More shapes were following to left and right, as the great crab settled down on its underbelly, claws drawn in like a pugilist’s fists. He took them for yet more crustaceans, at first, but they were men. As massive as the crab, more so, but these walked ponderously on two legs, hulking shapes in all-encompassing plates of armour. Helmess sought for any sign of familiarity in them, and found none: in their slab-like mail they were as broad as they were tall, plodding out of the waves with a dreadful inexorability. Whatever they wore was not metal, he realized. The moonlight glinted on something more like the crab’s armour, but moulded to them in a way that mere reworked shell could not even approximate. One of them wore something paler, rougher and, as he approached, the others fell into a slow formation behind him, Helmess could hear the plates of his mail scratching together as he walked.
It can’t be, was all he thought. It’s impossible. How strong would a man have to be to…?
Elytrya stepped forward as the giant approached, and Helmess sensed a slight tremor within her. So this is her employer, is it? But Helmess could tell there was something more to it than that. A lifetime of unravelling other people’s connections told him that there was no leader here, just two lieutenants whose precise positioning was still in flux.
‘Rosander,’ she said, giving the middle syllable all the weight.
The helmed head nodded, seeming tiny between the great, mounded pauldrons. The man’s gauntlets were carved into forward-curving hooks reaching over his hands, and when he raised them, Helmess flinched back, though Elytrya stood her ground. She seemed like just a child, a toy, against the vast canvas of Rosander’s armoured breadth.
With surprising delicacy, the hands hidden under those claws pulled free the helmet. Revealed was a narrow, bald head, the skull ridged and braced beneath the skin as though to support the weight of the helm. The man was of no kinden Helmess had ever seen, his face utterly alien in its combination of high cheekbones, small eyes, wispy eyebrows and narrow mouth. The half-dozen men behind him remained faceless, only a narrow slit giving onto the dark beach. Water streamed off them, or seeped out from between the sections of their armour. There were few weapons to be seen aside from the monstrous claws of their gauntlets, that echoed those of what was surely their kinden animal squatting behind them. One held a sword fashioned of some dull metal, its thick blade curving forward to a square-sectioned point. Helmess doubted that he himself could have lifted the weapon even in both hands.
‘Report.’ Rosander’s voice was small and bleak.
‘Here’s my report.’ Elytrya held up a small package sealed with oilcloth against the wet. ‘For the Edmir’s eyes only.’
Rosander regarded her without love. ‘Indeed.’ He reached towards her, the tip of his claw narrowly missing her shoulder. Within the cup of the hooked gauntlet his hand was still huge. Elytria carefully placed her package in his palm.
‘I see you’ve brought the heavy stuff,’ she said, fingers lightly skimming the coarse surface of his armour. ‘A glutton for punishment, then?’
‘When we come here in earnest,’ Rosander pronounced, ‘we shall bring all our might. So we must accustom ourselves.’ His accent was slow and strange, the vowels twitched all out of shape. He took another step forward, the sections of his mail grating softly.
It is. Helmess abandoned any self-deception. It’s stone. He has a suit of stone armour, yet he’s standing right there, holding it up. Oh, it must be lighter in the water, but he won’t let that deter him, that much is obvious. Who are these crab-kinden? What do they want of Collegium? A moment later he caught his breath, for those dark little eyes had flicked towards him. In two stomping strides the huge sea-kinden had eclipsed Helmess’s view of sky and sea.
‘Nauarch Rosander,’ Elytrya kept pace, ‘meet Master Helmess Broiler, our man in the city.’
‘Land-kinden,’ Rosander addressed him, and Helmess managed a small obeisance. The bony, narrow face looked contemptuous. ‘Doesn’t look like much. You fight, land-kinden?’
So close, feeling the presence of the man pressing on all sides, Helmess managed a brief shake of his head. Rosander made an amused sound, although no humour showed in his expression. Aside from the narrow lips and tiny eyes, his entire head could have been carved from dun wood.
‘Chenni!’ the huge figure snapped out, and a smaller one stepped out from behind one of his cohorts. Helmess saw a hunchbacked little woman with spindly arms and legs, no bigger than a Fly-kinden. She was as bald as Rosander and, despite her utter disparity in stature, there was a commonality about their closed, taut-skinned faces. She positioned herself a few feet away, further from the giant than Helmess was. With a sudden stab of amusement Helmess realized that by approaching any closer she would have been blocked from the big man’s view by the bulk of his own armour.
‘How’s it coming?’ Rosander growled at the diminutive newcomer. His gaze, by Helmess’s judgement, was not fierce but fond, however.
‘See for yourself, chief,’ she told him. ‘Going to be a bit of a test. Not sure if it’ll hold under the weight.’
‘Bring it up,’ Rosander instructed her, then swivelled his head back to eye Elytrya. To Helmess’s alarm, she clearly did not know what was going on.
‘I called you here to take charge of my report for the Edmir, nothing more,’ she said, her voice low and dangerous.
‘You called?’ Rosander’s lips retracted, showing small, dark teeth. ‘You’ve been away from the colony too long. Things are changing now. I’m not here for you. I’m here for… what’s your word?’
‘An experiment, Nauarch,’ said Chenni, her eyes focused on the sea. She spoke faster than him, but with the same accent. ‘The machinists back home will be in knots, waiting to hear from us.’
‘Rosander…’ Elytrya started, but he held a clawed gauntlet up to her face, the movement effortlessly swift. At the shoreline, Helmess saw the great crab scuttle sideways in an intricate dance of legs. Behind it something else, something much larger, was dragging itself from the sea.
It had a great rounded front that curved up into little horns on either side. In a wash of water and weed, its snub-nosed leading edge surged forward onto the beach, allowing only the slightest glimpse of the powering legs hidden beneath its over-arching shell. Helmess would have taken it for some other kind of sea-monster were it not for the sounds from within it, the ratcheting and grind and click that told him that gears and springs drove those pistoning legs in place of blood and muscle.
As the sea drained off from it he heard it creak as it supported its own weight. Chenni went tense: the sight was so familiar – an artificer willing her creation to work – that he had to fight down an inappropriate smile.
It held firm, nothing cracked. The hulking sea-automotive lurked on the beach like a house-sized boulder. The little woman made a satisfied noise.
The sounds of its workings intensified, until Helmess feared that some keen ear in Collegium might hear. The automotive lurched forward, clawing its way further across the shingle. Abruptly it began making less healthy sounds, grinding and crunching, and then the unmistakable noise of a stripped gear spinning. Chenni dashed over to the struggling machine.
‘Most impressive,’ Elytrya declared, but Helmess detected a slight quiver in her voice.
‘For a prototype,’ Rosander agreed, implacable. ‘When we come to seize back the land, we will use every weapon available. You have such things, land-kinden?’
‘We do,’ Helmess admitted hoarsely. He was thinking of an army of massively armoured men and beasts and machines, sitting invisibly beneath the water, swarming into Collegium from the river and the docks by moonlight, unheralded and unguessed at. ‘It is impressive.. . Nauarch,’ he said, understanding the unfamiliar word as a title. Walls staved in, claws rending flesh, seaweed and blood tracked into the halls of the Amphiophos. An enemy that we never even knew we had. And after that night, after the blood-tide has receded, who shall pick up the pieces? Not the Empire… and not Maker, either.