The Hod King

by Josiah Bancroft

  The bedpost cracked against Edith’s engine. The ragged end broke loose and bounced against the top of her head.

  Taking advantage of Edith’s momentary confusion, Haste bull-rushed her, grabbed her by the shirtfront, and drove her into the wall, shattering a pair of picture frames.

  Edith felt like a house had fallen on her. The breath flew from her lungs, and a ringing filled her ears. If Haste hadn’t been pinning her to the wall, she would’ve collapsed into a heap.

  Edith searched for but could not find Haste’s eyes. The Gold Watch had turned her head to one side. Her profile held the expression of one engaged in an unlikable but unavoidable chore. It seemed a very bad sign. Haste’s grip on Edith’s throat made her head feel like an overfilled balloon.

  The strangest thing came to mind the moment Edith realized she would die. She remembered the smell of horses. She recalled the day she had ridden out early before anyone was awake. A heavy fog had settled overnight. It made the world seem at once small and infinite. She didn’t ask permission because she knew her father would not grant it. It was dangerous to ride through such a blinding mist. She might charge into a fence or a ditch or a hedgerow. The horse was unfamiliar, and she inexperienced. She couldn’t remember why she had done it, but the feeling of thundering through the fog with her heart in her throat and the path appearing ahead of her just in the nick of time had filled her with a consuming sense of joy.

  And she had not been afraid, not even when the limb of a branch jousted her from her mount. She broke her wrist in the fall. The fog thinned into a light rain, and she could see the path she had missed, the tree that had unseated her, and her father’s house in the distance. The sight filled her with dread because she knew she would have to go home, have to face him, have to endure the inevitable scolding, and all manner of restriction as she waited for her wrist to heal.

  And she realized then that she would rather run toward danger and uncertainty than to have an unobstructed view of the unforgiving truth.

  That thrilling fog she had once galloped through had begun to fill her cabin aboard the State of Art. It ate the furniture, crawled up the walls, and devoured the light of the lamps, until the only thing left in the world was a shaking fringe of red hair and a hand upon her windpipe.

  And suddenly Edith knew exactly why the Sphinx had given her such a heavy, ugly engine: because it was stronger than all the others he had ever made.

  Edith gripped the arm that pinned her chest and pulled with all her might.

  The rending metal howled. The gilt shell buckled. Rivets popped in quickening succession. She wrenched the golden limb from Haste’s shoulder, drawing out with it a tail of vital machinery, down to the bone and veins. The arm flew across the cabin, shattering a showcase of compasses and boatswain whistles. It clattered to the carpet, flailed a moment like a fish thrown upon the shore, and was still.

  Haste released Edith’s throat, and staggered backward, grasping at the absence of her arm. Oil, blood, and the Sphinx’s glowing serum gushed from the wound and flowed down her ribs.

  Haste struggled to catch her breath as the engine inside her chest faltered. She gaped at Edith with an expression of vulnerable horror, then swung her remaining arm with a childish grunt. The strike was wild and weak. Edith caught Haste’s hand, and tried to hold her by it, but Haste fell to her knees, the color draining quickly from her face.

  The machine in her chest groaned. Edith knelt down with her.

  “I thought that would’ve gone differently,” Georgine said, slumping forward.

  Edith caught her and held her up. “Well, it nearly did.”

  Haste panted but could not seem to draw a breath. “Ah, ah, we would’ve had a falling out sooner or later. Too much alike. Headstrong. Stubborn. We could never have been friends. Sisters, maybe.” She managed a drowsy smile. “I would’ve liked to have had a sister.”

  Edith felt Haste’s weight shift fully against her, and seeing the retreating light in Georgine’s eyes, quickly replied, “Me too.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The universe breathes in ragged breaths. The body dies. The fungus grows. The loam spreads. The tree roots. The forest burns. The cloud bursts. The flood drowns. The alluvium feeds the fields. In, out. In, out. There is no stasis, no stillness. The source of all misery lies in our insistence that tomorrow be like today. But if it were, if it ever were, it would spell the end of everything.

  —I Sip a Cup of Wind by Jumet

  From the safety of the corridor, Eigengrau watched through his periscope as the Red Hand lobotomized and murdered his men, one after another. The little devil laughed as he dispatched them with an acrobatic grace that belied his ungainly shape. He leapfrogged over the first private who charged him to step onto the shoulders of the next man, who panicked at this unexpected mounting. The Red Hand squatted down upon his head like a potter at the wheel and stabbed him in the eye with his bodkin. The man yelped horribly while the Red Hand stirred his needle around inside him. Then he leapt from the soldier’s back, and the man crashed senseless to the floor.

  Though the bridge was nearly filled with men with drawn swords, few of them were quick enough to make contact, much less really wound the Red Hand. The mad assassin sidestepped a lunging rapier, went belly to belly with his attacker, and goaded the recruit in the ear with his stylet. The brief, almost imperceptible strike had the immediate effect of ending the man’s life.

  One handsome petty officer, who had distinguished himself to the ladies of Pelphia as an able swordsman and an aggressive duelist, caught the Red Hand in the back with such a forceful thrust, half of his blade was left protruding from the lunatic’s chest. Rather than temper the Red Hand’s activity, the wound seemed only to spur him on. The handsome swordsman lost his grip on his hilt when the Red Hand turned to face him, and then lost his life when the assassin embraced him, piercing his heart with the point of his own sword.

  Once the remnant of the general’s squad saw the frog-bellied man leaping about with a sword through his chest, they began to lose their nerve. Their flagging courage was not at all helped by the Red Hand crying out, “Do not fear the darkness, friends, for it is full of stars!”

  Rather than press upon the fiend in any concerted way, Eigengrau’s men began to jockey with one another to get away from him. The Red Hand took advantage of their confusion with brutal rapidity: He pierced the throat of one man and the heads of two others at the temple. Forgetting the general’s orders, the men who had pistols drew them. But their attempts to shoot the bouncing, chortling target ended in either errant shots that clanged haplessly about the room or in the accidental execution of one of their brothers-in-arms.

  Eigengrau had seen enough battles to recognize a rout. The only thing that his lingering could possibly contribute to this fight was another body.

  He thought to regroup. He would gather the rest of his men, draw the Red Hand out into the passageway, and fill him with every ball and leaden slug they had between them.

  And if that didn’t work, he’d call on the crown prince to fire the Ararat’s cannons at the ship’s silks, and let gravity take her and the devil in its ungentle embrace.

  Byron hunkered inside the engine room with his fingers in his ears. The gun deck rang with the sound of gunfire, Ferdinand’s heavy steps, and horrid screams. The more fortunate soldiers were killed by ricochets and the wayward shots of their panicked peers. The unlucky ones fell under Ferdinand’s colossal feet as he charged up and down the deck, or they found themselves picked up and squeezed to a boneless jelly by his steam-shovel hands.

  Byron couldn’t bear to watch for long.

  He was ashamed of himself—ashamed of the absolute deficit of courage that this emergency had roused within him. He had at times in the past wondered whether, given the opportunity, he would prove to be a hero or a coward. Naturally, he had flattered his ego by imagining that if he ever was called to action, he would find himself suddenly possessed by such a spirit of valor and pois
e that his foes would quake before him. At the very least, he had imagined he wouldn’t run away and hide in a closet at the first sign of trouble. The instinct to flee had proved unconquerable.

  But as he cowered with his back wedged in a corner, a new fear began to grow inside him. It grew so large, in fact, it eclipsed even his mortal terror. Because there was one thing worse than dying, and that was living to see a bleak future. Did he really wish to survive if Edith perished? Did he want to be the last man left alive? Did he want to be taken prisoner, interrogated, tortured, or worse—put on display, flogged to the public, treated as a monstrous curiosity for the rest of his life? Was a quick death in defense of his friends not preferable to a long life of suffering and humiliation?

  He pulled his fingers from his ears. The snap of gunshots and boom of Ferdinand’s pistons shuddered through him. He cracked his pistol open at the breech, pinching the rim of the spent shell, and replaced it with a fresh shot drawn from his vest pocket. He stood, held the gun far out to one side as if it were a viper he’d caught by the tail, and counted to three.

  When he stepped out into the open doorway of the engine room, pistol and life ready to be spent, he was met by an abrupt stillness.

  The Sphinx’s clock-faced doorman stood near the center of the deck amid the strewn corpses of nearly two dozen men. Some of the dead lay draped over the ornate cannons where Ferdinand had cast them. Dark blood streaked the ceiling and spattered the walls and pooled underfoot. The carnage was absolute; the stink of gore, bowels, and smoke, nauseating.

  The hulking Ferdinand was, at present, trying to stand a soldier back on his feet. The man’s neck was obviously broken, but the black iron locomotive tried to pose him upright anyway. The corpse’s ankles rolled, and the soldier fell into a heap the moment Ferdinand released him. The simple-minded doorman seemed to regret what he had done, or more precisely, he seemed to not fully comprehend it. Byron wondered how he could possibly explain death to something with the soul of a music box.

  The pale light of Ferdinand’s clocklike face dimmed as he opened a drawer in his chest and plucked the musical cylinder from its cradle. He returned it to another drawer and replaced it with a new drum of music. The plaintive song that began to rumble from his chest sounded, Byron thought, reminiscent of a funereal bugle call.

  Both Byron and Ferdinand seemed to hear the stamp of bootheels at the same time. The mourning engine turned, his blank face flaring bright.

  From the other end of the middeck, General Eigengrau marched at him with hip cannon leveled, his cape fanned out by his pace. The gun’s report was so intense Bryon felt it rattle the gears of his heart.

  Ferdinand twisted back around, showing Byron the black hole that stood amid his shattered face. The music stopped. The giant reached to touch the wound, and the rest of the frosted glass fell away in a ringing shower. Inside the dark plumbing of the machine, Byron saw the head and shoulders of a hound suspended in a matrix of black pipes and rubber cabling. Blood poured from the hound’s gray muzzle. The lids of his dark eyes fluttered with mortal exhaustion. Ferdinand fell forward and crashed upon the deck so heavily the quake nearly threw Byron from his feet.

  But he did not fall. His mind reeled at what he had just seen, but his emotions seized upon a purpose more quickly than his thoughts.

  Byron ran at the general, bleating with fury. He leveled his pistol and fired. And this time he did not miss.

  When Eigengrau retreated to the gun deck to gather his forces only to find them lying at the feet of what appeared to be a train engine that had sprouted arms and legs, he felt he’d had about enough of this vicious ship and its monstrous crew.

  So he shot the brute right in the middle of its dinner-plate face. He’d half expected the wound to have no effect, but as he watched the locomotive fall, he felt a surge of optimism: The Sphinx’s monsters could be killed after all. He thought it a hopeful sign that there didn’t seem to be very many of them. Yet, even as he began to calculate how large a reinforcement he would need to fell the Red Hand, the one-horned beast who’d been concealed behind the clockwork Goliath charged at him with a gun in its hand, screaming like a goat.

  Before Eigengrau could think to defend himself, he heard the shot and felt the slug pass through his shoulder and erupt from his back. The impact spun him about. His pistol flew from his hand and skittered across the floor. He reeled against the chest of a faceless cannoneer who made no effort to catch him. Having never been shot before, Eigengrau was surprised to discover just how widely it hurt. It wasn’t like a cinder burn or a cut on a finger; it was not localized to one place. He felt the ache in every limb; he felt it in his toes and earlobes. He wanted to squirm away from the pain but could not because it writhed right along with him. In fact, the more he shifted about, the deeper the agony twisted inside of him. But he had to move. He had to get out.

  The general groped along the line of guns, leaning on them to hold himself erect as he staggered back the way he had come. Hazarding a backward glance, he saw the horned abomination dashing after him. Eigengrau feared it meant to gore him with its horn and finish what it had begun.

  His terror made him swift despite the mounting loss of blood. He was down the stairs and loping past the cabins of the bottom deck in a matter of heartbeats, which seemed to be coming too quick now. He expected at any moment for some fresh ogre to leap out at him. But none did. Then he smelled the fresh air, sweeter than any perfume, and he knew he would escape.

  He gripped the sides of the open hatch and leaned into the night. A chilled wind slapped his cheeks, and he savored the rush of euphoria.

  And yet, he did not trust his unsteady legs to carry him across the open air. He dropped to his hands and knees and crawled the length of the quivering gangplank with his cape tangled about his ears. The moment he was safely back upon the hardy Pelphian pier, he stood and waved his arms high above his head. Ignoring the sharp throb in his chest, he delivered the signal to Pepin aboard the Ararat to open fire.

  He jogged toward the palm trees and lead soldiers that banked the city gates. His toes dragged, his breath rattled, but the thought of the coming barrage kept him moving forward. He shouted at the guardhouse at the end of the pier before he reached it, summoning out two sleepy-eyed watchmen. “You two! Man the lead soldiers! Sound the ala—”

  His words were blotted out by the boom of cannon fire. He turned to watch the arc of three flaming lances as they leapt from the ramparts of the Ararat, sailed above half the port, and speared the State of Art’s envelope.

  The ensuing fireball turned the shadows of the three men into long, black tails. They winced at the heat as the combusting gas turned the silks to ash. The steel ship, sharp and sleek as the rail of a sleigh, plunged from the port, sucking the smoke and flames down with it.

  The quiet that followed was surreal, like the muted ambiance of a scorched forest.

  It took Eigengrau scarcely a moment to regain his dispassionate poise. He found the strength to straighten his spine and cleared his throat into the ball of one fist. He pulled the corner of his cape away from his wound, and said without much urgency to the night watchmen, “All right, one of you fetch me a doctor, and the other, fetch me a drink. It’s been a long night, and my throat is awfully dry.”

  When Edith strode from her destroyed stateroom where Haste lay uncovered and uncomposed, she nearly collided with Byron. He had a wild look in his eyes. Seeing the shattered stump of his antler, she wondered what trauma he’d suffered. He told her that Ferdinand was dead, along with most of a boarding party, and that he had shot Eigengrau, who had run away, though maybe she could still catch the general if she hurried. The words spilled from him. He seemed in shock. Edith gripped him by the shoulders and said, “Forget Eigengrau, Byron. We have to make sure we haven’t lost the bridge. Come on!”

  She led him in a drumming ascent up the aft stairwell. As soon as they crested the last step, they saw the first sign of the battle that had occurred. One of the general’
s men knelt, with his cheek pressed against the wainscoting. Blood trickled from the corner of his eye, but he seemed otherwise uninjured. He moaned softly. He seemed not quite living and not yet dead. She wondered how Reddleman could’ve done such obvious damage with so little evidence of violence. Though perhaps she should be grateful. Surely this was better than the decapitations he’d once been known to dole out by hand.

  Then she saw the bridge.

  There were bodies everywhere. Most were clearly dead, their uniforms like black islands in lakes of blood. But some seemed to have suffered the same fate as the recruit in the passageway. They were senseless as miserable drunks and shedding crimson tears.

  The Red Hand stood amid them, in a gory undershirt with a sword through his chest. He turned around and around, reaching for the hilt that protruded from his back. Amid his spinning, he noticed them in the doorway and smiled. “Hello, Captain! I feel like a dog trying to catch his own tail!” He laughed as if it were some sort of parlor game.

  “Stand still,” Edith said sharply. Reddleman complied, and she gripped the handguard and pulled the blade straight out.

  He stumbled forward a little, giggling with relief and scratching himself. “Oh, that’s so much better. I couldn’t sit down!”

  He went to his post and settled into the pilot’s chair with a contented little sigh. He seemed unaware or at least indifferent to the death that surrounded him. “I have good news. I found the culprit behind our nagging alarm. The ship’s levitators were fully charged.”

  “Our what?” Edith said.

  But before he could answer, Byron shouted, “Edith!”

  She looked round to find him pointing at one of the magnovisor’s gilded frames. The flaming missiles had already left the Ararat and were hurtling toward them.

  They all knew what it meant, knew there wasn’t time to do anything to stop it, or to save themselves.