The three of them turned to look down the steps leading to Martak, and at their base saw that the first units of mechanical warriors had completed their slow march from the throne room and emerged from the cowl. They marched in the same organised lines of five, in rank after rank after rank, filling the jetty with their broad bodies, metal feet pounding into the stone, and, as they gradually drew closer to the steps, rocks at the top of the cliffs began to tremble and shed scree that bounced and skittered below.
Their assault on the peninsula would soon begin.
"We have to stop them," Slowhand said.
"Oh brilliant. Just bloody brilliant."
"I see the old Hooper is indeed back."
"Well, honestly…"
"If you two are finished," Makennon said, "I think someone's already ahead of us on that one." She pointed a little way along the clifftop, where the ogur was pushing its shoulder into a boulder that balanced there, clearly trying to dislodge it and send it crashing below.
"I think it knows what it's doing," Makennon said.
"Damn right," Kali said, smiling. "The old man's still in there somewhere."
"Well, are we just going to stand here or are we going to help it?" Slowhand enquired.
"Him," Kali corrected.
"Fine, him. Come on!"
The three of them joined the ogur behind the boulder and leant their weight to pushing it, and with a dull rumble the giant piece of rock dislodged from its perch and went tumbling away, bouncing first off rocks and then onto the stone steps. With a series of crashes that were audible even over the storm, it continued down, bouncing two then three steps at a time, then more, gathering momentum as it went.
The mechanical warriors did not even react to its approach, their minds — Munch's mind — intent on their single imperative of reaching the surface and the humans who dwelled there. The boulder smashed into their front rank and sent five warriors staggering back, causing a knock-on effect behind them, and as the giant rock continued to roll through the second and third ranks their relentless march was momentarily thrown into confusion, the affected warriors trying to recover from the impact, those behind attempting to march on around them. Then, in unison, five of the giant dwarven battle hammers were swung at the boulder and it was shattered first to rubble and then, to dust. The warriors' march continued, the damage to them insignificant.
"We need more boulders," Slowhand declared. He repeated the statement more loudly to the ogur as if, somehow, being an ogur made it deaf. He then pointed at more boulders, just to make himself extra clear, but the ogur had already stomped towards them of his own volition. "Yes, more boulders!" Slowhand agreed needlessly.
Makennon assessed the ammunition available to them. Short of attempting to smash away the Dragonwings themselves, most of the rocks available to them were smaller than the first. "This isn't going to work," she said. "The last one barely scratched them."
"Maybe not," Slowhand responded, heaving. "But we can at least slow them down."
"And what will that achieve? There are no reinforcements coming."
"I don't know, okay? But I, for one, am not going to just stand here."
He and the ogur sent another boulder tumbling.
Kali, meanwhile, stared down the steps, and then inland, back along the peninsula. She bit her lip. "Slowhand, carry on with what you're doing because it just might help, but Makennon has a point. There's only one way to stop those warriors and that's to destroy what Munch used to animate them — destroy the Clockwork King. But that means first having to finish their general — finish Munch."
Slowhand and the ogur made another rock roll, and the archer nodded. "Finish Munch," he repeated, breathlessly. "Hooper, you have to be kidding. Even if you had a chance against his bodyguards, how in the hells would you get back down to him? Those things would mince you before you got halfway down the steps."
"There's one way," Kali said.
She swept up Munch's gutting knife from the ground and jammed it in her belt. Then, she stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled. A second later, Horse stood next to her, braying, his broken tether dangling around his neck.
Kali mounted him and slapped his flank, welcoming his help.
Now it was Slowhand's turn to stare down the steps, Kali's intention dawning. "Oh, no," he said. "No, no, no. No…"
"Hyyahh!" Kali shouted.
She reined Horse around and galloped him towards the top of the steps, kicking his flanks to spur him on. Horse reached them and jumped, soaring in a determined arc over four of the risers before his hooves thudded back onto stone with an impact that made them spark and jarred Kali to the bones.
"Hyyahh!" she shouted again.
Horse thundered down the steps before them, Kali keeping her gaze straight ahead in the bouncing, rushing diagonal the world had become, and again kicked his flanks, spurring the bamfcat to greater speed.
"Hyyahh!"
They hit the jetty, and the world levelled, and still she kicked, bringing Horse to full gallop, the front ranks of the marching warriors now no more than ten yards ahead. As she'd hoped she would, she heard a distinctive shnak as the horns on Horse's body snapped fully from their housings, the bamfcat reacting instinctively to the danger to come.
Good boygirl, she thought, good, good boygirl.
And then they rammed straight into the army of the Clockwork King.
Kali was aware of little more than a sudden and rapid series of thuds and jarring impacts as Horse ploughed into and then through the advancing warriors, her world skewing this time into a seemingly endless number of fractured tableaux, flashes of hammers and axes and swinging arms, and of red, glaring eyes. There was nothing she could do but ride Horse as a helpless passenger, nothing she could do to affect their progress — all she could do was hope it continued, and that Horse's armour was strong enough to keep him from harm. The great beast ploughed onwards through the warriors, cutting a swathe through their middle, sending them staggering aside, and then, glimpsed through them at last, jarringly and shakingly, was the maw of the cowl. There were still far too many of the warriors between them and it, though, and within it, many, many more, still working their way up from the throne room, and the constant wall of metal and corrupted flesh was beginning to take its toll on Horse, not only in terms of slowing his momentum but in the amount of damage his armour was now taking. She couldn't — and wouldn't — push him any further, but that didn't really matter because it had never been her intention to reach the cowl, anyway. All she'd needed Horse to do was get her close to the water.
And now she needed to make sure Horse was safe.
Kali rose high in the saddle so that she touched only his stirrups, and then patted the bamfcat's neck. "It's time to do that thing you do," she said quickly, and hoped to the gods that he understood. "You know, the thing. Do it, Horse. Do it now!"
The bamfcat roared, and for a second Kali thought that perhaps he hadn't understood, but then she realised it wasn't that at all.
"Yes, you great lump, I'm fond of you, too, but you need to do the thing! Pits, Horse, do the thing and do it n — "
Horse reared, and the air cracked, and then the bamfcat vanished from under her, and suddenly Kali was flying over the heads of the marching warriors, all alone. She knew exactly what she was doing, however, and immediately turned what could have been a flailing tumble into an arched dive, taking her over the edge of the jetty. And then, like Horse, she, too, vanished — head first into the churning sea.
Kali hit smoothly, slicing beneath the surface like a knife. There, however, her smoothness came to an end, the churning maelstrom that was battering the side of the jetty flinging her around like a worgle in a whirlpool. It took her some time to orientate herself, arms and legs slapping and kicking against the currents, but finally she swam in the direction she wished. But she did not head for the surface, as might be expected. Instead, she swam towards the dark foundations of the entrance cowl to Martak. Slowhand had been right — there was no way to reach Munch through the warriors — but there was a way to reach him.