Samuel Lancemaster came up to Ganby and planted the foot of his newly retrieved spear alongside the druid's boots. 'We're out of our time, druid, so much unfamiliar but so much the same.'
'What did you expect?' said Ganby. 'A peaceful old man's death thousands of years ago would never have suited you or the other bandits; on a bed of straw, surrounded by grandchildren and pushed out under the stars to see the sky overhead one last time.'
'You sound like such an end would have suited you just fine, druid. These people treat us like heroes now,' said Samuel. 'But if we save them, it won't take long for their fear of us to return and their gratitude to fade to a memory. Then we'll just be bandits hiding on the margins of the marsh waters again.'
'There are worst things to be,' said Ganby, 'than fey.'
'I know why you followed Elizica to sleep under the hills with us,' said Samuel. 'The druids you betrayed by fighting alongside us were not forgiving types, were they? They would have made a festival of your end, old man, for helping end their sway over the Jackeni.'
'There are no druids in this land any longer; they are as lost to these people as the legends of the Bandits of the Marsh. But the Army of Shadows, now, they truly scare me. They are like wrathful gods in the heavens. When we fought the gill-necks they only wanted to usurp our rule over Jackals for their calflings' sakes, to make our territory their own. I understood their motives, even when I was digging spike pits on our beaches to kill them. But these dark ones, they would gnaw on the Kingdom of Jackals' bones until it is less than dust. I can feel the lifeforce of our land being drained, my sorceries fading along with it.'
'You always did jump at your own shadow,' laughed Samuel. 'Now you have an army of them to worry about.'
'Mock, then,' said Ganby, irritated. 'Your spear arm will be tested soon enough when we arrive at the bottom of their beanstalk.'
'I have a bad feeling about this,' said Samuel in a fair imitation of the druid's voice before he walked off.
Ganby held out his left hand flat in front of his face. It was trembling. He reached out with his right hand to hold it steady. There were worst things to be than a coward, too. Like dead.
Purity saw Watt and Cam Quarterplate waiting for her on the other side of the sloping road outside their shop's bay windows. There were plenty of people in the street between them now; people loading up their possessions on carts and abandoning the town, others coming down to the harbour and the Spartiate with hunting rifles or the weapons the fleeing convicts had thrown aside. Purity crossed over to them and saw that Watt had a package under his arm.
'Are you coming to the north with me?'
'Not I, damson,' said Watt, slapping his wooden leg with a hand. 'How do you think I lost this? Mangled by a shell-loading cable when I was thirteen on a seadrinker not much different from that old girl down there. My days as a u-boat boy are over, that's so.'
'And you fastbloods will still need sturdy boots,' said the steamman, 'out in the forests and the hills.'
'More than ever,' said Purity. 'To stay ahead of the slats.'
Watt held out the parcel he was holding. 'It ain't right for a queen to go around without covering up her toes.'
Purity put her hand on the wax paper then smiled. 'Lay them aside for me. It'll give me something to look forward to when I come back.'
Clutching the parcel with mixed feelings, Watt watched Purity walk away. She had been lucky that she had left a good footprint or two back in the dust of the shoe shop's floor. The shoes he had made for her would have fitted perfectly if she had tried them on. Perhaps they would have reminded her of him, too, when she glanced down at them every so often. Oh well. Purity Drake looked like a queen and talked like a queen, but Watt was a parliamentarian at heart, and he was voting with the one good foot that his service in the fleet sea arm had left him with.
'Good luck,' the apprentice whispered.
'I rather think, observed Cam Quarterplate, 'that you were growing quite fond of her.'
Watt looked down briefly, embarrassed, and clomped his wooden leg down on the cobbles. 'You know what I like about working for you, Cam? You never made fun of me for this, not even when all the customers were having their little jokes about young Master One-Boot working down at the cobbler's. Not even then.'
Cam Quarterplate's skull unit rotated towards the sky. 'The great pattern needs many different threads in its weave. Look up there. The birds are heading south, young softbody.'
'Too bloody right, old steamer.'
Watt hurried back into the shop to pack the rest of his tools up.
The slats were coming back to Wainsmouth. You didn't need to travel all the way to the icy north to find the Army of Shadows.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Commodore Black rubbed the grit out of his face. 'There! Is that what my poor mortal eyes think it is?'
It was. Coming out of the sand haze was a figure with a body slumped over its shoulders, briefly silhouetted against the last pizo-electric crackle of the raging beast of a storm.
'My ancestors' cogs be blessed,' said Coppertracks, his vision plate magnifying the distant image. 'They made it out of the storm! It is Molly and Keyspierre softbody.'
Even Sandwalker's normally stony face momentarily cracked into a smile. The group stopped and turned to look behind them in amazement, as if the pair might be a mirage cast by the heat of the day pounding down on them from above. They unslung their backpacks into a pile on the sand as they gawped at the miraculous sight.
'But I fear she doesn't look well,' added the steamman.
'The storm has slowed us down,' said Sandwalker. He pointed to a distant peak piercing the empty sky. 'We must make better time towards the mountains or Molly will surely die on the way.'
'What have you done to her?' shouted the commodore as Keyspierre stumbled to a stop in front of the expedition. 'She's as bruised as a barrel of lemons hauled through a storm tossing.'
The secret policeman unshouldered Molly and lay her body down on the dunes. Sandwalker was immediately at her side with a canteen; trying to give her the derisory dribble of water that remained to them.
Keyspierre squared up to the commodore, throwing the strip of severed guide rope at the u-boat man's feet. 'Thank you, compatriot, for rescuing the little author.'
Commodore Black lunged at the shiftie, but Duncan caught him.
'He's brought her back out of the storm, man, all the way through the lightning. The bampot didn't have to do that.'
'He was as likely using her blessed body as a shield to take any bolts that were coming his way.'
'I was obliged to render Compatriot Templar unconscious,' said Keyspierre. 'Her sickness has left her unhinged. She woke up screaming that I had eaten her hands, then tried to throttle me with the very fingers that were supposed to be inside my stomach.'
'Why did you do it?' asked Duncan. 'You could have just left the lassie to the storm, claimed that she was separated from you.'
'If you ask me that then you have no code,' said Keyspierre, 'and even less idea of what the Commonshare stands for. We are all equal and all equally worthy of saving. No officer of Committee Eight would leave a compatriot behind.'
'I will carry her,' said Coppertracks as Sandwalker finished administering the last of their water. 'This heat has less influence on my organs and my treads can roll as well over the dunes with Molly softbody's weight across me as with my own.'
