‘What’s the matter?’ he shouted. ‘Didn’t you hear the order? We are to escort Kavan to Spoole! He is a hero!’
Still the grey infantryrobots exchanged looks. Eventually one of them stepped forward.
‘What does Kavan say?’
Kavan pointedly looked from the heavily armed and armoured Storm Troopers, to the thin shells of the infantry. When he was sure that everyone there had got the point, he gave his answer.
‘For the moment, Forban and I are in agreement. We march south.’
Kavan and Calor, Forban and his troops marched south.
The signs of long-abandoned robot inhabitation seemed to rise and fall across the landscape like tides on a beach. Long ago, robots had followed the Northern Road through this land, bringing news and devices from the Top of the World, carrying the metal they quarried from these hills back up there by way of trade. Kavan had heard something about the history of this land as he had fought his way north, but he had seen little, if anything, of its former glory. The robots who had built these roads and the half-collapsed buildings that stood by them were long gone.
The hills rose and fell as they marched, the Storm Troopers beat a path through the wet turf, shouldering aside boulders, slashing at the twisted and weatherblown plants that clung to life in the thin soil. The infantryrobots marched on, eyes fixed upon Kavan, who walked silently in the centre of the group, his thoughts elsewhere.
Calor’s gaze constantly searched along the top of the surrounding hills when they walked through valleys, it flicked from boulder to tree when they walked the high moors, watching the movement all around them.
Because word of Kavan’s reappearance was spreading. Calor saw the flickers of sunlight at the top of the hills. Scouts, looking down at the grey and black bodies that marched south, relaying messages back and forth to others who marched nearby.
Forban noticed them, and he spoke into a radio just out of Kavan’s earshot. Half an hour later, a squad of twenty Storm Troopers marched in from a side path and joined them.
Kavan and the infantryrobots now found themselves surrounded by the black marching bodies. The air was filled with the percussion of metal on rock, the hum of electromuscle working and the prickling of electricity. Feet were covered in grey dust, mud and moisture.
And then Calor raised herself up on tiptoes in a dancing, skipping movement, looking over the tall heads that surrounded them. She jumped and spun, dodging through the dark press of bodies, her hand blades slightly extended as she did so.
Four Scouts were running up to join them. Calor dropped back to speak to them, and now Kavan found himself walking alongside an infantryrobot. Coal, his name was.
‘You’re outnumbered, Kavan,’ said Coal. ‘Forban has been on the radio, calling up yet more Storm Troopers to join in the escort duty. They have always been more loyal to Spoole. You need to find more infantry! They will support you!’
‘Move away there! Get back to your place!
Forban appeared at Kavan’s side. The infantryrobot stared at Kavan significantly and then fell back to his place in line.
‘We are bearing a little too far to the west,’ said Kavan.
‘There is an old road over this way,’ answered Forban. ‘It runs south across the whole of Northern Shull. Didn’t you notice when you marched these lands?’
‘It runs north, not south,’ said Kavan. ‘All the way north to the Top of the World. The robots of these lands believed that Alpha and Gamma, the first two robots, were made up there. Their descendants travelled down the Northern Road to populate Shull.’
‘Do you believe that, Kavan?’
‘I know it’s not true. I have seen the proof, up on the northern coast. There is a building there, I have been inside. I know that robots evolved here on Penrose.’
‘I think… hey, who are you?’
Calor had rejoined the middle of the party, but there was another Scout with her now. They were both speaking to one of the infantryrobots that trudged along. The new Scout looked at Forban for a moment and then turned and quickly ran off, body flashing in the sunlight as she dodged between the black bodies of the Storm Troopers.
A quarter of an hour later they joined the Northern Road, a grass-grown expanse of broken stone, long stamped down by the tread of many robots.
A squad of forty infantryrobots was waiting for them there. Kavan recognized their leader as Gentian, a woman who had served under him in the past. Forban gave no sign of being either pleased or disappointed at their presence.
At the approach of the escort party, the infantryrobots picked up their rifles and joined the procession, heading south.
Spoole leaned on the stone balustrade, looking out across the vast landscape of Northern Shull spread out below him, and he felt, for just a moment, his power.
All that he could see, he commanded.
Except, of course, he didn’t. Spoole was too much of a realist to think otherwise. It was part of the pattern twisted into his mind, a realization that there was a time to lead and a time to step aside.
The difficulty, of course, was knowing when that time was.
The robots who had built this citadel had not been able to tell. Whoever had built this place must have been way in advance of the other civilizations that inhabited these mountains. Why, they must have been well into the Stone Age whilst the surrounding tribes were still struggling through the Iron Age, and yet, despite that, they were long vanished.
The citadel was an island of rock at the edge of the Northern Mountain range. The builders had taken a mountain just like any of the others around it, and had chipped and hammered and dug and blasted away the surrounding stone, isolating their peak from all the others save for three stone arches leading east, west and south that they left to serve as bridges. But this had only been a prelude to their greatest feat of engineering.
Spoole had heard Kavan’s reports of the reservoirs that lined the mountains of Central Range. He had seen them himself as he had travelled north but he hadn’t appreciated their use until he had visited the citadel. The robots who made this place had used water to carve their home. The water that had been hoarded behind dams was directed down sluices and aqueducts towards this place, carrying rain and snowmelt and channelling it to just the right point, then they had let the water run over hundreds of years, smoothing the pillar that supported the great city until it shone dully in the sunlight, the bands of rock clearly visible, climbing in tilted shelves almost a mile into the sky.
All the while the water was carrying out its work, the robots were busy on the peak of their mountain, carving it flat to give a circle half a mile across. On this they had used dressed and jointed stone to build walls and forges, keeps and houses. The north side they had left for their final glory: a huge window, five stories high, formed of three arches, empty of glass but looking north across the lands of Shull to the Top of the World.
Now the citadel stood as a gateway to the north, and Spoole and his Generals had commandeered it to await the arrival of Kavan. The Supreme Commander of Artemis stood on the roof of Shull, waiting for its most favoured soldier.
Except, of course, that wasn’t quite true either. In any respect.
He heard movement behind him and turned to see General Sandale approaching. For a ridiculous moment, Spoole imagined the General rushing forward and pushing him backwards, sending him tumbling back out of the open window to be smashed on the rocks far below. But, no, General Sandale merely raised a hand in greeting.
‘Forban has Kavan,’ he said.
‘Good,’ replied Spoole. ‘Good.’
General Sandale remained where he was, gazing at Spoole. His body was polished to a shine, a contrast to Spoole’s matt-iron body. It wasn’t that Spoole wasn’t made of the very best materials; it was just that he didn’t advertise it. The leaders of Artemis never had done in the past. When did that thinking change?