Harry in the Wild: Astounding Stories of Adventure (Iron Pegasus Book 2)

by Steve Turnbull

  “I’m going to check this armed launch the mayor mentioned,” said Khuwelsa. “It might have something we can use depending on what they did to it.”

  “Anything I can do?” asked Harry.

  Khuwelsa thought for a moment. “Not really. Oh, unless you can rustle up some heavy tooling like I have back in my workshop.”

  Then she headed off with Bakari and two of the others, leaving Harry with the remaining two with whom she could not exchange a single word. They did, however, consume several more sandwiches each. That seemed to have a strange bonding effect, especially when she kept asking for more.

  Harry went back into the Pegasus and fetched her scarf. Only a few high-altitude clouds floated across the sky. Soon the sun would be beating down. She climbed down once more and shut the hatch.

  She looked at the scorched town. In the light of morning it resembled a ruin, so few houses remained untouched, and those that still stood were smoke-damaged at best. A haze of heat and smoke made the farther buildings shimmer. Their governess had made them study the history of England, which included the Great Fire of London. It must have looked something like this, but without the sun; it always rained in England.

  When she and Khuwelsa had walked around the previous evening most of the activity had been in the south of the town, so she headed in that direction. Hearing a noise behind her, she turned to discover the remaining two warriors were following her. They just grinned at her attempts to shoo them away.

  Apparently sending them was Bakari’s idea of respect, or perhaps he did not trust the people in the town. Either way, it was going to be difficult talking to anyone with those two in tow.

  Rather than follow the route the mayor had taken them on, she took the first turning east that looked clear enough. She skirted a bomb crater. A thought occurred to her: would the captain of the Zeppelin have been so callous as to drop the bombs simply to lighten the load his ship had to carry?

  It seemed unlikely, she thought. The next crater she encountered was off to the side and had destroyed a building. The debris of splintered wood and smashed bricks was strewn across the road. Fire had burnt out the buildings around it. Those a little further away were not in much better condition, as the fragments from the explosion had torn through their walls and windows.

  They would have done this to Zanzibar, she thought. She had no idea how many people had been killed in this attack. Did the ones she had rescued balance the books compared to those who had died by her actions? She shook her head as if the question had been asked out loud. These books did not balance that way.

  She came to a crossroads. The road directly across from her was lined with shops displaying signs for a grocer, barber, baker, and others. The shop row looked untouched; the only rising smoke was from chimneys. People moved with purpose along the street, some carrying baskets, others chatting with their companions. Except for the pervasive smell of burnt wood, it could have been a typical day.

  She heard the sound of hooves before she saw the horse. Coming from the north, its firm steps thudded into the dry soil. The cart was moving at a fair speed, drawn by a blinkered Clydesdale which moved as if oblivious to the weight of the cart behind it. The driver wore the coarse clothing of a farmer.

  She had been about to step out across the road and wander into the shops, but she waited for the cart. It did not slow at the junction and headed past. The driver was focused on his destination but must have caught sight of her and her small entourage. Whether because of her red hair or the tall black men behind her, his head whipped round to watch them as he passed.

  Harry would have waved but caught sight of the cargo of the open cart. Bodies. Not only that, they were bodies dressed in German naval uniforms.

  xviii

  With sudden energy Harry hitched up her dress and took off after the cart at a run. She gathered disapproving looks from the people she passed, which were replaced by fear, horror, and possibly anger when those people saw the two warriors following. But if Harry ever cared what other people thought of her, this was not one of those times.

  The powerful horse outdistanced her, but she did not slow down. The street was straight and wide, such that she saw the cart swerve round something she could not see and then turn right.

  She was about a minute behind it when she reached the crater in the road the cart had swerved to avoid. From that, she knew the road to the right was the one she needed to take. She slowed to a walk and caught her breath. As her escort closed up behind her, she was annoyed to see that they were breathing as normally as if they had not been running for the last couple of minutes.

  She looked around at this new part of the town. The damage here was minimal; the worst seemed to have been concentrated in the north, near to the copper works. Directly ahead, to the south, she could see the partially constructed tunnels of a terminus for an atmospheric train.

  Either the people here were very hopeful or they were very prosperous. Considering the need for copper in the world to provide conduits for the fast-developing electrics, and for Faraday devices, she suspected it was the latter.

  This attack, for all that it may have killed some people, was a mere blip in the fortunes of what would no doubt become a rich city in no time. As long as the copper continued to flow.

  Following the route the cart had taken, she walked between warehouses and stores. They looked to have been built recently but stood empty. There were no business names on the exteriors. She peered in through a window. The inside was bare, just open space waiting for future businessmen to fill it with wares to be transported in and out on the atmospheric.

  The road opened out into a square. A garden in its centre was laid out with greenery and fresh plantings of trees, still small. A wrought iron fence surrounded it, and the words “Danby Park” were engraved into the stone arch of the gate. She harrumphed at the mayor’s arrogance.

  She was not sure which way the cart had gone from here; there were routes in both directions around the garden.

  “Harry.”

  She jerked around at the sound of her name, though it had been pronounced strangely. One of the warriors was looking at her and grinning. He pointed at the ground and then to the right around the square. She smiled; of course they would be able to track a horse and cart in a town.

  “Thank you,” she said and gestured for them to lead the way. Although, now she came to look, the track in the dirt really was very obvious—it just had not occurred to her to check.

  Walking behind them, she realised she had never really looked at them. They wore a sort of skirt, which would have seemed strange on a European but not on them. Their skin was a deeper brown than Khuwelsa’s, almost black, and their muscles were clearly defined beneath it. They wore necklaces and, apart from their spears, each had a vicious-looking club hanging from his belt.

  She had had it drummed into her by Mrs Hemingway that looking at men in such detail would be frowned on polite society. This was not polite society.

  They stopped. Ahead, the road they had been following opened out into another square. And in the middle of it, surrounded by men, was the cart. Harry came up beside them. She debated whether to try to make the two warriors remain where they were but decided they would be at risk if she left them alone.

  She led the way forward.

  As she approached the crowd, she realised from the cheerful sound of their voices the men were happy and in the process of looting the bodies.

  “What are you doing?” No one took any notice of her query. A man came away from the cart holding a pair of boots. She recognised him as being one of the men she had rescued from the fire.

  “Have you no shame?” she yelled. Her voice reverberated off the surrounding walls and silence fell.

  The cart’s driver pushed his way round to the front. He noticed the man with the boots. “That’ll be ten shillings, mate.” Then he turned his attention to Harry.

  “Get lost, kid. This is nothing to do with you.”

 
“What are you doing?” she demanded.

  “I won’t tell you again,” he growled advancing on her. “Get lost.”

  At that moment she felt more than saw her escort move forward until they were flanking her. The cart driver hesitated.

  “What kind of monster steals from the dead?” she said very loudly, just to make sure they all heard. “And when you stand up in church next Sunday, what will Christ, Our Lord, think of you?”

  The man she had rescued dropped the boots as if they burned him. Other items fell to the ground and most of the men backed away.

  “This is my business, girlie.”

  “My father is Jonathan Edgbaston, servant of Her Majesty’s government in Mombasa,” she said. “Perhaps you would like me to inform him of what’s going on here?”

  More items dropped. Several men left.

  “These are the monsters, little girl,” he said. “They’re the ones who attacked this town.” Murmurs of agreement rippled through the crowd. “They owe us.”

  “Perhaps that’s true, but why should you be the one to make the money off of it?” she said. “If they truly owe the town, then you should be giving their goods away for free. To the townspeople who are owed.”

  The crowd seemed more on her side at that. She was not blind to the fact they would rather have the items for free than pay for them. She took a step forward and the warriors moved with her. The cart driver took a step back. The men of the town gathered round the cart began to decide there were better places to be at that moment, and their ranks thinned.

  “Why shouldn’t I make a penny or two when the opportunity arises?” he said.

  “From the dead?” she said. “What sort of ghoul are you?”

  “They’re dead Germans,” he said. “Who cares about the kaiser’s hounds?”

  “They are men,” she said. “They deserve respect. Some of them will have left wives and children. Would you want to be treated like this if the tables were turned? Would you want to have your body defiled and left unburied?”

  “I didn’t say I wasn’t going to bury them.”

  “You’re willing to sell the shoes off their feet like a petty thief. You would just dump their bodies in the grass for the carrion eaters. Would you want that for yourself?”

  He looked around for support, but only his horse remained. “Why do you even care?” he said in a tone of exasperated confusion. “Still, now that we’re alone …”

  He slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out a small pistol.

  “I think you should be on your way,” he said. “Don’t you?”

  xix

  Harry stared down the barrel of the gun pointed at her head.

  “Nothing to say now, have you?”

  “Lambert, put that away.”

  The man called Lambert did no such thing. Harry looked up to see the mayor and one of the men she had rescued standing on the other side of the truck.

  Mayor Danby moved more quickly than she would have thought him capable. He came alongside Lambert.

  “Put that away now and we’ll say no more about it,” the mayor said quietly. “Do something foolish and I think those blacks will have you dead in a trice. And I won’t stop them. Or string them up.”

  For a moment it was unclear whether the mayor’s words had any effect. Then, without taking his eyes off Harry, the man called Lambert uncocked the gun and let his hand drop.

  The mayor held out his hand. Lambert gave him the gun, and the mayor passed it to the other man.

  “Go and get a drink, Lambert, and calm down.”

  “This is my cart,” he said. “My horse.”

  “Nobody is going to steal it.”

  Lambert gave Harry another look of pure malice, turned away, and headed out to the main street.

  The mayor smiled at Harry. “Don’t let anyone tell you that being a mayor is an easy job, Miss Edgbaston.”

  She shook her head.

  “Pretty speeches you were making. Ever thought of a career in politics?”

  She frowned. “I’m no suffragist.”

  He laughed out loud. “Really? You may wear a dress, Miss Edgbaston, but we do get newspapers, even here. And your airplane and your recent escapades are not something you can hide. You are known. Then you arrive here and rescue my people from a raging fire. Quite the adventuress.

  “Yet you are a mere woman and you say you’re not a suffragist?” He could not suppress his laughter. “Well, you may not think of yourself as one but I can assure you, your exploits will be talked of by those particular women and will be held up as examples of what a woman can do. There will be many men who will not be happy with you at all.”

  Harry really could think of nothing to say on the matter. She just shrugged. “I just wanted to know how Mr Lambert had got himself a cartload of dead Germans.”

  This again seemed enormously amusing to the mayor; however, this time he seemed to bring himself under control more quickly.

  “Yes indeed,” he said. “That is an excellent question, and we will have to discuss the wherefores of that issue.”

  “Can I have a look at them?” asked Harry.

  The mayor looked somewhat surprised. “You want to?”

  “The reason I’m on their trail was that I found one before. He had fallen from their Zeppelin.”

  “Or was he pushed?” said the mayor with a wink. “I don’t think people generally just fall from airships.”

  Harry came forward. From her first glance she knew she did not have to look any further. The clothes of the men—only five of them, though it had seemed more—were caked in dried blood crawling with flies. The blood came from bullet wounds.

  “Shot,” she said not really to anyone in particular.

  “Indeed,” said the mayor.

  Harry looked more closely at the uniforms. She wasn’t an expert but she did recognise the same badge as on the other man they had found. So they were from the same ship that had disappeared, or at least the same service. Four out of the five looked to be lower ranks, but one of them was at least a sergeant, perhaps even an officer.

  She shook her head. It did not seem to make any sense. On a whim she looked at the hands that she could see. None were clasping anything.

  Turning away, she glanced at her escort. She was glad for them now.

  “Seen everything you wanted?” asked the mayor.

  She nodded and pushed the question of the dead airmen to one side. “You are building an atmospheric terminus.”

  “Let us move away from these poor souls,” the mayor said and offered his arm. She slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow and followed as he headed off towards the end of the road.

  They came out onto a thoroughfare that paralleled the one down which she had chased the cart. This was the side of the town that had been the most damaged. The shattered buildings still smoked. People were clearing the road, making piles of the debris. Most of it would be used for reconstruction in one way or another.

  “There is a great deal of hate in the world, Miss Edgbaston,” he said. “Here we see the result of it.”

  “Did they drop their bombs before or after they took the copper?”

  He glanced round at her with a sly look. “After.”

  “Why?”

  “You do ask many questions.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He patted her hand. “I daresay it is a fair question.” But he did not continue; instead he guided her further into the south of the town. In the distance tents were being erected. Talking to the mayor was like boxing shadows, but she took another swing

  “My sister would like access to some tools, the sort you probably have at the construction site.”

  “Your sister?”

  “Khuwelsa is my sister, yes.”

  “And your escort are your brothers?”

  “No, they are just passengers.”

  “They seem very protective for passengers,” he said.

  “Was there one like them on the G
erman ship?” she asked.

  The mayor stopped. “I did see a black man in their number. He seemed quite out of place. Was he related to these fellows?”

  “They were in pursuit of him.”

  “So your paths merged and your purposes became united.”

  “Yes,” she said, and realised he had deflected her again. “My sister would appreciate being given access to the tools you have at the terminus. Is that possible?”

  “Will you recover our copper?”

  “We can try.”

  “Then she may use the equipment.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Under supervision.”

  xx

  A considerable crowd gathered at the part-constructed terminus just after lunch the following day as they prepared to set off. Khuwelsa had outdone herself with the work she had put in, for which Harry was grateful as she could not stand the place any longer.

  It was not the people themselves that bothered Harry. They either left her alone or wanted to thank her for saving their lives, or their loved ones’ lives, or their friends’ lives. Everybody knew everybody in a place so small.

  The mayor and his hangers-on, however, were infuriating. The mayor seemed to want to be seen in her presence all the time and even implied on one occasion that the arrival of the Pegasus was somehow his doing.

  She disliked the politicking intensely. It confirmed her in the opinion she had no interest whatsoever in being a suffragist or ever dealing with her father’s friends and associates. Not that that would bother Jonathan Edgbaston; he always tried to find ways to keep her and Khuwelsa out of the way when he had people at the weekend.

  Bakari and his men were aboard. Khuwelsa had installed additional seats with a barrier rail between the pilot’s chair and the rest of the vessel, along with her other repairs and improvements. She had even found the feathers in the port wing that were not operating at full efficiency and fixed them. Harry was not sure whether the mayor was aware quite how much of the damaged launch Khuwelsa had scavenged. Harry had gone out to see it at one point and found it stripped bare, right down to the Faraday grid.