by Lee Bond
Ute stared wordlessly at Candall. Fenris’ orders were immaculately clear. The haggard, unkempt man before him would get Hungryfish. He would get the Hand of Glory missiles. He would get his revenge against the cyborgs of Corene.
The Harmonized God solider flashed Candall a smile empty of warmth. This … Q-Gun would indeed change the face of the war. “Very well then, let’s get started.”
A smile of pure happiness split Candall’s face.
***
“This is utter bollocks.” Dom muttered miserably, refusing to hold on to Chevy. “Utter, massive, Big’Un bollocks. You done something to my horse when I weren’t looking, somehow.”
Chevy kneed the horse gently, urging it to head off the beaten path. “I told you summat was wrong with your horse from the start, Dominic. It’s shorter than the others.”
“Well I don’t know nothing about that, Chevril.” Dom snapped. “It were fine before.”
Dominic honestly didn’t know what was wrong with Armand. Unless he was going completely mental, he’d never had a problem with it before, but the Gearman was now convinced that the bloody thing was shorter. Somehow. Sure, he’d never been asked to double on the thing before, but you’d think you’d notice your horse weren’t long enough to hold two men comfortably. It was just one of those things you couldn’t help but imagine as … noticeable.
“What I do know,” the discomfited Gearman continued snidely, “is that you done something to it. Before …”
“Before or after Specter collided into my dear old horse, which was older than you by a longshot?” Chevy took a deep breath of fresh air, eying the tree line some three hundred feet away. Something had definitely happened out there. As much as he hated accepting direction from Book –and thus Matrons-, the older, more experienced Gearman had been forced to agree that their investigation into the threat represented by the curiously absent Specter had fallen on rough times.
Therefore, two nights ago, Dom had gazed into the wondrous inky depths of Book and waited for status updates from the Matrons, them who ran Arcade City in their King’s woeful absence.
Dom had had it. He slid off the back end of the horse and planted his feet in the ground and started shouting. “Listen, you old bastard, I understand that your horse was an ancient, rickety thing and that the two of you went on many wondrous, equine-based adventures across the landscape, fighting off weird and bizarre Dark Iron monstrosities, but this is utter shite! Insisting that you need the data from your horse to do your job properly … it hain’t going to happen, Chevy! The damn thing was burst apart seam to seam! It blew up! Left a divot in the ground big enough to swim in. Besides all that, I wager my shiny left nut that hain’t a Barnman left in the world as willing to go out and hunt through the area lookin’ for important bits, Chevy! That lot don’t e’en like lookin’ through the windows o’ their own warehouse. Have their tea shipped in and everything!”
Chevy turned the horse around and regarded Dominic attentively. “What are you saying?”
Dom spat and stomped the ground. “What I am saying, Chevril, is that I want my fucking horse back. I want you to contact the Barnmen and get a new one. I want to find this bloody damned King-cursed Specter. And this ass Barnabas, who is probably hiding our quarry. I want this damn day to be over.”
“Oh,” Chevy swung off the horse with ease, “is that all? Why didn’t you say earlier?”
Still angry, still hot-headed, Dominic started shouting about more of the things he wanted, which included a warm bed, a hot meal, a chance to get out of doors and under cover. He also wanted a nice pint of ale and a long chat with Dave the Bartender about giving up the brass button because there was no way in hell that anyone should have one of ‘em anymore because if this is what the outer ring has fallen to... “And furthermore, I … what?”
Chevy pulled out his field glasses and trained them on the tree line. “You know, you’re the only person I know who has a temper tantrum and uses words like ‘furthermore’ in said tantrum. A most eloquently voiced fit of pique I’ve never heard before. As it happens, young Dominic the Passionate, I have indeed placed a request, not three hours gone. Whilst you was pissing on that bush.”
“You bloody arsehole.” Dom strode up to where Chevy stood. “How long were going to take the piss, anyways?”
“Truth be told?” Chevy looked sideways at his partner. “It grew tiresome days ago. Only held on because it were a riot having you tumble off the backside of your beloved on a regular basis.”
“Arsehole!” Dom slapped Chevy on the back, but nothing else. Practical jokes were a staple of a Gearman’s life. When you were loathed by everyone else on sight, you had to find joy in the simplest of things.
No matter how rankled he was at being forced to ride the back end of a mysteriously short horse, Dom had to admit he was rather impressed at his traveling companion’s fortitude. The longest running prank he’d ever been exposed to, and nary once had Chevy cracked a smile or snickered.
“So why do you reckon Book sent us out this way?” Dom asked, snatching Chevy’s field glasses to see what was so interesting with a pile of trees.
“Weren’t Book as you say, but the Matrons, hey?” Chevy scratched thoughtfully at an earlobe. “What does it look like over there to you?”
Dom scanned the trees silently, lips pursed, forehead scrunched in concentration. “Them’s old trees, there. This whole area hain’t hardly used no more, except for passage and e’en then, no one really goes into deep dark forest anymore. King gets up to strangeness in the out of the way places.”
Chevy nodded. “Aye, definitely. Shaggy Men, Water Ladies, Bolt-Necks, them … what d’yer call ‘em? Them new ones?”
“Mm?” Dom squinted through the lenses at the trees. Something was off … “Oh, them as wear the capes? Nothing sticks. Some of the Regulars want to call them Widows Peak on account of their hair, but that’s …”
“Fairly stupid. I’ll have to take a wander after this is all said and done. See one for meself.” Chevy nodded at that. As one of the oldest Gearmen under the Dome, it was something of a bit of professional pride that he gaze upon King’s creations with his own two eyes.
“Well,” Dom said, handing back the glasses, “if you do, try and bring some Water Lady water with you. Hurts ‘em, it does.”
“Bah!” Chevy put his field glasses away with a snarl. “Why’d you go and tell me that? Detectiving their weaknesses is part of the fun.”
“’Fun’.” Dominic shook his head. “That’s mental, that is. Weren’t you banged up in hospital for a solid month after your first Bolt-Neck? Tore half your longcoat off, did he not? Broke both arms and half a leg?”
“How do you break half a leg, Dominic?” Chevy shook his head disparagingly. “It’s thoughts like that that explain why you missed the fire. And the explosion.”
“What? Where?” Dom looked wildly around.
“Not around here, you goit.” Chevy slapped Dom in the head then pointed towards the trees. “There.”
“I knew it was there.” Dom said defensively. “I saw. I was just waiting for you to prove how smart you are is all. Who knows? Them other times might’ve been, what y’call it … luck?”
“Course you did.” Chevy smiled knowingly. The younger generation of Gearmen were all too reliant on Book. The older man supposed it was a sign of the times; though he’d never admit it to Dominic, the world they were living in now was a far cry different than the one he’d grown up in, and that was a solid truth.
In the beginning, they said, it’d just been Kings. That was it, that was all, and the violence brought about by wardogs minimal; not yet bespoiled and augmented into the wild and maniacal gearheads that saturated the landscape like diseased monsters these days, Kingkillers back in the day had kept pretty much to themselves. Any fights or disagreements they did have were easily sorted, damage to property and landscape relegated to a few broken chairs. Occasionally, rarely, one hot-headed Kingkiller set fire to someone or what
have you, but that’d been it.
Soon after, though, Chevy knew from reading proper, non-Ironed books in libraries that monsters of all kinds had appeared on the landscape. He’d laughed as he’d read through the descriptions of them all, carefully catalogued and sketched out and warning a fresh young Gearman to pay attention out there, so he’d prepared himself for all that strangeness and weirdness, hadn’t he just?
Only there hadn’t been nowt as such in them old books, nowt to do with green-skinned women charming men out of their souls, nor vasty one-eyed men, nor queer little fellas as liked to sneak into Estates and all to eat babbies and ruin a man’s childhood, oh no, nowt like that at all.
It were feral-looking Shaggy Men, half-animal, half-man, howling at the Dome and attacking Estates in packs, ripping and rending innocents into shreds once or twice a month. Bolt-Necks lumbered through forgotten and lost castles and buildings, clomping and stomping and terrifying villagers or doin’ the occasional weird experiment with unlucky gearheads until they tried to do something about it on their own, and every Gearman knew how that ended. Water Ladies at least had the decency to stay in their lakes until particularly adventurous but stupid gearheads thought to summon one up, and all that happened then was them as done the summoning usually wound up permanently dead. No great loss. There were these ‘Widows Peak’ monsters now, luring young women out of their homes and doing terrible –and sexually depraved- things to them, which in turn changed them somehow. There was no knowing what or even how the weird, pallid and be-fanged freaks were changing their conquests into shallower versions of themselves, but change they did, never to be normal again. Thus far, all Gearmen investigations resulted in bodies being burned or outright exploding, leaving the Men responsible shaken and refusing to talk about what they’d seen.
There was all that and more. Gearheads turning cannibalistic. Tinkerers building things called rockets that did nothing but aggravate everyone in the neighborhood.
Breaking the silence, Chevril clapped the horse on the ass. It lumbered away and started pretending to crop grass. “And so?”
“Well,” Dom scratched his nose thoughtfully, “well it looks like someone did for a King, but there’s no sign of it. This whole area’s been left to grow over. Looks like fifty years or more from them trees. A Big’Un summoned out here after so long, I reckon it would’ve been one of them fully armored ones. Them you just don’t see in the urban areas. For a kill like that, done with a crew of no less than … forty?”
Chevy nodded. “Aye. Forty or more. You ever see a fully armored King, Dom?” When the younger man shook his head, Chevy continued. “I have. Though it weren’t one of the Big’Uns. This one I saw was inward a bit, but the premise is the same. They’re the toughest buggers about, relatively speaking. One of the ones such as got done most recent at Sliver Hills, they’re all framework and exposed gears. Easy to do for, them. Full armor plating? You’d need a solid crew of twenty crushers and smashers alone to get through that thick cover. Shooters and bangers and lobbers and bombers, too. More than one looker and leader to be certain. King like that might have a Crown, as well.”
“A Crown, you say?” Dom was impressed at the thought of a Crown being used. There hadn’t been a King with a proper Crown in well over sixty-seven years. Some said the King himself had outlawed Big’Uns coming up with a Crown that shot back at gearhead crews on account of how it only added to the devastation of His lands, and it made a lot of sense; for hundreds of years, the outermost Kings had always come with Crowns, and look at that stretch of land closest to The Dome. All ruined. All flat. All devastated.
“And so, my young Gearman friend, we come to the conundrum in a nutshell.” Chevy waved his arms around as if he were grabbing the whole visible landscape into his hands. “We have ourselves a possible full armor King, complete with Crown. We have indications that this King was eventually done for at the trees. We was sent here by the Matrons to have a look-see. What, then, dear Dominic of the Book Club Regulars, is missing? Or, if you think that’s too difficult, what’s here that shouldn’t be?”
“Oh, that’s easy. It’s …” Dom’s mouth clicked shut. He could see from Chevy’s expression that the answer was equally obvious and difficult, one of those real tricky ones that said it was sitting right there in front of his damn fool face. “It’s…”
Dominic turned around in a slow, languid circle, eyes absorbing and calculating everything they saw. If he worked from the assumption that it was staring him in the face and added Chevy’s hints about things being both missing and present at the same time …
“No.” Dom shook his head and walked away, throwing his hands up for good measure. “No. It hain’t possible.”
“Only thing left, hey?” Chevril admitted to himself it was the sort of thing that could do a man’s nut right in. “There aren’t any Obsidian Golems about, are there?”
Dom pondered that one. “Naw. Any as are out this way are out at the city. Ickford, as run by that Golem lady. Can’t recall…”
“Agnethea.” Chevy supplied.
“That’s Agnethea up there in Ickford?” Dom doffed his metal cap for a moment at the revelation. “You’re certain she’s playing proper?”
“Off topic, young Dom. We’re not to worry about them Obsidian Golems until or unless they start up again, and they’ve been on the quiet front for decades now, most likely on account of that city, hey? They’ve been handling themselves quite nicely.” For which, Chevy thought pleasantly, everyone around is greatly appreciative. “You was telling me about an impossible thing.”
“No one does for a Big’Un on their own, Chevril Pointillier. Not no more. Not wi’out bein’ either grey through to the bone or one o’ them Golems.” Dom shook his head over and over again. “The Platinum Brigade used to come out this way every now and then for old times’ sake, but there was hardly a challenge in it for them, was there? Golems won’t go near crudey-crude. Not if their lives depended on it, which some say it does. There’s them grey-skins out Ickford way, but they don’t count, now do they? There ain’t a man …”
Dominic Breton narrowed his eyes at his overly smug partner. “You think?”
“I do.” Chevy nodded, pursing his lips. “I do indeed.”
“Specter. Out this far? That’s impressive. How d’you figure?”
“It all ties in with what we’re thinking about Barnabas, right? The man’s clearly traveling with someone. The few Estates we swung by these few weeks that’ve come across Barnabas’ train say the man’s got an apprentice, right? Sticks to himself mostly, does a bit of work now and then, not terribly friendly? Big, dour fella-me-lad, refuses to talk more than a bit and e’en then, when he do work up the nerve or what have you, it’s only to ask odd questions about the weather and them birds as we don’t see no more. Looks like a citizen, talks like an outsider? Seems to be the sort of man we might be looking for.”
“It’s at total bloody odds with what we heard from Dave the Bartender, is what!” Dom pulled Book from his chest and flipped to the page that had all the crucial information concerning Garth Nickels the Fishy-Fish Blacksmith. He stabbed a finger onto a very interesting point. “Says right here. Dave says ‘the moment the Dark Iron hit him properly, he went all sorts of mental and murdered everyone as had Iron in their blood’. In here some… ah, here it is … Nicked Jimmy dosed him with near on a quarter-gallon. That’s more than some see in years! Fish or not, King-creation or not, that much Dark Iron … you hain’t calming down. Not never. You are welded to the Iron. I admit, I don’t know much about the actual process, Chevy, but I as I understand it, sipping on crudey-crude is a gradual affair. Once you get to be like Nicked Jimmy or summat, then it’s all about shooting solid ounces or more, but in the beginning, it’s what they call a ‘sippy-sip’.”
“And yet,” Chevy remarked once Dom was done having his little incredulous moment, “here we are. We’re hunting Specter, whose path seemingly coincides with Barnabas’, a blacksmith who hates peo
ple like no one else I’ve ever met who also has a man traveling with him. The Matrons ordinarily do not tell us where to go or what to do, Dominic. They’re too busy in the inner Estates and in Arcadia to guide us as they used to, and let’s be honest, here, hey? That great Bangin’ mucked things up sure as anything. Lots of death, lots of mayhem. Them and all our boys are busy workin’ on damage control best they can. I warrant me and thee be the only two lads out on the job right now. If there is anything in this world that is going to grab and hold their attention with everything else that’s going on in Arcade City, it is a man or beast that can drink a quarter-gallon of the rough stuff, do for four crews of well-seasoned gearheads, calm himself down enough so he doesn’t murder his way across the countryside, stomp another crew into fine, runny paste and then do for a King all on his lonesome, yet this is the first proper moment they’ve stepped in to give us a hands. Do you not agree?”
Dom had his nose buried in Book, refusing to admit the possibility. It was too damn daunting a thing to imagine, and as such, he was reading up on Dark Iron saturation levels and the various effects a quarter-gallon in one go might have. So far, all Book was saying was ‘anyone doing that would die a horrible, painful death’ because, in times past, people had done just that.
“Mortality rates,” Dom lectured, reading directly from Book, “for ingestion of anything up to and including one-eighth of a gallon of so-called Dark Iron for anyone not already initiated into the ritual is one hundred percent, Chevy. Book goes on to say that Matrons have also gone on and looked at King’s creations, and there’s naught. The last thing cooked up –far as they’re saying- is Widow Peak.”
