Trinity
Militza had heard it said that
Trinity was the largest of the True Cities, save perhaps for Titan, and as she
looked up at the wall of old, scarred metal that led eventually to the upper
deck and Top Side and the Spinaccles that soared still higher, she found it
hard to imagine there could be a city that was bigger. There had been a time
ten cycles distant, before the War of the Rolling Plains, when Trinity had been
called Iron Reach and had been no larger than its sister city, Iron Cloud; but
then the city had devoured and amalgamated two of its rivals in the Great War;
had shattered the city of Tard in two and bound its remains and engines to the
north of the city, had wrought huge destruction upon the city of Cyan and
harnessed its corpse as an extension to the city’s eastern boundary. Trinity;
three cities as one, grinding their way slowly but relentlessly citywise.
Further along
the city’s length, she could see a cluster of yellow coated workers busying
themselves; an orange, industrial sized, traction engine matching its speed
with the city in a cloud of grey steam; a network of wooden gangplanks and
platforms strung across the gap between it and the city walls so that the
workers could scurry to and fro, like spiders, to carry out essential
maintenance on the city’s wheels. The south side of the city featured two
hundred wheels, each of which stood more than four times taller than the
tallest man; they were divided into groups of five that were spaced equally and
encased inside huge metal belts that ensured the city could maintain traction
on even the most unforgiving of surfaces. The noise of Trinity’s passage was
immense, the sound almost a physical thing; metal screaming against metal as
the huge and heavy plates of the wheel belts clanked and clamoured against each
other.
Militza stepped
tentatively off the metal ramp and onto solid ground, experiencing a slight
jolt as she strived to adjust to the fact that she had stepped from a slow
moving object to a static surface, and then walked away from the city with the
posture of somebody who was at least thirty years older, walked away from
Trinity, and into its Caravan, without even a glance back.
The Caravan that
surrounded Trinity on both sides for half a league and trailed in its wake for
almost two, like a pack of gulls following a fishing boat; was a ramshackle
conglomeration of trading vessels and cargo transporters, mobile factories and
farm units, and a thousand different craft upon which people were crammed
together in tightly confined sleeping quarters. It was organic, its shape and
consistency ebbing and flowing within each cycle. The Caravan would shrink when
they drew near to the Dreaming Plains; the mining vessels and smelters and
foundries surging ahead to make best use of the limited time that was available
to them, accompanied by a retinue of City Guards to protect against raiders and
enough craft to accommodate their workforce. Then, as Trinity pushed north and
crossed into the Ice Wastes to bridge the frozen Boreal Ocean, the Caravan
would swell in both size and population as nomadic tribes attached themselves
to its flanks, craving the security the city offered in the desolate north
where strange things haunted the ice.
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