Steampunk World

by Sarah Hans (ed)

  But she did know that if it ever emerged from the depths, she would sense it. As she kissed the top of tiny Ganesha’s head, she vowed she would move Heaven and Earth to stop it.

  The Hand of Sa-Seti

  Balogun Ojetade

  “That’s it, my brother and sister! Stay in step, just like that!”

  The massive war elephants lumbered across the plot of land, cheered on by their “brother,” Akhu, and his apprentice, Umat.

  “Umat, now!” Akhu commanded as he yanked on a lever that protruded from the arm of the ebony couch in his litter. Umat mirrored Akhu’s movements and the litters began to smoothly slide sideways toward the ten-foot gap between elephants. Akhu jumped to his feet. Umat followed suit.

  The litters came together with a click, forming a covered bridge.

  “It works, my Neb!” Umat shouted, jumping up and down with glee.

  Akhu hugged his apprentice and kissed the top of her cleanly shaven head. Umat’s cocoa skin tinged red. “We did it, Umat!”

  Gahs raised his head and a sound like a blaring trumpet escaped his throat.

  “Apologies, Gahs,” Akhu shouted, winking at Umat. “You performed brilliantly! You too, my sister!”

  Fusii nodded her massive head and raised her trunk in approval.

  “This will make a perfect base for Ra’s Rain, my Neb.”

  “Yes, it will,” Akhu replied. “Let’s set up the tripod and…”

  A deep, roaring noise – like the sound of a gale wind – stifled Akhu’s tongue.

  He drew his scimitar from its sheath and slashed inward, toward his chest. The steel blade crashed into a massive, stone maul. An outward slash sent the warhammer careening back toward its thrower – a hulking figure standing in the grass below.

  Akhu rubbed his chest with his fist. He shook his head as his knuckles slid across knotted bone, some spots still sore from when he did not respond quickly enough.

  Akhu somersaulted from the litter-bridge toward the large man beneath him. The man reached up and caught the shaft of his maul as Akhu landed in a kneeling position before him. Akhu placed his sword at the man’s feet and bowed his head.

  “Uncle,” he said.

  “Fast reflexes, boy,” the man said, pulling Akhu to his feet.

  “I was trained by the best, my Neb,” Akhu replied, smiling warmly.

  “That you were, boy! That you were!”

  Both men laughed as they embraced each other. Akhu’s uncle looked up toward the bridge. “Apologies if I frightened you, Umat.”

  “Apology accepted, General Mu,” Umat replied. “How are you today, my Neb?”

  “My heart is heavy, Umat,” General Mu sighed. “For today, I have to leave you lot to kill a dead man.”

  Akhu’s brow furrowed. “You speak in riddles, Uncle Mu. Kill a dead man?”

  “The Shekhem’s daughter has been kidnapped by the wizard Sa-Seti.”

  “The Sa-Seti? Shekhem of seven centuries ago?”

  “Yes,” General Mu replied. “It appears that rumors of Shekhem Sa-Seti’s death have been…exaggerated.”

  “Undead?” Akhu asked, shaking his head in disbelief.

  General Mu answered with a nod.

  “I will accompany you, then.”

  “No,” General Mu said with a wave of his maul. “The Shekhem would have my head if the most brilliant mind in Menu-Kash died on my watch. Besides, how tough can one mummified sorcerer – with untold magic power – be?”

  “Tread carefully, uncle Mu.”

  “Always, son,” General Mu said, embracing Akhu. “Always.”

  The General turned away from his nephew, tossed his maul over his thick shoulder and sauntered off.

  Akhu looked up to the litter-bridge at Umat. “Let’s run Ra’s Rain through its paces. We may have use for it soon enough.”

  * * *

  Akhu lay in his bed, but sleep eluded him. Three days had passed and General Mu and his elite Jackal Squadron – warriors specialized in the hunting and killing of practitioners of dark magic – had not returned home.

  A low din reminiscent of a plover pecking for insects echoed throughout the hall outside Akhu’s bed chamber. The sound grew louder; closer, until Akhu recognized it as the padding of bare feet on his home’s ivory floors. Umat rushed into the sleeping chamber. Her face was a mask of worry. “My Neb, please, forgive the intrusion, but…”

  Akhu sprang out of bed. “What is it Umat? What’s wrong?”

  “Your uncle has returned, my Neb, but he is…not well.”

  “Not well?” Akhu echoed. “What, exactly, is wrong with him?”

  “He is in the courtyard, my Neb. Please, follow me.”

  Umat turned on her heels and darted out of the room. Akhu followed her out to the courtyard.

  General Mu sat on his haunches. His tan linen vest and trousers were drenched with sweat and he shivered violently as the cool night air slithered across his chest and down his back. The General’s maul and his red, studded leather armor lay in a heap beside him. His helmet had rolled from his lap and lay, bottom up, a few feet in front of him.

  Akhu ran to his uncle and knelt beside him. “Uncle Mu! What happened? What’s wrong?”

  “They…they came at us from all directions,” General Mu replied. “Thousands of them!”

  “Thousands of what?” Akhu asked.

  “Beetles,” General Mu groaned. “Beetles the size of men! Beetles that were men! Goddamned beetles!”

  General Mu collapsed onto all fours. Sputum erupted from his mouth and cascaded into his helmet.

  Akhu and Umat pulled the ebon-skinned goliath to his feet. “Let’s get you to bed, uncle,” Akhu grunted as he struggled to support General Mu’s massive weight with his shoulders.

  “You must see the Shekhem, boy,” General Mu croaked. “Take my scepter; show it to the guards. They will let you pass. Warn the Shekhem, boy!”

  “Warn him? Of what?”

  “Sa-Seti allowed me to live so that I could deliver this message to the Shekhem – he has three days to return Sa-Seti’s hand, or Ta-Sut is dead and all of Menu-Kash will soon follow.”

  * * *

  Shekhem Tehuti Ur-Amun rubbed his goatee with his right hand, which – as always – was encased in a crimson, silk glove. He studied Akhu, who knelt before him. “And what is General Mu Ankh-Kara’s condition now?”

  “He is feverish; nauseous; and grows weaker with each passing hour, your Majesty.”

  “A curse?”

  “It appears so, your Majesty.”

  ”Perhaps the General’s talk of returning Sa-Seti’s hand is just the ranting of a man wracked by fever, then.”

  Akhu shot a glance at the Shekhem’s gloved appendage. “I think not, your Majesty.”

  The Shekhem smiled wryly. “You have always been a clever boy, Akhu Ankh-Kara. A clever boy, indeed. What, exactly, do you know of my hand?”

  “Just what every citizen of Menu-Kash knows, your Majesty – you were wading in the River Ise, presenting an offering to Pademak, when a crocodile sprang from beneath the surface of the water and attacked. You killed the crocodile, but suffered severe and disfiguring injuries to your right hand.”

  The Shekhem rose from his golden throne. Akhu bowed his head in reverence.

  “Stand up, son,” the Shekhem commanded.

  Akhu rose to his feet. The Shekhem stared into his eyes. “What I tell you now never leaves this room. Understand?”

  “Yes, your Majesty,” Akhu replied.

  “The story of my hand is a…fabrication,” the Shekhem began. “The truth is – I heard my father speak, in whispers, of a powerful sorcerer who once ruled Menu-Kash. It was said that this sorcerer had been kissed upon the right hand by the Goddess Ise herself and thereafter, the sorcerer-king could see the past and future.”

  “I have heard the legends, your Majesty,” Akhu said.

  “Yes, but only Shekhem know that sorcerer’s identity. There have been twelve sorcerer-kings, but all of our
powers pale in comparison to the third.”

  “Sa-Seti,” Akhu said.

  “Indeed. It was his hand that Ise kissed. It was his hand that held the key to the powers of precognition and postcognition. And it was his tomb that I raided for that hand over thirty years ago.”

  “But what does that have to do with your hand, your Majesty?”

  The Shekhem paced back and forth, his bare feet making slapping sounds on the cool marble with each step. “The ritual to claim Sa-Seti’s hand as my own required a sacrifice. I sawed off Sa-Seti’s hand and placed it in a calabash…”

  The Shekhem returned to his throne and flopped down in the huge chair. Beads of sweat ran down his forehead as he continued to speak. “Then, I…I severed my own hand and placed it atop Sa-Seti’s. Suddenly, the world went black. When I awakened, I was at home in my bedchamber. I felt no different, but when I looked beneath the covers to peek at my stump, I found this…”

  The Shekhem snatched the glove from his hand. Akhu stared at it in disbelief. The Shekhem’s hand was withered and the digits were twig-like and twisted, ending in long, cracked, yellowish-pink nails. At the center of the leathery palm was a large, fully developed, alive and alert human eye. The eye’s piercing greenness both fascinated and disgusted Akhu.

  “With the hand of Sa-Seti, I can indeed see the past and the future, but only of others; not of myself or my bloodline,” Shekhem Tehuti whispered.

  “To have your daughter returned to you alive, you must sever that accursed hand and return it to its rightful owner, your Majesty,” Akhu said. “I am a skilled surgeon. With Umat’s assistance, I can…”

  “I’m sorry,” The Shekhem said, interrupting him. “I…I don’t know if I can do that.”

  “You don’t know, your Majesty?” Akhu said, lowering his gaze to hide his disgust for this man, who had just proven himself to be a thief, a liar and a coward.

  “Look, Akhu,” the Shekhem sighed. “I love Ta-Sut with all my heart – she is my firstborn and heir to the throne – but the many outweigh the one. With insight from the hand of Sa-Seti, I have brought Menu-Kash unimaginable wealth and glory and I have kept this great land of ours safe. And – one day soon – I will heal the festering wound carved into this world by Pademak and restore peace to all of Ki-Khanga.”

  Akhu knelt in salute. “If you speak it, it is so, your Majesty.”

  The Shekhem slipped the crimson glove back over Sa-Seti’s mummified hand. “Leave me now, Akhu. I must devise another plan to rescue my beloved daughter from the clutches of that monster.”

  Akhu sprang to his feet and – as custom dictated – walked backward out of the Shekhem’s throne room.

  * * *

  A cool breeze sent a chill down Akhu’s spine, awakening him.

  He sat up on the couch in his litter, stretched his sinewy arms and then peeked over the back of the couch at the top of Fusii’s head. The steel plates of her barding glowed a soft red as the armor reflected the tint of the morning sky. Her trunk was raised high, set to deliver another blast of air.

  “I’m up, sister; I’m up!” Akhu chuckled. “Why have you awakened me?”

  A soft whistling sound made Akhu snap his head toward Gahs. Umat stood in her litter, pointing toward something in the distance.

  Akhu followed Umat’s finger. A towering obelisk loomed in the distance – the tomb of Sa-Seti. “Strange…the tomb is surrounded by some sort of black liquid, which ebbs and flows like an ocean tide.”

  “That is no liquid, my Neb,” Umat replied. “Take a closer look.”

  Akhu pulled a small bronze telescope from a pouch on his belt. He raised it to his eye and gasped. “Beetles! Beetles the size of a man’s hand!”

  “Hundreds of thousands of them, my Neb,” Umat sighed. “Perhaps millions.”

  “Prepare yourselves!” Akhu shouted as he pulled the lever on the arm of his couch. He swallowed hard, hoping to swallow the knot in his throat and quell the rapid pounding in his chest.

  Umat pulled her lever and the litter bridge snapped into place.

  Akhu snatched a large tarpaulin from under his couch and dragged it to the center of the bridge as Umat set up an iron tripod.

  The war elephants galloped forward as Akhu and Umat continued to work, busily sliding tubes, gears and large canisters – all from the tarp – into place.

  Gahs let loose a powerful roar, which shook the ground beneath him.

  Akhu looked up from his work. The beetles had taken flight and a dark, clicking cloud closed upon the litter bridge.

  “I’ll finish assembling Ra’s Rain,” Akhu shouted, wiping beads of sweat from his brow. “Fuel the Horns of Sekhmet and the Steamsword!”

  Umat was a blur, grabbing a large calabash from her litter and emptying its contents into vents in the helmets of the elephants’ barding.

  Akhu hoisted Ra’s Rain onto his shoulder then tossed the long, iron barrel of the weapon onto the tripod, fitting holes bored into the barrel’s bottom onto the tripod’s hooks. The massive weapon locked into place.

  A shadow darkened the litter bridge.

  “The creatures are upon us, my Neb!” Umat yelled.

  “I suggest you work a little faster, then!” Akhu replied as he screwed a tube into the spigot of a steel barrel that sat over a roaring flame.

  The sulfurous stench of feces assaulted his nostrils. He turned his gaze skyward. The clicking, black cloud of beetles was descending upon the litter. Akhu snatched back the canopy and stood behind Ra’s Rain. “Fusii…Gahs…now!”

  The twin war elephants raised their armored trunks skyward. A column of fire erupted from the nozzles connected to the barding covering each elephant’s eight foot long proboscis.

  The Horns of Sekhmet proved effective as the flames engulfed the beetles, roasting hundreds of them and injuring hundreds more. The dead beetles – and their living kindred – fell to the earth, where Gahs and Fusii set about crushing the creatures under foot.

  Umat tossed the Steamsword to Akhu with one hand as she pulled a large wheeled crate with the other. She pulled the heavy crate, which was filled with fist-sized steel balls, next to Ra’s Rain.

  On the ground, the beetles crawled together with military-like precision, forming a hundred or so patches of blackness upon the grass. Each group of beetles then began to fuse together, writhing and clicking as their bodies became one. After a few moments, a hundred large, chitinous black balls lay upon the field of battle.

  The clicking ceased. The balls were still.

  Akhu brought his telescope to his eye and studied the balls intensely. “Gahs, please, do us the honors.”

  Gahs nodded and then raised his right foreleg. He slammed his foot down, beating a small crater into the grass. The force of the powerful stomp sent a shockwave across the battlefield, sending the beetle-balls bouncing upward.

  The balls fell back to the earth and then…no sound…no movement.

  “Uh-huh,” Umat grunted as she rubbed her smooth scalp with the palm of her hand. “So…do we move on? Do we…wait for something to happen? Umm…”

  “Perhaps the creatures are displaying a gesture of surrender. I guess we press on,” Akhu said with a shrug. “Brother…sister…please, take us forward and step on those things as you go.”

  The balls began to vibrate; to quake. A loud clicking din rose from each ball.

  “Or…not,” Akhu sighed.

  “I knew this was too easy!” Umat spat.

  “One can only hope, Umat. Load up Ra’s Rain, I’m going down for a closer look.” Akhu drew the Steamsword and leapt to the ground. He landed with a dull thud. “Send down a line!”

  Umat lowered a thin flexible tube to him. Akhu slid the tube’s open end over a spigot on the sword’s leather-wrapped steel pommel.

  “Give it some heat,” he shouted.

  Umat turned a lever on the heated barrel that sat on the litter-bridge. A few moments later, the Steamsword’s blade began to glow with a reddish tint, heated by the hair-
thin copper veins running the length of the flat sides of the weapon.

  “That’s enough,” Akhu said, pulling the tube from the sword’s pommel.

  Umat turned off the heat and drew the line back up.

  “Get ready!” Akhu shouted.

  Akhu leapt toward a beetle-ball, raising the Steamsword above his head. As he descended, he brought the tip of the sword downward, thrusting it hilt-deep into the ball of fused insects.

  The ball burst into flames and the burning beetles separated with a loud series of clicks.

  “I thought so,” Akhu shouted to his comrades. “The beetles are metamorphosing into something. We need to kill them now. Something tells me we do not want to be here when the metamorphosis is complete!”

  A pulsing sound, like the pounding of an army of djembe drums on the horizon, rose from the field of chitinous spheres. The beetle-balls unfolded in unison. Within seconds, standing before Akhu was a platoon of hulking humanoid creatures with large, wicked-looking mandibles, razor-sharp claws and spiked, black, armored exoskeletons.

  “Too late, my Neb,” Umat shouted.

  Akhu rolled his eyes. “You think?”

  The beetle-warriors charged forward.

  Akhu and the elephants surged forward to meet them.

  Akhu slashed fiercely with the Steamsword, setting beetle-warriors ablaze with each strike, as Fusii and Gahs butted, gored and trampled the monsters with abandon. Score after score of beetle-warriors fell under the onslaught of Akhu and his elephant companions.

  The creatures suddenly broke engagement and retreated.

  Akhu reheated the Steamsword and Umat refueled the Horns of Sekhmet as they watched the beetle-warriors – about an acre away – fuse into each other once more, their carapaces softening and melting into one another until all the surviving beetles had formed one massive ball, which sat taller and wider than Fusii, Gahs and the litter-bridge.

  “Oh, no!” Akhu exclaimed. “Brother…Sister…Charge that thing! Destroy it!”