Blood
&
Steam
By
Jamie Sedgwick
Blood & Steam
Part One:
Prologue
I never knew my mother. I was little more than a babe when she headed out into that vast frozen wilderness known as the Wastelands in her old spring-powered plane, searching for the fabled lost city in the ice. According to legends, the city is a strange mystical place filled with wild magic and incredible advanced technology. My mother believed she might find something there to help us, some superior weapon or science that might give us an edge in the war against the Vangars. She never returned.
My mother left me in the care of an eccentric old inventor who raised me as his own. I loved him like a father. I called him Tinker, but I never knew his real name until after he died.
I was born on the side of a mountain in the spring. It was the year the Vangars invaded, the year they killed our king, decimated our cities, and forced our people into slavery. The banks of the Stillwater River were swollen with the runoff from the melting snow in the Blackrock Mountains. Stories say the river ran red that year, that it overflowed its banks and flooded the plains, and all of the land from Anora south to the Badlands became like a river of blood.
Before she left, my mother named me River. It was no mistake she chose that name, in that year. I’ve done my best to live up to it ever since.
Chapter 1
I emerged from the alley like a wraith, wings of smoke and shadow curling up behind me, the filtered moonlight splashing like blood against the rusted and decaying buildings that surrounded me. Down the hill and to the west I could see the flickering lights of Dockside’s shanties in the fog, and I heard the distant rumble of a steam locomotive rattling along the tracks towards Avenston with a load of freshly hewn timber and raw Blackrock steel.
I watched its dark shadow pass through the southern end of the city, moving deeper into Dockside. The train’s whistle sliced through the night, echoing back and forth through the maze of darkened streets. Somewhere in the distance, a child began to cry.
A chill ran up and down my spine as I saw the red crescent moon peeking through the thick layer of smoke that blanketed the city, and the words of Tinker’s eerie warning echoed through the back of my mind. I shuddered, remembering the wild look in his eyes:
“Don’t go out tonight, River, it’s a blood-moon. Dark forces are working against us!”
It was terrifying and tragic all at once, seeing one of the greatest minds of our time given over to dementia and superstition like a common peasant. I had been watching Tinker’s mental health decline for several years. I could tell that the end wasn’t far. His health had been failing ever since the Vangars took him captive, before I was born. All these years later, he still wouldn’t talk about what they had done to him.
In the last few months, Tinker had begun to lose his grip on reality. He saw things: ghosts and monsters, demons from his past. His occasional moments of lucidity were stretching further and further apart, and it was all I could do sometimes just to keep him sedate. I had soothed him with calm words and a warm cup of tea before leaving our Dockside shanty that night- the tea laced with a pinch of powdered duskwood, a mild sedative that would help him sleep through the night. I hated doing that to him; hated drugging the man who had raised me as his own child. I felt I owed him more than that, and yet I had nothing more to offer.
What I did, distasteful as it may have been, was for his own protection. I knew what the Vangars would do to Tinker if he wandered out into the city during one of his fits. Even if they didn’t recognize him (which they probably wouldn’t) a crazy old man like Tinker would have been like a plaything to them. They would have toyed with him like cats torturing a field mouse, bringing death in the slowest and most painful ways that their twisted minds could conceive.
No, it was better just to let the old man fade away. As long as I could keep him comfortable and well-fed, Tinker would be all right. Heartbreaking as it was, I could give Tinker nothing else. He had peace and comfort, and that was more than most.
I drew my attention back to the street and my fingers twitched nervously for the familiar grip of my revolver, though I knew it was still resting on the bookshelf by the stairs at home. I’d had a feeling in my gut all day, and not just because of Tinker’s superstitious ranting. Something just seemed wrong. I should have taken a weapon with me, but I didn’t dare break the law by arming myself in public, even late at night and under the cover of darkness. There were too many suspicious eyes on the streets, too many turncoats ready to sell out to the Vangars for a better job or a few extra coins.
The people of Astatia were weak, dependent on their overlords. They had lost their honor, had their senses numbed by fear and starvation, their pride destroyed by decades of slavery. Most of us had nothing left to live for except the instinct for survival itself. Few still had the courage to fight. Those of us who did knew that nothing would come of it but our own inevitable deaths. If nothing else, we had the desire to spill the Vangars’ blood. For some, that was enough to keep us going.
I hurried into an adjacent alley, my heart pounding as I exposed myself to the weak light of the gas lamps. The sense of impending doom intensified. The blood moon, I thought, gazing up into the thick, black, polluted sky. It’s just superstition, that’s all.
If only it were so easy to believe.
A gust of ocean breeze swirled up the smoke and fog, and for a moment, I almost thought I could see the stars. Then the clouds and vapor closed back in, smothering the life out of the sky. I relaxed as the shadows enveloped me. The dark streets of Avenston were my environment, my home. The place had molded me. It was where I had learned to fight, to survive, and to kill. That last one was the most important of all. To survive in the streets of Avenston, one must always be prepared to kill.
I slipped down the alley and cautiously made my way to the back door of a dilapidated old engine factory. Like most of the city, the tin-sided building was in a bad state of disrepair. Most of the windows had long since broken out and the siding was peeling away from the underlying structure in numerous places. It was the type of place that even the Vangars tried to avoid after dark, and that was what made it a perfect place for the sleepwalkers to meet.
The hinges creaked noisily as I pulled the door open. I yanked on it and stepped inside, blinking at the darkness. “It’s me,” I said in a whisper.
I heard a shuffling noise and someone pulled the cover away from a lantern. The dim light barely illuminated the faces that peered at me from the darkness. “Are you alone?” Kale said.
I nodded, stepping closer. Kale and the others had gathered around a table covered in a pile of gears and machinery parts. The skeletal frames of engine hoists and factory equipment rose up from the shadows behind them like obelisks. I glanced at their faces as I stepped up to the table, taking a mental roll call. All of the regular sleepwalkers were there.
“Sleepwalkers” was what we called our little group of rebels, because we only dared meet late at night, under the cover of darkness. It gave us a way to refer to the group in code, so that if the Vangars or other outsiders overheard us talking, they wouldn’t know what we meant. We were the only resistance, a small handful of revolutionaries plotting and scheming against our overlords in the hope that some day we would throw off the yoke of oppression and drive the Vangars back to their homeland across the Frigid Sea.
Hatch and Shel Woodcarver were there, as always. They were the oldest of the group. The couple had been married longer than most of us had been alive. In fact, they’d raised a child who would have been old enough to
be my father if he hadn’t been killed when the Vangars invaded.
Hatch was a wily old sailor with a scar on his cheek and a twinkle that came to his eyes every time he talked about killing Vangars. Shel was his perfect match, an age-wizened woman with long wavy gray hair who knew how to take care of herself. The others: Breck, the butcher with broad shoulders and a missing left arm, cut off at the elbow by Vangars in his youth. Tasha, the tailor from the upper crust Hillcrest District whose entire family had been slaughtered by the Vangars. She had since married and had three children, but still met with us in secret once a week to keep her dream of vengeance alive.
There were a few others, but not many. Less than a dozen. Our number had been three times that once. Some of us had been killed over the years; others had simply given up hope. The sleepwalkers were dwindling fast.
“Tinker couldn’t come tonight?” Hatch said.
“No, he hasn’t been feeling well.”
“Tell him we miss him,” Shel said. “And we hope he gets better soon.”
I nodded quietly. I didn’t have the heart to tell them Tinker wasn’t going to get better.
“Did you miss me, gorgeous?” Kale said, brushing up against me. He gave me a mischievous smile and I pushed him away.
“Stop it. You know you’re like a brother to me.”
“Like a big, muscular, sexy brother that all your friends are in love with?” he said. Laughter broke out around us.
“No. More like a very special brother who needs a cork on his fork so he won’t put his own eyes out.”
The others hooted at that one and Kale turned slightly red. I was impressed with myself. Being the ruffian he was, Kale wasn’t quick to blush. He had a way with the ladies. He always had, ever since he hit puberty at the ripe old age of eleven. I couldn’t help but think that his only interest in me was due to the fact that I always rebuffed his advances. Or perhaps he just did it to get a reaction out of me. Kale was like that. He had a bit of a mean streak.
Like many of us, Kale had his scars to bear. His entire family had been slain during the Vangar invasion, except for his father who died after a year of hard labor in the Vangar slave mines. Kale had a bright red scar on the side of his face the size of a man’s hand. From a distance, it almost looked like he had been slapped, but up close it was obvious that he had been badly burned. That happened when a Vangar warrior threw a spear at him, but missed and instead impaled the boiler on the back of the steamwagon next to him. Kale bore the scar proudly now, claiming it as proof that the Vangars couldn’t kill him.
“Every scar makes me stronger,” he told me once. “One day I’ll be nothing but scars, and then you’ll know all the Vangars are dead.” Of course that was but one of many boasts, and I took everything Kale said with a grain of salt.
“We’ve got some good stuff this time,” Hatch said, gesturing at the table. I glanced over the pile of parts.
“Well, what do you think?” Kale urged. “Can you use this stuff?”
I shuffled through the mess, looking for anything useful. “Gears, springs, a few bits of Blackrock steel,” I murmured. “No welded pipe?”
“Not this time,” Kale said. “The Vangars got there too fast.”
I arched an eyebrow, wondering just what Kale had done to get those materials. I decided it was better if I didn’t know. “I can’t make weapons without good steel pipe,” I said. “Guns need a barrel.”
One of the gifts I inherited from my mother is the ability to build things. Or perhaps I just picked it up from Tinker. There’s no magic to it, I just have a knack at putting the pieces together. I’m something of a mechanic, but my abilities are nowhere near Tinker’s, nor my mother’s, who could reach into a machine and feel the parts with her mind.
“Maybe not a gun then,” Kale said hopefully. “Can’t you come up with something else?”
I glanced at him and then at the rest of them. If gray hair and wrinkled skin could have made an army, we’d have been in great shape. Kale and I were the only sleepwalkers left under the age of thirty.
“I’m not an engineer,” I sighed. “I can fix things or build weapons if I have the right parts, but what can I do with a pile of gears and springs?”
“Maybe Tinker could look at it, see what he thinks?”
I glanced around the room and saw the disappointed looks on their faces. So much of their hope depended on Tinker. If they knew how bad he was, they might give up altogether. I sighed. “I suppose I could show him, if he’s up to it,” I said. “Put this stuff in a bag and I’ll take it with me.”
“Excellent!” Kale said. “I know he’ll figure something out.”
I smiled weakly, already working on the problem in the back of my mind. I knew it would fall to me, because Tinker simply didn’t have the capacity to build things anymore. It had been two years since he’d been in the workshop below our home. That was when he’d finished his last big project, a machine we both referred to as the boneshaker. I wasn’t sure if he even remembered about it anymore.
The others began moving away from the table, talking in low voices as they scattered around the factory. Our meeting was over. In a few minutes, they would all begin quietly making their way back home. I looked at Kale and then back at the pile of materials, wondering what I would possibly make from it all. It was up to me to make something useful out of that pile of junk and I didn’t have the slightest idea where to start. I had almost nothing to work with.
A feeling of hopelessness washed over me as I realized how pathetic we were. A handful of revolutionaries with no weapons and no army. Kale and I were the only real fighters in the group. As much as we liked to celebrate our minor victories, I knew we couldn’t ever accomplish anything meaningful. Not like this. Not hiding out in abandoned factories, trying to plan an insurgency with a pile of rusty nuts and bolts. The best we could ever hope to accomplish was to kill a Vangar now and then, or help a few slaves escape from the mines. That wasn’t enough. Our resistance was dying.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Kale said, stepping closer.
I arched an eyebrow. “Is that so?”
“Yes. I can see it on your face. You should remember that any one of them would die for our cause.”
“They probably will, eventually,” I muttered. “If old age doesn’t get them first.”
Kale laughed. He started to say something but at that moment a massive explosion went off near the front end of the building. I saw a flash of light and heard the sound of tearing metal. A cloud of dust and smoke poured into the factory, filling the front of the building. Screams filled my ears.
Someone shouted, “Sentinel!”
I exchanged a glance with Kale. We had crossed paths with sentinels before. If this truly was a sentinel, we were in a lot of trouble. Sentinels are Vangars, but they aren’t entirely human. Soon after invading our country, the Vangars learned that half-breeds like my mother possess certain gifts. They have the ability to work magic on both machines and living people. The Vangars used this to their advantage, forcing magic-users to create strange abominations of man and machine.
They experimented first on victims of the war, creating new arms and legs for them, giving fallen soldiers the ability to continue living and working. These artificial limbs were powered by springs at first, but they quickly evolved. It wasn’t long before the Vangars were looking for ways to improve their subjects. With springs and steam power, they created powerful robotic arms and legs, and integrated weapons into the soldiers’ bodies.
These experiments went on for years, until the Vangars finally created the ultimate warrior. They called it the sentinel.
Sentinels stand nine feet tall and have the strength of twenty men. Their armor and helmets protect them from conventional weapons, making them nearly indestructible. The sentinels remain slightly human, but not enough to have any empathy or conscience. If they ever had any, that is. They are Vangars, after all.
Sentinels are the perfect killing machines. They
have very few weaknesses, and even those are deceptive. For instance, the grated metal visor at the front of their helmets appears to be an opening, but the plate is made of specially treated Blackrock steel. It’s nearly impossible to damage, even with a firearm. Most of their armor is similar, and it covers their entire bodies. Against warriors like this, we were helpless.
Instantly, we were moving. Kale disappeared into the shadows off to my right and I raced back to the metal stairway at the center of the building. I leapt over the banister and flew up the stairs. I landed on the catwalk above and paused, scanning the front of the building for a clearer view. At first, I could only see smoke. Then a massive section of the wall gave way with a shrieking sound and the old lumber collapsed inward, crashing across the floor.
The smoke drifted out through the opening and a sentinel stepped through, his massive steel boots thudding against the floor as he moved. I heard the unmistakable whirring sound of the gears and springs that powered his suit. My gaze went to the scattergun he wore in a long holster at his side and then to the massive sword strapped to his back. I sized him up, calculating my chances of winning a battle with this creature. I scanned the area for a weapon, wondering what damage I might do with a length of iron pipe or a scrap of board.
Not much, I thought cynically.
As the smoke cleared, the sentinel crossed the front of the factory and I saw another dark form appear in the opening behind him. My heart fell as a second sentinel appeared, and then a third. Three sentinels! We were doomed.
In unison, they raised their scatterguns and began firing indiscriminately into the building. A chorus of screams went up in the smoky darkness below me. I heard the sounds of the other sleepwalkers scattering throughout the factory, running for their lives. I broke into a run, flying down the catwalk towards the front of the building. I didn’t have a plan at that point. I only knew that I had to distract the sentinels before they killed everyone. I reached the end of the catwalk and without slowing down, I leapt onto the guardrail and plunged forward, hurling myself over the edge.
Blood and Steam (The Tinkerer's Daughter) Page 1
