Tim Lebbon - Dawn

The fields soon gave way to wilder ground: the Cantrass Plains. Lenora had been here before. At some point in the next day she would cross the path she had taken three hundred years before, fleeing Lake Denyah with the Mages and retreating across Noreela to the foot of The Spine. She wondered whether she would know that place when she came to it, whether it would give her the sensation of having come full circle through life. Before, she had been running away. This time, she was on the offensive.

Lenora stood on the back of her machine and gave the order to increase speed. She was amazed and awestruck at the sight behind her. She had eight hundred Krotes with her, and for as far as she could see the landscape was alive with machines of all shapes and designs. The Krotes rode as if they had been born into this. Some had fashioned reins from rope or leather, preferring to stand as their rides loped across the landscape. Others sat back, sharpening weapons, checking quivers, greasing slideshocks, packing throwing stars, testing crossbows, or familiarizing themselves with their machines’ various weaponry. Fires exploded here and there when engines billowed gas. Some of them growled, as though already a part of the fight, and others darted about as if stalking something.

Moonlight sheened their way. They leapt over tumbled stone walls, skirted around trees, crashed through hedges, and Lenora could see the shadows of flying machines against the darkened sky. She wondered whether they could fly high enough to find the sun, but it was a treacherous thought, as though she was denying the Mages’ power.

The sun has gone, she thought. There’s no reasoning to that. It’s gone because Angel and S’Hivez wish it so, and they are the most powerful things in the world. Let the creatures of Kang Kang rise against them, let New Shanti unite in a final stand, let the Sleeping Gods rise. The Mages have magic, and its power is dictated only by the limits of their minds.

Lenora’s machine vaulted a fallen tree, but she did not even need to brace her legs. The ride was as smooth as floating on water.

THEY WERE MOVING fast, and several hours after leaving Conbarma they encountered one of the Cantrass Plains’ shifting homesteads.

Lenora was astounded. She felt a flicker of admiration for the people who remained with this giant thing, trying to continue their ancestors’ lifestyle. The energy and effort expended in moving back and forth across the Cantrass Plains surely outmatched any benefit they may gain. Perhaps it was a way of keeping madness at bay, like a man clearing a glacier a snowflake at a time. There was no final aim in sight because it was impossible; it was the process that took time and diverted attention from more serious matters.

The homestead was battered and dilapidated. The remains of rope bridges hung at its sides, their treads long since decayed and fallen away. Deflated water sacs were home to large gray fungi. Its roof had cracked and crazed, and even from close to the ground Lenora could see that large slabs of rock were missing.

The machine’s legs had disappeared, and now its inhabitants pulled it on a carpet of logs.

A hundred people tugged on thick ropes, a hundred more pushed. Dozens of large cattle and a few bedraggled horses were attached in leather harnesses, whipped on by rovers standing on their backs. The machine moved minutely, creaking and cracking some of the logs underneath, and the people strained as they tried to find somewhere better. It was a monumental effort for minimal results, and Lenora wondered whether this same machine had been moving in the same direction for three hundred years.

She ordered the Krote army to halt and they watched for a while, amazed that none of the homestead rovers seemed to have seen or heard them. The light was poor, but the moonlight seemed to like these new machines of war, glinting from sharp edges and making their stony parts almost luminescent.

“How hopeless,” Lenora said.

The rovers pushing and pulling their giant, broken home were all heavily muscled, and yet they appeared tired and weak. Their feet were large and flat, their hands knotted into stumpy pads. Lights burned in a few of the homestead’s windows, and Lenora wondered at the hierarchy that allowed people to remain inside. The rulers, obviously. Tribal heads. Those with power or charisma, who could command the others to do their bidding.

The machine moved a step as they watched. Many people sank to the ground, while others dragged several stripped trees from the rear to the front. They placed them behind the harnessed cattle and horses, forcing them beneath the front edge of the homestead with heavy wooden hammers. Then they walked back to the rear and took up position again.

So here was the first real test. For three centuries the Mages had plundered the tribes and races of the huge land of Dana’Man and its neighboring islands, adding to their army, training it, instilling a hatred of Noreela-a land none of that army had ever seen and many had never heard of. Down the decades old warriors had died and new had been born, until a large proportion of the army was Krote through and through. Different toned skins, different hair, some tall, some short…yet all Krote. Bred to fight. Born to kill, and aid the Mages in their revenge.

Now Lenora would begin to see how dedicated this army could be. The battle for Conbarma had been a fight; this would be a slaughter.

Lenora turned around and spoke to the Krotes within earshot. “It’s a sad first challenge,” she said, “but it’s practice for your machines.” She nodded, and half a dozen warriors moved forward.

The rovers saw them at last. Some stood upright and dropped their ropes, rubbing their hands as if to massage some feeling back in. Others turned and ran behind the machine. The men and women whipping the cattle dropped their lashes, and the cattle relaxed, heavy ropes dipping into the grass, animals slumping to their knees and baying in pain and relief.

A few windows in the machine grew dark as the fires inside were extinguished.

Six Krote machines walked across a field of low, ropy plants, and the screaming began.

A hail of arrows dropped onto the advancing Krotes from atop the homestead, and they returned fire. A body fell to the ground, arms and legs thrashing. Another slid down the side of the huge structure and snagged on a rope, swinging there as blood darkened the stone below it.

The rovers who had been pushing the homestead ran, and two machines went in pursuit. One of them flailed its long metal arms, harvesting the people. The other machine coughed a wide spray of fire before it, lighting the dim scene. It stomped across its burning victims, crushing them into the undergrowth.

The other four machines reached the homestead. One Krote started slaughtering the cattle, using a crossbow to kill individual creatures while her mount fired a dozen spiked balls at a time from rents in its fleshy hide. A rover leapt from one of the horses and came at her, fearless and mad. The Krote let him get close before putting a bolt through his mouth.

More arrows were slipping from shadows as those within the homestead recognized that they were under attack. The Krotes went inside.

Lenora sat back on her machine and watched the display. Any anxiousness quickly melted away, and she felt a sense of satisfaction. These rovers had been battling to survive for centuries, and their history would be wiped out in minutes. It could be the same for all of Noreela. The timescales would differ, perhaps, but the result would be the same. In a few moments these rovers’ wraiths would be wandering with no one to chant them down, and their future would have been erased.

But that vision, Lenora thought, with no room for survivors of any kind. She shook her head. Symbolism. Angel was fond of it, and she had used its touch to show Lenora what she wanted for Noreela.