Ancient Appetites

by Oisin McGann

  Nate and Tatiana dismounted stiffly, sore and tired. The thrill of the chase had left them and now they were feeling the aftereffects. Daisy hugged Tatty, examining her wounds with concern. Nate and Abraham shook hands, no longer master and servant, but still unable to be equal. Abraham handed Nate a rapier in its scabbard and Nate drew it out a few inches to check the sharpness of the blade.

  'They're coming,' he said at last, looking up at a single leaf-light that floated in the air above the roof of the station building. 'We have a few minutes at most.'

  'Could the train outrun them?' Daisy asked.

  'An engine like this can do nearly sixty miles per hour, ma'am,' Abraham told her. 'More than Trom could manage, I'm sure. I'm not certain about the juggernaut.'

  'It'll be all right,' Nate said confidently.

  'You're sure this will work? That Roberto won't be put at any risk?' Daisy persisted.

  'All aboard!' the train's guard bellowed, blowing on his whistle and moving along the train to close any open doors.

  'No,' Nate replied, looking her in the eye. 'I'm not sure of anything. We can only try.'

  'I suppose we can,' she sighed, nodding. All right, then. Let's do this. And may God go with us.'

  'Any help at all would be appreciated,' Nate said as he helped her up into the carriage.

  He turned to shake hands again with Abraham.

  'This is where we part ways,' he said. 'I hope I'll see you and your brothers again soon. Good luck.'

  'I think you will need the luck more than we will,' Abraham told him with a grim smile. 'God-speed, Master Nathaniel.'

  And to you,' Nate responded, gripping the other man's hand tightly.

  And for the first time in years, Nathaniel offered up a heartfelt prayer; just in case there was anyone up there still listening.

  *

  The locomotive started out of the station, southbound. Heaving and hissing, its pistons pushing the central driving wheels, which stood taller than a grown man, it gradually picked up speed in a cloud of smoke and soot and steam. It breathed like an asthmatic buffalo, but there the similarity with a living beast ended. This marvel of the Victorian Age had little in common with any animal, particularly the vigorous, fluid and tireless movements of engimals. But it had changed the landscape of this century in a way that they never could, and the iron engine moved now with seemingly unstoppable momentum, steadily gaining speed.

  Its puffing grew louder and faster as they left Kingstown behind them and carried on along the rails and down the coast. The driver looked out from under the arched roof, through the round window of the cab at the track ahead, as the other engineman shovelled coal into the firebox and watched the boiler's gauge with an experienced eye. The engine panted quickly now; travelling at speed, it passed through pastoral land, which dropped away to the sea on its left; fields dotted with clachans and villages on its right.

  Suddenly the man looking out of the window let out a cry of warning, reaching for the controls. The engine's brakes squealed, quickly followed by the brakes in the guard's van behind the carriages, but these trains could slow down no quicker than they could accelerate. There was a shriek of metal sliding against metal as the wheels scraped sparks off the rails. The enginemen blew the whistle in alarm, the train skidding inexorably towards its doom. The carriages' buffers impacted against one another as they were slowed suddenly from either end, and inside, people were thrown from their seats. Panic ensued.

  And then the massive bull-razer the driver had seen careering towards them on a collision course crashed into the side of the locomotive, smashing the twenty-five tons of iron off its rails and sending it toppling over on its side. The six-wheeled tender tumbled after it, carpeting the ground with lumps of coal before it was pummelled aside by the carriages slamming into it from behind. Half the train followed the locomotive off the rails… and then, with a deafening crunch, the juggernaut rammed the guard's car, sending it over on its side and pulling the rest of the carriages with it.

  Hugo stood up and gazed out on the devastation and saw that it was good. From the back of Colossus he could see the entire train lying on its side in ruin. Steam billowed up from the split boiler in the locomotive and smoke gushed from the twisted, punctured smokestack. People were starting to emerge, climbing out through the doors and shattered windows. Slattery blasted the roof of the train twice with his shotgun and there was more screaming.

  'We're looking for four people!' he roared, casually reloading the weapon. 'Two ladies, a young gentleman and his cripple of a brother. They are all we want. The rest of you may flee in safety!'

  He jumped down from Trom and strode over to the wreck, climbing onto the first carriage. Elizabeth stayed on the bull-razer's back to keep watch in case any of their prey tried to escape. Hugo and Brunhilde climbed onto the side of the overturned train at the other end and started to walk down its length, each armed with a pistol and a sword. Brunhilde still wore a smart crinoline dress, and she held the hoops up with one hand as she climbed, revealing her bloomers in a most undignified manner, looking like an uncouth little girl determined to join in the boys' games.

  The three met towards the rear end of the first-class carriage. Looking down through the remains of the glass in the windows, they found what they we're looking for: Daisy, Tatiana and Roberto lay semiconscious in a sprawling heap on the internal wall of the compartment.

  'Where's the other one?' Hugo hissed.

  Elizabeth saw her brother's posture change and immediately knew something was wrong. She had regained her leaf-light cloak, looking a little worse for wear but otherwise undamaged. She raised her hand, ready to gesture the little engimals into attack. Instinct made her look round at that moment and Nate's fist caught her square across the cheekbone and knocked her flying. She fell off the far side of Trom's back, landing head-first on the dry turf. Nate dropped down and glared at her as she lay there, seeing the jagged angle of her neck. She wasn't dead, but she was close enough to it for now. The leaf-lights continued to wait patiently for instructions from their silent mistress.

  On the carriage, Daisy had been pulled up through the door, and now Brunhilde was gripping her by the hair and banging her head against the wooden wall of the carriage.

  'Where's the delicious one?' the gibbering woman asked, yanking on Daisy's hair to bring their faces nose to nose.

  'You'll see soon enough!' Daisy snapped back, tears in her eyes.

  Her hand found the pocket hiding the syringe and felt that it was still intact. Brunhilde smacked her head against the wall again and Daisy let out a cry. Her body was already racked with pain and each impact shot bolts of it through her skull. Hugo leaned in through the window.

  Tatty was struggling to get to her feet and Roberto looked in terrible shape, lying unconscious on twisted limbs, his stretcher fallen on top of him.

  'He wasn't on the train,' Hugo said softly. Then he bellowed it. 'He wasn't on the bloody train!'

  Flash's engine came upon them in a sudden roar and Nate leaped from the engimal's back as it piled into Slattery in a high-speed charge that hurled them both off the side of the carriage and over onto the ground below. Flash got back on its feet. Slattery did not.

  Nate came to a running stop as he drew his sword and almost managed to drive the point of it into Hugo's unprotected thigh, but the Patriarch drew his cutlass with blurring speed and parried the strike. They pulled apart, swords in the guard position.

  'You used your own family as bait to draw us out,' Hugo remarked with a mixture of disgust and admiration. 'Have you no conscience?'

  'To be honest, I didn't think you'd actually crash the train,' Nate admitted. 'I thought you'd just block its path.'

  In fact, the ferocity of Hugo's assault had wrecked Nate's plans, and the sight of all the dead and injured had shaken him to the core. But it was too late to do anything about it now.

  'You still have much to learn about the use of force,' Hugo told him, and lunged in with an attack.
/>   Nate swept it aside, cutting inside Hugo's guard at his torso, but the Patriarch's chain mail saved him. He came back at Nate in a repost that nearly drove the point of the cutlass into Nate's belly. Nate beat it down and twisted his own blade around it as it came back up, binding it and sweeping it aside once more. He struck out with a kick to Hugo's solar plexus, throwing the older man backwards and following him, blade driving forward. Hugo dodged the strike, flipped back onto his feet and came at his younger opponent again with a bewildering series of jabs and thrusts. Nate was astounded by the old man's strength and speed. With skills honed during years of medieval battles, Hugo began to drive him steadily backwards.

  Brunhilde rose up, taking her pistol and drawing a bead on Nathaniel as the two men fought with a frantic clashing of steel. Daisy seized her chance and, pulling the syringe from her pocket, went to jab at Brunhilde's side – only to find her wrist caught in a crushing grip. Brunhilde's hand had moved impossibly fast and without her even looking, and now she was forcing the needle back. She turned on Daisy, her mouth open in a shrill battle cry, the gun raised not to shoot, but to beat her victim to death in an animal frenzy.

  Daisy's thumb jammed the hypodermic's plunger home, spraying the poison into the mad woman's face. Brunhilde yelped, knocking the syringe from Daisy's hand so that it smashed against the wall of the carriage. She staggered up onto her feet, letting out little cries, rubbing her eyes as if they were burning. She gagged on the toxins in her mouth.

  Daisy looked in despair at the shattered syringe. Her chance was gone. Half blind, Brunhilde snatched up her great Claymore sword and, raising it over her head, rushed towards Daisy. A small, dainty hand reached up from inside the compartment and grabbed the hem of her dress as she charged, catching her feet and sending her face-first down onto the carriage wall. Her sword clattered out of her hands and Daisy seized it, the weight of it nearly pulling her over as she swung it back over her shoulder. Brunhilde scrambled to her feet and Daisy swung the blade with all her might. With her eyes shut. She screamed as she felt the sword catch something in mid-swing before flying from her hands. Opening her eyes, she stared into the fierce glare of the warrior woman.

  Brunhilde's expression was so savage that it took Daisy a moment to realize that the woman's head was slipping from her neck. The head dropped into the carriage compartment below her, and her decapitated body collapsed over on its side. Tatiana sidestepped the falling head as it bounced against the lower wall and climbed up out of the compartment, looking from Daisy to the dead body and back in wonder.

  'I always… always told her not to run in… in that dress,' Daisy panted.

  'No breeding,' Tatiana agreed, before wrapping her arms around her sister-in-law's trembling body and holding her close.

  Further down the train, Nate was losing his fight. He was being forced back, ever closer to the end of the carriages, to where the jagged wreckage of the tender lay between them and the ruined locomotive. Every thrust he made was met with the ringing of steel as Hugo answered and bettered his move, attacking viciously in return. Hugo caught him, the cutlass blade opening the flesh of his sword-arm just above the wrist. Nate flinched back in reflex and Hugo cut him again below the ribs of his right side. It was all Nate could do to keep his guard up. He bled from a dozen wounds, his movements uncoordinated and awkward, slower and slower as he weakened under Hugo's barrage. But Hugo was not unscathed. Despite his chain mail and protective collar, he bled too. For every dirty move that Hugo tried, Nate had two – drawn from a lifetime of training in the fighting arts, from both East and West. He attacked with punches and kicks and knees and leg sweeps, keeping Hugo at bay with an array of moves unknown to a medieval knight. They fought like demons – every limb a weapon, every drop of blood spilled dearly. But Hugo's experience and superhuman strength were beginning to tell.

  Nate stumbled back, stopping just short of the edge of the carriage, nothing behind him but the torn iron of the tender and, beyond it, the wreck of the locomotive, flames coughing fiercely from its firebox and starting to spread across the spilled piles of coal. The air over the hellish scene was full of gritty, choking smoke. He nearly lost his balance, and his arms went out to regain it… leaving him wide open. Hugo drove his sword into Nate's side. Nate screamed, dropping his own blade. As Hugo made to pull back for another thrust, Nate clasped his hands around his ancestor's and lunged backwards, still impaled on the sword. Hugo was thrown forwards, tumbling over Nate's head as they fell into the pile of coal in the wreck of the tender. A sharp, white-hot pain shot through Nate as he landed, and the sword twisted in the wound, making him cry out again. Hugo got to his knees; jamming one foot against Nate's hip, he wrenched the bloodied blade out and raised it for a killing blow. But just as he did so, three figures rose up from beneath the coal, seizing his arms and legs in wrestling holds. He fought like a berserker to break free, but the Maasai were too strong, too well-trained, their hearts too set on vengeance.

  'Unhand me, you blasted blackamoors!' Hugo shrieked, thrashing vainly against their iron grip. 'What are you doing? What is this?!'

  'This,' said Abraham in a deep, calm voice, 'is your personal Hell, Hugo Wildenstern. And we are here to deliver you to it.'

  'You can't do this!' Hugo screamed at Nathaniel. 'You would let servants do your killing for you?!'

  'They are free men now. What they do with you is their business,' Nate retorted, sitting up with a grunt and pressing his hands against the wound. Not wanting to show how badly he was hurt, he got unsteadily to his feet and turned his back on his ancestor. Then he added: 'I never wanted you dead – I just wanted you out of my house.'

  And with that, he walked away to join his family.

  XXXIV

  BRUTUS

  Gerald leaned back against the workbench, smoking a cigarette and staring at Brutus. With all the family conflict going on around him, there had been little time to consider how recent events were going to affect his work. Now that he had a moment to think about it, it dawned on him that if Nate's plans succeeded, the ancestors' extraordinary bodies could be lost to science.

  And Nate had to succeed – the prospect of these throwbacks taking control of the family was unthinkable. But while Gerald would have been the first to admit that the four ancients were abominations of the highest order (even for Wildensterns), he despaired at the thought of losing the greatest chance of discovering the true nature of the intelligent particles. If a transfusion of Hugo's blood could help Clancy recover from a mortal wound, understanding those particles could change the course of medicine for ever.

  So Gerald made a decision there and then. He would take Brutus's inert body down to the cellars, where he could tell Nate he had incinerated it in the huge boilers that heated the house. There were forgotten rooms down in the foundations of Wildenstern Hall where Gerald stored some of his equipment, as well as more illicit materials he wanted to keep from prying eyes. He would keep Brutus there, where he could carry on his experiments in secrecy.

  Gerald had enormous faith in his cousin. Nate had yet to realize his full potential in the family but Gerald knew what a formidable opponent he could be. If he succeeded in defeating Hugo and his sisters, for the sake of science it was imperative that at least one of the ancestors be kept alive.

  The moral implications of what he was doing did not particularly bother Gerald – he considered himself a servant to a higher cause that could override all other considerations. Anything was justified to advance along the path of science.

  On the off-chance that Nate failed, Gerald could always tell Hugo that he had been trying to save Brutus's life. That part at least would be true.

  There wasn't a moment to lose, but there was still the problem of moving a man of Brutus's size without the help of too many loose-lipped servants. Gerald stepped over to the sleeping giant and put a hand on his brow – then he jerked back as the monster let out a trembling moan.

  Brutus awoke. His consciousness returned gradually and he l
ay still with his eyes closed and let it come. As his awareness of his body stretched out along his limbs, a terrible pain in his right arm told him he had been wounded in the fight. He could remember a mighty struggle, hands grabbing him, blades cutting him. He tried to flex the fingers of his right hand, and though he was sure he could feel them to their tips, there was no movement against his hip, where they lay. Instead, something cold and hard twitched against his skin. He had heard about this from men who had lost limbs in battle. Ghost pain. His hand was gone – replaced by some clumsy tool of metal.

  Brutus did not know why he was not dead. Perhaps Hugo and their sisters had saved him, but his one clear memory was of them lying in a bog grave, their bodies ravaged with wounds. Earth was being thrown upon their faces. Perhaps someone had kept him alive to prolong his torture. As his thoughts turned to his family, he was struck with the certainty that they were in mortal danger. He must act.

  His memories were confused; he could not think clearly. Opening his eyes, he found his vision was blurred. The room around him looked large and bright, with tall rectangular windows that blinded him with their light. He was in a bed, and on his left side, on a small table, were what could have been small weapons or surgical tools. His hand clumsily grasped the largest, a saw of polished metal. As he sat up, his unfocused eyes picked out the shape of a man lying in a bed a few feet away to his right. Brutus could see no details, but the man was not moving.

  That was when he looked down at his right arm and saw the claw attached to it. The claw opened as he lifted it, and clicked closed as he pushed it away. What sorcery was this? He gaped in horror, but stayed silent.