God of Clocks (20 page)

She flew straight at him.

His arms closed around her.

She made a savage downwards kick at his knee and vaulted up out of his embrace, lashing her wings to gain height.

He grunted in pain.

Carnival flew up, twisted in midair, and dived down on him.

He was ready. He swung at her.

Her wings snapped out, stopping her descent. She allowed his fist to pass an inch from her face and then wheeled and kicked him in the jaw with the back of her heel.

His head snapped round, but he turned his huge body in time to save his neck from breaking. He groaned and then jerked around again to look up at her. “You are stronger than—”

Thrashing her wings to keep airborne, the scarred angel spun again, aiming her foot at his neck.

The big man ducked, moving his body at incredible speed. It wasn't nearly fast enough. Her heel connected with the side of his mouth, knocking him sideways.

He gasped, his huge chest heaving within its wooden harness. Sweat sluiced down his dark cheeks and mingled with the blood now leaking from one corner of his mouth. He backed away from her, pressing two fingers against his swollen lip. Then he withdrew his hand and stared at the blood there.

He gave her a bloody grin. “You are the first one ever to make me bleed.” He slammed his enormous hands together and growled. “Come on, then.”

Carnival flew at him again.

As soon as she was within range, her opponent launched a ferocious flurry of blows at her, aiming at her face, her chest, her neck.

She blocked them all. She saw him reach over her shoulder, grasping for her wing, and punched upwards into the base of his jaw. The blow connected with a loud crack. He grunted, but didn't otherwise react. He had a grip of her wing. Muscles in his shoulders bunched as he pulled.

Carnival sank her teeth into his neck. She tasted blood.

“John!” the red-haired woman screamed.

They were locked together. He huffed and grunted, his huge greasy body engulfing her as he wrenched at her wing. She smelled his sweat, the spicy odour of his skin. His muscles slid across her own. Her shoulder gave a sudden crack, and she felt the bone jerk loose from its socket. A spike of pain. She ignored it, tearing at his flesh with her teeth. Hot blood flowed over her jaw.

“Leave him alone!”

This cry had come from somewhere else. Carnival recognized the voice of the boy. For a heartbeat she hesitated, relaxing her grip on the giant.

With a roar, the huge warrior pushed her off.

Carnival splashed backwards through the shallow red waters, but remained standing. A dull throb had taken root in her broken shoulder.

Her opponent looked in bad shape, too. He took an awkward step backwards, sucking in great breaths of air through his nose. He had one hand clamped against his bleeding neck.

The boy was standing in the river, ten paces to one side of the giant. Red water coursed around his thin chest. He held his hands clasped together under his chin as if in prayer, the metal hooks splayed outwards like fans. “Please don't kill him,” he said.

Carnival returned her attention to the giant warrior. Her dislocated wing hung slackly against her back, the feathers trailing in the river. She clenched her teeth, reached behind her back, and pushed the bone back into its socket. She barely noticed the pain. Flexing her rapidly healing wing, she strode forward to finish off her enemy.

“No!” The boy rushed over and put himself between Carnival and her opponent.

“Get away from me, lad.” The giant grabbed the boy's upper arm and started to shove him to one side.

The boy
changed.

Carnival halted as the child's skin began to flow like tallow from his bones. He closed his eyes and his head seemed to melt down into his shoulders. His flesh was reforming around the thin muscle of his upper arm where the giant held him, shrinking and changing colour. His bones clicked and cracked. In two heartbeats the whole of the boy's body had altered shape, hardened, and taken on a metallic lustre. He had ceased to exist in his previous form.

Instead of a boy, the warrior now clutched a sword.

A humming noise came from the device in the red-haired woman's hands. She glanced down at it. “It's a shiftblade, John,” she explained. “That child is a Mesmerist demon.”

John?
Carnival looked at her opponent. They had given him another name in the poison forest, she now recalled.
Anchor.

John Anchor frowned at the weapon in his fist. He swung his arm to cast the blade away, but threads of metal spun out from the grip and wrapped themselves around his wrist.

Anchor growled and tried to shake the sword loose. The metal threads tightened. It would not leave his hand.

“For the gods' sake, John,” the woman cried. “Sod your ridiculous principles and just use the damn thing!”

The big man ignored her. He seized the weapon's hilt with his free hand and tried to prise it loose. “Let go of me,” he growled. “This is not the way I fight.”

The shiftblade turned into a spear.

Anchor shook the long weapon furiously. He slammed it down against the water and put his sandaled foot halfway along the shaft and tried to snap it.

The demonic weapon let out a shrill cry. It changed from the spear to a short, fluted mace with elaborate silvered flanges and a grip cord of woven gold that coiled around the warrior's wrist like a serpent.

Anchor roared. “No swords, no spears, no bludgeons! I will not carry you.”

Carnival watched him struggle with the weapon. No matter how hard he thrashed his arm around, it would not release him. It changed shape again and again: to bows and clubs and punching shields. Each new weapon was more elaborate, more beautiful than the last, but Anchor would accept none of them.

He yelled at the red-haired woman, “Why is it doing this? Shiftblades feel pain. Since when do they choose to fight? Since when do they
force
themselves upon others?”

“Maybe it likes you, John.”

Carnival thought she understood. She recalled the boy's words in the skyship.
Maybe John, after my father.
The child did not look like the man, but then that child was a shape-shifter.

The shiftblade had stretched itself and become a broad steel shield with a sumptuous floral design in green and blue enamel that seemed to shine in the crimson gloom. In the world of men, such armour would have cost a presbyter's ransom, but Anchor simply beat at it with his fist, denting the brightly coloured metal until the shiftblade finally gave up. It released its hold on him.

The giant let out an angry roar. He wrenched the offending shield from his hand and threw it far across the River of the Failed. It spun away, flashing through the shafts of light descending from above, before disappearing into the distance.

The scarred angel looked at Anchor, and then she turned and gazed out in the direction where the shield had vanished. She tested her wounded wing, thumping it slowly, before she took to the air. And then she left the warrior and his red-haired companion and set out across the red river.

Ahead of her lay all of Hell.

Evidently the escaped rider had been quick to raise the alarm, for the entire local army awaited them when they finally reached the settlement.

From Dill's mouth Rachel watched as they reached the northern fringe of the great forest. The lakeside town appeared out of the fog; a brown ribbon of timber buildings ranged along the shore and was hemmed within banked palisade walls on its three landward sides. Mists hung over the waters like puffs of cotton. A hundred yards out from the harbour, Rachel could see manned barges loaded with mounds of coke and logs. Yet more sailors were steering empty vessels out from their jetties to join them, leaving only a cluster of smaller fishing skiffs at the quayside. It seemed that the merchants had received enough notice to try first to protect their fleet.

Long lines of soldiers stood atop the battlements, while others peered out from watchtowers set at regular intervals around the perimeter. Most of these men were bowmen; it seemed the settlement
lacked any of the heavy ordnance—the catapults and scorpions—Rys had employed at Coreollis.

Dill paused, turning his jaw slowly from side to side as he helped them survey the scene before them.

“They don't seem
very
keen to listen,” Mina observed. “But it's hard to tell with these provincial types. Does Dill know what he has to do?”

“Yes.”

“It has to be convincing.”

“He understands!”

Mina shrugged. “Then let's hope our friend Oran hasn't already killed Hasp.”

“With all that free-flowing drink, they're not exactly on top of things. They haven't even noticed the town yet.”

Mina inclined her head. “That's about to change.”

Dill was moving again, now coming within range of the bowmen. A shower of arrows flew up from the battlements, closely followed by a second, smaller barrage from the streets immediately behind the wall. They whined through the misty air. Most of the missiles clattered harmlessly against Dill's armoured shins, but a score or more thunked into the log walls of the Rusty Saw tavern.

There was a pause.

One of Oran's men appeared at the entrance of the inn. He clung to the edge of the doorway, swung woozily for a moment, and then stared across at the town with its defenders massed upon the walls. He shook his head, and looked again. Then he bolted back inside.

Mina smiled. “Here we go,” she said.

A second volley of arrows lanced up at the arconite. Gripping the cleaver in both hands, Dill raised it—and the entire tavern that rested upon it—high above his head, as if to protect the building. He roared.

“Nice touch,” Mina said to Rachel. “I can imagine how someone would find that menacing.”

Rachel yelled, “Don't overdo it, Dill.”

The huge automaton had reached the palisade. Rachel heard cries from below and yells from Oran's men overhead. She caught glimpses of the woodsmen peering down through Dill's fingers. In the settlement below, defenders scattered in both directions along the spiked embankment. Groups of men began assembling in the adjacent streets.

Dill lifted his foot and brought it crashing down upon the timber defenses. The wooden spikes and part of the embankment collapsed. Arrows pinged off his armour as bowmen attacked from both flanks. He raised his foot again, leaving a deep trench full of crushed wood, and stepped inside the town.

He was standing at the top of a long mud track that continued all the way down to the lakeside wharfs. The air was crisp, and thin lines of smoke rose directly from chimneys above the shingled rooftops. Pale faces gazed up from windows on either side of the street. Had the townsfolk not been given enough opportunity to flee? Didn't they fear for their lives?

Angry voices came from below. Two groups of town soldiers converged on the arconite and attacked his ironclad ankles with long poles.

Dill swung around and inclined his head to look down, causing Rachel to topple against the inside rim of his teeth. She held on to the upper edge of a huge smooth incisor as the automaton lowered the tavern again and now clutched it against his breastplate like a baby. One gable cracked, and two of the Rusty Saw's windows shattered. Dill lifted his foot as if to crush the attackers.

Those men immediately under the shadow of his heel broke and fled, before Dill slammed his foot into the ground with hideous force. Even up here, Rachel felt the jarring blow in her bones. Her head throbbed. She watched as Dill raised his foot again, revealing nothing but a muddy crater below. No one had been injured.

“Good,” she shouted. “Now on to the lake.”

Cradling the tavern and the enormous stolen blade against his
chest, he set off down the slope towards the lakeshore. Scores of Oran's woodsmen had appeared at the Rusty Saw's windows to watch these unexpected events unfold. The tavern's back door burst open and their leader himself emerged. With three of his men he ventured out to the very edge of the building's foundations and from there gazed down into the streets. Oran was far too absorbed by the scene below to look up.

Rachel could still hear the defenders yelling orders and curses behind them, but the streets below were now deserted. All around clustered two-and three-tiered timber houses with diamond-paned windows under the canopied eaves of their bark-shingle roofs. In a dozen steps Dill reached the lake, where low wharfs crowded the shoreline amongst timber warehouses and boatsheds. Huge, three-beamed stanchions overhung the water, supporting ropes, chains, and pulleys for hoisting cargo.

All of the larger vessels had been maneuvered out into deeper waters, but a number of smaller craft still occupied the shallow moorings. Dill crouched by the waterside, leaning closer to examine one.

Rachel experienced a sudden rush of vertigo as the arconite stooped and the whole of his skull tilted forward. She pressed her hands against the cold enamel of his teeth as the wooden skiffs rushed closer. But then the alarming motion stopped. She heard a creaking sound.

Dill picked up a boat with his free hand, then swung round to face the streets again.

Some two thousand men of the town militia were marching down the main thoroughfare towards them. They were armed with poles, bows, or spears, but now many also carried flaming brands. Wisps of orange tar fire jigged between the leaning buildings on either side, while a pall of grey smoke followed the vanguard, trailing over the helmets of those behind.

A horn sounded.

Rachel shot a glance at Mina. “Arconites?”

“No, that's local,” the thaumaturge replied. “A rallying call. We still have time.”

Dill threw the boat at the advancing forces.

The vessel was barely twenty feet long, so he could have thrown it right into the midst of the defenders—or half a league beyond the settlement—if he had chosen to. It spun mast over hull and hit the main street well short of the town militia, bursting into planks. The soldiers cheered and quickened their pace towards the arconite.

Dill roared again. The engines inside his breastplate thundered and blew gouts of hot black fumes out through the joints in his armour. He backed into the lake, smashing one jetty and three more boats to driftwood. In another three steps he had retreated up to his shins in the water. He reached down to pick up another vessel…and froze.