Moment of Truth (30 page)

George lay the binoculars on the ground. Carefully, he picked a blade of grass and ran it through his fingers. ‘Don't you have doubts, old man?'

‘Doubts? Not many people don't have doubts. The trick is not to listen to them.'

‘All right.' George threw the blade of grass over his shoulder. ‘Let's make a pact.' He stood and brushed himself off, then he stuck out his hand. ‘Let's promise each other not to listen to those doubts.'

Aubrey climbed to his feet, took his friend's hand and shook. ‘Not unless they're reasonable doubts.'

George growled. ‘Aubrey.'

‘Right. Sorry. I mean: let's do the best we possibly can for those around us.'

‘A noble aim. Now, how do we get into that place?'

Aubrey had been wondering if a night approach may be best, but he was sure the light towers situated at the corners and halfway along the boundaries would have powerful beams and equally powerful machine guns.

Think, Aubrey, think.

Standard tactics came to him – a diversion, tunnelling, fence breaching – but he had a suspicion that this place might be well prepared for such approaches.

He lay on the leaf-covered dirt again, the better to steady his field glasses. They were the best the Department could supply, by the hands of the renowned Crouch Bros. The lenses were each hand ground and the brothers Crouch had moved with the times, incorporating some neat stabilising spells in the frame of binoculars, so Aubrey had a firm, steady range of view. This allowed him to see the double box arrangement atop the nearest corner of the fence, attached to the guard tower legs, about twenty feet.

‘I thought so,' he muttered. He lowered the field glasses.

‘So did I,' George responded, shaking his head.

Aubrey stared. ‘You what?'

‘I thought so too, old man.' George paused a moment and seemed to enjoy Aubrey's puzzlement. ‘You see, old man, I like to keep you on your toes. Sometimes, when I'm supposed to give a compliant “What did you think?” response, I prefer to throw in a googly.'

Aubrey couldn't help but smile a little. George gave every appearance of being a solid, unsurprising sort of chap, but Aubrey knew from experience that this was far from the truth. His still waters ran deep indeed, and his mind worked in quick and sometimes capricious ways – and he had recovered some of his equanimity.

Aubrey was lucky to have him as a friend.

‘Thanks, George. I fell for it completely.'

‘Excellent. Now, what were you saying?'

‘This facility is even more important than we suspected. It's guarded.'

‘I can see that, old man. Those big towers do stand out.' George shrugged, a tricky job when lying on one's stomach. ‘You know, you're going to have to work harder in the “startling revelation” area. Good build-up, but a bit of a letdown afterwards, rather. I was getting all tense and now I'm left flat as a pancake.'

‘That's not what I mean. Under the towers and–' He picked up the field glasses again and scanned the rear fence. ‘About halfway along. Magical detection devices.' He adjusted the focus, very slightly. The devices looked larger than usual. ‘And I think they're not just for physical intrusion, they're also capable of detecting magic.'

Aubrey chewed his lip. If this was the case, the devices must be extremely sophisticated. They had to be capable of filtering out authorised magic, otherwise whatever was going on inside the buildings would be setting them off all the time. And such differentiating was an advance indeed, as he'd seen nothing like this in Albion.

‘Aubrey,' George said, interrupting his thoughts. ‘How did Sophie and Caroline get inside the place?'

‘Dr Tremaine's imprint is all over this factory. He's in there somewhere.'

George winced. ‘You told Caroline that Dr Tremaine was in there? That'd explain why she was so keen to get in.'

‘I've put her in harm's way,' Aubrey said. It pained him.

‘Don't think like that, old man. Caroline wouldn't like it. Suggests she's helpless, in more ways than one.' George pointed. ‘More important than worrying over that is the question of how Sophie and Caroline got in to the place.'

‘I hope Sophie didn't try any magical means.' In fact, Aubrey was reasonably sure she hadn't. He hadn't heard any alarms and the factory didn't show any signs of a place that had recently been magically breached.

George thumped the ground in front of him. ‘We should have asked Katya.'

A voice came from nowhere. ‘They went through the front gate.'

If Aubrey had been standing, he would have given the world high jump record a distinct nudge. Katya insinuated herself out of a dense tangle of shrubbery with nary a rustle, emphasising to him what a city fellow he was. She crawled close to them. ‘They went in the front gate.'

‘Just like that?' George said. ‘Bold as brass?'

‘They joined the soldiers who came this morning. Sophie performed some magic and they were in.'

‘Magic?' Aubrey was startled. She must have used something extremely passive. He was already thinking of the possibilities. Some sort of passive concealment magic was most likely. Or a semblance spell? He needed to know more about Sophie's capabilities.

Katya brought them to the spot where lorries full of soldiers ground their way around a bend and up a slight rise before reaching the factory gates. The lorries slowed here, she explained, and Caroline and Sophie had slipped themselves into the rear of the last in a column of three.

‘We can do that,' Aubrey said and he was confident he could, especially since their effort in slipping into the fortress at Divodorum had required the same sort of disguising magic. It was good, sound special unit magic.

‘I will wait,' Katya said as they took up a vantage point behind some thickly growing hazels, ‘and report back to von Stralick and Zelinka.'

‘I'd appreciate that,' Aubrey said, and he felt a flutter in his stomach. At least someone should know where they'd gone.

George took some time checking his revolver. Aubrey, feeling a little foolish, followed suit. He'd been prepared to leave the firearm behind, never having felt totally comfortable with it, but George had insisted on his bringing it.

It wasn't long before the noise of an overladen lorry came toward them. ‘Two only,' Katya told them after disappearing for a moment. ‘Go to the last.'

‘Ready?' Aubrey said to George.

‘As rain.'

‘What?'

‘Let's go.'

George scrambled through the brush, nearly leaving Aubrey behind – because Aubrey hadn't yet cast the disguising spell. ‘George!' he called, but the roar of the lorries drowned out his voice. A mixed blessing, for it hadn't alerted any soldiers, but George was ploughing through the brush, heedless of his lack of disguise. Aubrey rushed his spell as fast as he could, then put his head down and had to hurry to follow. Branches slashed at him, twigs plucked at his jacket, then he was through.

The rear of the lorry was canvas-covered. The back opened onto darkness and it was pulling away from them up the slight hill. George dug in, sprinting. An unfamiliar George, now looking remarkably like a Holmlander infantryman in full kit – navy blue jacket, cap, trousers, heavy boots. Aubrey's legs went slightly rubbery with the casting of the spell as if he'd already completed a nippy mile-and-a-half cross country. He had a moment of horror when he thought he wasn't going to make it.

The lorry lurched over a bump, just as George reached the backboard and hauled himself inside. Immediately, he leaned out and stretched his hand.

Aubrey gritted his teeth and found some strength. He pushed himself forward, feeling that awful moment when his stride was about to go to pieces. He was convinced he'd lose all momentum – just as George clasped his outstretched hand.

For an instant, Aubrey's feet left the ground and he was suspended in mid-air, most precariously, then George dragged him into the rear of the lorry where he lay on his back, panting.

While he regained his breath, he congratulated himself on how convincing his disguising spell was. His clumsy arrival hadn't caused any consternation. None of the dozen or so figures in the dimness under the canvas had moved. No-one questioned him, no bayonets were brandished in his face, no coarse laughter chaffed at him. All they had to do now was to sit tight and the lorry would take them right through the gates and into the factory. Their uniforms were perfect, just like the other soldiers who were quietly sitting in the back of the lorry, right down to the clumsy bandage wrapped around Aubrey's arm. Their faces were composites, blended versions of the features around them, fitting in neatly.

He began to feel extremely uneasy. ‘What's going on here?' he muttered to George, who helped him to a spare space on one of the benches on either side.

George leaned close and Aubrey saw that he had a bandage on his head, under his awkwardly sitting cap. ‘We're in a hospital transport, old man. At least, that's what it looks like.'

Aubrey surreptitiously glanced around the lorry. Each of the soldiers was wounded. Bandaged limbs and heads, blood-stained uniforms, but Aubrey had trouble believing that the wounds were entirely responsible for the bonelessness and the grey pallor in the faces surrounding him, especially since none of them had head wounds.

Young faces, too, he realised. It gave him a wrench to see they were about his age, youths who should be making their way in a world unblighted by war. These were the fodder for the insatiable appetite of the war monster that had been unleashed. So young, so many, and with the war so new.

He wrinkled his nose. A faint vibration was lodged there, irritating but not to the point of sneezing. He sniffed, but it buzzed and he realised he was detecting low-level magic. He frowned, looking around at the blank faces, the unseeing eyes, the chins resting on chests, and he realised with a start that the entire squad was enspelled.

He shook the shoulder of the soldier on the other side of the lorry, a fair-headed youth with one arm in a bloody sling. While George watched with some alarm, the Holmlander's head lolled from side to side like a rag doll. Aubrey lifted the soldier's good hand. When he let go it fell, unresisted.

Aubrey sat back and wiped his hands together. ‘It's clever,' he said after a moment's thoughtful contemplation of the canvas roof, remembering various descriptions in texts he'd read.

‘Some sort of trance?' George asked. His expression was one of caution tinged with definite distaste.

‘Our Dr Tremaine has come up with a new application of the Law of Patterns, is my guess. These poor wretches are entranced by a repeating pattern, caught in following an endless loop, so to speak. They follow it to the end, but find that they're at the beginning again. The effect, as you pointed out, is much like a trance.'

‘For what purpose?'

‘So they can be loaded onto lorries and shipped wherever needed.'

‘But who'd need wounded battlers like this?' George swept an arm around the interior of the lorry. ‘They should be in hospital!'

‘They should, indeed.' Aubrey was quiet for a moment. ‘But it appears that someone has plans for them.'

‘In a factory.' George's face was bleak. ‘Dr Tremaine is making me
very
angry.'

‘There's no mistaking his magic.' Aubrey hesitated. Even though the spell was clearly Dr Tremaine's it had an odd cast. It wasn't
fresh.

George frowned. ‘Let me see if I have this straight, being magic stuff and all. These poor fellows have been put into a trance by Dr Tremaine's magic.'

‘Correct.'

‘And we're currently rolling with them toward Baron von Grolman's factory.'

‘Most apparently.'

‘Where Dr Tremaine is.'

‘Ah.' Aubrey thought for a moment. How could these benighted soldiers have been enspelled by Dr Tremaine if Dr Tremaine was in the factory they were being shipped
to
instead of
from?
‘I suppose he could have whipped over to wherever these fellows came from, cast his spells, then whipped straight back here.'

‘That's a lot of whipping. Even for Dr Tremaine.'

‘And von Stralick said they hadn't noticed him coming. Or going.'

Aubrey frowned. Had Dr Tremaine discovered a way to cast spells over a great distance? Or was it something even more fantastic – had he managed to package spells so others could activate them? In a way, it was a variation of the principle that governed potentialised clay. For a man who needed to be everywhere, it could be a revolutionary discovery.
Another
Dr Tremaine revolutionary discovery.

‘Thank you, George, for throwing that little sparkler into the pot.'

‘Least I can do, old man.'

As they drew closer to the factory, Aubrey could feel Dr Tremaine everywhere. His presence was stamped on the whole complex. It fairly radiated with markers of his spellwork, both residual and active, and it all became confused with the multiple connections Aubrey had formed with his mannikins.