by Chris Paton
Emilia slipped off the chair and followed Luise to the end of the car. They shrugged their arms into the long, wool jackets and pulled the stiff collars up around their necks. The smell of gas lingered on the cool night air and Luise wondered if the airship had exploded, or been forced to land with a punctured balloon. Perhaps, she thought, from when Kettlepot and Khronos fought on the bridge? I had better not tell Emilia that.
Luise climbed down the ladder and onto the tracks. She waited for Emilia to join her before walking along the train behind the emissary skirmish line. Wallendorf's controllers, one for each emissary, were guarded by German musketeers and the occasional sharpshooter armed with what Luise imagined was a Lightning Jezail, like the one she had seen Smith and Noonan use on The Amphitrite. It seemed so long ago, and yet, the pain in her side, though diminished, reminded Luise that it had all happened recently, and that she really should find the doctor before they reached Arkhangelsk.
“What did you say?” said Emilia.
“Say? I didn't say anything,” said Luise.
“Then you must have been thinking very loud.”
“Of course.” Luise smiled and led Emilia to the front of the train. She paused at the sight of Hannah and the officers talking and pointing at a heap of heavy debris in the centre of the tracks in The Tanfana's path. The emissaries clanked into a ring around the debris, hiding all but the largest pieces from view.
“What have you found?” said Luise as she stopped beside Hannah.
Hannah looked at Luise and then frowned at Emilia.
“She's with me.”
“Fine,” said Hannah. “Make sure she stays with you.”
“I will,” said Luise and gestured at the ring of emissaries. “What have you found?”
“Khronos, we think.”
Luise felt a tingle of fear tremble through her body. Visions of Khronos as he merged with Jacques’ body on the bridge of The Flying Scotsman, shortly before he attacked Luise with tendrils of vicious energy flashed through her mind and she stumbled.
“Are you all right, Miss?” said Emilia as she caught hold of Luise's arm and helped her find her balance.
“I am fine, thank you.” Luise controlled her breathing with a few long, deep breaths and then she took a step forwards.
“Miss Hanover?”
“Luise, stop,” said Hannah. “Let the emissaries investigate.”
“I have to see if he is there. I must see him.”
“Ja, in good time, but let the emissaries...”
A crackle of ancient energy blistered out of the spaces in the debris and curled around the neck of the emissary standing in a straight line in front of The Tanfana. Luise watched as the controller gripped the levers inside the box hanging from his chest harness. The man's shoulders twitched as he tried to gain command of the emissary only to see it turn and march, sword in the high attack position, towards the train.
“Stop that emissary,” shouted the officer standing beside Hannah. He reached for the pistol holstered on his belt on the opposite side of his sword, but Hannah stopped him, placing her hand upon his.
“You won't stop it with that,” she said. “Use the train.”
“Of course,” the officer nodded smartly and signalled for the driver to steam up as he cleared the tracks.
“Stay right beside me, Emilia,” said Luise as the emissary clanked towards them, the coil of energy around its body surging along the length of the sword and blistering at the tip.
Emilia fidgeted as the engineer blew the train whistle and The Tanfana lurched forwards. Once the iron plough had passed, Emilia slipped away from Luise and ran alongside the train towards the engineering car.
“Emilia,” Luise shouted and reached for her only to grasp the night air where Emilia's coat was but a moment before.
“I told you to keep her with you,” said Hannah. “I won't have the girl's death on my hands.”
“I brought her with me,” said Luise. “I am responsible for her.”
“And yet,” Hannah waved at the retreating figure disappearing into the shadows.
“I know where she is going. She will be safe.”
“Unlike us,” said Hannah as she took hold of Luise's arm and pulled her away from the tracks and out of the emissary's path. Two more strands of blistering blue light burst out of the debris and coiled around an emissary, one on each side of the debris pile, just as The Tanfana closed on the emissary in front of it.
“If he uses the emissaries against us...” Luise said.
“Then we are in trouble.”
Khronos appeared then, shattering the heavy wooden spars and ribs of the airship piled above him with a pulse of energy. He stepped onto the tracks and stretched his arms. He wielded the emissaries attached to the end of each arm like hammers, sweeping them back and forth, tumbling the emissaries, soldiers and controllers as if they were lead toys set up by a child on a tabletop. Once the men and machines were scattered, Khronos thrust the two emissaries ahead of him to join the first as it crashed into the train. The Tanfana ground to a stop as the engineer shouted to the stokers for more steam.
Luise looked up at the burr of propellers circling above the train. The pilots dropped smoke missiles around Khronos allowing the men to crawl free. As the soldiers and controllers cleared the smoke, the officers formed defensive perimeters and held their breath as, one by one, the controllers arranged the emissaries in two lines, leaving only three machines in Khronos' clutches.
Khronos walked forwards and Luise gasped at what he had done to Jacques’ body. The young porter from The Flying Scotsman was distorted with muscles, his arms knotted with veins coiled beneath his skin like snakes. Luise shuddered as the Father of Time lifted the emissaries like hammers and battered them against the steam train. The engineer and the stokers leaped from the cab as Khronos pummelled it from the left, the right, and above.
“We need that train,” said Hannah. She yelled at the officers and called for a counter attack.
The first wave of four emissaries, two from each side of the tracks, stormed through the debris surrounding Khronos and pulled his attention from the train. With a snap of his arms he recalled the emissaries at the end of his tethers and swept his attackers off their feet. Wallendorf's officers launched the second wave, and the third, each wave slowed by the need to clamber over the one before it.
“We can't keep this up,” said Hannah.
“And we can't get near him. The controllers just can't react fast enough,” Luise said and watched as the last two waves of emissaries clanked around their fallen comrades as the controllers recalled as many emissaries as they could.
The sound of wrenching metal and the blistering crackle of Khronos' archaic energy muffled the approach of another combatant. Luise felt the rhythmic pounding of its metal feet on the ground before she saw it, and heard the soft voice of a young girl singing.
“Oh, the Grand Old Duke of York...”
Kettlepot leaped onto the tracks and charged towards Khronos.
“He had ten thousand men...”
Khronos raised his arms to crush the rogue emissary between the metal fists he controlled at the end of the time tendrils extending from his fingers, but Kettlepot threw himself to the ground and rolled beneath the crushing fists. The emissaries above Kettelpot slammed into one another, flattening the remains of their globus tanks and exploding above the tracks in a cloud of brass plates, screws and bolts. The energy tethered to the emissaries dissipated, retreating into Khronos' fingers with a final crackle of protest. The Father of Time had just one hammer left. He clapped his hands together and swung it at Kettlepot in a two-handed grip.
“He marched them up to the top of the hill,” sang Emilia as Khronos roared at her beloved emissary. “And he marched them down again,” she sang and smiled at Luise on her way past the battered cab of The Tanfana.
“I don't believe it,” said Hannah as Kettlepot ducked beneath Khronos' swing and slammed a huge, bronze fist into the demon'
s chest.
The emissary flew out of Khronos' grip as the energy tether dissolved and the demon landed hard on the dirt. Two Wallendorf Flyers circled lower and lower as the pilots dropped smoke missiles from one hand, steering the Nachtfalter with the other. Emilia kept her distance and raised her voice to compete with the burr of the propellers and the whine of damaged emissaries crawling and stumbling with their controllers towards the engineering car.
“And when they were up, they were up,” she sang as Kettlepot gripped Khronos in his left hand. He lifted the demon off the ground and into the air.
“And when they were down, they were down,” Emilia sang and Kettlepot slammed the demon into the ground. “And when they were only halfway up...”
Kettlepot lifted Khronos once again as a flyer swooped in low, too low, and the demon cast a tendril around the flyer and was wrenched free of Kettlepot's grip.
“They were neither up nor, oh...” said Emilia and her hands shrank to her sides. Kettlepot lifted his head and watched the flyer fly high into the night sky. Emilia screamed as the pilot was thrown out of the flyer, the sound of his body crunching into the ground softened only by the clank of Kettlepot's cloven feet as the emissary ran towards Emilia. Luise ran too, and slipped around the emissary to pull Emilia into her arms.
“It's okay, Emilia. I've got you.”
“But the pilot,” said Emilia as she lifted her head. “I couldn't save him.”
“No, but you managed to save everyone else. See,” Luise said and turned Emilia so she could see Hannah and the officers as they directed the men back to the train. “Now we just have to see how badly The Tanfana is damaged, make repairs, and then we can get going.”
“To Arkhangelsk?”
“Yes,” said Luise. “We must stop Khronos, and, with your help,” she said and looked up at Kettlepot. “I think we might just have a chance.”
Chapter 18
The Svyato-Troitsky Cathedral
Arkhangelsk
July, 1851
Nikolas Skuratov watched the German Confederation ship as it entered the River Dvina and sailed past his hiding place in the rubble of the cathedral grounds. The crimson hull of the ship was familiar to Nikolas. Despite the pain and suffering each ship unloaded at the Arkhangelsk docks, he loved the colour and had even painted the star on the globus tank of his emissary in the same deep crimson shade that most of the people of the city associated with death. As he watched the ship manoeuvre alongside the dock he nibbled at a piece of stale bread, sucking at the corners until they were moist, and then biting one chunk after another until his mouth was full. He sat there every evening, his cheeks stuffed like a hamster, watching the German boats unload a troop of blue liveried emissaries at one end of the ship, while taking on great buckets of ore at the other.
Nikolas turned at the crack of masonry behind him. He chewed the bread in his mouth as fast as he could, forming the words he wanted to say as soon as he swallowed.
“You can't come in, Molotok,” he said and picked at the crumbs that tumbled out of his mouth. Nikolas licked them from his fingers and scrambled over the broken chunks of cathedral and into the evening light. “How many times must I tell you?” Nikolas said and reached up to place his hand on the emissary's blue dented plates. “You can't fit in my hiding place. You have to stay in your own,” he said and pointed at a three-walled building with a dilapidated roof of black timber. The emissary's neck joints whined as it shook its head. “Fine,” said Nikolas. “Stay outside and get caught. See if I care.” Nikolas turned to hide his face as he knew the emissary could read him like a book.
It had been almost three months since the occupation began, and over four weeks ago when Nikolas found Molotok lying in a heap of scrap metal where the Germans had discarded him. Nikolas still wondered why they had thrown away the most vicious of the emissaries, the one everybody was afraid of, the one that had slain Mayor Chelyuskin right there on the docks opposite the cathedral. Nikolas remembered the grey star on the emissary's chest, the same star he had since painted crimson like the ships.
Nikolas' life changed that day he found Molotok. He had been running from hiding place to hiding place ever since he had been parted from his father, when the people of Arkhangelsk fled from the emissaries' swords. Bullied by the street gangs into stealing, and living hand to mouth on stale scraps and smelly water, Nikolas had lost weight, lost his parents, and had almost lost hope until he found Molotok. With nothing to lose, Nikolas had filled the emissary's boiler with water and its furnace with kindling, stoking the fire with broken chair legs and rotten timbers from the warehouse roof. As the emissary steamed into life, Nikolas had fiddled with a discarded control box, only to find it was both broken and unnecessary. The emissary, it seemed, had a life of its own. It was also fiercely loyal and had taken to Nikolas like a dog, an eight foot tall dog with a devastating number of combat moves. Each day Nikolas stoked the emissary's furnace, his own fire, the fire of hope, was rekindled.
It had not been difficult to name the emissary. When the largest members of the street gang discovered Nikolas and the emissary, they had beaten him for neglecting his duties. It was the last beating he had received, and the first time he had seen the emissary in action since that day on the docks. With a single hammer-like punch, the emissary had slammed the gang leader into the opposite wall of the warehouse. The others fled and Nikolas dropped his jaw in awe.
“Wow. That was incredible.”
Nikolas stopped the emissary as it clanked through the debris on the warehouse floor towards the man on the ground. He ran in front of it and waved his arms as the man stumbled onto the street.
“Stop,” he said and the emissary had stopped. Nikolas held up his hand and splayed his fingers. The emissary did the same. When Nikolas made a fist, the emissary made a bigger one. “Molotok,” Nikolas said as he reached up to place his palm on the emissary's fist. “Hammer,” he said.
Molotok had hammered a lot more since that day in the warehouse. So much so, he and Nikolas moved through the city only at night to escape the patrols searching for them during the day. But the night, Nikolas smiled as he looked up at the sky, is for hunting.
The late light of summer had seen a doubling of the German patrols. The leader of the German Confederation force occupying Arkhangelsk, Rutger Venzke, had posted a reward for the capture of Nikolas and Molotok, posters of which now decorated the walls of children inspired by Nikolas and his emissary. Nikolas hoped his father would be proud of him as he stalked the German patrols and ambushed them on cramped city streets. From the skinny and sickly youth he was before the occupation, Nikolas had grown into a hardened resistance fighter, surviving on stale bread and hard fighting. Of course, even he would admit that it was Molotok that did the fighting. But, Nikolas mused, I am the one that tells him who to fight.
“Well, Molotok. Seeing as you are up and about, we may as well get started.” Nikolas reached into his hiding space and pulled a satchel out from beneath a slab. He slung it over his shoulder and took a cap from his pocket which he pulled snugly onto his head. Molotok watched him. “I'm ready. What about you?”
The emissary lifted its foot above an angular chunk of masonry and stamped on it, crushing the stone into a fine dust beneath its cloven foot.
“Looks like we're both ready,” Nikolas said with a nod He pulled the collar of his jacket up and around his neck and began picking his way around the rubble in the cathedral grounds and into the cobbled street.
“We have to be careful tonight, Molotok,” he said as he walked. The emissary clanked alongside the boy, its shadow engulfing him. “The word on the street is that Venzke has doubled the reward for our capture. They want me alive,” he said and scowled. “But they want you in pieces. I guess we'll just have to disappoint them, eh?”
Molotok flexed the thick brass fingers of its left hand which Nikolas recognised as the emissary's standard response at the beginning of their nightly patrols.
“I'll play the ra
bbit again. It seems to work every time. But this time...” Nikolas stopped at the sound of several emissaries clanking around the corner of the street. He ducked into the shadows of a side street and pressed his back against the wall as Molotok clanked past him. The patrol came closer and Nikolas held up three fingers.
“One,” he said and folded his index finger onto his thumb. Molotok's neck whined as the emissary dipped its head to look at Nikolas and then lifted it again to scan the street. “Two,” Nikolas whispered and closed his middle finger.
The patrol paused at the top of the street. Nikolas watched as they sent a scout into the grounds of the cathedral. They knew we would be there, he thought as he held up his third finger. Molotok shifted the balance of weight on its knees and Nikolas remembered another thing he needed to get hold of – more grease. He held his breath as the creak of rusty joints echoed within the narrow passage of the side street.
Nikolas heard the scout return and give a quick report in German that the grounds were empty, as far as he could see. Nikolas waved his hand in front of Molotok's faceplate and folded the third finger. “Three,” he mouthed and ran into the street.
“There,” the officer shouted as Nikolas raced past the patrol and alongside the cathedral. The scouts, two young soldiers, chased after him. Nikolas risked a quick look over his shoulder as the German controllers commanded their emissaries into a clumsy charge, following the scouts in pursuit of Nikolas.
“They never learn,” Nikolas wheezed as he pulled his satchel tight against his body, his lungs were already burning. The officer, he saw, was alone with the two emissary controllers. Easy pickings for Molotok. Nikolas heard the rusty whine of Molotok's knees as the emissary lurched out of the side street and surprised the Germans with several jabs of its brass knuckles.
Nikolas tugged a pair of thick leather gloves from his pockets and skidded to a halt by the side of a thin wooden portcullis that used to boast the city's most fragrant roses, but now only thorns. He took a moment to calm his ragged breathing and then scrambled up the thorny ladder and onto a low roof from where he could see Molotok. The scouts leaped onto the portcullis only to curse and jump down onto the street to pick thorns out of their bloody hands. The emissaries, following the last commands they were given before Molotok attacked their controllers, clanked down the street and out of sight.
