The Pillars of Hercules (53 page)

Then it was still.

Lugorix pulled himself to his feet. He could hear shouting overhead. Barsine pointed for the third time at the mirror. Lugorix raised his axe.

And this time let it fall where she wanted.

“Sir!” yelled one of the soldiers below Eumenes. “The archer’s gone!”

“They’ve abandoned the platform!” yelled someone else.

“Where did they go?” yelled Eumenes.

No one had a good answer for that. Overzealous machine that it was, the single golem he had in his force had leapt down there, missing the platform altogether, dropping out of sight. Had it seen something ordinary men couldn’t? Sometimes golems were useful. Sometimes they did dumb things and got themselves destroyed in stupid ways. Eumenes could have sworn he’d heard swordplay subsequent to its fall. And now that he could see the platform with his own eyes, it was empty.

It smelt like an ambush. He watched in trepidation as two of the soldiers clambered down. He only had seven of them left—in addition to Hanno, his two slingers, Kalyana, and Ptolemy. Which hopefully still left them with the upper hand against the Persians. But not against that monster above them—as he watched, a slinger whirled, sent a rock spinning upward to crack against a descending head, which shattered like an egg. But the only real way to beat it was to stay ahead of it—or somehow find a structure or door past which it couldn’t go. Ptolemy scrambled down the ladder onto the platform, looked around.

“There’s a single ladder down!” yelled a soldier.

Eumenes and Ptolemy raced over. Looked over the edge.

“Holy
shit,
” said Ptolemy.

By the time Leosthenes reached the upper slopes of the Epipolae, the full weight of the Macedonian attack was underway. The sky was covered with smoke and flame. Trailed by several hundred Athenian cavalry, Leosthenes rode hell for leather toward the western wall, straight through the city’s wealthiest districts. Anyone still in those houses was as stupid as they were rich, which was a shitty combination when you got down to it. You had all the money you wanted, yet you were dumb as rocks. Leosthenes knew a lot of people like that. Maybe he was one of them. He’d turned down more bribes to turn the city over to the Macedonians then he could count—not just the kind of money that he’d had all his life, but money for ten lifetimes over. The sort of money that only a king could give. But no amount of wealth could compensate for the loss of his honor. He would defend Syracuse, whatever the cost might be. Yet any illusions he might have been under as to that cost were swept away as the western wall and the Circle fortress came into sight.

Along with the
thing
that towered over them.

It was every bit as impressive as he’d expected: the largest siege tower he’d ever seen, and he could only guess what kind of engineering had allowed it to get to the top of the plateau so quickly. The artillery of the wall was pounding away at it, but the only siege-pieces that seemed to be doing much damage were those steam-guns: as Leosthenes watched, one of them scored a direct hit (it was hard to miss at that range), knocking a slab of the tower’s metal armor clean off. But then more than a score of hatches opened on the tower and all manner of flame and metal poured down onto the steam-gun, disintegrating not just it but the battlements on which it sat. Pieces of rock rained down—and then Leosthenes lost sight of the siege-tower for a few moments as he led his force through the eastern gates of the Circle. In doing so, he found himself riding down soldiers trying to flee. Those behind them turned, dove to the side while he screamed at them:

“Penalty for desertion is
death!
But this is your lucky day, because you’ve just received
amnesty!
As long as you turn around and
follow me right now!”
His words probably weren’t as motivating as the scores of cavalry riding in behind him; those horsemen left the would-be deserters with little choice then to turn around and get back into the fight. Leosthenes spurred his horse through the other pair of gates and into the Circle’s courtyard. To his surprise, the siege-tower was reversing away from the western wall.

And then he understood why.

“It’s coming
back,
” yelled Diocles.

“Of course it is,” shouted Agathocles.

Xanthippus said nothing. He just watched as though hypnotized while the gigantic Helepolis ceased reversing and switched its engines into full-throttle again, plowing toward the Circle’s wall. That wall had already withstood one impact, and it was highly doubtful it would withstand another. The first such blow had nearly knocked them all off—had sent cracks spiderwebbing through stone, pieces of rock falling into the courtyard below. Missiles of every description were raining down from the tower upon the hapless defenders on the battlements. As the Helepolis thundered in toward the wall, Agathocles suddenly seemed to snap out of it. He reached down to his dead spear-bearer, grabbed a bunch of spears, slung them on his back and—

“Follow me,” he said as he started sprinting away toward the nearest tower. To Diocles’ astonishment, Xanthippus just seized his lover’s hand and followed the Syracusan outlaw. Maybe Xanthippus no longer believed in honor. Then again, maybe honor meant living for a few more minutes. Diocles wasn’t about to argue. They reached the tower—it was one of those that had housed one of the steam-guns, so there wasn’t much left of its upper levels. But amidst the rubble they could clearly see the flight of stairs going downward. Agathocles took them them two at a time, Xanthippus and Diocles doing their best to keep up. Agathocles was shouting something but he couldn’t be heard over the steadily increasing rumbling that felt like it was going to shake all of them apart. The stairway was vibrating so badly they were practically falling down it. They tumbled to the bottom, picked themselves up, raced out of the tower and along a culvert that bordered the western wall.

Just as that wall exploded inward.

One moment it was there, the next it just…
wasn’t
. Dust was everywhere, so thick Diocles was coughing and choking and almost blinded. But Xanthippus was still holding his hand, still leading him onward as the world crumbled around them. Diocles could hear the insanely loud clanking of the siege-engine towering above them; he couldn’t see it, but he expected to get run over at any moment. But then Xanthippus led him down a flight of stairs and into one of the underground passages beneath the Circle. Only then did Agathocles glance back to see the two soldiers were still behind them. Above them there was a noise like the ocean itself crashing down.

“This way,” said Agathocles. Diocles didn’t ask him how he knew the layout of the Athenian fortress; keeping tabs on the Athenian defenses seemed to be a specialty for the man. He led the other two quickly along the corridor, turned left, then right, then up another set of stairs, through a door and into—

“Thank
fuck,
” said Xanthippus. They were outside the Circle—which was crumbling into pieces before their eyes. Dead men and horses were everywhere. The impossibly huge outline of the Helepolis was dimly visible amidst all the dust and falling masonry. A man stood right in front of them trying to pull another man free of wreckage. He turned as they reached him.

It was Leosthenes.

“Viceroy,” said Agathocles, “what a pleasant surprise—”

“Shut up and help me get this rock off Memnon,” snapped Leosthenes. Diocles wasn’t sure who Memnon was, but Xanthippus didn’t hesitate; he leaned forward and helped Leosthenes push the rock off. But the old man who lay beneath was obviously dead, half his body crushed. Leosthenes blinked like someone who was seizing control of his emotions; he leaned down, closed the old man’s eyes, then looked back up at the three of them. In the background, the Helepolis was reversing one more time, undoubtedly so it could steamroll straight through the rubble and into the city that lay beyond. Beyond that, the Macedonian phalanx could be seen in the distance, cheering as they advanced triumphantly toward the gaping hole in the western wall. Leosthenes stared up at the Helepolis.

“We need to stop that bastard,” he said.

“Any ideas as to how?” said Agathocles.

“I’m down to exactly one,” said the viceroy.

A single swipe with the axe was all it took. Suddenly unbroken mirror had become shards of glass flying through the air, revealing an opening within—black tinged with a fiery light. Lugorix was about to peer inside when Matthias landed a few yards from him. Eurydice wasn’t so precise—she landed toward the edge of the sphere, began to slide. Matthias reached out and grabbed her, helped her up.

“Thanks,” she said—and then, to Lugorix: “What’s up with Barsine?”

“She’s possessed by her own baby,” said Lugorix.

“Got it,” said Eurydice. “So…. either she’s gone crazy or you have?”

“Where
is
Barsine anyway?” asked Matthias.

There was only one answer to that. Lugorix whirled, realizing that she’d gone through the opening while the other two were hitting the surface. He bent down, stuck his head in.

“What do you see?” asked Eurydice impatiently.

It was impossible to describe. Rungs led down through what seemed to be a tunnel surrounded by fire. But he could feel no burning—could sense no heat. And he could hear the Macks shouting above them. Either they’d reached the platform or they were about to. Lugorix grabbed those rungs and started climbing down through the tube, doing his best to ignore the flames seemed to be raging right in front of his face. Were they real? Was he looking at more of those moving pictures? Or was there
really
fire mere inches away from him his face? It was like descending into a volcano. He finally started to accept that he really was in Hell.

But then suddenly he was out of it: through a trapdoor and onto another platform. Barsine was standing there. Ten seconds later, Matthias and Eurydice were too.

And during those ten seconds, all Lugorix had done was stare at what lay all around him.

Chapter Twenty-Two

T
he platform was suspended just below a concave ceiling that curved away in all directions. They were inside the enormous sphere they’d just been on the exterior of. That much made sense.

That was basically all that did.

It was mostly empty space—mostly dark, too—and yet it was clearly some vast machine, several miles across, a webwork of gears and clanking steam-pipes, all of it in motion. Rungs and ramps were dimly illuminated by glowing orbs that shone through the black, rattling along metal rails that curved down toward something a long way below, a faraway disc that was a combination of green and blue and brown. It seemed oddly familiar to Lugorix—it took him a moment to place it—but Matthias beat him to it.

“It’s like that map,”
he said. “From Demosthenes’ study.
That’s what it’s like.
It’s meant to be—Fates protect us, it’s meant to be the…”

“Earth,”
Lugorix finished for him. Fuck, maybe it
was
the Earth, maybe they’d somehow been transported to far, far above it. After everything that had gone down, it seemed anything was possible. And as Lugorix took in the rumbling network of gears that powered those orbs—“planets,” whispered an awestruck Eurydice—he realized that the blackness of the ceiling was actually nothing of the kind—that it was shot through with a myriad pinpricks of light. The fact that he knew they were lit by the vast furnace built into the attic of that ceiling in no way detracted from his wonder at what were very obviously intended to be stars. In some faraway portion of himself, he became aware that Barsine—or whatever was inside her—had begun to speak.

“This is a mechanical universe,” she said, her words flat, without emotion. “A faithful replica of the real one, fueled by the furnace in its ceiling and driven by steam and fire. Like the real universe, it contains interlocking sets of spheres. That of the stars. Those of the planets. And the interior consists of the Earth, the Moon”—she pointed at a grey gleaming orb near the disc—“and the Sun. Which you can’t see right now, because it’s intended to be night.”

“Very pretty,” said Matthias, “but what’s the point?”

“The point is it’s a fucking
computer,
” said Eurydice. She used a word that Lugorix had never heard before. “A
calculator-of-worlds,
” she added. “Right?”

“More than that,” said Barsine. “A controller of them.”

Before anyone had time to react to that, they heard the thud of Macedonian boots landing on the roof of the structure above them.

Eumenes hated it when there was only one way to enter a place. Too easy for anyone inside to defend. His soldiers smashed away at the mirrors for a few minutes, but all they found beneath them was iron. Finally he bowed to the inevitable and sent his men inside, down the ladder, through the tunnel of fire, and onto the platform.

Which blew everybody’s minds, of course.

Even having some idea of what to expect, Eumenes was still struggling to hold onto his sanity. Kalyana and he had talked about the various possibilities, but talk was one thing and seeing was quite another. There wasn’t time to gawk either: Barsine’s group had a head-start, and they were making the most of it. Eumenes could see them, ant-like, far below, riding the outermost orb, the orb that was intended to represent the planet known as….
“Kronos,”
muttered Kalyana, as it swung away into abyss. How they’d reached it so quickly baffled him for a moment, until he saw an almost-impossibly long ramp folding back into the bottom of the platform on which he stood, the other half of that ramp retracting into the Kronos-orb below.

“They must have just
slid
along it,” he muttered. “Perfect timing—”

“Can
we
control those ramps?” said Ptolemy.

Kalyana looked around, studying the ceiling. “There might be something better,” he said—and cautiously led the way along the network of platforms, followed by the others. Eumenes and Ptolemy were right behind them, with the six remaining Macedonian soldiers keeping a wary eye on Hanno and his two slingers. One of those slingers stepped to the platform’s edge, whirled his sling so rapidly it was impossible to even see the moment when the stone spun away, whipping after the receding simulacrum of Kronos… which was technically way out of range, but then again gravity seemed to be in full effect within this place, all of it pulling toward that earth-disc far below. The slinger watched as the stone shot off into the dark—stared after it, then shook his head in disappointment. He’d missed, but Eumenes was damned if he could see by how far.