Stephen Hunt - The rise of the Iron Moon

'Why me?' Purity yelled her rage up at the iron moon. 'Why did this have to happen? What have I ever done to deserve this?'

'It had to be someone,' said Oliver, quietly. The look of resignation on his face shocked Purity to silence. What did she look like to him? She almost felt ashamed.

'I'm sorry.'

'Don't be,' said Oliver. 'I was given these two pistols by a Circlist reverend. He had been the Hood-o'the-marsh before me. He and I were connected, just like the Circlists believe all of us to be connected. Connected by the guns, or the land, or by our humanity. That's why we're going on. Because we have to. Because if we don't, nothing else will.'

She followed him. Purity and Oliver left the forest behind and trekked across the heath.

Hours became days.

It was strange, Purity mused, it was like the end of the world – as if the kingdom had been emptied. They hadn't met any other survivors from the camp since they had thrown off their pursuers.

Highhorn had been an isolated stretch of the country even before the war, and when they came across villages and roads they found them abandoned. Once the two of them had seen a valley filled with a dozen house-sized slugs, slowly devouring the trees of a pear orchard, a trail of hexagonal plating excreted in their wake. The slugs emitted a diffuse crimson steam that rose in vapours, trailing languidly towards the sky. No wonder the days had become an intermittent twilight, a crimson-toned gloom as the enemy's creatures set about their work – converting the land into useful resources. Even the enemy's soldiers seemed to have vacated the countryside. There was the occasional wasp-like humming in the distance to mark the passage of one of their leathery flying globes, but no more sightings of their flying citadels, no more pursuit by the eyeless monstrosities that marched under the enemy's banner.

Oliver and Purity might have been the only ones left alive in this strange, empty landscape.

Purity came to a stop. 'I wish we could find some food, a cottage, anything.'

Oliver pointed to the north. 'The nearest small town is that way, about a day's walk. But it's empty, the Army of Shadows must have reached it.'

'How can you tell?'

'Because if it was otherwise there would be people there,' said Oliver. 'And I would feel their evil. We'll stop and rest a while. I can make a poacher's fire. If I build it right it won't give off much smoke.'

An hour after Purity and Oliver left, a scout for the Army of Shadows was bent over the remains of their fire, its eyeless black head pushed up against the stones, sniffing at the ashes through a cluster of breathing folds. Its fangs clicked together in anticipation. Not old at all. And from the scents heading off, there were a couple of fine meals waiting for its pack.

Not for the first time, Molly wished that the ugly mood inside Lord Starhome would prove as mutable as the hull of their half-steamman craft. Once the crushing ferocity of the launch had been replaced by the strange waterless floating of their voyage, the shell-shaped ship had started to metamorphose, his living metal flowing into a new shape that was half-manta-ray, half bat. Lord Starhome was rapidly growing larger around his passengers. Sucking up the dust and grit of the celestial darks and incorporating it into his fabric. When they reached Kaliban, the expedition might be travelling in a craft a hundred times as large as the shell shape Lord Starhome had assumed to survive his ancient impact with the mountains of Mechancia – if the members of the expedition managed not to kill each other before they arrived.

Molly was coming to regret having opened her cockpit to the others she had inadvertently kidnapped for the voyage.

'I, sir, am invested with the authority of the House of Guardians,' insisted Lord Rooksby. 'I have full command of this expedition by order of parliament.'

'You carry no authority over any compatriot of the sovereign people of the Commonshare of Quatershift,' retorted Keyspierre.

His daughter Jeanne nodded vehemently by his side. 'The launch of this vessel was made possible only by the sweat and genius of the Institute des Luminaires and the ruling committees of our people.'

Commodore Black pointed towards the back of the craft where Coppertracks had vanished into the storage hold with Duncan Connor. 'You might as well decide on Coppertracks as the skipper of our expedition, for this craft belongs to King Steam and we're on steammen soil by the nautical laws, while your parliament of shopkeepers and congress of the mortal committees of Quatershift falls further away with each hour we travel.'

'A ridiculous suggestion,' said Rooksby.

Lord Starhome's disembodied voice sounded around them. 'Am I merely a chattel, then?' He showed his displeasure by allowing the field of artificial gravity he had recently created for them to fluctuate, the expedition members briefly subjected to a twinge of nauseous flotation.

'That's enough,' said Molly to Lord Starhome, who was showing worrying tendencies towards independence. As the craft grew larger, the percentage that was steamman – that owed any loyalty to the Free State – was being diluted. Molly fingered the control ring Hardarms had given her. How much longer until they were left riding a wild, masterless stallion through the endless night?

'We do not need to be lectured by you, Jackelian,' said Keyspierre's daughter, pointing an accusing finger at Molly. 'If it was not for your reckless interference we would be on a properly equipped and outfitted vessel of exploration, with trained soldiers to protect us instead of your gang of misfits and sightseers.'

'This is my expedition,' snapped Molly. 'I received foreknowledge of the invasion by the Army of Shadows. My gang of misfits got Timlar Preston back alive and saw my cannon completed, and without us amateurs, you-' she waved at the two shifties '-would be meat for those monsters' larder in your corrupt little compatriots' paradise, while you-' she pointed at Lord Rooksby '-would be on a clipper on the other side of the world blundering about looking for the Army of Shadows' non-existent homeland.'

'Aye, Molly has the size of it,' said the commodore. 'And more to the point, if it wasn't for her small blessed act of piracy back in the kingdom, the Highhorn cannon would have had a test shell loaded when the Army of Shadows came calling to destroy it, and we would all be sitting around its ashes toasting our bread in its fires, if we had the mortal life left to do so.'

'You, sir, are a fool,' shouted Rooksby at the commodore, stalking away to one of the other cabins. 'You are all fools. Lesser minds that don't possess the wit to realize the consequences of what you have done.'

'Your rebellious act of petulance may well have cost both our nations their future,' said Keyspierre, withdrawing with his daughter down one of the corridors that Lord Starhome had formed in his starboard wing. The shiftie's voice echoed back as he walked away. 'I fear the imagination of a novelist will serve very little purpose against the strength of the foe's might when we reach their home.'

Molly slumped back in one of the craft's acceleration chairs. 'Have I done the right thing?'

'You were true to yourself,' said the commodore. 'And it's the knowledge inside your head from that poor unlucky fellow Kyorin that we must look to, to guide us to the blue lad's friends.'

Molly bit her lip. If they still lived. If they could find them. If Kyorin's people had a way of beating the Army of Shadows. If they could even understand the weapon and discover some way of using it against the enemy. Molly tried not to despair. It sounded so desperate when she thought about it, but the dead slave's words had proven true so far. He had given Timlar Preston the knowledge the great inventor needed to finish the design of his wave-front cannon. Kyorin's pessimistic predictions about the Army of Shadows had proven true at every vicious turn of the kingdom's futile attempts at defending itself.