The Rising (The Alchemy Wars) Read Free

it. He wished the king’s call to arms all Godspeed through the waterways and wilderness of New France, that it might reach the ears of every voyageur, coureur, and trapper in the realm. Some might ignore the call, or pretend they’d not heard it. But Longchamp knew these men; he’d been one of them, for a while. Few would want to return to civilization only to find their contracts nullified, the scrip crumpled in the brassy fist of a mechanical demon, their hard-earned money worth less than a mouthful of a Dutchman’s piss.
    The low sun elicited no telltale glinting from the forests and fields on the south side of the Saint Lawrence. No omens. Well, then. It seemed Queen Margreet and her bootlicker colonial governor of Nieuw Nederland didn’t intend to murder the good men and women of New France quite yet. Longchamp could make use of the extra time by polishing a few turds.
    He turned his back on the sun and started the long descent to the inner keep.

    It took ten minutes to reach the base of the Spire. Another ten to navigate the maze of barricades and trenches before he could gain the top of the inner wall. A Clakker could leap over most obstacles; the trick was to slow them down enough to give the gunners a snowball’s chance in hell of spraying them down. Or to funnel them together so that they could be incapacitated most efficiently. Certain trenches and moats contained corrosives intended to destroy delicate mechanisms. Others brimmed with chemical reagents that needed just a dollop of catalyst to initiate the reaction that would solidify the moats in an instant, complete with Clakkers trapped inside like raisins in a Christmas cake. Longchamp fucking hated raisins.
    Just like he hated the thought of the inner keep’s defenses ever seeing use. Because the war was already lost if the tulips’ mechanical servants made it this far. The obstacles and rearguard tactics could only slow their final advances, and maybe, just maybe, give the king enough time to escape. Though where he would go when the Dutch truly ruled the earth was an open question. Perhaps he’d go north and become king of the White Bears.
    When he finally reached the outer wall, he sidled behind the cluster of new conscripts, taking care the
crunch
of frost beneath his boots didn’t signal his arrival. Even the civvies tended to shrink when they felt his eyes on them; they’d heard the stories, too. Sergeant Chrétien saw him lurking behind the group but continued to harangue the newcomers without acknowledging the captain. The newest conscripts shivered as though palsied, wiping their noses on their sleeves while they shuffled and muttered to themselves, hardly listening to anything the sergeant said. Half of them looked barely strongenough to raise a glass of wine much less a pick and sledge. Christ! Their forearms weren’t even the size of Longchamp’s
wrists
! What in the seven hells were they supposed to do with such a motley piss-poor group? Only two men in this group could be less than forty.
    The captain wondered if they could slow the mechanical horde by tossing the bodies of the useless in their path. The image brought him a modicum of satisfaction, though he knew that even this tactic would be pointless. Military Clakkers were walking scythes who churned through men like razor-edged tornadoes. They left nothing but screams, limbs, viscera, and arterial spray in their wake. Mere meat and bone could never slow them.
    Longchamp knew. He’d seen the ticktocks at work more than once. He’d seen friends fall to the
snick
and slash of alchemical blades. He’d seen the fountain in the inner keep run red in the aftermath of a single Clakker’s rampage. He shook his head. But no matter how he tried to free his head of memories and horrors, they clung like dusty cobwebs.
    “All right,” said Chrétien. “Let’s see if you civvies have listened to a single thing I’ve said.” He selected three men at random. “You, you, and you.