Stephen Hunt - The rise of the Iron Moon

Travelling north along the cobbled country road with the woods on either side for cover, Purity was unnerved by how empty the landscape seemed to be. Where they passed through a village, the houses were abandoned, possessions tossed about in the yards, gates unlatched and banging in the breeze. It couldn't have been more than a week or two since the Army of Shadows invaded, but already nature was reclaiming the gardens. Weeds rising from in between paving stones, once manicured lawns overgrown, brown leaves lying curled and uncollected.

Occasionally they came across the corpse of a horse by the side of the road, the saddle removed and its rider fled. Ridden to death in an attempt to escape the advancing slats? The gates by the toll cottage were unmanned, the little wooden boxes where pennies were dropped for the upkeep of the roads rattling full and uncollected. The road that Purity and the four Bandits of the Marsh were currently following rose up a hill before twisting down into a long valley, its floor covered in a yellow-green mist.

Purity made to go down the valley path, but Jenny Blow laid a hand on her shoulder. 'No, that is no mist, it smells unnatural – a false odour to it.'

'What does your nose suggest?' asked Samuel Lancemaster, resting against his spear as if it were a lamppost.

'War gas,' replied Jenny Blow. 'A barbarian's weapon. Does the Army of Shadows possess such filth?'

Purity shook her head. 'I don't know – I didn't see the slats use gas when they attacked us at the Highhorn camp. But our redcoats do and the Royal Aerostatical Navy have gas shells in their fin-bomb racks.'

'There may have been a battle below,' said Ganby.

'I could run through the valley,' suggested Jackaby Mention. 'Fast enough that I wouldn't have to breathe it. Find out what lies below.'

'No,' said Purity. 'If that's dirt-gas it will burn your skin off – and the Circle knows what the Army of Shadows is capable of producing.'

'Then I shall clear it away,' said Jenny Blow, taking a deep breath, her chest expanding to an unnaturally large size.

'Allow me,' said Purity, drawing out her maths-blade. 'You'll be gusting that back onto the Jackelian highway.' And she needed the practice.

Ganby nodded in approval and Purity held out the sword, pointing it towards the valley. She could feel the composition of the gas through the sword, heavy and complex, a name rising into her mind from the blade that meant nothing to her – dichlorodiethyl sulphide. But she could see the chain of bonds stretching out inside the cloud, ladders and ladders of particles, all connected. She felt the throb in her hand and visualized the bonds realigning, millions upon millions of them, reforming and changing their shape, becoming harmless celgas – the rare substance that floated the hulls of the RAN's airships. Within seconds the newly transformed lighter-than-air cloud was rising, clearing the valley below and revealing a terrible sight.

'I am glad to see that our practice sessions are bearing fruit,' said Ganby.

Purity wasn't. She would have been better off leaving the valley shrouded. Bodies littered the road snaking through the valley, grey dots scattered across the way. Horses. People. Overturned carriages.

'A gas assault,' said Samuel Lancemaster in disgust. 'There is no honour in war fought by such methods.'

It was no better at close quarters, the figures below twisted into hideous shapes, white foam hanging out of their bloated lips. Everywhere there was a terrible garlic reek. These people were refugees by the look of them, carts and wheelbarrows piled with precious possessions. Not much to look at really – mantelpiece clocks, a few prize gardening tools, bundles of clothes and – then Purity saw her. She stopped in shock. It was Emily from the Royal Breeding House, lying on the flatbed of an overturned cart, her eyes crying tears of dried blood and staring up sightlessly towards the cold autumnal sky. Purity bent over to look across at the other bodies. There were Flora and Edith from Dorm Five, the two young duchesses stretched out across the grass. More familiar faces sprawled along the side of the road.

'There are bodies in uniform up here!' called Jackaby Mention. 'Are these your soldiers?'

'Second Mounted Rifles,' said Purity, looking at the corpses. 'They were often assigned duty at the fortress.' She had nearly said home, but the Royal Breeding House hadn't been that, even when she had still been a prisoner of its halls. How many times had she wished a terrible death down on Emily's head for all of her torments? Egging the other royalist prisoners on to single Purity out for her madness and fits. But this… Parliament must have been evacuating the house's stock south, not wanting a repeat of the invasion by Quatershift, when the shifties and their revolutionary allies in the kingdom had run half the old order through their steam-driven killing machines. Her mother. Her brother. It looked like the premium on the old royalist bloodlines was about to rise even higher. If the House of Guardians were left a land to reconvene over.

'There is something wrong here,' said Ganby.

'You always say that, old man,' said Jenny. 'Any excuse to run away.'

Ganby pointed to two bodies locked together. One was a redcoat of the Second Mounted Rifles, his face covered by a neckerchief to protect against the fumes before he had been overcome. His bayonet had been stuck through the chest of another soldier wearing a Jackelian uniform, but not from a regiment whose insignia Purity recognized. Save for the bayonet thrust, this soldier would have lived: his face was covered by a gas mask with brass goggles concealing his features.

'These travellers were attacked by their own soldiers,' said Ganby.

'There's no food,' noted Samuel Lancemaster. 'Any supplies these people carried have been looted. They were ambushed down here.'

Sweet Circle, had it really become so bad in the world outside Highhorn while Purity and her friends were constructing parliament's secret cannon? Soldiers fighting each other for supplies? Raiding refugees for their few paltry belongings. Where were the raiders' officers, had there been a mutiny in the ranks?

'Yes,' said Purity, 'it was our own troops. The slats would never have left good food on the bone like this.'

Jenny Blow tapped her nose and pointed to the left. Jackaby Mention became a blur, running up the side of the valley and disappearing into the woods. After a minute he returned, the smear of his form coalescing in front of them, wiping a frosting of ice from his dark aquiline nose. 'There was a camp up there, the remains of a fire pit still smouldering and a great many empty shell casings in the tree line.'

'They've gone,' said Samuel Lancemaster, thumping his spear angrily in the mud.

'We must focus on the Army of Shadows,' said Ganby. 'We have no time to track these killers. There will always be people easily driven to brigandage by brutal circumstances and a poor harvest. We did not wake to follow a queen again for the likes of them.'

'I would have a harvest of their skulls if I ever come across such cowards,' said Samuel. A shaft of sunlight glinted off his silver cuirass, becoming a sunburst.

Ganby saw how Purity was staring at the bodies of the dead breeding house inmates. 'Did you know them?'

'No. I thought I might know them, but in the end I never did,' said Purity. 'They were Jackelians, just Jackelians. Like me.'

The plan to capture a slat alive for interrogation sounded a lot more achievable when it was being discussed around a campfire with the Bandits of the Marsh. Now Purity was actually facing the prospect of having to entice one into chasing her, the sense of the plan was melting away in the harsh light of day.

Perhaps it was the shock of seeing Jackelians collaborating with the slats, whip-wielding overseers from the race of man lording it over the slaves. Broken Circle cultists who had finally achieved their exalted position at the feasting tables of the end times. That they had transferred their worship of the iron moon to veneration of the invaders who had come down from it was bad enough; but that the collaborators felt so little sympathy for the lines of slaves labouring under their whips – slaves who had been their neighbours and friends a little while ago – that was unforgivable. The Broken Circle cultists had the smug, self-satisfied look of gamblers who had backed the right bird in a cockfight, and the fact that the loser was left bleeding in the pit mattered not a jot to them. It was the same look she remembered from the staff at the Royal Breeding House, a look that Purity knew well enough to loathe.