Stephen Hunt - The rise of the Iron Moon

Her volunteers shook their rifles in the falling snow.

'Then you're invited for a stroll!' shouted Purity. 'And if we bump into any slats down there, just remember that one stout Jackelian soul is worth fifty of their slave soldiers.'

'You have heard your queen. Not one of you is to die,' commanded Samuel, 'until you have sent at least fifty of those flat-faced bastards back to whatever foul underworld they worship. I shall kill twice that many myself and count them merely practice for my spear.'

Purity rose and pointed her maths-blade down towards the beanstalk. An explosion erupted from the base of the hill, the first of the Army of Shadows' mines detecting the gravity wave sent from her blade, then there were hundreds of sprouting flowers of fury setting each other off around the perimeter, arcs of shrapnel shredding the slats that had been standing behind the safety line with their rifles shouldered. At the first sign of attack, anthill-like structures next to the underground entrances of the slats' barracks started to spew out clouds of red gas, the cloaking mist the creatures used to blind their enemies and tip the balance in favour of their sound-sight.

Purity shook her head. Not this time – the sword blazed in her fist and the gas clouds became fierce jets venting from a hoop of red volcanoes around the beanstalk before returning to gaseous form far above the encampment.

'I think the Army of Shadows deserves to see us come calling,' called Purity, waving her sword. 'For your families. For your freedom. For Jackals!'

As one they rose behind Purity, charging down the slope. Purity was not thinking about the slippery iced rocks under their feet, not thinking about the driving wind or the black chattering forms spilling out from the Army of Shadows' underground barracks. Not thinking about how she would have to lead anyone who survived back to the Spartiate if the raid succeeded, harried every step of the way by the enemy's legions.

Jackaby had dragged Ganby Meridian to his feet and was pushing the druid along with the rest of the kingdom's last ragged army. Behind them the wind multiplied twenty-fold, a gale picking up broken rock from the rubble of the minefield and making a storm of flint chips over the base of the beanstalk, slats howling as their armoured skeletons were torn to pieces by the gale. The wind subsided as Jenny Blow halted for breath. Purity and her raiders were on the flat now, following fast after Jenny's storm as though they were redcoats charging behind a rolling artillery barrage.

That was when the first of the rods started to rise from buried hatches surrounding the minefield, shining black poles each topped with a rotating globe studded with sharp crystal tips. Samuel Lancemaster shoved Purity to the snow as bolts of fire began to streak out of the spheres, leaping red sparks that cut through the ranks of the Jackelians. Rifles went spinning though the air as their owners fell clutching blackened chests and burnt off stubs of limbs. A second volley of sparks lashed out of the rising fence, splitting the falling weapons into fragments.

'Movement!' shouted Samuel. 'The fence detects movement. Get to the ground and lie still!'

Purity looked around. Her force were throwing themselves down to the snow and trying not to shiver on the freezing ground. But there was Jenny Blow, still on her feet and trying to shatter the poles' spheres with her voice. Jenny Blow had once taught the knights of the Steammen Free State how to modulate their voiceboxes and shatter organs inside a ribcage, but she would teach no more. Homing in on her from all sides, the fence whipped Jenny in a crosscut wave of spitting sparks, slicing her to pieces. The last dying notes of her throat emptied into the wind as she fell back and lay sprawled across the ground, little veins of crimson spreading across the plain's snow. Purity had detected the minefield, but not this lurking fence of burning fire… Jenny's death was on her hands. Fool, fool of a girl. She was a breeding-house ragamuffin, not a queen, not a leader. What use was her bravado out here?

Ganby lay across from Purity, muttering, his frantic eyes darting between the crackling poles in front of them, a forest of death raised to protect the beanstalk. 'We're dead, we're dead. Death awaits us in the north.'

And Purity had led them to it.

Molly came out of unconsciousness yelling, the thunder roaring in her head as she tried to make sense of the vague shapes she could see in the dim light. She was being carried by one of the giant ants, her body lying across the foremost pair of its legs. As Molly was borne bobbing through a dark rocky tunnel, flashes of light hit her like bayonet thrusts from somewhere to her side. The nest, she was in the ants' nest, being dragged deep into their colony. Nausea and fear swelled around her in a sea of agony, the insect's antennae stroking her hair as she screamed and flailed in its grip.

Wakefulness came and went, the spear-clacking noise of the monstrous insect's legs on rock drumming across her. Then she was being taken through a chamber, pale light from a distant source in the roof glinting wickedly against the ant's compound eyes. Its legs lifted Molly forward; painfully twisting her neck she saw that it was carrying her towards a wall dotted with dark circular holes and lifting her into a tube. Oh, sweet Circle! A memory of the spider web that often seemed to be woven outside her bedroom in Tock House on cold autumn mornings came back to Molly. The spider happily spinning little white packages and sealing the flies against a leaf for its young to consume.

Molly tried to lever herself out of the tunnel, but the ant had sealed the tomb down by her feet. Shut in. Trapped. Just like when she had been a stack cleaner crawling through the tunnels of Middlesteel's towers, the enclosed spaces pushing down on her, crushing the life out of her. She had survived that, though. Survived the short career of a poorhouse stack-cleaning girl.

Molly was feverishly kicking at the obstruction under her feet when something came crawling out of the other end of the tunnel and snapped tight onto her head.

Surrounded by the cries of the wounded and dying raiders, Purity was desperately trying to work out a way to disable the fence of murderous poles that had risen to protect the Army of Shadows' facility. She could deflect a couple of the killing sparks with her sword, absorb a few more, but the enemy's defence barrier encircled the beanstalk. Every time one of the Jackelians moved they were detected and cut to pieces. Just like poor Jenny Blow.

More slats were spilling out of the barracks; it wouldn't take long for the beasts to form up behind the killing fence and pick the Jackelians off like farmers culling rabbits in a wheat field.

A slew of snow fell across Purity as a figure flashed past her, some of it falling into her open mouth and melting on her tongue. Jackaby Mention! Almost too fast to follow, save for the fact that icy erupting ground trailed the blur of his passage as the globes on top of the defence line spat their evil spark-fire at him. The blur coalesced by one of the poles, Jackaby visible for a second before he took off again, running around the ring of death.

Purity saw what Jackaby was doing. Fire flashed from each pole as he slowed, cutting into the neighbouring rod – and Jackaby was whirling around the beanstalk's perimeter, slowing and speeding up – a brief target for the spheres on top of each black sentry machine. The deadly heads were erupting in flames as neighbours cut at each other with fire, falling like felled trees while Jackaby spun around them like a human whirlwind.

The fence was disabled now. Samuel Lancemaster rose, a titan from the field of death. 'Forward the line! Up from the dirt, warriors of Jackals. Leave the dead behind and make their ghosts proud.'