purity.
'When we get to the coast we may have more fortune in the harbour towns,' speculated Ganby. 'Something to carry us north towards the Army of Shadows' terrible great beanstalk.'
Purity didn't voice her worries, but she doubted that too. All the large craft would have been used to flee to the colonies in Concorzia; anything small enough for the five of them to manage would have been seized to flee south or out to one of the isles. While she had been busy at Highhorn, it looked as if the entire kingdom had fallen into madness. Purity had even seen boats burnt in the river, not by the Army of Shadows, but by Jackelian turning against Jackelian. At least the current was pushing them in the right direction.
'I'll fill some sails fast enough,' said Jenny.
'My rowing is not quick enough for you?' asked Samuel. 'Or would you prefer to give Jackaby a turn?'
'I have my pride,' said the black bandit. 'I am not a living paddle to be dropped behind the transom.'
The conversation stopped, for as they rounded a corner, they discovered the course of the river blocked by a sixpenny steam ferry, its cabin covered in faded advertising hoardings that had seen better days – Smith-Evans' Balsamic Cough Elixir; WW Mackinder's of Middlesteel and her Gold Medal Pianos – and under the passenger bench awnings a group of men waited, rifles and pistols clutched and pointing towards Purity's rowboat. An order to heave to was shouted out from the sixpenny steamer. Were they brigands? Whoever they were, their boat looked sound enough and the twin stacks behind the cabin were emitting wisps of steam.
'Why do you block our way?' Samuel shouted from the front of their boat.
'We guard the approach to Wainsmouth,' a man wearing a brown flat cap called back.
Purity stood up so her voice would carry across. 'Wainsmouth still has people?'
'More and more every day,' shouted the man on the steamer. 'It is the last free town, unless any of the upland cities are still left standing.' He gazed down, obviously bemused by Samuel's archaic cuirass and tall spear. 'Is that all there is of you? All right, pass on, friend.'
Samuel rowed them past the passenger boat with three swift, strong strokes while Purity gazed back up at the men.
A free town, still. Perhaps with an equally free sailboat to carry them north? Their luck was turning at last.
The guard on the sixpenny ferry had been correct about more people turning up at the last free town every day. Outside Wainsmouth, the old town walls were packed with crowds queuing up in front of a line of tables for the chance to be admitted to safety inside.
Names, ages and occupations of those being admitted were recorded in ledgers, along with many other details. Few people seemed to fail whatever criteria were being applied to entry. The family in front of Purity and the Bandits of the Marsh was gushingly grateful that they were to be given sanctuary, the woman full of spite and bile over some village they had tried to enter on their way to the town whose desperate inhabitants had chased them away as thieves, waving pitchforks and birding rifles.
At one point, a couple of redcoats came trundling towards the town gate in an empty cart pulled by two grey shire horses. There was a short, disappointed exchange of shouts, then the cart was admitted back inside Wainsmouth proper. It sounded to Purity as if the cart had been out scavenging for something, but had found no luck on its search. She hoped it wasn't for food from the farms dotted along the South Downs. The mob of refugees might turn into a besieging army if they were turned away for a lack of supplies now.
They were a motley collection keeping order among the mob outside Wainsmouth. The country constabulary in their black frockcoats, redcoats from the regiments, even some shifty-looking fleet naval arm tars. But the desperation for food and shelter meant that the crowds were kept naturally pliable by their desire to be given sanctuary. No one protested too much when they were relieved of their packs of food and whatever other
