by Dave Butler
The ghouls staggered back from the noise and the light. Darkness fell again immediately.
“Now!” Gnat cried.
Charlie heard the gate swing open, and then with one big hand the troll scooped him forward, throwing him among the ghouls.
He really hoped this turned out to be a good idea.
A dozen hands tugged Charlie in all directions.
He’d made a terrible mistake.
But the ghouls pulled and gibbered, and Charlie didn’t come apart. If he’d been a real boy—flesh-and-blood, like Ollie or Bob—the hands would have torn him to bits. Instead he just felt stretched…painfully.
But the ghouls could do more to Charlie than just pull on his arms and legs.
The snuffling and whimpering in the darkness around him turned to hooting and shrill whistles and whines. A mouth bit Charlie on the shoulder, hard.
That hurt even worse.
But Charlie’s skin didn’t break, and he heard a crunch as the ghoul lost a tooth.
“Hoot!” the ghoul lamented, and tried to bite him again.
“Charlie, you all right?” Grim Grumblesson bellowed.
Ghouls pulling on one of Charlie’s arms let go and gibbered in frustration. Charlie swung his free hand around and cracked one of the rocks against the skull of the ghoul that was gnawing on him. That was the sharp rock; he hoped it hurt the nasty creature.
“Hoooooot! Whoop-whoop-wheeeee!”
The ghoul slapped Charlie against the side of his face and let go.
“Never better!” He hadn’t really been sure it would work. This was the plan, of course. He had to let the ghouls nibble on him, at least for a while. They had to learn that he was inedible—which he hoped he was. Then, with a little bit of luck, they’d leave him and all his friends alone. That was why they all had to smell the same.
Hands still pulled at him. Charlie was tempted to swing the rock some more, but he didn’t want to scare the ghouls off too soon. He wanted them to try to take more bites of him.
“Come on, you lot!” he shouted. Maybe they understood English and maybe they didn’t, but he could at least get their attention with noise. “Try harder!”
They bit him again. Ghouls chewed on his arms and legs, sucked at his fingers, nibbled his ears. Charlie’s skin didn’t break, but he felt his clothing being shredded, and all the gnawing did hurt.
“Hoot, hoooot!” the ghouls wailed. “Whoop-whoop-whoop-wheeeee!”
“Charlie?” Gnat yelled. Charlie could barely hear the pixie’s voice over the gibbering noises of the ghoul mob. “I can’t see you anymore for the pile of beasties. Are you still there?”
“Yes!” Charlie yelled as loud as he could.
The gnawing had gone on long enough. Charlie jerked one arm free, and then he started swinging.
At first he clobbered the ghouls that were still trying to bite him. They howled louder and hissed at him, but he could feel the rocks in his fists colliding with skulls and chests and shoulders, and the ghouls pulled away from him a bit.
He went after them.
Charlie couldn’t see, so he spun around like a top, smacking anything he could hit with the stones in his hands. He stumbled over the tracks but didn’t fall. He was out of control, and more than once he hit the brick walls and hurt his own fingers, but he kept going.
“Hooot! Hoo-ooo-ooooot!”
Charlie felt his blows land hard on leathery bodies. He heard feet padding and scratching away in the darkness. He kept spinning.
“They’re on the run, Charlie!” Natalie de Minimis shouted.
Charlie let himself stop. He fell to the ground from sheer impetus, but he didn’t feel sick from the spinning.
Of course not, he thought bitterly. He was a machine, not a real boy.
But a real boy would have been eaten by the ghouls.
He heard the crunch of footsteps around him as his friends caught up.
“Link up hands, everyone,” Grim ordered. “Gnat, lead the way.”
Charlie stood and tossed aside the rocks. He held Bob’s hand in front of him and Grim’s fingers behind, and Gnat led them deeper into the darkness at a trot.
“I ’ope you’re right about the smell.” Bob sounded nervous, but she didn’t stumble.
“Course he’s right,” Ollie grunted. “They broke their teeth on Charlie and then he beat them silly. We all smell the same as Charlie. That’s got to make them think twice.”
“They’ll have to think more than twice,” Grim rumbled.
“We all smell like ’ulders,” Bob said. “We’re ’oping they don’t think too much about it an’ realize Charlie ain’t an ’ulder, so we might not be ’ulders either. We’re counting on ’em to be stupid.”
“Yeah,” Ollie agreed. “And if there’s one thing I’m always willing to bet on, it’s stupid. Stupid grows on trees. Stupid is more common than air, mate.”
“Touché.” Bob surrendered.
“I ain’t French.”
They walked through darkness for a long time. Eventually Gnat led them away from the gravel bed of the train tunnel and up concrete steps. Occasionally she left them to scout ahead. Charlie couldn’t see the pixie, but the whir of her wings made him feel happy; it told him that her pulled back muscles must be healing well. Charlie squeezed the hands of his friends and listened for the snuffling and hooting that would mark the return of the ghouls.
But the ghouls didn’t come back.
More tunnels and more darkness, and then Gnat led them through a crumbled wall into a dank, stinking passage lined with brick. Charlie’s feet splashed in shallow water.
“The ’eck! Really, Gnat? The sewers are the only way out of this ’ole?”
“Shh!” Gnat answered Bob. “Look ahead.”
There was a light.
And Charlie heard voices.
They crept forward, taking careful steps and straining to hear. The light shone down through a grate overhead.
“And the simulacrum?” The voice belonged to the kobold, Heinrich Zahnkrieger. He sounded hard and cruel, not very much like the fussy engineer Henry Clockswain. “Her Ersatz Majesty? Have you determined how you will substitute it for the queen?”
“That was the easiest part.” The Sinister Man. “The queen’s carriage has been waiting for her all night in the station. It was child’s play to put the simulacrum in the carriage ahead of time.”
“Especially when a policeman or two is willing to look the other way.” The captain.
Charlie and his friends huddled under the grate. Charlie looked up through the fist-sized, irregular gaps between the bars and tried to listen to what his enemies were saying.
“You couldn’t find us a way out without these people standing over it?” Ollie whispered.
“Don’t you think we should hear what they’re saying?” Gnat shot back. “Besides, all our weapons are up there.”
“And for me?” Zahnkrieger asked.
“There is room in the carriage to hide you,” the Frenchman answered. “You go with the queen.”
“And you go with Pondicherry.”
“The explosives are already in place on the Eye,” the captain said. “They’ll see the explosion in Greenwich. Pondicherry will be found dead on the wheel, and when the police search his shop, we’ll find the manifesto for the Anti-Human League.”
Zahnkrieger chuckled low. “And in the chaos after the explosion I will dispose of Victoria. The queen is dead.”
“Long live the queen,” the Sinister Man added. The Iron Cog’s men laughed together.
“Time to go,” Zahnkrieger said. Charlie imagined himself punching the kobold in the face. “I will see you at the garden party.”
“So much to do when you have a war to start,” said the Sinister Man.
Footsteps, and the slamming of a door.
Charlie wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard chittering noises in the tunnel.
Gnat poked her head up into one of the gaps in the grate. “All clear.”
With
one heave Grim dislodged the grate. He tossed Charlie up first, and then Bob and Ollie. Charlie stood blinking in the light, examining himself and his new surroundings while the troll struggled to squeeze himself through the hole.
Charlie looked like a scarecrow, torn and filthy.
They found themselves in the Iron Cog’s workroom, where he had seen his bap and the simulacrum. In the steady yellow gaslight coming from the wall sconces, Charlie saw shelves and parts and tools and several big metal doors, all of which were shut. There was a big worktable and several four-legged stools. In a pile on the table lay his knife, all his friends’ weapons, and the boxes of inventions the Iron Cog had stolen from Charlie’s father. Charlie recognized the Articulated Gyroscopes and the Close-Reading Spectacles.
Patent pending, Charlie thought, and his shoulders slumped.
“Gaaaaarrrh!” Grim Grumblesson grunted. Bricks snapped out of their mortar around the edges of the hole, and he squeezed up in a fountain of dust and mortar crumbs. The chimney sweeps were already arming themselves with their sword and umbrella, and the pixie was closely examining a long steel rod with a sharp tip.
“Let’s get out of here.” Charlie knew what he had to do. “And then you should all go home.”
Bob stared at him. “The ’eck.”
“Yeah,” Ollie agreed. “The heck, Charlie.”
Grim frowned and Gnat flexed her steel rod.
“This isn’t your fight anymore,” Charlie went on. “Look, your devices are here on the table. You should take them and go. You don’t need to risk getting killed.”
“You reckon that’s the only reason we’re ’ere?” Bob asked. “For things?”
“Well…” Charlie hesitated.
“Your father’s a client,” Grim said. His head hung low and jutted out as he spoke. “I don’t abandon clients.”
“It’s true: at first I just wanted the gyroscopes,” said Bob. “Well, an’ also you made me curious, because I guessed you might be, well, you know.”
“Yeah,” Ollie added. “And also I wanted to stick it to the kobold.”
“I reckon we all want to stick it to the kobold now,” Bob said, and she laughed. “An’ we’re mates, Charlie. We ain’t gonna leave you.”
“Not when there are mighty beasts to be slain.” Gnat swooped in a circle and pantomimed stabbing a foe with her new spear.
“Besides,” Grim added, “Her Majesty is in danger.”
Charlie felt like crying again. He managed to keep it inside and just nod.
“Gentlemen—” Grim rumbled.
“Check your weapons,” Ollie finished for him. Grim nodded and began to load his gun.
“I think I heard rats in the tunnels,” Charlie said.
“Good thing we’re out of the tunnels, then.” Ollie shook himself like a cat shaking off water. He sighted along his umbrella at their exit from the sewers.
A big door at the far end of the room opened, and Egil One-Arm walked in.
The troll gangster was still missing his mechanical arm. He spotted Charlie and his friends and stopped; his face broke into a snarl.
“You!” Egil roared.
“Back for more?” Grim bellowed, snapping the cylinder of his Eldjotun into place with a resounding click.
“Tear you apart this time, you meddling cur!”
Grim Grumblesson laughed. “Not with one arm, you won’t. Sleipnir’s saddle, not without a weapon!” He raised the Eldjotun. “Not by yourself.”
“Not by myself,” One-Arm agreed, and he stepped farther into the room.
Behind him followed more thugs. One hulder, then a second and a third. And behind them came men with cutlasses.
“Run!” Gnat snapped, spinning on Charlie and the sweeps. “We’ll hold them here.”
“Ha!” Grim barked. “Got enough bullets for all of you.”
“But…,” Charlie objected.
Ollie tugged on his arm. “Come on, you idiot, we’ve got to get your dad.”
“ ’Ave you, then?” one of the cutlass-bearing men said to Grim, and he drew his sword.
“An’ the queen,” Bob added. The two of them started dragging Charlie toward the exit.
“But…” Charlie didn’t want to abandon the troll. “We can’t leave Grim alone!”
One of Egil’s trolls reached under his greatcoat and pulled out a stubby thing like a short rifle with a big open mouth. A scattergun.
“He’ll not be alone,” Gnat said. “Run!”
“Last warning.” Grim cocked his pistol. “Won’t miss.”
The other two trolls pulled back their coats. They were all carrying scatterguns.
“Got to thank you, Grumblesson,” Egil laughed roughly. “You convinced me my boys needed to get serious weapons.”
“Run!” Gnat pushed Charlie. Charlie and the sweeps staggered toward the door.
“You’re welcome,” Grim said calmly.
“Good-bye,” Egil grumbled.
Charlie grabbed for the door handle just as a horde of rats swarmed out of the sewer opening.
The wave of rats rolled toward Grim Grumblesson.
Charlie ducked, and the air of the room was torn to shreds by flying metal.
Grim took a hit from one of the scatterguns and staggered back. As the men with cutlasses began a ragged charge, he fired on them.
Ollie jerked the door open. He and Charlie started to scoot through it, but Bob hesitated.
Gnat swooped low at the leaders of the rat horde, slicing at pointy snouts and big ears. “What are you doing here, you devils?”
The only answer she got was shrieks.
The men fell back, and Grim grabbed the corner of the table.
“No!” Bob yelled. She spun on one heel, slapping at the stone of the floor as she tried to keep her balance and lurch back into the fray. She dropped her sword and didn’t stop for it.
Ollie grabbed at the tail of Bob’s peacoat and missed. Muttering, he picked up her sword and tucked it under his arm alongside his umbrella.
Grim flipped the table over onto its side with a heavy thud.
The Articulated Gyroscopes crashed to the floor, the Close-Reading Spectacles beside them. Charlie was amazed that neither of the instruments shattered, and proud of his bap. The rats snarled and snapped just inches from the devices, held back by the red-gold-and-green dragon that was Natalie de Minimis in combat. But for every rat that fell, two followed it.
“Bob!” Ollie shouted.
Grim spun around to kneel behind the table.
Bang!
Another scattergun blast hit the troll in the shoulder. He swayed, snarled, and fired back. His clothes hung on him in tatters.
BANG!
One of Egil’s trolls crashed to the floor.
Bob dropped to her belly and slid. Charlie scrambled after her on all fours. Somewhere in the dive he lost his grip on the knife, which disappeared into the chaos.
“Go!” Grim roared.
“Come on!” Ollie hollered.
Bob grabbed both devices, one in each hand.
One of Egil’s men bore down on her, sword raised over his head. Bob turned to scoot away, but she wasn’t moving fast enough—
Gnat swarmed in, and the swordsman batted the pixie aside with an elbow—
Grim pointed the Eldjotun and pulled the trigger—
click! The gun didn’t fire.
The policeman swung his cutlass, and Charlie tackled him.
He got his shoulder squarely into the man’s belly, and he felt the breath whoosh out of his target’s body. The sword clattered to the stone, and then the swordsman.
Bullets whizzed overhead.
“Come on!” Ollie shouted again.
Charlie picked up the fallen cutlass, grabbed Bob by the back of her belt, and pulled them both toward the door. He lurched, but it was a very fast lurch.
Bang!
A blow struck Charlie in the back and knocked him and Bob both through the door and to the ground. His whole body stun
g and he lay still.
“Charlie…Charlie, you all right?” Ollie shook him. “How do you feel?”
“ ’E got shot!” Bob snapped. “ ’Ow would you feel?”
“I’m fine.” Charlie sat up. He hurt, but he could move. He picked up the cutlass and peeked back into the firefight. Grim had reloaded and was raising his gigantic gun again. Natalie de Minimis flitted over the heads of their attackers, stabbing at their faces. A twisting carpet of rats spread in Grim Grumblesson’s direction.
“Run!” the pixie shouted one more time, and finally they did.
They pelted down a passage and through a room and down another hall, past pipes and grates and jets of steam.
“Where are we going?” Charlie asked.
“The station!” Bob rattled up a concrete staircase.
“What about Grim?”
“We ’ave…to think…about the queen!” Bob was short of breath. “An’…Franz-Joseph…an’ the others!”
“He’ll die! He and Gnat both!”
“Their…choice…Charlie,” Ollie reminded him in grunts. “No…other…way.”
The three of them burst through the maintenance door onto platform thirteen and ran right into a pack of trolls.
Ingrid stood at their front, a heavy club in one hand and a hard glare on her face. Now that she wasn’t standing behind a desk, Charlie saw that she had a cow’s tail, just like Grim’s, that lashed the floor behind her. So the Almanack wasn’t always wrong.
Following Ingrid were half a dozen hulders, male and female. They were all armed, and they all scowled.
“Oh no,” Charlie said.
But then Ingrid smiled at him.
“This is the hue and cry,” she said. “Where’s Grim?”
Charlie stepped out of the way and pointed down the stairs. “He needs your help!”
The trolls charged past him and down into the darkness.
“Thank you!” Ingrid called as she disappeared.
“Didn’t expect that.” Ollie scratched himself.
Platform thirteen was dotted with only a few Alton-line passengers. Their backs were turned, so they didn’t see Ollie holding his umbrella and Bob’s sword, or Charlie with his cutlass. Maybe they had even missed the hue and cry.
At the end of the platform stood policemen in blue hats and short capes. They wore cutlasses at their belts, and they were checking each passenger’s ticket before admitting him onto the main concourse.