The rear of the lorry was canvas-covered. The back opened onto darkness and it was pulling away from them up the slight hill. George dug in, sprinting. An unfamiliar George, now looking remarkably like a Holmlander infantryman in full kit – navy blue jacket, cap, trousers, heavy boots. Aubrey’s legs went slightly rubbery with the casting of the spell as if he’d already completed a nippy mile-and-a-half cross country. He had a moment of horror when he thought he wasn’t going to make it.
The lorry lurched over a bump, just as George reached the backboard and hauled himself inside. Immediately, he leaned out and stretched his hand.
Aubrey gritted his teeth and found some strength. He pushed himself forward, feeling that awful moment when his stride was about to go to pieces. He was convinced he’d lose all momentum – just as George clasped his outstretched hand.
For an instant, Aubrey’s feet left the ground and he was suspended in mid-air, most precariously, then George dragged him into the rear of the lorry where he lay on his back, panting.
While he regained his breath, he congratulated himself on how convincing his disguising spell was. His clumsy arrival hadn’t caused any consternation. None of the dozen or so figures in the dimness under the canvas had moved. No-one questioned him, no bayonets were brandished in his face, no coarse laughter chaffed at him. All they had to do now was to sit tight and the lorry would take them right through the gates and into the factory. Their uniforms were perfect, just like the other soldiers who were quietly sitting in the back of the lorry, right down to the clumsy bandage wrapped around Aubrey’s arm. Their faces were composites, blended versions of the features around them, fitting in neatly.
He began to feel extremely uneasy. ‘What’s going on here?’ he muttered to George, who helped him to a spare space on one of the benches on either side.
George leaned close and Aubrey saw that he had a bandage on his head, under his awkwardly sitting cap. ‘We’re in a hospital transport, old man. At least, that’s what it looks like.’
Aubrey surreptitiously glanced around the lorry. Each of the soldiers was wounded. Bandaged limbs and heads, blood-stained uniforms, but Aubrey had trouble believing that the wounds were entirely responsible for the bonelessness and the grey pallor in the faces surrounding him, especially since none of them had head wounds.
Young faces, too, he realised. It gave him a wrench to see they were about his age, youths who should be making their way in a world unblighted by war. These were the fodder for the insatiable appetite of the war monster that had been unleashed. So young, so many, and with the war so new.
He wrinkled his nose. A faint vibration was lodged there, irritating but not to the point of sneezing. He sniffed, but it buzzed and he realised he was detecting low-level magic. He frowned, looking around at the blank faces, the unseeing eyes, the chins resting on chests, and he realised with a start that the entire squad was enspelled.
He shook the shoulder of the soldier on the other side of the lorry, a fair-headed youth with one arm in a bloody sling. While George watched with some alarm, the Holmlander’s head lolled from side to side like a rag doll. Aubrey lifted the soldier’s good hand. When he let go it fell, unresisted.
Aubrey sat back and wiped his hands together. ‘It’s clever,’ he said after a moment’s thoughtful contemplation of the canvas roof, remembering various descriptions in texts he’d read.
‘Some sort of trance?’ George asked. His expression was one of caution tinged with definite distaste.
‘Our Dr Tremaine has come up with a new application of the Law of Patterns, is my guess. These poor wretches are entranced by a repeating pattern, caught in following an endless loop, so to speak. They follow it to the end, but find that they’re at the beginning again. The effect, as you pointed out, is much like a trance.’
‘For what purpose?’
‘So they can be loaded onto lorries and shipped wherever needed.’
‘But who’d need wounded battlers like this?’ George swept an arm around the interior of the lorry. ‘They should be in hospital!’
‘They should, indeed.’ Aubrey was quiet for a moment. ‘But it appears that someone has plans for them.’
‘In a factory.’ George’s face was bleak. ‘Dr Tremaine is making me very angry.’
‘There’s no mistaking his magic.’ Aubrey hesitated. Even though the spell was clearly Dr Tremaine’s it had an odd cast. It wasn’t fresh.
George frowned. ‘Let me see if I have this straight, being magic stuff and all. These poor fellows have been put into a trance by Dr Tremaine’s magic.’
‘Correct.’
‘And we’re currently rolling with them toward Baron von Grolman’s factory.’
‘Most apparently.’
‘Where Dr Tremaine is.’
‘Ah.’ Aubrey thought for a moment. How could these benighted soldiers have been enspelled by Dr Tremaine if Dr Tremaine was in the factory they were being shipped to instead of from? ‘I suppose he could have whipped over to wherever these fellows came from, cast his spells, then whipped straight back here.’
‘That’s a lot of whipping. Even for Dr Tremaine.’
‘And von Stralick said they hadn’t noticed him coming. Or going.’
Aubrey frowned. Had Dr Tremaine discovered a way to cast spells over a great distance? Or was it something even more fantastic – had he managed to package spells so others could activate them? In a way, it was a variation of the principle that governed potentialised clay. For a man who needed to be everywhere, it could be a revolutionary discovery. Another Dr Tremaine revolutionary discovery.
‘Thank you, George, for throwing that little sparkler into the pot.’
‘Least I can do, old man.’
As they drew closer to the factory, Aubrey could feel Dr Tremaine everywhere. His presence was stamped on the whole complex. It fairly radiated with markers of his spellwork, both residual and active, and it all became confused with the multiple connections Aubrey had formed with his mannikins.
Aubrey’s head started to ache. The life of a spy was taking some getting used to.
When the lorry passed through the entrance, Aubrey felt a slight tingle, which announced they were crossing the magically guarded perimeter. No alarm sounded at the ensorcelled soldiers, so Aubrey assumed that the detection level had been set high enough to allow such to pass – which explained why Sophie’s disguising magic had gone unnoticed.
He was impressed. She’d shown a light touch for someone out of practice. He wondered how good she could be if she really put her mind to magic.
The lorry followed the leader and pulled into the loading area of the enormous warehouse, alongside the railway line. Immediately, two armed soldiers appeared and peered inside. ‘Ten in here,’ one of them called.
‘Act like them,’ Aubrey whispered to George, who nodded. The backboard of the lorry banged down. The soldiers showed no reluctance, nor any untoward cruelty, as they manoeuvred the wounded out of the lorry and assembled them in rows. It was as if they were moving furniture. Aubrey and George adopted the dazed, preoccupied expression they’d noted, shuffling with arms dangling at their sides, mouths slack, heads bobbing, and they were herded with the others.
When a large man entered the loading bay and stood in the light coming through the open double doors, Aubrey desperately wanted to draw George’s attention. He stumbled and nudged his friend, cocking his head in what he hoped was a hintful way in the direction of the man, who was studying a clipboard given to him by a respectful – and unwounded – captain of the Holmland infantry.