Engn II

XVII

XVIIBaron Rankin stood with the assembled masters and generals of the Temple Guilds upon a rise in the ground, surveying the battle laid out before them. Gram, the Chevalier of the Ostlers Guild, stood directly beside him, holding a spyglass to one eye. Rankin didn't approve. They didn't need to employ the devices of their enemy in this war. He, Baron Rankin of the Guild of Stonecarvers, could see perfectly well how a battle was proceeding with his own eyes.

Gram's cavalry units were vital to their efforts, there was no doubt about it, but still Rankin disapproved of the younger master. Too ready to adopt the new ways, that was Gram's problem. Too ready to embrace change. Sometimes Rankin suspected Gram's loyalties were divided. The Ostlers were an ancient and respectable House, but the latest guildmaster seemed intent on throwing away all their fine traditions. It wasn't just the spyglass: Gram had also set up a seeing-orb on a little iron tripod, claiming it would allow them to record scenes of the battle and study them later. To learn from their mistakes, he had said. Rankin had even seen Gram slyly consulting a pocket timepiece, one of the thirty-six-hour ones the damned upstarters insisted on using.

Baron Rankin would have to keep his eye on Gram. Once this war was won and the pre-eminence of the twenty-four Temple Guilds was established, there would inevitably be some jockeying for position on the Council. That was the game. And it was a game he, Baron Rankin, thoroughly excelled at. There were plenty among the twenty-four who would side with him.

He returned his attention to the battlefield. Before them, across the fall and rise of the ground of the plain, thirty thousand Temple soldiers were amassed. They marched forwards in twenty-four precise squares, one battalion from the militia of each guild. Some of the others – Gram among them – had wanted to mix the soldiery up, arrange them according to some scheme of skill or weaponry rather than by guild. Rankin would have none of it. The soldiers would fight hardest for the men and women of their own city. That was as plain as his nose. A Woodturner wouldn't lay down his life to save a Flintknapper. At least, not readily. But a Woodturner would fight to the death to protect a fellow guildsman. It was common sense.

Beyond the twenty-four squares of marching soldiers, across a thin strip of grass, stood the lines of their enemies. The upstarters were heavily outnumbered. They would be crushed in the battle and it would be a decisive blow in the war. Perhaps an end to the twelve mechanical guilds and their wild ideas. They thought they could control the world with their damnable machines.

Beyond both armies, atop the rise on the other side of the valley, stood the Great Clock. A two-hundred-foot tower elaborately decorated with a metalwork mesh and struts and spikes. It reached high into the sky, visible for tens of miles around. He could hear its ticking despite the roar and stamp of the armies in the valley. They'd made it deliberately loud, he was sure: sending those vast, metallic tocks out through to air to batter the ears of anyone within hearing distance. Telling everyone they were there. Chopping up time into so many precisely calculated moments, as if a life was a piece of metal that could be measured out and cut up.

Them and their damned thirty-six-hour clocks. Who needed so many hours in the day? What made them think they could tie down time like that? You got up in the morning and went to bed when darkness came. If you were hungry you ate. The sun told you the time of day. These clocks were a tyranny. A way of controlling people; parcelling up their lives into little pieces. Little broken fragments. And he would have none of it.

Beyond the clock, curling around the whole battlefield as if embracing it in an arm, the river En flowed, sunlight sparking off its wide waters.

“They're sending out some sort of weapon,” said Gram, still studying the enemy lines through his glass. “The forwards ranks are parting. Some sort of machine.”

Them and their infernal contraptions. Was it true they had allies from elsewhere, providing these mechanisms? That was the rumour. “What manner of machine? Cannon?”

“Don't think so,” said Gram. “I've never seen anything like them. Want to look?”

“Certainly not.”

“But it's okay for me to look and tell you what I can see?”

“It was your idea to bring the glass, Gram, not mine. Just tell me what you damn well observe. If you think you can trust the thing. For all we know it's showing you something that isn't even there.”

“They're machines on wheels,” said Gram after a pause. “About the size of horses, moving under their own power. Clockwork by the look of it. I can't see any steam.”

“Clockwork horses? They'll get ten yards and then explode into a thousand useless cogs. And are there clockwork soldiers riding them too? Firing clockwork guns?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” said Gram. “There's no one on them at all. They're all being lined up at the top of the slope.”

“Mechanical devilry!” said Rankin. He turned aside to the three buglers who stood with them on the rise. “Signal the attack. Let's take them now before they can wind their damned clockwork toys up!”

The horns blared out, echoing around the valley. There was a moment's pause, as if everyone was trying to work out what the sound meant, then the twenty-four battalions surged forwards. Their combined voices came to Rankin's ears as a swelling roar. The sight of it made his heart pound within his chest. If he'd been twenty years younger, he'd have been down there, leading the charge.

The great clock struck then, the clangs from its bells heavy in the air, like being hit by something solid. For a few moments the sound filled the whole world, drowning out the cries of the soldiers.

Then, as the sound shimmered away to nothingness, the upstart army attacked. Rankin could see the devices Gram had mentioned. They shot forwards, flashing with unearthly speed down the slopes. One veered wildly to one side, crashing into another and bringing both to a tumbling halt. Rankin smiled at the sight. The ridiculous contraptions were no match for proper soldiers. The guildsmen would smash them to pieces just as they would smash the great clock to pieces.

The wheeled devices were almost upon the attacking lines when the first explosions blossomed on the battlefield. A moment later, a whole series of rattling booms hit them up on the hill. Screams accompanied each one. They were bombs. The upstarters were sending clockwork bombs into the Temple ranks. Rage boiled within Rankin. This wasn't proper war. Machines to do the work of men – it was an obscenity. When this was done, he would make them pay. Make them pay tenfold for every act of savagery.

“Give me that spyglass,” he said, and grasped hold of it while Gram still held the damned thing to his eye. He had to see what was going on down there, even if it did mean using upstarter devilry.

He saw only a blur of colours: greens and reds and browns. You had to focus the damned thing. Why couldn't the contraption do that itself if it was so clever? Rankin turned the brass knob wildly backwards and forwards until, suddenly, the scene down on the battlefield snapped into focus.

The clockwork bombs had certainly done their work. Where they'd detonated the ranks were decimated. Bodies and unattached limbs lay strewn around in a sea of red. Survivors milled around, dazed, some of them facing the wrong way completely. All discipline and order had been lost.

“Resound the charge!” he bellowed to the buglers. If they weren't careful the whole battle would crumble into chaos. The militias had to pull themselves together and attack now, before more of those bombs could be trundled out.

The horns sounded again. Baron Rankin stood watching the effect on his troops, breathing deeply through his nose as if he were down there with them, fighting with them. Nothing happened. At the foot of the clock, in the upstarter ranks, he could see more of the machines being prepared, one being cranked with some hooked metal bar, giving it the power it would need to reach the Temple soldiers.

“Resound!” he shouted.

The horns sounded the charge for the third time. Finally, they had the desired effect. The Temple soldiers surged forwards, scrambling over their fallen comrades. Rankin watched as the gap between the two lines narrowed. Good. The upstarters wouldn't dare release more of their wheeled bombs now.

With a metallic crunch, loud enough to be heard up on the hill, the two lines collided. Rankin lowered the spyglass so he could see the whole battlefield. Sunlight flashed off swords and pikes and hammers. Roars and screams filled the air. Upstarters and Templers fought and fell.

This was it. Proper war. Now they would learn who was in charge. Now they would see who really ruled the world. And when the fighting was done, and that great clock was toppled and dashed to the ground, and all their devices and machines were wrecked and reduced to rubble, then the upstarters could be dragged to the negotiation table and the terms of their surrender given to them. They could do it that night, there at Enloth. The upstarters made to pay for every death and every act of destruction they had wrought.

Baron Rankin smiled at last. This truly was a glorious day.