Stephen Hunt - The rise of the Iron Moon

Jenny Blow arched her head around, the gale from her throat sweeping the slats trying to circle her into the side of one of the stones. Samuel Lancemaster strode into the space that had been created, casually lashing out with the butt of his spear and nearly breaking a slat in half. He was big, but his strength went far beyond his size; the fey bandit seemed able to strike with almost superhuman strength, the blunt trauma of his spear strikes killing with a single blow every assailant that came at him. At least, Purity never saw any of the slats get back up to have a second attempt at him.

As quickly as they had come at them the storm ended and they were standing alone under the shadow of the stone circle, Purity's blade twitching in her hand like a diviner's rod seeking water. Corpses littered the slope around their feet while the blur that was Jackaby Mention slowed to a standstill in front of them. His marsh leathers were crisped with a sheen of ice.

'Where is Ganby?'

'I am here,' a voice sounded behind one of the stones and the old druid appeared, brushing mud off his breeches. 'I have seen off the last of them.'

'Did you enjoy your rest, old man?' snorted Jenny Blow.

Purity hoped so. When the Army of Shadows realized how many slats had vanished, this part of the country was going to get very dangerous indeed. They would have to leave here as quickly as they could.

Purity ran her hands along the shelves of the abandoned village's sole shop, emptying the contents stored there into a sack. Each tumble and crack of can upon jar brought back the memories. The attack upon the hill, slats leaping up towards the ancient stone circle. Her sword humming in her hand, sucking up the bolts of fire from the heat-agitation weapons of the beasts. Drinking fire from the air. And then there were the four Bandits of the Marsh. Awoken from the dark corridors between the worlds and full of surprises. Like Jenny Blow, who could tell the sex of a hare a mile away with her thin nose, Jenny who had remarked offhandedly that it had been she who had taught King Steam to fight with the modulations of his voicebox. The ancient fighting art of the steammen knights. Did they really owe all their martial skills to this short, barrel-chested female bandit?

Just four. Four out of two hundred Bandits of the Marsh. If only she had been stronger, could have struck the stone with more of her might. Kept the portals between the stones open for longer, awakened more of the sleepers.

Samuel Lancemaster poked his head around the door to make sure Purity was all right. She could hear the fire crackling in the back room's hearth, dry broken furniture feeding the flames.

Purity held up one of her finds. 'Ham.'

Samuel grunted. 'More canned victuals.'

'Back in the Royal Breeding House this was currency.'

Samuel shook his head, perplexed. 'Your land is a strange one, lady. The nobility held as prisoners by their own council. King and queen kept only as symbols.'

Purity took the bag through to the back room, tossing it next to the supplies they had found in the cottages of the abandoned village. It was a good haul. The people must have moved out very fast. Evacuated by the county constabulary or – well, the alternative did not bear contemplation. 'Only the old nobility, the royalist cause. You won't find any of the Lords Commercial inside the Royal Breeding House.'

'And these Lords Commercial,' said Ganby Meridian, his silver beard tinged yellow by the firelight. 'They are given their titles by your parliament of shopkeepers, or by your hostage-queen?'

'Neither,' said Purity. The conversation was making her uncomfortable, calling forth too many memories of the patriotic songs and lessons she had been forced to learn by rote in the cold school chambers of the fortress where she had grown up. 'They are decided by the tables and logs of Greenhall, the treasury office of the Guardian Chancellor. You are automatically granted a title after you have paid a certain amount in taxes to the state; the rate varies and is voted on each year by parliament. The more money you pay, the higher your precedent in the lists.'

'Hmm,' groaned Ganby, the disapproving noise rumbling at the back of his throat.

'Is it so different, Ganby Meridian, from the queen we placed on the throne of the Jackeni, or the council of druids deciding who would rule among the stag lords?' asked Jenny Blow.

'To become a druid took years of hard study and mastery of the worldsong. You had to prove yourself worthy of tasks as weighty as selecting a new ruler. My ostler I would trust to care for my horse, my smithy to shoe her. But to look inside the heart of the person I would call Sovereign? I am not sure I would trust such a matter to my ostler or smithy.'

Samuel smiled and tossed the leg of a table into the fire grate, sparks spitting against his silver breastplate. 'Has Ganby mentioned he was a druid long before he joined our ranks?'

'Yes,' added Jenny Blow. 'Before his crimes and knavery saw him thrown out and drawn towards the margins of the marsh's waters as an outlaw.'

'Pah,' said Ganby. 'If I ever stopped lying, I would disappoint you. These are strange new days indeed. Queens who are mutilated and kept in chains, councils of standing chosen by those who have none, and a faceless legion of monsters walking the world. Fighting those gill-necks from the kingdom below the waves seems as a blessing in comparison to this new war.'

A knot of anger tightened inside Purity. 'My friend Oliver gave his life to free you for this war.'

'Not just us four,' said Jenny Blow, pointedly.

'That's enough,' said Samuel. 'We four answered the call and you speak to the true queen of the Jackeni, that much you must know.' He knelt down in front of Purity. 'My spear is your spear, as it was for Queen Elizica.'

And what a spear it was. By activating a hidden control, Samuel could collapse the weapon into a nasty weapon shaped like a knuckle-duster that could smack bricks out of a wall. When he was thinking, he would sometimes snick the spear out to its full length and then swing it back to its fist-sized shape, rattling the air with the noise of the spear's reorientation.

'A queen without boots,' pointed out Jackaby Mention from his chair, wiping his lips with relish as he set about the contents of one of the tins.

Purity looked across at the brooding black bandit. 'You wear no shoes either.'

Jackaby raised his bare toes and wiggled them. 'I meant it as no insult. I run faster when I have none and I like to feel close to the bones of the world, the earthflow.'

Ganby drew Purity to one side. 'They mean no harm by their words. They are touchy around normal people.'

Purity wasn't sure if she should feel flattered or frightened that they considered her normal. 'You mean those who aren't fey?'

'Quite. In our age the druids made sacrifices to keep the killing, changing clouds of the feymist at bay – children were bound and cast into the feymist curtain. Most died, but some did not.' Ganby indicated his three companions. 'Those that survived the changes of the warping mist were considered cursed and hunted without mercy by the land's tribes. Where else could they hide but the great marsh? They have little love for the affairs of mortals and as loyal as they became in the end to Elizica and her lion throne, I fear they see only a little of her in you.'

'I wish there was none of her in me,' said Purity. She picked up the sword from the stone circle. 'And I wish that I hadn't been given this.'

Ganby rubbed his beard thoughtfully. 'I remember another young woman standing before me, saying the same thing about a trident she had retrieved from a lake.' He sighed. 'We slept for an age to reach this strange new time, when she said she would need us again. That was not easy for us, nor for you to be the one to receive us. Let us see if we can make it worth the while for both of us…' He took Purity's sword from her, carefully weighing it two hands. 'Do you know what this blade is?'