The Dragon Lantern

by Alan Gratz

  Custer took a sip of his coffee. “There’s something else I’m good at, and that’s being decisive. All those nobs who knew their military history backward and forward, what good did it do them on the battlefield when they couldn’t decide to retreat or charge? Being a good leader, being decisive, those are gifts, like whatever it is that makes you strong, Mr. Dent. If the trade-off for those is coming in last in my class at West Point, if it’s being laughed at and called steam-for-brains by my classmates, then I accept that. In fact, I embrace it. I tell everybody I can I was last in my class at West Point. Because you know where a lot of those jokers are now who got better grades’n me? They’re washed out. They’re shopkeepers, and teachers, and businessmen. And where am I?” Custer gestured at the room around them. “I’m captain of my own steam man at thirty-one, in charge of my own regiment, sent on a special mission by General Robert E. Lee himself.”

  Custer leaned across the table and pointed at Archie. “Whatever it is you’re embarrassed about, whatever it is you wish was normal, embrace it. Own it. Because that’s what makes you special. And being special is way better than being normal, no matter what it costs.”

  Bugle notes came to them on the breeze, soft and distant—messages from the advance aeronaut scouts they’d launched before. Colossus responded with a series of blasts from its steam whistle, and the speaking trumpet on Custer’s wall came to life.

  “Scouts report steam bearing south-southwest, Captain,” Lieutenant Pajackok reported from up above.

  Custer took the speaking trumpet in hand. “Excellent, Lieutenant. Adjust course, and blow to clear for action.”

  “Aye, sir, adjusting course and blowing to clear for action,” Pajackok replied.

  Archie saw the steam man change direction slightly before Custer pulled the lever that closed Colossus’s mouth, and the steam man’s whistle blew a new series of notes. Within seconds, two men had scrambled up the ladder from below and were taking the captain’s room apart, tucking his personal effects away and lashing the furniture to the walls. Captain Custer put his big broad cavalry hat on, stopped to see how it looked in the mirror, and climbed the ladder to the bridge.

  “Come along, Mr. Dent,” he said. “We have a train to catch.”

  Archie climbed after Custer. Clyde gave him a smile as he entered the bridge, but didn’t stop his drumming. Archie didn’t know how he could keep it up; Clyde had been drumming for hours. Even more incredibly, Dull Knife was still at the controls, marching the steam man along in time with Clyde’s beat.

  Colossus crested a ridge, and there in the distance was a train. Archie was surprised to see it was chugging toward them, not away from them.

  Lieutenant Pajackok saw his confusion and smiled. “You forget, Mr. Dent, Colossus can do something a train can’t.” He nodded at the maps in front of him. “We can take a shortcut.”

  “Mr. Pajackok, signal the scouts to intercept the locomotive, and kindly ask it to stop.”

  “Yes, sir,” the lieutenant said. He pulled a cord, sending the aeronauts a message via a series of whistles. The aeronauts responded with bugles, and the propellers on their steam-powered backpacks accelerated, swinging them down toward the train. Archie watched as they matched the locomotive’s speed, caught it with grappling hooks, and began to pull themselves down to it.

  Something yipped excitedly beneath them, and Archie squeezed his way to the big glass eyes at the front of the bridge to look down. There, barking and wagging his tail excitedly at the aeronauts and the train in the distance, was the little brown dog that had followed them out of Cahokia on the Plains.

  “He’s still there!” Archie said. “The little dog. Clyde, he’s still with us!”

  The dog ran out ahead of them like he was another advance scout, and Clyde leaned forward to see him. “Well I’ll be. The little guy’s persistent, I’ll give him that!”

  Suddenly a golden raygun beam shot out from somewhere below them, hitting the ground right beneath the dog. Dirt exploded all over him, and he jumped aside and cowered.

  “Somebody’s shooting at him!” Archie cried.

  “Mr. Pajackok!” Custer said. “Find out whoever’s doing that!”

  Another golden beam lanced out, hitting the ground right behind the dog. He leaped forward and spun, tail beneath his legs, trying to understand what was attacking him.

  Archie heard a clatter behind him and realized the drumbeat had stopped. Clyde was down from his chair and leaping into the hole that led below.

  “Mr. Magoro!” Custer yelled, but Clyde didn’t hear him—or didn’t listen. Archie hurried after him, beating Mr. Pajackok to the porthole.

  Clyde clamped his feet to the outside edge of the ladder and slid down fast. He was through the captain’s quarters and below before Archie was even halfway there. Archie chased him through the maze of soldiers at their posts on the upper gun deck and down the ladder to the crew deck, where the Choctaw soldier they’d taken on at Cahokia leaned out one of the forward hatches, taking aim at something with his oscillating rifle. Clyde yelled and barreled into him. The big Choctaw fell to the floor, and his oscillator fired inside the room, the beam ping-ponging off the walls. The other soldiers on the deck ducked and covered, but the bouncing energy ray was bound to hit one of them. The beam ricocheted in Clyde’s direction, and Archie threw himself in the way, taking the blast full in the chest.

  It blew a hole in his shirt, but didn’t hurt him at all.

  The Choctaw climbed to his feet and raised a hand to cuff Clyde. “Could have killed us all, you little—”

  Lieutenant Pajackok caught the Choctaw’s arm before he could strike. “The way I see it, Mr. Nahotabi, you’re the one who almost killed us all,” he told the soldier. “No one on this steam man is to shoot—ever,” he said, shaking Nahotabi’s arm as he said it, “until an officer gives the order. Do you understand?”

  Nahotabi glared up at Lieutenant Pajackok. “Yes. Sir.”

  “Mr. Magoro, you abandoned your post,” the lieutenant said, never taking his eyes off Nahotabi. “Please return to it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Clyde said. Archie helped him up, and Clyde gave Nahotabi one last glare before pushing his way through the other soldiers on the deck and climbing the ladder.

  Lieutenant Pajackok let Nahotabi go and returned to the bridge, giving the burn mark on Archie’s shirt a frown as he passed. Archie followed him back up to the whispers and sideways glances of the rest of the crew. His secret was out.

  Colossus had come to a stop by the time Archie and the lieutenant got back, and so had the train down below. Captain Custer was halfway out a hatch at the very top of the head talking to one of the aeronaut scouts.

  “Everything straightened out down below, Mr. Pajackok?” Custer asked.

  Pajackok glanced at Clyde, who sat grim-faced in his chair. “Yes, sir,” the lieutenant said.

  “Did they catch her?” Archie asked.

  Custer shook his head. “She’s not on board anymore.”

  “Are you sure?” Archie asked. “She’s a master of disguise. She can make you think you’re seeing something you’re not—”

  Custer put a hand up. “Mrs. Moffett told me all about it. But I think in this case your thief used her talents to get away. The engineer told our scouts that two hours back they were attacked by a Pawnee raiding party.”

  “What?” Lieutenant Pajackok said. “But locomotives have Right of Passage.”

  “They thought they were being attacked,” Custer said. “The engineer saw the tracks blocked ahead and threw the brake. Only when the train stopped there weren’t nothing there—and no Pawnee raiding party either. Said they all vanished into thin air.”

  “That’s when she got off the train,” Pajackok said.

  Custer nodded. “Most like. She had to know we’d be coming for her. I figure she had some other means of transportation stashed wherever it was she stopped the train.”

  “We should still search the train with one of the Tik Tok
porters, just in case,” Archie said. “She may still be there and just be trying to throw us off the scent.”

  “I’ll order one of the scouts to stay behind and search, but we’re going back down the tracks to where that train stopped,” Custer said. He closed the top hatch and climbed back down. “If your thief’s out and about, I don’t want to lose the scent. The aeronaut can rejoin us tomorrow with or without her. Mr. Pajackok, give the signals.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Mr. Tahmelapachme, adjust course to follow those tracks. Mr. Magoro, double march speed.”

  “Aye, sir,” they said together, and Clyde started a new, quicker beat. Dull Knife picked it up right away, and Colossus followed the train tracks at a faster pace than before.

  “Mr. Dent,” Custer said, appraising the burn mark on his chest. “You’ll be wanting to change into a new shirt.”

  “Yes, sir,” Archie said.

  On the way downstairs, Archie met Clyde’s eyes, and the drummer gave him a nod of thanks.

  * * *

  By nightfall, they reached the place where the train had stopped, and Custer’s scouts found steam mule tracks in the woods, heading northwest.

  “Toward Sioux country,” Clyde told Archie. The Sioux were notoriously territorial and fierce, and regularly raided the towns and villages of the tribes all around them. The United Nations had been in an out-and-out war with them in the past, but for now there was a tenuous peace.

  The United Nations were at peace with the Pawnee too, but Custer was still leery of marching through their territory at night. Instead he ordered the regiment to make camp by the railroad tracks where the fox girl had run off. They would go after her in the morning. And in this case, the steam man was faster than what she was riding. They would catch her tomorrow, Custer was sure.

  Dull Knife found a small hill to sit Colossus on, lowering him down with practiced precision. Some of the soldiers put up UN Army tents outside, choosing to sleep out under the stars, while others stayed in the steam man. Everyone came out for dinner, though, which Parsons cooked on a big campfire.

  Some of the soldiers tried to lift a log to bring it closer to the fire to sit on, but six of them together couldn’t lift it. Instead they tried rolling it, with poor results.

  Embrace what makes you special, Custer had told Archie.

  “I can do that,” Archie told the soldiers.

  “Do what?” one of them asked.

  “Move the log for you.”

  Most of the men laughed, but one of them—Inola, the young soldier with the girlfriend in Cahokia—peered at him from under his folded-up cavalry hat.

  “Do it then,” he said.

  Archie stepped up to the log, and the men and women stopped laughing and stepped away. Word of him taking a raygun blast on the crew deck earlier had spread rapidly throughout the steam man, and Archie could see a hint of fear in their eyes.

  Own it, Archie told himself. He put his arms around the log and lifted it like it was a lacrosse stick.

  The camp grew silent as everyone stopped to watch him carry the giant log and lay it down near the fire. In a way, Archie enjoyed their attention, liked the way they looked at him with awe and fear. Maybe he was telling them all he was different—that he was inhuman—and maybe that would keep them away. But maybe it was better that way.

  Archie strode to the edge of the forest beyond the tracks, picked another tree about the same size, and pushed on it. The tree groaned and creaked, and the earth beneath his feet rippled as the roots rippled. Archie pulled the tree back and forth, loosening it in the ground, and then put his arms around it and heaved.

  The tree came ripping out of the ground in a shower of dirt and rock.

  Archie laid it on the other side of the fire and snapped off the limbs where people would want to sit. When he was finished, he brushed the dirt and leaves off of himself and took a seat. The soldiers of the 7th Steam Man Regiment turned away to whisper incredulously among themselves. Across the campsite, Captain Custer grinned back at him and nodded.

  Slowly, regular life returned to the camp, and soldiers began to drift over to sit near Archie by the fire. Near him, but not with him. Archie got up to let them be more comfortable.

  The little dog that had followed them from Cahokia on the Plains was, incredibly, still with them, and it ran around through the campsite, barking and getting underfoot. He was a mutt of a dog, shaggy and scrawny, his hair a curly, tangled mess. He looked like he’d never had a bath in his life and was perfectly fine with that. He hunkered down low on his front legs and arfed, trying to get one of the men to play with him, but the soldier kicked him out of the way. It was Nahotabi, the same soldier who’d shot at him before. The dog yelped and shrank away, and suddenly Clyde was there in between them.

  “Back off,” Clyde told the Choctaw.

  “Or what?” Nahotabi said.

  “Or I’ll make you sorry,” Clyde said.

  “Yeah? You and what army?”

  Archie stepped up beside Clyde.

  Nahotabi laughed, but he had seen Archie’s strength, and he walked away.

  “Thanks,” Clyde said. “Like Mrs. DeMarcus says, some people are just rotten to the core.”

  “Who’s this Mrs. DeMarcus you’re always talking about?” Archie asked.

  “The woman who ran the orphanage where I grew up,” Clyde said.

  Archie suddenly felt awful. His own parents might have adopted him, but they’d loved him like a real son all his life. And all he’d done lately was be angry that they weren’t his birth parents. Clyde hadn’t even had that much, and yet he seemed so happy. Far happier than Archie.

  The little dog peeked out from behind Clyde, but stayed close to his leg.

  “Looks like you made a friend,” Archie told him.

  “Yeah,” Clyde said. “Looks like.” He put a hand out to Archie. Archie looked at it, surprised that anyone would want to be friends with him after his little display at the campfire. He took Clyde’s hand and shook it.

  “As for you,” Clyde said to the dog, “you need to stay out from underfoot and learn to be useful if you’re going to stick around, and that’s a fact.” He took off the red bandana he wore around his neck and tied it around the dog’s neck, like a collar, while the dog tried to lick all over him. “There. Now everyone’ll know you’re part of the regiment.”

  The dog looked up at them with his tongue hanging out and wagged his tail furiously.

  “Thanks again, by the way,” Clyde said. “For taking that raygun blast for me today in Colossus.”

  “Oh,” Archie said. He bent down to pet the dog. “Sure.”

  “Did it hurt? I mean, does stuff like that hurt when it happens to you?”

  “Yeah,” Archie said. “But only for a second. I feel things, but not for long. It hurts and then it goes away. Same with good stuff.” He nodded at the dog licking at his face. “This tickled at first, but now I don’t feel anything.”

  “And it doesn’t do anything to you, getting shot and falling out of the sky or whatever?” Clyde asked.

  “Only once,” Archie said. He had never shown it to anybody but Hachi and Fergus and his parents, not even Mrs. Moffett, but he rolled back his sleeve now and showed Clyde the crack, high up on his arm. The dog licked at it like he knew it hurt and was trying to make it better.

  “It looks like stone in there,” Clyde said.

  Archie nodded. “It is. Does it creep you out?”

  Clyde laughed. “Yeah it does! Doesn’t it creep you out?”

  Archie had to laugh at that. “Yeah. Yeah, it does.”

  “Good! I’d be worried if it didn’t!” Clyde said. “All right, Buster,” he said to the dog. “Let’s get you some food. Bet you’re thirsty too, after all that running.”

  “Buster?”

  Clyde shrugged. “He seems like a Buster.”

  “Think Captain Custer will let you keep him?” Archie asked.

  “Maybe,” Clyde said. “He’s parti
al to strays.”

  8

  Archie heard the cry of the advance aeronaut scouts’ bugles, and the shrill reply of the steam man’s whistle. All around him on the crew deck, soldiers jumped to action, clearing the tables, chairs, and bunks and pulling oscillating rifles from the rack.

  Archie did his best to stay out of the way in the tight quarters. “What is it? Did they find her?” he asked Private Inola.

  The Cherokee paused mid-hurry to answer Archie. “No. That’s the signal for ‘Enemy Sighted.’ It’s the Sioux.”

  “All the way down here?” Archie asked, but Inola had already run off to take up his post at one of the gun ports along the front wall of the cabin. Archie couldn’t believe it.

  “The Sioux come this deep into Pawnee territory?” Archie asked Mr. Rivets. “We’re only two days out from Cahokia!”

  “Sioux raiding parties this far south and east are not unheard-of,” Mr. Rivets said. “But they are indeed rare. Most of the Sioux/Pawnee conflict is concentrated around the area known as the Badlands, almost a thousand miles from here.”

  “Monowheels!” someone cried, and Archie ran to one of the empty hatches and looked out. Over a ridge rolled perhaps a dozen of the things. They were single round wheels, with cog-like bumps along the outside to give them traction. Inside each wheel, open to the air, was a Sioux warrior sitting back atop the tangle of brass and wood machine that made it run. They steered the wheels by means of wide handlebars and could spin and pivot the vehicles on a dime. It was the exceptional speed and all-terrain handling of the monowheel that allowed the Sioux to have such a huge territory, from the border of Pawnee country in the south to the cold, snowy borders with the Cree and Blackfoot in the north.

  And it was the twin mounted rayguns on either side of the wheels that made them so feared everywhere.

  “Monowheels we can handle,” Private Inola told Archie.

  “Be like playing chunkey,” said a Cahokian soldier. “Two points for putting a raygun shot through the hoop.”

  But then Colossus began to shake and rattle more than usual, and the soldiers grew quiet. Rising over the ridge was an enormous cogged monowheel, ten times the size of the smaller ones, and half the height of their United Nations Steam Man. Like the smaller monowheels, it was driven by a steam engine inside it, but unlike them, it housed not a single person but an armored capsule, no doubt filled with a small regiment of Sioux warriors. And like the smaller monowheels, it had twin guns mounted on the sides—but these were mighty raycannons.