Roil (2 page)

That the city of Tate could have survived its absorption by the Roil was unthinkable. That Shale lost its brightest minds in the Penns was an absolute tragedy.

The Penns, though, had never been popular leaders outside their city, seen in the north by Confluents as too much in their sympathies like Engineers, and by the Engineers as far too much like Confluents. It could be argued that little effort was expended by the three Allied Metropolises of the North to aid their southern cousin, and that all parties were complicit in it.

The Roil baffles radio signals but, without a doubt, more energy could have been applied in trying to contact the city.

However, it must never be forgotten that those first years of the Roil
’
s rebirth were madness, its creatures (outside popular fictions and fairytales) unfamiliar, and terrifying.

THE CITY OF TATE 600 MILES SOUTH OF MIRRLEES: WITHIN THE ROIL

Margaret’s parents were late. She sat in the basement of the family home beneath the Four Cannon, seeking distraction in weapons prep and failing. It was a mindless sort of work (charging vascular systems, checking regulators, resetting clips) that set your thoughts wandering, and all her thoughts wandered in one direction.

Two days ago a bullet-shaped balloon drone flew over the Jut and the wall, passed beneath the Four Cannon of Willowhen Peak and the vast and twisting buttresses of the Steaming Vents, and landed on the forecourt of Tate’s Breach Hold Chambers, meeting place of the Council.

Within the balloon’s storage nacelle, along with various letters to Ministers and Engineers alike was a short note to Margaret written in her mother’s crabbed hand:

Tests successful. The I-Bombs drove back the Roil and we saw the sun. Hah! Knew you
’
d be jealous, my child. This will be an end to it all. Combined with my iron wings we can destroy the Roil. A new age is begun!

A few things to conclude, then we
’
ll begin the journey home. Your father sends his love. Back tomorrow, no later than six.

Both anxious to see you

A

Margaret read the note again, it was particularly jubilant for her mother: beginning of a new age or not.

Margaret had finished her sentry duty for the day, a twelve hour shift, dull, nothing to mark the time but the occasional opportunity to launch a cannonade at Quarg Hounds, or a dusty-winged Endym, or practice her marksmanship on Hideous Garment Flutes – though so many of them filled the skies it was harder to miss than strike one.

She hadn’t even spied a Walker: those driven to despair who clambered down the spiked and ice-slicked outer wall of the Jut and walked into the dark, never to be seen again. Of course, such despair was unjustified now.

Margaret had barely slept the night before, and her superior officer, Sara, had ordered her off the Jut, promising to alert her as soon as her parents arrived with three rings of the intercom bells.

Margaret had agreed wearily, but her head was buzzing and soon there’d be no need for such vigilance. The I-Bombs had been successful. The Roil could be forced back. She would see the sky, the real sky, and its sun and moons and stars.

Her parents had achieved what many had considered impossible. No less than a means of destroying the Roil that did not involve the near mythical Engine of the North – the ancient saviour and scour of the world.

But it hadn’t happened yet. She cleaned her guns, swapped the old fuel cells for new, and set to charging the drained ones.

She checked her watch. Her father had given her that on her seventeenth birthday. All it did was remind her of him. Why were they late?

Nearly six. As her watch reached the hour, the Four Cannon fired, launching endothermic shells out into the darkness of the Roil, driving its substance away from the Outer Wall – though it would quickly return. The Four Cannon – designed by her parents, like every other endothermic defence in Tate – were the city’s heartbeat. Without that regular cannonade Tate would have long ago succumbed to the Roil.

Conventional weapons did little harm to the creatures of the Roil, indeed they only seemed to encourage them to fury. However, Roilings could not survive in temperatures below three degrees Celsius, and Roil Spores themselves were killed by temperatures below freezing. All the city’s weapons took advantage of this, creating a zone of cold around Tate that kept the Roil out.

Margaret stretched her arms, appreciating the quiet. As much as she looked forward to seeing her parents again, she knew that once they drove through the gates it would be non-stop, starting with her flight down the wireway to see them.

The bells rang three times.

Margaret sprinted up to the Wire Room and responded with three rings of her own. From here she could ride the wires down the slope of Willowhen Peak to the Outer Wall itself. She took a moment to admire the view before all the noise and fury of her parents’ return.

Tate was about to change: the I-Bombs had been a success. She glanced from the Outer Wall and the Jut, and the beginning of the white thread of Mechanism Highway leading north, then back over the Wall Secundus to the ice sheathed inner walls and the Swarming Vents.

These monstrous chimneys rose high above the Four Cannon, their buttresses lit with low voltage electric lights and crammed with all manner of endothermic weaponry. Keeping the city cold generated heat and not all of it could be recovered and distributed back into the city’s engines. The waste heat released by the Vents was a constant draw to Roil spores and other more horrible entities. An endless battle raged around them. A unit of men and women called Sweepers garbed in cool-suits and more weaponry than any Sentinel, clambered over vent and chimney or rode the thermals on sharp-winged gliders into the spore cloud.

A knot of them slid down, another rose up. Their mocking whistles echoed over Tate as they passed one another; tallies added up, kills expressed in swift signals; the sign language of the Sweepers.

Men and women died above the city in the dry and ceaseless heat, but there were always more to take their place, drawn by the glamour and the terror of it. Margaret herself had hinted at such a career path, her parents promptly made her swear she would do no such thing: as if her parents did not risk their lives every day.

She grabbed her harness, just as another bell began to toll. And another. She stopped and tilted her head towards the city beyond the Wire Room, and the cacophony that was building there.

The ringing rippled over Willowhen Mount, taken up in watchtower after watchtower. In every house, in every quarter of the city, lights came on and doors swung open. Searchlights broke up the city airspace into grids of brilliance, revealing the nets and the dense darkness rising beyond.

A gun-prickled dirigible rushed east. Something flashed, from beyond the walls. The dirigible fell, a long exclamation mark of fire. And the bells kept tolling.

The city was under attack.

Tate’s heartbeat raced. The Four Cannon loaded and fired, their huge engines turning, trying to cover as much ground as possible. Their grinding movements vibrated through the earth and into her feet.

Bells tolled. Smaller ice cannon fired all along the outer walls. What the hell was happening? An explosion shook the house, but not from above, this vibration had come from below. Another series of bells started ringing. Margaret, raised on the language of the bells, knew at once what it meant.

The Roil had breached the Jut, the gatehouse of Tate’s outer wall. Even from here she could see it burning.

Another explosion and the Jut was gone, nothing remained of the gatehouse but a shower of blazing stone falling into the city.

The Four Cannon picked up pace. Margaret stumbled back inside. She strapped two belts of pistols to her waist and grabbed an ice rifle. She reached for her harness again, but stopped before her fingers closed upon the leather.

The wire thrummed as though the line were in use. She looked along the wire, east. Her breath caught in her throat.

A Quarg Hound slid towards her, hooked claws gripping the wire perfectly. The beast’s black eyes widened as it saw her, then narrowed. It opened its mouth. A black tongue flicked out over tiers of jagged teeth, and lashed at the air.

Margaret lifted the rifle to her shoulder, took aim and fired. The endothermic bullet hit the creature squarely, the hound spasmed and dropped.

If the wires were compromised her father’s armoured carriage the
Melody Amiss
was the only way she would be able to get down to the wall. The wire thrummed again, startling her. Another dark shape raced over the city. She reached for an axe to break the line then thought better of it. The creature was a minute or so away, at least, and breaking the high tension wire was as much a danger to her as it. Margaret left the axe where it was, bolted the door to the wireway behind her and ran through to the Carriage Room.

The ceiling was high. Her footfalls echoed loudly, melding with distant clamour of the bells. She pulled on a cold suit: time-consuming but necessary. The black, rubberised substance clung to her and it chilled her to the marrow, but the suit would protect her from the Roil. Over the suit she shrugged on her long coat its pockets already filled with ammunition and spare fuel cells. She’d been taught from childhood to dress as though the sky might fall in at any minute and decide to eat her. She considered the
Melody Amiss,
inside that she’d be something of an indigestible meal.

The
Melody
was a brutally elegant carriage of streamlined steel and brass, an electrical-fuel hybrid her father had kitted out with more than the usual ice weaponry. Coolant fans streaked its tail. Her father regarded it as a barely tested prototype, but Margaret’s faith in it, and his designs, was far stronger. The cockpit could fit two at a stretch, but it was cramped, and the air within bitter with coolants.

She jabbed at the starter buttons, the engine hummed beneath her. She engaged the automatic doors to the driving room. A Quarg Hound raced on stiff limbs through the opening. It leapt at the
Melody Amiss
. All Margaret saw was teeth and scrabbling claw, she released a burst of cold air and the hound shrieked and slipped away and under the carriage’s wheels.

The
Melody Amiss
lurched out the doorway and on to the street.

A body fell from the sky, striking the road with a wet thud. A Sweeper, the glider they had been riding torn to shreds. She looked up at the Steaming Vents, the air around them black with Hideous Garment Flutes and other Roilings. Gliders were being attacked from all angles. Sweepers fell here and there, broken, no grace in their descent, just plummet.

There was nothing she could do here. But she could get to the front. She could help in the battle, and she could find out what had happened to her parents.

Even now, there was no panic. People gathered at the evacuation points. Lifts were already taking groups down to the caverns beneath the city, Margaret didn’t even consider heading for their safety.

She drove as quickly as she dared. Wan-faced Sentinels let her through the first gate with a quick wave.

In the next zone, endothermic weaponry was being passed out to cold-suited Sentinels, and men and women in day wear or dressing gowns or Halloween costumes. It was an incongruous army that marched towards the walls – almost as varied as the creatures of the Roil itself. Every one of them moved with absolute economy, eyes lit with fear and a terrible determination.

Pride blazed within her. These people did not cower before the immensity surging over the gates; they stood their ground and fought.

At the second gate, a guard stopped her. She recognised him at once, a friend of the family and an old teacher at the rifle range. She released the door of the
Melody
.

“Howard, the Jut it’s, I have to get through. Please let me through.”

“I can’t, Margaret, the Jut isn’t there any more. You know better than most that we have evacuation protocols to follow. The gates stay shut until we get everyone we can to the caverns below.”

Behind him, bricoled Sentinels, straining against harnesses, dragged cannon to the edge of the Wall Secundus, then winched them up. The weaponry already on the wall thundered ice into the attackers.

“I know about the protocols. But I have to get through.”

“You will do no such thing,” he said, folding his arms. “Of all the people that I would expect trouble from... Margaret, this is not the time. We need you up on the ramparts.”

Margaret’s gaze turned frantically to the gate. “My parents are out there.”

“So is the Roil.”

“Has it reached the Secundus?”

Howard shook his head. “Its agents are close though and getting closer. Look, I relayed Sara’s message. I
know
your parents were at the Jut. I need you here. I’ll send someone out for you, when we can spare them, once this is contained.”

Another explosion shook the earth, ice crashed from the Secundus and fiery steel shards hurtled overhead, searing the air, striking the wall and exploding again. White-hot metal showered the Sentinels, igniting their cold suits so fast it was as though they had instantly become flame. All along the wall people shouted and screamed, pointing back at the way Margaret had come.

“One of the Cannon!” Howard rushed towards a burning Sentinel, Margaret followed, though she daren’t get too close. Howard beat the flames away with his hands, then signalled to a stretcher crew.

“One of the Four has blown.” He said to her as the Sentinel was taken away. “Get back, Margaret. You’re a Penn, we need you safe.”

“I can’t, the Cannon sit above my home. And as to needing me, it’s my parents you need, and you know it.”

Howard said nothing. Margaret watched him look from blazing Cannon to blazing walls.

Fires everywhere.

Margaret knew the Penn home was gone. Where the cannon and the house had been was a wild ribbon of flame. The other three Cannon picked up speed, endothermic shells arcing out beyond the walls.

More ice smashed into the ground nearby. Gutters choked and water gurgled.

Her boots were soaked, as were the tips of her coat. The ice sheathes were failing and all that water freed.

In the middle of a firestorm the city began to drown.