by Dave Butler
Bob had stolen William T. Bowen’s steam-truck.
Charlie grabbed the ladder on the back of the steam-truck with one hand and gripped the flyer tightly with the other. A few seconds of climbing and he collapsed, with Bob’s flyer, onto the deck of the steam-truck.
Ollie slithered away and took his human form again, and Gnat emerged from the wheelhouse, laughing. The three of them looked back to see a swarm of lights around the steam-carriages and a cavalcade of horses rushing past the parked vehicles, their riders brandishing long guns.
“Bob!” Charlie called. “Go faster!”
Crash!
The stolen steam-truck knocked open the iron gate at the end of the drive without slowing down.
Bob raced at breakneck speed along the narrow lane leading to the highway. The branches of the trees overhanging the lane had been trimmed to form a tunnel, big enough for the steam-truck to pass through without hitting anything.
Bang! Bang!
The horsemen were gaining on Charlie. They were a rough-looking lot, dressed in dirty clothing that didn’t match, and they were shooting. Fortunately for Charlie, it was hard to aim while galloping.
Still, Charlie ducked low to the steam-truck’s deck. He kept one hand on the flyer and wrapped the fingers of the other through the grate of the deck. “Ollie!” he shouted. “Is there anything useful belowdecks?”
Ollie obligingly slipped below. Gnat followed.
The junction with the highway approached. To the right stood a row of gray stone buildings: a bakery, a butcher’s shop, and a bookstore. To the left was an open pasture.
Charlie’s plan was to turn right. He’d told Bob that. Right led back to Cader Idris, and higher cliffs.
Bob turned left.
She swerved without warning before reaching the highway. The steam-truck took the low stone wall surrounding the pasture at an angle, bouncing high into the air.
With one hand tethering him to the deck and the other holding the flyer, Charlie was floating for a moment—
and then crashing back down to earth.
Sheep scattered in all directions. Charlie half expected to see flattened white puddles of fluff behind the truck, but either Bob tried to avoid hitting the sheep or they were quick enough to get out of the way.
Some of the horsemen stopped, surprised by the sudden turn. Others galloped ahead to the junction. A few jumped their horses over the wall and came after the steam-truck directly.
One fell asleep and tumbled forward off his horse over the remains of the wall. Lloyd Shankin’s lullaby, Charlie thought.
“Bob!” Charlie shouted. “I said right!”
Bob looked over her shoulder to shout back. “If we was to go right, mate, I’d ’ave to slow down. ’Ow d’you feel about playing ’ost to a party of those ’orse-riding gents?” She turned back to the wheel.
Charlie looked back at the men chasing them. Rattling down the lane behind the horsemen, steam-carriages were now catching up. These had men with guns standing at the rear and leaning out the windows; the carriages were a much more stable platform for shooting than the back of a horse.
Bob shattered a wooden gate at the far end of the pasture and turned left again. On the highway the steam-truck began to really pick up speed.
The first horseman pulled up to the back of the steam-truck. He grinned at Charlie, flashing broken yellow teeth surrounded by an unshaved, scarred face, and then he disappeared from Charlie’s view as he jumped on the ladder.
The horse immediately slowed down and turned off the path. Charlie braced himself. He couldn’t let go of the flyer, and he was afraid to let go of the deck. He prepared to kick.
The man’s head appeared at the top of the ladder, and then his shoulders, and finally he pulled himself up onto the deck. He climbed to one knee, drawing a pistol from his belt—
and a chair hit him in the face.
Charlie saw a split-second look of astonishment before the attacker fell backward off the truck.
Ollie emerged from the hatch. He had another chair, which he pushed against the back of the wheelhouse, and two shovels.
“Good idea,” Charlie said, “but I don’t have free hands.”
Gnat popped up from belowdecks. She had a short length of rope and a knife. “But a moment, Charlie, and I’ll have you free to fight.” She quickly knotted the flyer’s main harness to the deck with her rope.
Charlie scrambled to grab one of the shovels from Ollie just as a second attacker jumped onto the steam-truck. He grabbed the lattice of the deck with both hands and started pulling himself up.
Charlie and Ollie simultaneously cracked their shovels down on the man’s hands. He groaned, and Ollie pushed him away with a shovel like a bargeman pushing away a bit of floating refuse.
The flyer rose into the air fast as any kite. With a loud pop, it hit the end of its tether and the rope went taut.
“We’re going to need a cliff or something!” Charlie called to Bob.
“We’re going to ’ave one! Smell that?”
Charlie sniffed. “Salt?”
“That’s the sea, mate. Likely a cliff there, an’ if not, we’re going fast enough to launch without one, I reckon. Breeze at our backs ain’t idealistic, but I expect we’ll fly.”
“Ideal. It isn’t ideal.”
“You’ve got it.”
“Let me do the flying,” Charlie said. “I’m stronger.”
Bob nodded.
Had he hurt her feelings? Charlie didn’t have time to worry about it now. The houses had given way to forest and pasture. The horses had fallen behind. The steam-carriages were gaining, and the first was nearly upon them.
The steam-carriage’s driver hunched low over his gears on the high coachman’s seat. Behind him, a fat man on the right squinted at Charlie along a rifle, and a tall man on the left brought a scattergun up to his shoulder.
“Get down!” Charlie yelled to his friends.
He grabbed the second chair and threw it at the windscreen.
Crash!
Shattered glass jumped; the chair hit the driver in the chest.
Boom! Bang!
Both men’s firearms went off, but thanks to the steam-carriage’s sudden swerve left, they missed. The carriage disappeared into a tangled green thicket.
More carriages were coming, and Ollie had disappeared.
“Any sign of a good place to launch?” Charlie called to Bob.
Bob pointed.
Ahead of them and to the right lay the sea. Under the surprisingly strong light of the stars, it was a dark blue, empty plain. Between the highway and the water stretched a short, rocky slope and a strip of white sand.
But where Bob pointed, the rocky slope rose to a black cliff.
“Go!” Charlie patted Bob on the shoulder and turned to face his attackers.
Objects began erupting from the hatch. Mattresses. A bucket. A whole shelfload of books, one at a time. Ollie and Gnat were heaving up everything they could get their hands on.
When a broken toilet bowl came up the hatch, Charlie almost laughed. “That’s enough!”
He started with the books. He wanted to read their spines, then open and leaf through them. Depending on the book, he might glance at the last page first, or the introduction, if it wasn’t too stuffy. Then he’d lie on his stomach under the gaslight and enjoy each volume for hours.
Instead he forced himself not to even look at the titles. He grabbed the first book and threw it.
Under an onslaught of hurled literature, the next steam-carriage pulled back. From fifty feet away, the men leaning out the vehicle’s windows took careful aim.
Bang! Crash!
The first shot knocked out windows in the wheelhouse. Ollie and Gnat fell to the deck and shoved objects off the back of the steam-truck as fast as they could.
Fortunately, Charlie had a good throwing arm, and the driver of the steam-carriage had underestimated his strength. Charlie picked a heavy book this time, and he couldn’t he
lp noticing that it was a copy of Mrs. Beeton. Compact, but solid.
He took aim, threw, and hit one of the shooters squarely in the face. The man dropped his gun, waved his arms wildly, and fell right out the window. Carriages behind him swerved left and right to avoid hitting the fallen man.
Charlie picked up the shovel. He gripped it like a javelin, bullets whizzing past him. Starting with his back against the wheelhouse, he took three short steps and hurled the garden tool.
The shovel sailed through the air, spiraling slightly, until it struck the first steam-carriage right in the thicket of gears and guiding levers at the driver’s feet. The driver braked and another vehicle struck him from the rear.
The others passed the wreck and accelerated.
The steam-truck lurched right, and immediately the ride was much bumpier. Charlie looked forward and saw that Bob was now driving across a field. Ahead, the cliff drew near.
“Now!” he shouted to all his friends.
Quickly he stepped into the flyer’s harness and strapped himself in. Ollie shoved the toilet off the back of the deck to trip up the pursuers, and then—bamf!—he was a yellow garter snake, sliding up Charlie’s leg and into his peacoat.
Bob jammed a stick into the spoked wheel to hold it steady and then scrambled to join Charlie. She laughed as she buckled herself into the front position of the flyer. “I ain’t used to being the pretty lady.”
Inside Charlie’s sleeve, Ollie hissed.
Gnat gripped Charlie by the calf. “I’ll just have to hold on,” she said. In her right hand she still had the little knife, and she laid it against the length of rope that anchored Charlie and the flyer to the steam-truck. “Tell me when!”
Charlie nodded. He crouched, bracing himself to jump at the right moment. The water of the bay swung in and out of view. Behind him, he heard gunshots, and with a high-pitched whine, bullets ricocheted off the truck very close to him.
With a final big bump, he felt the front of the steam-truck tip downward and begin to fall.
“Now!” he shouted to Gnat.
Charlie was watching the bay as its entire surface suddenly spread out before him, but he felt the tension of the rope dissipate and the flyer’s sudden strong desire to rise.
“Run!” he yelled to Bob.
They took two steps forward—
they jumped onto the wheelhouse as it tilted down and away from them—
and they sprang up into open space.
Charlie flapped the flyer’s wings as hard as he could.
Charlie flew.
Up and away from the men shooting at him, with a stiff breeze at his back coming off the mountains. As he wheeled right, out of range of his attackers and back toward land, the breeze pushed under the wings of the flyer and raised him.
Charlie looked at the water below for evidence of Lloyd Shankin’s Drowned Hundred, but didn’t see any houses beneath the waves. The starlight on the water turned the entire sea a sparkling, opaque silver.
“You’re a natural, Charlie!” Bob called over her shoulder.
“Your flyer is beautiful!” he yelled back.
“We ’ave your bap to thank for that!”
As the nose of the flyer lifted and turned toward land, Charlie saw the full expanse of the night sky. There was no moon, and it was dark enough that all the stars were visible. He nearly dropped the handles in astonishment. It reminded him of the gemstones in the walls of the pixie barony.
“The sky!” he gasped. “I’ve never seen anything like that!”
“Well, you wouldn’t, mate,” Bob shouted over the breeze. “Not living inside a shop as you did. Even out of doors, London’s got too much fog and too many lights to see the night sky properly.”
Ollie the snake hissed.
“That’s Ollie reminding us ’e likes London!” Bob laughed. “We know, my china! We know!”
Charlie flew over a small village at the mouth of the river, just a handful of yellow lights in the darkness. Ahead he saw the many glaring lights of Machine-Town. A string of lights dotted the highway from Machynlleth to the sea. How many men did the Iron Cog have, anyway?
And what was all that talk about building a new world and about his bap being a sacrifice? And who was Gaston St. Jacques, that the Hound belonged to him and that he had some kind of contact with shaitans? Charlie knew very little about shaitans, except that they were dangerous.
Veering left, Charlie was immediately over the lower flanks of Cader Idris. He aimed for the summit. He was going to find the pale boy.
As Machine-Town disappeared over the shoulder of the mountain, Charlie felt he was rising to enter a field of pure light. Angels, he thought. This must be what it would be like to rise to meet them.
“Charlie,” Bob called. “It occurs to me I ought to ’ave asked you a question.”
“What is it?”
“When was the last time your mainspring was wound up?”
Charlie thought about it. “Last night.”
“An’ you been jumping an’ running a bit, ’aven’t you?”
Charlie saw her point. “I’ll fly lower.”
He was careful not to fly too low. A glint of red that might have been merely a stray reflection, or a trick of the light, reminded him that the Hound stalked this mountain at night. The Iron Cog’s creation had nearly killed Charlie the last time they’d met, and he couldn’t count on being lucky enough to find a big-folk gate a second time.
He headed for Aunt Big Money’s burrow. The witch rabbit might know where to find the pale boy. Also, Ollie would be pleased to see her again, though Charlie wasn’t quite sure why.
At least he knew why the pale boy was afraid of him now. His home had been surrounded and his father attacked. Charlie would explain that he was not an agent of the Iron Cog. Not a creature of the Iron Cog, he corrected himself, since the pale boy had to realize that Charlie was a device like him.
Charlie brought the flyer down at the top of the forest, just above Aunt Big Money’s cave. Ollie instantly assumed his boy form.
“Thanks, Charlie!” His face wore an enormous grin Charlie was more accustomed to seeing on Bob’s face. Ollie immediately jogged down the hill toward the burrow.
Charlie shrugged out of his harness. “Let’s stay in pairs. Can you two watch the flyer?”
Without waiting for a response, he trotted after Ollie.
At the top of the mound of earth covering the burrow, he stopped. Ollie stood below him, looking at the warren entrance. His mouth was flattened into a thin line.
“Ollie?”
The chimney sweep didn’t answer.
Charlie dropped down and landed next to Ollie, and he realized Ollie was in shock.
Aunt Big Money’s burrow had been destroyed. The neatly packed chalk of the walls was shredded and the slates of the staircase ripped out. Charlie could see the marks of the work, and they weren’t the tracks of shovel and mattock—they were enormous paw-shaped gouges.
The Hound had opened the entrance to Aunt Big Money’s burrow. The hallway looked like a raw wound.
Ollie stepped forward.
“Stop!” Charlie said. “The Hound may be down there.”
Ollie kept walking.
“Ollie…”
“I have to see it for myself,” Ollie said. He eased his feet into the destroyed passage, spread his legs for balance, and then slid down into Aunt Big Money’s warren.
Charlie shook his head, but he followed.
Aunt Big Money’s main chamber was shattered. The fireplace was cold. The hundreds of drawers of herbs and other simples were ripped out and smashed. The great table that had once presided over the center of the room was split in two.
And lying on the floor, between the two halves of the table, was the witch rabbit.
She was mangled. One arm was missing entirely, and her torso had been ripped open. The sight of gears and pistons spilling out of her split chest struck horribly close to Charlie’s heart. He imagined himself lying there
in her place.
Ollie sniffed.
Charlie put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, mate.”
“Maybe she’s not dead. Maybe Brunel can put those gears back where they belong. Maybe Bob…” Ollie looked to Charlie.
Charlie wished he had answers. He shrugged.
Ollie abruptly sobbed. “Don’t you see? She gave me hope.”
“Hope of what?” Charlie remembered the visions the witch rabbit had shown him, of a pit with a tomb at its depth, a fire along a boiling river, and a giant who wished to kill him. None of those images gave Charlie anything resembling hope.
Before Ollie could answer, Charlie heard a growl at the top of the entry passage.
He was unarmed. Charlie grabbed one of the table’s thick legs with both hands and yanked as hard as he could. The leg came away in his hands with a loud CRACK! Charlie stepped to the bottom of the passage, club raised over his head.
At the top of the passage crouched the Hound. It growled and sniffed, thrusting its face into the opening. Its one eye gleamed red; the flesh around the other eye was swollen over it.
Charlie considered his options. Ollie could probably escape on his own, as a snake. But Bob and Gnat didn’t have that luxury. The slope of the mountain here wasn’t steep enough for Bob to launch the flyer.
If Bob and Gnat weren’t already dead.
The Hound threw back its head and ROARED!
Charlie charged.
It was a desperate act. The smarter move would have been to back deeper into the burrow, look for a smaller exit through which the Hound couldn’t follow, or a tight space in which the Hound’s size would be a disadvantage.
But that would have left the Hound free to attack his friends.
Charlie took the passage in a single leap and caught the Hound by surprise. Even as his feet touched down on the ground, Charlie swung his table-leg club at the Hound’s muzzle.
The Hound ducked, and the club hit it in the shoulder—
CRACK!
And snapped in two.
With a lunge and a shake of its head, the Hound battered Charlie, hurling him through the air. Charlie slammed into the hillside and dropped to the ground behind a patch of briars.
