white robes. Their contribution to the war effort would be in tending to the automatics, they had argued, in converting the cogs and artful clockwork mechanisms of their mechanical servants to a war footing. But their wives had known better. They had dragged their menfolk to the drinking basins and plunged their faces under the water until they could breathe no longer and were forced to sup the drug-filled waters. And where the men had no wives, the warrior maidens of the free company had broken down doors and performed the same rites on the trembling virgin lads.
Now the Catosian law that all men must walk clean-shaven save in time of war was showing its worth. Within days of drinking the Blood of Forman Thawnight, the men of the city had sprouted beards that would have made a polar barbarian proud. Sathens’ nights had been filled with the sound of its men screeching their newfound rage at the stars. The mornings found adrenaline-twitching husbands begging their wives to pass on the skills of the women’s mandatory daily war practice.
The force commander extended her brass telescope to its maximum length and was about to raise it to her eyes when one of the philosopher scientists barged forward and offered her a heavy double-tubed binocular set. ‘Use these. Gas compression lens. Triple the range of that old piece of brass.’
‘You have been busy,’ said the force commander, approvingly.
‘A toy!’ shouted one of the scientist’s fellows. Then he proudly pointed to his ranks of automatics shining like steammen knights in front of the city’s walls, jangling with maces, spears, and ammunition bins. ‘Does he expect you to toss his binoculars towards the enemy’s helmets and brain them? I took four of my own servants and built them into a cannon, a cannon that walks! What is that piece of optics compared to my genius?’
The two males looked as if they were about to start wrestling over the matter, but a company leader stepped forward and as she drew her sword, both men hurriedly stepped back into the ranks.
‘The enemy had better come soon,’ whispered the force commander’s aide. ‘Trying to keep any semblance of discipline among these damned males …’ ‘Be careful what you wish for.’
‘The city of Unarta was not expecting an attack,’ said the aide. ‘There is no element of surprise here. Our city is reordered for war, as are our people. Even my little husband will fight today.’
‘What else can we expect from filthy barbarians?’ said the force commander. ‘A declaration spear shoved into the sparring field and five days of feasting with the opposition free company first? Well, we shall have the measure of these foreign dogs soon enough.’
There was a rifle shot below as one of the free company officers punished a fighter trying to break the order of the line. Another male overcome with the berserker fury of his drugs a little too early.
‘Save it for the enemy,’ muttered the force commander.
Yes, the enemy. Unarta’s survivors had been hysterical. Men, of course. No warrior woman would willingly abandon her city. Carry me to victory or carry me home on my shield. The end had come shockingly fast, but there was one thing Unarta’s survivors agreed on. The cloud. The hideous crimson cloud gathering overhead and a darkness like night falling during the high heat of the day. Something terrible was coming out of the north. But what was the Army of Shadows? The far north was just a wide wilderness, worthless ice plains and glaciers left over from the age of the coldtime. It had been centuries since any lord of the north had emerged capable of uniting the polar barbarians’ feuding tribes.
A flaming cloud was rolling forward, shadows lengthening across their olive groves. The force commander rolled a wheel on the side of her binoculars, a hiss escaping from the instrument as its amplification was pushed beyond its safety parameters. At last, she saw the enemy; saw what the hundreds of thousands of corpses now rotting at Unarta had seen before they died.
The Army of Shadows was like nothing any Catosian city-state had ever faced before. The force commander experienced a feeling she had never known before. Fear.
She slammed her rifle against her shield and the drumming was taken up across the thousands formed up in front of the wall and the thousands more manning the ramparts. Anything to smother the feeling of dread rising in her stomach. Did her fighters realize they were now drumming their own march into the gates of hell?
Molly saw Commodore Black opening the door to Tock House just as she was struggling up the main staircase with a wooden crate full of periodicals, news sheets and journals. The old u-boatman rushed over to pick the box out of his friend’s arms. With his bulk and strength he lifted it up easily before she caught him remembering to put on a show, pretending to puff and struggle.
‘Have you been laying in reading material for Coppertracks, lass? The old steamer is off in the woods again, tinkering with his tower – his genius is occupied enough for now, I think. No need for these.’
‘These news sheets aren’t for his distraction, Jared,’ replied Molly. ‘I need to track down Oliver Brooks. Coppertracks can find patterns in the information, things too subtle for me to notice. Somewhere in here is the clue to where I can find Oliver.’
‘Good luck to you, then, for our old steamer isn’t noticing much these days except his tower and his dreams of conversing with the man in the moon.’
Molly looked towards the house’s orchard. The tip of the lashed-together tower was just visible over the trees. ‘He wants to prove the Royal Society wrong.’
‘He wants revenge,’ said Commodore Black. ‘That’s what his boiler heart desires now, and that’s not an emotion that sits well with a blessed steamman.’
And that was equally true of another creature of the metal Molly was well acquainted with. She thought of the Hexmachina’s final plea to her before it was frozen in the centre of the earth. It seemed so much like a dream now, she was half-doubting her own memory of the vision. Perhaps she had been working too hard of late?
Molly left the commodore and walked over towards the orchard. She had always loved the peace of the apple and pear trees, left to run slightly wild in their grounds. In the summer months, Molly would take an old collapsible card table from the cellar of the house and set it up in a glade alongside the ruins of an overgrown gazebo. There she would lay her writing paper and pencil down on the green felt top, watching the butterflies flit over the lilacs while she imagined tales of terror to stir the hearts – and pocketbooks – of the penny dreadful readers. Now, of course, she had the presence of Coppertracks’ tower of science for company, a small Porterbrook-model portable steam engine chugging away beside the ever-lengthening pyramid of lashed together girders, crystals and cables.
Molly could tell that Coppertracks was agitated, his mu-bodies falling over themselves to keep the tower running smoothly as his attention darted between his drones and the task at hand. One of the drones held a cluster of cylinders to its cyclopean eye, taking a reading from the sun, while Coppertracks seemed more interested in a large sheet of calculations resting on her card table, still out from her morning writing session. As Molly got closer, she saw there was also a map of the stars open before him – she even recognized a few of the constellations.
‘What’s the matter, old steamer?’ Molly called.
‘The matter? Why, everything is the matter, Molly softbody. Reality is not as it should be.’ Coppertracks’ caterpillar tracks ground at the grass in frustration. ‘I have been checking the declination
