Klaus suddenly threw his sword at Zeetha. The green-haired girl dodged, and with a roar, Klaus tackled her and slammed her to the ground.
She began to bring her swords up and felt a knife at her throat. “Ni tok,” the Baron snarled. The warriors last decision: Honorable surrender or death. She looked up into his face. “Ni tok!” he repeated. The knife pressed deeper.
Agatha leaned in and for the last time, gave Lars a kiss. “You were anything but ordinary,” she whispered.
Wooster surveyed the battle. Not good. He aimed his rifle at the Baron. He couldn’t kill him. The political ramifications of the Baron dying at the hands of a British operative would greatly displease Her Majesty, but wounding him—
A gun barrel poked against the back of his head. The fact that he was familiar enough with the sensation probably meant that he should get a new line of work. He was also rather impressed at his own calm. This evaporated when he heard the voice of the gun’s owner.
“Please, try to resist.” Bangladesh DuPree said hopefully. Wooster froze.
After it became evident that he was not going to resist, she sighed in disappointment. “Klaus always knows where the party is, but they’re always so dull.”
She raised her voice. “You are surrounded! Surrender and die!”
“I believe, Wooster said carefully, “It’s supposed to be ‘surrender or die.’”
Bangladesh cocked her pistol. “Dull, dull, dull.”
Agatha slowly folded Lars’ hands together on his chest. “Ordinary.” She whispered. “But I am a Heterodyne!” She stood up and screamed. “SHOWTIME!”
The fighting paused. Bangladesh poked her gun against Wooster’s head. “What is she trying—?”
With a groan, the wagon Bangladesh and Wooster were standing on began to tilt sideways. With a squawk, they lost their footing and slid off the roof, tumbling to the ground.
They stumbled to their feet, trying to avoid the wagon that appeared to be about to crash back upon them. They heard shouts from the other soldiers. Drowning these out were a series of snappings and grindings. All around them, all of the circus wagons were shuddering and warping. Wheels bent and slammed to the ground. Roofs broke and unfolded. Chassis’ rearranged themselves, joints sliding into new positions. Springs and slats re-organized themselves into new configurations.
Klaus stared at the nearest wagon as it wrenched itself up upon two extended fenders, spoked wheels unfolded like flowers into crude hands at the end of their axles. From the under-carriage, a single great eye ground open, and with a whine, focused upon him. A shudder went through the giant clank, and it took a ponderous step towards him, shaking the earth.
“Clanks!” Klaus roared. All around him, the wagon clanks began sweeping their metal arms back and forth, scything down the human troops too slow to run.
A quartet of Wulfenbach trooper clanks strode forward, purposefully lowering their great machine-cannons. Klaus pointed to the nearest wagon-clank. “Crossfire!” he ordered.
Immediately the four opened fire. Their bullets chewed away at the wooden structure and sent metal bits flying. Within thirty seconds, the ponderous clank had been reduced to fragments.
A Sergeant grinned at the Baron. “Haw! These things have no defenses!”
But Klaus was staring at the pile of rubble. It was shifting, heaving...
“There’s something wrong here—”
Suddenly the rubble disgorged hundreds of miniscule clanks, none of them taller than thirty centimeters. They darted forward and then fanned out. Several dozen of them scurried towards the trooper clanks. The larger clanks seemed to be at a loss as to what to do. One went as far as to fire several rounds into a particularly slow specimen, but the rest easily converged around the larger clank’s feet.
Several of the machines then began tossing their fellows at the trooper clanks. The small devices flew though the air and clung to the troopers with a magnetic “clang!” Before the clanks could react, the smaller machines detonated, blowing the troopers into fragments, which whistled through the Baron’s forces.
Klaus picked himself up in time to see another lumbering wagon clank explode into a cloud of smaller clanks, which charged into the lines of soldiers.
He looked around wildly. The girl. The Heterodyne girl. Where had she gone? It was then that he became aware of the music that overlay the noise of battle.
Bangladesh DuPree and Ardsley Wooster stood side-by-side, their mouths hanging open in shock at the scene of chaos before them. They both remembered at the same time who they were standing next to.
Bangladesh raised her gun, but Wooster simply punched her in the face, and then ran away, which Bangladesh considered, in some undefined way, to be cheating.
“All right!” She roared. “I’m going to kill somebody, and I’m not picky about who or what it is!” A rumbling from behind caused Bangladesh to turn about and stare.
The newly repurposed merry-go-round focused its attention on her, took a step forward, activated its calliope, and began to spin.
Everywhere, Wulfenbach troops found themselves fighting clanks that minutes ago had been inanimate objects. The organized, by-the-numbers rifle volleys that had broken armies across all of Europa began to dissolve into random, panicky, free fire.
“All troops fall back!” Klaus roared above the din.
“Fall back to where?” a trooper shouted back. “We’re surrounded!
” Another trooper pointed skywards. “Incoming cavalry!”
With a crash, a Hoomhoffer[75] slammed to the ground, crushing a phalanx of steadily advancing water barrels.
Several more thudded to earth and urged on by their mahouts, began to simply bulldoze their way through some of the encircling wagon clanks.
With a ragged cheer, the Wulfenbach troops rallied, and began a break-out action. Klaus took charge, and began directing the troops’ fire.
“Don’t shoot to destroy the clanks,” he ordered. “Shoot to disable them. Concentrate fire on their legs!”
After several minutes, it was obvious that this strategy was working. Several of the lumbering wagon-clanks fell to the ground and began to clumsily drag themselves forward.
Suddenly, over the roar of battle, the ever-present music changed.
“Of course!” Klaus realized. “The music! She’s directing the actions of the clanks through the music!” He paused and shook his head. “That’s brilliant. I’ve got to remember that.”
“Is ‘brilliant’ the same as ‘trouble’?” asked a corporal who’d served with the Baron before.
“It is that,” Klaus acknowledged with a grim smile, “We’ve got to find that girl and stop her before—”
There was a deep boom of sound, and one of the Hoomhoffers disappeared.
A scream from the mahout drew every eye upwards. Above the fray, the Baba Yaga flapped its enormous pinions as it dragged the Hoomhoffer skyward, clutched in its great metal claws.
The troops on the ground swung their rifles up and began firing, just as the flying wagon swooped about and launched the captive insect toward the ranks of its fellows. The Hoomhoffer screamed in from above, its torn wings buzzing ineffectually, and smashed into two others of the tank-like creatures, crushing one and sending the other flying for several dozen meters. When it tumbled to a stop, it lay twitching, stunned.
75
Hoomhoffers were gigantic insects, the end result of some forgotten Spark entomologists’ experiments. The original subjects had apparently been dust mites, too small to be seen by the naked eye. The experiments been designed to “make those little rascals big enough that I get a look at them.” They now required a small chugging engine to make sure they got enough oxygen throughout their enormous frames. This was a bit inconvenient, but their resistance made up for it. Plus, they ate a lot of dust.