Scrivener's Moon (23 page)

But there wasn’t enough fuel left aboard the
Sandwich
for a real explosion. The barge just burned, wrapping itself in flame as the survivors of the carnival jumped from the hatches and hurried into the firelit scrub. Looking back, Fever glimpsed the Carnival’s Stalker for a moment, still mindlessly working his treadmill as the walls collapsed around him, a runner in a wheel of fire. Sparks danced. Beyond the flames, the monowheels rolled to and fro, their engines moaning, a shot ringing out from time to time.

“Poor old barge,” said Master Fenster, pulling off his hat.

“Poor
Sandwich
,” said Lucy, and her face was bright with tears in the flame-light.

“Toasted,” said Stick, with his arm around her.

“We’re done for now,” said Lady Midnight. “They’ll hunt us down one by one. They’ve already got the Knave and Webfinger Joe.”

“No,” said Borglum. He wasn’t watching the blaze or the monowheels; he’d turned to look southward instead. “The
Sandwich
brought us far enough. Look.”

Fever turned. There in the moonlight a mile away a long ridge rose, whale-backed and somehow familiar. It was Dryships Hill, where she had once sat looking at the fires of the far-off Fuel Country. Just as she realized that, the lights of big vehicles appeared over its crest: one, two, three landships, and their guns went off with stabs of flame and puffs of moonlit smoke, and shells began to fall close to the monowheels, scattering them, drowning out the shrill howl of their engines as they fled.

“Hands up, hands up, all of you,” Borglum was saying. “We haven’t escaped from that lot just to get ourselves splattered by the other side.” He had his short arms up above his head, and Fever copied him, and so did all the others, and they stood there with their backs to the heat of their burning barge as the infantry of London came hurrying down the scarp.

“Miss Crumb? We had heard that you were. . . I am glad to find it is not true. You came from the north?”

Fever knew this man; his curly hair and honest, northern face. She remembered Wavey pointing him out to her across the heads of dancers in the Great Under Tier at Quercus’s ball all those months ago. Captain Andringa.

“Have you seen anything of the traitor’s fortresses?” he asked, turning from her to Stick and Stick to Lady Midnight, but they were all too shocked by the night’s events to answer. He said, “I was sent out by Quercus to find them.”

“Well, you’d better hurry back to Quercus then,” said Borglum. “’Cos they’re coming to find you. I sorted out Raven for you – don’t thank me, it was my pleasure – but I reckon every scrap o’ armour Arkhangelsk possesses is still hammering across that seabed. You’d better run home to London, and take us with you if you please.”

Andringa’s men were jogging past him, kneeling among the gorse, shooting after the withdrawing monowheels. He looked sideways, left and right along the slope of the hill, at the black hulks of Three Dry Ships on their reef of outbuildings. Around his landships on the ridge Stalkers were moving, their green eyes shining. “No,” he said. “We won’t be running. We shall hold them here.”

“Hold them?” said Fever. “There are hundreds! Landships, forts, Stalkers. . .”

“Hold them?” scoffed Borglum. “What’s to stop them just going round you?”

“There are marshes east and west of here,” said Andringa. “Unless they want to go far out of their way then they must cross this hill. Besides, the Arkhangelsk are warriors. They always point their vehicles towards the sound of the guns. The flames from your barge will call them like a beacon.”

Between the charred ribs of the
Knuckle Sandwich
the fires were dying down. Beyond them, along the black horizon, other lights were showing now, as the vanguard of the northern armada came hull-up. Andringa studied them, nodded. “We will hold them here for as long as we can. We can buy the Lord Mayor some time, at least.”

“Time? Time for what?” Borglum complained.

“To get London away,” said Andringa, as if it were obvious. “Your father has been busy, Miss Crumb. The engines are complete. Quercus is moving the city.”

t wasn’t hard to see why the crew of the
Knuckle Sandwich
had not noticed Three Dry Ships until they were almost upon it. Not a light showed in the windows of the beached hulks, nor in the low huddle of buildings round about them. The townlet was deserted, its people fled before the coming storm.

“And that’s what we should do too,” Stick said, as he and Fever and the rest went to shelter inside the largest of the old ships. They looked into the empty cabins that were shops and homes now; all showed signs that their owners had departed in a hurry. A ginger cat mewled at them, looking up jealously from the half-eaten remains of some family’s forgotten supper. “We should run, I reckon,” Stick said. “Leave these London soldier boys to fight their battle.”

“Stick, how can we?” Lucy said, holding tight to his hand with her pincer. “We’re too tired. We need to rest.”

“No good runnin’,” Borglum said. “There’s no vehicles nor animals left in this dump.”

“We could go on foot, and hide in the marshes,” Stick suggested.

“Very likely we could, Master Stickle,” said the dwarf. “And very likely Arkies on foot will come and hunt us there if they win this fight. Anyway, I’m a trifle short to go wading about in sloughs. No, we’ll wait and see what happens. Maybe Andringa really can hold these northern nanas off. If he don’t, we’ll prevail on him to find a space for us aboard one of his landships when he goes running back to Quercus. Till then, we might as well stop here. At least there’s
beds
.”

So they lay themselves down on beds abandoned by the folk of Three Dry Ships and there they slept, or tried to. Their dreams were bad, and several times that night Fever was woken by the sound of cannon fire, far off, but never far enough.

The third time she woke the sky outside was growing pale. She knew that she could sleep no more without knowing what was happening, so she rose and pulled on her boots (she had slept in all her other clothes) and climbed silent stairways to the old ship’s deck. There, between the chicken-coops and the clothes lines of forgotten washing, Andringa and a dozen other Movement captains stood talking together on the sterncastle, passing a telescope between them. More London landships had arrived in the night and were parked all over the slope of the hill behind the town.

One of the men saw Fever come up out of the stairway. “What’s she doing here?” she heard him say.

Captain Andringa told him, “Miss Crumb and her friends have done more already in this war than you,” and beckoned her forward. “Miss Crumb!” he said as she reached him. “I was hoping we might spare a barge to carry you home, but it seems we shall have need of them all today. . .”

He pointed to the north. There, on the rolling land where the
Knuckle Sandwich
still smouldered, strange shapes had appeared. Neat-edged plantations of young trees, Fever thought at first, and wondered how she had not noticed them before. Then she started to see movements among them, and men on horses cantering from one to another, and she realized that each of those bristling squares and oblongs was a unit of men: soldiers standing motionless with their pikes and long, north-country muskets pointed at the sky. Between them in the mist waited squadrons of campavans and the big hard shapes of landships, grey as outcrop stone in the dawn. Far behind them she could just make out still larger shapes: the traction castles of the Arkhangelsk Carns, gathered about the Great Carn’s heart-fort. They were being held back ready for the moment when their smaller, faster moving comrades shattered the Londoners’ defensive line.
Which one is Cluny on
? Fever wondered.
What is she doing, now, at this instant
?

“We’ll be hard pressed,” said the man who had complained about Fever when she came on deck.

“We held them at Hill 60,” said Andringa.

“Our
Stalkers
held them,” said another man. “They have Stalkers of their own now, thanks to Raven.”

“We’ll hold them just the same.”

Borglum came clambering up the same stair Fever had used. “What, you lot still here?” he asked in mock surprise when he saw Andringa and the other men. He stood on tiptoe to peep over the parapet. The sun was rising above the eastern fog-banks now. The banners of Arkhangelsk showed their bright colours. “Oho!” he said. “How long till the fun starts?”

“You and your people will be safe here, Master Borglum,” promised Andringa. “You are well behind our lines.”

“Are we?” said Borglum. “That could change. Lines move, Captain, but these old hulks won’t. If the tide comes in they’ll be overwhelmed, and the tide’s coming all right; a tide of steel.”

“Then we must dam it, Master Borglum,” said Andringa calmly.

From one of the northern landships a cannon boomed. Fever saw the puff of smoke drifting away, and heard the shot go whirring overhead.

“Get your people under cover,” said Andringa to Borglum, and to his comrades, “Gentlemen, we must rejoin our units. . .”

He had to shout the last few words, for all along the northern line guns were going off, red-gold muzzle-flashes stabbing out of a spreading cloud of smoke. The shells passed above Three Dry Ships with a sound like geese on the wing and burst among the dug-in landships on the slopes of Dryships Hill.

“They’re softening us up ready for an attack,” said Borglum cheerfully. “It won’t last long. Those northern nanas don’t like shooting matches; they’d sooner get to close quarters.” He shoved Fever ahead of him, back down the stairs, and she was glad to go; the air outside was buzzing with shot. But down at ground level the misshapes were arranging breakfast, sitting out the barrage together as if it was any ordinary storm. With them she felt safer; she even managed to eat a couple of the pancakes which Quatch rustled up, although she had thought she had no appetite at all.

The dry ship shuddered. From somewhere on the decks above came a huge crash, followed by the lesser sounds of debris falling. Dust drizzled down between the planks of the roof, settling on the pancakes like cinnamon.

“They found our range, I see,” said Borglum.

“Took ’em long enough, the amateurs,” grumbled Master Fenster.

Roundshot hammered the old hull with a sound like drumbeats.

“Don’t fret,” called Borglum, above the racket. “Won’t last much longer. We’d best be ready.”

“What for?” asked Lady Midnight, and her voice was suddenly too loud, for the bombardment had stopped.

They all ran to the stairs and up on to the roof, where the washing still hung unharmed. Fever crowded with the others to the old ship’s gunwale. Behind the veils of brownish smoke which shrouded Three Dry Ships, engines were roaring and huge shapes moved: Andringa’s landships were rolling through the town and heading out across the old seabed to meet the enemy. Behind them jogged squads of infantry, and the sunlight breaking through the smoke-clouds lit glints on the bayonets of their Bugharin rifles like little silver flames. In front strode squads of Stalkers, some with their claws unsheathed, others revving the engines of their battle-strimmers, their heads swinging from side to side as they searched the smoke for northerners. Officers ran ahead of them, bright swords upraised, shouting them on. Their banners blew sideways on the morning breeze, and as the breeze strengthened the smoke was drawn aside like a curtain and through the last rags and frayings of it Fever saw the Arkhangelsk vanguard rolling south.

“Now the ball begins,” said Borglum.

A line of Arkhangelsk landships was advancing to meet the Londoners. Behind it, the big fortresses had finally crept into range and started firing their cannon, but none of their shots reached Three Dry Ships. They burst instead among the London landships, trying to knock out a few before the two lines met. Already Andringa’s Stalkers had broken into a run. One group of them reached the bows of an Arkhangelsk ship and went swarming up its steep sides like insects, burrowing in through gun-ports and hawse-holes, or scrambling all the way up to attack the gunners on the open upper deck. That landship skewed aside, losing speed, but the rest came on, and within a few minutes they met the London ships, and the two lines disappeared again, engulfed in a spitting grey-white fog pierced through and through with flame.

“There are so many of them!” Fever said.

There were at least two Arkhangelsk ships for every Londoner, and the Arkhangelsk were bigger, with three or four decks and huge turrets jutting from their flanks, stubbled with cannon-barrels. But the London ships were faster, and tougher, and their guns fired more quickly, while on their upper decks sharpshooters kept up a steady crackle of rifle fire, cutting down any Arkhangelsk who dared show their faces over the parapets of their ships.

“Just like Hill 60,” said Borglum, who’d watched that battle from a distance, too. “Maybe this Andringa
can
hold them. . .”

In early afternoon Tharp came to fetch Cluny Morvish from the chamber they had given her. “What’s happening?” she asked him, as she trailed after him down the winding stairways of the heart-fortress. “We are not making another assault, surely?”

Half a dozen times that day Tharp had made her go and stand among the blowing banners up on the heart-fort’s forward bastion, where the men could see her as they readied themselves to charge into the wall of smoke and noise that hung in front of that long hill to southward. “They will fight better knowing that the Vessel of the Ancestors is watching them,” the old man had promised, while the war horns brayed and the drums thrummed and the attack-ships revved their engines. But each time the survivors had come back beaten; shot-holed vehicles dragging themselves along like escapees from a scrapyard; the wounded men draped on their upperworks like broken dolls.

“Are we losing?” she asked Tharp, hurrying along with no idea where he was taking her.

“The Movement are strong,” the old man said. “They have stronger forts and better guns. But we shall break their line. . .”

Cluny shuddered. London kept rising in her mind, driving all the other thoughts into the corners. In the wilds, with Fever Crumb, she had thought that she was learning to cope with the visions, but now they seemed worse than ever.

“The Great Carn has ordered an all-out attack,” Tharp was saying. “We will advance with our whole force; forts, warriors, mammoths. And you shall lead us.”

“Me?”

“Your presence will show our warriors that the Ancestors are still with us. Some are beginning to doubt it.”

I’m not surprised
, thought Cluny.
I doubt it myself
. She dared not say that to the Technomancer, and so she said instead, “What if I’m killed? What will that show them?”

“The Ancestors will not allow that,” Tharp said. “You will ride on the Great Carn’s own war-mammoth, and I shall be with you, chanting apps of power which will make the bullets of the southerners turn to mist before they touch you. Not only that; the Great Carn has given you a bodyguard. Here. We have gained something at least from this flirtation with Raven.”

The room he led her into was long and low; an afterthought of a room squeezed in between two of the fortress’s engines and hot as June. Cluny had seen enough now of the Movement to know that the two men who waited there in their red robes were Raven’s technomancers. One of their Stalkers waited with them, armoured and faceless, unmoving except for the faintly flickering glow of the green lamps which were his eyes. Words that Cluny could not read were stencilled on his chest and shoulder pads and across his massive, metal brow. She looked at his big hands and thought of the blades that were housed inside them. He was a veteran, his armour scarred with dents and scratches, and she thought,
This might be the very one that killed my brother
. . .

“He will protect you,” promised Tharp, sensing her unease. “These technomancers of the Movement have sung strong apps to him; they have told him that his only purpose is to do your bidding and to keep you safe.”

Cluny was not certain what she was supposed to say. “Thank you,” she told the men in red. She said it to the Stalker too, but he only looked at her.

Tharp said, “They call him Master Shrike.”

At first the battle had been terrifying. Soon it began to drag. On Dryships Hill even the birds grew used to the noise and began to sing again; Fever could hear them whenever there was a pause in the firing, and see them flitting between the gorse bushes. Now and then the ground jerked as another landship blew up. For the most part it seemed to be the northerners who were suffering; Fever could count twenty of their ships wrecked and burning for only a few of London’s. One had kept moving long after its crew were dead; a massive, self-propelled pyre which lumbered through the battle and ploughed into the sheds at the outskirts of the town before its engines finally gave out. Through its smoke she watched Suomi infantry pushing forward behind shield-walls on the eastern flank. High screens of armoured timber, mounted on wheels and propelled at walking pace by crude steam engines, the shield-walls had worked well against terrified snowmad tribesmen, but London’s guns punched through them as if they were wet cardboard, and the Suomi fled.