CHAPTER 9 #2
They aren’t coming back for a long, long time. If they’re smart, they’ll run and keep running, to listen to the refugees tell it.
Two days after that, they found a village destroyed by the Clockwork Boys.
It was decimated. The houses had been smashed as if a tornado had gone through. Doorframes hung like kindling. Walls had been ripped open to get at the occupants. Even wooden floors had great holes torn in them.
At first, she thought perhaps it had been a tornado, but the trees around the village were untouched. And tornados did not generally leave human bodies looking so…trampled.
A fire had broken out in one building, and half the village was burned in addition to being smashed. The ashes were still faintly warm.
The bodies were not.
“My god,” said Learned Edmund, almost to himself. “My god, my god, my god. These poor people.” He signed a benediction, over and over, his fingers flickering so quickly it was hard to follow. The prayer is quicker than the eye. Nothing up my sleeve…
Slate had a hysterical urge to giggle. She knew all about reactions to shock, and she also knew that Learned Edmund would never understand.
She nudged her horse forward and rode slowly down the middle of the ruined town, bent over so far that her horse’s mane washed over her face like tears.
“We should look for survivors,” said Caliban.
“Do it,” she said.
There weren’t any. She hadn’t expected there to be. The carnage was probably at least a day old—fires could burn for a long time—and any survivors had either stopped surviving or gotten the hell out of there.
Caliban checked every building anyway. He came out of each doorway with his face grown grimmer and grimmer, his eyes more deeply shadowed, until she had to look away.
Brenner vanished for a while, and then reappeared, climbing back into the saddle with no grace at all. It was not in Brenner to look sad, but he looked tired and older than Slate had ever seen him look.
The center of the town had a market square. There were oxcarts arranged around it, as if people had been packing up to leave when the Clockwork Boys came.
Both people and oxen were still there, but you could no longer tell one from the other.
She heard the sound behind her of Learned Edmund being sick. A few moments later, she could hear Caliban talking to him in his gentlest voice, low and kind. She could not make out the words, but the tone said: This will pass. Trust me.
Slate grimaced. I wish someone would say that to me, in a voice I couldn’t help but believe.
Her horse was restless at the stench, shying away. It was a relief to concentrate on that, to go to a world where the only thing that mattered was the reins and the bit and the space between the horse’s ears.
By unspoken agreement, she and Brenner rode to the far side of the town, upwind, and stopped just outside of the shadow of the houses. Slate took a deep breath, and then another. Brenner spat in the dirt, his jaw working like a disgusted cat’s.
Knight and dedicate caught up to them. Learned Edmund’s skin was ashen. Caliban was on foot, leading both horses and the mules.
“Well,” said Learned Edmund, looking directly at Slate for the first time in a week. “What are your orders?”
She would have suspected him of some malice—who wouldn’t be at a total loss in the face of this?—but then she met his eyes and saw that they were full of tears.
It struck her suddenly, how young he was. Nineteen. Chosen for his compassion. He looked much younger.
She’d killed a man at nineteen. She hadn’t been able to sleep or keep food down for days afterward, and that had been one man, who had richly deserved it, not a whole village mowed down like wheat.
What are my orders?
Slate folded her hands neatly over her saddlebow. Perhaps if she arranged them just right, perfectly symmetrically, she wouldn’t have to look up and see the destruction around her.
Perhaps she would not have to decide.
Caliban appeared at her stirrup, and set a hand on her leg. She looked down and met his eyes for a long moment.
“What will you have us do?”
If I ask, he will take command. He has seen carnage before. He will know what he is doing, and he will know that I am out of my depth, and I do not believe he will think less of me for it.
I will not ask.
“I thought the battles were farther south and east. The army’s supposed to be holding them.
” She heard her own voice, sounding angry and betrayed.
I knew they were supposed to be raiding, I knew it, they told me, but the army was supposed to stop them.
My plan hinged on the army not screwing up.
She took a deep breath. “I did not expect them to be raiding this far down the trade road,” she said.
“If we travel past this point, we might be a week or more, through territory held by the enemy.”
Caliban nodded. “I thought so as well.”
“So.” Slate drew up the reins. “We cannot continue this way, then. We’ll have to backtrack.”
“Where are we backtracking to?” asked Learned Edmund.
“For now, the last village.” It had been mostly empty, but if anyone was left, they would need to be warned. “After that—well, Brenner, do you think we can figure out where we can join up to the smuggler’s road?”
He looked up from where he had been rolling a cigarette, the paper dangling in his hand. “Are you sure that’s a good idea, darlin’?”
“No, but I don’t see what other choice we have.”
He rubbed at his neck. “Yeah, maybe. Somewhere around Six Ells, isn’t it? I’ve never been on it, but if you give me a map, I can probably work it out, assuming they haven’t gone and changed the whole thing.”
“There’s a smuggler’s road that goes through the mountains,” Slate told the other two.
“It’s narrow and in bad repair, but it bypasses the valley.
The end comes out just over the Archonhold border, maybe fifty miles from Anuket City.
I can’t imagine anyone would send troops down it, so perhaps if we can get on it, we can get to Anuket City without…
” She trailed off, gesturing at the destruction around her.
“I would like to bury the dead,” said Caliban. “Or at least burn them.”
She looked down at him, startled. He seemed to be addressing her boot, his eyes downcast.
He knows I’m going to say no. We don’t have time.
Slate sighed, and learned something else about command.
If he was in charge, he’d say no, but because he isn’t, he gets to ask.
“I wish we could,” she told him. “But you know we don’t have time. I’m sorry.”
He nodded stiffly, and released her stirrup. Slate went back to staring at her hands, and listened to the sounds of creaking leather as the paladin mounted his horse.
They had gotten perhaps a dozen lengths down the road, barely into the trees, when the smell of rosemary reared up and hit Slate full in the face.
This was no elusive hint of magic, no subtle warning. This was an assault on the senses. Slate felt like she was drowning in a violent, if herbal, sea.
She dropped her reins, gagging. Her throat burned and her eyes watered. She knew that she was breathing, because she could hear the horrible gasping noises she kept making, but there did not seem to be any air in her lungs.
“What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” Caliban’s horse banged into hers and her leg got pinned between them, but that was a minor concern. The paladin reached across and grabbed her shoulder. “Slate! Slate, my god, what’s wrong?” He shook her, which didn’t much help matters.
“Got to get off the road,” she rasped, through a throat gone thick and bubbling. “Get off the road! Now!”
“What foolishness is this?” demanded Learned Edmund.
“Do it!” Brenner said, turning his horse awkwardly and riding for the cover of the trees.
Caliban, to his credit, did not ask questions.
He grabbed Slate’s reins and brought both horses to the edge of the road, then slid off to lead them into the woods.
It was a good thing, because Slate was in no condition to lead anybody anywhere.
She wrapped her arms around her head, wracked with coughing, while that godawful overpowering reek of rosemary sank into her bones.
They were deep in the trees, set far back from the road, when Slate slid off her horse. She staggered, nearly falling. Something held her up—a tree trunk, a paladin, she couldn’t tell and it didn’t matter. She could not stop coughing, and danger was coming, down the road, stinking of magic.
“Shut—me—up—” she managed to choke out.
Caliban stared at her. “What?”
“Too much—noise—stop—” She rolled her eyes up at Brenner in mute appeal.
He didn’t fail her. The assassin pounced, knocking her down, and curled himself around her head. She choked helplessly into his midsection, pounding weakly on the forest floor and his shoulder with her fists.
“What are you doing? Are you mad?” Caliban hauled at Brenner’s arm.
“Get down!” the assassin growled.
“You’ll smother her!”
“If I have to, yes! Get down!”
“But—”
Slate gathered the very last shreds of air in her lungs and gasped “Down—quiet—that’s an order!”
Obedience was a habit that prison and possession had not broken. Caliban sank to his knees, one hand still on Brenner’s elbow.
Down the road, three abreast, a column of Clockwork Boys came marching.
They were huge. They were horrible.
There were a great many of them.
The basic shape was centaur-like. Some had four legs, some had six. They stood between eight and ten feet tall.
Slate had seen drawings before, but she hadn’t known how much faith to put in them. The drawings were all strangely geometric, depicting enormous creatures made out of slabs and blocks, like nothing Slate had ever seen.
The brief glance she got, in the space between Brenner’s arm and ribcage, showed that the artists had not been so far wrong after all.
The Clockwork Boys were the color of old ivory. Their heads—if it was anything so normal as a head—were blunt wedges, like a squared-off horse head. Slate caught a glimpse of what looked like inlay—carving—something.
Gears. They’re covered in gears, like barnacles. It’s how they move, somehow—but it doesn’t make sense. They’re alive, but they’re a made thing, but nobody could have made that, surely—
She understood now why the artificers were tying themselves in knots.
The creatures could not exist, but they did. And they could smash apart a building or an army column with equal ease.
How did the army ever kill even one of them? I suppose you could take it apart with hammers, like a stone wall, but it would take hours…
They have to be stopped.
They expect us to stop them.
If she had not been about to choke to death, the sheer insanity of it all would have made her laugh. Or cry. Possibly both.
Impossible, uncaring, the Clockwork Boys slammed down the road. Their feet pounded the ground like hammers.
They were abreast of the trees now. Brenner curled more tightly around her, blocking her view.
Slate was going to suffocate. She was going to die with her face jammed into Brenner’s ribcage, which was not a way she’d ever wanted to go. She thrashed weakly, involuntarily, despite every nerve screaming at her to lay still, lay still, let the danger pass, don’t make a sound…
A black-gloved hand covered her throat. He didn’t squeeze—yet—but Slate could feel his fingers like bars of iron, ready to close the moment she began coughing again.
Panic seized her, and under it, relief. Good old ruthless Brenner. He won’t let me kill us all. He’ll kill me first.
Slate had to admit that dying with Brenner’s hands locked around her windpipe was a death she’d seen coming. Could be a lot worse. Brenner was a very efficient killer, even if he couldn’t ride a horse.
“It’s okay, darlin’…” he whispered into her hair, “I’ve got you.”
His voice was really quite soothing, given that they were talking about her impending death. She would have laughed if she had enough air.
She could not keep track of time. She breathed through her teeth and Brenner’s shirt for eternity and he said things to her that he had never said when they were lovers.
“It’s okay. I’ve got you. It’s okay.”
Possibly if he’d said those things when they were lovers, things would have turned out differently… Yes. Because strangling on your own spit while monsters walk the roads is the perfect time to re-litigate old relationships.
“I won’t let go.”
Don’t, she willed him. Don’t. I’ll kill us all. Don’t let go.
He didn’t let go.
The end of the column passed.
A long time later, the scent of rosemary faded.
A little time after that, Brenner released her throat.
Slate took a deep breath, coughed it out, took another, and that one went down normally. She could smell other things, which in this case was mostly Brenner. He smelled like leather and cigarettes, and that was wonderful, because it wasn’t rosemary.
The assassin helped her politely to her feet.
“She knew,” said Learned Edmund, staring at her. He was holding the horses’ reins bunched together. Slate wondered if the horses had been too stupid to run or if the scholar had somehow soothed them. “How did she know?”
“Word of advice,” said Brenner, slapping leaf-litter off Slate’s back. “If our Slate starts choking and sneezing and tells you to do something, do it. Don’t ask questions.”
Caliban was staring at them. His expression was indescribable.
“What?” asked Slate, wiping at her nose.
“You two,” said the paladin slowly, “have a very odd relationship.”
“Oh, come on, if your friends aren’t willing to strangle you, what kind of friends are they?” asked Brenner.
Caliban turned away, shaking his head.
“So those are the Clockwork Boys…” said Learned Edmund, almost to himself.
“Big ugly bastards, aren’t they?” said Brenner.
“I should have been better prepared,” said the dedicate. “The last correspondence that we received from Brother Amadai included a drawing of one. But I could not picture the scale. I thought perhaps they were the size of a man, no more…”
Slate shuddered. She’d only caught a glimpse through Brenner’s arms of the creatures, and it had been enough to give her nightmares. She snuffled into her sleeve.
When she got back to her horse, there was a handkerchief draped across the saddle.