The Dragon Lantern (9 page)

“Captain's quarters,” Clyde said in passing. “All this gets stowed when the mouth opens.”

Archie noticed the thin line of light that crossed the far wall around knee-level—where the giant steam man's lips parted, he guessed.

“Can it talk?” Archie asked.

Clyde laughed. “Naw.
Colossus
isn't alive. He's just a big empty robot. The mouth just opens to get stuff in and out. One time, we caught a Blackfoot pirate ship as it was flying away and we boarded it through here.” He nudged Archie. “Guess we put our army where our mouth was, so to speak. Ha-ha.”

Clyde climbed on up to the top floor of the steam man. He was right—there wouldn't have been any room up here for Mr. Rivets. There was barely enough room for Captain Custer, a navigator, the driver, and Archie and Clyde. As it was, Archie had to stand over the porthole to the captain's quarters. He didn't want to move around much anyway—the head swayed in the opposite direction of the body as
Colossus
walked, making Archie steam-sick.

“Permission to show our guest the bridge, Captain?”

Custer nodded. “But make it quick, Mr. Magoro. No wise words from Mrs. DeMarcus. We need you in your chair.”

“Aye, sir. So that's Lieutenant Pajackok, navigator,” Clyde said, nodding at an Algonquin soldier at a small table with a map spread out on it. “Mr. Pajackok, Archie Dent.”

The navigator smiled at them. “Chief. Mr. Dent.”

“And our pilot is Mr. Tahmelapachme.”

The pilot sat in a padded chair with his hands on complicated levers with all kinds of buttons on them, and his feet strapped into brass pedals he was pumping like a bicycle. No—like a person walking.
Colossus
was moving in step with Tahmelapachme.

“Call me Dull Knife,” the pilot said, not taking his eyes off the scene ahead of them.

And what a scene it was. Archie had been up high before—in his family's airship, the
Hesperus
, and even higher in (and above) Cahokia in the Clouds. But looking out through the eyes of
Colossus
was like being a giant himself, walking along in a make-believe world of little toys. They passed the edge of a forest to their left, the trees brushing against their legs like tall grass in a summer field. To their right was a low-slung, hill-like Pawnee earth lodge, the size of a doll's house. Tiny toy cattle scurried away like overweight, spotted chipmunks, and two mouse-sized children scrambled to the top of the earth lodge to wave at the giant in their midst. Lieutenant Pajackok gave them a little
toot-toot
with the steam whistle, and they shouted and waved back happily.

Captain Custer gave his lieutenant a mildly disapproving look. The navigator cleared his throat and muttered, “Sorry, sir,” but when Custer's back was turned, he gave the boys in the cockpit a quick smile.

The steam man lurched awkwardly, and everyone in the cockpit grabbed on to something to steady themselves.

“Mr. Magoro, if you're finished with your tour, we could use you at your post. Mr. Tahmelapachme is making a hash of it without you,” Custer said. “Easy march.”

“Right away, sir!”

Clyde climbed up into a small chair high above and behind everyone else in the cockpit and swung a snare drum around in front of him. From a pocket beside his chair he produced a pair of drumsticks, gave them a theatric twirl, and then started to beat out a march. Like magic, the pilot fell into a regular rhythm with his steps, and the rocking of the steam man smoothed out considerably.

“Much better for all concerned,” Custer said without looking back at them. “All right. We've officially left United Nations territory. We have a Right of Passage treaty with the Pawnee, but we'll have to watch our step from now on.”

Literally
, Archie thought as they stepped over a tractor.

“Pretty great, isn't it?” Clyde asked Archie as he drummed. “Best way to travel, and that's a fact. Here—open this rearview hatch and see if they're there.”

Archie opened the little horizontal port. It was built for soldiers to look out of, and he had to stand on tiptoe to see out.

“What am I looking for?” Archie asked.

“The dogs.”

Archie shifted his focus lower, and he saw them. There was a pack of them, as small as ants, all yipping and chasing the giant steam man like they were nipping at a steam carriage. Archie laughed.

“They're almost always there right after we leave town.” Clyde said. “I love it.”

“They're breaking off now,” Archie said. “Most of them, anyway. One little brown one is still chasing us.”

Clyde laughed. “He'll tucker out soon and we'll lose him.”

“Mr. Dent, you had better go below now,” Captain Custer said. “Settle in. Get some rest. I hope to catch the train by nightfall. Oh, and I'm planning on having Late Dinner in my cabin. If you can wait till then, you're welcome to join me.”

“Thank you, sir,” Archie said. “I will.”

Clyde gave Archie a smile and a salute with one of his drumsticks, and Archie started the long, nauseating climb back down.
Hachi would be right at home in the swinging compartment
, he thought. And Fergus—Fergus would never have left engineering. He'd still be down there dissecting everything with the engineers.

Archie wondered where they were now, and if they missed him. He certainly missed them. That, as Clyde would say, was a fact.

7

“A first-rate chicken,” Custer told the cook clearing their table. Clyde had called him Mr. P., but his full name was Parsons.

Parsons grumbled something that might have been a thanks and might have been an insult and went back downstairs.

Archie sat with Custer at the little writing desk in Custer's small quarters in the steam man's head. Custer had opened the mouth a couple of feet, and all through dinner they'd been cooled by the constant breeze of
Colossus
moving forward. Archie had also been treated to an incredible view of Pawnee territory as they pursued the train. At least he hoped they were pursuing the train; Custer didn't seem to have them following any train tracks.

Custer glanced at himself in the mirror and smoothed his mustache before settling back in his chair with a cup of coffee. “So,” he said. “You still haven't told me how you came to survive that fall from Cahokia in the Clouds.”

Archie looked away, out at the advancing terrain. He had only known what he really was—the Jandal a Haad, “Made of Stone”—for a few weeks. In all that time, he'd told no one else besides Hachi and Fergus, Mrs. Moffett, and his parents.

The people he
called
his parents, at least.

Without realizing he was doing it, Archie put a hand to his arm, covering the crack underneath his shirt. The crack that showed there was nothing but stone underneath his skin.

“You don't like to talk about it,” Custer said.

“No,” Archie said. “I'm sorry.”

Custer nodded. “I understand. Mrs. Moffett says you're something different. Something special. But you don't want to be different and special, do you? You'd rather just be a normal kid doing normal kid things.”

Archie nodded. Before he'd known what he was, all he'd wanted was adventure. Excitement. He'd gotten that, but the trade-off had been losing everything he believed to be true: that he was his parents' son; that the Septemberist Society could handle any challenge the Mangleborn threw at them;
that he was a human being
. He'd been living a lie before, believing in things that weren't real, but he found himself wishing he could go back to being boring if it meant he could be normal again.

“So whatever this is that let you survive that fall, you hate it. You're embarrassed by it,” Custer said. “Well, let me tell you a story, Mr. Dent. I, Captain George Armstrong Custer, was last in my class at West Point Military Academy.
Dead last
. The other boys laughed at me. Told me I was a joke. That I'd never earn my stripes. But I'm good at things they can't grade you on. I'm a good leader of men. They may call me Iron Butt because I ride them hard and run a tight ship, but they respect me. They'd follow me into hell if I asked them to.”

Custer took a sip of his coffee. “There's something else I'm good at, and that's being decisive. All those nobs who knew their military history backward and forward, what good did it do them on the battlefield when they couldn't decide to retreat or charge? Being a good leader, being decisive, those are
gifts
, like whatever it is that makes you strong, Mr. Dent. If the trade-off for those is coming in last in my class at West Point, if it's being laughed at and called steam-for-brains by my classmates, then I accept that. In fact, I embrace it. I tell everybody I can I was last in my class at West Point. Because you know where a lot of those jokers are now who got better grades'n me? They're washed out. They're shopkeepers, and teachers, and businessmen. And where am I?” Custer gestured at the room around them. “I'm captain of my own steam man at thirty-one, in charge of my own regiment, sent on a special mission by General Robert E. Lee himself.”

Custer leaned across the table and pointed at Archie. “
Whatever it is you're embarrassed about, whatever it is you wish was normal, embrace it.
Own it
. Because that's what makes you special. And being special is way better than being normal, no matter what it costs.”

Bugle notes came to them on the breeze, soft and distant—messages from the advance aeronaut scouts they'd launched before.
Colossus
responded with a series of blasts from its steam whistle, and the speaking trumpet on Custer's wall came to life.

“Scouts report steam bearing south-southwest, Captain,” Lieutenant Pajackok reported from up above.

Custer took the speaking trumpet in hand. “Excellent, Lieutenant. Adjust course, and blow to clear for action.”

“Aye, sir, adjusting course and blowing to clear for action,” Pajackok replied.

Archie saw the steam man change direction slightly before Custer pulled the lever that closed
Colossus's
mouth, and the steam man's whistle blew a new series of notes. Within seconds, two men had scrambled up the ladder from below and were taking the captain's room apart, tucking his personal effects away and lashing the furniture to the walls. Captain Custer put his big broad cavalry hat on, stopped to see how it looked in the mirror, and climbed the ladder to the bridge.

“Come along, Mr. Dent,” he said. “We have a train to catch.”

Archie climbed after Custer. Clyde gave him a smile as he entered the bridge, but didn't stop his drumming. Archie didn't know how he could keep it up; Clyde had been drumming for hours. Even more incredibly, Dull Knife was still at the controls, marching the steam man along in time with Clyde's beat.

Colossus
crested a ridge, and there in the distance was a train. Archie was surprised to see it was chugging toward them, not away from them.

Lieutenant Pajackok saw his confusion and smiled. “You forget, Mr. Dent,
Colossus
can do something a train can't.” He nodded at the maps in front of him. “We can take a shortcut.”

“Mr. Pajackok, signal the scouts to intercept the locomotive, and kindly ask it to stop.”

“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant said. He pulled a cord, sending the aeronauts a message via a series of whistles. The aeronauts responded with bugles, and the propellers on their steam-powered backpacks accelerated, swinging them down toward the train. Archie watched as they matched the locomotive's speed, caught it with grappling hooks, and began to pull themselves down to it.

Something yipped excitedly beneath them, and Archie squeezed his way to the big glass eyes at the front of the bridge to look down. There, barking and wagging his tail excitedly at the aeronauts and the train in the distance, was the little brown dog that had followed them out of Cahokia on the Plains.

“He's still there!” Archie said. “The little dog. Clyde, he's still with us!”

The dog ran out ahead of them like he was another advance scout, and Clyde leaned forward to see him. “Well I'll be. The little guy's persistent, I'll give him that!”

Suddenly a golden raygun beam shot out from somewhere below them, hitting the ground right beneath the dog. Dirt exploded all over him, and he jumped aside and cowered.

“Somebody's shooting at him!” Archie cried.

“Mr. Pajackok!” Custer said. “Find out whoever's doing that!”

Another golden beam lanced out, hitting the ground right behind the dog. He leaped forward and spun, tail beneath his legs, trying to understand what was attacking him.

Archie heard a clatter behind him and realized the drumbeat had stopped. Clyde was down from his chair and leaping into the hole that led below.