by Lee Bond
“What have ye done, my King?” Dom couldn’t understand the reasons behind a rage so powerful as this. Oh, he had the helmet on, and could feel King’s anger percolating just beneath his conscious mind, but the tough nut that was how to defeat the Gunboys was keeping it at bay, just as Chevy had predicted.
It were easy enough to understand why King Blake the One and Only wanted Ickford gone. The doing of this particular city was a thing the Book Club Regulars talked about all the time; Ickford was a tick, leeching away the lifeblood of Arcade City, stunting the growth of the gearheads as would move inwards, which in turn saw fewer and fewer gearheads available to deal with the beasts that the King allowed to roam wild, which in turn meant that those Estates –no longer protected by Platinum Brigadiers and barely protected by the thin forces of the Gearmen- in the inner rings were continually harassed by more powerful Widows Peaks, ravenous Shaggy Men, all manner of things. The citizens of Arcade City had never been asked to defend themselves against the Dark Iron menagerie before, and they weren’t very good at it.
The population of Arcade City overall was at its lowest, some said, since The Dome had gone up. It was one of the only few reasons why Dom was still on the rooftop, watching the gearheads trying to do for their King … Gunboy, because Chevy were right: not hearing from the Nannies on the state of things past this outermost ring of hell spelled nothing but doom and gloom for the whole of the City.
Dom made more notes, nodding enthusiastically at the concerted efforts of those gangs’ efforts against this Gunboy. There were –at his best estimate- ten different crews working in tandem, displaying quite impressive levels of skills and –as always- a substantial understanding of tactics. They hammered at their brute in waves, working up from the heavy metal boots all the way to the helmeted head, stringing together sequences of hammer, bomber, shooter, lobber, bombarding their enemy with a continual stream of shivering blows that –if one were capable of deciphering the bellowing noises issuing forth from it- were at last doing some kind of significant damage.
Many –too many- of the Ironed buffoons fell as they clambered up the body. Far quicker than they ought, given the saturation of Kingsblood coursing through their veins, and though other men and women of the Iron Weld did rise up to replace those as had fallen, there never seemed to be enough.
“Hain’t enough.” Dom muttered, reading Book’s fraught appraisal. The armor was too thick, the skeletal structure of this Gunboy unlike anything seen before, the structural defenses impossible to catalogue beyond –whatever they were- they were brutally efficient. Twice as large as the biggest summoned King on record, the Gunboy represented something none of them had ever seen before. No amount of old training would be enough under circumstances such as these.
Was Chevy really bang on? Did they truly need Master Nickels when –by all accounts- he were the one to blame for all this and more?
“Hain’t enough by half.” Dom repeated, shaking his head at the rising death toll
If they didn’t get something working sooner rather than later, nowt would be left by nightfall and what then? Were there enough lads and lasses not married to the Iron left to repopulate?
At least them gearheads as were dying were the reckless, the foolhardy, the desperate. The War of the Gunboys wouldn’t be properly met until …
An apocalyptic eruption blanketed the city just then, a vast roar of sound brought Dom right to the edge of the rooftop he was on, squinting against sudden plumes of thick white smoke that filled his particular spot in Ickford, and for roughly three blocks on all sides. As the Gearman stood there, helmeted head turning this way and that, he saw spikes of electricity flashed through the smoke like vast, jagged silver fish, great torrential gouts of piercing blue and white energy, bolts of lightning surely doing for gearheads by the dozens.
Oh, if the King had given these Gunboys weapons from the Outside world, it weren’t just Ickford that was in trouble, no sire. Dom watched on, lips pursed, as another intense explosion refilled the sector with more smoke, more fire, more electricity.
Dom tilted his head to one side. He wasn’t as familiar with explosives as he ought to be, and without proper access to the Matrons, there was no way of knowing for certain, but intuition told him something was … off … with those detonations. The Book Club Regular worked through what his gut was trying to tell him, shaking his head more and more fervently as he reached the logical conclusion.
It weren’t possible. It just … it weren’t. The King outlawed such things, and everyone in Arcade City knew that when the King outlawed summat, it weren’t a matter of waiting for someone to come ‘round and confiscate the weapon. The thing wouldn’t work, and if you tried to make it work, it’d blow up on you, taking your damn-fool …
Agonized, torturous shrieks of metal grinding on metal combined with excruciatingly pain-filled mechanical bellowing welled up from the Gunboy just then, who stood stock still, surrounded by lightning-lit smoke. Fists clenched against still-hidden wounds, head tilted back, the Gunboy let loose with yet another shout, though this one, Dom reckoned, was one filled with rage.
“My King in his Heaven.” Dom watched on as –by some unseen method- the thick white smoke was quickly evacuated from the area, revealing to all those who stood and watched massive tears in the Gunboy’s armor plating, huge gashes and rips all across one side of the leg, revealing badly meshed gears and other mechanics.
An ecstatic roar rose up from the crews and squadrons who’d waited with hushed and bated breath. A hundred, two hundred … three hundred and fifty gearheads rushed the wounded Gunboy en masse, an army of Dark Iron fiends ready to protect their homestead.
Dom tracked the angle of attack back to it’s base and stared thoughtfully at the prancing, capering three-man team that’d assaulted the Gunboy with illegal … impossible … tech.
It was possible –just barely possible and almost unbelievable even still- that the Golem miasma that so affected King’s Will could permit smiths and tinkerers and artificers to create things that flouted all that was right and proper in the world.
An idea percolated through Dom’s mind. Need versus necessity clashed and collided all through him. The weapons being brought to bear ‘gainst the Gunboys were the sorts of things Gearmen had been ordered to dispose of, true enough, but…
The Gearman nodded sternly.
If enough gearheads were thusly equipped, they could manage the Gunboys all on their own; even now, the crews were swarming inside their foe, ripping and tearing and smashing everything in sight. It were a well-established fact that once gearheads got inside a King, it was simply a matter of time before the deed was done, and while these Gunboys were a far cry away from a King, it’s demise was, as they said, a done deal.
Why, Dom reckoned that even if it were only fifty percent of the gaggles out there as were armed wi’ them deadly weapons, they’d be fine enough, hey? More than enough to deal with the suddenly not-so-deadly Gunboys?
And if that were the case? Well then.
No need at all for Master Nickels.
None at all.
Dom started moving towards the gaggle as had ripped that monstrosity’s leg open, reasoning that while they may not have enough rockets to do for the Gunboy from a properly safe distance, they may very well have a wide variety of miasma-forged weapons.
Weapons as might be able to deal with Master Nickels and his hand-crafted armor, hey?
***
Chevril Pointillier had been though many strange and terrible things in his tenure as Gearman. If he were asked his opinion –which no one did, not more than once anyways as most often, all anyone wanted was an echo of their own opinion- on the worst thing that Arcade City had been asked to endure in it’s whole, Domed-over history, he would point to the nearest gearhead and simply nod.
He had nothing against gearheads, mind you, not really. They were a fascinating lot, when you got right down to it, especially when they started taking injury and then more Iron to c
ure said injury. The weird and strange ways the Vicious Elixir rewrote the human body, almost like it were following some sort of blueprint or sketch, it were fascinating.
No, it weren’t the gearheads, nor what they did to themselves.
No, the problem were Dark Iron itself, and, when Chevy was alone at night and no one else was around for hundreds of miles on all sides of him, he considered mayhap it were King’s Will that were also the problem.
For the thousand or so years he’d been working for the King as Gearman, Chevril had paid the strictest attention to Dark Iron. Had learned as much about it as were possible, and given the freedom of information and it’s relative availability then as opposed to now –Dom thought Book were the utter epitome of data retrieval and he were welcome to the notion, wrong though it were on many different fronts, thank you very much- Chevy knew he knew an awful lot more about crudey-crude than anyone else save the King and his mad Matrons.
Everyone imagined Dark Iron had been around since the beginning of Arcade City, from the moment that King Blake the One and Only had capped the land and caused the first of the Estates to rise out of the dust, a fantasy made real, with the King himself making no real efforts in dissuading people from thinking that, and every effort to ensure that no one found out the truth.
Which was why Chevy had a difficult time picking up a Book of his own, even when they were so useful.
The information provided within was not entirely true, or the whole of it. Here and there during those missions with Dominic –good lad, solid lad, intelligent and crafty- the old Gearman had caught whiff of things being spouted by Book that his own personal experiences said were different, and sticking all what he knew inside his own head down into Book would –like as not- draw attention to the fact that he were living proof lies abounded all over everywhere ‘neath the glorious Dome, yes he were.
An experiment with Dom some nights ago –when he’d found himself thinking quite seriously about giving up and getting one of the damned things- had been most illuminating; he, playing the role of forgetful elder Gearman, had asked the Book Club Regular investigate the exact genesis of Dark Iron and the first moment of introduction to the wardog crews.
Expecting an answer more or less congruent with his own personal experiences, it’d taken every ounce of willpower and artifice not to betray both surprise and dismay in the most voluble manner imaginable: Book insisted the first instance of a crudey-crude inflicted wardog’s ‘birthday’ as well over twenty-two thousand years ago.
Untrue.
So untrue, in fact, Chevy were well pleased that his own head hadn’t shot right off it’s neck, a veritable living skull of outraged shock zooming ‘round Arcade City’s skies, calling everyone and everything a liar ‘til the end of it’s days.
Chevril watched his Gunboy kick another building over so it could better stomp the debris flat, then switched his gaze to the gearhead crews ringing the rooftops of the buildings. Unlike them as were tossing themselves ‘gainst their quarry, these were patient midnight hunters, doing so little to attract the attention of the quarry they might as well be statues. Now, Chevril didn’t know if it were entirely wise to let the giant monster settle itself in, but his helmet-HUD was powerful enough to pick up the chatter from those nearest him, and they were all in agreement; an enemy that were comfortable were prone to make mistakes, so with that, the Gearman was more than content to let them operate on their own so that he might turn his mind inward once more.
Dom teased him. Ever since that little game with the birthday of Dark Iron, the younger Gearman took every opportunity he could to taunt his oft-partner about the fallibilities of memory, and –admittedly- there were times when Chevy himself worried that he was growing soft in the head and overfond of those olden times, but …
This were all wrong. He’d known it for a decade and more, but this … everything before him, this wanton destruction of Ickford, the casual slaughter of so many innocents, it were a thing that Chevy couldn’t shake from his head, no matter how hard he tried.
Dark Iron’s introduction into the wardog populace, which, until the very first moment that cruel black elixir seized them, had fought for prestige and skill and honor, had marked a departure from the relatively stable lifestyle of Arcade City.
And in such a big way!
Oh, there’d been wars and tumult and all manner of violent uprisings –not to mention more than a few Kingly smackdowns- but a side by side comparison of the peace and tranquility of Arcade City then and now revealed a disturbing trend.
The King, Chevy felt most strongly, was trying to destroy everything he’d built.
The root cause? Dark Iron itself. Or rather, the version released a thousand years ago to an unsuspecting population. There’d been instances of strange maladies and afflictions –not to mention the birth of Agnethea the Dark over eleven thousand years ago- that in hindsight were spots of Dark Iron bursting through into public awareness, but nothing too drastic, and the creation of the Gearmen could be traced back four thousand years, though again, the current incarnation of the post was well different than it had been way back then.
The Vicious Elixir had been around for a damn long time, eleven thousand years or more and aye, ‘more or less’ stable given what the foul shite did do to a man or woman but … the dark change to an already black substance near a century ago…
To what purpose did that serve?
Chevy watched some of the gearheads setting up a complicated looking machine that piqued his interest for a moment, letting his subconscious work on the problem that was so occupying his time when it could definitely be better spent.
A few seconds later, when the men began shifting extremely heavy-looking long tubes into place, a brilliant grin split the old man’s face. The Master Smiths of Ickford had gone and done the impossible, using –no doubt- the legendary miasma of the Golems to circumvent King’s Will.
Oh, Chevy couldn’t wait to hear how Dominic had dealt with the sudden realization! Chevy hadn’t seen nothing like what those squads were assembling outside of books in libraries that’d long since been buried under time and King’s Will and the occasional shifting of the earth, but he knew well what he were looking at all the same.
Gun turrets.
Excited, Chevy looked for and eventually found the rounds that were destined to be slotted into those huge tubes and clapped his hands. Oh, this were brilliant. The … shells for each of the cannon tubes were massive, bullets writ large, but where ordinary-sized rounds were –like everything else in Arcade City- inscribed or scrawled with adherence to Will, these were smooth and beautiful and perfect in every way. Chevy counted fifteen. Enough, perhaps, to bring the beast down. Even if it weren’t, the Gearman reckoned the barrage would be more than enough to open holes in the armor wide enough for gearheads to do as they always did.
A calamitous eruption filled Ickford just then, and everyone –including their Gunboy- paused long enough to swivel their heads in the direction from which the noise had come. The Gunboy closest to the proper gates of their small little city, and the one to make it out of the hole first, was under full siege. White, voluminous smoke filled the streets and alleys and brilliant arcs of power churned deep within those plumes. The wounded Gunboy howled again, ‘their’ Gunboy bellowed a response, and the crews working to assemble the mortar cannon picked up speed, moving as only gearheads under the full effect of Dark Iron could move.
Chevy wished the Golem Miasma wasn’t so profound, as he would well and truly like to have a quick chat with Dominic to see how things were going on the lad’s end of things; he weren’t especially pleased with how they’d parted, half his instinct screaming to trust the younger man, the other half yammering it were only a matter of seconds before he hared off towards Spe … Master Nickels with a mind full of King’s Ire.
He could run on over quickly enough, he supposed, but that’d mean missing the great attack that was destined to happen any time now; as inelegant as these Dark
Iron bastards were, as crude as the crudey-crude rushing through their hardened veins they might be, there was one thing that an old Gearman saw right off.
They were tough bastards, and they understood the mechanics of war as well as any who’d moved inward. Better, even, Chevy realized with a burst of insight, for these men and women weren’t as powerful as those others. They fought against debilitating handicaps. Damaged brains replaced by capacitors. Missing fingers transformed into cruel shapes. Eyes made of metal. Teeth like daggers. Hearts of solid metal. Blackened, bleak souls full of distrust and rage and regret. The further in you went, the more you became as you’d been before your first sup of Vicious Elixir whilst retaining all the power you’d gained.
These poor Dark Iron Bastards were –an’ this were perfect irony, hey?- cruel caricatures of their former selves, and all the damage they’d done in the last hundred years made them so much less than them as had gone before.
Yet, Chevy felt deep in his bones, somehow they were more, too, hey? For e’en wi’ all that were wrong wi’ ‘em, e’en wi’ the pain they surely felt every time they drew breath or took a step, hey, weren’t they doing as they’d always done? Weren’t they even now rising up ‘gainst all that the illness had done to ‘em to do summat that were good?
As Chevy watched, the crews assembling the cannon completed their task with brisk efficiency and a guilty thrill rose up through his armored feet right up into his heart. There weren’t many things left under The Dome to be seen, but this, right here and now, were a thing he’d never imagined in a thousand more years of life.
The King were going to be put in his place, well and truly properly for the first time since The Dome had gone up.
Chevy decided in a flash that their mad old King deserved it, too, and for more than just the present circumstances. The old Gearman smiled craftily and waggled a finger at his subconscious, proud and pleased as ever that he could continue to trust that side of him to work on a problem when he was consciously avoiding it.