Trent Jamieson - Night's engines

“Weeks we have hunted and devoured, weeks to build our strength to match our hungers. I am ready to tear you apart, it is all that we have wanted for months.”

Weeks: had it really been that long since David had left Chapman? There had been slowly passing days, for sure, but hardly that many. He could still remember the great hand rising over the battlements. The Hideous Garment Flutes rushing down out of the dark, and devouring a swirling screaming cloud of birds.

“Do we really need to do this, Andrew?” David said.

Milton blinked. “You never called me that.”

“I am different now. Things have changed.”

“Which is precisely why you must die.”

“What if I agreed not to do it?” the Old Man asked.

“You would not. And, even if you did, your presence alone is enough of a danger. You are an Old Man, old no longer. You are not yourself, but nor are you Cadell.”

“Then what am I?”

“Everything that we once were given a new fierce life. Even if you do not realise it, David, you are the destruction of a world.”

“But I want to save it.”

“So did we. But what is left to save? Perhaps you would like a little of our history,” the Old Man said. “After all, you are part of that now. Whether we like it or not.”

The Old Man was playing for time. Maybe Milton wasn't as confident as he appeared.

“Can’t I just kill you?” David said.

“If you’re fast enough, yes. But aren’t you curious as to what you are? After all, we have had aeons to come to an understanding. You, on the other hand, have had a few weeks. Don’t you want to know why you must die?”

David shrugged. Milton smiled.

He said, “When we did what you have done. When we released the Engine of the World, and sent the Roil back into the darkness, we thought we understood the cost. However, Cad… Mr Milde, we got it wrong. There was death, more death than you or I can comprehend. The Engine itself railed at the terror of its purpose. You may have changed, you may not have been the man you once were, but the Engine can never change enough. And it was as rigorous in what it did to us, as what it had done to the world.

“It captured us. Contained us, and transformed us. Cursed us with hungers, cursed us with life endless (or near enough). And still we thought we could live as normal men. Those days there were twenty of our kind remaining — I am sure you remember them.” And David did, he could see their proud faces, hear their voices.

Milton said, “But as the ice receded, as the world revealed itself to us, what we had undone and what we had made set a madness in our bones.

“Some it affected more than others. Drove them to kill and kill, but we seven, we Old Men, destroyed those who would devour the world that they had saved; and banished ourselves and our hunger to the deep places beneath Mirrlees. We locked ourselves there so that we could not again do what we had done.

“And there was not a day that I didn’t regret that decision, even as I knew it to be the wise one. Cadell, though, he was different. He knew that a time would come when the Engine would be required to work again.”

“And so it has,” David said. “That time has come.”

“Yes, but you need to understand. Time or not, it is the wrong path. We have no right.”

“We have no right to save our world?”

“No right to destroy this one.” The Old Man sighed. “To save it does not save a thing, merely forestalls.”

“Isn’t that what everything is?” David said. “Merely a stalling action.”

Milton smiled. His head dipped a little. “Then we’ve no more talking to do.”

The Old Man crossed the space between them in an eye blink, jaw snapping closed on air. David was already out of reach. Milton's feet dug into the earth, he turned on his heel. David threw a punch, and the Old Man caught his fist and squeezed.

David wrenched his hand free, but not without the Old Man raking his nails across the flesh. David closed the wounds at once. They circled each other.

David’s cheeks burned, his limbs felt slow and heavy, despite his speed. The ground was hard beneath his feet. His breath did not plume as Margaret's did. He looked over at her, on the cold earth, forehead bloody and pale. She might as well have been dead. But there, in the cold and the dark, she looked at peace. He felt again the pangs of his addiction, a stabbing ache, at once sharp and hollow, as though it had already torn the flesh from him.

“Caution will not save you,” Milton said.

David knew he was right.

What would it be like to let go, to lose himself completely?

It doesn't hurt. Not any more than sadness, Cadell said. Not any more than that. It won't even sting.

Milton moved lightly on his feet; his ruddy lips shone.

“Goodbye, Margaret,” David said, and he took a deep breath, left himself to Cadell.

David opened his eyes. Every bit of him was bruised, felt bitterly cold. He sat up.

Margaret was saying something. They were on the top of the ridge, now. “What? What?” he said.

“I-” her teeth chattered.

“I'm sorry,” David said. “I went away.”

He looked back, and there below them lay the scattered remains of Milton.

David coughed, tasted his own blood; when he breathed, it bubbled thick and dark from his nose.

“Two more,” he said. “What happened?”

“You killed him. You tore him apart. And then you laughed. David, David, it was the most horrible sound I have ever heard.”

“There's still more to come. I should have…”

“You said they didn't matter. You passed me a syringe of Carnival. I don't know where you had gotten it from, and you told me to inject you with that or you would die.”

“You shouldn't have.”

“What — how could I say no to something capable of that?” She gestured down the hill.

“You have a point,” David said. He could feel Cadell at a distance, but not that close inspection he'd felt before — as though Cadell was just leaning over his shoulder. David felt that what he had done was right. Felt, too, the grief. Cadell was wrong. Sadness could cut deeper than any hurt. Sadness could grind the breath from you.

There was no time for grief though. At the bottom of the hill, they appeared: the last Old Men.

Margaret sighted along her rifle. “Are you ready?” she said.

“Of course I am. Margaret, we did all right. No one can say otherwise.”

“We might still make it,” she said, but David could see that she was having trouble standing. Her breath was as laboured as a horse he had once seen die on a flooded Mirrlees street. She looked like she might at any moment stumble and fall.

Why had Cadell put himself back into the box? Had David really been that close to death, did it really matter?

Now, at least he felt calm, the anxiety had fled from his limbs. He took a deep breath.

Margaret fired, cursed.

“Missed,” she said, and slapped another shell into the rifle.

The Old Men sprinted up the hill. Halfway to the top they paused and turned, looking behind them. Margaret fired again, this time striking one in the neck, then even she forgot to fire.

It rose over the hill like a third moon, shining a brilliant light upon the field. An airship from Hardacre: green and grey flags swinging from its belly. Guns swivelled in their emplacements and fired at the Old Men below.

The airship passed overhead Ropes fell to the earth, men and women jumped down lightly, Whig and Buchan with them. Men and women armed with guns and sabres.

“We've some experience fighting these brutes,” Buchan said, one great hand clasped around a knife almost as thick as a cleaver. “I believe you could do with some help.”