Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air

At the shiftie end of the bridge fresh ammunition boxes had been brought up and the troops felt emboldened enough to start a volley of fire that started cutting down the rioting street fighters. Debating sticks smashed aside doors as the ragtag army took cover.

A couple of fast-bowlers with glass grenades tried running out onto the bridge and pitching the explosives towards the north end, but the range was too far even for the two four-poles fanatics, the explosions showering flames at the foot of the barricade as the Third Brigade cut down the two players. From the rebels a traditional flutter of applause sounded as they honoured the dead men’s fatal innings.

Oliver turned as a clatter of hooves reverberated behind them, half expecting to face a charge of exomounts. But instead of heavy cavalry, Oliver saw a line of horses with a collection of riders as motley as the city fighters’ own forces. There were huntsmen from the villages wearing red tunics that could almost pass for redcoat uniforms, the black greatcoats of mail coachmen, the blue uniforms of the county constabulary, and, by far the greater number, hundreds of roamers — wild gypsies in a flurry of colours, their fire witches riding without saddles and naked, war paint swirled around lithe muscles. At their head was a riding officer of the House Horse Guards, parliament’s oldest cavalry regiment.

‘Jack Dibnah,’ shouted the riding officer, adjusting his roundhead-style helmet. ‘Mad Jack to m’friends. Late of the House’s own. Been out hunting any shifties foolish enough to stick their heads into the royal county of Stainfolk. Heard there were some of the buggers in Middlesteel needing stringing up too.’

He pointed at the hundreds of horses behind him, sixers mostly, whippet-thin and panting from the thrill of the ride. ‘Dibnah’s irregulars. Not much for parade turns but handy enough with a sabre or a lance.’

One of the fire witches kicked her horse up to the front of the column. ‘Enough of your prattle, we were promised the blood of the beng that drove us from the plains of Natsia.’

Mad Jack winked at Oliver and the commodore. ‘Not much for the niceties of command either, but they’re spirited fillies, eh?’ He looked over at the steamman politician. ‘You with that lot camped out east?’

‘I am the honourable member for Workbarrows, young softbody,’ said Guardian Tinfold. ‘Which lot are you referring to?’

‘Good Circle, man, there’s a whole army of your people camped east of the Gambleflowers.’

‘King Steam has honoured the ancient treaty,’ said Tinfold.

Bullets whistled past Mad Jack’s helmet, but he just swatted at the air, as if horseflies drawn to the sweat of his sixer were bothering him.

‘We need the steammen here,’ said the Carlist officer. ‘Why aren’t they marching to our relief?’

‘King Steam is bound by the treaty,’ whistled Tinfold. ‘No army from the Free State will cross the Gambleflowers unless it is invited to do so by the House of Guardians.

‘Is King Steam mortal insane?’ said Commodore Black. ‘The Third Brigade is murdering us down here. If we can’t break through soon their gallopers will be hauled up and they’ll be giving us the whiff of their cannon.’

‘I must go to them,’ said Tinfold. ‘They must accept my command as a Guardian to traverse the river.’ He turned to Mad Jack. ‘Will your horse carry me?’

‘On the flat of a cart maybe, old steamer. Don’t you see how you’re spooking her?’

Oliver indicated the fast flowing waters of the Gambleflowers. ‘That will carry you fast enough.’

‘Would you have us drift the Guardian down the Gambleflowers like a barrel?’ asked the commodore. ‘The refugees floated away on every skiff that could hold out the mortal river.’

‘Not quite everything.’

Commodore Black looked with horror to where Oliver was pointing, at a boat converted into a tavern moored to the banks of the river. ‘A jinn house, lad? You’d risk our fate to an old tub that hasn’t been cast off the banks of Middlesteel for a decade or more?’

‘With an experienced skipper at the wheel, commodore.’

‘No, lad. Don’t ask that of me. Haven’t I been put in harm’s way enough? My fine house filled with wicked shifties, my friends and companions slaughtered underground with half the armies of the Commonshare trying to see us off the same way. Those troops on the bridge would fill the tub full of holes as soon as they saw us making off with her.’

‘Let’s see if we can’t throw their aim for you,’ said Oliver. He looked up at the cavalry. ‘I heard that horses won’t jump a line with bayonets.’

The gypsy witch looked at him with contempt. ‘These are not salahori horses, little gadje .’

‘Have you never been blooded, dear boy?’ said Mad Jack. ‘Jump a hedge, jump some shifties with a little cutlery on the end of their rifles. All the same to me.’

Oliver leapt onto the back of the gypsy’s mare and flourished his witch-blade. ‘Good luck commodore, you’ve just been promoted to what’s left of the Jackelian navy.’

‘Ah, lad, when you get to that asylum of yours, have them warm up a cell for you. You’ll put poor old Blacky in his grave yet.’

‘How does a man who does not know horses ride bareback?’ demanded the gypsy woman.

‘My memory comes and goes.’

Mad Jack spun his horse around and pointed his sabre down the bridge. ‘All those who would ride as free men, all those who would ride for Jackals — then ride with me now !’

Their trot became a canter became a gallop, the thunder of their hooves and the screams of the gypsies filling the long run of the bridge. At the other end of the bridge the glass-crack of charges sounded as the order to fire at will rippled down the enemy line. Horses fell, the easiest target to hit and as fatal to their rider as if the bullets had found their hearts, lost beneath the storm of the charge.

Oliver risked a quick glance away from the rapidly approaching barricade and the frantically reloading Third Brigade men. Commodore Black was scurrying down to the moored jinn palace, a handful of Ben Carl’s loyalists carrying Tinfold down the steps behind him.

Streamers of fire twisted around the gypsy witch’s painted arms in front of Oliver. ‘ Kris, kris, kris ,’ she yelled. They were no longer a charge of cavalry — they were thunder taken mortal form and hurtling towards the Quatershiftian line, the din of their hooves and cries painful to hear.

In front of them the bayonet-tipped rifles of the Quatershiftian line rose like the spines on a hedgehog.

‘The wall,’ shouted Molly to her steamman friend as the two possessed convicts flew towards them. ‘Use your voice on the wall.’

Slowstack swivelled to face the stone passage and his voicebox shook as he used the fighting frequency of the knights steammen, a spider web of cracks forming along the wall under the violence of his voice.

Dark energy rolled down the passage, the inhuman banshee howls of the Wildcaotyl channelled through corporeal throats. On the wall the cracks spread, slow at first, then rippling out as the pressure of the magma-drain behind the wall widened the fissure, the earth’s fury forcing its way out. Shards of the green stone favoured by the Chimecans blew off, followed by a geyser of molten rock.

Molly caught sight of the two convicts pushing back at the magma with their black light as they tried to retreat. Then her view was cut off as the slab of stone in the ceiling smashed down an inch in front of their position. She felt the rumble of the second door sealing the breach out of sight. Magma caught under the edge of the door began to cool, hissing by their feet.