by S. D. Stuart
The Woodsman proceeded forward. He was unsteady on his feet at first, but then he picked up a rhythm and headed straight for the small trio.
Jasper gripped Dorothy’s arm. “What do we do?”
Dorothy stood frozen as she stared at the Woodsman bearing down on them. Her eyes were transfixed on the spinning chainsaw blades that got closer with each massive step the Woodsman took.
Jasper frantically shook her arm with both hands. “Marshal?!”
She snapped out of her frozen state and said the first word that came to mind.
“Run!”
They ran in different directions, which was exactly what she wanted them to do.
As she predicted, the Woodsman shifted direction to follow her and ignored both Jasper and Caleb. She ran as fast as she could and soon felt the ground tremble beneath her feet with each heavy footfall as the Woodsman gained on her.
She desperately wanted to twist her head to see what was going on behind her, but knew if she did, it would slow her down and throw her off balance.
The crowd’s collective voice suddenly rose in excitement and she ducked just as a chainsaw cut through the air in the space where her head had been half a breath before.
She was beginning to doubt Nero ever planned to help her.
Jasper had only run a few dozen steps when he realized the Woodsman was going after the Marshal. He slowed to a stop and watched her run as fast as she could, but the Woodsman still got closer with each step.
When she ducked just before the Woodsman cut off her head, he knew he had to do something to help her.
There was no way a 12-year-old boy could stand up against a death machine more than twice his size. However, he couldn’t sit idly by and watch it cut apart the new Marshal either. He had to figure out away to even the odds somehow.
He looked around for any type of weapon he could use. Nero had not provided any weapons for them. It was obvious this was a one-way slaughter fest.
His eyes fell on the pile of scarecrow parts in the Marshal’s cage. The Woodsman before had already torn Scarecrow apart easily, so there was no way he would be any good in a fair fight. However, Scarecrow was faster and more nimble than the Woodsman was. If he could convince it to pick up the Marshal and keep her away from the deadly spinning blades, they might last long enough to get a reprieve and have more time to devise an escape. He knew from attending past games that the spectators became restless when contestants stayed away from each other for more than ten minutes.
That was the problem with modern audiences, he thought. They always wanted to get right to the chase. If Jasper could bore the audience, Nero would have no other choice but to do something else. It was a long shot, but anything was better than what was happening now.
He ran back to the cage and began rearranging Scarecrow in a more recognizable form. He finished laying out the various parts when he realized he was missing the most important piece, the head.
He glanced around him and saw it lying several feet outside the cage. He leaped up and ran out to get it when the lion-man scooped it up and kept running.
Jasper called after him. “Hey! I need that.”
The lion-man hollered over his shoulder. “Sorry kid, I need it more than you do.”
Exhaustion was settling into every one of her muscles. She gulped for air and could feel her body winning out over her mind. I’m sorry father, she thought. I tried my best.
The crowd swelled with excitement and she ducked again, but this time no spinning chainsaw blade cut through the air above her head. She risked a peek over her shoulder and saw Caleb running straight for them. He gripped Scarecrow’s head in his hands and quickly gained on the Woodsman.
He was shouting something to her but she could not make it out over the roar of the crowd.
It looked like he was yelling for her to stop.
He yelled again and this time she could make out that he was yelling the word stop.
She skidded to a halt and dove to one side as the Woodsman slid past her. It was bigger and heavier and couldn’t stop or turn as quickly.
She rolled back onto her feet just as Caleb flew past her and leapt into the air straight at the Woodsman.
Being part lion, Caleb was able to fly through the air at over twice his own height. As he sailed in an arc straight for the Woodsman, he lifted Scarecrow’s head above his own and brought it down hard onto a box mounted to the back of the Woodsman.
The box exploded in a shower of sparks and the Woodsman froze. Caleb landed hard on the ground and rolled back to his feet in a crouch, ready for anything.
The Woodsman turned and faced Caleb as the chainsaws ground to a halt. The crowd slowly grew as silent as the Woodsman.
The speaker on the Woodsman crackled to life as the Woodsman’s modulated voice echoed throughout the coliseum. “You are accused of attempted destruction of government property. How do you plead?”
Dorothy called out. “I pardon his crime.”
The Woodsman faced her. “Let me do my job.”
“Your job is to do whatever I want.”
The Woodsman stared at her with a single, unblinking eye. “What do you want?”
Jasper was at her side. “Tell him you want to get out of here.”
Caleb was looking all around him at the coliseum. “The walls are made of stone and the floor is several feet thick before the cavern below.”
Jasper pointed to the cages still raised up in the middle of the arena. “What about the cages?”
Caleb shook his head. “The controls are underground; we have no way of lowering them.”
Dorothy studied the cages and then looked back to the Woodsman as an idea formed in her head. “We don’t need to lower them. Everybody follow me.”
As they ran back to the cage, she took Scarecrow’s head from Caleb and handed it to Jasper. “As soon as were inside, rebuild Scarecrow.”
The spectators became restless and people started booing and hissing because the entertainment had stopped entertaining them.
Nero’s voice broke through the rumbling of the crowd over a loudspeaker. “And just where do you think you are going?”
As soon as they were all back inside the cage, Dorothy swung the door closed and looked up at Nero in his observation box. She yelled to be heard over the quieting crowd. “We are done playing your game. I suggest you lower us back down and let us go.”
Behind Nero’s easy smile, she could see the rage building up inside him. Nevertheless, he did not let that breakthrough to the surface as he spoke. “I’m afraid that wouldn’t be fair to my customers. They paid to watch you die.”
She smiled back and addressed the crowd as much as she addressed him. “Then I guess you owe them a refund.” She pointed to the floor. “Cut right there Woodsman.”
The Woodsman spun up his chainsaws and cut half of the floor away. The wood planks dropped 20 feet down to the cavern below.
Dorothy swung down through the hole and grabbed one of the chains that made up the pulley system that raised and lowered the cage. She slid halfway down the chain when she looked back up at her ragtag group who all gawked at her through the hole. “Don’t just stand there, let’s go.”
One by one everyone jumped down and grabbed the chain. Just as Dorothy hit the floor and moved away from the chain to let the rest slide down after her, the ground shook under her feet. She looked over as the Woodsman teetered a little to one side but then regained his footing. “You jumped?”
The Woodsman stared at her with that unblinking eye and raised his twin chainsaws. “I have no hands.”
Scarecrow was the last to slide down. He was unsteady as he hit the ground and collapsed to all fours. She was instantly at his side and helped him back up. He was much heavier than she expected and Caleb rushed over to help.
As they steadied Scarecrow on his feet, Caleb pointed into the darkness off to one side. “I know a way out of here and into the city.”
Chapter 14
Amanda
pressed the spyglass to her eye and focused on the small group as they made their way through the back alleys of the city.
She struggled to keep them in view and lost sight of them several times as the gondola rocked back and forth from being pushed around by the heavy air currents above Roma. She slammed her hand on the wood paneling that bordered the windows on the bridge of her airship. “Keep the ship steady.”
The helmsman cringed at her outburst. “Yes ma’am.”
She refocused the spyglass and watched as, yet again, Nero’s men almost stumbled upon the small group before turning the wrong way and completely missing them.
She was glad that this ongoing comedy of errors kept the small band of misfits from being captured.
Nero had his chance to turn over the East Marshal. Not only had he failed to do that, but he let her escape. It would have been comical if it were not for the fact that she had escaped with the one thing her mother needed to become queen over all of OZ.
Well, maybe not all of OZ.
The Southern Marshal had built a wall that cut off her territory from the rest of the continent.
Her mother would still be queen over the parts of OZ that really mattered. Once she was queen, she could knock down that wall and conquer the Southern Territories if she so desired.
For now, the Southern Territories did not matter.
The small group turned west down an alley and started moving away from her. Without taking her eye off the spyglass she barked commands at her helmsman.
“Turn thirty degrees to the port and increase speed to slow ahead.”
“Aye, aye captain,” the helmsman responded and spun the ship’s wheel. He grabbed the handle on the bridge’s engine order telegraph and shifted the dial to the section marked “Slow Ahead”.
She felt the vibrations in the floor shift as the steam turbines in the engine room spun the external propellers faster.
Her airship was built using the latest scientific theories, both inside and outside of OZ, in aerodynamics and propulsion.
She commanded the fastest airship in all of OZ.
Nobody was getting away from her.
Caleb stepped out of the kitchen door to the back alley where Dorothy, Jasper and the two automatons waited.
“The innkeeper says we can stay for a few days and promises to keep mum that we’re here.”
Jasper plucked at his bottom lip. A nervous habit Dorothy had noticed he exhibited during the short time she knew him.
She felt just as nervous about being discovered. “How do you know he’ll keep his word?”
Caleb looked at her. “Because I paid him more then he asked for.”
“Does he have somewhere to keep the Woodsman?” She asked.
He shook his head. “No. But I know of an old barn just outside of town where we can hide him.”
“I don’t like splitting us up.”
“I know, but we don’t have any other choice.”
She looked deep into Caleb’s eyes. “How safe are we here?”
He gripped her shoulders and squeezed them lightly, trying to reassure her. “Very safe.”
Amanda watched the group break into the barn outside of town and leave behind the Woodsman. She followed their journey back to the inn through the spyglass. Ten minutes after they disappeared inside, her spy on the ground transmitted a message to her by heliograph, a small mirror that reflected sunlight for communicating over vast distances.
The group had retired to their room and ordered dinner. They obviously planned to stay there much longer than she was going to allow them. That also meant she had little bit of time before she had to collect them.
She refocused her attention on the dilapidated barn.
Woodsmen were plentiful in the Eastern Territories, but they just didn’t have very many of them in the West. If she returned with a newly refurbished Woodsman, along with the East Marshal star, her mother would be proud of her. So proud she might even give her some territory to rule over.
“Take the ship to ground. Inform the men we are going to be loading on some cargo.”
The helmsmen snapped to attention. “Yes ma’am.”
As Dorothy scooped boiled vegetables on to her plate, she noticed Scarecrow studying himself in a wall-mounted mirror. He traced the shallow dents on the side of his head with a finger before he turned to look at her. “What happened to my face?”
Dorothy laughed. “It was very heroic. You single-handedly destroyed the wireless radio controlling the Woodsman. “
Jasper spoke through mouthfuls of bread and gravy. “More like single-headedly.”
If an automaton could look confused, Dorothy thought, Scarecrow sure looked it now. She suddenly remembered he was lying in pieces during the entire battle in the coliseum.
“While you were shut down, the Woodsman was trying to kill us.”
Scarecrow stiffened as if in shock.
Dorothy could tell she wasn’t explaining it very well. “Nero had a control device installed on the Woodsman’s back. He was completely under Nero’s control until Caleb used your head to smash it. Once destroyed, the Woodsman was able to follow my orders again.”
Scarecrow turned to Caleb. “Couldn’t you find something else to hit it with?”
Caleb tore a piece of meat from the roasted chicken with his fingers and popped it into his mouth with a smile. “It was the hardest thing I could find.”
Jasper was laughing gravy out of his mouth. “Yeah well …”
There was a thump from the ceiling above them as if something very heavy just dropped onto the roof.
Everyone went silent and looked up.
Captain Stiles, the squad leader for Amanda’s soldiers, watched as the last of his men slid down the rope that dangled from the airship and landed on the roof of the inn. He did not look at Amanda as he spoke. “I urge you to reconsider waiting until reinforcements arrive.”
Amanda stood stock-still and gave him a hard stare back. “If we move now, we can take them by surprise. I will not make the same mistakes Nero made and let them get away.”
Captain Stiles stood his ground. How could he expect a politician’s spoiled little child to understand matters of war? “I wouldn’t be saying this if we hadn’t already lost five men trying to secure the Woodsman.”
Amanda narrowed her eyes. “Are you questioning my judgment, Captain?”
He lowered his head. Whether or not she understood anything at all about strategy or tactics, she could still toss him and his family into the deepest dungeon for disobeying orders. “No ma’am.”
“Good. Then proceed as planned.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Let me know as soon as you have them and I will bring the airship back down.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Captain Stiles grabbed the rope and disappeared out the gondola door. As he slid down the rope, he wondered which god he had angered that put him under the command of such an inept child.
His boots landed on the roof and, as soon as he let go of the rope, the airship pulled away from the inn.
He retrieved his .44 caliber repeating Winchester carbine from the sling around his back and looked at his men. He shook his head and wondered if he should have stood up to the West Marshal’s daughter sooner.
Having only four men left, including himself, it was going to be much more difficult to capture the fugitives. Especially, since one of the fugitives was an automaton.
Fortunately, his men were armed and, according to all intelligence reports, the fugitives were not. As long as he could get the fugitives together in a small group, he could keep them under control.
This might not be too bad, he thought. The element of surprise was always one of the better weapons he had at his disposal.
He pointed to the south end of the roof line. “Charlie, Edward. You secure the back entrance.”
They both nodded their heads and rushed across the roof.
He looked at the youngest soldier he had ever commande
d in OZ. The boy could not have been more than 16 years old. He usually did not recruit young boys from the general populace for security detail, but the West Marshal had been gearing up for an invasion of the Northern Territory’s as part of her campaign to control all of OZ and she had taken all the older and stronger men for her vast army. Once they had control over the Eastern Territories, he would rebuild the Royal Security Forces with more able-bodied men, and not the children that he was forced to deal with now.
He nodded to the young kid who gripped his Winchester carbine more like a club than a rifle. He made a mental note to petition the West Marshal for better training of her soldiers.
“Cole, you’re with me.”
He thought he heard Cole’s voice crack a little when he replied with a, “Yes sir!”
They ran along the roof to the north end of the inn and stopped. He looked over just in time to see the fugitives jump from the balcony of their room to the roof of an adjacent building. The girl was the last jump across and when she hit the roof, she turned around and looked up at him. There did not appear to be any fear her in her eyes, just a determination to get away. She spun back around and ran along the roof, following the rest of her party.
So much for the element of surprise.
He glanced back and yelled to get the attention of his men standing at the far end of the roof.
He pointed down as he yelled, “They jumped over to another building.” The two men instantly began running back.
He spun back around and pointed to the roof below them. “Follow them.”
Cole backed away from the edge of the roof, shaking his head. “No way. It’s too far.”
The fear he had hoped to see in the eyes of his quarry was instead deep set in the eyes of his soldier. He grabbed Cole’s collar with both hands and nearly lifted him off his feet. “Either you jump or I throw you across.”
The boy was practically in tears. “Okay, I’ll jump.”
He let go of him. “Just do what I do.”