For an instant, Buckle thought he had escaped unscathed.
But then he saw little droplets of his bright-red blood spray across the white marble chest of the stallion statue, and he cursed himself.
MERCY FOR THE WICKED
THE WOUND WAS NOT A bad one—a surface slice across Buckle’s forearm, just below the elbow—but the psychological advantage of first blood was powerful. The ripped edges of his shirt sleeve dripped red. By all rights, Buckle should have been gutted.
Buckle spun away, hefting his sword in his hand as he and Goethe circled one another again. Goethe smiled at him.
“You bleed, Captain?” Goethe announced. “Perhaps you wish to beg for mercy now, while your major parts are still attached?”
Buckle’s thoughts whirled in his head. If Goethe knew of Elizabeth, if he knew that Elizabeth was Buckle’s sister, then he must know more.
Goethe lunged. Buckle clamped his teeth, slashing back and forth as Goethe advanced, slowly closing. His desire to kill Goethe would do no one any good. He had to disarm the man, cripple him, demand what he knew of Elizabeth. But Buckle also sensed that Goethe was far too proud to talk, and if he did, his words would be lies.
Buckle was not going to kill Goethe; he would chop the damned blackheart’s toes off.
The fighting mind kicked in, overtaking Buckle smoothly, easily, as it always did; the ancient Roman war machine in his brain calculating, studying Goethe’s technique in ways only one swordsman might estimate another. Goethe was quick, experienced, well-trained, but he had not kept up a demanding practice, and so he was also predictable, enslaved to the tactics of the textbook.
It was time to set the trap.
Buckle set to, bulling forward, swamping Goethe in a flurry of flashing blade strokes. Goethe deftly parried, but that was what Buckle wanted. Buckle eased up just a hair, lessening the force of his blows, dropping his guard a fraction, offering Goethe the telltale signs of a man beginning to tire.
Goethe took the bait, as the textbook required he should; he shifted to the attack, surging forward. Buckle let Goethe almost get inside his guard, then caught Goethe’s blade with the edge of his steel, holding it as the blades slid against one another in a tumble of sparks. Buckle hunched, as if overwhelmed, bringing Goethe in even closer, then wrenched Goethe’s sword arm high and shouldered him in the chest, straightening him up. Now inside Goethe’s guard, Buckle whipped his saber low, slashing the tip across the top of Goethe’s right boot, splitting the polished leather open like a mummy’s mouth.
Blood welled up and out of the jagged crevice of the cut; Goethe howled, more with rage than hurt, and tried to fling Buckle back, but Buckle was too close. Buckle hooked his leg behind Goethe’s left knee and flipped him backward.
“Charlatan!” Goethe shouted as he toppled back, taking a wild swing with his rapier as he fell. Buckle ran his sword into the space between Goethe’s hand and his sword guard and ripped the handle away, sending the rapier bouncing across the floor. Two of Goethe’s fingers went with it.
The rapier rolled to a stop with a clatter, the two severed fingers, still inside the white fingers of Goethe’s glove, quivering on the floor. Goethe lay still—the entire room had fallen utterly still—propped up on his elbow, grasping his wounded hand, glaring at Buckle as blood poured down his white gloves. A pink puddle oozed out from beneath his right boot, his blood mixing into a thick paste with the copious stone powder. Goethe’s eyes showed little pain. They were calm, superior, reptilian.
“Where is my sister, you blackguard?” Buckle snarled, holding the bloodstained tip of his saber in front of Goethe’s eyes. With every fiber of his being, he wanted to throttle the vile Goethe, to feel the cartilage of his windpipe convulsing in the vise of his bare hands.
“Duke!” the steampiper officer shouted, his nineteen men surging with him as he hurried forward.
“Hold!” Goethe bellowed. The steampipers halted. He looked at Buckle again. “Why, Captain, I only know the rumors. It nearly worked, would you not say?”
“Tell me,” Buckle said. “Or die.” For all the world, Buckle wanted to kill Goethe, but he also knew that he would not. Goethe knew it as well.
“Please, Captain” Goethe smiled. “We both know you will not.”
“The duel is over!” Smelt yelled, striding out onto the floor, Albard close at his side.
Buckle lowered his sword, surprised at how heavily he was breathing, and took a step back.
“The decision goes to Captain Buckle of the Crankshafts,” Smelt announced. “The navigator Sabrina Serafim retains her freedom.” Smelt turned to Goethe. “Ambassador, you are not welcome here. Pack up your steampipers and your ultimatums and go.”
“My condolences, Chancellor,” Goethe said as Wallach and the steampiper officer rushed forward and raised him, dripping blood from hand and boot, to his feet. “You have made a choice that you shall soon deeply regret.”
“Go,” Bismarck said.
With Wallach and the steampiper officer each supporting an arm, Goethe hobbled toward the door, leaving behind a trail of bloody boot prints. He gave Sabrina a smile as he passed her; she met his gaze, glowering. “Beware, Captain,” Goethe shouted over his shoulder as he limped away, “Sabrina Fawkes is a disgraceful scrap. She shall betray anyone unfortunate enough to place his trust in her. You have been warned.”
AIRSHIP ON FIRE
SABRINA HAD SAT BESIDE BUCKLE on the ride back up the cliff road, very close at his shoulder. She had not said anything during the rocking, rattling carriage ride. He had just tried to ignore the sting in his arm, ignore the revelation of her true name, and he found himself enjoying her closeness. They had earned a break. The bloodied Leopold Goethe and his steampipers were on their way home, the armored locomotives chugging in reverse back down the mountain in heaves of steam and smoke.
Smelt, Rainer, and Washington talked urgently about war strategy and diplomatic maneuvers for the entire ride, limiting the opportunity for anyone else to speak. At one point, Sabrina had gripped Buckle’s gloved hand in hers, tightly, though she did not turn her head to look at him.
Buckle had liked the squeeze of Sabrina’s hand on his, her expression of thanks, and a silent request that, despite Goethe’s terrible words, Buckle never lose faith in her, however damningly dark and murky her family past—the family of the Fawkes bloodline, apparently—might appear to be.
Buckle also noticed, though not directly, Valkyrie reading his interaction with his navigator, her blue eyes moving from their laced hands to their faces.
Upon the arrival of the motor carriage and its heavy escort at the old town hall, the doors swung open and the group was ushered by the cavalrymen into a broad corridor that bore the pleasant musk of old wood and lamp oil. They quickly arrived at a grand entranceway, a marble-floored, pillared hall facing two towering timber doors—now bolted shut and guarded by four soldiers gripping blackbang muskets and eyeing the new arrivals nervously. A sweeping twin staircase ran up to a grand balcony with a balustrade of carved wooden horses; a story above it, its folds highlighted by soft sunlight streaming down through coal-hazed skylights, hung a white-and-black Imperial flag on a spike-headed staff, flanked by eight regimental banners. The flag was severely torn and bloodied—surely there was a legendary story behind that swath of battered linen.
Bismarck collected a friendship scroll and a folded Imperial banner for presentation to Vladik Ryzhakov, the leader of the Spartak clan.
Then the world fell off its axis again.
“Chancellor!” a household cavalryman shouted from the balcony of the town-hall staircase. “An airship approaches from the west! It is on fire!”
“Quickly! To the signals post! This way!” Smelt shouted, already racing up the stairs with Valkyrie, Bismarck, Albard, and Rainer on his heels.
Buckle followed at a run, with Sabrina and Washington alongside.
Reaching the top of the stairs, Smelt turned down a long hallway with blue carpets and long l
ines of stuffed elk heads, all adding a molting stuffiness to the fire-warmed air, dull with the odors of old hide and taxidermy glue. A bell rang outside with a deep, bounding peal.
They emerged onto a snow-drifted balcony where an Imperial signals officer stood in a dark-blue uniform, binoculars pressed to his eyes as he peered high to the west. Shouts echoed back and forth below, yelled from the pale-gray walls, towers, and metal-shingled rooftops. The city was planned, a neatly designed work of geometry with its unswerving ring roads and boulevards, but its sprawl stopped abruptly at its eastern wall, which topped the cliff face, the white-purple mountains barely visible in the haze far beyond.
Buckle hurried with the others to the rail and peered up through the cold, crisp afternoon air. A brisk breeze was running from the north, and it jangled the rope clasp of a hollow iron flagpole as the Imperial standard flapped above.
The signals officer threw out his arm, pointing. “There she is, high to the west, Chancellor. About a mile out, heading straight for us.”
“I see her, Lieutenant Jannick,” Smelt replied as Valkyrie handed him her binoculars.
Buckle spotted the black dot of the airship against the overcast—its long trail of dark-gray smoke made it easy to find—then drew his telescope and caught it in his glass. It was a small airship—the single set of glassy glitters suggesting a single gondola—and the red and yellow gleams along her flanks spoke of a serious fire.
“The scout airship Troy is escorting the damaged arrival, three hundred feet above her, Chancellor,” Lieutenant Jannick said. “The zeppelin on patrol, the Pneumatic Tirpitz, is en route from the south.”
“City defenses are on alert, Chancellor,” Albard said.
“Very good,” Smelt replied, concentrating on the sky.
Buckle lowered his telescope. With a fire like that aboard, Buckle doubted that the airship would make it to New Berlin. But the crew was not initiating a crash dive, making no attempt at an emergency landing to save their own skins—they were coming on straight and fast, their propellers whirling at high speed despite the dangers of funneling oxygen into loose hydrogen inside the burning envelope.
“Why do they not get to ground?” Sabrina asked. “If they do not get to ground quickly, they are finished.”
“I don’t know,” Buckle replied. A weird shiver visited his stomach. Whatever message the desperate crew was bringing, it could only speak of catastrophe.
Sabrina sucked in a little breath of air. “It is Spartak. It is a Spartak airship.”
“Yes, you are right,” Jannick replied. “I see the double eagle on the port flank.”
“The Russians?” Washington muttered incredulously. “Coming to us?”
Buckle raised his telescope to his eye again. The approaching airship, a corvette of perhaps three hundred feet, was showing the Spartak double-headed eagle emblem on her port-side envelope.
Of course it was the Russians, Buckle thought grimly. Spartak was the biggest bear in the room, from the Founders’ perspective. Yes, the Tinskin fleet was probably bigger, but the Founders surely sensed that they could manipulate them. Spartak, on the other hand, was a notoriously difficult outfit to parley with. With their invasion already under way in Brineboiler territory and their resources irreversibly mobilized, it made sense to strike Spartak now, before they were ready, before the Founders lost the last advantages of surprise.
It was bad that Buckle could see the airship’s flank. If she was coming on at full speed, trying to make New Berlin before the fire consumed her, then a broaching to, a sudden swing of the nose, was a disaster. She was either too damaged to control, or the bridge crew was dead. Buckle lowered his telescope, not wanting to see what was about to happen up close. The battle for survival aboard the Russian airship was already lost.
The airship exploded, the bulk of her stern vanishing in a brutal, brilliant flash.
Jannick gasped.
The burning fragments of the airship fell slowly for an instant, until her last gasbags blew up inside the bow—and then she fell in a plummet of fireworks. Great pieces of burning envelope skin and gondola tore away; a gush of water sparkled briefly as the blue ballast reservoirs split open under the collapsing superstructure.
Buckle and the others stood in silence as the Russian airship fell to earth. Such was the end for so many zeppelineers. Buckle did not fear it, but it was difficult to watch. It was just difficult to watch. The fiery wreck dropped behind a mountain ridge and disappeared from view.
Why had the captain of the Russian sky vessel believed that his mission to New Berlin was so urgent that he would gamble that his flame-engulfed zeppelin might last long enough to reach the harbor?
“This does not bode well,” Smelt said slowly. “We must contact Spartak with absolute haste. We must find out what is going on.”
“Agreed!” Washington blustered.
“I fear the Founders already may have pounced, Chancellor,” Buckle said.
“Messenger pigeon!” Sabrina shouted, her eye still pressed to her telescope. “Messenger pigeon coming in!”
Buckle swung his glass back to the sky. It was not necessary—the flapping V shape of the pigeon was already close at hand, not three hundred yards off, approaching from the direction of the now-destroyed airship. The bird had a red-and-black Spartak flash on its belly and the red ribbon of a loaded scroll case rippling at its leg, a last message scribbled from the hand of a Russian zeppelineer now dead.
MESSAGE FROM A DEAD MAN
“THE BIRD IS IN,” BUCKLE said, watching the distant parapet as a pair of handlers under a homing target immediately scooped up the bird. The handlers’ signal lamp was already burning, the edges of its case spilling a phosphorous glow; they started sending signals almost immediately.
“Founders invasion,” Albard said slowly as he read the coded flashes of light, standing on the signals platform with his binoculars. “Rostov overrun.”
Rostov overrun, Buckle repeated in his head. Rostov was the Spartak clan’s southernmost stronghold, a port, and a big, well-fortified one. If the Founders had actually taken it, then this was no skirmish.
“Grand Boyar Ryzhakov requesting immediate Imperial assistance,” Albard continued. He lowered his binoculars, looking to Jannick. “Acknowledge, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, Captain,” Jannick answered nervously, flipping the operating handle of his signal lamp, the casing issuing a hot stink as the shutters snapped up and down.
“There you have it,” Bismarck muttered. “The war has begun.”
War. The word shuddered down Buckle’s spine. The inevitable had happened. He felt a surge of apprehension, followed by nervous exhilaration. He looked at Sabrina, whose face was soft but profoundly solemn as she looked back at him. Buckle smiled at Sabrina; he wanted it to be a reassuring smile, but he feared it might be rather grim.
“But, Spartak appealing to us?” Albard questioned. “We have been in a skirmish war with them for more than a decade.”
“By invading Spartak, the Founders have driven the Russians to you,” Buckle said.
“Yes,” Smelt replied. “But our fleet is not yet ready for war.”
“We can send a vanguard, a token of our support,” Valkyrie offered. “The Pneumatic Tirpitz is on its way and will be here within the half hour. We can send her.”
“And the Lucerne is bunkering,” Colonel Rainer said. “On an accelerated schedule, she can be up in an hour.”
“I cannot send two of our war zeppelins off and leave New Berlin exposed,” Smelt said. “We could well be in for a Founders visit ourselves.”
“Especially since we sent Leopold Goethe home with his toes and fingers in a bag,” Bismarck added, winking at Buckle.
“We can recall the Beowulf, but she is patrolling the northern approaches,” Rainer said. “She is more than two days away at best speed.”
“Send for her immediate recall,” Smelt ordered.
“The Pneumatic Zeppelin is rigged and ready,” Buckle said. �
��We can be away immediately.”
Smelt gave Buckle a hard look. “Spartak has requested Imperial support, Captain Buckle. The Crankshafts are not compelled to act.”
“I believe we are, Chancellor,” Buckle replied.
“Do you speak for the Crankshaft clan, Captain Buckle?” Smelt asked, turning his eyes from Buckle to Washington.
Washington stepped forward. “Captain Buckle does not, but I do. The captain has the right instinct. We are with the Imperial clan, and where you must fight, so must we. Our combined presence shall also surely impress the boyars of Spartak, and secure their willing participation in the Grand Alliance.”
Smelt made no effort to hide his relief. “Very well. It seems, as it always does in diplomacy, that external events are making many of our decisions for us.”
“May I play the devil’s advocate a moment, Chancellor?” Rainer said. “We must also consider that possibility that this is a trap. If Spartak has gone over to the Founders, sir, then this frantic call for assistance is a perfect trap.”
“No, Colonel,” Smelt replied. “I know Vladik Ryzhakov. Well, I knew him a long time ago. That old bear would never submit willingly to the Founders, not to mention sacrifice one of his aircrews in a sham.”
Valkyrie stepped forward. “We must go.”
“Father, give me the Cartouche,” Bismarck said. “With her I can get to Muscovy well ahead of the warships. It is imperative that Spartak knows we are with her as quickly as possible.”
“Very well,” Smelt said. “Tell Captain Snyder to assemble the Cartouche’s crew and make his way with all best speed to Muscovy. I shall send the Pneumatic Tirpitz after you, once she arrives here. But I cannot spare more, for I fear New Berlin may soon be under attack from the Founders as well.”
Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War Page 29