by Lee Bond
“Ickford,” Barnabas growled, “is last on our places to visit, Master Nickels. The absolute last place and now I really will hear nowt about it until I bring it up again. I said we would make our way there, and so we shall, but on my timetable, not yours.”
“Okay, dude, bring it down about … eight thousand notches.” Garth raised his hands defensively. “Just a suggestion.”
Barnabas slapped a hand on the cart’s frame. “I know not what a ‘dude’ is, and you ought to work on your apology-giving skills. I’m feeling lenient, so we shall let this pass in favor of brining one of your own sore points up…”
Garth grit his teeth. Barnabas was a tenacious old prick. Immediately following their reawakening, the first thing the old blacksmith had done was round on him about the accidental revelation of his particularly weird case of Dark Iron poisoning. It didn’t matter, Barnabas opined, that Thumper had promised to keep Garth’s secret. Thumper was a stone-headed moron who could only keep his mouth shut when he was underwater and even then there was every chance that the fool would try to drink down the river he was in rather than shut that old gob of his.
Personally, Garth didn’t give a rat’s ass one way or the other what happened; hate it though he might, there was Kingsblood in him now. If push came to shove, there’d definitely be more pushing than shoving.
Barnabas, on the other hand, kept suggesting they elevate the levels of crudey-crude because ‘Marc’s crew may not look it, laddie buck, but they be one o’ the best around and you shall need all the edge you got, and besides all that, if I’m to conjure some way to cure you, well, now, I need to see you in your dark glory, hey?’
It sounded great, even doable, especially since it seemed like he could control the worst that Kingsblood brought out in him. It was just that Garth would sincerely rather scoop his one remaining eye out with a melon baller than add more of that hot, goopy crud to an already unwanted amount.
“Of all the things I don’t like about this place or the things you keep suggesting I do, Barnabas,” Garth stared down the road Mental Marc’s crew had taken to leave camp, tried imagining what they were thinking, if they were planning a raid… “This is one thing I don’t like more than anything else.”
Barnabas had promised to help discover a way to rid him of the crap in him, sure enough. The blacksmith felt that a tinkerer or artificer hanging out in one of the Estates may have the machinery needed to extract the bubbling black metal from his veins, and failing that, there were those smiths in Ickford that Barnabas held a rage-boner against and then, if all else failed, the sour old cuss deemed it quite probable that the old King’s forges in the Armory would almost certainly be able to meet their needs. If they could but find a gaggle willing to escort them all that way, a feat Barnabas likened to encountering the King popping a squat over a river.
“Not for you to like nor dislike.” Barnabas responded drolly. “Extra Kingsblood pumping through you is just the ticket. Only thing for you is to do.”
Sharp laughter bounced off the tents surrounding the two men. “’There is no try, there is only do’.” Garth wiped a lonely tear from his good eye. Oh, how he missed Reality 1.0. A shame he’d never see Reality 2.0.
Barnabas quirked an eyebrow at Garth’s sudden burst of hilarity. It wasn’t the first of such, and every time it happened, it was hard to miss the terrible sorrow lurking beneath the humor. What had the lad been through in his life? “Indeed, my young apprentice. Wait, what’s so funny now?”
More laughter poured out of Garth, long, bellyaching guffaws that hurt his sides. When he was able, he waved the comment away. “You wouldn’t get it and the story of the magic knight and his psychic apprentice is way too long, even if I skip the origin tales. Just as you refuse to talk about Ickford and the Great Clanging, we ain’t brining me up doin’ hotshots of Dark Iron this side of eternity, got it?” Garth was all smiles and wide eyes as Barnabas gave a grudging nod. Positive the armistice would last all of ten seconds, he sort of changed the topic. “Now. On a more serious note, you got any guns?”
Barnabas considered his mental checklist of items on hand. “Quick as I am, nowt that could be fixed in time. All as left by Marc and them will be little more than paperweights for now.”
“Fuck me. Guns would’ve ended this so quick. I’m like the Lone Ranger. Could shoot them bitches from miles away. Pew pew pew. Even if they are stupid guns with stupid amounts of useless gadgetry attached for no good reason.” Garth cleared his throat. “Knives it is, then. Wellp, let’s tuck ourselves into fake bed so we can wait for the moment those assholes try to kidnap or kill me and I kill them so you can watch like some kind of weird fucking pervert.”
“Put the hat on.” Barnabas shouted after Garth. He grinned when the younger man flipped him the bird. He persisted, shouting again. “Wear the hat. If they do come, Marc won’t send his whole crew down here to camp. Dead cert Shooty Jane’s going to be up in the tree line somewhere. You hain’t got that hat on your damnfool head when you go Specter on her comrades, she’ll either give you a second Kingsblood eye ‘twixt t’other two or equally dead cert she hies herself hither to spill your tale over hill and dale. You want them Gearmen to know your whereabouts, your choice, lad. Your choice. Rest assured I shall say I was taken hostage.”
Barnabas the blacksmith watched Garth disappear behind one of the tents, eyes filled with shrewd pleasure. He knew Marc’s crew of old. Thumper would indeed be telling tall tales soon enough –if the gormless twat had even made it to the end of the road before opening his yapper- and so they would definitely be coming for Nickels.
King Barnabas Blake the One and Only suspected the evening’s festivities were going to be quite illuminating. Ducking into his own tent for some downtime, Barnabas hoped to resolve his own issues before then.
***
Marc stalked back and forth, throwing his hands up in the air and slamming them down against his thighs. He’d known right away that the old bastard had been lying through them pearly whites of his. “Shoulda trusted me pistons, hey? Shoulda knowed right from the start. No man in a hat like that be a true smith. Man like that, he be some sort of gearhead not seen before now, hain’t that the truth!” Marc whapped his piston-brain with a fist and they started chuffing and chugging like crazy. “Prick like Barnabas … he hain’t never traveled with no one before now. Too disagreeable by a gallon! Don’t know who this Master Nickels boyo is when he’s at home, but I reckon I know what he’s goin’ to be, yes I do!”
Quick Wit –dangling upside down from a gnarled old tree branch high above their raging looker- peered at Barnabas’ well-lit campsite through a pair of Harvard’s Own Special Lenses; there was a big fire in the center of all those tents, but there were also a few actual lamps with their head-sized bulbs down there casting eerie illumination across the area. Nowhere he looked, though, did he see hide nor hair of the smith or his fake apprentice. “Looks as they’ve gone to bed, Marc.”
Marc barely heard Wit’s announcement.
It took a full two minutes more of him all but bouncing off the trees to notice his crew’s excitement. “Who does he think he is?” Marc demanded loudly once more
“Who does he think he is?” Marc demanded, pushing his way through the copse of trees they camped amidst to stare at Barnabas’ pitch with his own peepers. Atop –and through- his pate, them old pistons kept hammering away.
At first, all of them had thought Thumper crazy, but the lad had kept on insisting with more and more frenzy, going on about it until they’d started paying proper attention; it were well easy to forget that when you was dealing with someone who’s brains were nearly mush –like their fine thumper Thumper…- well.
You learned to pay attention to what he was saying.
If the details in the story changed too much, too often, it was likely the lummox wasn’t telling the truth. He might not be lying, because –in Thumper’s particular case, anyways- he never fibbed. Most of the time when their heavy hitter was tryin
g to relate summat, bits and bobs he’d seen or heard days and sometimes weeks earlier percolated through the story.
In this case, the story hadn’t changed one jot. No, Thumper’d said the same thing, over and over again; the insufferable ‘blacksmith’s apprentice’ had tried to push in Thumper’s pressure plate and failed. Had kept trying. And then, as insane as it sounded, tattoos done up in Kingsblood had poured down the be-hatted man’s arms, swirling, twirling gewgaws similar to the pistons and pipes jutting out of Mental Marc’s own head. And then the plate had pushed in with ease.
Now, everyone knew a lad or lass as had tattoos. It were a thing bored gearheads did afore they started monkeyin’ around with the real serious stuff. It weren’t summat Marc thought were a good idea, but he did know dear old Shooty Jane had herself some interesting ink all up and down her legs and admitted to himself that such a thing would be mighty fine to see, but even with his old tumpity-tump brain going click-clack all day, Marc had this to say: he were damn well certain Jane’s ink didn’t move.
Quick Wit called the notion miraculous, going all poetic about how, in a world of miracles, there were still summat out there to blow a bloke’s mind clean as a whistle. Marc didn’t know about that, neither, but their Quick Wit had lofty thoughts.
The looker and leader of the gaggle thought summat entirely different about them alleged tattoos. Whatever else they were, if what Thumper had seen, they jumped past miracle into some other, stranger world.
Marc ran a careful hand across the top of the pistons that seemed to do most of his thinking these days. He’d got a digit caught in there not too long ago and damn him if it hadn’t been chopped right off at the first knuckle! The tip had grown back right enough, all clawlike and sharp as a razor, but what about that original digit? Were it in there somewhere, rattling about inside his poor old brain pan or had the pistons done something to it?
If Barnabas could take Kingsblood and infuse it into another man, give him strength when he needed, disappearing up the arms like a magic trick when it were done, then … Marc liked his lips decisively.
If Barnabas could give a man Kingsblooded strength on command, then the old fuck might have the trick of ridding someone who had the worst bits that went along with the old Vicious Elixir. Seemed right, didn’t it just? You couldn’t do one wi’out the other, hey? If that were true, then there doubly no reason to even think on moving inwards.
Of all his crew, he, Marc, was the worst off, and how he longed to look a little less strange.
And if not, well, there were the hat. Marc liked that chapeaux, and he supposed that if he wore it on an angle to cover up the thumping metal rods coming out of his skull, he’d look mighty rakish.
Marc summoned his crew. Thumper and Quick Wit, two of his best, were quickest on the scene. They stayed close to one another because where Thumper couldn’t think his way out of a yawn, Wit’s mind moved like greased lightning. And besides all that, he had a way when speaking to the lumbering, near-brainless giant. Shooty Jane crawled from her hiding place in the underbrush, slinging her rifle over one shoulder, a cocky grin on her face; she’d been down in the scrub looking through the lenses of her long gun down on the smith and his friend, coolly assessing. Rabid Elton came up the hill, hoisting his two buzzsaw sabers crisscross with the hungry teeth pointing right at his neck, always taunting himself with accidental de-head-ification. Behind him came Dank Eddard and Fresh Emmy, the two of them with saucy grins on their faces.
The looker and leader bit back a snide remark or two. They was a couple, sure enough and could do what they wanted. For now.
“The plan, then?” Dank Eddard asked, as always, his soft voice betraying the absolute bastard that he was.
Marc pointed at the well-lit camp. Mayhap … mayhap they would leave the smith alone. The old crank had friends in low places all right. Being hunted by other gaggles weren’t no fun. No, they wouldn’t hassle Barnabas into unveiling his secrets, not when there were them in Ickford who might conjure up answers out of Nickels’ corpse. Much as they charged more than they ought by twice again, they were right smart.
“Best is to leave Barnabas well alone.” Marc nodded firmly. “The man is a smith. He’s got friends up and down these outer rings of Arcade City. Hurt him or kill him and like as not we’ll find ourselves hunted the rest of our lives. He’s done up weapons and gizmos for some of the best and brightest.”
“Like Flash Edward.” Thumper announced loudly, full of sudden fear. “Him with the pistols, shoots ‘round corners, he does, with mirror-bright bullets. Or High City Slim, the one with the fists. Or … King forbid … White Lisa…”
Quick With laid a hand on Thumper’s broad forearms. “Be calm, friend. Be calm.” He shot a dirty look at Elton, who always took great delight in working on Thumper’s fears. “No one’s seen nor heard of them in a perishing long time, Thumper. Like as not they’re dead or more like, skulking about Ickford, all thick with greyskin and darkhearts. No interest in us no more, hey?”
“If I can resume?” When no one said anything –except Thumper, who gave a slow, quiet apology- Marc did just that. “Now, as I see it, there’s artificers out there who’re just as good if not better than our old friend Barnabas, they’re just not as brave as the man himself. No, we go in, we get this dark-haired … experiment of Barnabas’ and we steal him away. Drag the body up Ickford way. See what one o’ them flash bastards can do for us.”
“Barnabas won’t likely let it go.” Shooty Jane had no problems stealing from a smith. Before running with Marc, one of her other lookers had done the same. It’d ended poorly for nearly everyone but her –doing for a smith was tough business, especially for them as liked to get up close and personal, but she were a shootist and danger rarely found her- and that blacksmith had been strictly small-time. Barnabas was practically a legend in comparison. The heat from his death or disservice could well hound them the whole of their days.
Near about the only thing offsetting the risk in this particular case were the rewards. Marc was focused on the gearhead and his miraculous hat, but Barnabas held more than that in his amazing train: deadly traps of all kind, no doubt.
Now, obviously, once they were done bringing down the fake apprentice, it were cert to just be a matter of getting the old smith to turn all them deadly tricks and traps and all off, weren’t it? Jane thought of that old looker of hers, getting, well, vaporized by some kind of Kingsblood bomb. Well and wicked dangerous, that. Flattened near half a camp by a third-rate smith, where Barnabas himself were the toughest of the lot.
Wi’ that in mind, who was to say what kind of traps the man had at his disposal?
“Don’t matter.” Marc insisted. “Barnabas can be as angry as he wants, can come after us if he chooses, but we’re what we are and he’s a smith. At the end of it, if he insists, we’ll show him what’s what and who’s who.”
Fresh Emmy, leaning on Dank Eddard’s cool skin, spoke up. “So what’s the proper plan, then, leader ours? If our target is tough as Thumpy here says,” she shot the brute a wink, “then it might get a bit noisy. Barnabas is likely to get involved when that happens.”
Marc smiled wide. “Simple. Our own Quick Wit sneaks in, slices the ‘apprentice’ from ear to ear and mayhap from gullet to groin just to be on the safe side. Then he just drags the body from camp, leaving the blacksmith a mystery to solve.”
“What if that…” Rabid Elton clicked his jaw shut when Marc turned his way, fury in the eyes.
“Weren’t done, Elton, and every time you interrupt me it gets on my tits in a most aggravating way. As I was about to say,” Marc snatched his hand away from the pistons as they started moving in response to his irritation with Elton, “as I was about to say, Shooty Jane is going to move in closer and watch through her long gun. If things go wrong with Wit, she’ll see it and signal me. Then I’ll send you, Rabid Elton and our friends Thumper, Emmy and Eddard along. You merry four will traipse in and do things old fashioned. If he’s wise as
he acts, ole Barnabas the sourpuss will stay locked away in his nice little tent ‘til we’re done our business.”
Dank Eddard signaled he had a question. It was best to be as polite as possible when Marc’s brain started bouncing up and down and his nose started leaking smoke. The man might only be a looker, but when he lost his temper, he could dole out some decent suffering.
Eddard nodded civilly when their leader allowed as how he could speak his mind. “What about you and Shooty Jane? And the ‘smith?”
“Well,” Marc pointed to his head, “I can hardly involve meself in a covert operation like this one, hey? Not with my brain sounding like an engine all the time. That’d give the target all sorts of early warnings. You all know how I get when I get excited, and with my coat down there in Barnabas’ workshop, it’s not like I can keep my head on straight in the mix. Now Shooty Jane here, my lovely lass with the long gun, she’s going to keep her peeper peeled for the smith. If he gets involved in too big away, she’ll drill him in the eyes and splash that lovely tinkerer’s thoughts all over a tent wall. But as I only just said, he’ll stay hidden away.”
Fresh Emmy stuck her mouth against Dank Eddard’s ear and cooed sweet nothings to calm the man’s frayed nerves; he came from all the way to the very furthest Eastern parts of Arcade City and out there, they treated their smiths with a great deal more reverence than they did this side. Everything about Eddard –from the way he stood to the way his lips worked questions he daren’t ponder aloud- screamed to her that her love thought this were a very bad idea.
Marc looked around at his gaggle. They weren’t completely sold on the prospect of raiding a blacksmith, and he supposed it weren’t totally fair to blame them, but the prize was worth it. When they got that ‘apprentice’s’ corpse to an artificer and the method of manufacturing inky tattoos that did the trick instead of grossly misshapen supplements, they’d find themselves in Arcadia in no time, supping with proper ladies and gentlemen. Marc told his crew this, and eventually they nodded.
