Stephen Hunt - From the Deep of the Dark

Signalling the collapse of the shore’s defensive line, the lake’s ocean lock burst open in a massive explosion, pieces of concrete blown across the lake, a deadly shower of wreckage sweeping across the battlements. A second after the detonation, the screams of pain and terror from the defenders who had taken the shockwave reached Daunt. Some townspeople had been flung off the wall, others maimed and ripped apart. Behind the city’s wall, one of the clean gleaming white porcelain towers stood with its top two storeys shaved off by the scythe of rubble.

‘This is how it begins,’ whispered Daunt. Then he shook himself. It was almost as if he had been possessed by the old gods again when he had spoken.

‘Reckon you’re not wrong,’ said Morris, resting his rifle on the battlements. There were two little metal legs underneath the barrel, and he had opened them up to rest the gun against the stone, swivelling the stock experimentally. ‘You been through anything like this before?’

‘Jago,’ said the ex-parson. ‘I was on Jago when it was invaded.’

‘Then you know what to expect.’

‘I presume you’ve tasted similar when you were in the regiments?’

‘Once.’

‘So you showed the good wit to get out,’ said Daunt. ‘Sickened by the senselessness of it all?’

‘That wasn’t why I deserted,’ said Morris. The convict’s body language closed up. ‘Eyes front. They’re coming. Can you smell them? Can you taste them? Bloody gill-necks.’

Out towards the sea the wind had changed direction, war gas drifting across the lake, providing the advancing Advocacy forces with a haze screen of cover. The Court’s own deadly cloud was working against them now. Daunt saw a couple of runners outside the battlements, sprinting down the ground between the wall and near shore of the lake, pegging small triangular pennants into the dirt. The effective killing range of our rifles, so our defenders don’t expend ammunition needlessly. There wasn’t much cover in the stretch of land between the lake and the city — wooden jetties for fishing boats, a few shacks for storing nets, eeling skiffs lying beached in the reeds. Apart from the runners desperately marking out the ground, the rest of Nuyok were sheltering behind their town’s thick, tall walls.

Daunt quickly tipped up his gas mask and wiped the salty sweat off his forehead before it could sting his eyes again. Even the wind on the island was hot, playing against his skin as if it had been blown off the coals of a Jackelian tavern’s fireplace. Matters were about to get devilishly hotter. Out on the border of the lake, a rhythmic clanking filled the air as hundreds of rolling-pin tanks began to rise up out of the lime-coloured waters, tracks at either end of the metal vehicles dragging them off the lake bed and up onto the surface. Almost before the landing craft had cleared the surface, the guns studding their armour spewed out a hail of fire. They were moving up in a coordinated assault formation — some halting for hatches at their rear to fall down and disgorge marines, others coming to a standstill in the shadows of the battlements, dozens of weapons bristling up on their maximum elevation and peppering the battlements with shot and shell. These soldiers had come for the long haul, bulbous crystal helmets filled with water connected by hoses to their version of rebreather packs, bodies weighted down with pouches and entrenchment equipment. Protected by the initial landing force, more rolling-pin armour emerged out of the lake waters. Some were dragging spherical cargo containers, others mounted with trench digging prows and siege machinery. The appearance of this assault was met by a hail of fire from the Nuyokians, the roar of their rifles firing a thousand baby rattles shaking in anger. It resounded across the lake like no gunfire Daunt had ever heard before. Not the wood-like splinter of explosive charges being ignited and discarded manually, but a hollow thwacking as the firing bolts in the side of rifles jolted back and forth with the discharge of super-compressed gas. The defenders’ furious response was accompanied by a clockwork clack of ammunition drums rotating on top of the rifles as the city’s militiamen emptied their magazines down onto the ground in front of their home. A fierce drumming echoed from the rolling-pin tanks as rifle balls glanced off their armour. Where the gill-neck marines were out in the open, unloading their siege and entrenching tools from the landing craft, soldiers’ corpses spilled into the dirt and crumpled back into the lake’s reeds.

Behind Daunt, the two long guns of the city were still discharging every few minutes, tossing shells at the stalled battle fleet of the Advocacy as fast as the city gunners could reload shells into the breeches. Daunt ducked as a spray of shots whistled past his head. Morris was keeping down, swivelling his gas gun on its leg mounts and aiming careful bursts at the invaders below, laughing as if the vista of carnage below was a theatre production laid on purely for his amusement. At the receiving end of each spray of bullets, Advocacy soldiers collapsed to the ground with shattered breathing helmets, their crab-shell armour torn and holed. Elements of the landing force were trying to storm the slopes of the volcano, no doubt trying to find elevated positions from where they could shell and snipe at the city below. Fortunately for the Nuyokians, the close-defence mechanisms of the Court of the Air were coming into play. Fake rock fronts were drawing back all across the mountain side, cannons, mortars and banks of rapid-fire rifles emerging into the light of day from camouflaged bunkers, cutting down each wave of Advocacy marines as they attempted to scale the rise.

Stretcher-bearers ran crouched along the length of the battlements, rolling collapsed bodies onto stretchers and manhandling them down the steps towards the surgeons’ tents on the lawns of the nearest towers.

All around Daunt the defenders were intent on murder, focused on killing enough gill-necks for the Advocacy to abandon its beachhead. This is your war, Jethro Daunt, and welcome to it. He bent down and went off to see how many of the wounded he could save.

Dick and Sadly stood in the shadows of an alleyway, occupying one of the narrow passages between the imposing marble facades of the capital’s moneyed districts, a wide boulevard disgustingly well-lit by gas lamps even in the middle of the night. As head of the State Protection Board, Algo Monoshaft was entitled to a grace and favour residence supplied by the state. In this case, a series of rooms atop Victory Arch.

Dick had always considered it fitting that the civil servant charged with the protection of the realm from its enemies should be ensconced inside a monument built to celebrate Parliament’s victory in the civil war. If me and Sadly get in there alive, who knows, maybe the old arsehole’ll continue doing the job. That didn’t mean Dick failed to begrudge Algo Monoshaft his polished walnut floors and his servants and his expensive antiques and every penny of the luxuries he enjoyed while Dick had shivered in the cold comfort of Damson Pegler’s cheap boarding rooms. Perched in gilded opulence atop the ceremonial gateway’s four arches. Well, at least Dick knew where to find the senile sod, even if it was in the lap of state-patronized luxury. They might have had an easier job of it, if the head had lived in Steamtown with the majority of the capital’s other steammen. But Algo Monoshaft was living high on his perks, so here the head was, and across there Dick and Sadly would have to go.

Sadly checked outside the alley. ‘Nobody watching that I can see, but that doesn’t mean they’re not out there to get us.’

‘Oh, they’re watching all right,’ said Dick. ‘Walsingham isn’t going to let anyone he doesn’t trust within a country mile of the old steamer.’