Mike Wild - The Clockwork King of Orl

As she'd suspected, it was the wisest thing she could do. All the accoutrements necessary for a ride might have been in place, but there was no telling that to the bamfcat. The sensation of being mounted obviously a novel one to the beast, for a second it stood there simply stunned, and then decided that it didn't like the development at all. And then all hells broke loose.

The bamfcat ceased its rattling rumble and instead roared a roar that drowned out the thudding of the Hells' Bellies, beginning to leap around the junkyard and spinning round and round in an attempt to throw its unwanted passenger from its back. Kali could do nothing but hang on for dear life, her hands clenched around the bamfcat's neck horn, thighs jammed against its flanks. At first she didn't find it too much of a challenge — the places she'd been, she was used to clinging to things — but what concerned her was how long she could maintain her grip — and how long, if at all, it would be before she succeeded in calming the beast. The bamfcat certainly didn't make things easy, deciding, when Kali refused to budge, that if it couldn't dislodge her with leaps and bounds, then it would do so with the aid of whatever lay around the junkyard, first impacting with and demolishing the tackroom and then having a go at the stables, where at that very moment Flash was just coming round. The emaciated nag sprang up, wheezing with terror, and began to run around the junkyard in hopeless circles, searching for an exit, before collapsing again. Kali, meanwhile, did the best impression of a circus performer she could, avoiding the bamfcat's protestations by dodging anything that threatened to crush her, throwing her legs over one side of the beast then another, at one point slipping under and over its girth, and at another lying flat on her back without a grip to pass beneath an overhanging beam that would otherwise have decapitated her. It seemed, for what felt like an eternity, that the bamfcat was never going to surrender its independence, but then, unexpectedly, it began to slow. A few more feeble bucks and leaps followed, together with a half-hearted brush against the collapsed ruins of the tackroom walls, but finally the beast was reduced to a few spasms that were little more than afterthought, and then to a begrudging standstill.

The thing stank overpoweringly of the sweat that oozed thickly from between its plates, but Kali knew that after what she'd just endured she was hardly in a state to win any floral competitions herself. This appeared to be no bad thing. The bamfcat turned its head towards her, eyes dolefully taking in the rider that had beaten it and, with a long and disgusting snort, sucked in the scent of its new owner.

"Good boygirl," Kali said, patting it heavily. She smiled as the bamfcat rattle-rumbled, because this time it sounded more like a purr. "Good, good boygirl."

It was time to go. Kali manoeuvred the bamfcat towards the passage out of the yard but then reined it back. On the other side of the gate she could hear the voices of two patrolling guards, who, despite the continuing thudding of the Bellies, were bemoaning the fact that it was too quiet in the backstreets, and how they'd each give coin for a little piece of the action. Especially if they could lay their eyes — and other parts of their anatomy — on the girl who was meant to have scarpered from the cathedral. She was a tasty little piece by all accounts. Running around in her drawers, too. A bit of all right. Worth a stuffing.

Really.

Be careful what you wish for, boys, Kali thought. She smiled and patted the bamfcat soothingly, prompting a rolling of its neck. If it was a piece of the action the guards wanted, then a piece of the action they would get.

"Yah!" she shouted, at the same time ramming her heels into its flanks and pushing its neckhorn forwards. With a snort, the bamfcat responded, galloping forwards and through the junkyard gate.

Through, because there was no need for Kali to bother opening it. Or rather, the bamfcat didn't need her to — because as it galloped forwards it demolished the entranceway in much the same way it had demolished the yard, ramming the gates with its armoured head and ripping them clean away from their hinges. As a result, twin sheets of wood arced through the air of the alleyway, flipping and spinning into the path of the patrolling guards.

"Wha — ? Oh, bloody huuurk!" one of them cried as half the gate smacked him in the face, flooring him, while the other, ducking to avoid the second half, swiftly drew his sword and advanced. But then he saw the bamfcat, and stopped. The bamfcat saw him, too, and roared into his face so strongly that his hair streamed back from his scalp. It was difficult to describe the colours the guard's face went, and the only change in colour about his person that could be pinpointed with any accuracy was that of his trousers. He slopped away.

Kali galloped the bamfcat down the alley and out, emerging onto Anclas Way, Scholten's main thoroughfare to its eastern gate. It, too, remained busy despite the night hour — was thronged, in fact, with revellers, tradesmen and, most of all, pilgrims returning from their visits to the cathedral. But as the bamfcat galloped forth, skidding into a turn on its wet cobbles, the area did its best to empty itself as fast as it could.

Kali ignored the screams and cries of alarm, the bodies falling through windows, the collapsed stalls and the rolling trinkets and fruit, and the bamfcat ignored the various objects thrown by some braver members of the crowd that bounced off its armour. Both of them ignored — completely — the cries of a number of startled guards that they should immediately halt.

A moment later, scattering those same guards in their path like ninepins, they exited the closing city gate.

Free at last of Scholten, Kali reined the bamfcat forwards. Towards a horizon that was tinged white and red from the glow of ice and volcanoes. Towards the mountains that formed the ridge of the world. Towards Merrit Moon.

It took Kali two days to reach the World's Ridge Mountains, but even without rest and at the sustained and full gallop to which she subjected her seemingly inexhaustible mount, the journey should have taken longer. The bamfcat, it seemed, was something more than just an armoured horse.

She couldn't put her finger on how it happened, where it happened or even precisely when it happened, but now and again in their journey, the world about them seemed suddenly to blur. This was not simple acceleration on the bamfcat's part — had it been she would have at least felt greater wind resistance — but a rather disorientating case of simply being in one place one second, another the next, as if unbeknownst to herself she had actually nodded off for part of the ride. The biggest hint that something unusual was happening was when they reached the town of Fayence, where, after such a blur, the startled faces of the locals were tantamount to what they might have been had mount and rider appeared right in front of their noses, out of thin air. Odd, that, because as far as Kali knew that was precisely what they'd just done.

Those faces were nothing, though, compared to the looks that followed when, during the brief hiatus, the bamfcat decided to feed. One moment the worgle was happily rolling along the main street in front of them, and the next the rodent was snapped up by a lizard-like tongue the length of two men, the furry ball hooting in panic as it was sucked in and devoured in a single swallow. A dozen of its startled brethren flared like toothbrushes and bounced away, trying to avoid its fate, but the bamfcat's lengthy tongue slipped into every nook and cranny and snapped them up in rapid succession, Fayence's worgle population suffering a devastating blow in seconds.