Moment of Truth (34 page)

It was a minor spell, he decided after he'd lined up the elements in his mind. He wouldn't be debilitated at all by it, nor would Sophie suffer any after-effects. It would only last a few hours without renewing, though, so he hoped that Théo would be easy to find. Otherwise they'd have to start all over again, and using the same spell twice so soon would begin to have some cost.

Aubrey pronounced his spell carefully, aware of George's silent scrutiny, and as soon as he finished, Sophie's eyes flew open. ‘Oh!' She put a hand to her chest. ‘Théo. He's here.'

‘I'm relieved to hear that.'
I didn't fancy wandering all over Holmland.
‘Where?'

‘Not far.' She pointed. ‘Over there. Where the soldiers live.'

‘The barracks.' Aubrey scratched his head. He hadn't quite worked out this bit.

‘I don't fancy smuggling Sophie in so she can walk along the bunks until we find her brother,' George said.

‘No need for that,' Aubrey said. ‘Caroline, how do we encourage many people to leave a building very quickly?'

Caroline grinned the wicked grin she kept for special occasions. Aubrey added it to his enormous list of things to like about her. ‘Oh, I have a way that might work. And it works best at night.'

Aubrey had been hoping that the factory's activities would diminish as the day gave way to night, but all that happened was that electric lights snapped on all over the complex, keeping the darkness at bay. The industrial din continued, and the chimneys belched away unchecked. He began to wonder if this was a sign of urgency. Was there an important date approaching? An imminent commitment of the output of the factory? Aubrey grimaced as he thought of hundreds of golems unexpectedly appearing on the battlefront at Divodorum.

Sophie gasped. Brilliant light flooded the interior of the elephant. ‘Look! Come and see!'

It was crowded, somewhat delightfully, but they all managed to take up a position lying on their stomachs to peer through the eyes.

‘I say,' George breathed. ‘Drilling? At this time of night? What on earth are they up to?'

Aubrey didn't answer. His attention was on the parade ground, where half a dozen fully uniformed Holmland officers had gathered.

The parade ground was flanked on the west by the barracks, the long huts that Aubrey assumed were the soldiers' quarters. On the north was the main factory building, where the golem-making machinery was pounding away. To the south was the electricity generation station.

The officers were looking toward the factory and the warehouse situated behind it, where the train loaded and unloaded.

Caroline tapped his shoulder and pointed. Baron von Grolman, wearing a long black coat and carrying a silvertopped cane, was hurrying past the concrete animals. Aubrey couldn't help but tense when the baron passed their position, and he saw the industrialist spare a glance at the elephant before rushing on, chuckling.

Aubrey found his field glasses, and with their help he was able to see the baron greeting the officers with arms outstretched, every inch the expansive, welcoming host. He proceeded to point at various buildings of the complex with his cane, no doubt explaining the functions of each. Some of the officers were sceptical, to judge from their posture (arms crossed, leaning away from the baron) but others were enthusiastic – nodding and asking questions.

Aubrey noted the amount of gold braid on the uniforms. These weren't just officers – they were generals, at the least.

The baron stood back and pointed across the parade ground at the warehouse. With a voice that echoed, he cried, ‘Behold!'

In the distance, past the far side of the parade ground, Aubrey spied two soldiers dragging back the doors on the warehouse. The officers with the baron moved apart, the better to see, then the baron herded them to the western edge of the parade ground, where they stood with their backs to the gardens. Aubrey grimaced. He would have liked to see their faces.

‘Good Lord!' George burst out. Aubrey swivelled the field glasses. Clanking from the warehouse was a sight that made him grip the binoculars so hard it hurt.

A vast billow of steam rolled from the warehouse entrance. Emerging from the cloud was an impossible figure. At first, Aubrey thought it was a giant golem fifteen or twenty feet tall, but then it resolved itself into a metal nightmare that glittered under the electric lights. It was human shaped, but its angular limbs were made of brass struts. It body was a metal mesh, an armature behind which cables clearly slid and gears whirred. Red eyes gleamed in the metal head.

‘It's a monster,' Sophie breathed.

‘If it is,' Aubrey said with horrible certainty, ‘it's a monster made here.'

A second figure, identical to the first, swaggered out of the warehouse. Its arms swayed loosely, nearly down to its knees, and Aubrey, with a jolt, realised he should be noting details for the Directorate. Their mission had become more than vital. He had to get news of this development to Albion, for he knew that these giant creatures were weapons that could win the war for Holmland.

More of the ponderous figures marched from the warehouse, one after the other, grinding and clanking their way, while the first to emerge trod remorselessly to the centre of the parade ground.

Aubrey began to refine his initial impression. At first, they appeared to be mechanical men. He was frustrated that he couldn't make out the inner details more clearly. Was that copper? And what were those globes? Those dull, non-metal sections?
Automatons,
he thought, but he immediately knew that wasn't right. These weren't machines, not in the way he usually thought of machines. He'd never seen a machine that moved so fluidly, so easily. Their limbs bent and straightened with an almost animal-like grace. Even though they must have been as heavy as an omnibus, they stalked across the parade ground in good form, leaving a trail of steam behind them.

Steam?
Aubrey frowned and adjusted the focus on his field glasses.

Projecting up over the head of each of these creatures was a chimney that sprouted from the spine. ‘Impossible,' he breathed.

‘What is it, Aubrey?' Caroline said, her voice tense.

‘These creatures are steam-driven. But they can't be. Where would the boiler go? They're not big enough...'

His voice trailed off. Take something impossible, then insert a magical genius into the picture. Dr Tremaine could have, for instance, used reinforcing spells on a miniature boiler, increasing the pressure...

‘Thermal magic?' Sophie murmured.

‘Sorry?'

‘Could a heat spell be used? Instead of the firebox a steam engine would require?'

Aubrey went to argue, but stopped and thought for a moment. ‘In theory, yes.'

‘It would have to be contained in dimensionality, of course.' Sophie touched an ear-stud, pensively. ‘It could be reduced to a single point of intense heat that way. Perhaps.'

‘Perhaps? Almost certainly.' Aubrey looked at the clanking monstrosity and then back at Sophie. ‘You seem to remember quite a bit of your magic studies.'

‘Magic never leaves you,' she said. ‘It is – how do you say it, George?'

‘In your blood?'

‘The blood. It is there.'

‘Aubrey,' Caroline said. She'd managed to prise George's field glasses from him. ‘What sort of a head is that?'

It wasn't a head, not as heads were usually thought of. It was a bright metal box set on the creature's lumpish neck. The box was square, with glowing red eyes and dark patches, one on either side. Ears, if Aubrey had to guess. But he wouldn't swear to it. This creation was unlike anything he'd ever seen, so normal rules did not apply.

A horrible thought came to him. He shied away from it as too gruesome, too inhuman, but he found himself circling it, unwilling to let go.

‘The neck, Aubrey,' Caroline said, offering glad distraction. ‘What is that made of?'

She had a good eye. Aubrey scanned the milling creatures, moving from one to the next. In each one, the neck didn't fit with the rest of the gleaming construction. Connecting the head and the shoulders was a dull, lumpy, non-reflecting region, quite out of place.

Thinking hard, he lowered the field glasses. Immediately, Sophie took them from his hands. ‘May I?'

‘Be my guest,' Aubrey mumbled, his thoughts elsewhere.

No,
he thought again, and he tried to tell himself that he wouldn't contemplate such a thing, that he refused to. His humanity rejected such a thing – but he knew that even if he rejected such a thing, Dr Tremaine wouldn't. Not if such a thing served his ends.

‘It's a hybrid,' he whispered.

He became aware that everyone was staring at him. ‘Aubrey,' Caroline said. ‘You've gone pale.'

‘Dr Tremaine hasn't just made golems, he's blended golem with machines. He's made
enhanced
golems.'

‘Why?' Sophie asked. ‘What is the benefit?'

Aubrey put both hands to his head. He was sure he was missing something. ‘I don't know. The endurance of golems married with the power of machines?'

That wasn't it. There had to be more.

‘They're monstrosities,' Caroline said,
‘whatever
is animating them.'

Caroline was right. It was the animating principle that was important here. Aubrey studied the parade ground. More of the mechanical hybrids were emerging from the warehouse, steaming as they stamped their way into ranks. He counted two dozen, three dozen, four dozen before he lost count. ‘It's ghastly,' Aubrey agreed, but part of his mind was still trying to work out exactly how it had been done. ‘I need to get closer to see exactly what's going on.'

‘I don't think right now is the best time for that,' George said. ‘Rather public, if you get my meaning.'

A hundred of the mechanical soldiers were clustered on the parade grounds, stubby chimneys steaming relentlessly. The clashing and whirring even came to them where they were inside the concrete elephant, so Aubrey wondered how loud it would be on the parade ground. He imagined it could be a useful battleground effect, inducing terror long before the mechanical soldiers actually appeared.

Baron von Grolman waved his cane, and immediately the parade ground was ceilinged with black smoke as the giants clanked into action, their chimneys belching furiously. Then, they marched about at double-time, reeling around until they faced the dignitaries in perfect ranks, motionless, a company of terrifying mechanical warriors.

Baron von Grolman handed over to a uniformed soldier, whose bellowing signalled that he could only be a sergeant-major, and an exhibition drill began. With motion that was stuttering to begin with, but became smoother as they went, the mechanical soldiers were on display.

They marched at single time, then double time, wheeling in perfect formation when they reached the end of the parade ground, and heading back in the direction they'd come with never a falter, never a misstep in the ranks.

Something was puzzling Aubrey as he watched, then he had it. It was all being done with no commands. The sergeant-major stood stock still to one side of the parade grounds, his hands behind his back, but unlike every other NCO Aubrey had ever known, he didn't shout once he'd set the company in motion.

The mechanical soldiers broke into teams of three or four and were busy with ropes and timber that had been wheeled out on a flat-bed trolley, constructing ... what, exactly?

The answer didn't come easily, for the mechanical soldiers weren't all constructing the same thing. With deliberate haste, each team was lashing, tying ropes at angles – but all busy on different tasks.

‘They're building a bridge,' Caroline said, and Aubrey immediately saw she was right. Some were putting together massive pylons made of multiple spars, some were building stretchers and bearers, others were making stanchions, others were organising suspension leads. When put together, they'd have a bridge with a span of more than fifty yards. It was a remarkable feat of coordination, especially given that the teams had to negotiate their resources from a central pool of timber and tackle, which they did smoothly and with no fuss – which was something a golem could never do, and this gave Aubrey pause.

Then the lights went out.

It only took a few minutes, however, before the teams had used frayed ropes, shattered timbers and sparks to start fires enough for the watching audience to see, after which the floodlights snapped back on.

Soon a neat rope and timber bridge stretched across the quadrangle.

‘Twenty minutes,' Sophie said, and Aubrey was glad someone had been alert enough to time the extraordinary effort.

‘They're not golems,' Aubrey said flatly. ‘Golems couldn't do that.' Repetitive work, intense focus, endurance,
that's
golem territory. Team work? Adaptability? Unheard of.

Aubrey realised that they were looking at super soldiers. Strong, fast, and adaptable. A battalion of these monstrosities would sweep through the defenders of Divodorum as if they weren't there.

Two impulses warred in him: to find out more, and to take what they already knew back to Albion.

‘They're finishing,' George said. ‘The bridge is all packed away.' Aubrey scrambled to see what was going on.