They were a formidable duo. Tomas the Rabid Dwarf: a very short man – although not truly dwarfish – with bad teeth and an impressive mustache, so called for his temper and predilection for explosions and unprovoked violence. And Yelm the Iron Giant: single-armed and Cyclopean after the final engagements of the War, so named because he stood eight feet tall and consistently survived what broke other men. Together, they ranged the European lands once ravaged by the armies and the creations of the New Scientists and the Madboy Kings, hunting down the Haunts which had survived the Second Thirty Years War. Those peasants and burghers who had likewise survived the conflicts, and who now found themselves piecing back together the old nations in spite of the vestigial aristocracies, paid well for proof that yet another of the monsters and machines created by the Madboys had been destroyed, and so Tomas and Yelm were able to stitch together a living in the midst of the ruins and the fear.
Ten years after the end of the Second Thirty Years War the Dwarf and the Giant came to Terriero on the Mougan coast to collect the bounty on the latest Haunt to fall to their partnership. The city of Terriero lay somewhere in the valley below the pair, obscured by a dense layer of smoke and the shadows cast by the surrounding mountains. A swift, ancient river had spent the long ages of its life carving a notch into the mountains on its way to the sea, creating a sudden harbor in the otherwise rugged coastline.
Tomas looked up at the Giant. “That’s a lot of smoke,” he said. He sniffed with a nose rather too large for his face. “Smells like…industry. Coal and chemicals. Must be quite a city, no?”
Yelm could hear the saliva filling the Dwarf’s mouth. It was always the same: Tomas would get drunk, try to cuckold someone (the more important, the better), and get them both thrown out of town before Yelm could fill his belly.
“A little civilization at last!” Tomas laughed and slapped the side of his cart, laden with chemicals and weapons and the mortal remains of a biological/mechanical style of Haunt. The Giant was reduced to drayage, as the Dwarf’s goats had been killed by the hybrid. “Must be a prosperous city to produce this much smoke, eh? They’ll have food, soft beds, hygiene.”
The last few towns the pair had visited had been decidedly provincial, the townspeople poor and hardworking. It was not a life to produce much in the way of soft, feminine beauty; at least not by the Dwarf’s lights. Yelm knew that was what his partner meant, but he couldn’t share Tomas’s excitement. Women tended not to be very comfortable around a man of his size. But there was something else. They hadn’t passed any villages or even solitary farms in days, he realized. Nothing to supply the needs of a large and prosperous body of citizenry. Unless all such needs were supplied by trade via Terriero’s deep port, he conceded to himself. He shook his head; the observable facts did not add up.
Tomas misinterpreted the Giant’s negation. “No, amigo?” He gauged the smoke again. “It is a lot of smoke,” he said. “But I am certain that the lovely ladies of the city have many means of protecting their beauty from the ravages of such an environment.” He chuckled and stroked his mustachios. “Let us go and find out, shall we?”
The Giant shrugged lopsidedly. A portion of his mind wanted him to simply, gently, render the Dwarf unconscious, and thus spare them both much trouble. The rest of his mind acknowledged the task to be too difficult, too unlikely. The Dwarf was much stronger and tougher than he looked. And the Giant was so very tired.
Too tired to fight, he thought. Which was a bad thought for a man whose life and livelihood depended upon his ability to fight. And it suddenly seemed to the Giant that his mind was filled with doubt. Nothing at which he could yet point his massive finger, but a generalized uncertainty too diffuse to be identified. He shivered in spite of the southern heat. Uncertainty and weariness in a bounty hunter usually led to a dead bounty hunter. And the Giant found that he very much did not want to die a bounty hunter.
#
The trek down the slope next to the tumbling river was accomplished via a very good road of carefully interlocked stones – a testament to the route’s erstwhile importance, when before the War Terriero had been a major port supplying half the region’s interior cities. But trade must have been long reduced; weeds crept among the flags from the verges, reducing the road to a double track. Tomas and Yelm soon passed into the thick layer of apparently perpetual smoke, eyes and noses streaming with irritation. Yelm leaned away from the cart’s handle, using his bulk to brake the conveyance down the decline. They passed piles of crumbling masonry and rotting timbers next to the tumbling river as it chuckled over a bed of rounded stones like skulls in the gloom.
The remnants of an older quarter of the city perhaps? Yelm asked himself.
His unease increased, and even Tomas’s spirits were dampened as they proceeded. But the city’s great iron gates seemed rusted open, which the pair took as a positive sign, and the high, fortified walls themselves, though stained with soot and fans of chemical taint, stood tall and unmarred by signs of battle. Yelm wondered if perhaps the Mad Days had passed Terriero over. He would not have thought that possible given all that he’d experienced, but he had to concede that he’d not spent much of the War in Iberia.
The pair passed though the wall, beneath the deep stone arches of the gateway, and stopped to take their first close look at the city. Although the sun stood well above the horizon to the southwest, none of its light penetrated to the streets. Harsh chemical lamps glared actinic in the gloom, fed by pipes that bundled and branched against the pitted stone buildings brooding above the pavements. Yelm would have assumed it to be the middle of the night if he hadn’t been so certain of the rate of their passage. Every window was shuttered tightly, every door closed and heavy-looking. The main thoroughfare of the city ran straight ahead, barren in the gloom, bereft of travelers. Yelm thought that the surrounding buildings must be residences, and fairly grand residences at that, given the ornate flairs of their solid stone construction and the lack of trade signs overhanging their portals.
“A little run down, don’t you think?” Tomas said, and Yelm nodded. It was obviously not the bastion of elegant civilization that Dwarf had been hoping for.
For all their size and ornament, the facades were pitted and stained. Soot settled on the pair’s shoulders as they stood, and Yelm noted no other footprints or tracks near the gates. Tomas pulled a set of brass-rimmed goggles from a vest-pocket and tugged a scarf up over his mouth.
“Cover yourself, mi hermano,” the Dwarf said. “Wouldn’t do to contract blacklung at your stage of life!” He cackled.
Their business was deadly, and they sported scars from scores of close calls. It would be unfortunate indeed to fall victim to the more insidious effects of the New Science after so long surviving the obvious dangers. Yelm deftly pulled his own goggles onto his head, wrapping around his face a scarf composed of three normal such articles knotted together.
Thus armored, they strode forward. Yelm continued to scan for signs of life under the spitting chemical lamps, and even the normally loquacious Dwarf was silent. At one point as he peered down a dimly-lit side street, Yelm thought he saw a pair of weak red lights, a notable contrast to the ubiquitous chemical lamps. But he blinked and they were gone.
The buildings changed as they walked further into the city, growing larger and less ornamented, and before long the pair heard heavy footsteps echoing from a broad side street. Yelm found himself feeling relieved at the prospect of finally seeing someone other than themselves, and hoped they would be able to ask directions of the stranger. His design was foiled when a large brass automaton hove out of the gloom. Gears clicked and whirred within the machine’s open framing as it stomped on rubber-padded pods across the main street, carrying a huge, crude wooden crate.
Tomas had put his hands on the steel and wood pommels of a pair of pistols thrust through his belt upon hearing the footsteps. Now he relaxed. “Mira. Would you just look at that?” he said. “It’s like some sort of miniature Warwalker. But no weapons. If that sort of thing is normal around here….” He whistled. “What a life of ease they must live! Apart from the soot, I mean. Maybe that is why the doors are shut so tight?”
Yelm felt constantly frustrated by his friend’s lack of financial savvy. In his less charitable moments, he was able to admit that Tomas was the reason they were required to continue hunting instead of retiring to some villa in the Italian Alps. But his present thoughts ran along broader lines. Automata were doubtless less expensive in the long run than human porters or draft animals, but they must be expensive to build, and so only the rich would feel their benefit. That had been the whole reason that, during the War, they had seen Madboy Barons and Scientist Kings, and not New Scientist Plowhands and Philosopher Tinkers. And what of the porters they displaced? he thought. He shook his giant, shaggy head, and held tightly to the hope that Terriero was more than an assemblage of automata and faded gentry.
Tomas laughed. “So the New Science does not always in end in Madness,” he said. “Let us go get our bounty!”
Yelm nodded and forced himself to dismiss his reservations and focus on more immediate concerns. They needed the money, and a good night’s rest. He thought that such a crate must be going somewhere in particular, a destination that must include some human being for whom the merchandise was intended. Someone from whom they might get directions to the city’s Master. He gestured after the automaton, whose tracks in the soot were still the only evidence of life. It felt good to make a decision.
“Right you are,” Tomas said. “Let’s follow it.”
The mechanical man had already disappeared into the gloom, but the pair easily followed its trail. The buildings down the side street were very different from those on the main thoroughfare. Here, as on the outer fortifications, the walls were more thickly crusted with soot, the stonework more deeply pocked and pitted and discolored. There were fewer windows and doors, too, although all were as tightly shuttered as any the pair had so far seen. And still they saw no people, no trade signs, no signals of human life. Streets branched off either side in a regular grid, each smaller than the one they walked, each apparently untraveled. Somewhere beyond the smoke, the sun approached the horizon; Yelm’s stomach rumbled.
They came soon after to a small square, in the center of which stood a curious construction. A squat metal tower ten feet in diameter rose some twenty feet tall; stacks projected from the top, one belching black smoke and the other venting dirty gray steam. Metal cogs spun freely at the end of thick shafts projecting a few inches from the tower.
Tomas eyed it suspiciously. “Does no look like a weapon,” he said.
Yelm stared at the contraption, trying to infer its purpose from its design. He watched the smoke rising to join the general darkness overhead and wondered how many such squares must be set up around Terriero. Then he heard more heavy footsteps, and turned to watch a second automaton lurch into view. It approached the tower, and Yelm heard its gears clank and thunk into new configurations. The machine stepped forward until it stood aligned with one of the whirring cogs, upon which it suddenly impaled itself.
There was a momentary screech as metal ground on metal, then the pair heard a high-pitched, clicking whir. Seconds later, the automaton stepped back, turned, and proceeded down one of the smaller side streets, its gait much increased.
“Clever,” Tomas said, and clapped his hands. “Automatic clockwork winding stations. Fantastic, even! Think of all the manual labor such a design might accomplish!”
The implications of a tireless, ceaseless workforce ran once more through Yelm’s mind. Ease, wealth to spare, time for study and philosophy. For the Masters, anyway. But by all the Powers, where were the people? He shivered. And far off down a side street, he saw again the two, dim, red lights. Again, he blinked, his eye tearing in spite of the goggles, and the lights were gone. What is this place? he thought.
#
They attempted to follow this new automaton more closely. The street it trod paralleled the original thoroughfare, headed toward the harbor. Yelm reasoned that visiting merchantmen would need to address some kind of Harbormaster, who would by all means know where a bounty hunter would collect on a Haunt.
Unfortunately for the bounty hunters, Tomas could not keep up with the automaton even with Yelm doing the heavy work pulling the cart, and they lost the mechanical man’s trail at the next major intersection in a sudden welter of tracks.
“Now what?” Tomas said, petulance staining his tone.
The Dwarf was becoming frustrated, Yelm thought. Which state usually lead to some sort of petty violence. They couldn’t have that before they collected their bounty. He looked around, then pointed to the nearest door. It seemed to be that of a large house.
Tomas said, “Right. Ask directions. Right.” He pressed an oversized button next to an ornately carved door with corroding brass fittings, activating a gong somewhere in the building. The pair waited what felt like hours, their noses slowly filling with gray mucous, until a small panel opened in the door. The man peering through the small opening wore goggles too, which reflected the glare of the chemical lamps so that he appeared to have no eyes, just blank, frosted glass.
“Yes?” The voice of the doorman was a ruined whisper.
“Greetings, my good man,” Tomas said, drawing the doorman’s attention downward. He swept through a low bow. “We seek guidance through your lovely city, having lost our way in our search for the local Master, or Burgher, or Mayor.”
The doorman took a long while to reply; his whisper finally drifted through the open portal. “Mr. Fulginate has left instructions that all inquiries are to be directed to the Magistrate.”
The little portal clicked shut before Tomas could reply.
“That was terribly rude,” Tomas said. He looked over his shoulder at Yelm.
The Giant nodded wearily and stepped forward. His enormous fist slammed once into the door, sending echoes booming through the space beyond. It seemed to take all his energy.
The little portal opened again, and once more the doorman’s phlegm-wracked whisper vied with the hiss of the chemical lamps. “Mr. Fulginate instructs you to attend the Magistrate before you attempt to transact any business in Terriero.”
“That is all well and good,” Tomas said quickly, “But we have no earthly idea where this Magistrate is. Unless your Mr. Fulginate wants us to simply bumble around and knock on every single door in this rather quiet town, I would ask that you please provide us with more explicit directions.” The Dwarf’s voice would have been more nasal, more whinging, were it not for the snot clogging his nose.
The doorman paused once more for a very long while, and Yelm wondered if he was listening to a speaking tube or some such contraption. Then, in a whisper only a little above a breath, “On the main square, near the harbor. Opposite the main gate. You really can’t miss it.”
The little portal clicked shut, once again forestalling further questions or even thanks.
Tomas turned and said, “That Mr. Fulginate must be rather an unpleasant fellow if his servants behave that poorly.” The Giant nodded. “I hope the Magistrate is slightly more forthcoming.”
Yelm considered the doorman’s behavior – only his final statement had held any trace of personality. He felt eyes on him, observing the interaction, calculating its effects. The town made his chest feel tight.
The pair headed off again. The quiet creak of the cart echoed strangely off the stones of the street and the houses, muted but not completely suppressed by the reeking miasma. At one point, Yelm thought he just heard muffled footsteps over the hiss of the chemical lamps gleaming in the artificial darkness, but when he looked around he saw no movement, only the dimmest hint of scarlet radiance.
Is it a Haunt? he wondered. That would explain why the city appeared so empty, all the people fled or dead or in hiding. He felt a little better having an explanation for the eerie emptiness of the city. Tired as he was, he still he felt that they could handle a Haunt; they’d been doing so for decades.
But that was the problem, he thought. They’d been hunting Haunts for decades, either under mercenary contract or as freelance bounty hunters. And what did they have to show for it? Yelm was tired of sleeping rough, tired of constant hunger. But they never seemed to be able to save any of their bounty money. His stomach growled and he knew he couldn’t blame the Dwarf entirely, however he wanted to. His feelings of uncertainty increased, and he wished he were tired enough for his mind to simply stop working.
He was tempted to simply leave the city, and the Devil take the bounty.
#
A long while later, Yelm had almost decided that they had gotten turned around again in the darkness. A fog seemed to be rolling in off the sea, mixing vilely with the smoke, confusing their senses even further. Then he heard a steady thumping that sounded to him like an army on the march.
Tomas growled, pulled his scarf down and spat. “Is that not delightfully ominous?” he said. “This place is really starting to get on my hump. Let us get this over with. We must nearly be there.”
And they were. They entered a great open space. The buildings surrounding the square were the largest Yelm had seen in Terriero, indeed in many towns even in the years before the Mad Days. In the center of the square hulked an enormous machine, black smoke and dirty gray steam billowing into the air at a prodigious rate. Looking closer, Yelm saw dozens of automata apparently plugged into the machine, but somehow powered down. He shivered when he saw heavy, spring-powered crossbows built into their torsos.
An army of combat mechanicals, he thought. Terriero is a Madboy’s fortress. And the Mad Days of the War might be ready to rise once more.
He took a deep breath through his wrap, trying to ease his tension. He was too seasoned a campaigner to panic, but he was also experienced enough to know that if things went wrong it would be very bad for them indeed.
Even Tomas was troubled by the revelation, although he for once kept his thoughts to himself.
The pair passed the silent clockwork soldiers to the largest facade on the square and the only open door they had seen in the city. They hadn’t gotten within fifteen paces of the doorway when a figure appeared out of the darkness of the interior. A brace of chemical lights affixed above the door only served to enhance the dimness beyond the open portal. The man confronting them wore a long black coat with a very high collar and wide-brimmed hat, all serving to completely obscure his face. Like the doorman, he also wore goggles, but his were lit from behind by a smoky red effulgence, and a sort of thin black smoke or steam drifted from beneath the hems and collar of his coat.
Yelm froze for a moment and considered offering battle; this was at best a Haunt – at worst, a Madboy. He restrained his inclinations, however; it was not wise to charge into battle without knowing a little of one’s opponent. And he was so weary.
The creature’s voice was a tinny buzz. “I am Mr. Fulginate, Magistrate of Terriero. Please state your business.”
Yelm twitched. This was Mr. Fulginate? The very same Magistrate whom the doorman had said that Mr. Fulginate had instructed them to see? The duality was confusing, troubling. Worse, Yelm thought, was the glowing red implication that this Fulginate had apparently been following them since they had entered the city.
Tomas made no such connection. He made a bow which combined a certain courtliness with a stiffness originating from the awkwardness of his joints rather than formality. “My companion and I,” he said, gesturing to Yelm, “Have it on good authority that the Magistrate of this city will pay a substantial bounty for the disposition of rogue Haunts of the Second Thirty Years War. Is this true?”
“Yes,” the Magistrate buzzed.
It must be a construct, Yelm thought, some kind of automaton. Where is the real Fulginate? Where are the people? He almost trembled as adrenalin began to war with fatigue. Will we have to fight our way out of the city? he thought.
“Excellent!” Tomas danced as his greed overcame his discomfort with the city. “Then we have something for you. A most interesting example of a biological-clockwork hybrid type. Somewhat disassembled.”
The qualifier was more than a little misleading, Yelm thought. The Haunt they’d taken in the ruins of Guernikan Pass had been shot, stabbed, and decapitated as they’d apprehended it. Further, he felt very uncomfortable with the idea of handing over fuel for research to what was at best the lackey of a Madboy. He glanced over his shoulder at the clockwork army; it was too late to retreat now.
“Present for inspection,” Mr. Fulginate buzzed.
Yelm reluctantly opened a panel in the top of the cart and with a small grunt lifted a mostly humanoid corpse from within. He laid it on the ground, and then removed the Haunt’s beaked and liver-spotted head from the cavity and placed that next to the lumpen body. The whole thing appeared to be a bizarre mixture of human arms and legs, avian feet and face, and metal blades affixed to fingers and toes. The matte black material covering the torso was crusted with chemical salts, and a metal fin protruded from the corpse.
Yelm heard a whirring noise from the Magistrate. He thought he saw the lenses of the goggles rotate, their smoky radiance changing shape. This could only end badly, he thought. He felt sick with adrenalin.
“Acceptable,” Mr. Fulginate buzzed. He made some sort of sign with his gloved left hand.
Relief washed through the Giant, overwhelming but not entirely replacing the dreary tension induced by the city. And in its wake, he was left only with the greater tension of the knowledge that Fulginate was almost certainly the cause of Terriero’s malaise.
A clockwork man clanked and whirred out of the Magistrate’s office, holding a small metal box in a pincer at the end of an awkwardly articulated arm. Yelm cautiously received the box and handed it to Tomas, who opened it and nodded.
“This will do nicely, Mr. Fulginate. It is our pleasure to do business with you,” he said. He handed the box back to the Giant, who placed it in the cavity evacuated by the corpse of the Haunt, all the while keeping his eye on the purported Magistrate.
The automaton gathered up the pieces of the Haunt of Guernikan Pass and stalked past the Magistrate.
“You may have two days freedom in Terriero,” Mr Fulginate the Magistrate said in his buzzing voice.
Tomas shivered ever so slightly. He looked at Yelm, who nodded. “We thank you for your courtesy,” he said. “But my companion and I are really only just tired? If you would be so good as to direct us to the nearest Inn? And tomorrow, we will need to acquire supplies?” He could make even what would have been simple statements sound like deferential requests when he wanted.
Mr. Fulginate hummed for a moment before he spoke. “The Inn is two streets back, one street left. Tomorrow, Roderigo’s Mercantile will resupply you. Two streets left of the Inn. That door bears a Trident mark.”
“Thank you, my lord,” Tomas said, and bowed again.
Yelm took the handle of the cart in his single, massive hand; it moved much more easily without the corpse of the Haunt inside. They headed straight away from the square. Yelm looked back over his shoulder and saw Mr. Fulginate’s glowing goggles seemingly trained on them across the expanse of worn, dusty stones. He had the enervating sensation of a doom postponed.
#
The pair soon spotted hanging over a doorway, well-lit by a trio of chemical lights, a sign carved with a bed. Yelm couldn’t understand how they’d missed it on their way in. It was the only such trade sign they’d seen in the city. A motionless automaton stood against the wall opposite the doorway. He had the uncomfortable feeling that the heavy brass machine was not simply derelict, but somehow powered down, watching them and waiting as Tomas pushed open the door of the hostel. He shivered again and almost decided to leave the city immediately, but his stomach growled at him with strongly contrary instructions. He removed the chest containing their bounty from the cart. And he took his ten-foot long steel glaive inside with him; it calmed his nerves. Although the weapon was completely inappropriate for the space – there was barely room for the Giant to stand up straight once past the door.
The hosteler stood from behind his desk as if in alarm; Yelm thought the tall, thin man poised for flight, a reaction the pair often received. The Giant took in the subdued lighting, the empty fireplace and tables, and wondered how such a place stayed in business; although there was nothing to indicate that it received any kind of trade at all, let alone a steady stream of seafarers. The hosteler continued to stare at the pair as they approached the desk.
At least, Yelm thought, it was a real man, flesh and blood.
“Ho, Inn-Keep!” Tomas said. “Have you any exceptionally inexpensive rooms? We do not need luxury. Although a bath would not be unwelcome. And food.” The Dwarf looked up at the Giant. “Lots of food. And a place to secure our cart?”
Yelm felt relief that Tomas had not asked for a brothel. Although it was still early in the evening; there was still time for the Dwarf to misbehave. Then he thought that perhaps his partner had finally caught some of the strangeness of Terriero, perhaps even felt the need for caution.
“I, ah….” The man’s already pallid face blanched further, and he paused as if calculating something. “You are the bounty hunters?” he asked.
“Tomas and Yelm, at your service,” Tomas said.
The hosteler nodded, although his features betrayed no recognition. “Then I can safely offer you rooms, for tonight only.” He looked the pair up and down. “Three pesos. Meals are three pesos each. No bath. Your cart will be safe on the street.”
Yelm thought that the innkeeper sounded as if he were merely reading from a list rather than answering questions.
Tomas pouted and looked back up at Yelm with a shrug. “That sounds fine, sir. We thank you. He reached into a pouch on his belt and dug out a handful of coins. “These will get us started.” He counted fifty pesos onto the desk.
Yelm thought that for a man whose business depended upon his interactions with strangers, the hosteler was awfully aloof and discourteous. But then, the Giant saw little enough evidence of any great business. Again he thought, Where are the people?
“This way,” the hosteler said, and led the pair down a short hallway with only five doors opening from it. “This is yours,” he said to Tomas, opening the door closest to the common room. “La letrina is out the end door. Do not stray from the court.” He stepped to the next door on the right and opened it for Yelm. “And this is yours. I’ve no beds to hold you.”
Yelm nodded. No one ever did.
The rooms were small and bare, but clean. Yelm noted bars over the only window. He imagined again some kind of Haunt roaming the streets by night – the only good reason for the abundance of automata and the dearth of travelers. But the Magistrate had offered no bounty. There was Madness in Terriero, he was sure; and if there was a Haunt, it was the Magistrate’s creature.
“I will have dinner ready in ten minutes,” the hosteler said, and left before the Dwarf could make further inquiries.
#
“Well? What do you think?” Tomas spoke around a mouthful of thin, bland stew.
Yelm didn’t know exactly what to make of his partner’s query, so he shrugged and continued scooping stew into his mouth. He’d had the innkeeper simply bring out the entire pot and three loaves of bread; they were already half gone.
“About Fulginate? Is he a Madboy?”
Yelm considered the idea once more as he chewed sour bread. Between the glowing eyes, the buzzing voice, and the smoking cuffs, if the Magistrate were not a Madboy – a New Scientist experimenting on himself – then he had clearly been replaced by a Haunt usurping his position and power. Either was bad for whatever people remained in Terriero, but Yelm couldn’t seem to muster the spark within him to care that much about a people he’d barely seen any evidence of. He shrugged again.
“Come on, Hombre!” Tomas hissed. He looked around the inn’s common room theatrically, as if to reassure himself that not one had slipped in on them unnoticed to spy for the Magistrate. He leaned forward, rocking into a kneeling position on his bench. “If he isn’t a Madboy, then he is damn well a Haunt. You saw it!”
Yelm nodded. He had seen it. He was a little surprised that Tomas had noticed, but conceded that the Magistrate’s performance had been sufficiently strong to pierce even the Dwarf’s legendary egotism. He ate more stew and tried to make himself feel the Dwarf’s urgency.
“Well, what are we going do about it?” Tomas sat back on his feet, outrage frank on his grimy, hairy face.
Yelm shook his head and grimaced. Even if the duo could hope to be effective against the supposed Mr. Fulginate, and his legions of automata, there was no bounty. It was a cynical thought, he knew, but he was feeling his age too much to try anything. And that provided an excuse he thought even the Dwarf would accept, if he could bring himself to voice it.
The Giant sighed when he realized that this must be the real reason he wasn’t as worked up as the Dwarf. When had he gotten old?
Tomas growled. “I can’t believe you. I was there when you went into Dr. Verineaux’s lab all by yourself. You killed six of his electric werewolves and then you chopped that Madboy’s fungoid head from his shoulders with his own lab table!” The Dwarf was breathing hard.
It was true. Yelm had assaulted Madboys in their lairs, often on his own. But that had been more than a decade ago, in his prime, when he’d been whole. His stump tingled; it was doing that more often lately, he realized. He dragged his gigantic hand over his face and shook his head again. He was tired. In his bones, he was tired.
“Maybe it’s time to do more than talk about retiring,” the Giant whispered hoarsely.
Tomas stared at Yelm. That sentence was more than the Dwarf could ever remember Yelm saying all at once. It was too much to think about, too suddenly. He stood on his bench, red-faced, mouth agape. He pointed at the Giant, and then his gaze drifted. He suddenly jumped down and stalked to his room, slamming the door.
Yelm drew a deep breath. They’d talk more in the morning, he was sure. In the meantime, he was still hungry.
#
It was difficult for the Giant to say for certain if it was later that night, or early the next morning, or even high noon the next day, when he awoke. He rubbed the scars that tightened the left side of his face, and replaced the thin mattress on the too-small bedframe before going out into the gloomy common room. The Dwarf already sat at a table, his head cupped in his small hands. Yelm felt only a little better prepared for what he knew must happen next.
Tomas looked up as the Giant sat across from him, and Yelm feared that he recognized the gleam in his companion’s eyes.
“I have been thinking about it,” Tomas said. “Maybe you are right.”
For a moment, Yelm dared entertain the hope that Tomas meant to retire.
“Maybe we cannot handle this Fulginate person.”
Yelm nodded slowly, almost holding his breath.
“Not alone, anyway. So what we do is we go to the next city, or the next two cities, and we talk to the Mayors and the Burghers.”
Yelm’s heart sank in his chest.
“They must know about the state of affairs here. We can raise an army and come back here and liberate Terriero from its thralldom to the Madboy Fulginate! Just like the old days!”
Yelm shook his head.
Oh, he supposed it could be done. They’d done much the same thing scores of times during the War. But. The War was over. Even if a few Haunts lingered here and there, or a Madboy or two had somehow survived, the War was over. It was no longer a world which cared for armies or besieging or soldiers. And Yelm himself didn’t want conflict or destruction, no matter how righteous the need. He just shook his head at his friend. Some little of his uncertainty had dissipated. In this, he was done.
That was all he had left, the only strength he had left: to defy his friend. To stop.
“What is the matter with you?” Tomas asked. This was not the Giant he knew. This was not the Iron Giant who had ripped the head off a monstrous worm in the sewers beneath Paris mere hours after losing his arm and his eye.
Yelm looked straight at Tomas. He raised his hand, big as the Dwarf’s head, and held it flat, palm toward the floor. The tremor was slight.
“Gods.” Tomas sagged, deflated, became more dwarfish as the implications set in. “How long?”
Yelm shrugged. “A year?” He dropped his hand. “I only ever wanted peace. And quiet. War is for the young. I want to retire.” His chest seemed to clench, and he almost grunted. He forced himself to take a very deep breath.
Tomas stared at Yelm as if at a stranger, as if at a caged Haunt. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t feel particularly old. Hells, he was only thirty-five. So was Yelm! Tomas shook his head in turn, mustachios wagging.
“It is months to walk to Vilnius,” Yelm said. He might still have family there. “We’ll talk on the way.”
#
They ate in silence, then picked up the cart, apparently unmolested through the night. Neither Yelm nor Tomas had said anything more even as they’d gathered their gear and let themselves out of the inn. Tomas seemed to be in shock, and Yelm only just had the strength to keep moving. He took the cart’s handle in his hand and started pulling with a groan, creaking toward the gates of the city, distant and invisible in the gloom. The derelict automaton remained where it had stood when they entered the inn, unrecovered.
Yelm considered the thing. It seemed to him to indicate that the Magistrate, whether Haunt or Madboy, wasn’t perfect, didn’t actually have perfect control over the automata or his city. Perhaps there was hope for Terriero if its remaining citizens, wherever they were, could simply last a little longer. It seemed to the Giant to be an apt analogy for the whole of Europe in the last decade.
“I wonder how a Madboy like Fulginate survived?” Tomas said quietly, unable to much focus on the Giant’s revelations.
Yelm nodded. It was true that nearly every Madboy had succumbed to their own ambitions during the Mad Days that ended the War. Ruined by jealous rivals or destroyed by their own creations run amok, or toppled by the citizens of whatever principalities they’d dominated. It didn’t seem to matter much how, but even the less-mad New Scientists of the war had all but died out. Yelm wondered what it was that made the occasional hold-over like Mr. Fulginate different. He considered again the implications for a society with access to clockwork workers and automatic winding stations. The idea had merit. If only the New Science weren’t so liable to induce Madness.
Tomas sighed. “Maybe it is time to retire.”
Yelm wasn’t certain who his partner addressed, the Giant or himself. And the Dwarf’s relatively sudden change of mind was more than a little disconcerting.
“I mean,” the Dwarf said, apparently thinking out loud, “There are no many Madboys left. Cannot be very many Haunts, either. It was, what. A month between the last two?”
Yelm nodded, in case the Dwarf was addressing him. Maybe he’d not been giving Tomas enough credit, had been too much discounting the small man’s intelligence and perceptiveness, he thought.
“I remember when we used to take three in a week,” Tomas said, his voice wistful under his scarves.
Yelm thought he saw two burning eyes ahead, under the arches he could only just make out. His guts clenched a little.
Tomas’s fingers idly traced the lock of one of his pistols. He saw in his mind’s eye the Giant’s trembling hand and felt again his own weakness before the Magistrate. “Time is the ultimate hunter,” he said.
Yelm nodded again, further surprised and relieved by the Dwarf’s insight. No Madboy had yet discovered the secrets of immortality. Fulginate and his Madness would inevitably pass, he thought. And if no one attempted to take his secrets by force, the War might not be reignited. There was no need for a Third Thirty Years War.
The city wall loomed up in front of them, the gates a deep tunnel directly ahead. Empty of any tell-tale glow.
“I guess I will have to learn to be more careful,” Tomas said.
Yelm looked sharply at Tomas, illuminated by the last chemical lamp before the gate.
The Dwarf grinned slyly up at the Giant. “If we are going to settle down somewhere, it would no do for me to get caught with too many burghers’ wives, eh?”
Yelm shook his head and sighed; some things would always remain certain. But the tightness in his chest eased and a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
It was good, he thought, that his friend meant to learn caution. It was good, too, for the Dwarf to have a challenge. Yelm felt that perhaps he had been very unfair to his friend. He really couldn’t have asked for a better companion. And now that they had made this decision together, he didn’t have to die a bounty hunter.
“Wouldn’t do at all,” he whispered.
