The Mask And The Master (Mechanized Wizardry Book 2) (36 page)

“Everyone all right?” Lundin said, rushing through the rear door.  Martext was already heading for the nearest workstation, and didn’t respond.  Elia swallowed and nodded, perched on a stool by the near wall.  “We’re fine,” Dame Miri reported from the front door, her trained voice carrying effortlessly across the hall.  She was hefting a pistol he’d never seen before, but seeing it in her hands didn’t surprise him one bit.  Odds were good she was always armed. 

The two women had gotten dressed for dinner beforehand, apparently.  Miri was in an immaculately tailored coat and slacks that evoked the Army’s black-and-gold dress uniform with sleek, sharp lines.  Elia was nervously polishing her glasses on the hem of a summery yellow dress with hand-painted ferns or something all across it.  Her brown hair was unbunned, hanging past her shoulders, and she was in charcoal-gray leggings instead of pants.  It was the outfit of someone who loves going formal but never gets the chance.  Her eyes were wide and she didn’t seem to be breathing much.  Lundin walked a little closer, trying to project calm for her.

“You okay, Elia?”

“Mmm-hmm,” she said with a close-lipped smile.  “Dame Miri made me sit down.”

“Well, keep it up.  You look great, by the way.”

“You look… unfinished.”

“Guess I got distracted,” Lundin said, tweaking his suspenders over the thin undershirt.  She smiled, eyes towards the floor, and he rubbed his palms together.  His eyes scanned the room as the rumbling sounds outside continued—

“Where’s Willl?” he said, realizing in a flash what was missing. 

“He was delivering a list to the sergeant-at-arms, earlier,” Dame Miri called out.  “He wasn’t changing with you?”

“No no no,” Lundin said, turning back towards the door in indecision.  “Okay.  You three—when you can, Elia—work on securing the gear, the notes, the disks.  Everything fragile.  Load it back in the trunks and put it under the archways, away from the windows.  I’m going to go look for Willl.”

“You think you’ll find him, running around out there?”  Martext said.

“He’s my tech.  I need to know where he is.”

“Either he comes here, or he’s got sense enough to stay put.  How does you going out there help anything?”

“Look, Mister Goolsby,” he said.  There was a deep, bone-jarring noise as Campos’ cannons opened up for the first time.  Lundin shouted over the noise.  “I’m the senior tech.  It’s my duty to make sure my team is accounted for—”

“Do what you want, sir,” Martext shouted back.  “Don’t feel like you have to explain yourself to me.”  And with that, he grabbed the metal press with both hands and hoisted, carrying the machine to its insulated case.

Lundin clamped his mouth shut.  Something was definitely wrong with the tall, typically unflappable tech, but he’d already wasted enough time fretting about it.  He needed to get out there and find Willl before something terrible happened to him, and all his L’s.

Just then, the front door came swinging open.  The techs froze, and Dame Miri raised her pistol.  She lowered it just as quickly.  “Flames, Willl, watch yourself,” she grumbled, clapping the lanky blond on the shoulder.  He stared at her with his mouth open, clearly derailed from whatever he’d been about to say.

“Are you all right?  Where’ve you been?” Lundin said, making a beeline for him.

“Okay,” Willl with three L’s got out after a moment.  “We gotta go.”

“Go?  Go where?”  Elia stood off the stool, her breath coming more quickly.

“I was with the sergeant; you know, learning?”  he gestured vaguely to the central fort.  “Then the bombs started.  Farmingham saw me on his way somewhere and told me to get the team.”

“Do they want us inside the fort?”

“No, uh.  ‘Too close to the field of fire,’” he quoted carefully.  He pointed out past the back door, his bangs swaying back and forth.  “Southeast tower has a basement.  Secure.  Far away from the shells.   He said grab the little stuff and go.”

“Little stuff?  Like, the journals?”

Willl with three L’s shrugged.  Lundin scratched his shoulder where the suspenders pressed against his skin, thinking hard.  It was hard to concentrate on anything, now that the fort’s thunderous guns had found a rhythm.

“Journals.  Translations.  Ronk’s notes.  Archimedia’s scrolls,” he yelled, holding up a finger for each item.  “If you can carry it and still run, grab it now.”

Dame Miri holstered her gun in her belt and joined them as they scoured the worktables for papers.  Martext loaded up a small box with their Old Harutian workbooks, and Elia found a scroll case; but, otherwise, they just shoved papers into their arms and pockets.  Dame Miri took the slim leather journal with the draft text for Greatsight and their next planned spells, and slipped it into her inside jacket pocket.   Willl with three L’s tapped Lundin on the shoulder as he was folding up a set of Ronk’s parchments.  “Colonel Farmingham said, like, fast,” he reported hesitantly.

“Yes, Willl, we’re going!  Back door, everyone!”

Out in the open air, the noise was astonishing each time Campos’ guns blasted out.  Lundin fought the urge to look over his shoulder as they dog-trotted towards the southeastern bastion.  There wouldn’t be much to see through the smoke, and even with watching where he was going, he was having enough trouble staying upright in these burning thin-soled slippers.  He adjusted his arms around the package of papers.  Maybe it was the ringing in his ears from the big cannons, but it seemed like he could hardly hear the whistling of the enemy mortars anymore.  Against his better judgment, he risked a look to the side.  There was a mass of Delian musketeers and a few armored knights charging through the main gate. If their guys were charging out into the forest, that had to mean that Colonel Yough felt like the bad guys had been adequately softened up.  As if in counter-argument, another mortar shell screamed out of the woods and burst high above the tower, sending shards of metal raining down onto the masonry.  With no unprotected bodies around, though, a bomb like that was only so much smoke and noise. 

Lundin turned back around, his mind swirling as they ran.  He was revising his earlier ideas about the smart planning of their attackers. 
What’s the point of picking a fight with Campos if you know your firepower’s only going to scratch the paint? 
It seemed like an awful lot of risk to maim a few soldiers patrolling the walls.  They had to be missing something.  A nasty ambush once the Army was outside the gate, maybe?  Or was the attack more about spreading fear than accomplishing anything substantial? 
You figure it out, Colonel Yough.  I just want a nice sturdy roof over my team’s heads again.

There was no one visible in the southeast corner, though he knew the towers were never empty.  The door to the bastion was about thirty meters away, with the rest of the tower rising high above ground level; and descending into a nice safe basement as well, apparently, if Willl with three L’s was remembering Farmingham’s message right.  To their left as they ran was a secondary gate through the fortress walls, barely big enough for a soldier on horseback to fit through.  The pair of portcullises would open for small-scale patrols, Lundin supposed, or clandestine rendezvous.  A field agent who wasn’t supposed to make a grand entrance could be admitted here.  At any rate, the door that mattered was the one straight ahead.

Dame Miri was leading the squad to the bastion, her arms full of books.  But long before reaching the door, she slowed to a halt.  “Go, Miri, go!” Lundin said, frowning, his chest starting to burn from all the excitement and exertion.

She turned, letting the books fall from her arms.  “Someone’s outside!” she said, reaching for her pistol with her bandaged hands.  Lundin opened his mouth again, and then the explosions threw him to the ground.

He skidded hard on his bare arm, clutching the papers instinctively to his chest.  His left ear didn’t seem to be working; the ongoing rumble of the cannons was more something he felt in his ribs now, rather than hearing in his head.  Lundin shook himself and forced himself up as quickly as he could, his feet feeling a little unsteady.

The tiny side gate had been blown open.  Its inner portcullis was a tangle of frayed metal edges, frozen in the moment of explosion.  And barreling through the open gate was—
Spheres, what is it?
  At first it looked like an animated statue, it was so massive and stiff-jointed.  The huge figure had a helmet that made his veins freeze; a long, featureless representation of a wolf’s head, or one of those scavenging dogs from the desert lands.  Its eyes glowed gold.  As the statue raised its metal arms, he could hear the distinctive whine of straining gears.

A Petronaut
, he thought, letting the papers drop.

Lundin wished frantically for a weapon as he scanned the scene.  Dame Miri was back on her feet; Elia was crouched over Martext, who seemed to be in trouble; and Willl—

Something dark swung over his head from behind.  He bent over double to avoid it, wincing as the edge of a rough fabric sack caught against his forehead, scratching his skin.  There was a whiff of something alchemical inside the sack that made his eyes water.  Instinctively, Lundin jabbed backwards with his elbow and yelped with pain as his funny bone connected with his attacker’s ribs.  He wheeled around and saw Willl with three L’s, hefting a black hood in his hands. 

The lanky blond was grimacing as he pressed his hand to his ribs.  But there wasn’t any anger in his eyes, or burning vengeance, or sudden madness.  He just looked patient.

“Hold still, sir,” he said, barely audible above the chaos through Lundin’s one good ear.   Willl with three L’s lunged forward again, the dark folds of the sack gaping like a mouth. 

Lundin crouched down in a barely remembered martial stance and punched him in the stomach.  It must not have been a very good punch, because all Willl with three L’s did was grunt and stumble on top of him, sending him sprawling onto his back.  He kicked out a few times before the tech pushed his leg aside and straddled his waist.  “What,” Lundin finally managed as he squirmed and beat wildly on the other man’s arm with one closed fist.  One word was about as close as he could come to getting a handle on the rapidly changing situation.  It was amazing how much pain was radiating out of his elbow, his ankles, and now his knuckles too. 
No wonder people invented weapons; every time I bash him, I hurt myself more than he gets hurt.

Willl with three L’s fought past his flailing arms and shoved the black hood into his face.  Lundin desperately held his breath as the stinking fabric scoured his cheek and lips.  His fingers brushed against something metal near his waist.  His right suspender had come unclipped, and the little metal mouth with its tiny teeth was yawning open.  As Willl with three L’s struggled with both hands to slip the hood over his head, Lundin pinched the clasp between his fingers and jabbed upwards, blindly, as hard as he could.  The other man made a noise like a nauseous stork as Lundin clawed him in the adam’s apple.

He felt the pressure on his face and belly let up as Willl with three L’s recoiled.  With a wild yell that made his voice crack, Lundin flung himself forward and planted his forehead into Willl’s teeth.  The tech’s upper jaw clamped down involuntarily, chomping down on Lundin’s scalp in an extremely unpleasant way.  Willl with three L’s fell backwards with one hand to his throat and the other clutching the black hood at his side.

Lundin’s eyes were dripping with tears, between the dizzying fumes and the teeth marks in his skull.  He pressed a finger to the indentations on his head, kneeling on the ground in his good pants, and tried to understand what was happening.  “Spheres,” he said, his voice sounding strange in his ears.  The wolf-headed Petronaut was holding Elia in its metal arms.  She banged a fist against its colossal shoulder in slow-motion before going limp, courtesy of the black hood over her head.  Martext was lying on his side at the ‘naut’s feet, a hood on his head too.  And Dame Miri—

He blinked.  There were two other Petronauts inside the fort now, the size of normal people, in featureless oval masks with golden eyes. 
Where did they come from? 
They were both wearing that padded armor poor Miri had had to deal with back on the feastday, with strange packs slung over their shoulders.  Dame Miri swung both arms in a pile driver and bashed one of them across the face.  Lundin winced in sympathy for her bandaged hands as the ‘naut staggered, just a little.  That blow had definitely hurt Delia’s Feastday Hero more than it had hurt the bad guy.  Miri’s gun was nowhere to be seen, but, in better news, he saw two black hoods discarded on the ground.  As the ‘naut she’d just hit rolled away from a kick to the face and reached for one of the hoods, the other masked bastard wrapped its arms around Dame Miri’s waist, pinning one of her arms to her side.  As she tried to elbow the attacker in the head, there was an outpouring of sparks and the pair of them lifted off the ground.

“No,” Lundin said, fighting to his feet.  Delia was the only place in the world that had gotten thrust packs to work.  It wasn’t possible that these people had them too.  None of this was possible.  They were supposed to be at dinner.  He hadn’t picked out a shirt.

Dame Miri and the Petronaut landed on the battlements just outside the southeastern bastion.  A pair of Delian soldiers came running out of the tower, one with a musket and one with a pike.  They shouted at the Petronaut as Miri struggled in its arms, and angled for a clean shot.  Lundin watched, feeling stupid and helpless, as the massive wolf-faced ‘naut on the ground raised one arm up towards the bastion and squeezed its fist.  The soldiers vanished from view as another piece of Fort Campos exploded into smoke and pebbles.  Lundin wanted to shout, but his tongue was thick in his mouth.

Up on the wall, the masked Petronaut turned to shield its head from the flying debris.  While the ‘naut was distracted, Dame Miri reached down with her free hand to grab its glove at her waist.  She yanked at something Lundin couldn’t see, and the thrust pack flared up again, much to the ‘naut’s surprise.  They lifted straight up for a brief moment before curling backwards, away from the wall and out towards the treetops. 
Dame Miri,
he thought as they disappeared from view, terrifyingly fast, with only a trail of black exhaust floating upward to mark their passage.