The Mask And The Master (Mechanized Wizardry Book 2) (39 page)

But, a few weeks ago, a golden carriage had pulled up to the homesteads.  And now, the families were clustered again in the green-grass courtyard that separated each of the houses, listening to a new set of visitors with a new kind of message.

“Go on, now,” Mr. Haris said, patting Columbine on the back.

She stepped forward, her big eyes searching across each face.  Some of the adults gave her a little smile.  The kids looking back at her tilted their heads, perplexed that someone their age would be traveling with a bunch of hard-bitten farmers from Two Forks.  She ignored the parents and talked directly to those forest children.

“I had a house like that,” she said, pointing over their shoulders at the hand-built cabin, its timbers glowing red in the midday sun.   She turned to the tangled plot of bright green squash. “We had a field like that.  I had a family, just like you’ve got. Then some crooks came to our farm and burned it down.

“My sister and I had to run.  I never saw my parents again.  My sister Ariell was the only person I had.  I loved her.  And she protected me.  We lived in the Tarmic for months and months.  We had nowhere else to go. Then we finally found a home at Two Forks.  The farmers took us in.  We had a new home, like you’ve got, with hot food, and beds, and roofs, and shoes.  It felt so good to be in a place like that again.”

Columbine wet her lips.  “Now my sister’s dead,” she said, fighting to keep her voice steady.  “She was shot in the back.”

She looked at a little boy, just a tiny bit younger than her, with curly blond hair.  His mouth was a little open, and he was listening hard. Columbine pointed at a tall, short-haired girl standing next to him, her lanky arms crossed over her chest.

“Is that your sister?”

The little boy nodded, his eyes wide.

“I think you should hug her,” Columbine said, very quietly.

The boy looked up at his sister, and gingerly wrapped his arms around her waist.  She rubbed her brother’s back.  Her face was very pale as she looked down at Columbine, a mixture of pity and fear in her squinty eyes.

“I don’t know why the crooks picked us,” Columbine went on.  “I think it was just bad luck that my parents… that they’re gone.  But you know what?  My sister Ariell didn’t die from bad luck.  She died because we’re in a war.  We all are.  You, me, your parents.  We’re all in a war, right now.”

“No I’m not,” said another girl.

“Yes you are.  The Golden Caravan came here, right, and gave you some stuff?  Neat things, to make life easier?  Well, down in Delia, the greedy Petronauts and their bosses, the Pretenders, don’t want you to have those things.  And I mean
really
don’t want you having ‘em. 

“‘Well, what do I care?  They’re far away!  Let ‘em be mad!’  Well, that’s what I thought too,” she said, her voice ringing in the air.  “And then the Petronauts showed up in Two Forks, and shot my sister in the back.”

“You had Petronauts come to your town?” one of the older men said.  Mr. and Mrs. Haris and the other adults nodded, and the families started to stir.  Mrs. Haris tapped her fingers on Columbine’s shoulder, urging her on.

“They were looking for the Golden Caravan,” she said.  “We didn’t want to tell them anything.  And so they started shooting.”

“Stars and Spheres—!”

“How could they—”

“They came all the way up here?”

“It’s a war,” she said again.  “They’re at war with the Golden Caravan, and anyone who’s ever seen them, no matter who.  If the Petronauts came to Two Forks, then next they’ll go to Hamners, and Ruby Glen, and everywhere.  And they’ll come here.”

“They wouldn’t come here.”

“What are we supposed to do?”

“I knew that Golden Caravan was trouble,” grumbled one of the women in a baggy cotton dress.  “We should never have taken that junk.”

“The Golden Caravan set us up!” another agreed.  “They’re the ones who started this trouble!”

“You can be mad at them, I guess,” Columbine said.  “But the Delians are the ones who shot my sister.”

It was very quiet in the courtyard.  A little goat bleated mournfully in the pen, rubbing its face against a wooden post.  Columbine stared down at the ground.  All those eyes looking at her, so sad and scared, were too much all of a sudden.

Mrs. Haris put her hand gently on Columbine’s shoulder.  “I’d like to go sit down,” she whispered.

“That’s fine,” the woman whispered back.  She steered Columbine into the arms of Mr. Haris, who scooped her up and excused himself from the courtyard.  One of the homesteaders, with concern in his blue eyes, steered them to a bench on the far side of the house.  Mr. Haris carried her there, rubbing her on the back as they walked.  She leaned her face against his shoulder automatically.  He smelled like dust and stale snuff.

There was a tightness in the center of her chest, the sort of pressure that could easily turn into a geyser of tears.  But it didn’t make any moves up her throat, or towards her eyes.  It just stayed as a big old knot in her chest.

She knew it would stay there, and she knew that it would fade.  She knew, because it’s exactly what she had felt the last time she gave her speech, except that the knot had been just a little bigger last time.  Next time, it would be smaller still, until, Columbine guessed, one day she’d be able to make her speech without anything bubbling up in her chest at all.

I suppose I’m getting better at this
, she thought.

As they sat down to rest, the murmuring of the adults in the courtyard was just one more background sound, low and dark in the hot forest air.

Yeoman Richmond wiped the sweat away for the hundredth time.  It was sweltering inside the machine.  Little breaths of wind made their way through the ventilation slits from time to time, but when the air outside was about the same temperature as the surface of her skin, it was going to take more than a little breeze to improve her mood.  The small of her back was sticking to the rubber-coated seat, right at the place where her sleeveless shirt rode up and her linen pants sank down.  She shimmied forward on the stool, her skin pulling away from the seat with a sound like a wet mop slapping on tiles. 
A Golden Caravan may look nice
, she thought, perched awkwardly in the driver’s seat,
but it’s not much fun to drive.

She peered out through the front hatch, one hand on the steering wheel and one on the gearbox.  The cramped cockpit had felt like it was bristling with levers when she’d first entered training, but now the controls were second nature.  The steering wheel was a wooden circle on a long pole in front of her; the hand throttle, at the front of her seat on the right; a gearbox to her left with a high gear for cruising, a low gear for climbing surfaces, and reverse for getting unstuck; a separate handbrake for the left and right tracks jutting out from the dash, flanking the steering wheel on either side; a handle at eye level for opening and closing the front hatch; and the tail end of a periscope folded up in the ceiling, so she could pull it down and not be totally blind if the hatch had to be closed.  Her feet only had two pedals to dance across, a clutch and a footbrake.  The footbrake was a lovely idea for dividing up tasks between her upper half and her lower half, but it was too weak to put any serious dent in the Caravan’s momentum.  It took removing her hands from the steering wheel and jamming on both handbrakes and the footbrake to actually stop the machine in a hurry.  Something for the techs to fix when they finally got back to the keep.

Her foot pressed down on the clutch as she shifted into low gear.  The motor thrummed with high-pitched protest.  Miraculously, they’d been in cruising gear for almost a quarter-hour, the sturdy machine sailing over your run-of-the-mill divots and bushes without any impediment.  But Richmond had seen the shallow ridge coming up, and a slope like that needed a little more torque to climb.

She peered out through the hatch again.  The two yeomen out front were already scaling the hill, about twenty meters ahead of her.  By design, the Caravan’s top speed was only as fast as a person could sprint.  The machine was too blind to travel unescorted, so it didn’t make sense it fast enough to propel it at hurricane speeds away from the men and women who’d protect it.  More to the point, their machine shops hadn’t been able to make an engine strong enough to carry it much faster, given the weight of its armor and cargo.  In addition to the gifts they gave out, all the rations and forestry gear the five-person team needed for weeks of travel were stored in the spacious back compartments.

Having given out ninety percent of their trinkets, the Caravan probably could manage a little extra speed, she mused.  But the yeomen outside would hate her if she bumped up the speed another few kilometers per hour, even if meant getting back to the keep that much sooner.  Just because she’d never do it didn’t mean the thought didn’t bring a smile to her face as the Caravan started trudging up the hill.

“Halt!”

Richmond frowned.  It was virtually impossible to make out anything over the thunder of the engine and the rattling of the tracks on either side.  But she could have sworn she’d heard a—

“Stop, in the name of the Throne!”

She saw the yeomen guarding her scramble for their pistols, which was her cue to slam the front hatch shut.  Richmond’s heart started racing.  That unfamiliar voice was unnaturally loud and undoubtedly unfriendly.  She swung the steering wheel as hard as she could to the right and squeezed the hand throttle.  The engine howled as the Caravan lurched forward on the uneven ground.  She folded the periscope down from the ceiling, pressing one eye to the lens.  There were only small trees ahead of her, and flatter ground not too far away where she could switch into cruising gear.  Richmond panned the periscope towards the ridge and saw her starboard guard fall to the ground before getting off a shot. 
Burn me!  Who’s out there?

Thick pinging sounds rang out in front of her.  The Caravan was taking musket fire.  Richmond swore and stomped on the clutch, switching into cruising gear early.  The tracks shuddered as the engine’s sound deepened.  She heard the clatter of footsteps behind her and felt hands on the back of her seat. 

“What’s going on?”  said Welters, the thin-voiced cargo chief.  Not having anything to say, Richmond just kept driving.  Welters took the periscope of his own accord, crowding the space near her shoulder.

There was a mighty blast outside.  Either their attackers had brought cannons, or that was yeoman Fisk in the rearguard firing back with redstone.  She heard a brief scream; with any luck, from the enemy side.  As if it wasn’t deafening enough in the Caravan, the pinging impacts from musket balls redoubled against the plating.  There was no way regular shot could break through, but the scale of the volley was still troubling. 
How many of them are there?

“Well?” she snapped, feeling the acceleration build and not much liking driving blind.  “What in the black flames is going on out there?”

Welters spun almost in a complete circle with the periscope to his eye; quite a contortionist’s feat in the cramped cockpit.  Another blast shook the earth to their left.  “Dozens of them,” he said, stunned.  He swung the periscope again.  “Fisk is firing back, but I can’t see—”

“Can’t see what?”  Richmond demanded when Welters cut off mid-sentence.  “Report, yeoman!”

“Fisk just fell,” he said.  “And… Sweet Spheres, it’s—”

The Caravan shook as something enormous struck it on the roof, followed by a second massive impact, like a catapult barrage.  Welters yelped as the periscope suddenly bashed him in the face, sending him teetering into the wall.  The periscope went into spasms of inanimate agony, accompanied with a rhythmic banging from the ceiling above their heads.  Someone up there was bashing the periscope into scrap.

Welters swallowed.  It echoed cavernously in the cockpit, like he’d just forced a whole apple down his throat.  “I’ll guard the hatch,” he said, not convincing either of them.  She heard the slick sound of metal on leather as he drew his pistol, but didn’t bother to look back at him as he disappeared from her tiny room.

They had a decent bit of momentum built up now.  Yeoman Richmond let go of the steering wheel and snatched the two handbrakes.  She stabbed her boot against the footbrake and squeezed the two metal handles so hard her knuckles popped.  Welters yelped behind her as the vehicle stopped short.  There was an ungainly thud against the roof, and, even more gratifyingly, a cacophonous avalanche as a body tumbled down the front of the Caravan.  It struck her closed view hatch on the way down and landed with a crackle of leaves and twigs on the forest floor.

Richmond leapt off the brakes and opened the hand throttle as wide as she could.  The engine roared into life and the Caravan lurched forward towards that prone body on the ground.   She’d run these bastards down, no matter how many dozen of them there were.

Richmond frowned.  The Caravan had rumbled forward at least ten meters, without the tell-tale jolt of a body beneath the treads.  Where had he gone?   A quick peek through the strangely angled periscope only showed her shadows and bent metal.  She gritted her teeth.  The pings of shot against the armor had stopped completely, which was the opposite of reassuring.  It meant that all three yeomen outside were down, and the bad guys were smart enough to know their shots alone weren’t getting anywhere with the Caravan.  Driving blind meant she was as likely to get them killed in a gorge as she was to escape.  Richmond held her breath, wrapped her fingers around the metal handle and pulled down, swinging the front hatch open.

She leaned forward, making a quick scan through the six-by-eight portal.  Light-barked arliss trees; a carpet of ferns on the ground; a rotting stump in forty meters, she noticed, automatically correcting her course to avoid it.  But no sign of—

Yeoman Richmond flung herself backwards as the hand came down.  The black metal gauntlet slapped around the outside edge of the hatch with a resounding clang.  She watched, frozen, as it started to pull upwards, yanking the hatch beyond its full extension.  The metal plate started to bend before Richmond grabbed the handle with both hands and shoved it away, back to the ‘closed’ position.  The black hand disappeared as the hatch flew out of its grasp, but the metal was already seriously warped.  A pointed peak at the bottom of the metal plate was open to the world.  Wind came whistling into her face through the gap.