Gideon Smith and the Brass Dragon

by David Barnett

  “I reckon there’ll be thirty, maybe thirty-five men,” said Cockayne. “I was hoping more might have fled Steamtown since Rowena shot it up and Pinch hauled off to the old mine.”

  Far beyond, to the south, they could see the pall of smoke that hung over Steamtown. Gideon hoped that the slaves and women forced to work in the brothels had been able to escape. Pinch’s hellish little town was dead, more or less. But if he got his hands on Maria and was able to fly the dragon, there was no guessing what fresh terror he would be able to work.

  Gideon looked at Cockayne. “What do you think we should do?”

  Cockayne turned to Maria. “You surprised me. You can ride a horse. Do you think you can shoot?”

  “I didn’t know I could ride until I did it,” she said. “I summoned some hidden memory … Annie Crook’s, I suppose. Perhaps she went riding in Ireland in her youth.”

  It was little things like this that brought Gideon up short, reminded him that Maria was not a flesh-and-blood woman, but the clockwork creation of the genius Hermann Einstein. She was an automaton with the brain of poor old Annie Crook, the tragic London shopgirl who had dared to love a prince and been murdered by the Crown—by his own employers, he reminded himself bitterly—for the good of the nation. Cockayne reached into his saddlebag and handed her a revolver.

  “Let’s hope Annie Crook learned to shoot as well as ride,” he said.

  “Surely you can’t be expecting Maria to fight as well?” said Gideon.

  Cockayne raised an eyebrow. “This ain’t London high society, Smith. We don’t pack the ladies off to do needlework while the men do the important stuff. Unless Maria has any objections?”

  She spun the chamber on the revolver and twirled the gun on her index finger, slapping it into her palm and taking aim with it rested in the crook of her other arm. Cockayne grinned, and Maria said, “None at all.”

  “Maybe we should wait until dark,” suggested Gideon. “We could sneak in and—”

  “And have our asses handed to us on a plate,” said Cockayne. “Look, Smith, as soon as Pinch realizes we’re not at the mine he’ll be hauling his little army right back here to defend his property. We’ve walked into the lion’s den. We don’t have the luxury of waiting for nightfall, of formulating plans, of sneaking around. Pinch’ll be on our asses soon, and we want to be airborne in the dragon by then or we’ve lost.”

  “So…?”

  Cockayne drew both pistols. “Blaze of glory, Smith. It’s all or nothing, win or lose, black or white. We go down there and we take back our dragon, or we die trying.”

  Gideon gazed down the hill. “But it’s suicide.…”

  “Not if we win.”

  Gideon looked at Maria. He’d only just found her, and now he was going to risk losing her again? “What do you think?”

  She smiled. “Blaze of glory, I believe Mr. Cockayne said.”

  Cockayne laughed richly. “All right. Let’s make for the gate. Try to stick together.”

  With that, he dug his heels into his horse’s flanks and whooped loudly as it began to gallop down the hill. Maria and Gideon exchanged a glance, and she smiled and spurred her horse on also.

  “Blaze of glory!” yelled Gideon, and followed them down the hill.

  * * *

  The mood in the Alamo was not good. Bernard Osterman had been put in nominal charge of the mission and given responsibility for looking after the brass dragon. It was a queer-looking thing, and he’d never have believed it could take to the air if he hadn’t seen it himself before it crashed in the desert. There were thirty-two men at the Alamo apart from Osterman, and there were already rumblings of dissent and even mutiny. Mr. Pinch had gone off on some crazy mission and had taken most of the Steamtown men with him. Meanwhile, San Antonio had practically burned to the ground overnight; they’d watched the flames licking the dark sky, seen the groups of men and women—in twos and threes at first, larger mobs later—breaking out of the dormitories and making their bids for freedom. There was no one to stop them, though Osterman had ordered his men to at least try to shoot the packs of escaping slaves that passed anywhere near the Alamo.

  Yesterday he’d had forty-seven men. Fifteen had absconded in the small hours. The rest wanted to know how they were going to get paid, what they were going to eat, and if anyone was stopping the whores escaping. There wasn’t much left of Steamtown now, and that included loyalty; most of the men who had settled there had been drifters, criminals, murderers, and if the things that kept them in San Antonio—money, vittles, women, gambling, and the iron rule of Thaddeus Pinch—were now gone, then there wasn’t much to keep them faithful.

  Osterman stared at the dragon under the tarpaulin. Crazy thing. And it had caused all this trouble. If he were Pinch, he’d be ruing the day he’d ever set eyes on the thing. It had burned Steamtown to the ground without even flapping a wing.

  “Mr. Osterman?”

  He looked up at one of the young bucks. If he was asking about money, or food, or women, Osterman swore he’d—but no. The kid had news.

  “Riders, sir. Three of ’em. Heading this way.”

  “Three?” said Osterman. Didn’t sound much like an invading force. “Maybe it’s a message from Mr. Pinch. Maybe he’s won and he’s on his way back.”

  “You want us to open the gate?”

  Osterman shrugged. Maybe it was supplies. “Keep guns on them, but yeah, open the gate.”

  * * *

  “They’re letting us in!” shouted Gideon.

  “Then they’re fucking idiots!” called Cockayne. “Okay, I’ve seen this place. When the gate opens the dragon will be right in front of us, staked down into the dirt. We’re going to go straight through the plaza to the old church, around the dragon.”

  “Around it?” said Gideon. “Why not straight to it?”

  “They must think we’re from Pinch or something, but they’re pretty quickly going to realize we’re not. We’ll have a tiny window of opportunity, Smith, and it won’t be enough to get the dragon fired up. Go right to the wall, get off your horse, and get behind it. Then follow me.”

  They were two hundred yards away now, and the gate was fully open. There must have been some kind of walkway along the wooden palisade, because Gideon counted maybe ten men with rifles trained on them. He shouted to Cockayne, “Armed men. Should we…?”

  “Yeah,” said Cockayne, then started firing. “¡No rendirse, muchachos!” he yelled. “Blaze of goddamn glory!”

  * * *

  Too late, Osterman realized he’d fucked up badly. Of the ten men on the palisade, six were tumbling, dead, to the dusty ground. And he’d only counted six shots. Whoever the riders were, they didn’t waste bullets.

  “Shoot, you assholes!” he screamed at the remaining four. He turned around, looking for help. The kid who’d come to him was looking frightened, as though he was going to piss himself. “Get to the long barracks, wake those lazy bastards up!”

  The long barracks was where most of them slept when on Alamo guard duty. The mission itself was crumbling and mostly roofless, but it was still a church, and the Steamtown boys might have been the scum of the earth but none of them wanted to sleep there, so it was pretty much empty save for a few boxes of ammunition and supplies. Osterman stood before the mission and turned to face the gates, the dragon laid out before him. He checked his guns. Before he came to Steamtown he’d been a rifleman in the Boston Cavalry Division. They’d drummed him out for screwing the daughter of some Indian chief up near Canada. That was why he’d come to Steamtown, where they let a man take what he wanted and screw who he liked, whether they said yes or no or what. That was why he was going to do his job and defend the goddamn dragon.

  The three riders breached the gate at the same time. He recognized one of them and quailed. Louis Cockayne. Best shot in Texas, they said. There was a man and a woman flanking him. Osterman swallowed and raised his gun. He was going to be the man to take down Louis Cockayne. Thaddeus Pinch would be kissin
g his boots for a year.

  * * *

  “Shit!” said Cockayne as the bullet whizzed past his ear. Gideon glanced at him then picked off a shooter with a rifle who was taking aim to his right. They were inside the mission, but there were men converging on them from all sides, the air singing with the passage of hot bullets. He saw Maria’s gun jerk, and another man crumpled. In front of them was the dragon, and behind it a man in a battered brown hat, his gun raised. Beyond him was their goal, the white Alamo church, a brown door set into a porch.

  “He’s mine,” said Cockayne, and put a bullet into the shoulder of the man standing in front of the church, who sprawled backward into the dust. “Damn. Must be losing my touch.” Cockayne veered off to the right around the dragon, Maria to the left.

  Gideon felt his heart pounding. Blaze of glory. Why did he always feel so alive when he was closest to death? The huge brass snout of Apep was in front of him beneath a flapping corner of the tarpaulin. He dug his heels in and the horse leaped forward, high into the air and over the covered wings of the dragon. Gideon couldn’t stop himself from letting out one of Cockayne’s whoops as his horse thundered into the dust, skidding to a halt before the Alamo porch.

  “Everyone off! Use your horses as cover!” ordered Cockayne.

  Gideon slid to the ground just as two bullets slammed into his mount. He felt a sudden pang as it whinnied and began to topple.

  “Door’s locked,” said Cockayne. “Maria? Can you use a bit of that muscle you decked me with?”

  She nodded and put her delicate foot to the door, drew it back, and kicked it inward with a splintering of wood.

  “Good girl,” said Cockayne. “Everyone inside.”

  The shooting stopped for a moment as they tumbled in and Cockayne found an old pew to wedge against the door. Gideon looked around. The church was largely roofless, dust covering the altar and the broken pews. Whatever there had been in the way of gold or decorations had been looted; black Bibles lay like dead birds scattered across the floor. The sun was beating down to the center of the nave, but in the shadows by the door it was cool.

  “Now what?” asked Gideon, breathing heavily. In his hand he clutched the cloth bag containing the artifacts that allowed the dragon to fly.

  Cockayne wiped the back of his mouth with his shirtsleeve and began to dig in his pockets for bullets. “Now’s the time for you to come up with one of your clever plans,” he said.

  * * *

  “Do you think Gideon got a good enough start on them?” asked Bent.

  Rowena shrugged. It had been more than an hour since Pinch and the Steamtowners had set off in pursuit. “I don’t know. I hope so.”

  “Do you think Pinch and the Steamtowners’ll come back here to finish what they started?”

  “Depends if they get the dragon. If they do, then we’re in trouble.”

  They had escaped the confrontation with no deaths. That was something to be thankful for. And a change had come over Oscar, Hamish, and the others. They had worked together, and they had survived. They seemed to have shed the broken, beaten mien they had worn like masks. They no longer seemed frightened. They were all working together, sawing down trees, collecting food and water, creating a corral to keep Ackroyd’s cattle in one place.

  The Nameless was standing in the dust in front of the house, peering out into the prairie. He was an odd one. Rowena could quite believe what people said, that he was some kind of spirit or ghost. He seemed solid enough, but there was definitely something otherworldly about him.

  She turned her attention to the Spanish girl, Inez, and her Indian lover. Chantico’s people had gone back to their settlement with the promise that they would return if needed. Inez and Chantico seemed to be arguing.

  Bent chuckled. “She’s got him right where she wants him.”

  Inez glared at Chantico and stalked toward Rowena and Bent. “He is an idiot,” she spat.

  “But you love him,” said Rowena.

  Inez sighed. “Yes.” She pulled at the top button of her black shirt. “He gave me this. I asked him where he got it. I thought it was an old Yaqui thing, but he said—”

  Rowena stared at the red gem hanging on the golden chain. She said slowly, “Aloysius? Tell me that isn’t…”

  “Oh, eff,” he said. “It is. It’s the Faxmouth amulet.”

  Inez bit her lip. “It is important, yes?”

  Rowena nodded. “Yes, it is very important. And it should be a long way from here.” She thought for a moment then glanced back at the Skylady III.

  Bent groaned.

  * * *

  Osterman’s shoulder felt as though it were on fire. He held a handkerchief to it that quickly blossomed red with his blood. He dragged himself to his feet, his head spinning, and looked around. Seventeen dead. Shit. He looked at the church. Still, they were trapped now.

  “Get two men on every corner of the church,” he called weakly, spitting into the dust. “The rest of you, up front.”

  He was losing blood fast, and the edges of his vision were feathered with darkness. Someone passed him a tin cup of water, and he drank gratefully from it. It made him feel a little better, well enough to shout at the closed door of the church.

  “Cockayne. There’s nowhere to go now. You better just open that door and throw out your weapons, then come out with your hands up.”

  He felt the others gathering at his back. He turned to them, staggering slightly. They looked worried. A few of them nudged each other, then one of the younger men stepped forward.

  “Mr. Osterman? We’ve been talking … we’re not rightly happy with the idea of going up against Louis Cockayne.”

  “He’s just a man,” said Osterman, his throat suddenly dry. He looked around at the seventeen corpses. He said it louder. “He’s just a man. We’ve all got a job to do, and by God we’re going to do it.”

  “The boys, they’ve been wondering … what if Mr. Pinch doesn’t come back? What if we’re just doing this for … for no wages, nothing?”

  Osterman didn’t really have an answer for that. He looked beyond his remaining men, to the open gate and the desert beyond. His eyesight blurred again, then he realized there was dust rising from the hills, a line of dust and sand. He staggered, holding on to the kid for support. He said, “It’s all right.” Then he slumped to the ground.

  * * *

  Cockayne peered over the lip of the window, through the slats of the busted shutter, his back to the wall and his freshly reloaded pistols ready.

  “What’s happening?” asked Gideon.

  “Nothing,” said Cockayne. “The guy I got in the shoulder looks like the boss. I think the others aren’t keen to go up against us.” He smiled tightly. “Glad to see I’ve still got it.”

  “Where did you learn to shoot like that?” asked Gideon.

  “Lifetime on the plains, I suppose. Started off shooting rats on my daddy’s farm in Connecticut.”

  “Can you teach me? I mean, I’ve done firearms training, but—”

  Cockayne grinned. “Sure I can, Smith. Soon as we get out of here we’re going for a long, cold beer, and I’ll teach you to shoot the balls off a horsefly from fifty feet.”

  “I think I would quite like to learn how to improve my own aim,” said Maria.

  “You, too, Miss Maria,” said Cockayne. “Hell, maybe we should even show Bent how to tell one end of a—” He paused. “Shit.”

  “What’s happening?” said Gideon.

  The smile dropped from Cockayne’s face. “We got company.”

  * * *

  Thaddeus Pinch climbed stiffly from the Steamcrawler and stepped down onto the plaza in front of the Alamo. His dragon was untouched, but there were a dozen and a half bodies scattered about. Looked like he’d gotten there none too soon. Most of the Steamcrawlers had blown gaskets, and the horses had been ridden into the ground, but it had been worth it.

  The idiot he’d left in charge—Osterman, that was it, German name, he’d never liked Ge
rmans, no fun in ’em—was bleeding from his shoulder and trying to stand up. Pinch marched over to him, exhausts pumping out steam from his leg and arm joints, and looked down.

  “What the fuck happened?”

  “Cockayne,” said Osterman dreamily.

  “Where is he?”

  “In the church.”

  “With Smith? And the clockwork girl?”

  Osterman nodded, his eyes flickering. “We opened the gate. Thought they was riders from you.”

  “Dickwad,” said Pinch, and shot Osterman in the head. It was no less than he’d do for a dog or horse that was injured so badly. It was a kindness. He limped past the dragon to the doors of the old church and coughed, spitting phlegm into the dust.

  “Ain’t no sanctuary in those church walls, Louis,” he called. “You’re back on my turf now, so you might as well do as you’re told.” He waited for a response, but there was none. He continued, “We can do this one of two ways, Louis. Either you three come out of there with your hands on your heads, and we sit down and talk all civilized-like, or we come in there to get you. Either way, I’m getting my hands on your little clockwork girl, and my dragon’s gonna fly. You understand?”

  He squinted and waved his good hand for the muttering behind him to stop while he listened for Cockayne’s answer. He saw the smallest movement at one of the windows, then a voice called out.

  “Fuck you.”

  Pinch pulled back his jaw in his grotesque parody of a smile. “I was hoping you were gonna say that.”

  23

  BLAZE OF GLORY

  “What are we going to do?” asked Gideon.

  Cockayne continued to peer through the broken window shutter. He said, “Hey, ain’t you supposed to be the Hero of the Empire?”

  “Don’t get irritable,” said Gideon.

  Cockayne took a deep breath. “Sorry. The threat of impending death tends to do that to a man.” He turned away from the window. “The goddamn dragon is so close I can practically touch it.”