by Lee Bond
“I,” Chevy rolled his eyes at the antics of both Havilland Harvard and Twisted Mickel, “do indeed. Whilst you are off in the bushes tending to the call of Mother Nature, which, by the by, does not normally take more than half an hour at the outside, I do indeed engage in jumping jacks. And also pushups and crunches. Strong body, strong mind.”
“Good Lord.” Dom whacked the side of his helmet. “I do think you just became an old man, right in front of my very eyes. Next you’ll be asking for ginger snaps cookies as the Mistresses hand out, and a cuppa.”
“Nowt wrong, as you’re inclined to say, with a ginger snap and a nice cuppa, Dominic.” Chevy’s HUD picked out the man they were looking for. He snapped his fingers and pointed.
The crowd of gearheads and regular folk –already milling nervously about, due to the presence of two Gearmen who’d only just gone and done for a solid handful of people doing nothing more than amusing themselves- scattered like a startled murder of crows, though some of those Dark Iron bastards did their level best to saunter.
Dom snorted. “Hard to saunter,” he called after someone named Ricky Red, “when you got a streak of piss down your trousers.” Ricky Red went –as his name suggested- an impressively deep shade of vermillion and went to turn back, but his friends grabbed hold of both shoulders and one leg and then forcibly carried him from the scene before something untoward happened.
“I, for one, will be glad when we are out of Ickford.” Chevy announced suddenly as they made their way towards their target.
“Why’s that?” Dominic watched a host of names scroll by on his HUD. There were loads of people in Tinker Square, and through the connection in the armor –now the helmet was on and running full bore- the Gearman caught sight of six names of blokes as was guilty of crimes in Estates.
It’d be a simple thing to nip over, slap some cuffs on each of the transgressors, but not so simple to toss them outside the gated city; they were guilty of crimes bad enough to demand punishment worse than instant liquefaction, yet no Mistress or Matron would willingly come to Ickford to dispense said punishments.
“You turn into a right asshole when you got the helmet on. You’re talking all funny, like one of the gearheads after a long night of drinking, and you’re a damn sight more interested in causing mayhem than usual.” Chevy read through Shackled Al’s bio.
A middling smith, their quarry, not good enough to rely on his own talents to keep him properly safe plying his trade on the open road, disliked enough by the few Estates he’d been through to prevent him from setting up shop to provide for the locals. Came to Ickford quite some time ago, got involved with summat called the Tinker War, wound up on the wrong side of both sides of that particular engagement.
“That begs the question, don’t it?” Dom felt almost immediately sorry for Shackled Al. With blokes like Mickel and Havilland around, virtually no one else stood a chance.
“Which is what?” Chevy’s HUD started plotting possible escape vectors the smith might take; the man had only just realized that the two heavily armored men walking in his general direction were, in fact, homing in on him like gearheads after a King. A certain stiffness in the legs, as flight response took control, a shifty gleam in the peepers.
Chevy switched a gauntleted finger back and forth when Shackled Al’s eyes looked their way. The defeated smith exhaled miserably and slumped a bit on his stool.
“How come you in’t?”
“Ah.” Chevy replied sagely. “Been around, I have. Long time, but you knew that. One of the few perks, I reckon. The King, long may he live and not find cause to come knocking on my helmet, is a wonderful good ruler, but … he can be a bit … fractious. If all us Gearmen started knocking about with our guns and maces and swords and what-have-you, well, the Matrons reckon there’d be nothing left but us, them, and the beasts in the wild. Hardly what the King want, yeah? Trust me, my son, you wear the armor long enough, you’ll get to where I am. What ho, fair smith?”
Shackled Al wanted to run and hide. Somewhere far away. He was even willing to risk the open roads, he was, if only to get away from the terrible mistake he’d made in letting Master Nickels use his paltry forge and workshop.
What a bad idea!
The rumor-mongers were positively afire with news of the bloodiest scene of death and murder and rank, vile mayhem Ickford had seen ever; the death and carnage of the Tinker War hardly compared. Making matters worse, an alley-rat was claiming she’d seen the man who’d done it, and that the man in question had had himself a little chat with Agnethea’s butler.
That was bad enough.
Worse, both Twisted Mickel and Havilland Harvard had come ‘round his shop this morning, bright and early and before anyone with a lick of common sense was awake, and all to have a ‘chat’ with him over his ‘new friend’. Al was no fool, not no more. He’d spilled everything he’d known or noticed or been told about Master Nickels to the two proper artificers, sparing hardly any time to get a breath in edgewise. They’d tossed him some Dark Iron as payment, saying in passing that they were well disappointed in him.
Bastards. It were their fault all them gearheads had been done for, and no mistake there!
Worse still, and by a margin so deep and wide Shackled Al figured he’d be able to hide forever and a day, Gearmen were at his shop now. His old mam used to say ‘when it rains, it pours’, and as a wee lad who’d never seen no rain, Al had always wondered what the daft old bird had meant by that.
Well now the nigh-on useless old smith reckoned he got it now, didn’t he?
He’d never get another customer again. Not even from Agnethea’s servants.
Shackled Al tried pasting a smile on his face, but it came out all wobbly and he figured he looked like a nauseous gargoyle, so he quit trying. He doffed his cap. “Truth told, your honor sirs, I been better.”
Dominic stepped forward, but Chevril held him back with a gauntleted hand across the chest. He chafed a bit at the gesture, but understood; riding hot, as it were, with the King’s distinct loathing of all things Ickford, mayhap he wasn’t the best fella on the block to have a chat with a blacksmith. Instead, Dom pulled Book from its moorings and directed it to assemble the past for their perusal. He asked for and received permission to beam the summoned data directly into Chevril’s helmet so the man could proceed as though he knew everything.
“Is that so?” Chevy asked politely, HUD eating the data available inside the tented smithy like there was no tomorrow. Their true quarry had been here, as gossip and rumor –as supplied, after some … casual … inquiries- had suggested. Time-lapsed footage of the man’s assemblage of the daunting looking gun was … worrisome.
“Aye, aye.” Al didn’t know what to do with the cap in his hands, so he just sort of … squeezed it rhythmically. “Been a long night and a longer morning, truth be told.”
“Tell me about the man who visited you last night, if you would, good smith.” Chevy hoped that Dominic was paying attention to how he was treating their poor blacksmith. The man had obviously been harassed by the two resident ‘super smiths’ and was as fragile as an egg.
“He … he were well polite.” Al stammered, twisting his cap back and forth in his hands. “Well chatty, too. Told some interesting stories about where he come from. While … while he worked.”
“Oh?” Dom stepped forward, Book Club curiosity overriding King’s Will in a breezy rush of excitement. “Such as?”
Al scratched his noggin a bit. “Well, not a lot of the words made sense, yer see. I mean, I understood them as King’s English, as it were, but …”
“As much as tales of the man’s homeland are interesting,” Chevy didn’t like interrupting –least of all when it seemed that Dom had found his leverage against King’s Will- but time was wasting, “we are pressed considerably for time. He came to your forge. Why? Why not Mickel’s? Or Havilland’s?”
“I … er.” Round and round the hat went, in Al’s thick old fingers. He’d have to buy a new on
e, soon enough. “I … I reckon he were trying to avoid confrontation. On account of how good ‘e is, milord.”
Dom found the concept of Specter avoiding confrontation damned hilarious. His laughter, changed by the helmet’s vocal recoder, was transformed into a chilling, hollow amusement that turned Shackled Al a most disconcerting shade of green. The helmet’s HUD –aided by Book- informed both Gearmen that Tinker’s Square was emptying out; the only people to soon be in the vast square would be angry tinkerers, artificers and blacksmiths.
Chevy nodded pensively, going over the footage of the man working on the drum-fed shotgun. A weapon such as that hadn’t been seen in hundreds, if not a full thousand, years. With a weapon like that in your hands, you would walk away the victor every time. It looked to be capable of doing the sort of damage the rumor-mongers were claiming had gone down in the alley.
Never had Chevy seen a smith with such … fluidity in their work. Everything went right where it was supposed to go, everything was always within reach, everything was … Specter was no madman, no maniac, no beast hungering for endless death. The elder Gearman pushed the data into Dom’s HUD so his partner could see what needed seeing, then turned to the terrified Al, desperately wishing that Dom hadn’t burst into laughter like that.
It was bad enough that the helmet made everyone sound like the Devil himself. Laughter was just the cherry on top of that particular terror sundae.
“I can well see how and why he should want to avoid confrontation.” Chevy replied supportively, doing his level best not to sound like he’d rather eat the man’s face. He’d tried in the past to remove the recoder-box from the throat and mouth. All he’d gotten for his trouble was a severe reprimand and a horrid pudding. “The man’s skill with weaponry appears to be unparalleled, and the gents on t’other side of the square take extreme exception to those with better talent, hey?”
“Aye, milord, aye, that they do. Didn’t work, though.” Al sighed. “Them two proper gents over there, they only went and sent men ‘round to take a look at what our fellow was doing, didn’t they? Then our man, he copped to it right quick, milord, and that’s when it got a bit … strange, didn’t it?”
Chevy reviewed the footage, but without access to Matronly hardware, there was no audio; pulling conversations out of the ever-present King’s will demanded a lot more vigor, and the Mistresses generally only doled out higher levels of power only when absolutely necessary.
Here, in Ickford, with the miasma choking the life out of King’s Will, their suits were already running into the red. If they tried to eke out more … he didn’t want to be trapped in Ickford with no power to the armor. They were going to have to play it cautious with how they spent the remaining power supply.
“How so?”
“Well, erm.” Al shrugged. “Look, all us who work with Dark Iron, right, we do our absolute best to keep it out o’ our own bodies, yeah? It makes folks go right mental, it does, and we see it more than most, yeah? There’s some gearheads out there that’re right round the bend, down the alley, and in the woods barkin’ mad. Now, we does get some in, through breathin’ in the vapors and all that, right? Inescapable. There hain’t a one of us who does hot shots, or drinks it down whole. King’s Will gets inter ya then it’s off killing Kings and all. But …”
“We know about your man and his addiction to Dark Iron, Shackled Al.” Dom thumped Book closed and slapped it back onto his chest. “The man turns into a right fiend when he gets it in him and he goes on the kind of tear we’re going to be looking at soon enough.”
Shackled Al held up a hand, saying, “That’s just it, milord, that’s the very thing, isn’t it? I … it’s the armor, milords, the armor.”
“What’s this now?” Chevy demanded, urgency in his voice echoing nastily through the tented space.
“Towards the end, right, of his time in me tents, ‘e got all upset. Summat was wrong with his armor, you see. Now,” Al put a hand to his heart, “in all honesty, I ain’t a good smith any longer. The dust-up we had a while back, it done for me real good. Lost the spark. But I did understand what ‘e was sayin’, if only just.”
Dom had Book out again and was demanding access to better hardware so they could rip the audio from the ether. He’d bloody well sacrifice some mobility or higher end Geared support to get the full truth of this!
Both he and Chevy knew precisely what Al was talking about; shortly before Shackled Ron hurried out of the tent, their man, the one and only Specter, had clearly been righteously angry about something. Shortly after that … well, unfortunately, shortly after that, the feed went odd, as did happen sometimes when men or women of singularly ridiculous Dark Iron concentrations rammed more of the foul shit into their veins or down their gullets. If the Matrons approved the temporary upgrade, they could witness precisely how Nickels introduced Dark Iron into his veins. More importantly, they would learn how he could survive so much in one go.
“Well, go on, man, tell us.” Chevy snapped. The Matrons weren’t leaping to their rescue this time. They’d already gone above and beyond by issuing the weapons they’d issued. There was almost no chance they’d allow two Gearmen in Ickford more power, not with Agnethea nearby. They’d lost too much to that abomination over the years.
“Well, milord, just before he, er, done what he done, he asked me politely to leave.”
“I’m sorry, what?” Dom looked up from Book. “He what now?”
Al nodded hurriedly, still as confused now as he had been then. “Aye, I know. Never met a Dark Iron addict as asked a man to leave before he done his fix. Point of pride, innit? To be man or woman enough to drink down the crudey-crude in front of a normal bloke, right? That’s why I think he ain’t a proper Dark Iron fiend, milords. That’s why I think it’s that fancy armor ‘e wears. Which,” Al added quickly, realizing he may have inadvertently insulted not only the Gearmen in front of him, but the King Himself as well, “hain’t nearly as fancy and … and … amazing as your own.”
“Explain.” Chevy snapped, King’s Will rage finally percolating through his system. “And be quick.”
Al found his tongue and started rattling off what he could, accidentally tearing the brim off his cap. “Just afore he booted me out, milords, he was complainin’ about not ‘avin’ enough time to fix the armor. More specifically, the arms. He said stuff about as how the arms of his Gear were drinkin’ the Iron right out of his skin, he did, and that ‘e was almost dry-like. Hain’t never heard of that never. Said summat about ‘ow e’d’ve just needed to wait, or summat, then started properly complainin’ about ‘ow ‘e wouldn’t ‘ave time to connect the arms to the rest of the array. I confess again, milords, I didn’t understand too much. Then ‘e told me that I needed to leave, as ‘e was goin’ to put more Iron in his skin, and that it were goin’ to try and steal ‘is soul again. Umm.”
Chevy and Dom exchanged a long, thoughtful look. There was more going on here than Mistress Primrose had either known … or let on. How was it even possible that the man was even a little bit immune to Dark Iron, that he would have the wherewithal to withstand the pressures of more crudey-crude in his blood? Mistress Primrose’s assertion that the man was some form of Obsidian Golem only made sense if the man they were hunting had no need for more Iron his veins; once transformed into a Golem, the afflicted was and always remained at the pinnacle of that particular horror-heap.
Dark Iron was as eternal as the King Himself. It did not decay, not in the manner Shackled Al was indicating. If a man drank Iron and somehow managed to avoid serious injury or death –not to mention the soul-searing demand for violence- he would never need another ounce. Of course, the system wasn’t designed that way. Anyone with Iron in their blood sought out more Iron, hungered to kill Kings, burned to live faster, hotter, more dangerously, until they moved inwards.
Dom stepped further forward, until he was standing terribly close to poor Shackled Al. “You are positive this man said he was almost empty of Dark Iron.”
“Yes, yes, yes milord, a thousand times yes. I hain’t lying, nor telling tales. I swear it on me mam’s grave!” Al threw this his hands up, covering his head and praying to the King Himself that he got out of this conversation alive.
Chevy cleared his throat. “You were about to say something else, Shackled Al?”
Licking his lips nervously and unable to take his eyes off the grim, horrific visage of the extremely angry Gearmen, Shackled Al nodded until he felt his head would fall right off his neck. “Aye, milord, aye. Only, the man, Master Nickels, he did seem right and properly sad about what ‘e was ‘avin’ to do, see? Like, he weren’t hungry for the Iron at all. Like he’d rather do anyfing else in the entire world but take more in. ‘e were well sad, milord Gearman. Oh! And ‘e did warn me, too. ‘Dark Iron is going to try and swallow my soul’, ‘e said. ‘Because a few seconds after that, if it wins and I lose, everything and everyone in my line of sight will be dead quicker than you can imagine. Even if I’m lucky and I come out on top a second time, it will take appallingly little for me to lose my shit in a colossal way’, ‘e said. Never ‘eard o’ that afore. And naturally, we is all knowin’ what ‘appened down the way a bit.”
Dom synced Shackled Al’s word-for-word quote with the available footage and grunted. “It’s a match, Chevril. Barring this man’s horrible accent and mangling of King’s English, that is precisely what Garth said.”
Chevril Pointillier stroked the chin of his helmet thoughtfully. Garth N’Chalez was no new form of Obsidian Golem. That much was bloody damned obvious. There wasn’t a fresh Golem in existence that didn’t go on a holy tear, once they realized what’d happened to them. They didn’t go ‘round apologizing, they didn’t warn people away. They viewed everyone and everything in Arcade City as pets, or toys, and promptly proceeded –like children- to break as many of ‘their’ things as they could. His helmet clicked, and Dom’s voice came through loud and clear.