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.
‘Not that one,’ Sophie pointed.
At the rear of the parade ground, one of the mechanical soldiers was bent at the waist. Its arms dangled nearly to the ground.
‘What’s wrong with it?’ Caroline asked.
The rest of the mechanical soldiers were back in ranks and were marching off the parade ground. Their chimneys steamed purposefully. Baron von Grolman pointed his cane after them, no doubt explaining more features of his creations. Aubrey doubted that the baron would need to possess a silver tongue. His mechanical soldiers were impressive enough to sell themselves.
The baron shepherded the dignitaries away from the parade ground toward the old buildings. They went past the concrete elephant, close enough for Aubrey to see their faces. The generals were impressed. Some tried to hide it, but the others were talking keenly with the baron, asking questions about maintenance and transport.
On the parade ground, the sergeant-major was left behind with the sole remaining mechanical warrior. He marched over and stood with his hands on his hips, shaking his head.
Aubrey narrowed his eyes. Nothing was coming from its chimney – no smoke, no steam. Was that the problem?
The sergeant-major turned toward the warehouse. He roared, and Aubrey clearly heard his voice, even over the mechanical rumble of the last of the mechanical soldiers. He was shouting for coal.
‘Impossible,’ Caroline said. ‘You couldn’t feed these things on coal. They’d have to drag a tender around with them.’
‘A tender the size of an omnibus,’ George muttered.
Aubrey didn’t respond. He had a suspicion that their clever enemy had concocted a way around that limitation. After all, they should have moved with the ponderousness of steam engines. Clearly, magic had been used to new and frighteningly efficient effect, as Sophie had suggested.
A white-coated civilian ran from the warehouse. Aubrey wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d pushed a wheelbarrow, or even carried a bucket, but he was startled to see that the man was carrying a brass cylinder about the length of his forearm – and a pair of tongs.
‘We’ve seen those cylinders before,’ George said to Sophie and Caroline. ‘In the factory.’
‘But they were empty. Now we might get to see what they’re used to transport,’ Aubrey said.
The sergeant-major, no fool apparently, stood back while the hapless white coat clamped the cylinder and the tongs under one arm, then with the other reached into the chest cavity of the metal warrior. A series of movements – opening a hatch? – then the white coat straightened.