Agatha H and the Voice of the Castle

by Kaja Foglio

  Vole was ready to give up. “Hyu keep talkink like dese guys iz schmart. Dose clowns attacking hyu poppa iz as organized as a bag of fleas.”

  A smile lit up Gil’s face. “Yes! ‘Clowns.’ That’s the perfect word, Captain. Foolish creatures who exist to cause a distraction while the real players prepare off-stage.”

  Vole looked at him blankly. Gil sighed. Suddenly, the ground trembled with a sound like a distant explosion. “Never mind. Sound the alarm. The real players have arrived.”

  In the little outpost, Ognian screwed the telescope tighter into his eye. “Hoy!” he called to the others, who were lounging like cats in the sun, “Someting iz heppenink!”

  Jenka opened one eye and looked at him suspiciously. “Dis had better not be anodder gurl takink a bath.”

  Maxim grinned and nudged Dimo in the ribs. “Hy dun tink ve gets dot lucky twice.”

  Dimo grinned back. Good times.

  Jenka snagged the telescope and examined the distant town. “Hyu iz right,” she said grudgingly. “Dere’s pipple appearink all alonk der walls. Dey’s pretty excited about someting.”

  Maxim’s ears twitched. “Listen—iz dot der alarm gongs?”

  Dimo shrugged. “Hyu gots der goot ears—but Hy ken see dot dey iz closink der gates!”

  Ognian peered downwards. “Jenka? Vy iz Füst runnink avay?”

  Jenka leaned over the rail in time to see her trained bear retreating over the hill. “He’s vat?” A look of surprise flashed in her eyes. “Get serious,” she screamed.28

  Instantly all three of her companions snapped to attention but it was too late. A giant metal foot smashed the tower to bits around them, sending them flying through the air.

  They crashed to the ground, bounced to their feet, and stared in amazement.

  Five enormous spider-like clanks filled the plain. Each boasted five stout armored legs that rose and fell, sinking deep prints into the earth as they ponderously moved forward. Their hides were armor-plated. Each was topped by a colossal machine cannon. Arrays of exhaust pipes poured forth gouts of black smoke. A balcony of sorts girded each machine, and they could see squads of riflemen staring down at them in amazement.

  Ognian was the first to react. “Hey!” he yelled. “Dey busted our tower!” He shook his fist at the machine as it majestically passed over them. “Who’s gun pay for dot?”

  Aboard the lead war clank, His Grace the Third Duke of some kingdom that technically no longer existed,29 flashed his oversized teeth in a grin and adjusted his periscope. “Haw! We caught those fellows completely by surprise, General Selnikov.”

  Behind him, His Lordship, late of Balan’s Gap, nodded. “Yes, that worked, at least.”

  The duke fiddled with the scope. “Why, those are Jägers!” He looked up hopefully. “Shall I let the men shoot them?”

  Selnikov considered this and then shook his head. “No. We’re still pretending that we want to do this without bloodshed.”

  The duke looked at him. “Oh,” he said, pronouncing the “E.” “But surely they don’t count. They’re Jägers.”

  “Anywhere else, perhaps. But this is Mechanicsburg. Never burn a bridge unless your foe is on it, Your Grace.” Selnikov rubbed his fingers together. “Does the air feel odd to you?”

  The duke sucked on his teeth. “Odd?”

  “Yes…sort of…greasy…” Selnikov frowned. He’d felt nervous. He’d felt this sort of thing before—but where?

  Atop the city wall, the side of an elaborate set of chimney pots shivered and then swung aside, revealing the head of a metal stairway. From the shuff of dislodged dust emerged Agatha, Zeetha, Herr Diamant, von Mekkhan, Krosp, and Wooster.

  Zeetha looked around. “And where are we now?”

  “Top of the outer wall,” Herr Diamant informed them. “The old passages can take you almost anywhere if you take the time to learn them.” He pointed to an ancient bank of steam-driven arbalests. “The old Heterodynes liked to operate the defenses personally.” He started walking and indicated a mass of rusted tubes topped by a corroded copper gargoyle, its mouth stretched impossibly wide. “The Baron disabled the controls to the screamer guns long ago, but if you’d like to take a look at them—”

  Agatha interrupted, pointing to a group of men intent on a device that gleamed with polished glass and fresh grease. “Screamer guns? Is that what they’re working on?”

  Diamant shook his head. “Oh, no, that’s something new.”

  Agatha was intrigued. From where she stood, the device looked like a sleek brass cylinder, mounted to the stone walkway by a set of heavy-duty ceramic insulators. Thick power cables looped off in both directions. As they watched, a worker in thick goggles threw a final switch and, with a crackle, a large glass dome filled with flickering tendrils of blue energy. The crew gave a small cheer as the man shut and bolted a final metal hatch. Only then, as they turned away and began gathering their tools, did they notice Agatha and her friends.

  The man in the goggles stepped forward, stripping off thick rubber gloves. “Why, it’s Herr Diamant, yes? We have all the supplies we need, thank you.”

  Another technician closed the cover on a steel box and carefully snapped shut the clasps before straightening up. “Indeed, we’re done. We have just turned everything on.” He waved his hand and Agatha now saw that another cylinder, with its own flickering dome, stood some distance away and another beyond that. Similar devices were spaced out atop the wall as far as she could see.

  “What are they?” she asked.

  Diamant looked embarrassed. “We’re not sure. Some project of young Wulfenbach’s.”

  The second technician leaned forwards and dropped his voice conspiratorially. “Don’t ask us. But we’ve been unloading and installing them since he arrived this morning.”

  Further disclosure was cut off by the team leader lightly tapping the speaker on the head with a spanner. “Quiet, you.”

  Meanwhile Agatha’s eyes had grown large. “Wait—you’re saying that Gil is—”

  “BATTLE CLANKS!” The shout came from Wooster, who had been looking outwards. “Huge ones!”

  Everyone ran to the wall and stared out at the vast contraptions hauling themselves toward the gates.

  Agatha clasped her hands together. “Magnificent,” she breathed.

  “They are here to attack us,” Krosp reminded her.

  “Yes!” she agreed. “I can’t wait to see them in action!”

  Herr Diamant smiled. “Well, that’s encouraging.”

  Krosp stared at him.

  The old man shrugged. “What? Her grandfather used to open the gates for things like this, just so he could get a better look.”

  In the Great Hospital, Klaus Wulfenbach stirred. Outside, a resonant, mechanical sound was building. Bangladesh DuPree gazed out the window. When Klaus spoke, she noticed that his voice was already stronger than it had been at breakfast. “Those are the Mechanicsburg Alarm Gongs. DuPree, what’s happening?”

  DuPree’s shrug became a businesslike snap—knives appearing in her hands as the door opened. The knives vanished when she saw that it was only Dr. Sun.

  “The city is under attack. An army of war-clanks. Coming up to the Western Gate.”

  Klaus glanced at the nearest window. “I should have a decent view from here. Get me—Ow!”

  The exclamation came from Sun lightly tapping Klaus on the chest. “Oh, so that still hurts, does it?”

  “Of course it hurts,” Klaus snarled. “You know every pressure point and nerve cluster I have. I still have to get up.”

  He tried levering himself up from the bed. With a detached air, Sun tapped a muscle in Klaus’s shoulder, and the Baron collapsed back, grimacing. “Sun—”

  “You shouldn’t move.”

  “I need to see what we’re up against.”

  “You’ll damage yourself.”

  Klaus snorted and waved a bandage-wrapped arm. “I doubt any damage I will incur will be worse than this, and if it is, I�
�m in no better place for it, now, am I?”

  Sun looked at him and with a sigh, quickly detached the assorted drips, feeds, and catheters, taking care to do so in the most painful way possible. By the end of the procedure, Klaus was paler, but still determined. He thrashed about feebly and sank back onto his bed.

  “There,” Sun declared with a touch of satisfaction. “Are you convinced? You cannot—”

  “DuPree,” Klaus interrupted. “Get me to that window. No matter what.”

  DuPree nodded and gave Klaus a “thumbs up” signal. The Baron glanced at Sun. “I think you could construct a simple—” DuPree grasped the edge of the Baron’s bed and tipped it over with a crash. The Baron blacked out briefly from the pain. This was no doubt a blessing, considering the agony he experienced when he awoke a few seconds later to find that DuPree was dragging him by his shattered leg towards the window.

  Sun forced himself to remain still as DuPree jerked, pulled, and slammed the gasping man into position. This was not the first time that Sun had patched the Baron up, and Klaus was one of the worst patients he had ever had to put up with. While he himself would never do what DuPree was doing, he reasoned that there was a small chance that this might actually teach Klaus a lesson.

  A final gurgle of pain signaled DuPree draping Klaus over the windowsill. She patted him on the back and his knuckles whitened.

  “Th-th-thank you, DuPree,” he gasped. “That should be the worst of it.”

  Sun stepped up. “Please stick around, Captain, you can haul him back.”

  Klaus’s eyes rolled back up into his head.

  Back on the lead war-clank, the Duke exclaimed in delight. “Oh, I say! Someone is coming out! To surrender, I imagine.”

  Indeed, at the base of the great ironbound gate, a small postern door had swung open and a single man stepped forth.

  Atop the wall, Herr Diamant frowned. “That’s not one of the City Council.”

  Ardsley Wooster took one look and felt as if the floor had dropped from beneath his feet. “It’s Master Gilgamesh! He’s here!”

  Krosp’s ears flicked forward with interest. He gazed at the five gigantic metal behemoths and then back to the single small figure striding out towards them. “Well. This could solve some problems,” he opined.

  Agatha felt her breath catch in her throat. “What is he doing? He’s all alone! He’ll be killed!”

  Zeetha raised her eyebrow. “Oooh? And why do you care?”

  Agatha’s face went red. “Because… Because the Baron will blame me?”

  Zeetha nodded with a small smile. “Oh. Of course.” She patted Agatha’s arm. “We’ll just root for him then.”

  Agatha didn’t know it, but she was on Gilgamesh’s mind at the moment. He was growing uncomfortably aware that, for someone as smart as everyone insisted that he was, he could be just as idiotic as anyone else who wanted to impress a girl. Surprisingly, he took some comfort from this.

  Occasionally Gil looked at the silly doings and squabbles of the people around him and wondered if he was actually a member of the same species. He knew that this thought probably hit most people at some time in their lives, but Gil had the added factor of having a father who could easily have made it a legitimate question.

  Thus—on those occasions when Gil found himself doing anything that he had ever seen or read about that had made him roll his eyes at the foolishness of the human race—he made sure that he took a moment to cherish the experience.

  He toiled to the top of a small hillock and craned his neck up at the lead machine that now towered over him. I think this is worth about four seconds of cherishing, he mused, then I can go straight to terror.

  The faces of several dozen uniformed men peered down at him. A few of them uncertainly raised their rifles. At the sight, Gil felt a small wave of hope. Muzzle-loading muskets. Whoever had financed this expedition had spent all the treasure on the walkers and bought the soldiers whatever weapons they could find handy. No doubt they expected the town to roll over at the sight of the giant machines. This meant that if it came to shooting, as long as he could avoid the first volley, he had some chance of getting away before they reloaded.

  Gil stood tall, checked his stick a final time, took a deep breath, and bellowed upwards, “What is your business here?”

  Wooster felt a jostle, and turned. To his surprise, the tops of the walls were filling with people. Townspeople. They were pouring up the stairwells, grumbling and querulous.

  “I say,” he said. “What is this all about?”

  Krosp leapt atop a chimney and looked around. Troopers were shepherding the townspeople along, steering them away from the machines dotted along the wall and keeping them facing the action below.

  “Wulfenbach soldiers are forcing the townspeople up onto the wall,” he reported.

  “But most of the defenses aren’t working,” Diamant protested. “They can’t do anything useful.”

  Suddenly Wooster had an epiphany. “They can observe.” Wooster turned back to the scene outside the walls. “Someone wants everyone in town to see this.” He swallowed. “And I believe I know who that ‘someone’ is.”

  “Gil?” Agatha looked horrified. “But…but what is he thinking?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, her mind flashed to the devices Gil had positioned around the wall. Certain structural elements suddenly suggested intriguing possibilities. Agatha’s eyes went wide. “Oh,” she said quietly.

  Zeetha’s eyes narrowed. “Oh? What ‘Oh’? You know what he’s thinking?”

  Agatha bit her lower lip. “He’s thinking he’s not the one in trouble.”

  Aboard the walker, the duke laughed. “B’god, they do grow them stupid here, what?”

  “Be quiet, you idiot,” Selnikov snarled. Something isn’t right. Raising his voice, he answered the tiny figure below. “I am Rudolf Selnikov—a Commander of the Knights of Jove! I hereby take command of the Empire of the usurper Wulfenbach in the name of the House of Valois!”

  The tiny figure below put his hands on his hips. Selnikov felt the floor drop out from beneath him. He knew—knew—that the foot of the person below was slowly tapping. Why did he know that? Gamely he soldiered on. “Surrender the town, the Heterodyne girl, and the Baron! Cooperate, and no one will be harmed!” Well, he silently amended, no one anyone will care about.

  The person below nodded once. Selnikov felt sweat start upon his brow, then realized why he was so rattled. This young jackanapes was acting exactly like that devil Klaus would! The impertinence—!

  “I am Gilgamesh Wulfenbach. Son of Klaus!” The voice calling up to him sounded annoyed. “I will say this only once! Leave now, or you will die!”

  Selnikov had been exposed to the strange ways of Sparks on an almost daily basis for most of his life, and had nevertheless managed to live to a rather respectable age. He turned to order a retreat. But before he could do it, the duke beside him gave a snort. “Stupid and as mad as a fruitbat, apparently.” He raised his voice. “A gold piece to the fellow who shoots this rascal!”

  That was it. The muskets were popping and there would be no retreat. Only one possible way was left to get through this mess. “All guns!” Selnikov screamed. “All guns open fire! Quickly!”

  “Use the artillery,” Selnikov roared. “Fire the coil gun!” Around him soldiers were raggedly firing their unfamiliar weapons.

  “Damnation,” one swore as he tried to dig another ball out of the pouch at his belt, “I hit him! I know I did!”

  Another cursed as he tried to aim. “The gyros are keeping us steady, but they’re not keeping us still!”

  Below them, Gil raised his stick. “Time’s up.”

  There was an almost imperceptible click—and then the sky opened. A bolt of lightning struck the lead machine, briefly wreathing it in a veil of blue-white discharge before various things inside it exploded, adding to the earsplitting sound of thunder.

  The machine stood still for a moment, then twisted and slowly fell
to the side with a booming crash.

  Several thousand mouths fell open and almost twice that many eyes bugged from their sockets. The first sound, aside from the slow pinging of the metal as it cooled, was Agatha’s delighted scream of triumph as she stared entranced at the scene below.

  Gil would have found this intensely gratifying, if he could have heard it, but at that moment he was wondering if he would ever hear anything ever again. With echoes of thunder ringing in his ears, he again raised his stick, its tip glowing brightly. He roared towards the remaining machines, “Anyone else?”

  A moment of terrified silence ticked past and then shouts arose from the machine to the right of the smoking clank. “We surrender!”

  A shower of weapons fell from the next machine over. “So do we!”

  Still, there is one in every crowd. The third machine swung its mounted cannon about and let off a poorly aimed shot, which blew apart a patch of road several dozen meters to Gil’s left. Again he raised the glowing stick. Again there was a click, and again a bolt of lightning crashed down and blew the machine to molten fragments.

  As the legs crashed outwards, Gil strode forward. “This is not a trick”, he shouted. “I did not get lucky! I am Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, and I am in control!”

  High above the walls at the hospital window, Klaus watched the action outside the town, his face lit with an unholy glee that even DuPree found unnerving. “They’re surrendering. Good!”

  “Good?” Sun looked pale. “That was amazing.”

  Briefly Klaus appeared to relax. Muscles taut with tension released for the first time in years. “Yes. Yes it was.” He gazed down at his son with undisguised pride, then snapped back to his usual tense self. “Get me back to bed,” he ordered Bangladesh. “Quickly, before he comes back.”

  There followed a period of screaming that Sun tried very hard to ignore. When it was done, he turned back to find Klaus again stretched out in bed, white-faced and sweating but still with a ghastly grin on his face. Sun shook his head, and set about reconnecting the assorted drips, feeds, and hoses to his patient. He hissed at the messages that his reconnected meters began to display. “I hope it was worth it,” he snarled.