Lilith Saintcrow: The Iron Wyrm Affair

Especially as the mecha were jolting as they fired. Clare had eight remaining out of a dozen; four had been left at Westminstre – one a shattered hulk, the other three under the control of some doughty Coldwater Guards in their soot-stained, tattered crimson uniforms who had been sent to hold the Bridge against this menace. Good lads, they had ripped the contact helmets free and taken the controls of the mecha in stride.

The Bridge had been littered with bodies and the smoking remains of shattered mecha, some with intact golden cores glittering. Many of the bodies were sorcerers or witches and their Shields; since charm and spell would not work, their only alternative had been to stand and die.

The Park was a wasteland of scorch and metal, trees stripped of their leaves and blasted, the lake boiling from the weird crackling cannon bolts. Clare stopped, wheeling; his fellow mecha did the same.

Wait. They are attacking Buckingham, not St Jemes . That must be where the Queen is .

Which was a more defensible palace, to be sure, but it rather altered his plans. There was no time to explain; Clare urged the mecha forward, taking over subsidiary control from his companions. The earth quaked as their cuplike feet drummed, mud and metal shards flying. Smoke wrung tears from his stinging eyes, a minor irritant. The other mentath, behind his massive logic engine, had ceased seeking to swat at Clare as if he were a horsefly. Instead, the stirred-hive mass of mecha were running together like sharp metal raindrops on a window pane. Clare could feel them, a painful abscess beneath the skin of Londinium. The city quivered, a patient under the tooth-charmer’s touch.

Force of numbers would drown what a battering of logic could not. The other mentath’s intellect was a smeared explosion of living light, diseased and overgrown, swelling hot and painful in the mindscape of the glowing engines.

Mud sucked at the cuplike feet, the Park thrashed out of all recognition. The Palace lifted its brownstone shoulders, shattered windows gaping and bits of its masonry crumbling as the huge arachnoid mecha squatted, its spinneret cannon ready to fire. Squealing wraithlike howls, the ghost-snarled brains trapped in their sloshing jars atop the spider bubbling and struggling for release, their screams a chorus of the damned as the other mentath used them ruthlessly to amplify his own force.

“ ONWARD! ” Clare roared, releasing Sig and Valentinelli’s mecha. It wasn’t quite proper to force them into the charge, and in any case, he had more than enough to do with his remaining five passengerless mecha so near the immense core and engine burning in the arachnid’s abdomen. Capacitors glowing, its eight feet stamping in turn, the gigantic thing braced itself as the spinneret cannon began to glow. The Other – for so Clare had christened the opposing mentath – woke to the danger a fraction of a second too late, and Clare’s five mecha hurled themselves on the massive arachnid with futile, fiery abandon. Metal tore, screaming, Prussian capacitors shattering and overloaded cores howling at the abuse, and the Other engaged Clare with a burst of pure logic.

It was not the weakness in her limbs, Emma decided. The ground itself was quivering steadily, like a pudding’s surface when the dish is jostled. Which was disconcerting, yes, but not nearly as disconcerting as the sounds from above.

Clacking razor beaks, the tearing-metal and crunching-bone cries of gryphons, hoarse male shouts, and a swelling sorcerous chant that ripped at her ears and non-physical senses. It was a complex, multilayered chant, a prepared Work of the sort that took months if not years to build. Consonants strained against long whistle-punctuated vowels and strange clicking noises, as if the peculiar personal language of the sorcerer had been married to an older, lipless, scaled tongue of dry fire and sun-basking slowness.

An Awakening chant, of course . She hauled herself up grimly, boots slipping on dew-wet rocks, vines tearing under her hands. The trick, she had discovered, was to push as hard as she could with her legs, silently cursing the extraneous material of her skirts. A minor charm to keep the skin on her hands from becoming flayed helped, but her arms shook with exhaustion, her fingers cramping and her neck afire with pain. The dragon. Hurry, Emma .

It was a surprise to reach the top of the rocky, almost vertical slope. She hauled herself up as if topping an orchard wall in the days of her Collegia girlhood, and lay full-length and gasping for a moment, protected by a screen of heavy-leafed bushes.

Shadows wheeled overhead, their wings spread. She blinked, sunlight drawing hot water from her unprotected eyes. The shapes were massive, graceful and fluid in the air, afire with jewel-toned brilliance.

Gryphons. One, two, good heavens, six, seven – Grayson did not have this many!

It did not matter. She rolled to her side, peering through the screen of brush. Exactly nothing would be achieved if she rushed into this. The chant was rising towards consummation, its broken rhythm knitting itself together, and she blinked back more swelling water, seeking to make sense of what she saw.

Lord Grayson’s gryphon carriage lay smashed against the foot of an ancient, ruined, moss-cloaked tower. The hill shuddered, the tower flexing as if its mortar were some heavy elastic substance. A milky dome of sorcerous energy shimmered around an indistinct figure, whose posture was nevertheless instantly recognisable: Llewellyn Gwynnfud, Earl of Sellwyth, his pale hair crackling with sorcerous energy and his hands making short stabbing gestures and long passes as the passages of his memorised chant demanded. A prepared Work this long and involved required such a mnemonic dance, breath and movement serving to remind the vocal chords of their next assay.

She recognised the tower, too. Dinas Emrys. That’s where I am. Very well .

The Prime’s five remaining Shields were spread out in a loose semicircle, fending off angry gryphons. Three of the gryphons – two tawny, one black – bore shattered leather and wooden bits, the traces they had used to pull the dead Chancellor’s chariot broken and useless, dragging them down. The remaining four lion-birds were slightly smaller, their plumage not as glossy. Wild, she realised with a shock.

The gryphons are loyal to Britannia; they must guess his aim. This is bloody good luck .

Two bodies – masses of fur and blood-matted feathers – lay on the stony ground. The Shields had managed to kill two lion-birds; or perhaps that black one had been lost in the chariot crash.

Emma forced herself to stillness. She breathed deeply, listening to the chant, judging the structure of the sorcerous dome protecting Llewellyn. The surface of the hill rippled, in a fashion that would make her ill if she thought too deeply on it, so she put it from her mind and concentrated.

You are alone, and the gryphons will kill you as likely as Llew; their hunger for sorcerer flesh is immense and they are angry. Then there are the Shields; of course they will view me as a threat. That they are occupied does not mean they cannot spare a moment to slay me .

Her fingers plucked at her skirts, thoughtfully. They felt something hard, plunged into the pocket, and brought forth Ludovico’s dull-bladed knife. Mikal had found a leather sheath for it, and she had tucked it away, not trusting that the Neapolitan would not find some way of reacquiring it if it were not on her person. She had never underestimated the man, and she devoutly hoped she never would.

Already sensitised. Ah . The stone at her throat chilled further, ice banding her neck and her fingers aching as if she had stepped outside on a winter’s day.