D: L&L - Part 43 | Narrator: Little Toy Soldier
Turnbuckle flipped himself over mechanically, arms and legs barely responding, wheezing, creaking, slipping on the packed ice. His eyes clicked open and closed, blinking against the night, tiny tin motors whirring in his head as his eyes adjusted the aperture of the irises and opened up to draw in more light.
He didn't know where he was. All he knew was that it was cold, that it was dark, that he had fallen and could not get up.
He immediately begin a status check. Arms. Legs. Neck. Feet. Hands. Head. The order was out of sync. His sync was out of order. Check. Check. Check. Negative response. Check. Chest internals. Dyno. Gyro. Vocal cortex. Check. Check. Negative response. Check. Check. The process continue, halted, sputtered, paused, continued. He would have frowned if his tinny mouth could have done so. Instead, he uttered a smallest squeak, an attempt at a sigh. Vocal cortex off-line. There would be no calling for help.
Internals status check complete. VC off-line. Left leg below the knee joint disengaged. Right arm inoperable. Dyno on; gyro spinning up. IEG at half life. Left occular inoperable; left audiotron inoperable.
External status check in progress. Ravine. Ice. Snow. Estimated date/time via star calculation: 23 April/0300. Sunrise estimation: 0615. Danger: minimal.
Turnbuckle would have signed again, but he was embarrassed at the tiny squeak he'd managed before, so he shut down the air lines to his vocal cortex and mentally shrugged. There was nothing to be done there until he could be repaired...if the Mistress didn't crush him instead and leave to the smelter.
Gears groaned and creaked as he sat up, pushing against a heavy blanket of ice and snow that had come down after him, tumbling along like a miniature metallic avalanche. He turned his head and craned his neck. It groaned with the strain and he wondered how close he'd come to losing his head when the footing gave way and he'd slipped and tumbled and left his comrades screaming.
Why had they screamed? What had they seen?
He hadn't seen a thing. One moment they were less than a kilometer from the castle, Kiamo Ko looming black and forbidding against the backdrop of a star-filled sky. The next moment his brothers were screaming and he was charging forward, then slipping, tumbling, falling into snow and ice. Somewhere above, he thought, there were perhaps dozens of little bodies like his littering the rocky ground, bleeding black lube all across the driven snow. Somewhere above, he thought, there might be tiny men searching for him or pressing on. Somewhere above -- there was no telling what he might find, but find it he would. Arm and leg damage be damned; he might be just one little toy soldier, but he could still move, still climb back up the mountain, still complete his mission.
The sun dripped its first ray of golden honey on the high peaks of the Great Kells just as Turnbuckle managed the edge of the ravine and set his eyes on the littered snowbank. The contingent was all there; he counted all thirty-nine in seconds. None of them had moved. None of them was operable. He'd checked each one.
Each was intact. No scratches or abrasions. No dents. No mangled joints or twisted limbs. No signs whatsoever of a struggle. It was if they had simply fallen in the snow, blown out like so many candles before an open window. He squatted near the center of the small, impromptu graveyard and looked over the little bodies, wondering at the terrors of the night and what had taken them so swiftly and so completely.
Then his eye drifted to the towering black mass that seemed to simmer in the morning light, deflecting the sun's rays one by one. Somewhere up there, he knew, were the answers to all of his questions. And there also, he hoped, was the goal of his quest: the Grimmerie. He only had to get that far.
Casting about, Turnbuckle caught the leg of his nearest compatriot and drug him slowly closer. One leg below the knee, one arm, one eye. It would be some time before he would feel whole again, but he would soldier on.