Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War (8 page)

“You will get through this all right, Lieutenant,” Buckle said. “If you had not heard, I am one hell of a surgeon.”

Max nodded. Martians were tough. A human being so torn up would have been dead by now, Buckle calculated. But her pain had to be immeasurable, no matter how she tried to hide it. He already had one of the glass morphine vials in his fingers. He worked his knife blade against the base of the nipple, weakening it enough that he could snap the cap away. He sank the syringe needle into the vial, drawing the golden liquid into the firelit glass.

Max exhaled in a way Buckle knew meant disapproval. Martians did not like morphine much, though it alleviated pain for them in the same manner it did for humans. Buckle lifted the coat and swung out Max’s left arm. He searched for a vein inside her elbow, but the drained vessels refused to rise. He drove his thumb deep into the clammy flesh and finally found the flabby plumpness of a vein, and then he sank the needle home.

Buckle slowly depressed the syringe plunger until the chamber was empty, then drew the needle free and replaced it in the still-steaming iron pot. He placed a patch of fresh gauze over the hole, but it hardly bled—Max’s body had little more to bleed with. Max released a sigh, a long, trembling signal of the onset of the morphine drowse, the release from the agony.

Max was fast asleep before Buckle had time to tuck her arm back under her covers.

THE CHAMBER OF NUMBERS

T
HE FIRE BURNED WELL AND
low, a gray husk packed with red embers, casting up bursts of sparks now and again, and Buckle hoped that the big chunk of wood he had procured would last them through the night. The blizzard still raged outside in the utter darkness where the weak illumination of the fire did not reach.

Buckle was exhausted, and he might have felt sleepy if he was not so worried about Max. She had not moved since he had drugged her with the morphine about an hour before. His attention had barely drifted away from her sleeping face since.

Her eyes moved back and forth beneath the lids, but he did not know if she was dreaming. He had heard that Martians did not dream in the same fashion as humans: rather than drifting into fanciful interludes that never escaped the confines of their skulls, like humans, they could somehow plug in to a massive Martian collective unconsciousness. Empowered in this mysterious way, some part of the mind could leave their sleeping bodies to travel, investigate, and interact with the conscious world.

Buckle wondered how far away Max was from him in that moment.

Would she remain that way forever? He was afraid that Max would die on him, and he knew the fear was justified.

Once, he had removed his pocket watch and edged its polished brass cover close to her lips, to reassure himself that she was still breathing, and was relieved to see traces of pulsing condensation on the cold metal.

Enough, Buckle thought to himself. He had been sitting there, his saber resting across his knees, the blade agleam with the firelight, long enough. He shoved the pile of bloody gauze and bandages—already frozen stiff—away from the fire, and filled the little flask with water from snow he had melted in the iron pot. As he screwed on the cap of the flask, the metal squeaking with each turn of the wrist, he appraised his remaining medical supplies: there were enough gauze and bandages left for one more dressing, plus enough penicillin paste to complete that job, but that was it. He could boil more snow for water. What worried him more were the two vials of morphine: enough to keep Max drowsing through the night and into the middle of the next day, but after that, her comfort would be her own.

He had to get her down the mountain in the morning, but how? She was far too injured to carry, or even place on a horse, if they still had one. He could not fathom leaving her alone in the cave to traverse down the mountain on foot: there would be no way, even on horseback, that he could make it back to her before nightfall. And at nightfall, the sabertooths would come again.

Buckle rose to his feet unsteadily. His knees felt stiff and cold. He stretched to get the blood circulating again, and looked around the cave. There was not much to the long, oval space and its shallow side chambers, but he noticed that the walls were streaked with a dark corruption. Buckle stepped to the wall and ran his fingers along the stone; sure enough, the tips came away black with soot. The cavern had been used for shelter before. It
was coated with the greasy detritus of poorly ventilated cooking fires; judging from the thickness of the stains, it had been used for an extended period of time.

Drawing his pistol from his belt, Buckle walked to the mouth of the cavern. The outside snowdrift obscured what little view there was through the swirling snowfall, but the trail left by his last foray was nearly erased, and he was thankful for that. His vision, now that he was away from the fire, slowly adjusted to the darkness, and he noticed an irregularity at the right-hand side of the cave mouth—a thick black line. As he stepped toward it, his eyes widened. It was a pipe, a section of black stovepipe, partially sunk into the rock, and bolted to it, as well.

Buckle blinked. The outside end of the stovepipe was covered in a weather cap. The interior pipe ran into the cavern and turned a hard left to angle high along the front wall. Buckle followed the pipe inside, where it ran into the small adjoining chamber closest to the front of the cave, one he had not considered worth investigating. Buckle snatched up the torch and relit it in the fire, hurrying forward to the little chamber as he followed the stovepipe home.

He entered the small cave, which, deceptively shallow-looking from the main cavern, on the left turn opened into a space about as big as a cottage.

Buckle froze. Before him, in the wavering orange light of the torch, the stovepipe disappeared into a stone wall, and in the middle of the wall stood a heavy door, sheathed in iron plates and rivets, its surface running with rivers of rust. A horizontal slot had been cut into the face of the stone just to the right of the door, and Buckle peered into it with the torch. A metal handle gleamed, sunk deep in the recess. Without hesitation, Buckle reached in and yanked it.

The mechanism responded: somewhere inside the wall, a set of gears and cogs rolled into a distressed motion, slowly sliding the door open with a rumbling complaint of squeaking metal and grinding stone. Ten seconds later, the multitudinous noise stopped as the door came to rest inside the wall, leaving an open doorway leading into a darkness that reeked of musty old wood.

Buckle advanced with his torch. The chamber was a small, enclosed space, but spacious enough to house a handmade bed frame, dressing table, writing desk, and bookshelf. All the furniture was warped from the cold and damp, and laced with old cobwebs.

A large candle rested in a copper sconce on the table, its tubular form misshapen by the tendency of the wax to flow with gravity over time, the wick flopped over and splayed at the top, like a jester’s hat. Buckle lowered the torch gently over the candle. The wick caught flame, sputtering, and added its small sphere of yellow light to the room.

The walls were covered in a riot of bizarre scribblings applied by sticks of charcoal. A black potbellied stove sat in one corner, home of the stovepipe that ran up to the ceiling and across, to exit through a hole cut just above the top of the doorway. Buckle noticed a large iron wheel protruding from the wall to the immediate left of the door, the device that would close the door and reload the mainspring. Beside the wheel, tucked in the corner, sat a stack of neatly cut wood, as dry as old brown bones. And there was an axe.

Someone, a long time before, had made this little chamber his home, a little home safe from the beasties. And now the little chamber would make humans—well, a human and a Martian—safe from the beasties once again.

Buckle heard a roar, a rough-throated, loud, echoing roar.

A sabertooth had discovered their hiding place. And he was calling the others.

Buckle spun on his heel, pistol and torch leading, and charged back into the main cave, suddenly fearful that the sabertooths might have slipped inside: inside where Max lay, helpless and inexcusably undefended. He found Max untouched and the chamber empty, but when he spun to the mouth of the cavern he saw a sabertooth, its massive black bulk atop the snowdrift in the churning darkness, pacing back and forth, its green eyes occasionally catching the glow of the fire and shining in a ghastly, jade-gold, ghoulish sort of way.

The shadow of another sabertooth appeared alongside the first, looking straight in.

Buckle needed to buy himself a few seconds—enough time to pick up Max and carry her into the little chamber—so he shouted the zeppelineer boarder’s cry of “Hurrah!” and attacked. He booted the fire in an explosion of swarming red embers and sent the burning log rolling along the floor toward the entrance of the cave, followed by the clattering iron pot. The burning wood and iron sizzled as they slid to a stop on the ice.

The pacing sabertooth halted, glaring at the flaming log. Buckle rushed forward, swinging the torch, his pistol leveled. They saw the pistol, the damned clever beasties, lunging away into the storm just as he fired. The muzzle flash illuminated the cavern for one brilliant red instant, the contained
crack
of the shot walloping Buckle’s eardrums.

Buckle jammed the pistol back into his belt, turning back from the hanging cloud of powder haze to leap the scattered remains of the fire and scramble to Max. Tossing the torch toward the side chamber, he gathered her in his arms, bundled her up in the parka and bear fur, and carried her into the secret
chamber. Not trusting what was left of the heavy-timbered bedframe, he laid her down as gently as he could in the middle of the little floor, a floor that glimmered in the candlelight, as smooth as polished stone.

He needed the survival kit.

He needed the morphine.

Drawing his empty pistol as he leapt through the doorway and picking up the torch on his way, Buckle was aware there were things slinking into the main chamber, things that were not made of stone.

As Buckle skidded to a stop in the middle of the scattered remains of his fire, the icy floor studded with a thousand glowing orange embers, he swung around his sword and pistol to find one sabertooth, a massive brute coated with ice, its fangs at least a foot long from upper lip to tip, already creeping in under the overhang.

Buckle could hear more roars piercing the wind outside. The pack was coming, collecting, preparing for the final rush.

Buckle grabbed the survival pouch. The capped syringe, morphine vials, and Fassbinder’s jar were loose, lying on a gauze strip, and he scooped them inside the pouch as he rose, pointing the pistol at the sabertooth’s face. It paused, regarding him with its four malevolent green eyes, then slowly kept on coming.

The devil, Buckle thought. How the hell could the beastie know the pistol was not loaded? The ruse was over, and he jammed the pistol back into his belt. He reached into the pouch and grabbed one of the musket cartridges.

The sabertooth dashed forward. Buckle beat it back with a shove of the torch at its face. The hulking creature came so close he could smell the rotten-egg scent of its hot breath, shooting out of its nostrils in pumping columns of mist. The beastie
scrambled back a few feet, snarling so vehemently that the walls of the room seemed to rattle.

Two more beasties appeared at the cave entrance, gliding in with an ease of anticipation that was unnerving. Buckle bit off the top of the paper musket cartridge and dumped out the ball, the lead sphere landing with a little pop on the ice and rolling away. Buckle sidled slowly to the right, back toward the inner chamber, and the sabertooth veered to cut him off.

Buckle lunged, and the big beastie lunged with him. Buckle swung the musket cartridge so that the blackbang powder spilled through the air in a wide arc between him and the sabertooth. He thrust the head of his torch into the black arch of gunpowder, which ignited with a loud, rippling flash.

The sabertooth roared, a furious baritone howl, as it jumped back, cowering under the unexpected wall of fire that had just exploded in its face.

Buckle dashed, biting the head off a second cartridge as he ran, tossing the ball and setting another crackling arc afire with a rearward swing of his torch, just as he ducked into the adjoining cave. He scrambled headlong into the chamber of numbers, and dove to the winding wheel. He yanked at the spokes, hauling the ancient iron device with its brass fittings around, hand over hand. The wheel creaked, rust spilling from the hole where its trunk pierced the wall; cogs creaked, thick and dull with mold and ice-locked oxidation, and the heavy iron door slid, closing the gap far too slowly, no matter that Buckle gave its course every ounce of strength his body could bear.

Out in the main cavern, the indignant sabertooths roared, a mass of foul voices.

Buckle snatched up the torch and tossed it out the doorway, hoping the fire would slow the beasties a bit. If he had enough time to crank the door shut, he could keep Max safe.