Fields of Iron: A steampunk adventure novel Read online

  Evan reached out and laid a calming hand on his arm, and the man backed up against the wall as though Evan had been a snake. His chest heaving, he stared at them with an uncomprehending gaze.

  “It’s all right, friend,” Barney told him with some compassion. “No one here is going to hurt you. Calm yourself.”

  No response but the drag of breath into constricted lungs.

  Barney repeated himself in French, and then Italian, which did nothing for their frightened companion, but told Evan quite a lot more about Barney’s education than he probably wanted.

  Evan tried the same phrases in Prussian, the only foreign language he knew, and the man’s eyes widened even further.

  “Thanks be to God,” the man said in that tongue. “Who are you and how came I here?”

  “I am called Evan Douglas, and this man here is called Barney. The cross one by the door is Joe. We are prisoners of the Viceroy of the Royal Kingdom of Spain and the Californias. What of you?”

  The man looked from one to another, Evan’s introductions not seeming to lessen his confusion in the least. “The Viceroy?”

  “Do you know where you are?” Evan asked him after a moment. “What is the last thing you remember?”

  “I—I—” He passed a shaking hand over his face. “I boarded a train in Reno with my family, I do not know when. It is all a blank.”

  “Do you know your name?”

  But instead of replying, he looked around wildly. “Where is my wife? My children?”

  Evan exchanged a glance with Barney, and translated rapidly. Even Joe had become interested enough to push himself up against the wall and sit with his skinny arms wrapped around his knees, his dark eyes on the distraught man’s face.

  “You are in a Californio gaol in the water meadows known as Las Vegas,” Barney said gently. “Reno is a long way north of here, on the far side of the mountains. Have you no memory of the journey?”

  The man shook his head as Evan began to translate. “English. You are English. I am English, though my use of the Prussian tongue seems much more familiar. But … A gaol? Why am I in gaol? Mein Gott, what crime have I committed?”

  “As far as we can tell, the only crimes we share in common are being on the wrong side of the border and having knowledge that the Californios need,” Barney told him wryly.

  “For what purpose?”

  “For building a dam across the last canyon in the mountains before the river enters the flatlands and loses its velocity,” Evan said. “The Californios wish to control the water and thus commerce for the length of the river, which is hundreds of miles long.”

  “Which river?”

  “The Rio de la Sangre Colorado de Christos.”

  “Ah.” The man seemed to sink in upon himself. “I cannot remember my own name. Yet that one is familiar to me. In fact—” He flushed and fell silent.

  “In fact?” Barnaby echoed. “Any facts would be helpful if we are to help you remember your identity, sir.”

  “You will find it amusing, but so be it. It was the river I was dreaming of just now, before I woke.”

  “Dreaming?” Joe, who hardly ever spoke, snorted. “More of a nightmare. Whimpering and crying out like a child, you were.”

  “It terrifies me,” he whispered, turning his face away. “Deep water. I cannot bear the thought of it.”

  Evan had not written eight monographs and been hailed as a pioneer for his invention of the mnemosomniograph for nothing. The poor man had been debilitated by his dream, and if they were to have any hope of escape, they needed to be able to trust every man in this cell as an ally—one as whole and healthy as possible.

  “Aside from your dreams, have you been injured in any way, sir?” Evan turned the subject slightly out of sheer compassion.

  The man was quite a bit older than he and Barney—in his late forties, perhaps. His hair was beginning to turn gray, and his beard had been neatly clipped at one time, though it was streaked with mud and blood now. His trousers and shirt were well made, though he wore no hat or jacket. Lost during the fight that had cost him his memory and landed him here, perhaps?

  The man struggled to his feet, testing his weight, bending his knees, examining his arms. He wore boots that seemed to be custom made, but not by any Texican boot maker, who favored flat heels and chased sides. They appeared to be straight out of Bond Street, which confirmed he must have been in England before his journey here. Perhaps he spoke Prussian so fluently because he had lived there? Or taught the language in England?

  “I am bruised, and my ankle is tender, but nothing seems to be broken.”

  “Just your head,” muttered Joe into his arms.

  Evan rose from his mat to indicate the man’s temple. “It seems you might have been struck. There is a quantity of dried blood here, and in your beard, which might account for the loss of memory.” Gently, he touched the man’s head, and the latter flinched. “I apologize. But this area of the brain is said to control short-term memory. It may be that once the organ recovers from the blow, your memory will return. It may also account for your unpleasant dreams, which might fade as the brain regains its health.”

  “You a doctor?” Joe squinted up from the floor. “Or just a regular know-it-all?”

  “I possess a medical degree, yes,” Evan said somewhat stiffly. “But my research subsequently has all been in the field of dreams and visions.”

  Joe snorted and got up, dusting off his pants. “That’s useful.”

  But the stranger stood beside him at the barred window, breathing the morning air as dust from horses passing on the road outside sifted in on them. “And what do you think of my dream?” he asked, his chin held high as though Evan might think him weak. “Of a river I cannot cross, no matter how furiously I swim. It is so deep, so cold that the more I attempt to ford it, the faster I sink, until at last the water closes over my face and I know I am drowning.”

  It sounded dreadful, but Evan had heard its like in his interviews … in a life that seemed to have belonged to someone else, long ago.

  “When you are swimming, is it away from something or toward something?”

  The Englishman who spoke Prussian frowned. “I do not know. Wait, that is not true. I am swimming toward something.”

  “There is nothing that has chased you into the water, nothing pursuing you?”

  “Nein. At least, I have no memory of it. But it is urgent that I cross.”

  “As though you will lose something important if you do not?”

  “Ja.” The man nodded thoughtfully. “But what?”

  “Perhaps the thing that brought you out here to the Wild West. Were you offered a position of some kind? Or were you to deliver something important to someone?”

  The man’s lips parted, as though he was on the brink of speaking—of remembering—

  Down the corridor, the doors crashed open and they heard the clank of the tin cup against the porridge pot. Each morning’s meal was the same—a tin cup of porridge, an orange, and water. Afterward came review in the parade ground formed by the gaol’s quadrangle, and then the men were divided into work crews. Discipline was strict. Evan had never been whipped—for the most part because he was not a troublesome prisoner—but many had, in full view of the others.

  The stranger sighed. “It is gone. I thought for a moment you might be right, that—”

  The key clattered in the lock and the door was pushed open. “No talking. Stand back!”

  “I demand to know why I am here,” their companion said bravely, facing the four guards in the middle of the floor while Evan and the others did as they were told.

  “Silence!”

  “This man has interpreted my dream and I believe I may have come here to take up a position. My employer will be looking for me and I must—”

  “I said, silence!”

  Their fellow prisoner got an elbow in the stomach that sent him reeling against the wall. Their filled bowls clanged on the stone floor, and Evan dodged
to catch an escaping orange. Why such a luxury should be treated so cavalierly in this place was a mystery, but he was not about to let the precious thing be kicked or worse, taken away.

  The door slammed shut behind the guards and there was no more talk. Eating and guzzling water was far more important. They had barely finished licking their bowls when Evan, Barney, and the stranger were hauled out and, instead of being forced into lines in the hot sun, were marched together to the fortified yard where the behemoth spent its nights.

  A crew boss was waiting for them. “You will repair the arm of el Gigante today, but not for use as a cannon. We require a holding and gripping assembly so that he may be used more precisely in building the dam. You have two days for this task.”

  “Two days?” Evan repeated incredulously. “Even had we any real engineering experience among us, a week would not be enough time.”

  The crew boss jerked his cleanshaven chin at their new companion. “The Dutch man has plenty of experience. You will begin now.”

  “Who is this Dutch?” the older man demanded. “Why do you call me that? What do you know of me? Where is my family?”

  But he got no reply save a face full of dust as the crew boss wheeled his horse around and spurred it to the gate. The yard was locked and watched by a pair of soldiers who patrolled outside the sturdy palisade. As the gate clanged shut behind the horse, their companion gave a sigh. “How is it these men know more about me than I do myself? I must know what has become of my family.”

  “I wish he’d taken a moment to tell us your proper name, at least,” Barney said. “It is most inconvenient to refer to you as the Englishman who speaks Prussian all the time. Or even Dutch.”

  “Who or what is Dutch?”

  “I have no idea. Perhaps they have never met someone who speaks Prussian, and are not fussy about which Teutonic language is which. But it is all we know at present. If it suits you, though, Evan and I have no objection to using it.”

  The man chewed his lip in frustration and anxiety, but in the end, nodded agreement. They had no option but to do as they were told and make their way over to the shop, which was not a shop at all, but a heap of parts and tools that might have been manufactured in the previous decade and not used since.

  Evan climbed up into the behemoth and began its ignition sequence, and once it was operational, caused it to kneel. This brought the arm low enough that Dutch and Barney could tilt a ladder up against it and begin removing the bolts that held the damaged assembly together. It took them the whole morning to get it off and disassembled, and the whole of the next day to fashion a set of ungainly pincers that would operate harmoniously with the hydraulic system of the arm.

  “It is clear that, among other things, you are an engineer,” Evan observed to Dutch in the pilot’s chamber of the behemoth, wiping the sweat from his temple with one dirty sleeve. “There has been no damage to your long-term memory, nor to your motor skills, for which we can be grateful. I would not like to be facing the lash this evening had we not been successful.”

  Below, Barney was foreshortened and small, his hands on his hips as he gazed upward, ready to supervise the exercises to which Evan would subject the new arm. Dutch gripped a hanging strap as Evan raised the behemoth to a stand. “Do you wish me to work the arms now?”

  “You will have to—I cannot do both. It was designed for a pilot and a gunner, one above the other.”

  With surprising agility, Dutch climbed into the gunner’s chair and raised the behemoth’s arm. They had modified the trigger so that the pincers would open and shut. The sound of clanking metal came clearly through the air vents as Dutch moved the arm this way and that, testing its range of motion.

  “How far is the dam from this place?” he asked.

  “About five miles. It takes us about half an hour to walk it in the behemoth, who is faster than the steam drays that convey the crews there.”

  Dutch swung himself down into the main chamber. “Has it never occurred to you simply to walk away to freedom? What self-respecting man can tolerate this treatment? How long have you been here?”

  “It has occurred to me every single day of the twelve I have been here, many times a day,” Evan informed him, his frustration with his situation leaking into his voice and giving it an edge. “But I am never left alone. When we walk to the dam, I am always accompanied by an armed guard in this chamber, who stays at my side, pistol cocked, in case I should attempt exactly what you suggest.” With a glance at the sun on the horizon, he began to shut down the boilers. “Do not imagine we tolerate our situation. We are prisoners. It is only because they need our knowledge that we are treated as well as we are.”

  “Have they no engineers of their own?”

  “It seems not.” Evan led the way out of the chamber, and climbed down the series of iron rungs on one of the behemoth’s legs. “They are educated in the mother country, but it seems that extends only to classics, languages, mathematics, and the arts of war. Not to practical pursuits such as engineering and mechanics. Apparently, the Royal Kingdom is the greatest market for railroads and trains on this side of the world.”

  Dutch hopped to the ground. “But not airships.”

  “Those would be illegal,” Barney told him. “Flying in the face of God and all that. No airships are permitted in these skies, which is likely why you were on the ground in Reno. That is the main transfer point from points east to the Royal Kingdom’s rail system.”

  Dutch shook his head. “I do not understand why they do not simply hire the engineers they need, rather than kidnapping and imprisoning them. But how did you come to be here, you healthy and intelligent young men?”

  When Barney did not reply, instead gazing upward as though checking the behemoth’s arm at rest, Evan said, “I came in search of a girl.”

  For the first time since he had been shoved into their cell, Dutch’s mouth curved in a rueful smile. “I hope that the young lady was worth the price you are paying.”

  “She is,” Evan said. “Or was. They told me she was dead, but even yet I cannot believe it. One moment Gloria was their prisoner, and the next she had disappeared. But until I see her with my own eyes, I cherish hope that she still lives.”

  Barney was no longer looking up, but at Evan. “They took a woman prisoner? What had she done?”

  Evan smiled with the memory. “Besides have their shipment of mechanical war machines derailed by air pirates before they could reach the border, in an attempt to stop this war? Nothing of significance.”

  “War machines,” Barney repeated. “Gloria.”

  “Yes. Her name was—is—Gloria Meriwether-Astor. And she is as beautiful as an angel.”

  “Blond,” Barney said, and held out a hand at his shoulder. “About this tall. Blue eyes.”

  Evan stared. “Yes, in fact.”

  “Cantankerous and opinionated. The daughter of Gerald Meriwether-Astor, may God damn his warmongering soul.”

  Through his utter astonishment, Evan managed to close his mouth with some difficulty. “How in heaven’s name do you know that?”

  Barney laughed and spun away. “That girl makes a habit of being kidnapped, it seems.”

  “Have you seen her?” Evan demanded. “Is she alive?”

  “I have not. Though it seems her propensity for being kidnapped has helped her develop a particular talent for escape, if what you say is true.”

  “What on earth do you mean? I must know if—”

  With a shout, the gate behind them opened, and a squad of four soldiers marched in. And in the chaos of being herded through the streets and back into the quadrangle, reviewed and counted, and watching that evening’s whipping of a man who had tried to escape by diving off the dam’s scaffold and swimming upriver, there was no opportunity for Evan to shake any information out of him. Not until they had been given that evening’s portion of rusty meat, beans, and rice, and had settled on their pallets once again, could Evan speak.

  “Where did you meet Glor
ia?” he asked in a low tone that he hoped would not reach the ears of the soldiers at the end of the corridor. “How is it possible that you know her?”

  With a sigh, Barney tilted his head back against the wall plastered in a substance the inhabitants called adobe. “I hardly know where to begin.”

  “The beginning is usually a good place,” Dutch suggested.

  “I am afraid that in this recital, there is no good place. In the autumn of last year, I was the captain of an undersea dirigible called Neptune’s Fancy, belonging to the fleet of Gerald Meriwether-Astor. We were massed in the Adriatic Sea for reasons I will not go into, and I was given orders to proceed to Venice to allow Miss Meriwether-Astor and a party of friends to board for some sightseeing. I followed my orders, and in the course of time she became my guest at my home in England.”

  “In England?” Evan repeated. “You’ve missed a bit in the middle, I think. ‘In the course of time’? How did you get from Venice to England?”

  “I am not permitted to say,” Barney told him. “Are you familiar with friends of the young lady that include Captain Ian Hollys and Lady Claire Trevelyan?”

  “I certainly am,” Evan said. “Lady Claire’s wards, Elizabeth and Marguerite, are my cousins. Our grandmothers were sisters. And incidentally, Lady Claire is now Mrs. Andrew Malvern.”

  “I only met the lady briefly,” Barney said.

  “Lady Claire is one of the most intelligent and resourceful women I have ever known,” Evan said. “If not for her, for an airship captain called Alice Chalmers, and for my young cousins, I might not have survived a very dark period in my life.”

  “Then perhaps she has shared her resourcefulness with Gloria, for the latter lost no time in leaving my house and making her way back to Philadelphia.”

  Evan made up his mind. While he knew from Maggie and Lizzie that they had suffered some dreadful experiences in Venice, Barney did not seem inclined to expand upon them. Perhaps if he shared a little of what he knew, he might receive some information in return.