Rigging Under the Hip

Would four hundred feet of empty air kill a man faster than two hundred southern river-spears? Dag Flintrow crouched inside the pylon's cork-lined hip alcove, caribou hood drawn tight against the howling draft, searching the brass-studded bulkhead for any lever, valve, or brake that might drop Cairn Nine into a halt before the machine trod those scarlet-coated strangers into grease.

Below the vibrating floorboards, the northern gravel spit of the Gap of Horns churned in seismic convulsions. The colossus's sixty-pace basalt heel was three heartbeats from touchdown. From this height, the river-legion looked like a spilled basket of red berries scattering across gray shingle. Dozens of spearmen dropped their bronze pikes and scrambled for the timber docks, kicking up spray as they shoved their own comrades into the shallows. The white-robed woman in the pearl gorget stood her ground beside an ivory-trimmed litter, her scroll case held high toward the sky, before two frantic bodyguards seized her trailing silks and hauled her bodily toward the nearest skiff.

CRUNCH.

The landing foot struck the northern bank gravel.

A shockwave ripped upward through the stone shank, rattling Dag's molar teeth and throwing him against the curved brass ribbing of the alcove. The alcove groaned, but the lead-plugged cork lining absorbed the worst of the hammer-blow. Down below, tons of river silt and shattered cobbles erupted outward in a rooster-tail sixty cubits high. One of the empty mountain skiffs flipped end over end, splintering into matchwood across the shallows. When the dust veil parted, the red ranks had dissolved into wet, crawling clumps along the waterline.

Deep inside the pylon's hollow pelvis, a musical sequence chimed with polite, chime-like clarity.

Ding. Dong.

"Terrain variance detected," an airy, melodic female voice resonated from the hollow flues behind Dag's neck. The vowels rang smooth and sweet, as though a temple flutist were singing into an empty rain vat. "Glacial aggregate exceeds compaction threshold. Auxiliary stabilizer: engaged. Continuing south-by-southwest reclamation cycle."

"Don't continue," Dag muttered, rubbing the sore knot on his left knee where it had met the brass rib. "Sit down. Fall over. Take a seasonal rest like an honest mountain."

The machine paid no heed to northern advice. A series of massive internal counterweights slid through grease-grooves overhead with a deep, liquid rumble. The second basalt leg lifted from the canyon mouth behind them, thirty thousand tons of prehistoric masonry swinging forward on an automated pendulum arc.

Dag wiped gritty spray from his eyelashes and crawled toward the alcove's inner junction. If the machine wouldn't listen to spoken words, it obeyed something else. He had seen the steam louvers respond to mechanical leverage; ancient craft didn't move on ghosts alone.

At the alcove's rear stood an octagonal pillar of dark, greenish basalt, polished to a dull sheen. Running down its face were four vertical channels lined with pale, translucent crystal that pulsed with a faint amber warmth. The channels met at a circular bronze manifold roughly chest-high. In the center of the manifold sat a narrow, hexagonal slot no wider than Dag's thumb, flanked by twin filigree wires of green-tarnished copper.

Dag stopped breathing for a beat.

His right hand dipped into his greasy caribou coat, closing around the smooth facets of the honey-tinted quartz sliver he had pocketed on the tundra two days ago. He pulled it into the dim lantern light of the alcove. The hexagonal geometry of the stone matched the bronze aperture to the fraction of a fingernail.

"A strike socket," he whispered.

To a hunter who knapped chert by the ringing note of the strike, the manifold was no lock, but an acoustic bridge. The pale crystal veins channeled sound straight into the pylon's hydraulic relays.

From his belt kit, Dag produced his egg-sized chert hammerstone. He slid the honey-colored quartz sliver into the hexagonal socket. It entered with a soft, airtight hiss, the copper wires flexing outward to grip its lateral bevels like tiny bronze claws. The stone seated firmly, leaving half an inch of faceted crown exposed.

Below, the second leg was swinging forward, lining up for another pulverizing strike that would carry Cairn Nine straight down the river channel, flattening the remaining skiffs and the surviving spearmen huddled along the boulder field.

Dag didn't care about southern priests, but if the machine marched down the deep river canyon, it would enter narrow limestone gorges where falling cliffs would peel this exposed maintenance rigging like dried bark.

He raised the hammerstone. He tapped the quartz crown with a crisp, measured strike.

PING.

The chime was thin and high, like an icicle snapping under a winter boot. A pale yellow pulse raced up the crystal conduits into the roof vault.

Nothing happened for two seconds. Then a hydraulic valve hissed deep in the pylon's hip pivot. The swinging leg hesitated mid-arc, its massive knee-joint groaning under immense counter-torque. The limb shifted its outward angle, yawing three degrees to the west before driving down.

THUD.

The second foot crushed a deserted slate bluff forty paces to the right of the ferry landing, sending an avalanche of gray boulders rolling into the foam instead of trampling the crowded skiffs.

The pylon had turned. Just three degrees, but the course had shifted under human hand.

"By the old frost," Dag breathed, his fingers tingling from the resonance that still hummed through the chert stone. He wasn't just riding an unguided landslide. The machine was a team of sled dogs, and he had just found the harness peg.

He tapped the left facet with a double rap, lighter this time. Ping-ping.

The amber veins flared brighter, and the airy voice spoke again from the overhead flues: "Bearing adjustment confirmed. Vector variance: three point four degrees westward. Warning: external hull contacts detected at lower perimeter."

Dag blinked. "Hull contacts?"

He scrambled to the outer edge of the alcove and peered over the timber safety balk into the windy gulf below.

The southern spearmen were not running away.

Down on the churned gravel spit, four heavy winch carriages had been rolled into position. Teams of red-tabarded soldiers hauled on braided cords, anchoring thick oak tripods into the river stones. Standing upon the nearest carriage, her white robes tied up with leather cord and her pearl gorget gleaming amid the river spray, the woman Dag had seen earlier was shouting orders, pointing an ivory baton directly toward the pylon's undercarriage.

Toward Dag's platform.

"Lookouts on the hoist!" her voice carried upward on the updraft, sharp and imperious over the roar of the river. "Boarding anchors to the hip struts! Seize the lower cradle before the blasphemer retreats into the holy core!"

"Blasphemer?" Dag shouted down into the wind, though his voice was swallowed instantly by the grinding basalt joints. "I'm trying to keep this walking quarry off your heads!"

A deep TWANG echoed from the gravel spit.

A heavy bronze shaft the length of a hunting spear tore through the misty air, trailing a humming cord of braided green silk. It slammed into the timber railing six inches from Dag's left temple, the barbed bronze head biting three inches deep into the seasoned ash beam. The impact sprayed splinters across his cheek.

Before Dag could even draw breath, two more harpoons hissed past the struts. One glanced off a basalt tendon with a shower of sparks; the other drove into the lower cork paneling beneath his boots, sinking with a dull, wet thud.

The green silk lines snapped taut beneath the pylon's swinging weight. Down on the riverbank, three winches screamed as the counterweights engaged, reeling the ascending cables rigid against the sky.

On the middle line, hauling herself upward hand over fist with the furious agility of a cornered stoat, the white-robed woman was already thirty cubits above the spray, a bronze dagger clenched between her teeth and her crimson sash whipping in the gale. Behind her on the flanking cords, four bronze-capped legionaries were scaling the ascent with short boarding axes drawn.

Dag pulled his curved caribou-bone skinning knife from his hip sheath, the hone-sharp edge catching the pale sunlight. He looked at the taut silk rope vibrating against his timber rail, then down at the fierce, pearl-collared face climbing toward his sanctuary.

Two quick slices across the green silk would send the herald plunging into the rapids, but that would leave four winches below free to fire a second volley through his floorboards. If she reached the deck, she would bring four armed soldiers behind her.

Dag slid the bone knife back into its sheath and scooped up his chert hammerstone instead, planting his boots against the brass steering pillar.

"Climb fast, mistress," he called down into the spray, resting the stone pommel against the tuned quartz wedge. "You're boarding an unguided landslide, and passage costs two fat haunches of dried meat."