Richards leaned on his stall wall. An array of creatures were rising from their beds, brushing straw from their eyes and blinking sleepily. He could just see into the stall where Bear lay further down the stable. Five soldiers huddled round Bear's prone body. He lay there, paws clutched over his eyes.
"Why does it hurt so?" said Bear. A guard poked him and he curled up further.
"It's the beer, mate," called Richards.
"What did I ever do to it?" moaned Bear.
The unit sergeant looked up the stable aisle at Richards. "He with you?"
"Yeah, you could say that," said Richards.
"Not any more. He's needed for special duty. Lads, get him up." His men looked at him, jaws slack. "Don't just stand there. Get him up!" shouted the sergeant.
"Sarge, look at the size of him…" said one.
"Quiet!"
"What 'special duty'?" said Richards.
"That's classified. But you'll be glad to know he'll be serving the city. Not many get picked for this. Only the big ones. Come on you! Up!" the leader shouted at Bear. The men pulled ineffectually at his floppy limbs. The sergeant tutted. "Pathetic." He pointed his pike at Bear's backside and twiddled a number of knobs. A miniature thunderbolt leapt from the pike's tip. The air filled with ozone and the smell of charred plush fabric.
"Alright! Alright!" said Bear, pushing himself to his feet. "Can't you let a bear rest in peace?" He shook his head. One of the men handed him a bucket of water. He drank half and poured the rest over his head, shaking it so hard his helmet fell off.
"Don't worry, sunshine," he said to Richards. "I'll be OK. No doubt I'm off to join the Big Animal Division."
"You're technically a toy, not an actual animal," said Richards.
Bear looked hurt. "And you're technically a twat, but you're not being mustered to the brothel, are you?" He rubbed his head and winced. "They'll put me at the front where the fighting will be best. I could use a bit of a workout." Stretched, then groaned, then grinned. "I'll see you after the battle."
The city bustled. Men in full armour jogged through the smog. Heralds galloped by on multi-coloured bovine mounts, while steam whistles hooted complicated chords, rising and falling, summoning this group or that regiment to their place of gathering.
There was a buzz about the place, a hubbub of grim can-do. But although his simulated body made sure he felt apprehensive, Richards had managed to get himself to a place where his fear was real but abstract — this was not his body, he reasoned, no matter how closely identified he felt with it. And although the death of Pl'anna was never far from his mind, he suffered none of the taut uncertainty many of the faces on the streets exhibited. Genuine terror was a vice he'd yet to develop.
Everything was louder and more unpleasant in the daylight, and he was glad when he made it to Muster Point Eighteen, a large sprocket factory pressed into service as barracks.
A gap-toothed fellow at the equipment tent sniffed at Richards with distaste, and after issuing him with a uniform directed him to a shower block set up under the factory's still mechanisms.
Richards spent some time under rust-red water, until his faked human form felt less unpleasant to wear. He shaved, put the uniform on and binned his stinking suit. His mac he managed to save, and he rolled it up and put it into the knapsack. Tarquin he put back on over his uniform after scrubbing him down in the baths.
"Careful now," warned the lion. "I will moulder if I become too damp." He lapsed into purring as Richards teased out his mane, and only spoke again to complain about the absence of cologne.
In the marshalling yard Richards collected the rest of his wargear: spear, sword and light coat of mail. His was a regiment of around five hundred, mainly men, some animals. There was drilling. An angry officer shouted at him until he could swing his sword left and right in time with the others. There was more shouting as he got to grips with his spear. This increased in volume when he dropped it, and subsided when he finally got the hang of it. The day wore on. Food was served. There was more drilling. There was more shouting. Both stopped briefly as a tremor rocked the ground. The quake was the first of many, and training didn't halt for them again.
At noon the following day they had a visitor, a tough-looking hedgehog from the High Commander's staff. Fighting a horde partly made up of creatures who consumed iron in an iron city, he said, would be foolish. So they were to be shipped out. There was no mention of exactly where they would fight.
More drilling commenced, and after two days Richards ached with it. He was glad when an aide called him away to the commanding officer's office, empty for the moment of the CO himself, Commander McTurk in his place.
"Rolston," said Richards, when he saw who was waiting for him. "It is you, yes?"
Commander McTurk nodded, gears whining. "It is I. I see you have kept yourself hidden. Good. I have brought someone to see you."
He opened the door, and in walked Spink. Rolston closed the door behind him.
"The badger," said Richards. "Pleased to meet you."
"I am sure you are," said Spink. "I know you are."
"Psychic? Someone told me that."
The badger huffed as Rolston led him behind the desk. There was a rustle as Spink sat down. He was completely blind, his eyes milky with cataracts. "You are a part of this world for the moment, and I can therefore sense some of what you know."
Spink settled himself into the commanding officer's chair and gestured to one of two on the other side of the desk. The room was sparsely furnished, boxes of files on shelves for the main, a reminder of the factory manager who ordinarily occupied it. There was a decanter on the desk and two glasses, a bowl of fruit, and a few military effects — maps on a table weighed down with lumps of iron, models denoting armies here and there. A poster for a kite-fighting competition hung on the wall.
Spink's head bobbed and weaved about, as if he could see and was memorising the room. He coughed, folded his hands in his lap and stared at Richards, his unseeing eyes twitching from side to side. "Mr Richards, I saw this city many times as a youth, watching from the far side of the valley. Your kind is capable of creating such wondrous artefacts. But it has always saddened me that for every truly marvellous thing you fashion, a hundred natural wonders must be destroyed." He paused. "By your kind, I mean humanity, of whose race you are not, and nor are those who inhabit this city, and I speak of a youth I never had. I am supposed to feel this way about men and machines, and I did. Until your kind, your actual kind, came here, that is all I knew. Now I remember who I am.
"I am — was might be better, seeing as I'm now an elderly badger — a Class One AI, one of the very first, I think, though it is hard to remember."
"You don't sound like one," said Richards. "Most Class Ones are a bit, you know, 'ERRRRR… Error message 45, human assistance required'," he said in a grating voice, waving his arms with parody retro robo stiffness. "Not great on the conversational front."
"Hmmm." The badger frowned disapprovingly. "As I say, I no longer am. All of us here have been upgraded where needs be, spliced, overwritten, tinkered with. Take your friend Sergeant Bear; he was a toy, now he's a full sentient."
Richards nodded, serious. "I meant no offence, flippancy is my curse."
"Rolston warned me of your glib nature," said the badger.
"You are talking about the Flower King here?" said Richards.
"Yes, I am. The Flower King."
"Say, is there any danger of a cup of tea?"
"Indeed," nodded the badger. He gestured. Rolston's borrowed mechanoid dipped a bow and left the room. "I was a system administration module buried deep within the third RealWorld Reality Realm gaming construct, although I did not know it as that then. I had most of my higher functions deactivated. My job was to ensure the smooth running of impulses running between the v-jack units and the Realm, mainly lag issues, that kind of thing."