Agatha didn’t know it, but she was on Gilgamesh’s mind at the moment. He was growing uncomfortably aware that, for someone as smart as everyone insisted that he was, he could be just as idiotic as anyone else who wanted to impress a girl. Surprisingly, he took some comfort from this.
Occasionally Gil looked at the silly doings and squabbles of the people around him and wondered if he was actually a member of the same species. He knew that this thought probably hit most people at some time in their lives, but Gil had the added factor of having a father who could easily have made it a legitimate question.
Thus—on those occasions when Gil found himself doing anything that he had ever seen or read about that had made him roll his eyes at the foolishness of the human race—he made sure that he took a moment to cherish the experience.
He toiled to the top of a small hillock and craned his neck up at the lead machine that now towered over him. I think this is worth about four seconds of cherishing, he mused, then I can go straight to terror.
The faces of several dozen uniformed men peered down at him. A few of them uncertainly raised their rifles. At the sight, Gil felt a small wave of hope. Muzzle-loading muskets. Whoever had financed this expedition had spent all the treasure on the walkers and bought the soldiers whatever weapons they could find handy. No doubt they expected the town to roll over at the sight of the giant machines. This meant that if it came to shooting, as long as he could avoid the first volley, he had some chance of getting away before they reloaded.
Gil stood tall, checked his stick a final time, took a deep breath, and bellowed upwards, “What is your business here?”
Wooster felt a jostle, and turned. To his surprise, the tops of the walls were filling with people. Townspeople. They were pouring up the stairwells, grumbling and querulous.
“I say,” he said. “What is this all about?”
Krosp leapt atop a chimney and looked around. Troopers were shepherding the townspeople along, steering them away from the machines dotted along the wall and keeping them facing the action below.
“Wulfenbach soldiers are forcing the townspeople up onto the wall,” he reported.
“But most of the defenses aren’t working,” Diamant protested. “They can’t do anything useful.”
Suddenly Wooster had an epiphany. “They can observe.” Wooster turned back to the scene outside the walls. “Someone wants everyone in town to see this.” He swallowed. “And I believe I know who that ‘someone’ is.”
“Gil?” Agatha looked horrified. “But…but what is he thinking?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, her mind flashed to the devices Gil had positioned around the wall. Certain structural elements suddenly suggested intriguing possibilities. Agatha’s eyes went wide. “Oh,” she said quietly.
Zeetha’s eyes narrowed. “Oh? What ‘Oh’? You know what he’s thinking?”
Agatha bit her lower lip. “He’s thinking he’s not the one in trouble.”
Aboard the walker, the duke laughed. “B’god, they do grow them stupid here, what?”
“Be quiet, you idiot,” Selnikov snarled. Something isn’t right. Raising his voice, he answered the tiny figure below. “I am Rudolf Selnikov—a Commander of the Knights of Jove! I hereby take command of the Empire of the usurper Wulfenbach in the name of the House of Valois!”
The tiny figure below put his hands on his hips. Selnikov felt the floor drop out from beneath him. He knew—knew—that the foot of the person below was slowly tapping. Why did he know that? Gamely he soldiered on. “Surrender the town, the Heterodyne girl, and the Baron! Cooperate, and no one will be harmed!” Well, he silently amended, no one anyone will care about.
The person below nodded once. Selnikov felt sweat start upon his brow, then realized why he was so rattled. This young jackanapes was acting exactly like that devil Klaus would! The impertinence—!
“I am Gilgamesh Wulfenbach. Son of Klaus!” The voice calling up to him sounded annoyed. “I will say this only once! Leave now, or you will die!”
Selnikov had been exposed to the strange ways of Sparks on an almost daily basis for most of his life, and had nevertheless managed to live to a rather respectable age. He turned to order a retreat. But before he could do it, the duke beside him gave a snort. “Stupid and as mad as a fruitbat, apparently.” He raised his voice. “A gold piece to the fellow who shoots this rascal!”
That was it. The muskets were popping and there would be no retreat. Only one possible way was left to get through this mess. “All guns!” Selnikov screamed. “All guns open fire! Quickly!”
“Use the artillery,” Selnikov roared. “Fire the coil gun!” Around him soldiers were raggedly firing their unfamiliar weapons.
“Damnation,” one swore as he tried to dig another ball out of the pouch at his belt, “I hit him! I know I did!”
Another cursed as he tried to aim. “The gyros are keeping us steady, but they’re not keeping us still!”
Below them, Gil raised his stick. “Time’s up.”
There was an almost imperceptible click—and then the sky opened. A bolt of lightning struck the lead machine, briefly wreathing it in a veil of blue-white discharge before various things inside it exploded, adding to the earsplitting sound of thunder.
The machine stood still for a moment, then twisted and slowly fell to the side with a booming crash.
Several thousand mouths fell open and almost twice that many eyes bugged from their sockets. The first sound, aside from the slow pinging of the metal as it cooled, was Agatha’s delighted scream of triumph as she stared entranced at the scene below.
Gil would have found this intensely gratifying, if he could have heard it, but at that moment he was wondering if he would ever hear anything ever again. With echoes of thunder ringing in his ears, he again raised his stick, its tip glowing brightly. He roared towards the remaining machines, “Anyone else?”
A moment of terrified silence ticked past and then shouts arose from the machine to the right of the smoking clank. “We surrender!”
A shower of weapons fell from the next machine over. “So do we!”
Still, there is one in every crowd. The third machine swung its mounted cannon about and let off a poorly aimed shot, which blew apart a patch of road several dozen meters to Gil’s left. Again he raised the glowing stick. Again there was a click, and again a bolt of lightning crashed down and blew the machine to molten fragments.
As the legs crashed outwards, Gil strode forward. “This is not a trick”, he shouted. “I did not get lucky! I am Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, and I am in control!”
High above the walls at the hospital window, Klaus watched the action outside the town, his face lit with an unholy glee that even DuPree found unnerving. “They’re surrendering. Good!”
“Good?” Sun looked pale. “That was amazing.”
Briefly Klaus appeared to relax. Muscles taut with tension released for the first time in years. “Yes. Yes it was.” He gazed down at his son with undisguised pride, then snapped back to his usual tense self. “Get me back to bed,” he ordered Bangladesh. “Quickly, before he comes back.”
There followed a period of screaming that Sun tried very hard to ignore. When it was done, he turned back to find Klaus again stretched out in bed, white-faced and sweating but still with a ghastly grin on his face. Sun shook his head, and set about reconnecting the assorted drips, feeds, and hoses to his patient. He hissed at the messages that his reconnected meters began to display. “I hope it was worth it,” he snarled.