The Mask And The Master (Mechanized Wizardry Book 2) (54 page)

Torvald’s blue eyes went wide.  Gray smoke was rising out of a second-story window, floating up in a thin column like the string of a gargantuan balloon.  “The Petronauts,” he whispered, placing the window against his mental map of the keep.

“Their guards were discovered outside their cell, subdued, disarmed, with grave injuries.  The room displayed signs of an explosive having been deployed.  And, uh, a fire was burning inside the cell, the mattresses arrayed in a pile under a shot-out window—”

“A signal fire.”  Torvald’s hand went to his sword.

“I don’t—I don’t understand,” Iimar said, rushing to Torvald’s side.  His jaw dropped open at the sight of the smoke, rising into the cloudless morning sky.

“It’s a signal,” the Haberstorm explained.  “Why break a window?  Why make the smoke?  Why take that time and draw that attention, if all they want to do is escape?”

“That was the garrison’s thought as well, Master,” the yeoman said, back towards the door.  She raised her voice slightly to get their attention.  “An escort is prepared for—”

“But who can they be signaling?”  Iimar said, blinking his long lashes.

Torvald opened his mouth to answer when something caught his eye, glinting atop the southern ridge.  He reached out for his telescope, on its curved wooden stand.  He found himself laughing at what he saw.  “Them,” he said simply, handing Iimar the telescope.

The Enchanter raised the scope to his eye and frowned.  It was one of their Golden Caravans, the distribution treaders that had been criss-crossing the northern Tarmic with gifts all these months.  But it was covered in dents, and the vision hatch in front was badly bent.  Its treads tossed great clods of earth in the air as it sped down the hill towards the broad southern gate.

“One of our own,” Iimar said, lowering the ‘scope.  “But not entering through the tunnels.”

“Master?  I beg your pardon—is there something there?”

Torvald turned to the hapless soldier.  “Yeoman,” he said, “I think we’re about to become further compromised.”

He turned back to the window, ignoring the shock on her face.  The treader picked up momentum, barreling into the valley at what looked like a crawl from this distance but had to be close to its very top speed.  The handful of sentries on the wall, like little dolls, waved their hands and raised their miniature weapons.  Puffs of fluffy smoke rose out of their muskets, but their guns stood no chance of stopping the armored machine.  As it plowed through the spiked wooden barricades in the valley like a bull through matchsticks, Torvald saw the top hatch swing open.  A slim, black-clad figure leapt out of the machine, dazzlingly fast, and rolled to cover behind the splintered barricades.  The sentries briefly turned their fire on the driver, but their attention soon wavered as the pointed nose of the treader sped right for the southern gate, like an arrowhead to a bull’s-eye.

Even Torvald flinched away as the metal gate came crashing inwards, with a shrieking noise audible across the courtyard and up five stories to his tower.  Iimar the Enchanter had his hands pressed on either side of his head.  He had stopped breathing completely.  Torvald raised the ‘scope to his eye again as a flood of bodies rushed out from the woods.  A few armored figures outpaced the rest instantly; two in black, two with white stripes and swords, and one with a ferocious death’s head on its helmet. 
Petronauts…
and one glance at the black-and-gold uniforms of the musketeers following them down the hill told him everything he needed to know.

“Master, I was instructed to escort you to the northern tunnel—”

“A very reasonable order, yeoman,” Torvald said, replacing the telescope calmly on its stand, “seeing as the Delian Army has breached our gates.” 

The soldier’s eyes went wide, shooting past him to the window as he went on.  “Give your commander my compliments.  I am, however, countermanding the order.

“Escort Master Iimar to the tunnel instead, and see him safely out of the keep this instant, with the same honor guard you would deploy for me.”

“Master—!”

“There are a great many things riding on you, my friend,” Torvald said, placing his hand on Iimar’s silken sleeve.  “I can’t risk that you’re taken or killed.  Spheres move you swiftly.”

“But, Master Torvald—”

“What will you do?”  Iimar said, shaking his head.

“Stay.”

“But.”  Things were moving far too quickly for the wizard.  “You can’t stay!  There’s much more riding on you than on me!  You’re the King!”

“Not yet,” he said with a smile.  “My path to the Throne is just beginning.

“Look out that window, wizard!  Not twenty-four hours after I summon Svargath’s armies!  Not a day after Dame Hanah deploys, dwindling our defences! The moment my plans fly into motion, my enemies appear at my door.”

“Ill fortune,” Iimar the Enchanter whispered.

“No,” Torvald shook his head, his face shining.  “Providence.  The glowing, golden light of Providence itself.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I will stay, my friend.  I will be safe.  Find Dame Hanah and tell her what I’ve done.”

“But, Master—!”

The Haberstorm stood behind his desk.  “My path begins here,” he declared.  “And yours will take you down those stairs and north to safety.  Now.”

There was no arguing with those ice-blue eyes.  Iimar stopped in the doorway, looking back at the golden-haired man.  “We will meet again,” he said, as much a prayer as anything else.

Torvald was smiling as they shut the door.

“Can one of you help me with these?”  Lundin said as the scroll cases went spilling from his hands again.

“Lundin, you firebounder,” Martext raged, stomping over to him.  Iimar the Enchanter’s workroom was almost completely dark, except for the sunlight filtering down from the arrow slits in the hallway beyond.   Martext kicked a half-melted taper out of his way and dropped his sword on the ground, kneeling next to the pile of brown cylindrical cases.  “I thought you were taking us out of here.”

“After we get these scrolls,” he said, wincing as Martext stabbed the cases through the waistline of his pants-pack. 

“It doesn’t matter how much we steal if we don’t make it out alive.  You do understand that, don’t you?”

“Once we’re loaded up, we should head left down the hallway,” Lundin said, ignoring him.  “I think that’s south, which will take us out towards Campos.”

“And we’ll just walk all the way home through the Tarmic, with every soldier in this damn place after us?”

They froze as footsteps in the hallway skidded to a halt.  “Who’s there?” a thick voice demanded.  A pair of heavy boots tramped down the stairs, followed by another pair as two scowling guards peered into the dark.

“For Delia!” the blood-curdling cry rang out.

The first guard turned as a mace came hurtling through the air and hammered into his neck.  He crumpled down the last two stairs, gurgling as the musket fell out of his hands.  The other guard dashed down the stairs and whirled around, his blade flashing, as a brown-haired cat pounced on him from the shadows.  Elia brained him twice with the butt of her pistol until he threw her off, sending her careening into an iron candelabra.  As he staggered to his feet, Martext rushed up from behind and swung his sword at the man’s head with all his strength.

“Are you okay, Elia?”  he asked, breathing heavily.

Elia pulled herself to her feet and nodded, wincing where her ribs had hit the jagged metal stand.

Martext hesitated.  “You know… next time, you can
shoot
with the gun, and
hit
with the mace…”

“I’m learning, all right?” she said through clenched teeth.

“Also, you might not want to yell so much,”  Lundin said, adjusting the last of the scrolls.  He raised his hands when he saw the forbidding look on her face.  “Otherwise, that was amazing!”

“Oh, go pick something up!” she snarled at him.  Martext backed away as she stomped for the stairs.  “Now can we please get out of here?”

“Um, sure.  Absolutely.  Just to the… left…” Lundin trailed off.  Elia was already out of sight. 

He scrambled to his feet after Martext.  Just as he got to the stairs, there was a screeching sound and a massive crash from somewhere to the left.  “Spheres, what was that?” Martext said.

“Maybe Dame Miri got our signal?” Lundin said, his mouth going dry.  A look from Martext said the tech believed that about as much as he believed it himself.

Sir Mathias powered down the hill in enormous strides, feeling the spring in his coils each time his feet touched the ground.  The castle walls rose up higher and higher the closer he got, solemn and imposing.  It was up to the ‘nauts to rush into the valley and take out the wall sentries as quickly as possible. 
If we don’t?
  Travelling on foot with all that open space to cover from the forest to the keep, the musketeers would be picked off by the dozens before they made it to the southern gate.

Rather, what used to be the southern gate.  Dame Miri had steered the captured Caravan perfectly.  Zig had rigged it up with a block on the accelerator so all the thing would do was go forward, and all Dame Miri had to do was concentrate on steering that wheel so the nose was lined up with the metal gate.  He caught a glimpse of her, curled up behind some of the wreckage of the Caravan’s barricade outside the stone walls.  She was busy pouring powder into the two pistols she’d stuffed in her vest.  He grinned at the sight.  It was a shame they didn’t have an extra suit for her; she was a damn fine ‘naut.

A musket ball struck the earth next to him.  He took a three-meter leap to the side and kept running, and saw the other ‘nauts doing the same.  They were like a field of armored grasshoppers, far too agile for the Caravan’s sentries to have a prayer of hitting. 
At least, that’s what I’m going to keep telling myself.

“Eyes!”  Dame Gaulda bellowed, to his left.  Mathias lowered his head and kept running as a volley of whistling projectiles left her armor.  A few seconds later, there was a series of blinding flashes that spanned the air across most of the castle wall.  The musket fire died off almost completely as the dazzled sentries struggled to get their bearings.  As Sir Mathias looked up, a scream rang out.  One of the Caravan goons stumbled forward over the parapet and tumbled end over end to the grassy earth.  The wall was nice and close now.  Mathias bent his legs and leapt.

In mid-air, he looked down at one of the soldiers clutching her eyes on the castle wall.  His arm cannon barked and she fell backwards.  Then he was descending, significantly sooner than he would have liked. 
Burn me, these walls are high
!  One hand pressed involuntarily at his waist where the controls for his thrust pack should have been. 
A mission in the Tarmic Woods?  Why would we possibly need the packs for that?  Just a waste of petrolatum! 
Sir Mathias sighed and braced himself as his body slammed into the castle wall.

He scrambled against the stone, stretching his arms as high as possible, and managed to latch the fingers of his right hand on the gap between two crenellations.  He held himself there through sheer force of will and shook his head, dizzied from the impact. He reached his other hand up and grabbed the other side of the stony crenellation.  Sir Mathias curled his legs up to his chest and shoved himself off against the wall.  His armored body swung around one hundred eighty degrees before he let go of his stony handholds and flipped the rest of the revolution on to his feet on the top of the wall.  He shook his wrist, chambering another round, and looked down.  All the other ‘nauts were still on the ground, making a beeline for the open gate. 
Wimps
, he sniffed.

There was a sound behind him, and he ducked.  A musket ball whizzed over his head.  He turned to see another soldier in red leather, his eyes streaming with tears as he tried to focus on the big black ‘naut.  Sir Mathias clenched his fist, feeling the recoil of his gun as he watched the man sink to the stones.  Shooting the blind wasn’t the most honorable way to fight, but he couldn’t feel anything beyond that first obligatory pang of conscience. 
People who put children on the battlefield don’t deserve any better.

A clatter of boots on metal made him glance downwards.  Dame Julie was inside the courtyard, perched on the nose of the ruined Caravan.  She leapt skywards and extended her glider, curving back towards the walls.  She landed in between a pair of soldiers shaking off their blindness, and laid them low with two sharp blows from her sword.  Mathias lowered his head and charged towards the guards on his side of the wall.  The longer they pressed the momentum, the more of their team would be likely to come home.

The ‘nauts huddled in the courtyard moments later, their suits trailing smoke.  “South wall’s clear,” Sir Mathias reported, his heart pounding with exertion. 

“You and Gaulda keep the courtyard secure,” Sir Kelley said, stabbing his finger towards the ground.  Mathias looked over his shoulder.  The musketeers were most of the way to the gate, able to navigate the distance and barricades without a single shot to worry about.  There was a lot of firepower coming his way to support them.  He nodded.

“Sir Kelley!”  Orinoco called out, standing by the castle door.  She gestured to the western wall.  “We’ll take the front; you flank from the side!  Let’s find those Civics!”

Sir Kelley hesitated.

“Remember,” Mathias said, “You’re here for the other two.”

Sir Kelley made a very rude gesture at him before turning away.  Sir Mathias grinned, stretching out his arms, and sprinted over to Dame Gaulda’s side.

“I just want to go home,” Elia whispered.

“Me too, me too,” Lundin reassured her under his breath.  They hunkered behind the base of a hulking statue as the endless stream of soldiers kept dashing through at the intersection in front of them. 
At least none of them seems inclined to turn this way
, he thought.  There was the unmistakable sound of gunfire further ahead; outside, from the muffled sound of it.  Leave it to soldiers to choose to run
towards
the gunshots, but he supposed it made sense. 
That’s their job…