Agatha H. And the Clockwork Princess (60 page)

She waved at the crowd and spoke from the corner of her mouth. “Don’t worry, I’ll play the good little girl… in public.”

She smiled and pulled out the trilobite locket. At the sight of it, Klaus’ eyes widened and he stared at her with an unreadable expression on his face. “I’ll even wear my little family sigil so everyone will know who I am! I’m so glad you thought to bring it.”

With a giggle, she unsprung the pin and speared it through her collar.

With a snap, she closed it.

Her smile faltered.

There was a sound.

A whine. Like a mosquito. It was getting closer. No… not closer—

A clamp slammed onto her brain. “
NOOOO!”
Lucrezia screamed as she fell into the darkness.

Agatha blinked, and found herself facing an astonished crowd of people. She smiled in delight. “I’m back!”

Behind her, Klaus’ greatsword reached the top of its arc and swept back down towards her neck.

CHAPTER 13

People they say that the Heterodynes—

They will return.

They will come laughing and singing,

sheepish because they have kept us waiting.

They will smile and wink and

Show us marvelous things that will

Make the world a’right and then

They’ll a’pat our heads and put us to bed.

But I thinks the Heterodynes—

They will return.

They will come with fire and smokes

and machines a’blazing in the night.

They will stare at us from bloodspattered faces

They will pull us up and roughly exclaim

“We bought you years, but you’ve done nothing

and now the monsters are a’snapping at our heels!”

—T. Stormboy,
La Revue Parisienne des Réflexions Chagrines et Sans Mérite
,
Vol. 2. Issue 3

T
here was an explosion of movement, and Lars leapt forward. With a sweep of his arm, Agatha was thrown to the side, the Baron’s blade slicing a few stray strands of hair from her head. She tumbled from the wagon, everything around her a blur. She realized she was clutched in Maxim’s arms, but the Jäger wasn’t looking at her.

Towering overhead was the Baron, sword dripping gore. He kicked aside a body at his feet. “Damn fool,” he muttered. His eyes locked on Agatha’s. “Kill the girl!” he roared. “Kill her companions, if you must. Kill them all!”

Maxim dropped Agatha to her feet, and with a hiss, pulled a slim rapier from its scabbard and with three strokes, cleared a space around them. “Time to fight!” he sang out.

Klaus made to leap, and a glittering flash of green and blue exploded before him as Zeetha attacked screaming. Klaus barely parried in time, and with an oath, leapt backwards to avoid the slicing
Quata’aras
.

Agatha darted forward and knelt at Lars’ side. All of her medical knowledge delivered the same terrible answer. Lars’ eyes opened and gazed at her blankly. “Agatha?”

“Don’t move!” Agatha said desperately. She shucked her jacket and tried to tear off a strip. The heavy fabric stubbornly refused to tear. She whimpered in frustration.

Lars gently patted her hand. “It’s amazing,” he whispered. “I never even guessed. But it’s so… so
perfect.”

“Lars, stop moving!”

His head fell back and he gave a ghastly smile. “Oh, that’ll happen soon enough.”

“NO!” Agatha gasped. “No, you’re just in shock! I can—”

Lars cupped her chin. “It’s okay, I can even promise I won’t panic afterwards.” He chuckled, and a bead of blood welled up between his lips.

Agatha wanted to scream at the helplessness she felt. “I don’t have any instruments,” she said, “I can’t—”

“Shh.” Lars feebly tried to move his hand. Agatha clasped it in her own. “’S probably for the best,” Lars whispered. “A Heterodyne girl and…and an ordinary guy like me… probably lucky I lasted as long as I…”

Agatha waited for Lars to finish, and then saw that he had.

Around her the battle raged. The three Jägers ringed her with a shield of carnage. Always on the move, they mowed through soldiers. Never slaying, but leaving a trail of wounded who tied up even more troops.

On the roof of one of the wagons lay Ardsley Wooster, who had taken out one of the snipers and was busy finishing off the rest with their comrade’s own rifle.

And at the center of the fight, drawing almost everyone’s eye, were the Baron and Zeetha. Both were terribly fast. The Baron swung his greatsword with a deceptive ease that sent it screaming through the air. Zeetha couldn’t hope to block its unstoppable force, but she danced between the strokes and at times seemed to fly. Klaus’ coat was sliced in dozens of places, and not all of the blood that covered him was from Lars.

But fury and speed would not hold up in the long run against superior numbers. Even now the troops facing the Jägers were falling back and beginning to fire at them from a distance. From the surrounding wagons, a line of the tall brass fighting clanks strode forth. In unison, they raised their machine-cannons and fired a quick burst into the air. The human soldiers began to pull back. A bullet punched through Maxim’s side, eliciting a howl of annoyance.

Klaus suddenly threw his sword at Zeetha. The green-haired girl dodged, and with a roar, Klaus tackled her and slammed her to the ground.

She began to bring her swords up and felt a knife at her throat. “Ni tok,” the Baron snarled. The warriors last decision: Honorable surrender or death. She looked up into his face. “Ni tok!” he repeated. The knife pressed deeper.

Agatha leaned in and for the last time, gave Lars a kiss. “You were anything but ordinary,” she whispered.

Wooster surveyed the battle. Not good. He aimed his rifle at the Baron. He couldn’t kill him. The political ramifications of the Baron dying at the hands of a British operative would greatly displease Her Majesty, but
wounding
him—

A gun barrel poked against the back of his head. The fact that he was familiar enough with the sensation probably meant that he should get a new line of work. He was also rather impressed at his own calm. This evaporated when he heard the voice of the gun’s owner.

“Please, try to resist.” Bangladesh DuPree said hopefully. Wooster froze.

After it became evident that he was not going to resist, she sighed in disappointment. “Klaus always knows where the party is, but they’re always so dull.”

She raised her voice. “You are surrounded! Surrender and die!”

“I believe, Wooster said carefully, “It’s supposed to be ‘surrender
or
die.’”

Bangladesh cocked her pistol. “Dull, dull, dull.”

Agatha slowly folded Lars’ hands together on his chest. “Ordinary.” She whispered. “But I
am
a Heterodyne!” She stood up and screamed. “
SHOWTIME!
”

The fighting paused. Bangladesh poked her gun against Wooster’s head. “What is she trying—?”

With a groan, the wagon Bangladesh and Wooster were standing on began to tilt sideways. With a squawk, they lost their footing and slid off the roof, tumbling to the ground.

They stumbled to their feet, trying to avoid the wagon that appeared to be about to crash back upon them. They heard shouts from the other soldiers. Drowning these out were a series of snappings and grindings. All around them, all of the circus wagons were shuddering and warping. Wheels bent and slammed to the ground. Roofs broke and unfolded. Chassis’ rearranged themselves, joints sliding into new positions. Springs and slats re-organized themselves into new configurations.

Klaus stared at the nearest wagon as it wrenched itself up upon two extended fenders, spoked wheels unfolded like flowers into crude hands at the end of their axles. From the under-carriage, a single great eye ground open, and with a whine, focused upon him. A shudder went through the giant clank, and it took a ponderous step towards him, shaking the earth.

“Clanks!” Klaus roared. All around him, the wagon clanks began sweeping their metal arms back and forth, scything down the human troops too slow to run.

A quartet of Wulfenbach trooper clanks strode forward, purposefully lowering their great machine-cannons. Klaus pointed to the nearest wagon-clank. “Crossfire!” he ordered.

Immediately the four opened fire. Their bullets chewed away at the wooden structure and sent metal bits flying. Within thirty seconds, the ponderous clank had been reduced to fragments.

A Sergeant grinned at the Baron. “Haw! These things have no defenses!”

But Klaus was staring at the pile of rubble. It was shifting, heaving…

“There’s something wrong here—”

Suddenly the rubble disgorged hundreds of miniscule clanks, none of them taller than thirty centimeters. They darted forward and then fanned out. Several dozen of them scurried towards the trooper clanks. The larger clanks seemed to be at a loss as to what to do. One went as far as to fire several rounds into a particularly slow specimen, but the rest easily converged around the larger clank’s feet.

Several of the machines then began tossing their fellows at the trooper clanks. The small devices flew though the air and clung to the troopers with a magnetic “clang!” Before the clanks could react, the smaller machines detonated, blowing the troopers into fragments, which whistled through the Baron’s forces.

Klaus picked himself up in time to see another lumbering wagon clank explode into a cloud of smaller clanks, which charged into the lines of soldiers.

He looked around wildly. The girl. The Heterodyne girl. Where had she gone? It was then that he became aware of the music that overlay the noise of battle.

Bangladesh DuPree and Ardsley Wooster stood side-by-side, their mouths hanging open in shock at the scene of chaos before them. They both remembered at the same time who they were standing next to.

Bangladesh raised her gun, but Wooster simply punched her in the face, and then ran away, which Bangladesh considered, in some undefined way, to be cheating.

“All right!” She roared. “I’m going to kill
somebody
, and I’m not picky about who or what it is!” A rumbling from behind caused Bangladesh to turn about and stare.

The newly repurposed merry-go-round focused its attention on her, took a step forward, activated its calliope, and began to spin.

Everywhere, Wulfenbach troops found themselves fighting clanks that minutes ago had been inanimate objects. The organized, by-the-numbers rifle volleys that had broken armies across all of Europa began to dissolve into random, panicky, free fire.

“All troops fall back!” Klaus roared above the din.

“Fall back to
where?
” a trooper shouted back. “We’re surrounded!”

Another trooper pointed skywards. “Incoming cavalry!”

With a crash, a Hoomhoffer
⁷⁵
slammed to the ground, crushing a phalanx of steadily advancing water barrels.

Several more thudded to earth and urged on by their mahouts, began to simply bulldoze their way through some of the encircling wagon clanks.

With a ragged cheer, the Wulfenbach troops rallied, and began a break-out action. Klaus took charge, and began directing the troops’ fire.

“Don’t shoot to destroy the clanks,” he ordered. “Shoot to disable them. Concentrate fire on their legs!”

After several minutes, it was obvious that this strategy was working. Several of the lumbering wagon-clanks fell to the ground and began to clumsily drag themselves forward.

Suddenly, over the roar of battle, the ever-present music changed.

“Of course!” Klaus realized. “The music! She’s directing the actions of the clanks through the music!” He paused and shook his head. “That’s brilliant. I’ve got to remember that.”

“Is ‘brilliant’ the same as ‘trouble’?” asked a corporal who’d served with the Baron before.

“It is that,” Klaus acknowledged with a grim smile, “We’ve got to find that girl and stop her before—”

There was a deep boom of sound, and one of the Hoomhoffers disappeared.

A scream from the mahout drew every eye upwards. Above the fray, the Baba Yaga flapped its enormous pinions as it dragged the Hoomhoffer skyward, clutched in its great metal claws.

The troops on the ground swung their rifles up and began firing, just as the flying wagon swooped about and launched the captive insect toward the ranks of its fellows. The Hoomhoffer screamed in from above, its torn wings buzzing ineffectually, and smashed into two others of the tank-like creatures, crushing one and sending the other flying for several dozen meters. When it tumbled to a stop, it lay twitching, stunned.

With another loop, the Baba Yaga prepared to swoop down for another victim.

“The Hooms are scattering!” The corporal reported. An explosion sent shrapnel screaming through the air. “And that was the last of our clanks! We can’t penetrate the enemy lines to find this girl, those friggin’ little bomb things are everywhere!”

Klaus grit his teeth.
I underestimated her,
he realized. “Drummers,” he roared. “Sound
Full Retreat!
”

The soldiers looked at each other in astonishment. Full Retreat? One of the drummers had a panicky moment before he could even remember how to play it.

They hesitated. A furious lieutenant kicked a wooden chest, which extruded a set of mechanical legs and began to pursue him, its lid snapping at him. That did it. The drums boomed out the unfamiliar refrain. With a step, then another, then several speeding up into a run, part of the greatest army that Europa had ever seen, took to its heels.

Klaus loped up next to a Captain. “Have them form up on the other side of that wall!” He pointed.

“Not that great a defensive position, sir!” the Captain opined, eyes glancing up at the still circling wagon.

Klaus reached into his coat as he ran and produced an elaborate flare gun. He spun several wheels, aimed upwards and fired three times.