Frank Tuttle - Brown River Queen

It burned, did the Elf. Burned hot and bright. The smoke from it was sweet, as though from some rare and treasured tree.

Ashes fell from inside it. Its movements slowed. Vines began to unravel from within him, trailing embers and smoke.

In a moment, it was over, and the remains of the Elf-the last Elf, for all I knew-fell smoking to the Queen’s kitchen floor.

Instantly, Buttercup’s banshee howl sounded again. Shouts rose up, and a bevy of wary halfdead charged in, weapons drawn, eyeing me with an unhealthy amount of suspicion.

I lowered my hand. It was empty, save for a handful of ashes and a few steaming drops of black wax.

“It’s me, gents. Captain Markhat.” I said, adding a hint of emphasis to the word ‘Captain.’ “We had a spy aboard. Now we don’t. How are things outside?”

Their weapons didn’t waver. Mama Hog forced her way through them and without a word tossed a loop of Buttercup’s stringy rope around my neck.

Buttercup’s howl ceased and she was suddenly there with me, arms wrapped around my knees.

“Let her in,” bellowed Mama. “It’s him.”

They parted for Darla, and we all hugged while Mama kicked at the Elf’s remains with the toe of her boot.

“I knowed it all along,” she muttered. “Ain’t nothin’ to ‘em but a handful of weeds.”

Stitches made her way inside. The rotary guns are too hot to fire, she said to the Avalante soldiers. Go. The constructs are massing.

The soldiers went.

I leaned against the cabinets. My side was beginning to ache where I’d struck the wall. I had bruised ribs, if not broken ones.

“Stitches.” Talking didn’t hurt, but pulling in the breath to speak above the din of gunfire did. “How long until you absolutely have to drop the shield?”

Two hours. At that point, if the shield remains, we will effectively be engulfed in the shadow realm.

“Is that two hours plus or minus, or precisely two hours?”

Precisely two hours.

Darla, always angelic, found an icebox and wrapped a good big scoop of ice in a burlap flour sack, which she pressed gently to my side.

“You think the Elf was communicating with the outside?”

It seems likely.

“So they’d know we have two hours before we make ourselves vulnerable. I assume we’re still heading south at what…twenty knots, figuring the current?”

I have no contact with the wheelhouse or the engine room. But yes, we are still underway, at speed.

“I’ve got two ideas. You’re going to hate both of them.”

The gunfire outside wasn’t slowing. Shouts for more ammunition and more rifles sounded. I couldn’t see out the kitchen door, but it seemed the bone-men were massing for a charge.

“First, we take the rotary guns and as much ammunition as we can carry, and we march right into the shadow. They’re not expecting that.”

Suicide. Sheer suicide. Even my limited exploration of that place revealed it to be populated by creatures against which the guns would have little or no effect.

“She’s right about that, boy. I got a glimpse myself. Ain’t got words for what I seen. We could each charge in with a handful of cannon and still end up stomped flat.”

“I told you you’d hate it.”

I do indeed.

“Then we’re left with an easy choice,” I said. “We hand everyone a gun and we line the outer decks and we drop the shield. That will close the door to the shadow realm, will it not?”

I believe so. It will also render us immediately vulnerable to Hag Mary and her allies, who we know to be waiting in ambush.

“If they’re planning an ambush, they’ll be massing their main forces right at the spot they think we’ll be when the Queen’s shields fail. If you say we could hold out another two hours, and if we’re doing twenty knots, that might put them forty miles away.”

You realize this will be an arcane assault, and forty miles may make little difference to its execution.

“I know that. We might buy a few minutes, no more. We might be able to make for the riverbank, and we might get some of these people to safety. You have a better idea? Anyone?”

I shall need a moment to coordinate with the Regent.

“I don’t.” I was about to add a treasonous comment upon the Regent’s lack of involvement in the saving of his own hash when a pair of halfdead floated into the room and whispered to Stitches.

She dismissed them with a wave.

I shall see to the containment of the constructs while you coordinate the evacuation to the outer decks, she said.

“What about your word with the Regent?”

The Regent and his staff are gone. Vanished. Presumably via arcane means beyond detection by my skills or those of his adversaries.

Her voice maintained its careful neutrality, but the sutures in her lips beaded with tiny droplets of blood and she involuntarily clenched her jaw.

“Too bad. I was going to thank his girlfriend for adding her poison to the huldra. Or was that your magic that set him on fire?”

I have no such magic. She lowered her hood to hide her face. I wish you good fortune, Markhat.

“You should go with Darla and Mama,” I said. I showed her the key Evis had given me, to the false boiler and a hiding place. “You sure as hell don’t owe the Regent any loyalty. Not now.”

Stitches turned and walked away.

“I’m not hiding in any steel bowl,” said Darla.

“Me neither,” said Mama, loosing another savage kick at the smoldering remains of the Elf. “Might take me one of them fancy guns, though. I aims to do some harm.”

Buttercup looked up at me and grinned.

“Hell with it then,” I said. “Mama, I’ll get you a rifle. Buttercup too, maybe even a brace of cannon.”

Mama cussed and grabbed the little banshee and hauled her out of the kitchen. Darla and I kissed, checked our pistols, cleaned chicken broth off Toadsticker’s noble steel, and set about arming the survivors and warning them not to fire too soon or at each other.

The bone-men stood in clacking rows halfway to the stage.

Stitches fussed with the rotary guns, banging away at some brass mechanism with a hammer in a most unsorcerous fashion. A hundred halfdead ringed the advancing line of skeletons, rifles ready. Behind the riflemen stood more halfdead, each holding a fresh weapon and kneeling by a crate of ammunition.

The bone-men advanced another step, coming even with a chalk line inscribed on the floor.

The riflemen fired, working their bolts until their weapons were empty. Then they dropped them, grabbed the fresh ones handed to them by their reloaders, and started firing anew.

The bone-men fell in scores. The smoke from the rifles filled the ruined casino with a thick and choking fog. Lady Rondalee still held the stage, her voice a dry croak, but her words still sounding.

I counted a dozen dancers limp and pale, still moving though dead or nearly so. Evis and Gertriss still held their heads upright, still showed signs of life in their movements.

“What about them?” said Darla, tearing her eyes away from Gertriss and Evis.

“When the shadow gate closes, the music box will be inside. They’ll stop dancing. You’ll see.”

“You’re makin’ that up, boy. Though it does make a kind of sense.”

“With any luck, as soon as we close the shadow, the music box will start making those damned things in the shadow dance.” I had a brief vision of the monstrous, shambling hulks I’d seen in that place, locked forever in some clumsy round of pirouettes twenty stories tall.

That’s what you get for hurting my friends, I thought. Dance ’til Doomsday, you bastards.