The Laws of Magic 6: Hour of Need (26 page)

T
HE FIELD HOSPITAL ON THE EAST SIDE OF THE CHATEAU
was a large and well-ordered, if sombre, place. George hurried Aubrey and Caroline through the rows of tents full of beds with men who weren’t critically wounded, but who were definitely not capable of fighting in the near future. At the centre of the medical facility was a large tent in uproar. ‘She’s refusing to go into the operating theatre until she sees you,’ George explained to Aubrey and Caroline.

‘She’s hurt?’

‘She was on that ornithopter we saw crash, but it’s more than that.’

George explained that Sophie had been co-opted into acting as an interpreter for the hurt Gallians who had ended up at the facility. George had done what he could, and when on an errand to find a particular chest surgeon he’d been recognised by the seriously injured Professor Mansfield. She had implored him to bring Aubrey to her.

Having delivered Aubrey and Caroline, George hurried off to find Sophie.

Wounded men and stretcher bearers were clustered at the opening of the tent, which smelled of carbolic soap, ether and blood. From inside came shouting and the sound of breaking glass.

With Caroline at his side, Aubrey eased his way through the crush at the entrance to find a large space, well lit by electric light, a preparation area for those about to enter the operating area behind the two wooden doors at the far end of the tent. Screened-off beds were being shielded by nurses, while near the doors white-coated doctors struggled around a trolley. One – round glasses and an impressive pointed beard – staggered back and cursed in a most unprofessional manner. When he saw Aubrey, he barked in aggrieved Albionite tones: ‘Are you Fitzwilliam? She keeps calling for you.’

‘Professor Mansfield?’

‘Calm her down, quickly. She needs surgery, but we have others just as needy who are waiting.’

With a word from him, the other doctors backed away from the narrow trolley. Aubrey approached to find his one-time lecturer in Ancient Languages draped in a blood-stained sheet, her eyes wild, her movements frantic. ‘Aubrey? Is that you?’

Aubrey’s heart went out to her. She had been the most energetic and most vivid of his Greythorn lecturers, and not only because she was the only woman among them, and nor was it the fact that she was by far the youngest. It was her animation and her vivacity that had appealed to him, but here it was transformed. Her eyes rolled, her small frame shivered, her face was blackened by soot, her hair hung in sweaty ringlets as she was sitting, gaze darting about as if she expected to be attacked from all sides at once.

He came to her side. ‘Professor Mansfield.’

Her gaze locked on him. She gasped – a wrenching, tormented sound – and clutched at his arm with bony fingers. She buried her face in his chest. Awkwardly, he took her in his arms. ‘Dr Tremaine,’ she sobbed hoarsely, ‘he’s on his way to attack Trinovant.’

Trinovant? But Tremaine needs to be near a battlefront for the Ritual of the Way!

Aubrey felt as if he’d been standing on carefully constructed scaffolding made from his observations, speculations and deductions about Dr Tremaine and as he was about to reach out to grasp the final, clear understanding of the rogue sorcerer’s plans the scaffolding dissolved beneath him.

Why is he abandoning everything?

Aubrey glanced at Caroline to find that she was staring with horror at the back of Professor Mansfield’s head.

He looked down and nearly cried out. In a shaved patch, just above where her neck swelled out into the skull proper, was a socket.

The ghastly thing was an inch or so in diameter and had the appearance of hard, white ceramic. Scar tissue surrounded it, reddened and weeping in places, and Aubrey shuddered at the thought of the operation needed to insert such an abomination.

Professor Mansfield pushed away from Aubrey. Before he could ask what had happened to her, she chided herself. ‘No, no, no! I promised Kurt I wouldn’t cry. Not a tear, not at all.’

Aubrey took Professor Mansfield’s shoulders, but at that moment he saw the bearded doctor hovering behind her. He pointed at his watch then at his leg in an awkward pantomime. Aubrey looked down and saw fresh blood on the sheet.

‘They said I might lose my leg,’ Professor Mansfield said softly.

‘Don’t worry.’ The words came automatically to Aubrey’s lips. ‘You’ll have the best of care.’

She grimaced, then gripped his arm again, hard. ‘I won’t, but it doesn’t matter. Kurt risked his life to save us from that madman. He made a much larger sacrifice when we crashed, and I’m not going to dishonour his memory.’

‘But how is Dr Tremaine going to attack Trinovant?’

‘He has the Rashid Stone,’ she said and Aubrey wondered at her state of mind, skating about like that. How badly shaken had she been by her experiences, let alone the crash?

‘It’s important?’

‘Listen!’ She glared at him and her fingers dug into his arm. ‘He’s collected magical artefacts from all over to enhance his magic, including the Rashid Stone. He’s gathered magicians and savants from all over –’ She broke off and coughed, her face contorting with pain. ‘He’s harvested their knowledge and harnessed their magical talent.’

‘He wired you together.’ Aubrey remembered the booths under Dr Tremaine’s clifftop estate. Revulsion made the words stick in his throat. ‘He treated you like a row of batteries.’

A flutter of a smile. ‘You were always quick, Aubrey. As you should be with such parents.’

Aubrey did his best to be reassuring, but he found it difficult as he tried to fit this new data into his thinking. ‘He did this to you and the others to achieve his goal.’

‘You know what that is?’

‘I do.’ The Ritual of the Way. A blood sacrifice and then immortality for his sister and himself.

A thousand thoughts were rampaging in Aubrey’s mind, calling for attention, insisting that he bring them all together to form a coherent, comprehensive theory. One of these thoughts rose above all the others and thumped the inside of his skull until he turned to it.

Dr Tremaine wouldn’t abandon his preparations unless he had something more suited to his ends. ‘He could have something better than the Ritual of the Way,’ he said softly. The horror of anything that would surpass a magical rite needing the blood of thousands struck him like a blow. Only with an effort did he prevent himself from folding in the middle and falling to the floor.

‘Aubrey.’ Professor Mansfield brought her face close to his. She was shivering. ‘Whatever he’s doing, he must be stopped. He’s going now!’

T
HE DOCTOR, HAVING SEEN THAT
P
ROFESSOR
M
ANSFIELD
had collapsed, bustled in and, with the assistance of a horde of nurses, whisked the trolley through the wooden doors.

‘She’ll get the care she needs,’ Caroline said. She took Aubrey by the arm and shepherded him out of the preparation area, which had exploded into action as soon as the impasse with Professor Mansfield had been resolved. Screens were dragged aside, trolleys and equipment rushed to bedsides, bandaged soldiers in wheelchairs hurried away.

Aubrey was deep in thought as they hurried back to the chateau. Through adroit nudging and steering, Caroline kept him from colliding with apple trees, water pumps and the many hurrying service people who had turned the estate into a headquarters. She even had to stop his progress with an outflung arm to prevent his running into a maintenance crew that was rushing to one of the new Gannet model ornithopters that had just landed in the large flat area to the west of the chateau.

General Apsley would need to be informed, Aubrey decided, plucking a single decision from the furore in his mind. News of this development needed to get to the Directorate immediately, so Trinovant could prepare for Dr Tremaine’s assault. Not knowing the exact nature of the attack was going to make things difficult, but this warning would give a chance to ready the forces.

Aubrey was jerked out of his planning by the abrupt thumping of thirteen-pounder guns. He looked east, shading his eyes, looking past the line of poles that brought the telegraph line to the chateau. ‘Anti-aircraft artillery?’

Caroline pointed. ‘On the edge of the estate, near the road, the other side of the avenue of trees.’

Before Aubrey could make out the emplacements, he was stunned in two vastly different ways. With astonishment, he saw the target for the anti-aircraft guns while simultaneously feeling as if someone had implanted a hook below his sternum and yanked it skywards.

‘Aubrey!’ Caroline cried as he doubled over, then staggered a few steps. Around them, soldiers began running and shouting, which was never a good thing in Aubrey’s experience. The sudden appearance of helmets did little to reassure him, and the looming presence on the horizon fully justified such preparations.

A skyfleet was steaming towards them.

M
ASSES OF OMINOUS DARK-GREY THUNDERHEADS
were heaped up, towering toward the heavens. Advancing from the middle of this storm was a horribly familiar line of cloud-forged warcraft led by a massive battleship – a dreadnought large enough to make other dreadnoughts think about doing some quiet dreading.

The sun vanished. Lightning flickered above the thunderheads and the day was suddenly cold. As the storm surged toward them, wind sprang up, whipped at tent flaps and sent leaves scurrying across the ground.

The anti-aircraft guns continued their determined barrage, firing faster and faster as the skyfleet steamed closer. The shells burst all about the cloud ships but did nothing to stop their progress.

Dr Tremaine was up there. The jolt Aubrey had felt was a tug on the link he shared with the rogue sorcerer. It was a whiplash moment, then it was gone, but in that instant he had Dr Tremaine’s location as surely as if the sorcerer were standing on top of a lighthouse with a flag on his head.

Caroline was quick. Her eyes narrowed. ‘Dr Tremaine? Is that how he’s going to attack Trinovant?’

Aubrey went to agree, then another option presented itself with enough force to make him wince. He looked at the chateau, then he looked at the approaching skyfleet, then he looked at the chateau again. Was Dr Tremaine the master of multiple strategies? Of course he was. ‘Yes. Probably. Maybe.’

Caroline followed his gaze. ‘You think he knows Bertie is here.’

‘Why not create some mayhem along the way to Trinovant? The disarray it would create would be useful, just in case his Trinovant mission fails.’

The wind picked up. Aubrey had to shield his eyes from dust. Sergeants strode about, shouting, bringing order to the chaos the skyfleet had caused. A large black dog ran about, barking at the soldiers, the flapping tents, the whipping wireless aerials on top of the chateau, and the flailing trees. On the other side of the chateau, horses whinnied and stamped.

Aubrey was still drained from his efforts on the battlefield, but he ransacked his brains for a spell, something to counteract the attack that was coming. He didn’t spare any time wondering how Dr Tremaine knew the location of the new King of Albion. Magical means or ordinary spying, Dr Tremaine’s methods were thorough.

Aubrey remembered the havoc created by a similar aerial fleet attack on Greythorn. Much damage was done by weather magic concentrated by the skyfleet, but it had also dropped at least one bomb Aubrey knew about. He wondered if he could manage some sort of deflection; not stopping any bombs, but simply sloughing them to one side of the estate. If he couldn’t protect the whole estate, then maybe the chateau itself? What about the hospital, though? Could he shield it as well?

They ran, bent nearly double against the wind, weaving through the companies of soldiers who were being dispersed to dugouts and trenches about the estate. Aubrey was relieved to see that one private was dragging the black dog by a length of rope, while it continued to do its job of giving the wind a good barking at.

When Aubrey reached the side door of the chateau, he looked back. The skyfleet couldn’t have been a mile away. Its passage was flattening trees and crushing cottages, creating a swathe of destruction across the countryside. A herd of cows took one look and scattered; each cow was grimly doing its best to achieve this ‘galloping’ it had heard of but never personally experienced. The madcap sound of cowbells added to the cacophony of shots, shouting, artillery fire and the overwhelming, all-encompassing scream of the wind.

‘Get Bertie into the basement!’ Aubrey shouted to Caroline. ‘Tell him that Tremaine is here!’

Caroline glanced at the sky, then nodded sharply. The door was wrenched from her hand as soon as she turned the handle. It slammed back, almost ripping from its hinges. While guards struggled to heave it closed again, Caroline slipped inside.

Dimly, Aubrey heard the sound of breaking glass. He flattened himself against the stuccoed wall of the chateau. He had to shield his eyes from flying grit as he wrestled with the possibility of a spell.

At this distance, half a mile or so, the connection he had with Dr Tremaine was faint, almost ghostly. It tickled his awareness without giving much more impression than an itch that couldn’t be ignored. It was swamped by the magical presence that was the skyfleet itself, wrought by magic from cloudstuff – and by a furnace-bright burning that came from the heart of the flagship itself. It had the texture of the magic Aubrey had sensed coming from the Holmland trenches at Fremont, the magic that coincided with the twenty-seven points of light in the Directorate’s remote sensing.

Dr Tremaine wasn’t leaving anything to chance in his attack on the new King. He was bringing his collection of magical artefacts to add power to his magic.

Aubrey anticipated the stormfleet behaviour he’d witnessed in Greythorn. There, the skyfleet had swept in and circled a single position, creating mayhem through weather magic, trapping those inside its whirling perimeter with a wall of cyclonic wind. If Dr Tremaine achieved this formation he could pound the chateau and the new King of Albion to pieces. Basement or no, anyone inside would be doomed.

He was rapidly spinning an idea into the beginnings of a spell. The buffeting of the wind made him wonder if he couldn’t do something similar, some sort of displacement that could shift bombs. It would take a combination of the Law of Action at a Distance and the Law of Transference, but he might be able to shift a large enough volume of air to create a deflecting vacuum, or a vortex to spin a bomb aside … Of course, in order to cast these spells accurately, he’d have to spot the bombs as they fell, which would be a challenge in such conditions as the storm-brought darkness made the entire sky murky.

Aubrey’s beret was ripped from his head. It spun away and was caught in a nearby rhododendron. Aubrey ignored it as the storm rolled toward them, a juggernaut of lightning and cloud. The skyfleet itself pushed from the middle of it, a formidable battleline of giant warships, ignoring the anti-aircraft fire that fell far short of its lofty elevation.

An untried spell, put together in difficult circumstances? Aubrey was ready but, before he could even articulate the first syllables that he was still arranging in his mind, the heavens were torn apart in a blinding flash. The thunder that followed made the anti-aircraft fire sound puny.

Aubrey blinked at the purple after-vision. He shook his head to clear it but his ears were still ringing as he scanned the sky. Lightning lanced across the black wall of cloud, ragged rips in the heavens, leaking brightness that made his eyes water.

How was he going to spy a bomb dropped in such conditions?

Wedged between the stairs and the side of the chateau, Aubrey extended his magical awareness, hoping to detect any magical emanations from falling bombs. It was a forlorn hope but desperation often gave birth to such unexpected offspring.

Even with his senses – mundane and magical – so attuned, Aubrey nearly missed the particular lightning bolt amid the garish display the heavens had become. In the split-second he had, he realised it was because of foreshortening – he didn’t see it because it was coming directly toward him.

The next thing Aubrey knew he was lying in the rhododendron bushes near where his beret was lodged. The noises about him were muffled and dim. When he stood, on shaky legs, he realised he’d been deafened by the blast that had flung him sideways. Numbly, he contemplated the diamonds scattered on the ground at his feet for a few seconds, before he realised that they were actually fragments of glass. A soldier grabbed his arm, shouted something and pointed up, then ran toward the stairs of the chateau.

Pull yourself together
, Aubrey admonished himself. He untangled his beret and held it in his trembling fingers. He smelled burning and looked up.

All the windows on the top floor of the chateau – the third – were gone. He couldn’t see flames, but what he saw on the roof of the building finally stirred his feet into action.

Giant electrical figures were capering about, swinging from antenna masts, skating along wires, dancing on chimneys, a horde in a manic, sparking frenzy.

Aubrey ran for the stairs, bent double, for the skyfleet was rolling directly overhead. It was a vast, oppressive presence, bringing a howling wind that came from all directions. The storm cannoned into Aubrey and sent him reeling. Only by throwing out a hand and catching the newel post of the stairs was he able to prevent himself from being hurled away from the entrance.

Inside, the chateau was pandemonium as military personnel from privates to generals either tried to flee the assault on the chateau or assist the injured who were staggering down the stairs.

Aubrey sprinted in that direction and swam against the current, mounting the stairs as fast as he could, while hoping that Caroline had managed to find safety with Bertie.

He was alone when he burst out onto the flat area between the turrets, the erstwhile site of the antenna array, just in time to see the last of the electrical fiends cavort on top of the flagpole, which had – until a few minutes ago – flown the Gallian flag. Its rough human shape and its magic left Aubrey in no doubt that it was a cousin to the creature he’d defeated on the roof of the Divodorum base, but before he could do anything the flagpole exploded in a hail of splinters that sent him sprawling to protect his face.

When Aubrey rolled to his feet, the malicious sprite had vanished. The flagpole was a blackened stub amid the slag and shreds of wire that had once been a carefully aligned antenna array.

Aubrey rubbed his aching head, realised that his beret had gone missing again, found it in a tangle of nearby metal and lodged it on his head while he stepped gingerly across the melted and charred remains that had been, briefly, a playground for Dr Tremaine’s malign magic. When he reached the western parapet, he saw that the skyfleet was sailing away and taking the storm with it. Lightning jabbed down at the earth, making it look as if the ships were walking on giant, electrical legs, stalking across countryside with impunity. A telegraph pole exploded in a shower of sparks, then another, before the skyfleet crossed a ridge and Aubrey lost sight of its sparky spideriness.

A cry made him whirl to find Caroline joining him on the roof. ‘Aubrey!’

While Aubrey had the highest estimation of Caroline’s abilities, he nevertheless was relieved to see that she was unharmed. He veritably skipped across the roof, vaulting over a gaping skylight and dancing around a metal pole that jutted at an angle right through a dislodged downpipe.

She took his outstretched hand. A host of expressions flitted across her dear face before she settled on careful professionalism. ‘Bertie is safe. The telegraph room exploded and is burnt out, but that’s the only real damage.’

‘You’re unhurt?’

She tilted her head, but didn’t let go of his hand. ‘One must put first things first, Aubrey.’

‘I did.’

The service door banged back. George and Sophie emerged. ‘A right mess,’ George said after surveying the damage. ‘They won’t be putting this back together in a hurry.’

Click, click, click.
Aubrey had it. He ran for the stairs. ‘Exactly, which means we need to be on our way.’

Banging down the stairs, Aubrey told Caroline what he’d seen on the roof – and he shared what Professor Mansfield had said with George and Sophie. ‘We need to let the Directorate know,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘but it looks as if … Ah! General Apsley!’

At the bottom of the stairs, the general was standing like a rock in the middle of a stream. While others rushed about, carrying boxes and valuables, the general had his hands behind his back, taking account of proceedings with some approval. ‘Fitzwilliam! Very good! This way!’

He broached the flood and ushered them into a drawing room to one side of the main entrance. The room was mostly gilt, mirrors and vases, a tiny showpiece designed to impress. It looked over the hospital area, which was, to Aubrey’s relief, untouched apart from some flailing canvas and a few minor collapses.

Bertie stood as they entered. ‘Relief seems to be the order of the day,’ he said. ‘I’m glad to see you, Aubrey.’

‘Bertie. Sir. Your majesty.’

A quick smile. ‘Enough of that. The general was eager to find you after I told him you’d know what just hit us.’

Aubrey addressed himself to the general. ‘It was Dr Tremaine, sir, and I’ve just learned he’s on his way to Trinovant. I don’t think I need to tell you that he needs to be stopped.’

‘Tremaine, eh? That was his magic?’

‘It was. I’ve seen his skyfleet magic before, and the electrical attack was undoubtedly his.’

‘Trinovant?’ General Aspley said. ‘Whatever for? I’d been led to believe that he was determined to organise a battle here, in Gallia.’

Aubrey screwed up his face in frustration. ‘He was, but he’s abandoned that plan. Whatever he has in mind now is unlikely to be less dangerous.’

‘So he wasn’t after our new King?’

‘I doubt it. If he had been, we wouldn’t be standing around and chatting like this.’ Aubrey felt some more pieces clicking into place. ‘He’s stopped us letting the Directorate know that he’s coming.’

‘All the communication equipment is unsalvageable,’ Caroline said. ‘It would take weeks to repair the damage.’

Aubrey jabbed a finger into the air, at nothing in particular. ‘As the skyfleet headed west, it was destroying the telegraph lines to make sure. He knew Professor Mansfield had escaped.’

‘He’s on the way to Trinovant?’ Bertie’s face was grave. ‘We must get word to them.’

Caroline seized Aubrey’s arm. ‘And so we shall.’