The Steampunk Megapack

by Jay Lake

  Something very large and heavy was approaching, at speed!

  TOM’S METAL IS TESTED

  In which a vicious adversary is at last confronted.

  Though it must have been merely a matter of moments, seconds really, between the first stirrings of alarm and the appearance of the monster, I confess each breath felt positively an hour at the time. Survivors of harrowing experiences frequently describe how time seems to slow to a crawl, as though the world were suddenly submerged in an icy lake and each gesture a diver’s ponderous motion, and until that night in the cottage I had always believed it something of an exaggeration. Having survived that encounter and too many others like it in the years since, I now freely admit my error.

  My embarrassment becomes more profound considering that I was the first to realize the danger. Hearing the thunderous gallop approaching, I turned and saw through the doorways the most malevolent pair of eyes I have ever seen, twin points of crimson light in the dark, narrowed with bloodthirsty malice and growing rapidly larger with each passing moment.

  Still more quickly than I could find words, Tom spun and shouldered his rifle, staring down the charging beast with the apparent detachment of a gentleman shooting pigeons in his backyard. “Got you now, you brute,” he muttered, then squeezed the trigger. The round struck home with a high cracking sound and one of the two crimson lights went out. A hideous squeal erupted from the beast, something between the whistle of a train and the hissing of molten metal being poured in the foundry.

  “Brilliant shot—” I began, but stopped when I realized that his marksmanship, while superb, had only thrown the thing off pace for a few steps, and it had nearly reached the door. I fumbled for the pocket where I’d stored the vials I’d prepared, but found my fingers stiff and clumsy. My gaze locked with its remaining eye and I suddenly and quite distinctly felt myself freeze in place. One of the most unfortunate side effect of my Transfiguration is that I occasionally find I share certain habits with the common rabbit, one of the most inconvenient being a certain tendency to be struck stock still when faced with a dire threat to life and limb. That, and a need to dig up gardens that sometimes requires all my will to subdue.

  Particularly if they contain delicious roses.

  Fortunately I was not alone that night. “Look out!” Tom bellowed, putting his shoulder down and knocking me clear across the room before somehow changing direction and diving for the opposite corner. The boar turned first one way, then another, trying to track his movements, but succeeded only in missing us both. It thundered past and collided with the doorframe before plowing straight through the wall like a cannon shot, followed by sounds of crashing metal and breaking china as it thrashed around the kitchen.

  “Is it ready?” Tom asked, attaining his feet with a wrestler’s leap.

  My hand finally cleared my pocket, sparing the vials from destruction as I tumbled, but at the cost of scattering them across the floor when I hit the ground. I grabbed for the nearest one, but it hit the tips of my fingers and rolled further away. “Just need a moment!” I called out, quite unnecessarily.

  “All right, then,” Tom replied with the same unhurried nonchalance, reloading his rifle. From the kitchen came another of those thunderous grunts, as well as the scrabbling clatter of metallic hooves digging trenches into the stout wood. “Come on, you beast!” Tom growled, sighting down the barrel into the darkness of the kitchen. “See if I can’t take that other eye!”

  Astoundingly, the noise from the room beyond abruptly halted, save for the protesting groan of the timbers. A low hiss rattled the windows of the cottage, like that of a colossal kettle nearing the boil. This happened once, twice, a third time, and I realized the beast was doing its impression of a bull snorting in its pen. Yet it wasn’t coming for another charge.

  “I—I think it understood me,” Tom said, a note of quiet awe mixing with his otherwise cautious tone. “Is that even possible?”

  “I wouldn’t have thought so, but then there is something distinctly amiss with its very Animation, so I must admit the door is open to many possibilities I hadn’t entertained earlier.” Having quite lost my dignity but at last come up with one of the vials in hand, I stepped carefully away from Tom’s line of fire and regarded the monster. Sure enough, we stood not a half dozen paces apart, the light from the lantern revealing the creature to me clearly for the first time. It was much as I’d imagined from Tom’s description, save that his words had hardly conveyed the preternatural terror of seeing such a hulking golden monstrosity moving as if alive.

  Nor the wonder, for as the light played over it, I could see that its Animation was clearly no natural Ætheric phenomena. Each limb featured large glyphs, clearly Oriental in design and layered at points of articulation in a combination of exceptional craftsmanship and efficacy. I realize that it may seem odd to praise the grace of a creature who so far had simply managed to knock over furniture, terrify livestock and punch large holes through standing structures, but without those more detailed symbols it would have been little more than a stiff-legged brute incapable of anything more than a straight line shamble. It was quite remarkable, even if the fact that those very qualities were endangering my life. A final piece of the puzzle fell into place, though not one that filled me with any special hope for poor Doctor Sykes.

  “Peter,” Tom prompted quietly, shaking me from my reverie. “I’m no expert, but this would seem an excellent time to destroy the blasted thing.” At those last words, the boar snorted, narrowed its remaining eye and lowered its tusks. “Oh, right,” Tom muttered, just as it threw itself at us again.

  With no room to build speed, the charge was far less imposing than it had been when the beast was coming up the drive; at the same time, such comparison is rather like stating a lightning strike that impacted fifteen feet away was far less intimidating than one the impacted only five feet away. Both are still likely to set your hair on end and your heart racing.

  Fortunately, by this time I’d at last managed to recover my wits, and if may be so bold, they are few things quite so dangerous as a Transfigurist with time on his hands. I threw the door to the kitchen closed and danced back a step, keeping my hands on the wood but moving my lower body out of harm’s way. “Help me!” I called to Tom. Not a moment too soon—the boar’s initial impact rattled the door and nearly carried me off my feet.

  “It’ll never hold!” Tom objected, but bless his heart, he didn’t argue, just put his gun up and lent his shoulder to the door. “The frame’s half off!” Sure enough, the door shook again, and the points of two ferocious tusks erupted a full six inches through the wood. The monster gave another squeal, this one with unmistakable notes of triumph, and began worrying at the door, sending out a shower of splinters as it shook its head to and fro. “I thought you had your countermeasure ready!”

  “Can’t risk it just yet,” I replied. “Just give me a moment to work!”

  “Well, at least you have a plan,” Tom said rather archly, the metal of his Transfigured limb scraping loudly as he struggled against another rattling impact.

  “When I give the word, jump clear,” I said, finishing the fifth and final necessary symbol on the door. I unstoppered a vial of pitch from my pocket and applied it to the symbols, just to be certain, then nodded at Tom. The snout of the boar was just starting to break through, which meant I had but a few more seconds before the effect would be ruined. “On my mark—now!”

  Tom launched himself backward, nearly tripping over his rifle, and before the boar could force its way through I slapped the door with my palm as hard as I could, using the impact to excite the formulae. With the familiar whoosh of rapid Transfiguration, the solid wood of the door collapsed into a flood of thick, viscous tar. Fortunately, one of the advantages of my condition is a newfound facility for rather impressive leaps, and so neither Tom nor I were more than splashed by the adhesive.

  As I’d hoped, the boar’s head was entirely coated with a thick layer of pitch. It issued a s
trangled snort and stumbled forward blindly, trying to shake off the sticky mixture, but its front hooves quickly became mired in the tar spread across the floor.

  Still, I was not about to place my faith in the efficacy of a simple formulae. Taking care to approach from as far back away from the beast’s head as possible, I poured the contents of one of my vials of prepared counter-agent over the creature. Given its deliberate rather than accidental Animation, I feared that the reaction might take a few moments, but as it happens, I needn’t have worried. The boar’s struggles ceased almost instantly, the quicksilver extract from my vial darting across the exposed portions of the creature’s body and evaporating the Animating symbols in a hissing cloud of Æther. A small portion even slithered under the tar coating, and with a final, bubbling snort, the beast’s head lowered and fixed in place.

  “Amazing,” Tom said, though I noticed he did not lower his rifle completely for a few more moments. “Is it—dead?”

  “In so many words? Yes.” I thought of questioning whether that term truly applied to a thing which had never lived and only now had been returned to immobility, but decided against it. “It was just a matter of getting close to ensure that I could apply the proper formulae.”

  “If it was that simple, why didn’t you just toss that stuff at the beast while it was charging the second time?” Tom asked. “Why the business with the door and the tar?”

  “You’ve obviously never seen me take a turn as bowler,” I replied. My friend regarded me quizzically, as I suppose a lifelong athletic type might. “Let us simply say that it’s safer to make sure the beast is entirely immobilized, rather than risk our lives on my pitching skills.”

  “Fair enough, I suppose,” Tom said. He looked around the room and exhaled slowly. “We’re still left with the mystery of what happened to Henry, however.”

  “I’m afraid I think I know where we might find him,” I said, taking up the lantern. “Follow me.”

  THE UNFORTUNATE CASE

  In which one mystery’s solution proves another’s beginning.

  Tom at my heels, I headed into the back bedroom and knelt in front of the steamer trunk. As I feared, the lantern reacted strongly to the trunk, causing a small series of Oriental characters to appear. “This may not be pleasant,” I warned, “but we need to take a look inside.”

  “Are you sure?” Tom asked. I nodded. “Very well then,” he said, taking aim over my shoulder. “Let’s not take any chances.”

  Suitably guarded, I placed my hands on the trunk, took a deep breath and opened it. As the lid rose an audible gasp escaped both of us, along with a muttered prayer from Tom. Laid inside the trunk was a solid gold statue of only too lifelike detail, realistic in every respect from the folds in his clothing down to individual hairs on his head. As precise as these details were, however, they paled in comparison to the expression frozen on his features, a look of such wide-eyed horror and despair that I fear I shall never purge it from my memory despite a thousand nightmares spent trying.

  “Oh, Henry,” Tom muttered, when he had composed himself. “What happened to you?”

  “Not what, but who,” I said, leaning in to inspect the statue more closely while trying to avoid its terrible gaze. One of Henry’s hands was palm outward, as though trying to ward off an assailant, but the other was curled tightly against his chest. A flash of color from between his fingers caught my eye, however, and I reached in carefully to retrieve it, doing my best with an averted gaze. “I suspect that for some reason, it seems that Henry took an interest in a very dangerous individual. Or rather, he may have…attracted its notice.”

  “What? This ‘Ghost Emperor’ person you were talking about?” Tom said. “How could he have possibly have anything to do with this?”

  “I’m not exactly sure,” I replied, withdrawing my hand from the trunk, “but given the evidence, I can’t rule it out either. Plus there’s this to consider.” I displayed the flower that had been clutched in Henry’s own. “This is Imperial scarlet amaranth, and while I am not incredibly versed on the subject, I do know that the Chinese have long employed it in their variations of the Art. Particularly for immortality elixirs, which as I recall were something of a fixation for many of their practitioners.”

  “Henry did say he’d brought some flowers back,” Tom said.

  “True, but look at this.” I held it up higher, shone the lantern on it. “This is fresh. Where would he have gotten it?”

  “Perhaps a garden?” Tom ventured weakly. “I mean, surely you’re not suggesting that Henry conjured up some kind of ancient Chinese phantom?”

  “I don’t know.” I sat back and wiped my brow, as much to quiet my racing thoughts as anything else. “My own experience with the Art tells me that many more things are possible than conventionally imagined, but the idea of some sort of specter rising up in Yorkshire, changing a man to gold and loosing a statue across the countryside?” I shook my head.

  “Well, can you cure him?” Tom held up his golden hand. “You seem to have made admirable progress with my condition.”

  “Possibly, but I’ll need to examine him at length, and—”

  “Hold on a moment,” Tom said, pointing at the inside of the trunk lid. “Put the light on that. What is it?” I looked over and saw a ragged string of Oriental characters scratched into the material. “That’s writing, isn’t it? What does it say?”

  “I don’t know, but I believe I can find out,” I replied, running to the sitting room and back as I picked up the language primer. “Let us just hope these were not among the characters excised,” I said, settling down to study and compare.

  It took almost an hour wrestling with the vagaries of pictographic language, but eventually I found the translations for each of the characters that poor, doomed Henry had scratched into the lid of his makeshift coffin before the Transfiguration had run its course. Their meaning would stay with me for months afterward, returning to my thoughts to distract me during the day and bedevil my dreams by night.

  Indeed, out of all the strange and ominous events to follow, I still think back to that night in the cottage as perhaps the most telling incident, when I both sealed a friendship and started on the trail of an enemy more ancient and terrible than I could have imagined in those rosy early days.

  Henry’s words, carefully chosen as only the dying can, translated simply:

  The Ghost Emperor awakens, and the Year of the Boar heeds his call.

  Darkness ahead.

  The days of Odd Britannia had arrived.

  THE WAR EFFORT, by Austin H. Williams

  It was always night when the Messengers came; always from the forest, always with their gifts and counsel. The generals would be privy to furtive discussions on tactic and strategy. The quartermasters would take stock of the supplies they carried in—fire-breathing rifles and earth-rending canons, bullets that never failed and swords that stole men’s souls.

  They would come, too, after important and bloody engagements had left the Hermangen occupiers ragged and tattered. It was the reward, each man inferred, that they had earned for victory in the name of their lords. The Hermangens had done all they could to expulse the Eglantrans’ ancient, mystical protectors and providers, thus their campaign turned sacrosanct. Every battle became a rite, every fallen partisan a martyr, every dead occupier a pleasing holocaust. And none fought with more devotion, more righteous fervor than Timo Malthusset. When the Messengers came this time, Timo would have himself ready.

  In the darkness the night patrols saw a shimmering light on the horizon. The men shouted for joy and roused themselves to give obeisance to these Messengers from Eglantra’s gods. As the cries of joy rang through the companies, Timo put away his warrior’s medals, his conflict-weathered fatigues, and field-battered rifle. He let the feeling of calling and destiny settle upon him. It took great force of will for the most revered and zealous warrior on the Eglantran front lines to follow the heavy fate set upon his heart, but he would not be stopped
. In the dark, as his closest comrades celebrated, he slipped away.

  Timo’s knuckles whitened in his clasped hands as he prayed for favor. He stayed under cover just near the eave of the forest, rehearsing, beseeching, hoping that he was not mistaken in this errand. Eglantra stood on the precipice of a new golden age. If Timo was right, he could not fail.

  In the deepest hours of the night’s watch, the stars started to move into hiding. Brightness neared from the horizon. Timo’s heartbeats threatened to choke him. He prayed between sputtering breaths and focused on the light ahead, searching for the Lady, that vision of unrivalled beauty that Timo was destined for.

  The Messengers stopped a few yards away, searching about the woods, sensing something. Silence ensconced the soldier, amplifying the pounding of his heart. With a deep breath and final prayer he found his strength and stood forth.

  Timo cast off the dark robes he’d donned to hide himself as he deserted his troop. His pants and shirt were bleached clean from the blood and mire that they had known but a few days earlier. He stood proud and strong before the divine people, and faced immediately the woman against whom no beauty could stand.

  She stood at the front of her column, leading the now empty carts pulled by white stallions, guarded by men in shining armor. The world blurred into nothing as Timo beheld her radiant image. Her eyes locked upon him, and a sliver of eternity passed between the moment when Timo faced the Lady and when he finally found breath to speak.

  When that moment had ended, he said, “O lady of the gods’ people, I am Timo Malthusset. I remember your arrival as we huddled in the mountains, beseeching the Lords of Heaven that they might send again their envoys and deliver us from the Hermangens. You headed the train ascending to our camp, and in wonder I beheld you.