The Absolution
had run aground, literally, and it seemed it was still running.
From the deck of the Terror, Frostfire had watched in stunned amazement as the hull of
the steam barge - which, mere moments before, had seemed doomed to crash into
the harbour and do all their work for them - folded out into a complete set of
eight, jointed legs, exposing its inner hull, yet enabling it to scamper ashore
like a gigantic metal crab.
Tiberius did not seem surprised however.
"My Uncle has always been most
resourceful," he said in his unsettlingly calm voice, "hence the
inability of all those I hired to assassinate him all these years. I hope, now, you understand the necessity of
these extreme measures. It's the only
way to be sure."
"Of course, my Lord," Frostfire replied
obediently, but his eyes were fixed on the amphibious steam barge.
"It will be time to land the army soon,"
Tiberius continued, "whether or not my uncle and his friends are still
alive." He turned from the scene
before them and looked Frostfire right in his burning eyes. "I trust you are ready to lead?"
"Of course I am," the Spiketail replied
defiantly, before remembering just a moment too late to add another, "my
Lord."
A dark look crossed the Baron's face, before
smoothing into another thin smile.
"Excellent," he said, "then you had
best go join them."
Ellis couldn't quite believe it. Of all the Former Baron's mad ideas, this was
one of the most insane - there was no good reason why it should have worked, or
why he should have thought of it in the first place, and yet, here they were,
living it, and not a one amongst them had yet died because of it.
"It looks like the hull is holding, then,"
Von Spektr said, peering through the windows of the wheelhouse, past the crowd
of confused crew, even as he worked the levers that kept them moving forwards.
"It had better," Siren warned, "we
need to stay inside the ship until we reach the obelisk. There's no way we'd survive on our own out
there."
‘Out there’ was a wasteland. Where once there had been cobbled streets and
ramshackle shops and houses with their quirky overhanging upper storeys, there
was now just smoking - indeed, more often than not, burning - rubble. Shalereef had been all but obliterated. Only fragments of the harbour area remained
intact and no ships remained afloat in the water. The most massive of them remained as hulks
jutting out of the water, pocked with holes, flames spouting out of their
chimneys.
"I grew up here," Siren said in a voice
little more than a whisper, "and now it's gone."
"Not quite yet," the Former Baron amended,
"the high ground is still very much intact."
"But not for long," observed Doctor
Barkham.
The bombardment from Tiberius' fleet seemed to be
marching ahead of them, almost as if it were clearing a path for the Absolution to run through. That path was strewn with rubble, debris and
flaming hazards, of course, and there was still artillery fire trying to hit
them as well. It was only the incredible
manoeuvrability of the Absolution's
spider-like legs that was keeping them all alive, as Siren and the Former Baron
worked together to weave through the rain of destruction, crawling over piles
of rubble and scurrying through those streets which somehow remained only
half-razed.
"You're veering too far South," Doctor
Barkham observed snippily.
"We're doing the best we can!" Siren
shouted back, "If you want to take a try..."
"No, thank you," the Countess replied with
a smile, oozing sarcasm, "I'm happier just to navigate, after all, you
seem to need it."
Ellis watched Siren's shoulders tense and worried
she was about to have an outburst, distracting her from her vitally important
task, but she took a deep breath and managed to ignore Rosetta, turning the Absolution Northwards through the
remains of an alleyway at the same time.
"Excellent," Doctor Barkham said and Ellis
found himself fighting the urge to punch her.
Fortunately for the Countess, that was when Sarah,
Gulliver, Miss Barkcastle, Lord Blood Dragon and Ember joined them in the
suddenly very cramped wheelhouse.
"The alterations are working just perfectly,
Franck," Miss Barkcastle began, "your calculations were perfect as
always."
"I wouldn't say always," Ellis muttered,
but no one seemed to hear him. The
Former Baron merely shone one very quick smile at Miss Barkcastle before
returning to his complicated assortment of levers. How he could manage to control all eight of
the ships arachnoid legs, Ellis couldn't even begin to imagine, but the old Philosopher
hadn't faltered once so far as he could tell.
"How did you even think of it?" Lord Blood
Dragon asked, sounding similarly impressed.
"Oh, I guess I had been pondering the
possibilities of larger mechanical conveyances ever since our sojourn in
Smokestack when we were heading to find Ellis in Blackfeather, oh... many
months ago now. Remind me to tell you
about it later sometime."
"Sometime when we aren't running for our lives
or trying to overthrow an Elder god," Siren added pointedly. She spun the wheel and the Absolution began to tear along a
rubble-strewn avenue.
"About that," Gulliver said, sounding
lower than ever, and yet clearly not quite as close to tears as he had been all
day, "do we 'ave a plan for what 'appens next?"
"At the moment we're mostly concerned with
making it to the obelisk alive,"
Siren said not looking away from the wheel, "After that? I think that's up to Ember."
"Why isn't it all just up to Ember, then?"
Gulliver replied, "couldn't 'e 'ave done all this without us?"
"I am not that powerful," the Fallen
replied, "besides this final obelisk is protected somehow. I was unable to get us any closer to it and I
cannot move it until I am inside."
"So were what, then? Cannon fodder?"
"You are my... friends..." Ember replied
uncertainly, "and for that I am grateful."
Gulliver looked away for a moment, then added,
softly this time, "I'm sorry. This
is all just..." he trailed off.
"It seems to me that our biggest problem is how
we're even going to get to the obelisk," Sarah said, joining the
conversation for the first time.
"Tiberius' forces are concentrating their firepower ahead of us and
it looks like they are trying to create a barrier of destruction. We can't just weave through that."
Sarah was right.
The artillery fire was, somehow, intensifying ahead of them, creating a
wall of hypostatickally charged fire they could not possibly cross and it was
no longer advancing ahead of them at any great rate, but stretching to either
side, hemming them in.
"I can't believe they have so much
firepower," Ellis said.
"I can't believe they would kill so many
people," Miss Barkcastle added sadly, "if only we'd had time, we
could have tried to evacuate..."
"There'th no point in 'if only'th now,
Felithity," Lord Blood Dragon said, laying a hand on her shoulder,
"and we thould not blame ourthelveth."
"Oh, don't worry," the elderly Engineer
replied, a sudden look of such steely intensity in her eyes that Ellis felt the
need to take a step back, though there was no room, "I don't intend
to. I know the parties responsible for
all this."
For just a moment it seemed her eyes lingered on
Doctor Barkham, but they flicked away so quickly Ellis couldn't be sure.
"But what do we now?" Sarah asked, trying
to bring everyone's attention back to the problem at hand, "how do we get
to the obelisk? Is there some way we can
pass that firewall?"
"In a couple of moments," the Former Baron
replied, pointing out the window towards the hill where Tentacle Lane still
stood, though the flames were nearly upon it, "it will not matter at
all."
"And why is-" Sarah began, but then there
was a flash of almost blinding purple-white light and a crackle, like charged
lightning, so loud that it left Ellis' ears ringing.
Frostfire surveyed the beachfront. It probably had been a beach once, millennia
ago, but countless generations of humans had built and built and built,
covering it in wood and stone and layers of city, until even the old shoreline
was left behind. The harbour he had just
helped destroy was probably about ninety percent reclaimed land, and now
turning to ash as it was, it seemed likely that the sea might take it back.
The way ahead was not going to be easy. Even with the level of destruction they had
caused with the bombardment, which, even now was progressing up the hill like a
living firestorm, buildings still stood in half-ruined splendour, their
fittings and furnishings spilled out into the streets along with the bricks and
wood that had held them together. There
were very few routes that might be called clear pathways and even the best of
those had hillocks of rubble to climb at intervals.
To either side stood his army, or at least the
vanguard. They were a mixture of Humans,
Stoneskins and Lakhmaspawn, though he tried to keep the latter separate as much
as possible for their appearance disturbed even him, and they were kitted out
in a motley armour with various makeshift weapons. Some were armed with hypostatick projectile
weapons provided by the Noble Society, but there weren't as many of those to go
around as he would have liked. They
stood, undisciplined and unfocussed, eyeing Frostfire nervously but
nevertheless waiting for the command to move.
He was happy to let them wait a moment longer.
Their objective was clear. Even through the smoke and the fire it was
possible to see the massive pyramid looming over the district in the
distance. It was hard to believe that it
was only the tip of an obelisk, itself part of some impossibly huge
weapon. And, somehow, his force had to
seize it. Tiberius wanted it secured for Lakhma. If it did what he had been led to believe it
did then he wasn't sure why Lakhma didn't just want it destroyed, but he had
his orders and it suited him to follow through on them for now.
He took a few steps forward, turned his back on the
destruction of Shalereef and faced his untested army.
“You know what you need to do,” he said, feeling no
need for preamble, “so go to-”
Thinking back on it later, Frostfire would never be
entirely sure if it was the looks on the faces of those before him, or the feel
of the air behind him which changed first.
Either way, he had less than a second to process the shock of the army
and the sudden charged wind before the flash and the crackle and the force
which lifted him off the ground and threw him back towards the sea with such
force that, for just a moment, he blacked out completely.
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