Free Timepiece by Heather Albano

to use. Similarly, once the secret of their creation had been mastered, it was tactically sound to increase their numbers. But the idea of sending them to places too dangerous for the average British soldier chafed Brown like an ill-fitted boot. There should be no place considered too dangerous for the average British soldier. And the credit for victory obtained in those dangerous places ought to go to brave British soldiers, not to Wellington’s unnatural battalions.
     
    But it was the unnatural battalions—now they were unnatural regiments—who had been awarded credit for the grand victory over the Russians in the Crimea, and then for settling what might have been a nasty rebellion in India. The Times had trumpeted both victories to the skies, and “Wellington’s monsters” had become the nation’s heroes. It was rumored among the higher echelons of the Army that Wellington himself had disliked the term, but that was a fact kept secret from the public. Attaching the name of Waterloo’s hero to the creatures conferred upon them a sort of legitimacy, a faint cast-off gleam from the Iron Duke’s halo. Each year since Waterloo, Whitehall had reduced the funds needed to pay the wages of human soldiers and diverted that money to the creation and upkeep of more and more Wellington monsters. There was even a secret training facility far north in the Scottish Highlands—the sort of secret that most Army officers knew, though none discussed out loud. In the thirty-seven years following their first victory, the monsters had been taught steadily more complex maneuvers and armed with steadily more impressive weaponry. They never needed leave or salary or improvement in living conditions; they rarely sickened and recovered quickly from injuries; they were rotated like clockwork between the ever-expanding perimeter of the Empire and the training grounds in the Highlands. They were an effective and easily maintained dream come true.
     
    Then three years ago, they had rebelled, turning the dream into a nightmare. They had killed their human officers and taken over the training facility so smoothly and quietly that it was some days before anyone suspected anything amiss. Whereupon Brown and his Light Division had been hastily collected and dispatched north to restore order—with only the sketchiest and most misleading of information as to what they would face. Human soldiers and Wellington monsters did not customarily fight alongside one another, and Brown and his men had no way of knowing how dangerous an enemy awaited them. Damn Whitehall. Not only were the things enormous and fast and capable of seeing in the dark, but they also handled the muskets and artillery that had been part of the training facility with the facility of the very well-trained. After two days of staggering losses, Brown had pulled his men back to a defensible perimeter and wired to London for reinforcements. Which was when the man in gray had turned up.
     
    He had claimed to be from Whitehall, giving a name that was so obviously an alias that Brown had never bothered to remember it. He was armed with the right kinds of credentials and the right kinds of passwords, but for the rest of it, he looked like a madman—covered in mud, white hair askew, a bruise high on his left cheekbone giving him a particularly rakish air. And his talk was as wild as his appearance. He insisted that Brown press the attack immediately, that instant, not pausing to regroup or wait for reinforcements. “They will regroup too,” he had said. “If you do not defeat them tonight, you will never defeat them.”
     
    Defeating them that night had been manifestly impossible, and Brown had refused to sacrifice his men for no purpose, finally ordering the arrest of the importunate man in gray. Which had led to a scuffle in the darkness, and the man in gray had somehow eluded his captors and fled into the night. Brown had ordered the flogging of the soldiers who had lost him,