by Lee Bond
What in the utter fuck was going on?
“A blacksmith, hey?” Jimmy stepped forward some more and the fish responded by stepping back. Over the fish’s shoulder, the King still fell. Wouldn’t be long now.
Maybe … maybe it were time to move on inwards, after all. In all his long years of pulling these crews together to punish Peemes’ arrogance and lies, Nicked Jimmy never once had someone come through the door as had this dark-haired bloke, nor one claiming to possess even the most rudimentary skills at smithing.
Oh, now, if this gaggle that kept trying to build itself in his head, to take him all the way to Arcadia, had a blacksmith on tap, well… that sort of thing didn’t come along too often. And like as not, Nicked Jimmy found himself feeling like it were a risk he should be taking after all.
This fish … this fish … No other gaggle had a smith of their own, and if this fish –all bright eyed and staring about in wonder like a newborn- had even the smallest hint of talent towards making weapons … Jimmy nodded to himself.
“Come on then.” Nicked Jimmy held out his hand, the one with the extra fingers. The fish raised a startled eyebrow at the metallic digits but said nothing. “My knobkerrie, if you please. And then we need to make haste, fish, to help my men take down that there King.”
“And why,” Garth handed the skullcrusher over to Jimmy, watching the rough metal fingers that’d been clumsily grafted onto the hand curl around the pipe, “do you think I’m going to go back there and help you murder that fucking Kingbot?”
Jimmy smiled, revealing stained and gritty teeth. “Well, fish, it’s either you join my crew here or I kill ya, and something tells me a man who can take my bonking stick away from me so quickly and who can guess the height and weight of a … ‘Kingbot’ without ever actually settin’ eyes on one whilst on the ground is someone who’s got himself a vested interest in life, yes?”
Garth pursed his lips tightly. This was the last thing he wanted. Allying himself with a horde of crazy-ass FrancoBritish freakazoids was exactly the sort of move that could stir the Specter out of its uneasy sleep; without The Eye’s presence continually reminding him of the greater goals he had, it’d be too easy to fall under the hypnotic sway of ruthless violence and never-ending death that erupted from him every time rage darkened his otherwise sunny disposition.
Especially in the sort of place Arcade City was already shaping up to be.
Still, it wasn’t like better options were cartwheeling towards him. Nicked Jimmy obviously held a grudge against Warden Peemes, just as it was obvious that this little town existed so close to the doors so that fresh convicts could have their new lives explained to them. Since the mad bastard Jimmy had scared all the townsfolk away …
“Fuck me sideways. All right, Jimmy, let’s see how you crazy fuckers kill yourself a King.” Garth trotted along after his newest ‘employer’, wondering fervently how in the hell he was going to get out the jam he was in without having his head torn off or giving in to the dark pressure of Arcade City.
***
The King smashed solidly into the ground at terminal velocity. The clatter, Jimmy reckoned, could be heard for miles in every direction. Shielding his eyes against the storm of debris that howled through the alleys, laughing as chunks of metal and rock bounced off his skin, Nicked Jimmy gestured with his knobkerrie once the dust clouds settled. “See that? Our old King there, he’s a toughie. ‘s why I like it out here, hey? The Big Kings are a challenge, right enough.”
Garth shook his head in disbelief. There was no goddamn way a two hundred foot robot that looked like it’d been built from a Meccano set should’ve been able to survive a plummet like that.
Not only had it survived, it was bellowing and thrashing around on the ground like a turtle flipped over onto it’s back. Nicked Jimmy’s crew was arrayed on the roofs of the buildings overlooking the square where the massive robot had crash landed, silent sentinels bedecked in a nightmarish hodgepodge of strange clothes and stranger desires.
“Why don’t they just jump down there and smash the fucker’s head in?” Garth couldn’t take his eyes off the ‘bot. It was an amazing feat of technical construction, even if it did look like a cheap sci-fi knock-off from some of the pulp magazines he’d read during his time in the proto-Reality. No one in the Unreal Universe should have any idea what steampunk was, yet … yet everything here screamed fanboy.
‘What in the fuck is going on?’ was his brand spanking new, super shiny mantra.
Nicked Jimmy shook his head, wishing he had his damn megaphone. He was going to have to rely on his crew’s skill and wisdom from here on out. Now he was considering making the switch, on moving inward and maybe, just maybe getting hold of some purified Kingsblood, perhaps it was time to start trusting. “A fallen King is damned dangerous, fishy. Standing upright, it’s just a matter of persistent and continual damage, right? As long as you can move quick enough if you’re a crusher or thumper on the ground and you can dance around them feet, you’re golden. A King on his back … legs and arms are flailing about. Ah, see there … that’s what happens when you can’t dance.”
Garth followed the tip of Jimmy’s skullcrusher to where the man was pointing and blanched. “Is that a dude stuck in there? Half a dude?”
“Stupid Ferd.” Jimmy shrugged. “He’ll be right as rain in a day or two, quicker if we can find his lower half for him. He’ll be right useless he grows summat wi’out the lower half, come out all weird. Seen it before. Awful, awful stuff, it is.”
Garth had to shout to be heard over a sudden, concussive bellow from the downed monarch-bot. “Say what the fuck now?”
Jimmy chuckled. He’d forgotten what it was like, talking to someone who had no idea what Arcade City was really like. “In due time, fishy, in due time. For now, let’s just say that here, in Arcade City, death ain’t like it is on the outside.”
Garth looked back to the King, disregarding Nicked Jimmy’s attempt at mystery. He may not know the precise method of resurrection being used by the crazy fuckers in Arcade City, but he already knew the delivery vector.
Unbidden, his skin started crawling. To complement the huge sense of foreboding, an icy cold chill decided to wash across his skin.
The Cloud. Gut instinct had proven right.
More was the pity.
The Cloud –somehow, some way, some awful terrible way- surrounded him on all sides.
The Cloud. On Earth. Didn’t matter if it was beneath an indestructible Dome or not.
The Cloud.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Down below, their Kingbot was thrashing and flailing around with wanton destruction, tearing great chunks out of the buildings within reach of arms or legs.
“Is it … what’s going on?” Garth watched a massive chunk of wall, easily four hundred pounds of solid stone, fall into the King’s mouth.
“Aye.” Nicked Jimmy saw the glint of binoculars from someone on a building on the opposite end of the court and he motioned to the King. Faint motion from the assembled crew said they understood. “He’s getting ready … and there he goes.”
Garth watched with jaw-dropped awe as mechanical arms sprouted from the King’s head. Thin in comparison to the massive ones attached to the body’s shoulders, these rickety-looking things shoved and heaved and strained to get their quarry upright. More skeletal arms appeared, growing out of the Kingbot’s back, then ass, each set aiding in the task. The ones atop the King’s crown reached out to grab hold of the nearest wall, and that was when the crew started moving.
“I cannot fucking believe what I just fucking saw.” Garth made a popping sound with his mouth. Everyone within eyesight wasn’t even paying it the kind of attention such a terrifying miracle deserved. He bit back a gasp when five of Nicked Jimmy’s crew actually ran down the skeletal arms, whooping and hollering as they leaped onto the King’s crown.
“Time for the bombers and bangers, too, I think.” Nicked Jimmy pulled a popper from his pocket. He slapp
ed the tube against his thigh then tossed it high into the air. A brilliant burst of red smoke erupted, bright enough to be seen for tens of miles in every direction.
The two men stood in silence for a moment, Nicked Jimmy contemplating the future fully for the first time since he’d come up with a method of punishing his old friend Warden Peemes and the fish no doubt paying attention to the fight down below.
Jimmy still wasn’t sold on the whole idea, but … a blacksmith. There was no denying that the fishy had some kind of engineering skill; it took most Kingslayers upwards of five big kills to have an inkling about how tall and how much one of the heavy bastards weighed, and this fishy had done it in the twinkling of an eye.
And then, of course, there was that sweet grab he’d done. Not a one of his crew had been ready for that. Why, Nicked Jimmy himself was mighty impressed. His little fishy had swept in, jabbed him in the throat and gone for the knobkerrie quick as anything, telling anyone who was good at that sort of thing that there was even more to this new convict. Blacksmiths didn’t fight Kings. They didn’t need to. They sold their services for Dark Iron and anyone who wanted to kill Kings for a living paid up without blinking an eye because without the fancy smashers and pokers and prodders and launchers and whatever else those skilled men dreamed up, all you were was a dead man.
No, blacksmiths normally did not kill Kings, but Jimmy reckoned this one might. If he didn’t decide to kill the fish later on.
What a treasure such a one could be! A smith as understood not only how to build weapons, but one as knew the proper methods of Kingkilling to boot? Why, Nicked Jimmy couldn’t bring to mind a single gaggle as had ever had a lad or lass like that!
Garth winced as one of Jimmy’s crushers took the full weight of a low sweep of a giant hand; the woman flew through the air, smashing painfully into the geared door that theoretically led to the outside world. From his vantage point on the rooftop, the poor woman flopped like a ragdoll as she tumbled to the ground. “How long for that?”
Jimmy sniffed. “Ten, twenty minutes, tops. Grim Mary didn’t lose any arms or her head or anything, so that’s it.”
“And you guys all do this?” Garth watched a guy built like a brick shithouse swing a hammer that easily weighed in at six hundred pounds at the very same hand that’d smashed Grim Mary into the wall. The face of the hammer –easily three feet wide- knocked a finger right off. “Holy shit!”
While the hammer-wielder brought his hammer around for another bash, a short, skinny guy with an actual cartoony-looking bomb –the device was perfectly spherical with a sputtering fuse in the top- ran up the bigger man’s back, leaped across to the King’s hand, slam dunked his payload into where the finger had once been, only to get bashed by the hammer as it came around for another blow.
“Ah. A bomber. Crazy lot, them.” Nicked Jimmy applauded as the King’s hand shattered into a rain of metal and broken springs.
“Let me guess.” The King snatched his broken wrist back and decided instead to focus more on trying to stomp his enemies flat, giving Jimmy’s launchers and bangers a better profile to target. “Explosives don’t work so well in here.”
Jimmy cast the fishy a thoughtful sideways glance. He scratched at his cheek. “Now why would you figure that?”
The air filled with pops and cracks. Jimmy’s crew was using old-fashioned gunpowder, not very pure. A far cry from the explosive content used by the bomber who’d gotten his chest crushed in by the hammer. Garth ignored Jimmy’s repeated question, ears trained on the percussive sounds. No misfires. No backfires. The antiquated formula was obviously low-tech enough to avoid possible restrictions set about by the Dark Iron King’s Cloud.
What was it Meechy had said? The King decided what worked and what didn’t? Such power in the hands of a single man was almost too terrible to contemplate. This King –whoever he was- had set himself up as some kind of deity.
Jimmy clouted the fishy cruelly on the back of the head, grinning mischievously at the hot surge of anger that rising on the fishy’s face. Oh, aye. This one had a fire in him, for certain. A soldier, outside? Mayhap. Mercenary?
Didn’t matter which, Jimmy supposed. Knowledge was knowledge. “When I ask a question, fishy-fish, you answer. How d’you know that bangers and bombers have a tough time with their chosen profession?”
“Simple.” Garth considered a handful of maniacs as they rappelled up one of the King’s legs with pulleys. Fucking loons. “You called them crazy, and seemed overly appreciative of the King’s hand going boom.”
Garth continued, pointing to the weirdoes who were clamping themselves to the King’s metal sash. “Since I consider those guys right there fucking lunatics of the highest order yet you’re like ‘yeah, them guys are attaching themselves right to that there gear-y sash thing, what about it?’, your version of crazy must mean something else entirely, meaning stuff that goes boom can’t be trusted.”
“Keep talking like that, fish, and you’re gonna smart yourself right into the grave.” Nicked Jimmy was beginning to dislike the fish again. He knew he weren’t the smartest gearhead in Arcade City, knew that there were lookers and leaders out there that had a lot going on inside their skulls, but he was the leader and looker here. Jimmy explained this to the fish calmly, patiently, and it wasn’t until he let go of the fish’s neck that he realized he’d actually been shouting and screaming and trying to choke the life out of his fish. “Besides which, you’d be wrong, fishy. Bombers and lobbers are mad on account of they just is. You tell me, laddie … you think running up and down them arms and legs and all wi’ summat in your hands as can rip you in half if you stumble or hain’t quick enough be proper thinkin’?”
Garth massaged his neck. He raised his hands apologetically then turned back to the King. Inwardly, his mind was churning over his options. Nicked Jimmy was insane. Hell, they all probably were. Not only was Jimmy insane, he was rife with feelings of inadequacy and riddled with self-doubt.
“What’re those fuckers doing?” Garth watched as one, two … all five of them climbed inside the King the moment they managed to pop a gear from the royal sash loose. “Jesus Christ, they climbed inside?”
Jimmy frowned and tried to bat some metal flinders out of his vision. He stopped a moment later, feeling like an idiot. Luckily the fish was entranced by what was happening with the King. Every guy or girl that had enough of the crudey-crude in them had metal bits in their eyes, and every one of them did the same, tried to push those tiny flakes out of the way. “Well, I reckon they’re gonna do for the brain. We been fighting this King for just over a whole day now. Pushed him here, though I bet you’re gonna say you figured that out all on your own.”
“No, no.” Garth ignored the hostile question with skill. “The brain? Why do you sound disappointed at that?”
“Well, it lacks skill, right?” Jimmy pointed to their mostly-demolished King. The giant robot’s movements were belabored, and the launchers and bangers had managed to do enough damage to one shoulder to get the arm totally immobile. The metal bastard was staggering around the court like a drunken gearhead, bellowing madly and looking for an escape.
The leader made mental note of that. The King was damaged rightly enough and was having a hard time plotting an escape out of the courtyard. Either its eyes or its brain was already damaged enough that it couldn’t think of just jumping. Interesting.
Personally, Garth was of the opinion that climbing inside a Kingbot’s body to deal with the King’s brain was –while batshit insane- infinitely more skillful than whanging away until the fucking thing fell to pieces, but he kept that observation to himself. Nicked Jimmy was nearly as strong as a God soldier.
“Come now, fishy.” Jimmy snapped his fingers. “With them inside the noggin like that, things’ll end right quick, but for us as outside, it’s not exciting at all. Best to move along down to ground. You can … well, I guess you can take them stairs, hey? Be right quick, though, fishy. Make me look for you, and I guarantee you
won’t be pleased, hey?”
Garth flipped Jimmy the bird as the madman with extra metal fingers leaped to the ground. Nicked Jimmy’s admonishments about escape rang loudly. The Engineer looked around for a door so he could join the maniacs down below.
***
“We got a few seconds, fishy, so mind what I say ‘ere now, hey?” Jimmy pointed at the King, all troubled still with what was happening inside.
“Yeah, sure. No… no problem.” On the ground, literal steps away from the massive metal monarch, Garth had a whole new appreciation for Chadsik al-Taryin’s madcap attacks on the Gunboys; these Kings were monstrous, and while they seemed to lack modern weaponry, they obviously provided Arcadians with enough of a challenge to make fighting them worth it.
“As I hear it,” Jimmy hawked a blackened glob of spittle onto the cobblestones, “for most of old Arcade City’s life, it were well difficult to find and summon a king, hey? Few and far between, back in the day. Most lads and lasses as wanted a fight gen’rally wound up fighting other gaggles as were lookin’ for the right to do so themselves.
Well, near about a hundred years ago or so, summat happened to drive our old King mad, though most of them as were around when it went down preferred callin’ the bloke’s descent ‘Gothic’, hey? At any rate, whatever it was as happened saw Kingspawn points poppin’ up all over the places, right, givin’ any Tom, Dick or Harry the opportunity to fight a metal royal ruler for their own dollop of Vicious Elixir wi’out too much of a fuss.
That changed the rules of the game, fishy-fish. Gaggles stopped fightin’ one another so much, stopped roamin’ the land in search of unused Kingspawn points, hey? Took to pickin’ a castle or abandoned homestead or empty Estate or wotever as were closest to their favorite point and that were it! Each gaggle owns their own points and nary a scrap ‘twixt ‘em, unless chaps such as meself come strollin’ through, as I hain’t give a fuck as to ownership, no I do not.”
