Now that he had reached Blaize he had his first inkling of how enormous the place was. The city was comparable in magnitude maybe even to his former home of Turing City. Morphobia Alligator had said he was to meet someone here: a soldier. That could take some doing in a place of this size.
Just as he was thinking this he saw, lit up in scarlet sunlight, the metal shell of another robot. It was sitting near the top of the road, just where it ran up through the remains of a wide arch into the city proper.
Karel raised a hand, and slowly, the other robot returned his gesture. As Karel made his way to towards it, he realized that there was something odd about the other person. His body seemed half melted. The joints and seams of his panelling looked as if they were soldered together. Karel felt the current drain from his electromuscles. The thought of having his mind placed in that body made him feel fuzzy with static. It would be like being trapped in a prison.
The other robot got up with some difficulty. Stiffly, it made its way towards Karel.
‘Hello,’ said Karel. ‘My name is Karel. I have been told that you could help me.’
‘I help you?’ said the other robot. ‘I don’t think so. I can’t even help myself. Tell me, do you know who I am?’
The Uncertain Army charged, and a storm of metal arose upon the face of Shull. Metal pumping and flexing, pistoning and scraping, stretching and bending across the earth, metal tearing into the ground, thudding deep into the soil, metal rising up into the air in a swarm… The swipe of blades, the crash of cannon-balls, the spung and ricochet of bullets, the whirling of saw-edged discs, flares of wire, rains of chaff, explosions of shrapnel, swarf springing up all around…
Through it all danced the energy of electricity, jumping in blue sparks, crackling down arms and legs, earthing itself on blades, shorting out between electromuscles, singing in the mind…
The noise of explosions, crackling orange and yellow flames, burning phosphorus, the clash of metal, the squeal of drills slipping across plate, the scrape of knives, the thud of lead on iron… The atmosphere was squeezed and sucked this way and that by explosions, smoke and iron filings pushed through panelling in great gasps that sent the gyros shuddering, eyesight and hearing baffled by the flash and crash and roar…
And amongst it all, the Uncertain Army stumbled forward, retreated back, reeled sideways, was pushed and knocked and tumbled over itself, the whole force swaying this way and that, but all the time slowly advancing on the Artemisian army.
Spoole had positioned his troops well; he had given his cannon clear lines of sight at Kavan’s approaching army. They fired round shot and chain shot, canister and shrapnel, shell and carcass and magnetic bolas: pairs of magnetized balls that orbited each other as they flew, whipping and crashing their way through the approaching ranks. File after file of robots were smashed down, bodies crushed, electromuscle torn, blue wire tangling across their comrades, and still the Uncertain Army came on.
Seen from above, the fighting didn’t just occur at the boundary between the forces: it boiled all the way through the troops. The robots of the Uncertain Army fought amongst themselves, they fought to get away from the charge, they fought to be at the front of it, they fought just to keep their feet. Kavan moved in the eye of the hurricane, surrounded by grey-bodied infantryrobots who marched with cold determination, but also with an air of homecoming: they had marched for Kavan before, they were marching for him again. Iron-tipped bullets rained down from above, they rattled off their grey shells. They were fired by the robots that lined the distant mountain peaks, their killing energy spent by the time it reached them.
‘Onwards,’ called Kavan. ‘Onwards! Aim for the centre!’
The Uncertain Army was getting less spread out: they were being funnelled between the low hills that led to the pass Kavan had once blasted through the centre of the mountain range. Now that passage was being choked with railway lines. He guessed that somewhere safely beyond Spoole’s troops would be marshalled the trains that had brought his army north. They would be waiting to carry the broken metal from this battle back south to Artemis City to be remade anew once the war was over.
A volley of shots sounded to Kavan’s right, and a huge explosion fountained brown soil into the air, smeared clinging dust across eyes and bodies. Black and grey and silver robots lost their nerve and began running for the surrounding hills, barely seen through the smoke and flame: they were cut down by shots fired by the grey robots that Spoole had stationed up there. A gust of wind blew clear the smoke for a moment, revealing silver Scouts running down the hills towards them. Some of his own Storm Troopers stepped forward to meet them, then the smoke drew back in, blotting out the scene. Were the Storm Troopers defecting to Spoole’s side, or were they fighting the Scouts?
Still the Uncertain Army moved on, a creeping determination spreading through the ranks as they realized they were now committed: there was no way to go but forward. The army moved like a robot carrying a large rock, unsteadily but with an unstoppable intent.
Grey infantryrobots spilled down from the hillside in front of them. Kavan thought that this was an attack, then saw the soldiers on his side that charged to intercept them pause and open their lines, welcome the infantryrobots back into their ranks. Kavan realized that the message was spreading.
Kavan was returning, and he was raising an army.
Silver Scouts came rushing up to join the battle on the hillside; they fought the Stormtroopers and the infantry alike, and Kavan saw the careful arrangement of Spoole’s troops unravelling, a tearing in the ranks that spread back along the hills further and further to the distant mountain peaks. Robots were changing sides as the fight reached them. Spoole’s and Kavan’s armies were flowing together and splitting apart and changing allegiances too fast to follow.
The grey band of infantryrobots that surrounded Kavan was growing thicker and thicker as more soldiers defected to his side. The infantry had always been loyal to him, he was one of them after all. The ground was shaking with the stamp and crash of so many feet. And then there was another noise, a high-pitched whistling.
The battle seemed to freeze for just a moment. So many robots halted, looking into the dark smoke, listening…
The area ahead of Kavan erupted in incandescent white fire. Metal and shrapnel exploded into the air, molten lead droplets rained down upon Kavan, melting into his panelling, searing the electromuscle beneath. The Uncertain Army moved forward once more, the fighting reforming itself around the smoking pit ahead.
‘What was it?’ Kavan realized he was asking the question of himself. Then he heard the answer. ‘Magnesium. They’re burning magnesium.’
The sense of outraged indignation spread through the robots battling in the flare and the noise. They were wasting metal! Those people who called themselves Artemisians were destroying metal!
Again, that same high-pitched whistling, and Kavan looked up to see something falling overhead. A dark metal sphere, it burst in the ranks behind him in another bright white flare. Hot air rushed forward, coating him with soot.
His ears were singing, some of the circuitry had been damaged by the blast, but he still heard the faint crump ahead of him, he saw the flames there on the slopes of the distant mountain. He stood taller when he knew what was happening.