Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War (53 page)

A wall of flame rolled up against the piloting gondola in a sizzling roar, roasting the glass dome and sending a tongue of flame in over the starboard gunwale, before rolling away as quickly as it had come. The chadburn and helm wheel had been singed, the helmsman and Nero’s bald head singed, the entire starboard side of the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
singed, but they had all ducked through it handsomely.

It was close to a minute after the blast before the news came down that the captain had survived. A gush of relief turned Sabrina’s body to rubber. She was thankful for the elated cheers of the bridge crew, for no one noticed how she almost dropped to her knees.

“Here be those Russians,” Buckle whispered into Sabrina’s ear. The Spartak company was no more than thirty yards away now, and from the corner of her eye she could see Buckle grinning with some satisfaction under his top hat, its array of copper and bronze gizmos gleaming in the lantern light. “Burly-looking devils, eh?”

“Aye,” Sabrina said stiffly, not looking in Buckle’s direction, hoping her straight-ahead stare might express her anger toward him in a way he would recognize. Her intense feelings toward Buckle, swallowing her whole despite her vehement but silent protests, dismayed her. Her inability to shield herself from those feelings dismayed her. What had happened? Where was the unwavering commitment to her purpose that had consumed her life? When she had led the joint Crankshaft-Alchemist rescue mission inside the City of the Founders to free Balthazar, she had experienced an urge to slip away, to vanish into the shadows with her dagger in her hand and exact her revenge. But she did not do so. After being orphaned, after losing her dear Marter, after a near lifetime of brutality and being hunted, she had no longer thought herself capable of love. But she did love Balthazar. And now she feared that she was in love with Buckle.

Sabrina did not know how she felt about that.

She had always been in control of herself, and yet now, suddenly and without warning, her mastery of her emotions had failed her. It happened, for unfathomable chemical, visceral, and metaphysical reasons, whenever she entered a room that contained Romulus Buckle.

Damn you, Romulus, Sabrina thought. Damn you.

THE BOYAR AND THE CLOUD COSSACKS

B
UCKLE
,
WALKING IMMEDIATELY BEHIND
A
MBASSADOR
Washington, eyed the Russians with a grin. He could see their faces clearly now, illuminated as they were in the fluttering orange halos of their torches. Eight wore uniforms and Cossack fur hats—members of the
Czarina
’s crew—while the two horse riders looked like landsmen in their heavy fur cloaks and ushanki. It was easy to see, the sky a gleam of silver moonlight and the earth lit up by the terrible fires of Muscovy in her death throes, sending tides of red and orange eddying across the countryside as if the world were the inside of a potbellied stove.

A man of average height led from the center of the Spartak group, exuding a physical confidence that was easily read in the swagger of his bearing, bareheaded with black hair and a dense beard, wearing a rust-brown wool greatcoat with overbearing gold-and-red epaulettes gleaming on each shoulder. He was grinning widely, his eyes intense and a shade wild with the spark of recent action.

The dark-bearded man had to be the captain of the
Czarina
, and if so, a capital commander. He had withstood a bracketing by two Founders war zeppelins and then, dropping away holed and afire, still gamely dove to finish the
Industria
, which had
somehow managed to regain control and was limping southward. The Founders sloop easily escaped him, but the mortar barges, bereft of their cowardly escort, had not been so lucky.

Buckle liked the Russian captain already.

Washington cleared his throat, a low, breathy sound over the crunching of many boots across the shallow, crystalline snow.

“Greetings, Crankshaft!” the Spartak captain shouted first, throwing open his arms. “All hail the sky warriors from the east! Bravo! A fight worthy of a mad badger!”

“It is an honor to make your acquaintance, sir,” Washington said, and when he took the Russian captain’s hand, he nearly lost his own, the powerful fellow shook it so hard. “I am Ambassador Washington, representing the Crankshaft clan.”

“Nicholas Zhukov, boyar of Muscovy. Welcome to Spartak, Ambassador, though I cannot vouch much for her current condition,” the captain said, raising his eyebrows, which resembled small squirrels, at Valkyrie. “I see Imperial blues among you, very lovely blues.”

“Boyar Zhukov, may I present Princess Valkyrie Smelt of the Imperial clan,” Washington said.

“We have come to assist, at your request,” Valkyrie offered politely.

Zhukov gave Valkyrie a small bow. “Ah, yes—and in an Imperial-designed zeppelin bearing the Crankshaft emblem, no less,” he said as his two huge wolfhounds came and sat on each side of him, their wolfish heads resembling the armrests of a throne. Zhukov gave Sabrina and her red ringlets a penetrating glare. “And a scarlet as a member of your contingent as well?” he muttered. “Strange days are upon us, I say!” Zhukov’s eyes locked on to Buckle. “And are you, sir, the captain of the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
?”

“Aye,” Buckle replied. “Captain Romulus Buckle, at your service, Captain Zhukov. I must compliment you and your crew—you fight like eagles, sir.”

Zhukov flashed a smile with a set of big white-and-gold teeth as he brushed past Washington to shake Buckle’s hand. “Bah! To hell with eagles. I fly like a tangler! And so do you, Captain Buckle!”

Buckle laughed as openly as did Zhukov, the Russian’s breath a slightly rotten breeze of warm tobacco, sausage, and heavily creamed borscht pickled with vodka. Zhukov was near half a foot less than Buckle’s height, but much fuller in girth, his mass accentuated by his unruly hair and beard, which seemed to block everything out behind him. His handshake almost yanked Buckle’s shoulder bone out of its socket. Zhukov’s expressive, ruggedly featured face made his age difficult to measure. Buckle guessed he was in his early thirties, though he looked closer to forty.

“We go to war together, you and I, my friend, eh?” Zhukov said, just to Buckle.

“Yes, we do, sir,” Buckle replied. It was rare that he instinctively trusted other men or women without knowing them at all—Andromeda had been another—but Buckle placed great faith in his gut feelings.

“Ahem!” Washington cleared his throat. “I do not wish to appear abrupt, Boyar Zhukov, but we need to establish our situation quickly.”

“Our situation, sir,” Zhukov said, “is that we are with you and you are with us, whether we like it or not. Our Rostov stronghold has been overrun—with two pocket zeppelins captured at their moorings, damn me to hell—but we blew up the railway tracks and stopped the armored trains at Krasnaya bridge.
And the Founder fools overextended reaching for Muscovy.” He lifted his hand and crushed the air in a fist. “Their attack has shattered upon the rocks of our resolve.”

“But your city is blown to pieces,” Washington said. “This is an unsustainable position.”

“Muscovy is lost, temporarily,” Zhukov said. “Our people are retreating north over the mountains, to Santa Inez. The
Czarina
is to steam to Archangel, where our fleet now assembles. Our outposts have signaled that the Founders are advancing north as we speak, but their zeppelins are crawling to keep pace with the trains. We have a fat forty-five minutes to make good our escape.”

“We are with you, Boyar Zhukov,” Washington said. “You have asked for assistance from the Imperial clan and she has come, bringing our Grand Alliance with her. Crankshaft blood has been spilled alongside yours. The Founders invasion must be stopped.”

“Not stopped, Ambassador—destroyed,” Zhukov said. “And who are the members of this Grand Alliance?”

“Along with Crankshaft and Imperial, we have the Alchemists, Gallowglasses, Tinskins, and Brineboilers,” Washington replied. “And I am certain we may add Spartak’s signature to the list, in the spirit of mutual defense and friendship.”

Zhukov paused, a torrent of thought in his eyes. The wind sighed through the group, gently rocking the lanterns and calming the horses who had been stamping the snow and jangling their tack, continually turning their big, dark eyes toward the fires of the city. “Our alliance is a foregone conclusion under the circumstances, a pact signed in blood this day. But the Brineboilers are already…”

Zhukov was cut off by the
boom
of a gigantic explosion inside Muscovy, a blast that rattled the earth and sent a colossal ball of flame roiling a thousand feet above the city, a fireball illuminating the world like a small sun before it vanished. Startled at first, Buckle stared at the catastrophe with the detachment of exhaustion. He knew what it was—the stronghold magazine, hundreds of barrels of blackbang powder going off at once. The sky glittered, a brilliant display of a billion bright-red cinders raining down like burning snow. The ashes of Muscovy.

“They have had at us, the Founders devils!” Zhukov snarled as he peered upward. He then cast a serious gaze upon Washington. “The Tinskins,” he said, showing his teeth with disgust. “Unconscionable rats.”

Washington nodded. “I believe the threat of mutual destruction will keep them in line—for the time being.”

“Never trust them,” Zhukov said. “Now, we must make way.”

“The
Pneumatic Zeppelin
must return home immediately,” Washington said. “But I urgently request passage aboard the
Czarina
to Archangel. I must have an audience with Grand Boyar Ryzhakov.”

“Of course, of course. He shall be in Archangel with the fleet,” Zhukov answered, allowing his eyes to take another approving, lustful measure of Valkyrie.

“We should—” Washington started, but he was cut off by a vicious cheer near at hand to the west.

Buckle cocked his head to the side, peering through the black bars of the trees to focus on the small group of buildings, ruined and afire—most likely the result of a wayward Founders mortar—about thirty yards away. A mob of Russians had gathered around a large gallows, streams of flame licking
its posts and crossbeam, encouraging a hangman as he lowered a noose around the neck of another man on the scaffold, a crooked cripple, whose head was covered by a dark canvas bag.

“They are hanging a spy.” One of the Spartak horsemen laughed, his voice thick with drink. “Old as the hills, a fogsucker, addled as a moonchild. And he had some devil robot with him.”

“I approved no executions on the drumhead,” Zhukov said, but he made no move to stop the proceedings.

The old prisoner cried out, his shaking voice carrying across the snowbound earth. “Who saves old Shadrack?” he wailed. “The Oracle be eternal, yea—but who saves old Shadrack?”

“Stop!” Buckle screamed, hearing his howl in his ears before he was aware of having uttered it, realizing he had bolted forward toward the burning gallows before he was aware of giving his body a command to move.

THE BURNING GALLOWS

T
HAT
R
OMULUS
B
UCKLE WAS ABLE
to save the wretched hide of old Shadrack was a near-run thing. He charged into a small square surrounded by bomb-gutted, burning buildings, where the gallows towered like the spire of some terrible, fire-ringed church. A sea of heavy-lidded, death-dealing faces turned to Buckle; the Spartak clanspeople had dispatched a good tally of “spies,” judging from the stack of dead bodies piled like cordwood at the edge of the square.

Buckle shoved his way into the crowd. The grumbling mass, their sense of revenge boiling, glared at his foreign clothes and closed in, grabbing, sticks and fists raised. Buckle would have found himself in considerable trouble if Zhukov’s two horsemen had not arrived at a gallop, robes flying and pistols drawn, ordering a halt to everything.

The mob stood silent, still clutching Buckle, the fires crackling, the horses stamping uneasily, the prisoner motionless on the gallows. It seemed to take forever for Zhukov and the others to arrive.

“Why, Captain Buckle, do you step in on behalf of the accused?” Zhukov asked as he hurried up along the road, red-faced and puffing, Washington, Sabrina, Valkyrie, and the others close at his heels.