For Steam and Country: Book One of the Adventures of Baron Von Monocle

by Jon Del Arroz

  “I am not sitting this fight out, especially after they shot Talyen!” I protested. “Share some of your bullets with me. I’m out.”

  “No! I’m here to protect you, Zaira. That’s what knights do!”

  I narrowed my eyes, expectantly holding out my hand, palm up. I focused my eyes on him, daring him to keep questioning me.

  James handed me the bullets. One of the smartest things he’s ever done.

  I fumbled with the gun, trying to find where to load the bullets. I’d never done that before, even with the training the commandos gave me. It was an embarrassing time to realize that. “James, I need you to help me load them,” I said.

  He grimaced, then handed me his gun. “Swap you,” he said, taking the bullets and my original gun. He loaded the bullets in a swift motion, clicking them into place. Then he crouched and leaned against the crate that concealed us.

  The two other knights backed into the room. Frances made an error in exposing himself and several bullets pelted him in the chest. He collapsed. Cid pressed against the wall around the corner, laying down suppression fire as he did so.

  James stood from his crouch as Frances went down. “No!”

  “Get down James. We’ll have time to grieve later,” Cid said.

  A bullet whizzed by James’s head. He hurriedly ducked behind the crate, joining me again. His face had turned pale as a ghost.

  MOVE. KILL THEM.

  The voice resonated in my head. My body wanted to comply, but that order made no sense. James and I held in too sure a spot to get up and fire weapons. Despite my rational thoughts, my legs started to move. Then I heard footsteps approaching.

  The Wyranth soldiers came to the edge of the hall in front of us, guns pointing outward. I couldn’t get a good line of sight on them from behind the crate.

  “You should surrender now. We are right outside the capital, and even if we go down, there will be others to take our places. You’re outnumbered thousands to a few,” one of the soldiers said.

  “You’ll kill us anyway if we surrender!” James shouted back at them.

  “This is your last warning.”

  Three shots rang out, one after the other in succession. At first, I’d thought that had been the soldiers firing warning shots at us. What could we do? The soldier was right, we couldn’t hope to escape with such odds.

  James stood. My own legs wanted to move already so I joined him, dropping my gun to the floor as I assumed he meant to surrender.

  He didn’t surrender, but stood in awe of what he saw. Each of the Wyranth soldiers fell flat, face first into the room in front of us. I peeked behind the crate to see that they’d each been shot with perfect shots to their heads.

  “By Malaky, I hate all this messy fighting,” my father said, not bothering to avoid the bodies as he strode forward. He looked like the hero in the stories, gruff, strong, full of purpose. He had Talyen draped over his shoulder. “My apologies for the delay, but I was able to get a closer look at the creature below. Horrific looking stuff. It took those soldiers long enough to not be in a place where I had my back to one of them as well. Everyone out here okay?”

  James and I stood, and his knight mentor moved to my father’s side to assist with Talyen. “What of Captain von Cravat?”

  My father moved her carefully from his shoulder, helping Cid to place her on the ground below. The wound was clear. Despite all the shots fired before, only a single bullet had pierced her shoulder. That had been enough to soak her small clothes with blood.

  The knight tore the fabric away from her shoulder, maintaining her dignity by not exposing her chest. He glanced toward the hallway, and my eyes followed. A trail of blood led back to where she had taken the wound. He frowned. “She’s lost a good amount of blood, which is why she’s fainted. We’ll need to put some pressure on it and stop the bleeding.”

  “Need my knife to dig the bullet out?” James asked.

  Cid shook his head. “I wouldn’t take the bullet out unless I knew it caused problems where it rested. Too much risk of causing other damage through the surgery. Further, if we start digging around with your knife, which is not sterilized, there’s too much risk of infection. I’d leave that to an actual medic.” He pointed to one of the downed Wyranth soldiers. “Quickly, rip off a good portion of his tunic, say this wide.” He made a motion with his hands as he spoke.

  LEAVE HER. SHE WILL SLOW YOU DOWN.

  I jabbed my fingers into my ears, twisting to see if something was stuck in there. I could hear the voice so clearly, but it wasn’t coming from the room. All I wanted was for it to go away and leave me alone. It gave the worst commands. By the looks of the others around the room, still focused on Talyen’s health, no one else heard it.

  James gave me a perplexed look as he saw me picking my ear. He moved to one of the Wyranth and cut off some of the dead man’s uniform with his knife. He held a piece of fabric up. “This work?”

  “Perfect,” the knight said, taking the fabric. He folded it and stretched it tightly around Talyen’s shoulder and pulled to ensure it stayed. Then he tied it into a knot. With one more tug to make sure it was secure, he nodded. “This should stabilize her if she hasn’t lost too much blood already.”

  My father paced back toward the big room we’d just left.

  “What was that in there?” I asked him.

  “Come with me, Zaira. You two stay here and watch over Talyen,” my father said. He disappeared through the hallway.

  I sped to catch up with him and reached him as he peered over the railing toward the center pit. This time, I came close enough for a good look as well.

  What I found shocked me. For lack of a better word, I saw a giant blob with bubbles forming across its skin. Each pulsed like a chest taking a breath, and then descended back into the main mass. The bubbles didn’t have any noticeable pattern about them. The whole thing was blue and bright, just like the light that it projected. It had large veins that stretched across it, thicker than a person. They pulsed as well. “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “A giant,” my father said.

  HE LIES.

  The voice pierced through me, guiding my thoughts this time. “Those are kids’ stories, father.”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “They’re not. I thought they were just legends as well, but this is proof of their existence.”

  “Aren’t giants supposed to look like a person, but, you know, giant?” I couldn’t help but stare down at it.

  “Long ago, when I was on… I think it was my third journey across the ocean to open trade negotiations with the Tribes of Zenwey, I came across a book. No doubt you’ve seen the library in my quarters?”

  I nodded. His quarters smelled of old books, and he had enough stacked in his room at the house that anyone understood he read a lot. How he had time for that, I had no idea. I worked so hard from sun up to sun down with my fields that I never had any time to read. I could only imagine how it was with his responsibilities.

  “The book I’m thinking of was given to me by a shaman, one attached to one of the Zenwey chiefs. She told me that those of us over on the Areth continent didn’t have a grasp of true history. When the first settlers came here over a thousand years ago, they started anew and had forgotten much. This book detailed life before that, so she says. I’ve never heard any record of events prior to the last thousand years beyond legends and tales, so I was naturally intrigued.”

  “And it had these creatures, these giants in it?” I asked.

  “It was said that there were men who once roamed the land, thirty feet tall, taller sometimes. That their very footsteps caused the earth to shake beneath them. They had machinery that makes our clockwork and steam engines look like children’s toys. One day, one of their infernal devices caused a massive explosion, pouring vile chemicals across their land. The giants weren’t destroyed, but they transformed.

  “They became bulbous creatures, and their skin looked like jelly. Their brains still hel
d intact, but they morphed from normal function as well. They could project thoughts and feelings to those around them. It was rumored that, barring some sort of accident, they could never die, that they would keep growing for eternity.”

  “Wouldn’t they starve if they couldn’t move?”

  “With their projections, they could convince people to bring them their sustenance. Many tribes delivered human sacrifices to them as if they were gods. Oh my.” My father glanced back over to the crates in realization. “Sustenance. It looks like this one here has been feeding off people for some time.”

  A shiver ran through me. Being around this giant thing gave me the creeps. And the talk of projections, could that be the strange voice I kept hearing? I would have given up anything to be out of this room. “Do they have to eat people? What happens if they don’t eat?”

  My father shrugged. “The book said they go dormant, lose their glow. They’re able to come out of that hibernation over time. But the book also said that feeding on people was just their basic level. As we need food and water, they craved something more than simple flesh.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Emotions.”

  I bit my lip, thinking about the last several hours and even days that I’d been in proximity of this… thing. I’d thought I had a change in me, that I’d become more confident, taking on the roles that I’d inherited from my father. Now that I looked back on it, if my father was correct, there was a force amplifying and manipulating my will to fight. And that voice I’d heard…

  “Father,” I said. “I think it’s been reaching into my mind.”

  “It has?”

  “I heard a voice as we were fighting in there. It was loud. It told me to shoot, to kill.” I looked at him with horror. “Can it really dictate what I’m thinking like that?”

  “I don’t know enough about it, Zaira,” my father said, leaning over the rail again to once more glimpse the glowing bulb below. “I sensed similar. Whatever this is, it’s dangerous to be here alone. You were right about that. We should leave immediately,” he said. Then he moved to the hall and called to the next room. “Are you able to move Talyen? I think there’s an exit here from where the machines exhaust their steam. It’ll be tight, but it’s better to head that direction than back through the Wyranth capital.”

  Cid frowned. “It’d be best not to, but I don’t see a choice. We have to get her to a medic quickly.”

  “We have to get to the airship. They have a great medic. It was incredible how fast he healed Zaira before,” James said, making his way into the hallway. With the help of the other knight, James lifted Talyen, moving with careful steps.

  “Hopefully they haven’t left without us,” I said.

  James reached into his vest and pulled out a small pistol-looking contraption, patting it as he grinned at me. “It won’t be a problem. I told them to wait for me to give them a signal. After the rest of the crew returns to them, they’ll be just off the coast in flight, looking for us and waiting to swoop down for the rescue.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “It’s called a flare gun. It shoots fireworks into the air. The knights have all sorts of cool gadgets that I wish I’d known about.”

  “Wonderful,” my father said, peeling himself from me. “I’m glad to hear that the knights are as resourceful as ever.” He made his way over to the exhaust shaft, stepping over some of the piping lines from the machinery. He paused, glancing at the goo being extracted from the creature. “Anyone got a canteen or a small jar?”

  “I do, Cid said. He motioned his head to me. “It’s attached to my belt.”

  I removed the canteen from its clip and brought it over to my father.

  When my father took it, he tilted the canteen back over his mouth, downing the last of the water inside. He shook out the last drops, and dunked the canteen into one of the containers carrying the glowing azure goo. He jutted his head forward, sniffing the substance, and then made a face of disgust. “Whatever they’re extracting from this thing smells worse than wombat droppings. I’m sure some of our researchers would be interested in figuring out what this is.”

  He twisted the cap back onto the canteen, tossed it to me to hold, and pressed forward into the exhaust shaft.

  I caught the canteen and placed it under my arm.

  We moved through one by one, with Cid last, carefully maneuvering Talyen through the aperture created by the exhaust shaft. It was dark inside the shaft, though I could see light out the other side. It gave me a little thrill. The sun! How I’d never thought I’d bask in its rays again.

  The shaft proved a steep climb. James and Cid struggled to keep Talyen steady through the ordeal. Fortunately for our footing’s sake, the Wyranth hadn’t spent much time smoothing out the surface. It left plenty of natural ledges and rocks to give us footing and grip.

  My father and I were out first, allowing us to help James and Cid bring Talyen out safely. We’d made it back to the outside world. The area around the exhaust vent was dead. Dirt, rocks, old dried out foliage that couldn’t have survived. The hot steam they poured through here and whatever chemicals came along with it must have destroyed any semblance of life. Beyond that was a small clearing with tall grasses and trees that expanded into a dense forest. There were no signs of villages or of people on this side of the mountain, strange given it was so close to the Wyranth capital.

  “They call this Devil’s Mountain, you know,” my father said. He was like an encyclopedia of knowledge thus far. He’d told me about empires and lands I’d never heard of before, so his intimate knowledge of Wyranth Empire landmarks came to no surprise. “Perhaps that title had a very real meaning to it that was lost in time. If it’s true that creature inside has been influencing people for generations, it’s no wonder the Wyranth have been so aggressive.”

  “Huh,” I said. “That explains a lot.”

  “What?” James asked, shielding his eyes as he glanced around.

  “The war. What if this aggression is all because of the thing inside? Think about it. The Wyranth attack us relentlessly, almost mindlessly. They don’t give up and don’t care if it’s in the name of slaughter and for little other cause.” My eyes widened. “If we destroy that thing, we might be able to have real peace with the Wyranth.”

  NO. PEACE IS DANGEROUS. MUST DESTROY.

  “Whatever’s projecting into my head doesn’t like my thought process,” I said, rubbing my temples. I wanted nothing more than to get that voice out of my head.

  My father placed his hands on his hips. It was a thinking pose, I’d seen it before. It was when he got creative ideas. “Zaira, that’s a very good conclusion. Hmm, it couldn’t hurt to try.”

  “Try what?” I asked.

  “To blow it up,” my father said with a grin.

  I sighed. By Malaky, my father was exhausting. We’d already been through so much. We needed some time to recharge, heal up before mounting such a dangerous plan. Was this the life the Liliana crew had signed on for? They must have had endless stamina.

  “Well, we have to get to the airship first,” James said, holding the flare gun into the air while propping Talyen up on his opposite shoulder.

  “No!” Cid said, nearly dropping his end of Talyen’s limp body in the process. “We only have one shot, James. We have to wait until nightfall or they’ll never see us.”

  “We can’t wait here then,” I said. “We’re too exposed.”

  “Zaira’s right,” my father said and pointed away from the mountain. “Some of the trees are pretty thick over there. We’ll set Talyen down and rest, take turns keeping watch.”

  We set off toward the trees at my father’s command. Even though we were at the foot of the mountain, the walk still had a slope that made for a descent into the forest. It brought me some comfort to know we had a whole Devil’s Mountain between us and the Wyranth capital. However, I wished we could be further away from that blasted place. Once they realized what had happened in the
ir strange laboratory, they would pull out all the stops to search for us.

  We waited several hours, sitting, talking, and catching up on the last couple of years. The conversation naturally split between my father and myself, and James with Cid. I couldn’t have been happier to have a conversation with my father after all that time. Though he’d spent most of the last couple years in a solitary cell, he told me of how he devised games with himself by scratching lines into the stone. He came up with a strategy game involving armies and their commands, using different numbers to represent different types of units. “I’ll have to develop that into pieces when I return to Rislandia,” he said. His voice gushed with pure happiness as if being alive itself held reason for joy. It brought me warmth inside, and that warmth removed a lot of the tension that kept me awake.

  I fell asleep under a large stumped tree with thick leaves and branches. I didn’t wake up until James fired the flare gun.

  Of all the crew, I believe Marina impresses me the most. I wouldn’t tell her that, of course, but she reminds me of myself rising through the ranks. I was happy to give her a promotion today to Lieutenant Commander.

  An excerpt from Captain von Cravat’s log

  Day 4 of the Month of Dukes

  18th Year of Malaky XVI’s Reign

  I jolted awake to a fizzing sound, followed by a boom and crack. “Wyranth!” I shouted, reaching for my gun. I used my free hand to push myself up to my feet faster than I should have, dizzying me in my post-sleep haze. Toby used a nearby tree to conceal himself.

  The sky lit up with brilliant white light, much stronger than the moon and stars. It brightened our camp considerably, revealing the faces of my party in the concealment of the shady forest. It was just the flare gun.

  I looked at James, seeing his features, his neck stretching upward to the sky and eyes lit up. Seeing him like that made me realize that if our ship could spot the flare, so could the Wyranth soldiers. “Doesn’t the flare leave us exposed?” I asked.