‘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.’
Twenty-eight
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.