A legion is maintained as an unassembled weapon not only by necessity, but also by design. Its assembly requires procedures subject to Chosen authorization as well as a properly maintained cothon mechanism. Naturally, we mediate all such authorization. Further, in operation a legion is wholly dependent on the logistics of render and naphtha supply.
As Carnelian and Osidian appeared from the legate ’ s chambers, the Marula guarding the door fell back, gaping. Carnelian almost stumbled on his ranga. In their stares he saw too clearly what he had once more become. It sickened him to be back behind a mask looking down on fearful men. He wanted to cry out that he was still the same man they knew, but he had chosen his path. At least the Marula were on their feet. Something pale moved in the corner of his vision: Osidian’s hand shaping a command. Carnelian half turned, hearing the ammonites behind him settling to the ground. Glancing at each other, the warriors, reluctantly, began falling to their knees.
In obedience to Osidian’s summons, the Legate and the other Lesser Chosen commanders were waiting for him by the door to the purgatory. A pall of myrrh smoke was rising from a ring of censers set around them. Only the Legate, and those subordinates who earlier had accompanied him to the cothon, stood outside the curtain of smoke, safe in their ritual protection. All knelt as Osidian approached. Carnelian noted that these Masters abased themselves more quickly than had the Marula. Osidian beckoned the Legate to approach him. Though his mask gave the man an air of imperious indifference, Carnelian detected anxiety in his gait and in the way he sank before Osidian.
Osidian pointed to the collar at the Legate’s throat. ‘Surrender that to me, my Lord.’
The Legate’s hand went up to the jade and iron. ‘Celestial, this was put about my neck by the hands of the God Emperor Themselves.’
‘The might of the Commonwealth properly belongs to the House of the Masks. It is in the name of that House I take back from you the legion you were lent.’
As the Legate hesitated, Osidian turned his mask just enough to allow the Legate to see the Marula reflected in it. The man must have understood the warning, for he turned to the other Lesser Chosen. ‘You are my witnesses. I have no choice but to yield my command to the Lord Nephron.’
This said, the Legate reached behind his neck, released the collar and offered it to Osidian, who coiled it around his fist. He stepped past the Master who had been Legate and addressed the other commanders. ‘I am now acting Legate. Serve me well, my Lords, and I shall reward you with blood and iron. Fail me and be assured that, if I do not destroy you, you will surely suffer the vengeance of the House of the Masks.’
Osidian’s gold face regarded them a while, then he indicated the ammonites who had followed him from the tower. ‘These shall prepare you for the outer world. I do not know how long it will be before any of us shall walk again upon sanctified ground.’
Even through the closed gates of the cothon, Carnelian could hear the squealing of brass. As they began to open they belched a reek of naphtha and dragons. The view widening between the parting portals was of a vast and complex machine come to life.
Morunasa and his Oracles, coming to greet them, faltered. Dazzled by Carnelian’s and Osidian’s masks they were forced to squint. Morunasa found enough composure to address Osidian, but was ignored as the Master half turned to Carnelian. ‘Behold, my Lord, the sinews and technology of our power.’
Carnelian could see the cothon in motion, shrunk and twisted in the gold of Osidian’s mask. Osidian slid forward, forcing the Oracles to move from his path. Carnelian followed, onto the road that curved off between the piers and the stable vaults. Hawsers now ran out from each vault, which they had to step over. Up on the piers men were greasing stone trackways and the bone-lined channels in which ropes ran as taut as bowstrings.
Osidian came to a halt at the edge of a stable entrance. He turned to say something, but his words were lost amidst the rattle and groaning of counterweights falling in their niches. He pointed up. Carnelian saw above them the base of a dragon tower being hoisted, ponderously, off its supporting beams. When these were winched back, the tower base was left hanging, black against the sky. Along the curving run of piers, more were rising, creaking like the hulls of ships at sea.
Movement just in front of Carnelian caused him to step back. The hawsers lying across his path were rising, curving ever more steeply up into the mouth of the nearest vault. As they lost their slack, it became clear they were pulling on something within the shadows. A dragon was being dragged out. Carnelian glanced between the piers towards the bright heart of the cothon. Rows of men, yoked to the hawsers, swayed in rhythm to a chant as they heaved. Other men appeared, carrying cruelly spiked billhooks. Seeing the Masters, they hesitated, but Osidian waved them on and they rushed into the stable. As their billhooks clawed at the monster, it let forth a terrible cry. The last time Carnelian had heard that sound was amidst fire and rolling sulphurous clouds. The cobbles under his feet gave a shudder. Another. Like the prow of a baran sliding out from its boathouse, the monster’s head began emerging from the gloom. The hawsers were attached to rings gripping its horns. Sun splashed up the hill of its forehead. He saw its white eye larger than a shield. Rusty tattoos coating its head seemed the dried encrustings left by a wash of blood.
‘Five, three, four twenties and one,’ Carnelian read. The glyph ‘Battle’ appeared in several places. ‘Bending River’ and ‘I cast down’ he saw, surrounded by other glyphs that folded illegibly into its hide as it flexed. The inscriptions ran up the slope of its crest, sweeping in complex interweaving streams of signs, lapping the rugged cuticle of a horn, enringing its milky eye. Then its shoulder was dragged into the daylight. A cliff monumentally inscribed, spotted with the cartouches of the Lords who had ridden it, dates, paeans to its lineage as ancient as a House of the Chosen. At last Carnelian’s gaze was led to the ‘Nu’ roundel that rouged its forehead: a glyph, one of whose readings was ‘Annihilation’. Circling that was its battle name, pricked into its hide with raised scars. This was Heart-of-Thunder.
‘I must go and talk to the Quartermaster,’ cried Osidian over the tumult, ‘and then I will give the commanders an audience. Will you, my Lord, oversee the re-equipping of the Marula from the legionary stores?’
Carnelian, unable to take his eyes off the vast monster as it was urged past, raised his hand in the affirmative. Each footfall shook the earth. Majestic, vast, Heart-of-Thunder slid between the piers and under the suspended tower base like a finger into a ring. When he next looked, Osidian was gone. He moved round behind the pier so he could gaze up at the monster’s head. Men were lifting bronze rings set into the cothon floor. Heart-of-Thunder shook his head. One of the hawsers whipped loose. Its yoke, yanking back, threw the men who had borne it onto their backs. They lost hold of it. Their cries of alarm mixed with the clatter the yoke made scraping across the cobbles. Other men pounced on it and, with the help of the bearers, they managed to bring the monster back under control.
Carnelian continued to watch as the hawsers were made fast about the bronze rings. Thrice the monster, jerking back, threatened to tear the rings from the ground, but each time, unable to budge them, he subsided. Throughout, he rumbled a growl that reverberated through the cothon floor and off the piers, seeming to threaten a storm.
A man Carnelian had not noticed before, who was sitting astride one of the monster’s lower horns, shuffled along it as if it were a log. When he reached the beast’s head he leaned against it just behind the moon of its lidless eye. Stroking Heart-of-Thunder’s hide, he seemed to be talking to him. Unbelievably, the monster stopped his growling and had soon become as motionless as stone. A barked command, then ropes snaked down the mountainous flanks. Men rushed into the squeeze between the dragon and the pier. Grabbing the ropes, they hung on them. Two massive counterweights began rising in their niches. Glancing up, Carnelian saw the four-prowed tower base descending. Its feet came to rest upon Heart-of-Thunder’s haunches and shoulders. As the feet pressed into his hide, the monster let forth a bellow that rattled the piers. While the keeper calmed him again, others were circling him, peering up at his muscles, tapping them with the curve of their billhooks. When they were satisfied, they waved a signal and men leaping up into the niches took hold of the counterweights and began swinging them in and out like bells. At last, with one coordinated action, the counterweights were swung back onto shelves. Their ropes sagged, as Heart-of-Thunder’s back took the full weight of the tower base.
More men appeared, lugging steaming pails, into which others dipped poles that they lifted, dripping, to begin greasing the belly of the monster.
Voices above him made Carnelian look up to see figures swarming onto Heart-of-Thunder from the pier. He noticed a pole running the length of the tower base onto which one man was working a hook. Carnelian gasped as, gripping a rope attached to the hook, the man leapt into space. He slid to the ground, then pulled the rope after him under the ceiling of the monster’s belly. Another man appeared, coming the other way. Rope in hand, he scrambled up footholds in the pier, back to the tower base. More men descended, more ascended as rope after rope sank into the layer of smeared fat, weaving a tight girdle to fix the tower in place.
Carnelian found Morunasa watching his Marula warriors being cut out of their beaded corselets. To his relief he spotted Sthax among them. Morunasa was frowning. Carnelian shared his unease at seeing the warriors being shelled like oysters, their corselets discarded as rubbish. In lines, the now naked men were being fitted for armour. The leather was more flattering to their long-limbed beauty than their corselets had been, but they were left looking more like slaves.
On the other side of the courtyard, grooms were bringing aquar down ramps. These were not the dun creatures of the Plainsmen, but the larger ones of the Commonwealth, silver as fish. There was no doubt the elegant curves of their saddle-chairs accommodated the lanky Marula better than the cramped wicker of the Plainsman chairs, but Carnelian could see how uncomfortable the warriors were with the stirrups and their frustration at how these new aquar did not respond to the touch of their feet. How long would it take them to adapt to using reins? Just before setting off on a dangerous campaign seemed a bad time to exchange the familiar for the strange. Osidian did not make that sort of mistake. No doubt this change had less to do with efficiency and more with discomfiting the Marula. Osidian wanted to break these proud men into auxiliaries obedient to his commands.
A desire to see Heart-of-Thunder once more drew him back to the cothon. Light from torches set into the piers gleamed off machines and towers. Commanding his escort to wait for him, Carnelian slipped into the shadows. He wandered under piers, passing dragons each bearing a tower base, each being crawled over by men still hard at work.
When he reached Heart-of-Thunder, Carnelian saw the immense girdle was complete. Clambering over it, men were working toggles larger than their hands into its ropes. Carnelian watched one being twisted into a rope a turn at a time, tightening it. When the toggle could be turned no further, it was tucked under the next rope to hold it fast. The rigger drew a fresh toggle from a pouch slung at his hip and with it struck the rope he had just tightened, feeling its tone with his cheek. Satisfied, he moved on to the next.
Watching the men work, Carnelian grew aware of a sound like distant drumming. Aurum must have arrived even earlier than they had feared. In alarm he sought the direction from which the drumming was coming. Then he realized it was only the beating of the dragon’s heart.
Figures were hunched round fires lit directly on the cobbles of the marumaga barracks. From their slimness, and the ash coating their skin, Carnelian knew they were Oracles. His escort brought him to a door before which a curtain of myrrh smoke was rising. Passing through it, he found a gold-faced apparition waiting for him. Wrapped in linen, it made Carnelian recall the term the Plainsmen used for the Masters. The apparition unmasked to reveal Osidian’s face, his eyes seeming murky emeralds. He must have misunderstood Carnelian’s hesitation for he said: ‘These chambers have been ritually cleansed, my Lord.’
Carnelian removed his mask and stripped down to his second skin of bandages. Osidian indicated a mat upon which lay some dishes of food. Realizing how hungry he was, Carnelian sat down and began eating.
Osidian was watching him. ‘Tomorrow I shall leave with the Marula to seek signs of the Lord Aurum.’
Carnelian frowned. ‘Have you reason to expect him to be close?’
‘I would like you to remain behind.’
Osidian’s face was as unreadable as a mask, but Carnelian sensed he was up to something. ‘Will you take all the Marula, my Lord?’
‘I shall leave you some; though I do not think it likely you will have problems with the marumaga. You will be the only Chosen here.’
Carnelian thought that strange. ‘My Lord is taking all the commanders with him?’
Osidian made a sign of affirmation.
‘The Legate too?’
‘He is no longer that but, yes, he will come with me.’
Carnelian returned to his meal. Perhaps Osidian intended nothing more than to humble the Lesser Chosen. Forcing them to endure the discomfort of riding aquar in the world beyond the city could only serve, as in the case of the Marula warriors, to reinforce Osidian’s dominion over them. Something occurred to him. ‘And Morunasa?’
‘He shall remain here as your lieutenant.’
‘To keep an eye on me?’
Osidian did not reply, but sat down to eat.
Before the outer gates of the cothon were fully open, Osidian and the Lesser Chosen commanders sped through the gap, their black cloaks fluttering like wings. Watching the Marula pour after them Carnelian frowned, remembering other Chosen riders in black cloaks, with other Marula. When all were through, the gates slowly closed. He turned back to the cothon. With their masts and rigging, the dragon towers had a look of the barans in the Tower in the Sea. Seeking distraction, he set off across the cobbles towards Heart-of-Thunder.
The piers dwarfed the pack huimur, each under a pitched frame studded with sacs. These sacs, once unhitched from the frames, were being lugged towards Heart-of-Thunder. As each arrived under the prow of his beak, a keeper would tear it open with his billhook, snag the sac, then raise it to tip the render into the dragon’s maw.
When he tired of watching this feeding, Carnelian wandered down the monster’s flank, staying in his shadow, curious to find out what the other keepers were up to, whom he could see prodding mushroom-headed poles into the dragon’s hide. He deduced they must be testing the strength of the monster’s massive muscles. When the beastmaster came, he pronounced himself satisfied. Heart-of-Thunder’s lower horns were roped to yokes. Keepers pricked his legs as teams of men pulled on the ropes. With a shudder, the monster came to life. One massive leg rose, swung forward, then dropped to the ground with an impact that shook Carnelian’s bones. More quakes followed as the monster moved from the first set of piers towards the second, finally slipping beneath the beams that held aloft the pyramid-shaped upper half of a dragon tower.
After Heart-of-Thunder had been tethered in place by his horns, more huimur approached bearing sacs. Carnelian wondered if the keepers were going to resume feeding the dragon, but this time the sacs were being lugged to the piers, then hoisted to their summits. These new sacs were being carried with some care. Also, they were not brown, but black. Curiosity drew Carnelian to investigate.
As he emerged from the shadows, everyone within sight fell to their knees. He peered at one of the black sacs. His ranga would not allow him to reach down to it. ‘Hold it up to me.’
As a keeper lifted it, Carnelian could smell its reek even through the nosepads of his mask. ‘Naphtha.’
He let the men resume their work and stood where he could watch them ferrying the sacs over to the tower base roped to the dragon’s back. After a while a reek of naphtha began wafting down from the tower base and he realized they must be filling its tanks.
The empty sacs were piled on the cothon floor away from the dragons. No doubt as a precaution against accidental fire. Near sunset the legionaries began clearing the cothon. Carnelian had been watching the mobilization for so long, his legs had begun to ache. A lone legionary dared approach to tell him that the gates would soon be locked. Carnelian followed the man across the cothon. The rest of his comrades were already beginning to huddle around fires they had lit upon the cobbles away from the dragons. As Carnelian passed through the gate it was locked behind him.
Alone in the marumaga barracks, Carnelian could hear the murmur of the Marula in the courtyard outside. How he longed to go and join them round their campfires. Twice now he had summoned someone to attend him but, when they had knelt before him, he had stood silent. What communication could there be between them? All they could see was a Master. He had had to be content with asking them to bring food and water.
He lay on the floor without a blanket, wanting the stone to spread its coldness up to numb his heart. What would he not have given for a glimpse of Fern or Poppy or Krow, or even just to hear their voices?
Beneath one of Heart-of-Thunder’s piers, Carnelian was waiting for the Quartermaster. Though, by waking, he had escaped his nightmares, his mind was still stained with dread. The cothon and its activity no longer held a promise of power, but only of destruction. This great mechanism, so nearly wound up to readiness, was a weapon he knew Osidian would not hesitate to use. His heart told him they were close to the point of no return if, indeed, they had not already passed it. The immediate consequences of the events they were about to set in motion he could barely see; the ultimate consequences he could not see at all; but, though he was blind to the future, his heart was populating it with vague, terrible shapes.
‘My Master, you summoned me?’
It was like being shocked awake. The Quartermaster was there, kneeling. Carnelian gestured him to rise. ‘What remains to be done?’
‘Some of the dragons have not yet recovered their strength, Master, and this is causing us delays. We dare not burden them until they’re ready.’
Instinctively, Carnelian reached out to reassure the man, but let his hand fall when he saw him flinch. ‘I’m not accusing you, but seek only your best estimate of when the legion will be ready.’
‘Before nightfall most of the tanks should be full, Master.’
‘And then?’
‘For those dragons strong enough, we can attempt to seal their towers.’
Carnelian glanced at Heart-of-Thunder. ‘Is he strong enough?’
‘He is, Master.’
‘What happens after his tower is sealed?’
‘We shall connect up the pipes.’
‘The flame-pipes?’
‘Just so, Master.’ The man raised a hand to point towards the centre of the cothon.
Carnelian gazed off to what he had thought a brass wall. The Quartermaster said something else, but Carnelian was not listening. He had not noticed before how much that wall resembled the bronze forest surrounding the Chamber of the Three Lands in Osrakum.
Mast and tower shadows were reaching across the cothon when the Quartermaster came to tell him Heart-of-Thunder’s tanks were full and that his tower would now be sealed. Carnelian followed him back and found a place near the dragon where he could watch everything. Slaves greased the piers, counterweights were released, the upper, pyramid-shaped part of the tower rose from its supporting beams. When these were slid away the pyramid was left swinging gently like some vast but silent bell, men clinging to its sides. Chanting to keep their rhythm, gangs pulled the pyramid down, even as the counterweights rose in their niches in the piers. As the two parts of the tower came together, the men on its sides began threading ropes through blocks and rings. When the pyramid and base were sewn together, one by one the counterweights were coaxed onto holding shelves. Heart-of-Thunder groaned as his shoulders bulged under the increasing burden of the completed tower. Men ran around him, gazing up anxiously, testing his sinews with poles. Slowly smiles lit faces, eyes brightened, as they grew confident he was strong enough. At the Quartermaster’s command they unhitched the cradle ropes. The tower was now completely free of the piers. It and Heart-of-Thunder were one.
Legionaries escorted two flame-pipes across the cothon: each a trumpet as massive as a fallen tree. Setting guards on the piers, one of the legionaries first sent his fellows clambering up, then gave a command to the beastmaster sitting astride one of Heart-of-Thunder’s lower horns. Carnelian took a step back as the tower rocked. Under instruction, the dragon was shuffling sideways towards the pier. Legionaries began crossing to his tower. Clambering around on its sides, they threw down ropes to be hitched to one of the flame-pipes. Slowly it was hoisted towards the tower.
A commotion across the cothon made Carnelian turn to see that riders were pouring in through the outer gate. Osidian and the Marula had returned.
Carnelian waited for Osidian by Heart-of-Thunder’s pier. He watched him consult the Quartermaster and then approach, accompanied by another Master. ‘It seems, my Lord,’ Osidian called out, ‘it will be at least another day before we can leave. Some of the huimur are not yet strong enough to bear their towers.’
Carnelian tried to deduce something of Osidian’s mood from his tone, from the set of his shoulders. He sensed Osidian was putting on a show for the other Master. They all turned to gaze up at Heart-of-Thunder. The first flame-pipe was already attached. Legionaries were working on the second. Osidian was nodding. ‘I shall command the first cohort from his tower.’
He turned to Carnelian. ‘I hope that you, my Lord Suth, shall condescend to command the second.’
Carnelian had not thought about it, but raised his hand in affirmation.
‘The third we shall leave in your hands, my Lord.’ Osidian indicated the other Master, who bowed.
‘As you command, Celestial.’
Something about this man disturbed Carnelian, but he could not work out what it was. Then it occurred to him. His voice was not that of the ex-Legate. As the most senior of the Lesser Chosen it should have been he who took next place after Osidian and himself.
Later, as he followed Osidian to where the other Lesser Chosen were waiting, Carnelian searched among them for one who might be behaving differently from the others, perhaps showing some resentment. It was then he noticed ammonites unloading a body from a saddle-chair. He glimpsed an arm that was wrapped in ritual bindings.
‘You murdered him, didn’t you?’ Carnelian asked, the moment they were alone and unmasked.
Osidian gazed at him. ‘He defied me.’
‘You needed to kill him as an object lesson to the other commanders.’
Osidian held Carnelian’s glare for a while before turning away as he divested himself of his military cloak. ‘We shadowed the road far to the west and saw no sign of Aurum.’
Carnelian was remembering how Osidian had killed Ranegale so as to take control of the Ochre raiding party. He focused his attention on what Osidian had said. ‘What if he does not come by road?’
‘He must if he is to have any hope of getting here before we complete our mobilization.’
Carnelian realized something. ‘If you could see the road, then the watch-towers must have seen you.’
Osidian threw his hand up in a gesture of dismissal. ‘The time for hiding has passed.’
For a moment Carnelian became lost in a maelstrom of anxiety. So they had finally passed the point of no return. He marshalled his thoughts. ‘You have a plan?’
‘We penetrate deep into the hinterland beyond the seeing of the Wise. Then we shall turn towards Makar.’
Carnelian saw it in his mind. ‘You wish to outflank him.’
‘And snatch his base from him.’
To capture Makar would put them astride the South Road that ran north to Osrakum.
Osidian’s eyes went opaque. ‘That should get the attention of my Lords the Wise.’
Even though he did not believe they would give Osidian anything, Carnelian felt uneasy.
Osidian’s eyes brightened. ‘Aurum will be forced to come to me.’
Could it be he still hoped the old Master would join him? Carnelian felt a need to put a crack in Osidian’s certainty. ‘How can you be so certain of that?’
‘How else is he going to keep his legion supplied?’
Carnelian paused. ‘Surely he will find all he needs here.’
When Osidian smiled, Carnelian could already see Qunoth burning.
Carnelian stood upon a low dais within a raised ring of stone. The curved alabaster wall suffused the chamber with soft white light. An ammonite entered, bearing a casket of ribbed ivory. He put this on the floor, broke its seals and opened it. Pulling back layers of parchment, he reached in and drew forth a pale garment. The torso was of a piece with the legs that followed, which another ammonite swept into the crook of his arm so that the suit would not touch the floor. Together they carried it towards Carnelian, climbed up onto the stone ring then let the suit fall, dangling its toed feet and fingered hands. It opened up the middle, inner edges fringed with ties and hooks. It seemed the skin flayed whole from a man. The ammonites asked him to raise his arms, then they fed them into those of the suit. The soft leather poured like silk, rucking at Carnelian’s elbows. The gloves that formed the extremity of the arms were slipped over his hands. He helped the ammonites by worming his fingers into each pocket. They tightened the gloves along their outer edges with delicate ties like tendons. They did up the paired green and black buttons on the back of each wrist. Flexing his hands Carnelian was hardly aware of their covering. The ammonites smoothed the leather up his arms, fitting his elbows into the ridged joints, slicking it over the muscles of his upper arms and easing the shoulders of the suit over his own. As they pulled the leather over his chest, the dangling, empty head flopped down under his throat. The legs of the suit hung nudging at his shins. The ammonites lifted his left leg and fed it into the suit. His foot slipped into the leather foot as easily as had his hands into the gloves. They squeezed his big toe into one pocket and the other toes into another wide enough to accommodate them all. When he put his foot down he could feel soft calluses under his toes, the ball and ridge of his foot, his heel. Once his other leg was clothed he raised it, turning his foot up to see the sole. The heel was red, the ball and ridge black, the toes green. It was a ranga shoe integral to the suit. He felt the leather slide and grip his body as the ammonites began to engage the ties and hooks up his back.
As the suit moulded itself to his body Carnelian raised his arms, surprised at how it flexed at the gathering ridges of wrists, elbows and shoulders. He did not like the paleness of the leather which reminded him of the bleached faces of the Wise. In its sickly, greasy pallor it also bore a resemblance to the maggots of the Oracles.
He dropped his arms and practised breathing against the embrace of the suit. It was restrictive, but not so much that he felt trapped. He became aware of the way the suit was padded to accentuate the musculature of his body that the ritual bandages obscured.
When the ammonites asked him to climb down and walk around the chamber, he was pleased to find the legs of the suit articulating as comfortably as the arms. As he bent and twisted and crouched, the suit clung to him like a second skin. The ammonites asked him to stand still, then, after some adjustments, all left save one who, removing his silver mask, replaced it with one whose eyes were solid spirals. Begging his permission, the ammonite reached up and released Carnelian’s mask. He took hold of the flaccid head of the suit, smoothed it over Carnelian’s chin, then up and over his head. Carnelian pulled its opening around the contours of his face. He felt buttons being secured at the nape of his neck. Then the ammonite came round and bound his mask back on. Finally, the others returned with a great, black, hooded military cloak that they threw about his shoulders and bound across his chest with a clasp that, in jet and jade, showed the faces of the Twin Gods.
Carnelian followed Osidian onto the summit of the pier. There before them was a dragon tower: a pallid, three-tiered pyramid from which a mast rose, supported by rigging. In front, one flame-pipe pointed towards the heart of the cothon; the other was just being raised. From the rear of the tower two thicker brass chimneys emerged with sooty swollen mouths.
Even as he was taking in these details, Carnelian became increasingly disturbed. He realized the tower was reminding him of a Plainsman Ancestor House, and of the boats of the ferrymen of Osrakum. Though smoother, it too seemed made of bone. Those other structures people had fashioned from their own dead, with reverence and as memorials. The dragon tower, though more finely wrought, was an instrument of war and thus seemed gruesome.
Osidian was facing a diagonal brass cross set against the tower flank. As Carnelian approached him, he saw it was no cross, but a gigantic woman wrought from brass. Her back to them, she was spreadeagled on a mesh as if crucified. Between her splayed legs he could see a portion of an opening that gave into the dark interior of the tower.
As she began to fall back towards them, Carnelian realized she was a drawbridge with ropes tied to her wrists. As her knuckles and the back of her head clinked against the pier, two legionaries emerged from the tower and ran out over her. When they reached Osidian, they unclasped his cloak, folded it carefully, then stood aside. The brass woman shuddered as Osidian’s foot struck her in the face. His next step fell between her legs. A third took him into the dragon tower through its oval portal. As the legionaries removed Carnelian’s cloak, he turned his head to see her face the right way up. Though it was worn almost smooth, he could still make out a noseless, eyeless grinning skull trapped within the circle of the deeply cut earth glyph. It must surely represent the branded face of a dead sartlar of the Guarded Land. He did not want to tread on that face and so he put his ranga down on the mesh between her head and an arm. Long, empty breasts sagged down the sides of her body. She was almost a skeleton. He stepped over her bony arm. Her vulva looked like a scooped out pomegranate. He stepped over her leg. It disturbed him that she was there to be walked on. He turned to the legionaries, now kneeling on the pier. ‘Who is this woman?’
One of them mumbled something and Carnelian asked him to speak more clearly.
‘Brassman,’ the legionary said.
Carnelian frowned behind his mask but, seeing the man’s discomfort, he stooped and entered the tower.
The ceiling of the cabin forced him to remain stooped. Just enough light squeezed past him to allow him to make out the organs and entrails of sinister machinery. When a voice behind him begged leave, Carnelian shuffled aside to let the two legionaries past. A porthole grated open in the opposite wall. More followed, letting in daylight. The rimless wheel of a capstan filled the rear of the cabin. In front of this a ladder led up to a trap set into the ceiling. The front of the cabin was dominated by a convoluted arrangement of tubes, vessels and other structures.
As Osidian gave commands, Carnelian was drawn to peer at these contraptions. Hanging in the air, a mass of leather strips wove around some metal ribs. Stepping round it, he saw this was a chair floating in mid air upon a limb of brass that came into the cabin like an oar into a baran. He could imagine the rest of it projecting out from the tower and knew it must be the end of the flame-pipe. He peered at some handles set upon its barrel. Taking hold of one, he found the pipe so finely counterbalanced he could swing it easily. Sliding his hand along the barrel, he touched the tube that curved from it down to a vessel of copper as large as a pumpkin. From the rear of this vessel a brass tube ran up to and back along the ceiling and out, presumably to emerge from the tower as one of the chimneys.
‘My Lord, please move away from the furnace. It is about to be lit.’
Osidian was waiting for him by the ladder. Carnelian watched him climb it even as legionaries were opening hatches in the copper vessels and striking flints. As he followed him up, one of the furnaces roared into life.
He emerged into a second cabin partially filled with trumpets the size of canoes. Climbing further he came up into the brightness of a third cabin. He clambered up onto the deck. He was pleased to find he did not need to stoop. The front wall was a delicately pierced screen that curved round to open up the front half of each side wall. A single chair faced this screen, upon which sat Osidian. Carnelian had to avoid some contraptions lying on the floor to the side of the chair as he approached the screen. His eyes adjusted to the glare enough for him to be able to see out through the web of fine rods.
Below him the two flame-pipes pointed forwards. Beyond was the open cothon, piles of empty render sacs forming a ring around its hub. The hub itself was now only a scaffolding rack almost entirely denuded of the flame-pipes it had held. He could smell something burning. Gazing back into the cabin he almost expected to see it smouldering. A legionary had come after them and crept forward to kneel on one side of the chair. Another appeared through the floor and hesitated, a look of agony on his face. Carnelian realized he must be standing in the man’s place. He moved back to stand behind Osidian and the legionary rushed forward to kneel beside the chair, then lifted a tube from the floor and connected it to his helmet.
‘The pipes are ready for testing, Master,’ the other legionary announced. Tubes snaked from his helmet also.
Carnelian noticed both legionaries were crouched over a kind of fork they held before them and from each of which two tubes hung. Osidian’s gloved hands closed on the armrests of the chair. ‘Target the render sacs.’
The legionary at his right hand leaned down and murmured into one prong of his voice fork. Carnelian heard a sound and looked up to see the flame-pipes lifting.
‘Flame,’ said Osidian.
The legionary spoke again into his voice fork. From the bowels of the tower there rose a choking and gurgling. Then a high whine that made Carnelian grit his teeth. Screaming arcs of sunlight erupted from the mouths of the flame-pipes. A mist of smoke. Then the sacs began detonating. Their fiery brilliance was almost immediately concealed behind a mass of black smoke that boiled into the sky. A wall of heat struck the cabin, carrying a stench as if from a funeral pyre.
Night had fallen when Carnelian accompanied Osidian on a final inspection of all twenty-four dragons. Smoke obscured the stars. The incessant testing of flame-pipes had hung a pall over the fortress that had turned day to murky twilight. The fires of the Marula camp guttered across the cothon floor, where Osidian had insisted they must all spend the night. Carnelian had agreed to stay with him. He shared Osidian’s anxiety. Now the dragons were fully armed, he did not want them out of his sight. Lit by the torches attached to the piers, the bellies and legs of the monsters formed a continuous portico that could have been the edge of the Isle of Flies. Carnelian shuddered. He gazed up at one of the monsters. Though its upper horns were now bound to its tower with a hawser, its lower horns were still tethered to the cothon floor. The sickly pale tower with its pipes, chimneys, mast and rigging seemed a sinister ship in a fog. For some reason he was recalling the fear Ebeny had felt on that night, long ago in the Plain of Thrones, when she had been chosen from the flesh tithe.
Carnelian awoke on Heart-of-Thunder’s pier. He and Osidian had slept there so that they could be free of their masks. Dawn was running blood down the mast of the monster’s tower. Osidian was gone. Carnelian put his mask on and rose to face the day.
He found Osidian down on the cothon cobbles talking to Morunasa. Osidian was instructing the Oracle on how he and the Marula were to seed the fortress with naphtha sacs. Listening, Carnelian was struck by how thoroughly Osidian was planning his act of sabotage. He could not keep silent once Morunasa had gone. ‘Is it necessary to destroy this place so utterly?’
Osidian’s mask turned its imperious glance on him. ‘This fortress must provide no succour to my Lord Aurum.’
‘Is it not rather that you wish to send a message to the Wise?’
‘My Lord, you will take your grand-cohort out immediately.’ Osidian indicated the dozens of lesser huimur chained one to the other, each bearing a fully laden render frame. ‘Take our supplies with you to safeguard them. When you reach open ground, deploy your huimur to cover my exit from the city. Do you understand?’
Carnelian frowned behind his mask, angry at Osidian’s tone. ‘No news of Aurum?’
Osidian made a gesture of negation, then indicated the brightening sky. ‘The smoke we have been releasing will be visible from a great distance.’
‘As far as Osrakum,’ Carnelian said, knowing it must be clearly visible to the nearest watch-towers.
Indeed, signed Osidian.
‘And while I am screening the city, you will be here incinerating this place?’
‘I shall do nothing myself.’
Carnelian could hear the smile in Osidian’s voice. ‘You will make the Lesser Chosen commanders do it so as to fully implicate them.’
‘There are more ways to bind others to one’s cause than love.’
Carnelian would not allow himself to be stung by Osidian’s bitterness. ‘Which huimur is to be mine?’
Osidian made a summoning gesture and two legionaries rose from among the rest. ‘These are your Righthand and Lefthand. They will guide you to your command, my Lord.’
‘Until later then.’ Carnelian indicated to his officers that they should lead and he set off with them across the cothon floor.
As he approached the dragon Carnelian judged that, if it was less massive than Heart-of-Thunder, it could not be by much. Gazing up between the swelling arches of its eye-ridges, he found the scar glyphs of its name: Earth-is-Strong.
Carnelian turned to his Lefthand. ‘Have you ridden him long?’
‘She, Master,’ the man said, then shrank away at his presumption.
‘You were right to correct me, legionary,’ Carnelian said, gazing back at the dragon. He had not thought they could be female.
‘Nine years,’ the man was saying when Carnelian’s chuckle interrupted him. He was amused to find he was detecting feminine curves in the monster’s horns, her beak, the sweep of her crest. Her lower right horn was just a stump, so she really only had three.
Carnelian became aware of the legionaries’ confusion. ‘Come, let’s take her out.’
He followed them to the rear of a pier, where they opened a door for him. He dismissed them and began to climb the stair alone. No doubt its form was intended to remind a commander of the Law. He used its spiralling path to compose his mind. He must be careful how he managed those under his command. When he reached the summit, he saw before him the bone pyramid of her tower upon her massive back. He could not help feeling a stab of elation that she was his.
His officers were waiting, kneeling. He passed between them, then crossed the brassman into the tower. He surveyed the gloom through the slits of his mask. Men were kneeling before the furnaces, beside the flame-pipe counterweight chairs, between the spokes of the capstan. Carnelian noted the hawser that emerged from a hole in the deck, wound itself round the spindle of the capstan, then disappeared through another hole on the other side of the cabin. It was this hawser, attached to the upper horns of the dragon, that allowed her to be steered.
He climbed to the next deck. Framed by the brass of the huge trumpets, this cabin had been turned into a storeroom and barracks. He continued up to the command deck, where he took his place upon its chair. His officers came up behind him, then knelt to either side and began connecting tubes to their helmets. His arms rested naturally along those of the chair. Its bone seemed polished ivory. He raised his gaze to look out through the latticework screen at the cothon. Below him were the gleaming spars of his flame-pipes. Further down still the slope of Earth-is-Strong’s head sweeping out into the scythe and stump of her lower horns, into the hook of her beak.
He realized he did not know what to do next. He considered asking one of his officers, but decided it could not be that difficult. ‘Take her out.’
His Lefthand put his mouth to his tubed voice fork and murmured something, then lifted his head. Nothing happened. Carnelian was beginning to feel they were waiting for him to give another command, when he noticed some movement down on the dragon’s lower horns. Men were now sitting astride the brass cuffs, to which were lashed the tether ropes. Responding to some signal, both simultaneously leaned over and released the ropes. Earth-is-Strong’s head came loose. Carnelian flinched as she swung it up. For a moment he imagined her bony frill would shatter the tower he was in to shards. She let forth a cry like tearing metal. The tower shuddered. Then it heeled over to one side, causing Carnelian to grip the arms of the chair. The tower surged forward. The impact of the monster’s footfall jarred up into Carnelian’s head. The tower began another surge, toppling in the opposite direction. To his relief, as Earth-is-Strong got into her stride, the movement gradually smoothed like a ship riding a swell.
They were heading straight for the centre of the cothon. ‘The outer gate,’ he said, quickly.
The Lefthand jerked a nod and muttered into his voice fork: ‘Starboard for two counts.’
Carnelian felt the turn in his stomach. Ahead, the cothon was slipping right to left.
‘Shall I give the signal for the others to follow us, Master?’ the Lefthand asked.
Carnelian managed only a nod.
The legionary leaned to his voice fork and began murmuring instructions. Carnelian’s curiosity was piqued. ‘Who’re you talking to?’
The Lefthand looked up, startled. When he saw it was a question and not a complaint, he pointed up. ‘Our mirrorman on the roof, Master.’
Carnelian nodded, imagining something like a small heliograph up there. Earth-is-Strong was now pounding directly towards the outer gate of the cothon. As they approached, it opened before them. Soon its brass was glimmering past on either side. Then they began moving through the fortress towards the watch-tower that guarded its gate. Edifices slid past. Men scurried from their path. The fortress gate grated as it lifted into the retaining wall. Soon the shadow of the watch-tower fell over them.
‘Master, shall we give warning of our coming?’ said the Righthand.
Carnelian released the arm of the chair and raised his hand in affirmation. They were exiting the fortress. He could see the mosaic of squares and lozenges made up by the roofs of the mudbrick tenements. A trumpet roared beneath Carnelian’s feet. He could feel its vibration through the deck. It blared again, its harsh, ragged voice echoing back off the buildings as Earth-is-Strong slid between them.
Carnelian had grown tired of watching the city slip by. His focus was turned inwards as he brooded on what was to come. He was startled by a rumbling like thunder that came from somewhere far behind him. For a while he heard its echoes getting lost among the alleys below.
‘What was that?’ he asked his Lefthand.
Staring, the man shook his head. Carnelian rose, swaying with the deck, searching the rear wall of the cabin for windows. There were portholes to either side of the mast. Finding his sea legs, he strode to one. Another explosion sounded as he fumbled at the bolt securing its cover. Then he had it open and was looking back along the road. Beyond the long line of dragons following his, a frowning black cloud was rising as it fed on wavering tentacles of smoke. As he watched, there was a flash as if the sun had been caught suddenly upon some vast mirror. Moments later he was hit by a detonation that made him recoil from the porthole. He returned to it and watched the smoke rising. Suddenly, the branches of the watch-tower were wreathed in flames. It looked like one of the mother trees in the Koppie burning.
As Earth-is-Strong took them through the gate of Qunoth out onto the blinding expanse of the raised road, Carnelian brought her to a halt. Beyond the road there spread what appeared to be a vast midden. Carnelian leaned forward on his command chair. He could not imagine where so much rubbish could have come from. Then he noticed movement, as if the whole mouldering mass were writhing with maggots, and realized what he was looking at must be a suburb outside the city walls. Beyond these shanties he was sure he could see where their brown shaded into the red of the Guarded Land.
‘Take us west along the road.’
The Lefthand murmured into his voice fork. Then the cabin lurched into movement as Earth-is-Strong swung westwards.
They pounded along the road that poured its limestone west to vanish in the haze. The road was so wide it easily accommodated Earth-is-Strong without blocking the flow of other traffic. Having made sure that Aurum was nowhere in sight, Carnelian distracted himself by peering down at the patchwork of the crowds. Here and there it was dense, but mostly it barely skinned the stone. Many faces turned up in wonder to watch the dragons go by. Others were looking south to where black clouds were rising from the tip of Qunoth. Though he had been hoping to recapture something of the excitement he had felt on the Great Sea Road, it was hopeless. During that journey he had been down there among the bustle and the stench. He had been one of them. Now it took effort to see it as anything other than a roughly patterned tapestry.
After they had left the shanties behind, he kept a look-out for a ramp. When they came to one, he ordered Earth-is-Strong off the road and had commands sent to the rest of his grand-cohort to follow. Descending the ramp, the dragon sat back a little on her haunches, so that, on the whole, the cabin remained level. Soon after she reached the earth, it seemed she was wading into a red sea. The billows of dust she churned up soon rose high enough to submerge her head.
When a message was received that the last dragon had left the road, Carnelian sent one back commanding that each should heave to, facing west in line abreast. When Earth-is-Strong had completed her turn, the cabin stilled. He could hear the creaking of the tower, of its rigging, of its flexing mast. As the dust settled, her head emerged like a reef from an ebbing tide. Soon it was quiet enough for Carnelian to hear the breathing of his officers.
Carnelian was drowsing when a remote murmuring brought him fully awake. The sound was coming from his Lefthand’s helmet.
‘What is it?’ Carnelian demanded.
‘A message from Heart-of-Thunder, Master.’
‘What does it say?’
The man looked disconcerted. ‘Join me.’
Carnelian returned to the porthole in the rear wall of the cabin. He had to move round to another to gain a view of the city they had left behind. Smoke, rooted in the fortress of Qunoth, had grown into a black tree under whose branches the city and the adjoining land lay in shadow. He searched for Osidian and his dragons upon the road, but could not find them. Then movement at the corner of his eye made him turn his mask slits away from the city. There they were, beneath the smoke, like a flotilla of ships ploughing a course directly through the midst of the shanties.