Stephen Hunt - Secrets of the Fire Sea

The colonel pointed his pistol at the dying man as if to fire, then he tapped his artificial leg with the gun and holstered it. 'I've sacrificed more than everyone, you rodent. May you live long enough to see the guild's power dwindle to an ember on Jago.'

Colonel Knipe helped Hannah to her feet. 'He can't hurt you now, but there might be more of his guildsmen following him. Are we close?'

Hannah looked at the robed body crawling like a slug across the dusty oak floor, his groans growing more intermittent. Was Alice Gray's ghost resting easier now that the man who had murdered her was passing along the Circle's turn? Not if Hannah's own feelings were any compass. She felt no satisfaction, only pity. That was a surprise. Wasn't this something she had dreamt of when she was a slave of the Guild of Valvemen? Nothing felt quite like it should.

'Yes,' said Hannah. 'It's close.' Jethro, Boxiron and the commodore were moving through the crowded floor of an assembly room where hundreds of children were sitting cross-legged and frightened on the floor, when Jethro heard panicked shouts from the corridor at the other end of the chamber. Out of the passage a townsman emerged using his rifle as a crutch and moving so fast that he was treading on the hands of the children cowering on the floor.

'Careful, man,' cried the commodore, grabbing the townsman by the jacket.

'Let me go! They're coming! The wet-snouts have breached the slopes. They're inside the mountain vaults now, inside!'

The townsman pulled away and resumed his sprint through the huddling crowd of refugee children. Jethro saw the commodore looking at his hands. The u-boat man's palms were covered in the blood that had been soaking the man's dark frock coat.

'Stay and fight, you mortal fool,' the commodore shouted after him. 'There's nowhere left to run to.'

Jethro looked around. There was just himself, the commodore and Boxiron trying to get through the assembly room. No defenders to protect the hundreds of children hiding here. The other fighters had already gone to man the firing lines, leaving the three of them to work their way up ever higher into the honeycombed passages of the Horn of Jago in pursuit of Hannah Conquest.

'Where are you going, good captain?' Jethro called to the commodore as he moved towards the passage. 'We have to keep moving higher.'

'I'm too tired to chase about the tunnels of this blessed mountain, Jethro Daunt. I'm going to sit myself down in this chamber and rest awhile.'

'These children are not our concern,' said Boxiron. 'We have a greater mission.'

'One man and a sabre will make no difference here,' agreed Jethro. 'All the armies of the world will make no difference unless we can get to Hannah before she finds the final section of the god-formula.'

'Does the Circlist church have a formula for that, Mister Daunt? Some equations wrapped up in a homily about the power of the common good?'

They did, but Jethro could sense that the old u-boat man had made up his mind. Not everyone could pick where they died. There were hundreds of children here, hiding terrified in the heart of the Horn of Jago, as safe from the bombardment and fighting outside as they could be.

'Off with you, lad. You and the old steamer have your god-formula to protect and I have my own code I must uphold.'

'May serenity find you, good captain,' said Jethro, passing the commodore his rifle and satchel of charges.

'Maybe she will at that.' Commodore Black watched Jethro and Boxiron climb up one of the side passages before laying aside his sabre. Sitting wearily down in the assembly room, he raised the barrel of the ex-parson's rifle to his nose and sniffed it. 'As new as a freshly minted coin,' he muttered.

The commodore pulled out a cloth he used for his mumbleweed pipe and began cleaning the grease off the barrel. Two of the children came up to him, a brother and sister perhaps, the girl holding a tiny horse carved out of a single piece of volcanic stone.

'Why did the man run off?' asked the boy.

'He had forgotten to give his wife a kiss before he left home,' said the commodore. 'She'll be blessed angry at him if he doesn't get back to her quickly.'

'We've left home too,' said the sister.

'I thought you had, now. You had that look about you.'

There was a sound down the passage, an echo of rattling brass, and coming out of the flickering artificial light was as bizarre a sight as the commodore had ever expected to see here on Jago. A line of children, but children in militia uniforms, miniature cloaks and full-sized rifles on their shoulders. Most of them barely looked to be in their teens, although the girl marching at their head might have had a year or two on that, along with a good few gangling inches over the troops in her company.

'Cadets, halt!' ordered the girl. She looked suspiciously at the commodore's tattered foreign naval uniform. 'We are here to protect you.'

'That's grand,' said the commodore.

'We wanted to stay on the slopes and fight but the major ordered us back here. She said that the evacuated classes needed to be defended.'

Commodore Black sighed. In the Jackelian New Pattern Army these greenhorns might have passed as drummers. In the Royal Aerostatical Navy, they might have passed as midshipmen or catwalk monkeys for the sailors. Here in the mountain vaults, though, they were just frightened children in stiff uniforms trying to ignore the gestures and calls from the youngsters they had been studying next to the week before.

'Captain Jared Black,' said the commodore, wearily raising his full bulk to his feet. 'You might forget to salute, cadet,' he blustered, leaning over to lock the bayonet under her rifle barrel in place, 'but when you forget to turn-and-twist your cutlery, the first wet-snout you stick with that bayonet is going to end up keeping it in their gut.'

'Sir!' she barked.

Commodore Black stared back down the assembly rooms, calculating the meagre options for their defence. There was the corridor at the rear where he had entered with Jethro and the steamman. That led to the lower levels of the Horn of Jago and those grand doors out onto the subterranean city – that should be safe enough. There was the stairway on the side up to the next level – too narrow for a good assault, but maybe good for flanking with a skirmisher or two, he'd have to keep an eye on that. Then there was the entrance in front of them, leading onto the main corridor the cadets had retreated down. Yes, the main corridor, that's where he would assault from, and that's where the mortal Pericurian troops would show their snouts in force.

'Turn over those tables in front of this passage and form two lines behind them. First line kneels and loads, second line fires on command, then you change position. Don't sight your rifles; the passage's width will do your blessed aiming for you. Clear your broken charges cleanly and watch you don't burn yourself on the wadding and residue.'

She saluted. 'We will do our duty, captain.'

Aye, and they would break on it too.

Hannah opened the door and she and Colonel Knipe stepped out onto the floor of a hoop-shaped passage circling around the metal barrel of the flare-house gun. The two of them had travelled as high as they could climb up the Horn of Jago, to the very tip of the summit itself. It was cold in the narrow passage. It would have been warmer had the flares still been launching like magnesium stars overhead, but the flare bins deep below must have run empty with the loading crews cowering in hiding like everyone else in the mountain vaults.

A ladder had been riveted to the stone wall, rising a man's height to a second gantry, which ran alongside the flare-house's stained glass windows. Each twenty-foot high pane bore a multicoloured illustration based on the rational orders' illuminations, filled with the calligraphy of mathematical philosophy and Circlist imagery from the Book of Common Reflections.