“Go, the Regiment!” shouted Arthur.
Arthur!
The Will’s shout was deafening.
The Mariner can open the cage! You must bring him before Lord Sunday returns or all will be lost!
As the Will shouted in his head, Arthur saw the beetles take flight and Lord Sunday’s dragonfly turned again. It was headed straight for the hill, and flying faster than Arthur had seen any dragonfly go before.
Arthur dropped the telescope and ran down the hill in great leaps and strides, easily clearing a dozen feet each time, landing and springing off again in the same motion.
Even the wormsnake didn’t slow him down. He jumped straight on to it, raced lightly down its back and continued springing from coil to coil. At the end, he even bent down to pat its strange, stony hide, before jumping clear.
Arthur crossed the next terrace in a blur and was halfway down the steps to the one with the clock when he saw figures hurrying across the lawn below, clouds of billowing smoke at their heels. They all looked a bit singed, especially the leader. He was an old man with a white beard, very tall, wearing a blue naval coat and carrying a tall harpoon of curdled light. He was followed by a score or more of Denizens wearing blue pom-pom berets, blue-and-white-striped shirts and nankeen breeches, all of them armed to the teeth with sparking cutlasses or fiery boarding pikes and quadruple-barrelled Nothing-powder pistols of imposing bore.
“Captain!” shouted Arthur as he tried to stop himself, his legs continuing to carry him down the steps. He waved and pointed at the approaching dragonfly. “Hurry! We have to get to the top of the hill before Lord Sunday! I need you to open a cage!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Leaf looked around in wonder as she and Daisy were carried up through the hole in the underside of the Incomparable Gardens. The impact of the tower had greatly enlarged the initial hole made by the assault ram, creating a circular gap at least half a mile in diameter. As they flew up through this, Leaf could see a cross section of the materials that made up the floor of the Gardens. There were stratified bands of several different shining metals, four varieties of crystal and, near the top, lots of what looked like just plain old dirt. There were also secret tunnels exposed, and the cutoff roots of the hanging plants that had once plucked fliers from the sky below.
Saturday’s tower had been damaged too, of course. The top floors were bent and missing office cubes around the edges. They were occupied by Borderers now, who hung out the sides and kept watch with their muscle-fibre bows, occasionally shooting a winged sorcerer or Newnith who tried to come back down the hole.
Leaf hadn’t known what to expect when they emerged into the Incomparable Gardens itself, but she hadn’t thought it would be into a vast and only loosely organised horde of flying Denizens, heavily mixed with smoke that reminded her very much of the bushfires at home. She coughed and wiped her eyes as she tried to look around. There were Denizens hovering about all over the place, getting organised into massed formations that were stacking up above her and for miles on either side of the tower.
In the distance, through the swirling smoke, Leaf could see the flashes of Nothing-powder muskets and carbines, and several times amazing lightning flickered across the sky.
The Borderers carrying the transport sling flew across and up to find their place in the line between a battalion from the Regiment on the left, a detached cohort of the Legion above and a squadron of the Horde to the right. The Horde troopers were riding winged Not-Horses, which Leaf hadn’t even known existed. The Not-Horses’ wings were easily thirty feet across and made of a silver, pearly metal, and clattered like Venetian blinds. The troopers on their backs carried very long lances made entirely of bright steel, with small pennons hanging near the needle-like points.
It all looked amazing, and even as exhausted and sick as she felt, Leaf still felt a small thrill to be part of this great enterprise.
She wished she knew what was going on. She couldn’t see Dame Primus or Suzy because there were just too many Denizens in the sky, too much colour and sound and movement.
“What are we doing?” she called up to the Wingmaster circling above, one hand idly conducting, making sure her troops beat their wings together.
“Waiting for orders!” the Wingmaster called back. “Hurry up and wait…hurry up and wait…just like always. Could be hours.”
But the Wingmaster was wrong. Only a few minutes passed, with Leaf scanning the throng to see if she could find Suzy, before Dame Primus spoke, her voice amplified by the Keys she bore, so that everyone in the Army could hear her, even though most of them, like Leaf, couldn’t see her.
“Glorious Army of the Architect!” came the booming words, so loud they made Leaf wince and Daisy’s tentacles shiver. “All our enemies lie before us! Though Saturday has joined forces with the Piper, both contend with Sunday. We shall spare none of them, but fly forward to our final victory!”
The great voice stopped for a moment then. Soldiers looked at one another, waiting for more, till some smart Sergeant-Major twigged what was required. A ragged cheer broke out, slowly building as more and more Denizens joined in, till it became a roar as loud as a crashing wave.
“There is only one order!” shouted Dame Primus. “We charge for the Elysium, where Lord Sunday makes his stand! For the Architect and Lord Arthur!”
“For the Architect and Lord Arthur!” bellowed the soldiers. Leaf found herself shouting it too, and even Daisy roared out something that had the emotion of the battle cry, if not the words.
“Forward!”
Wings beat down, so many in unison that they caused a great rush of air that made the fires flare beneath them. Tens of thousands of Denizens flew forward, shouting the battle cry, clashing their weapons, sounding their trumpets and cymbals and horns.
The Borderers carrying the transport sling picked up the faster beat, their wings spreading wider, drawing more air. The Wingmaster called the time and slowly they picked up speed, though not so fast as the Legionaries above them, who began to forge ahead, but only until the Not-Horses settled into their full wing stride, and all the different squadrons of the Horde flew out of the line and joined up into a massive wedge formation a half a mile ahead.
Leaf was watching them in admiration when Suzy suddenly plummeted down next to her, braking so hard in the last minute that she lost a bunch of tip feathers from her wings.
“Wotcher,” said Suzy.
“Hi,” said Leaf. She was still intent on the marvellous cavalcade of flying Not-Horses.
“It’s all show, you know,” said Suzy. “Sunday could knock us all off if ’e’s got a mind to.”
“What?” asked Leaf.
“Only reason he hasn’t is he’s busy with the Piper,” said Suzy. “But as soon as ’e’s done with him…”
“And Saturday,” said Leaf.
“Saturday don’t count now,” said Suzy scornfully. “Anyhow, that ain’t why I dropped in. I got some of my Raiders to stick ’emselves to the ceiling with a telescope, and one just dropped down to say they reckon they’ve seen Arthur—”
“Arthur’s here!”
“And the old Captain, wot came down in that big fireball—”
“What big fireball?”
“You might ’ave missed it. Anyhow, they’re heading to the same place where we’re all going, this Highlisium or whatever it’s called, though Jonty says it don’t look like much—”
“Suzy! Why are you telling me this? Is there something I need to do?”
“Wot? Nah,” said Suzy with a slightly amazed look. “I thought you’d want to know. Course, it might not be Arthur and the Mariner, but if it is them, we’ve at least got a fighting chance.”
“Does Dame Primus know Arthur is here?” asked Leaf. “You should tell her straightaway!”
“She knows,” said Leaf. “Fred went to tell her. I’d better get back to the lads and lasses. Here’s hoping Arthur can sort out Sunday before he sorts out all of us.”
“Suzy! Wait!” Leaf called out. But it was too late. Suzy was already gone, straight up like a rocket, with only one beat of her wings.
Leaf looked ahead again. If only she could see what was happening! The sky ahead was full of Legionaries and Regimental soldiers now, as well as the Horde. Try as they might, the Borderers couldn’t keep the transport sling up with the forward line and they were falling behind.
“Arrgh,” Leaf groaned in frustration. Everything was happening up ahead and she was going to miss out!
Daisy made a strange noise. Leaf looked down at her unusual steed. The beastwort suddenly lashed out with a tentacle, cutting a massive gash in the material of the sling.
“No, Daisy! Don’t!”
A human-size insect looked in through the rent. It was spiked all over and had very, very long limbs that were lined with hooks or burrs. It began to climb into the sling, till Daisy lashed out again, smashing it off into space.
“’Ware attack from below!” shouted the Wingmaster. “Escorts ahoy! Hold her steady!”
Borderers not holding ropes dived down from above, bows and savage-swords ready. But even as they descended, they met an inverted rain of the spiky insects, which had no wings, but were being shot up from below. As the insects passed through the ranks of flying Denizens, they stuck out their hooked legs, and whenever they hit someone, they pulled themselves into them and made both fall.
Falling seemed very likely to happen to Leaf and Daisy as well. Even though the beastwort kept batting away any insects that got inside the sling, the material was slowly tearing. Soon Leaf and her companion would fall through the hole.
“Put us down!” shouted Leaf. “You have to get us on the ground!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Well met, Arthur,” said the Mariner gravely as he strode over to meet the just-stopped boy. “I see you do not need my aid to be freed from that cursed clock.”
“No,” gabbled Arthur. “I need you to open the cage that’s got Part Seven of the Will in it. Before Lord Sunday gets back.”
“Aye,” said the Mariner. “I thought it might come to this. But then all journeys must end somewhere, sometime. Lead on.”
He gestured with the harpoon, and his sailors marched forward, following close behind the Captain. Arthur thought two of them looked familiar, but he had no time to waste figuring out who they were. He turned around and began to run again.
But the Mariner did not run. He lengthened his stride, but even so, Arthur was a dozen yards ahead when the boy looked back and halted.
“Come on! There’s no time!”
“There will be time enough,” said the Mariner with a well-gauged look out at the distant aerial battle, the smoke and the nearing dragonfly. “Provided we do not stop to gossip. I’d best let that old wormsnake know we’re coming up.”
He lifted the harpoon above his head. Arthur heard its crackling paper noise and tensed for the toothache and joint pain that would strike when it flew. But as the shaft of light leaped from the Mariner’s hand to flash up the hillside, Arthur experienced no more than a passing twinge.
Within a second, the harpoon, moving too fast to see clearly, slapped back into the Mariner’s open hand.
“Did you kill it?” asked Arthur. He had to force himself to only walk fast, rather than run.
“Nay,” chuckled the Mariner. “It is one of the first things, not readily slain. I have encouraged it to become steps on the hill again, and make the way easy, lest my companion touch its stony hide in earnest.”
“You’ve been here before?”
“Of course. We climb to the Elysium, the beginning of All. The very point where Mother emerged from the primordial Nothing.”
“Part Seven of the Will is trapped there inside a gilded cage,” said Arthur. He had to keep turning his head to talk to the Mariner, because try as he might to slow down he was always ending up yards ahead. “I think your harpoon will break the lock, and then I can get the Will to make Sunday give me the Key and then—”
“Indeed,” said the Mariner. He looked up again. Sunday’s dragonfly was less than half a mile away. “I said we’d not need to run—”
“Yes?”
“I was wrong. Swiftly now!”
The Mariner broke into a sprint, taking the wormsnake steps three at a time. Arthur outpaced him, running fast ahead.
They were both on the next terrace when Sunday’s lightning lashed down behind them. Arthur was blinded for a moment, and deafened by the crash of thunder that drowned out the screams of the sailor Denizens. He looked back, but could only see the Mariner, who was himself looking back, though only for a second, before he began to run again.
“Use your Keys to shield us!” commanded the Captain. He ran close to Arthur, so close their shoulders touched.
Arthur raised his Keys above his head as he ran, and thought of shields. He remembered illustrations of Roman testudos, the tortoise formation, and that made him think of tortoises themselves and their thick shells. He felt the mirror and the pen twitch in his hands, and the now familiar pain of sorcery. Then the lightning came again and he was briefly blinded, catching the fading afterimages of the great arc of electricity as it bounced off him and into the hill.
Three times the lightning came as they climbed the last slope, and three times Arthur’s shield deflected it. But it was not without cost. Arthur felt like he’d been carrying a vast weight above his head and he could barely make the last ten feet to the Elysium and the paved area with its gilded cage. He staggered and would have fallen, but the Mariner held him under the arm.