Big Engines and little, that's what it comes down to. That is what we have lost, the little and the big. And why did we lose them? I would gather that the answer is simply this: The little and the big are difficult things to hold onto. Think of sand, think of something finer than sand, it would slip through fingers no matter how tightly it was grasped. And how does one hold a world? It would take more than gloves and a large stick to do it properly. How could one do it and remain human? We are human and thusly we did not.
TEARWIN MEET 2120 MILES NORTH OF THE ROIL
Something howled from behind them, David jumped (was this what it was like, to feel engaged, to feel threatened by the world? He missed his Carnival!). The street behind was empty, well, the part they could see. Though David could see another street, crowded with memories; he blinked and they were gone.
“Stop doing that,” he whispered, and for once Cadell seemed to listen. “Can’t see it,” he said more loudly.
The Quarg Hounds had been hunting them, drawing closer, as they’d made their slow way up the streets of the frozen city. The central tower felt no nearer.
“It’s not quite close enough yet,” Margaret said.
Margaret slipped a rifle from her back and handed one of her pistols to David, who handed it right back.
“I don’t need it. Why let me waste bullets?”
Another howl, closer.
“Get ready,” she said, so calmly that David almost resented her. Even now, even with all that he had become, the sound held terror for him. Dragged him back to the Dolorous Grey and his woozy flight from the Hounds, made his bones grow spiky with fear, and lit the spark of all too recent memory.
And now he no longer had Carnival to keep it at bay. He closed his shaking hands into fists.
Something broke free of the nearby shadows, claws clattering on the ice, heavy enough that they pierced it with each footfall.
The creature was made of ice, around machinery of some sort. David recognised it at once, a Mechanism of the Engine. It snarled at them and Margaret swung her endothermic rifle towards it. David grabbed her wrist, half expecting her to drive her elbow into his throat. She nearly did.
“That's not going to do much good now, is it?” he said. “The damn thing's made of ice. Besides it’s on our side, sort of.”
Margaret hissed at him, but lowered her weapon.
The Mechanism ran towards them, and crouched as though to leap. David lifted his hand, the Orbis flared and the Mechanism stopped, though its icy jaws clamped open and shut, and its limbs juddered.
“It's all right,” David said, and walked towards it.
Its great head shuddered a moment, then lowered. David reached out and touched its brow, and the Mechanism let him. It was cold to the touch, like him. He remembered these creatures now, remembered the great packs of them that had circled the city, fighting Quarg Hounds.
“Cadell,” a voice whispered in his skull. “The Old Man returns.”
“I know you,” David said, and the guardian made a deep rumbling that might have been a laugh.
Margaret stared at him, her rifle pointed at the creature’s skull. David shook his head.
“It remembers me. Trust me, it will ensure our safe progress through the city,” David said.
Something howled from behind them, as loud as a pistol shot, and Margaret and David turned towards the sound, almost colliding with each other in the process.
The Mechanism turned its head slowly, regarding the street behind them with heavy eyes.
This time Margaret fired her rifle.
The Quarg Hound was unlike anything David had ever seen: part animal, part machine. He knew at once that it had not been born, but made from a motley of living things and components. A Roil-beast engineered for the cold. Sheathed in iron, the Quarg Hound shook off the ice pellets, its huge eyes narrowed.
“Wasting my bullets there, too,” Margaret said petulantly, though she kept her gun raised.
The Mechanism leapt past them and crashed into the metal Hound, David stood and watched as the two monsters struggled, rolling and thrashing, jaws clamped around each other's throats.
The Mechanism slammed the Quarg Hound hard against the nearest wall. The concrete cracked, and the Hound whimpered. Steam crashed from it, black blood spilled, and the Mechanism let the corpse drop from its jaw.
Then the Mechanism turned towards David, and he could see where it had been injured: a long wound ran along the side of its face.
Another Hound howled in the distance, and another. They appeared.
“Run,” the Mechanism said. “Run. I will do what I can.”
It shook itself once, and ice spilled from its great back. And then the Quarg Hounds were upon it, snapping and snarling and dancing.
“Time to go,” David said.
Margaret didn't argue.
Into the heart of the city they sprinted, along wide streets, far too wide — so that they felt exposed, their backs an all too easy target for whatever might be following them, be it Quarg Hound or Roiling, or a Mechanism whose programming had gone wrong. The general direction they followed, the one that David's fragmented memory suggested, led them further uphill. And twenty minutes later, they found themselves much higher up, and closer to the central tower, its top gleaming with its mother-of-pearl brightness.
Margaret didn't like leaving herself so totally in another's hands; not that she didn't trust him, just that she felt useless, even that she might be slowing him down.
Several times he had stopped, turned left or right, rather than straight ahead, whispering, “Too dangerous for the both of us” or “They'll never let two through here.”
It seemed that there were many ways to reach the heart of the city. Margaret wondered if they weren't taking the fastest, but the safest. David had stopped again. To catch his breath, he said, and here they had a clear view of the area that they had already travelled.
From this elevated position Margaret, with the aid of her field glasses, could see back the way they had come. The ice beast lay there, a flopping mass of metal, greasy with fluid, and behind it she could see a single Roiling.
A man, broad in the shoulders, strode across the ice, too distant to make out. Though there was something familiar about the Roiling. A little part of Margaret chilled at the sight of the figure, her lip curled. This wasn't like the lumbering mad things she had encountered at Chapman. Its steps were purposeful, and she knew its purpose was her and David.
“Roiling,” she said.
David smiled at her. “Then it’s a good thing that we’re almost there.” They sprinted now. Around another corner and another, and David started almost to run. “We're nearly there,” he said. “Nearly there. Around this bend, we'll come to a doorway.”
And they did, they came upon the tower at last.
David laughed. “See! See!”
“I see,” Margaret said.
And the door stood there, at the base of the tower. Such a tiny door, with no handle or keyhole, but a door nonetheless.
“So how do we-”
The Quarg Hound barrelled out at them from the shadows, knocking David to the ground, and leaping onto her, so that she fell upon the flat of the rime blade — the movement activating it and burning her back with cold.
The beast snapped at her neck. Margaret reached into a pocket, her fingers closing over the lozenges of Chill. She grabbed as many as she could, swift as her hands would let her. The Quarg Hound stretched its jaws wide and Margaret threw the Chill into that dark maw. Its eyes blinked, pupils expanding until they looked like they might burst, and then it shook its head, and gagged. It rolled from her, making that dreadful gagging noise, loud enough to deafen her, and its mechanisms whined. Then it dropped to the ground, stood up and dropped to the ground again.
Margaret got to her feet, unsteady, the ice-sheathed sword now in her hand, watching.
When the Quarg Hound was finally still, Margaret ran to it and struck off its head with her rime blade. Three hard blows it took through armour and bone and muscle, and she howled as she did it. And then, when the head had fallen to the ground, she threw the dark mass away, ichor raining from the mouth and neck, down the street.
“Let them know they've failed,” she said, turning to David.
“Maybe they'll stop coming,” he suggested.
“No, they'll never stop. Which is why we came here. They'll never stop until we're dead and they're dancing around in our corpses.”
And then the door opened, light spilled out.
David stood there as if mesmerised. Margaret fancied that she saw a figure beyond the door. She took a step towards the light, and David stopped her.
“You can't go through here,” David said. “I'm sorry, I don't think Cadell wanted me to remember that, until now.”
Margaret looked at him, almost brought the blade to his throat. They had come this far, and she couldn't go through.
“I've just felt it,” David said. “A memory, a warning. You can't come through this doorway. It will kill you. It’s a final trap, a test you see. It will only recognise an Old Man.”
A Quarg Hound bounded around the corner, its great eyes narrowed. Margaret could hear another approaching. David walked beside her.
“We can take them,” he said.
Margaret smiled. “I don't doubt it, but it's too risky.”
She looked down at her weapons. Checked their charges, more than enough to do what was needed. They backed closer and closer to the entranceway.
“Go through the door now,” she hissed. David opened his mouth to speak, but Margaret wouldn't let him. “We're not here for ourselves. Go, boy. Leave me to this, because I cannot do what you must. Believe me, if I could I would, and there would be no hesitation.”
Then his face hardened and he nodded. “Margaret, I-”
“Move!”
“I can’t,” David said. “I won’t leave you here.”
Margaret flashed her teeth at him, fired her rifle at the first Hound's head. It dropped on its arse, and clawed at its face. “I know what I'm doing.”
And she had never felt wilder, or more confident.
He stood there looking at her. Margaret could tell David was struggling with Cadell inside him, the fool, to struggle so now: just because he had grown a spine. He moved to stand beside her. “I won't leave you,” he said. “We fought the Old Men together, we survived the fall of Chapman.”
“You damn well will,” she said, and then she turned swift and smooth and kicked him hard in the stomach.
Not what David was expecting at all, obviously. He fell back through the door, and the door closed.