Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War

by Richard Ellis Preston Jr.

  Cronos shrieked. Another sabertooth was coming. Buckle felt the shake of the frozen earth under his boots as the heavy, agile claws of the beast bore down. But from which direction, it was impossible to tell. Cronos swung, stamping, to the left, his eyes locked in the opposite direction. Buckle flung out his pistol, aiming where the horse sensed the danger was.

  Before Buckle sucked in another breath, the sabertooth was on them: launching airborne from the storm, its green eyes afire, terrible claws extended, the mouth wide open in rows of bone-yellow, dagger-bladed teeth streaming with saliva, sailing over Buckle’s head.

  The beastie was going for the horse.

  Buckle fired the pistol up into the sabertooth’s throat; steaming blue blood spewed as the creature instantly went slack, its limp body sailing away in the waves of snow, landing in a skidding crash at some point beyond.

  Buckle cast the empty pistol aside and frantically dug inside his coat for the second. Sabertooths attacked in packs, like wolves. He was surprised another one had not hit them yet. Cronos—now bucking and shrieking—bumped into Buckle, nearly knocking him off his feet.

  And then it was there. This sabertooth was bigger than the first, surging out of the snowstorm, a locomotive of flesh and fangs, the horrible mouth flung open. Buckle, aiming the wrong way and off balance, could do nothing but accept his doom.

  THE BLACK ANGEL COMES

  A MUSKET THUNDERED. IT SOUNDED muted, far off, but inside the maelstrom of wind and snow, it had to be close at hand to be heard at all. The crack of the musket coincided with a brutal jerk of the sabertooth’s head to the right, a blow that split the massive skull open immediately behind the second eye and spun the beastie sideways in a burst of blood and brains. The creature was dead before it slammed into Buckle, but the weight of the blow knocked him down as if an oak tree had been felled across him.

  For an instant, Buckle was smothered by beastie, the rolling weight upon his body threatening to crush his bones, his mouth and nose full of sabertooth fur, his nostrils thick with the pungent reek of carrion and the burned-hair stink of the alien mammal. Then the weight was gone.

  The momentum of the dead sabertooth’s body sent it somersaulting over Buckle’s head, but he barely saw it go. He was flat on his back, his head spinning like the sky and the twirling torch descending within it, suffocating, his lungs abruptly clapped free of every molecule of air they had once contained.

  Something materialized out of the blizzard above Buckle: the head of a black horse with frantic eyes, and above that, a black figure with fluttering, sweeping wings upon its shoulders. A black angel. Buckle gurgled, trying to speak, trying to recover where his body was in relationship to his mind. His breath suddenly came to him in ravenous gasps, gasps painful due to the freezing air, an agony his oxygen-emptied lungs reveled in.

  The air between Buckle and the black angel cleared, a momentary eddy in the gales, and he saw the figure above him, clad in a long, black bear-fur greatcoat and a swirling black cape with the breadth of wings. The figure cast a smoking musket aside. Buckle saw the long, graceful face, pale white adorned with ornate black stripes, a face dominated by a pair of goggles where the large black eyes within burned nebula orange.

  What the devil? Max. It was Max. She had defied his orders to stay behind with the Arabella. She had defied his orders not to follow him on his fool’s errand up the mountain. And now Max had saved him. Saved him again. He was glad to see her. And angered by the risk she had taken.

  “Captain! Get up! You must get up now if you can!” Max shouted. She had pulled her horse aside and, leaning in her saddle, was clawing at Cronos’s tethered reins, which she had yet to realize were hopelessly tangled.

  Buckle rolled onto his side and then his stomach—spilling through a skeleton’s rib cage as he did so, scattering the bones—and jumped to his feet, still gripping his pistol, and collecting his fallen torch as it sputtered in the snow.

  “Aye! I am up!” Buckle shouted back. He tossed the torch to Max and quickly drew his saber as he advanced on Cronos. “He is caught! I will cut it!”

  “Hurry, Captain!”

  Buckle took a firm grip on the reins. The horse would bolt once it realized it was free. “You came alone?”

  “Aye!”

  “You are mad in the head!” Buckle shouted as he lifted his sword.

  “That makes us a pair, then, sir!” Max replied, drawing a pistol.

  The horses screamed. Max swung her pistol, but she never got the barrel around in time.

  The first sabertooth tackled the head of Max’s horse, wrapping its front paws around its neck, the claws sending out spurts of blood as the huge jaws clamped down on the poor creature’s skull. The second sabertooth arrived a fraction of a second after the first, landing on Max’s back before her dead horse had time to drop.

  THE BLACK ANGEL FALLS

  MAX WENT DOWN IN A tangled mess of beasties, horse, and thrashing snow.

  Buckle lunged forward. “Max!” he screamed. She lay facedown, her right leg pinned under the quivering mass of her dead horse, the gigantic sabertooth still upon her, its four green eyes afire, its claws punched into her back, its massive canines sunk into the cloak and greatcoat on her left shoulder. The beastie opened its mouth with a jerk, yanking free its incisors awash in Max’s bright-red blood, and cocked its muscle-bound shoulders to land another bite—a killing bite—on Max’s exposed white-and-black striped neck.

  Buckle sprang forward, planted the muzzle of his pistol squarely behind the beastie’s second eye, and pulled the trigger. The weapon burped in the storm current, its flash and black discharge instantly sucked way. The sabertooth thrust its head straight up with a smoking hole in its skull; it collapsed, stone dead.

  Buckle dropped the spent pistol, snatching the last one from his belt as he strode up to the other sabertooth. It was crouched low, its fangs deep in the deceased horse’s skull; its four green, split-pupilled eyes flashed as it snarled, a throaty, almost musical utterance, clamping its teeth tighter with a splitting crunch. Aiming into the forebrain, Buckle fired, killing the beastie almost instantly—the sabertooth shuddered in its death throes, its fangs never releasing the horse’s head.

  Buckle jammed his last firearm in his belt as he leapt over the near-doused torch in the snow, scrambling to Max. She lay motionless on her stomach, twisted forward at the waist with her lower half still in the saddle, the mass of the horse across her right leg and the dead sabertooth slumped over her torso. When Buckle shoved the heavy bulk of the sabertooth’s body away from Max, he discovered that the animal’s claws were still buried in her back. He gripped the massive forepaw—with all the care he could, but the hooks were sunk deep—and drew each blood-soaked claw out of its fleshy bed beneath the heavy bearskin coat.

  “Max!” Buckle shouted, tearing the ripped cloak away from her body. “Max! Can you hear me?”

  Max raised her right hand but it dropped instantly, as if it had taken all her remaining strength just to lift it. Buckle felt both a great pang of relief and one of fright. Max was still alive, which was a miracle; by all rights, the sabertooth’s pounce should have broken her spine. But he was shocked by how terribly injured she was. He scrambled around the horse, gently rolled Max more onto her side, and leaned close to Max’s goggles, brushing back a sweep of black hair that had fallen across her face from beneath her pilot helmet.

  “Max!” Buckle shouted again. “Stay still—you hear me?”

  “Captain. Go,” Max said with a faltering voice. “Leave me.”

  “To hell with that suggestion, Chief Engineer!” Buckle replied. He started badger-digging at the snow packed around Max’s thigh, where it lay pinned under the saddle. More sabertooths roared in the wreathing vapors of the blizzard. Cronos whinnied nearby, less a frantic plea now than a sound of foreboding, as if he had become resigned to his fate, tied to his own butcher block as he was.

  Buckle’s spine tingled as he clawed at the snow. The beasties, pack hunt
ers, were closing in again. His back was utterly exposed. But surely the blood stink of the corpses of the dead beasties gave them pause. Of course. It must. To hell with them. Buckle continued digging.

  “Captain,” Max gasped.

  “If you are trying to talk me into leaving you, I would suggest you save your breath,” Buckle said. He scrabbled on his knees around to Max’s head, shifted her onto her back, and placed his hands under her armpits. “I am going to pull you out.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  Buckle eased Max back with half of his strength, hoping that her leg might easily slide free. It did not. Buckle hauled with more desperate force, near lifting Max’s body out of the snow. Max’s shoulders stiffened, but she made no sound. Martians rarely expressed pain, but her eyes betrayed her: inside the aqueous humor of her goggles, they glittered a swimming gold, the Martian color of agony.

  “Damn it!” Buckle screamed. But he had to get her loose.

  Swinging his body around to cradle Max’s head in his lap, Buckle planted his boots on the withers and croup of the dead horse, bent at the knees, and clamped his hands under Max’s armpits with a grim pressure.

  “Out you go!” Buckle shouted. He yanked on Max with every ounce of strength he had. Max threw her head back, her face upside-down just below Buckle’s. Her exposed white-and-black-striped throat quivered; her white teeth were clenched, the lips drawn back and rigid, stained by a stream of blood running from her left nostril. Her goggles, kept free of ice by the warm aqueous humor within, were covered in a smattering of melting snowflakes, each fantastic, crystalline pattern illuminated by the swirling, golden light from below.

  Buckle pulled harder.

  The leg suddenly jerked free, sliding out from beneath the horseflesh as smoothly as a sword from its scabbard. Buckle fell backward, still cradling Max’s head in his lap, and as they landed, he heard her grunt and lie still.

  “We’ve got it!” Buckle yelled. “You are out, Max!”

  Buckle gently laid Max’s head on the snow as he scrambled to his feet. She lay still, her goggles fading to darkness, into some chasm of shock. He saw that his left glove was soaked with warm, steaming blood, bright-crimson Martian blood, absolutely dripping with it. He realized that his legs and the front of his coat were wet with blood, too.

  Buckle lifted Max in his arms, leveraging the slender, light mass of her body over his left shoulder. He knelt to snatch up the torch and paused, just for an instant. The light of the flames, playing upon the depression in the snow where Max had been trapped beneath the horse, revealed a large, ever-spreading stain of blood.

  It was a horrific amount of blood for a lithe creature such as Max to lose. Her Martian heart, stout as it was, could barely still be beating.

  Buckle ran.

  WHITEOUT

  BUCKLE STUMBLED UP TO CRONOS and lifted Max onto his back, ramming his boot into the stirrup and swinging up into the saddle behind her. Cronos threw his head back and forth, scuffing his hooves.

  Buckle drew his sword, slashed through the stretch of the reins between Cronos and the girder, and kicked the horse in the ribs. “Hah! On, boy! On!” Cronos, his shivering muscles firing, charged into the blizzard. Buckle leaned forward, gripping Max, letting the horse run. They were on the upslope, as far as he could tell, but he had no sense of direction now—he could see nothing. His whipping torch did no more than illuminate a wavering waterfall of snow that he could not see through.

  Buckle clung to Max, who slumped forward like a rag doll, with little tension in her form, her head lolling with the rock of the horse’s motion. Through the raging storm and the battering of the horse’s muscles, through the clutch of his fingers against the blood-smeared coat, he sought to feel a movement from Max, a twitch, a heartbeat, to reassure him that she was still alive—but he could feel nothing.

  Confound the disobedient Martian! Buckle thought. She shall not trade her life for mine. She shall not.

  Cronos slowed a bit, beginning to tire, but Buckle let the animal run on. Buckle wanted to return to the ravine and hole up in one of the caves for the night—if only the wind would let up a moment, give him a view of the landscape about, he could surely point his mount in the right direction. He hoped that the horse, experienced on the mountain as he was, would instinctively head home along the ravine, seeking his stable and its hanging bag of feed.

  A whiteout blinded Buckle for an instant. The memory it triggered came on so hard and fast it startled him, leaping from the darkness and bursting in the forepart of his brain. He was a boy again, in his parents’ cabin on the mountain. He was terrified, perhaps no more than six years old, clutching a sword that was far too big for him. His mother had her arms clutched around him—and Elizabeth. His strongest impression was that of his mother’s heart, a youthful organ, drumming hard against his back.

  The sabertooths were attacking. Outside in the night, they roared. A horrible screaming came from the horses in the stable. The two cabin windows, both made of heavy, translucent glass, had been broken in by the beasties, and shards were scattered across the floor rugs in glittering bits. Fangs and claws had torn at the window frames, green-eyed nightmares had peered in, but the heavy timber of the cabin had defeated them.

  Buckle was crying. Elizabeth was crying, tears streaming slick and glistening down her round cheeks. Buckle wanted to be brave for her, but he could not muster it. Their mother had snatched them from their beds with a pistol in her hand, and now they huddled in a corner wearing their nightclothes. The fire was low in the hearth, scarlet and orange embers, and the air felt cold.

  Buckle remembered watching his father, Alpheus, striding back and forth across the room. He looked very big. His hair was mussed. He gripped both a sword and a pistol, and had a belt strapped around his waist with two more pistols stuck into it. The sabertooths, clever creatures, were slashing at the heavy oak door; its iron hinges, screws popping, threatened to burst.

  Wood scraped across the floor, bunching the fur rugs with it, as another man shoved his parents’ heavy oak bed toward the door. Alpheus was alongside the man immediately, throwing his weight into the push.

  The other man? Buckle’s mind grasped at a vapor in a fog. He had not remembered the other man being there that night—a detail almost lost to his memory—but Buckle was certain the other man had been there. He could see him now, shoulder to shoulder with his father, a long musket strapped across his back and a pistol at his waist, gripping a burning torch that filled the cabin with smoke. The man was taller than Alpheus, and wiry thin, clad in his day clothes, with knee-high leather boots lined with leather straps and buckles.

  A beastie slammed the door with enough force to shake the world. Glittering dust streamed from the rafters. The fire threw sparks up the chimney. Alpheus and the other man froze for an instant.

  “The door shall not stand much longer,” Alpheus said. Buckle felt his mother stop sobbing and her spine stiffen. He clutched the handle of the cold sword his father had handed him, telling him to defend his mother and sister to the last, if it came to that, and that he was proud of him being so brave.

  The other man clapped a reassuring hand on Alpheus’s shoulder. “It most absolutely shall hold, Alpheus,” he boomed. “I helped you build that door, and we built it to withstand exactly this, and despite your incompetence as a carpenter, I build damned fine doors!”

  Alpheus smiled grimly at the man who was his friend. “And yet you cannot brew a decent cup of tea.”

  “No one has ever brewed a decent cup of tea. Vile stuff, it is,” the other man replied heartily.

  The cabin shuddered again. A sabertooth clawed furiously at the door, the vibrations of the strokes sounding as if the oak were being carved away at a terrifying rate of speed. The man sprang to the front window, a small portal fixed about five feet to the left of the door, drew his pistol, and stuck his arm outside with it. The pistol boomed, followed by a shriek and a roar from the beastie. The scratching stopped. The man yanked his a
rm back an instant before sabertooth fangs crunched on the pane in a burst of splinters.

  The man punched the beastie’s massive, splayed-nostril nose and it released, vanishing into the darkness beyond the window.

  “Good way to lose an arm, Shadrack,” Alpheus observed dryly.

  “Tut, tut. No bother,” Shadrack replied, turning to wink at Buckle. “I do have another one.” Shadrack had a narrow, gaunt, but kindly face, bordered by a shock of long, dark hair, and a thick beard framed with gray.

  Shadrack. The name roiled around Buckle’s mind like a fox gone mad in a henhouse.

  Shadrack! The same Shadrack whom he had seen locked in the prison of the City of the Founders, the skeletal madman, a moonchild who had beseeched him as a savior, with some crazy hint of recognition. There was no doubt it was the same man—Buckle was certain of it. Oh, what tales the madman might tell!

  Buckle gasped, sucking in a huge slap of freezing air loaded with snow, making him cough. His plunge into memory had only lasted a second, yet it seemed as if he had been away from Max and the run of the horse in the blizzard for an eternity.

  Who saves old Shadrack?

  Buckle clutched Max’s body closer to his chest. He was afraid that she might already be dead.

  Something panicked the horse. Cronos neighed and bolted again, cutting left through the snowbound twilight. Buckle glimpsed the low shadow of a sabertooth loping alongside on the right, the glowing green of its eyes visible in the storm.

  Cronos veered farther to the left. The roar of another sabertooth somewhere behind made him accelerate, foam spewing from his mouth, his head jerking from side to side as his eyes bugged in their sockets. Tree trunks exploded out of the murk, flying past on each side with high-pitched swishes.