Mike Wild - The Clockwork King of Orl

Kali Hooper's eyes snapped open. She coughed. And then she sat up, abruptly, ramrod straight.

"Great gods," Slowhand whispered.

"Lord of All," Makennon said.

"Slowhand?" Kali asked.

The archer scurried to her side. His voice trembled, partly in wonder at what he had just witnessed, partly in thanks that — somehow — he had Kali back. "H-hey, how you doing?"

"Ohhhh, you know…" Kali said weakly. "You?"

"Ohhhh, you know. Fled certain death, watched you come back from it, now starting to wonder once again whether we have a chance of stopping an invincible clockwork army intent on destroying the world — in other words, your usual." He hesitated, looked doubtful. "You up to speed with this?"

"Unnh. A-ha." Kali coughed again and held her chest, from where she found her fatal wound had gone. And as she did, she caught sight of the figure beside her, and scrambled back on the ground.

"It's all right… I think," Slowhand said. "I don't know how or why but… the ogur helped you."

"Helped?" Kali said, puzzled. She picked herself up, her own metabolism aiding the effects of the amulet, and studied the creature. It was weak but conscious, and its face seemed almost to ripple before her eyes, caught somewhere between the beast she thought it was and something heart-thuddingly familiar. She touched the amulet around her neck, remembered seeing it on the old man, then moved to touch the ogur's face. And as she did, the ogur's hand moved over hers and moved it gently down, much as another had in the Warty Witch a long, long time ago.

Kali swallowed. There was something familiar there — and the eyes.

"My gods," she said. "Merrit?"

"What?" Slowhand exclaimed.

"It's the old man," Kali said, excitedly. "I don't know how or why but he's here, inside this, this… thing. The cave in the World's Ridge, where I last saw him — he didn't die!"

"Oh, Hooper, come on — "

"Your friend is correct," Makennon said. "Munch told me how this happened, about an artefact. Its effects are meant to be temporary but…"

Kali looked at the ogur, concerned. What had, a moment before, seemed so familiar in its eyes was fading, as if Moon were going away, and as she watched the spark in them faded to something feral — the eyes that she remembered from the beasts in the cave. The ogur emitted a dull growl, then, and as if afraid something worse might follow, roughly shoved her away, rose and stomped along the cliff.

"We have to do something to help him," Kali said.

"Hooper, I'm not sure we can," Slowhand cautioned. "It seems to me that in doing what he did he's sacrificed something."

"Like what?" Kali said.

Slowhand looked grave. "Like himself."

"Then let us hope his sacrifice has not been in vain," Makennon said. Her attention had been drawn by a series of quaking thuds from far below. "Because they're coming."

The three of them turned to look down the steps leading to Martak, and at their base saw that the first units of mechanical warriors had completed their slow march from the throne room and emerged from the cowl. They marched in the same organised lines of five, in rank after rank after rank, filling the jetty with their broad bodies, metal feet pounding into the stone, and, as they gradually drew closer to the steps, rocks at the top of the cliffs began to tremble and shed scree that bounced and skittered below.

Their assault on the peninsula would soon begin.

"We have to stop them," Slowhand said.

"Oh brilliant. Just bloody brilliant."

"I see the old Hooper is indeed back."

"Well, honestly…"

"If you two are finished," Makennon said, "I think someone's already ahead of us on that one." She pointed a little way along the clifftop, where the ogur was pushing its shoulder into a boulder that balanced there, clearly trying to dislodge it and send it crashing below.

"I think it knows what it's doing," Makennon said.

"Damn right," Kali said, smiling. "The old man's still in there somewhere."

"Well, are we just going to stand here or are we going to help it?" Slowhand enquired.

"Him," Kali corrected.

"Fine, him. Come on!"

The three of them joined the ogur behind the boulder and leant their weight to pushing it, and with a dull rumble the giant piece of rock dislodged from its perch and went tumbling away, bouncing first off rocks and then onto the stone steps. With a series of crashes that were audible even over the storm, it continued down, bouncing two then three steps at a time, then more, gathering momentum as it went.

The mechanical warriors did not even react to its approach, their minds — Munch's mind — intent on their single imperative of reaching the surface and the humans who dwelled there. The boulder smashed into their front rank and sent five warriors staggering back, causing a knock-on effect behind them, and as the giant rock continued to roll through the second and third ranks their relentless march was momentarily thrown into confusion, the affected warriors trying to recover from the impact, those behind attempting to march on around them. Then, in unison, five of the giant dwarven battle hammers were swung at the boulder and it was shattered first to rubble and then, to dust. The warriors' march continued, the damage to them insignificant.

"We need more boulders," Slowhand declared. He repeated the statement more loudly to the ogur as if, somehow, being an ogur made it deaf. He then pointed at more boulders, just to make himself extra clear, but the ogur had already stomped towards them of his own volition. "Yes, more boulders!" Slowhand agreed needlessly.

Makennon assessed the ammunition available to them. Short of attempting to smash away the Dragonwings themselves, most of the rocks available to them were smaller than the first. "This isn't going to work," she said. "The last one barely scratched them."

"Maybe not," Slowhand responded, heaving. "But we can at least slow them down."

"And what will that achieve? There are no reinforcements coming."

"I don't know, okay? But I, for one, am not going to just stand here."

He and the ogur sent another boulder tumbling.

Kali, meanwhile, stared down the steps, and then inland, back along the peninsula. She bit her lip. "Slowhand, carry on with what you're doing because it just might help, but Makennon has a point. There's only one way to stop those warriors and that's to destroy what Munch used to animate them — destroy the Clockwork King. But that means first having to finish their general — finish Munch."

Slowhand and the ogur made another rock roll, and the archer nodded. "Finish Munch," he repeated, breathlessly. "Hooper, you have to be kidding. Even if you had a chance against his bodyguards, how in the hells would you get back down to him? Those things would mince you before you got halfway down the steps."

"There's one way," Kali said.

She swept up Munch's gutting knife from the ground and jammed it in her belt. Then, she stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled. A second later, Horse stood next to her, braying, his broken tether dangling around his neck.

Kali mounted him and slapped his flank, welcoming his help.

Now it was Slowhand's turn to stare down the steps, Kali's intention dawning. "Oh, no," he said. "No, no, no. No…"

"Hyyahh!" Kali shouted.

She reined Horse around and galloped him towards the top of the steps, kicking his flanks to spur him on. Horse reached them and jumped, soaring in a determined arc over four of the risers before his hooves thudded back onto stone with an impact that made them spark and jarred Kali to the bones.

"Hyyahh!" she shouted again.

Horse thundered down the steps before them, Kali keeping her gaze straight ahead in the bouncing, rushing diagonal the world had become, and again kicked his flanks, spurring the bamfcat to greater speed.