Alan Campbell - God of Clocks

“Finish your tea,” Mina said. “It's good for you.”

Rachel felt the warmth of the glass in her hand. The tea's bittersweet aroma cut through her muddled thoughts with a welcome sharpness. “What?” She opened her eyes again. “Sorry, Mina, I must have drifted off.” She took a sip of the hot liquid.

Mina drank from her own glass. “Menoa's parasite won't leave him be,” she said. “The last I knew he was sitting on the pantry floor with a bottle of whisky, as drunk as any man or god could be.”

“Were we talking about Hasp?”

“You asked.”

“Yes. Sorry, do you want me to speak to him?”

The thaumaturge shrugged. “You can try.”

Rachel sighed. She seemed to have lost track of this conversation somewhere. She could hardly recall what they'd been speaking about at all. Her head continued to throb, but she felt slightly more alert now. Mina's tea had cleared her thoughts. She eased herself up against her pillow, then swung her legs out of the bed. “Thanks, Mina,” she said. “I'll take him some of this tea.” She topped up her glass and then stood up unsteadily.

“Are you all right?” Mina asked. “You look very pale.”

Rachel shrugged. “I'm Spine.”

In the cracked Pandemerian Railroad Company mirror behind the bar, Rachel glimpsed her own reflection again. She looked even thinner and more gaunt than usual, like a spectre lingering in that dark room, the ghost of some long-forgotten war. The bandage around her head had been fashioned from blue-and-white checked cloth. She brushed her fingers against the dark smear of blood above her right ear.

Somebody had cleared away all the bottles and righted one of the tables and two chairs, setting them in the center of the saloon. The building lolled gently from side to side and she heard the muted crash of trees from below. She went into the kitchen.

Hasp sat on the pantry floor with his back propped against the door frame. Four empty whisky bottles rolled back and forth across the floorboards near his feet. Clutching a half-full bottle in one fist, he raised it to his lips and drank, then looked up at her with darkly shadowed red eyes.

“A god walks up to a bar,” Rachel began. “And the barkeep says, sorry, we don't serve gods in here. And the god says, why the hell not? And the barkeep says, because the last one pissed all over my begonias.”

“Trying to… make the fucking thing drunk,” Hasp said, tapping the bottle against his head. “But the little fucker is more… has more tolerance than I do.” He lowered the bottle, sloshing yet more whisky on the floor.

“You want some tea?”

The god grunted.

Rachel downed half of her glass of tea and set it down on a convenient shelf. The drink was cold and foul-tasting, and she wondered why she'd brought it here at all. Her gaze wandered over the dusty tins and pickle jars and a box of old potatoes, carrots, and turnips. “Mina says we're following some sort of trail.”

“Woodsmen,” Hasp explained. “Rys's shit-head reserves. Never came to Coreollis when he summoned them.” He dragged a hand across his stubbled jaw and tried to spit; a glob of saliva remained on his chin. “Probably on their way to Herica, like us… abandoned their settlements when the peace treaty turned sour.” He grunted. “Either news of our glorious fucking defeat reached them fast, or they watched the battle at Larnaig from the cover of their forest. Cospinol's gold is only going to hire us idlers and cowards.”

“It's a fresh trail, so we're likely to catch up with them soon.”

Hasp sniffed. “You want me sober, eh?”

“Civil, anyway.”

The god set down his whisky bottle. “I'm not…” He stared glassily into the corner of the room for a long while. “I'm no more than this fucking parasite in here.” He glared up at her. “Understand? That's what Menoa has left you. If he had killed me, then there'd be nothing, but now there's less than nothing… a burden. I'm going to betray you with this fucking… little piece of Hell in my brain.” He bared his teeth and slammed the whisky bottle against the floorboards. The bottle smashed, but his glass-sheathed fist remained intact.

“Easy!”

Hasp lifted his transparent gauntlet and stared at the blood flowing inside it. “Tougher than it looks, isn't it?”

“Don't test it, Hasp. We need you alive.”

He snorted and wiped his nose. “Alive?” He mumbled something under his breath, then let out a sigh. “My head…”

“It'll hurt a lot more tomorrow.”

“Good. That'll punish the little fucker.”

It had grown almost dark by now, and the god sat sprawled on the pantry floor, stinking of whisky, his robe disheveled and his eyes hidden in caves of shadow. His neck and arms gleamed as dully red as tools from a surgeon's table. Rachel searched the shelves and then went back into the kitchen and pulled open drawers until she found some tallow candles and a taper. She looked for flints but found none.

“We need light. I'll go and see if Mina has something we can use to get a fire going.”

But the Lord of the First Citadel was snoring.

The moon had risen and it glowed dimly within its own misty halo by the time Dill stopped walking. Rachel and Mina were seated before the big potbelly stove in the main saloon, eating the remains of a stew that Rachel had made for Abner and Rosella Hill, when the swaying building became totally still. Silence crept in with the cold breeze.

The inn began to rise quickly into the sky.

“He's seen something.” Rachel glanced over at the thaumaturge.

Mina sniffed the air. “Refugees,” she replied.

The two women set their bowls down upon the floor and picked up candles and walked over to where the arconite's great grinning face looked in at them from behind the open doorway. Rachel stepped outside and Mina followed.

Three or four yards of hardened earth surrounded the inn, as though the building had been built upon a tiny island adrift in a sea of fog. Dill's skeletal fingers curved up over the precipice, as pale as boles of dead birch. He had lifted the building close to his skull, and his eyes gazed down at them blankly, like holes in the sky itself. The inn glowed like a beacon in the night sky behind Rachel, its windows and doorway ablaze with yellow lights. The scent of the green pines mingled with the odour of hellish chemicals leaching from the arconite.

Rachel heard a woman cry out in the distance.

“Set us down, Dill,” she said.

Dill did not move.

“I need to speak to them, Dill.”

Mina stood to one side, frowning, then she shook her head. “They're attacking our arconite's feet with axes.”

Rachel shot her an inquiring look.

“Not a chance of damaging him,” the thaumaturge said.

Rachel turned back to the face in the sky. “I can handle a group of woodsmen.”

The great skull tilted forward. Gold coins fell through his teeth. Then Dill stooped and lowered the building, and its earthen island, towards the ground.

A flurry of arrows greeted them as the Rusty Saw descended towards the woodsmen, their shafts hissing by in the mist. Rachel spied the refugees' caravan encamped along the forest trail ahead. A line of ten or so canvas-covered wagons had been left in the middle of the road, but scores of hide-covered tents crouched amongst the trees on either side-enough to sleep two or three hundred men. Campfires flickered amongst webs of branches and green needles, throwing shadows after hurrying men, illuminating the white eyes of horses and pack mules that snorted and struggled wildly against their hobbles.

A group of men was hacking at Dill's feet with axes-arcs of red steel in the glow of the firelight. They were as broad and fair as Rys's Northmen but wore a much simpler armour of lacquered wooden segments strapped to their torsos. Their women scattered, rushing goods and children away from the wagon train, slipping in the muddy ditches on either side of the track. Babies wailed in their arms. A horse reared against its reins tied to a running board; the wagon gave a jolt, and the animal fell in terror. Dogs barked and loped at the heels of fleeing men. Someone kicked a branch from a fire, raising a burst of sparks and embers amongst the trees.