Steampunk! Part 28

Shortly before noon, they discovered the army of the Parthian general Surenas, which stood as if waiting in the midst of the desert. They were in the region of a town called Carrhae. The Parthians looked to be an unimpressive force, dressed all in ragged skins and cloaks, standing at the edge of a forest.

The Romans drew up and prepared for battle, their flying machines hanging above them.

Cra.s.sus gave the order, and all the trumpets of the Roman army sounded, and the Klaxons, and they began marching forward. The bands of their armor shone in the desert sun, and their battle standards gleamed gloriously. Their flying ships began to rain down arrows on the enemy.

At this sign of violence from the Romans, General Surenas of the Parthians raised his hand and dropped it - and drums along his line gave forth great roars, and the Parthians, screaming, threw their ragged cloaks from themselves, revealing battle armor curiously wrought, scales covering both man and horse, masks of terrifying visage - and they charged. And then behind them from some clearing in the forest rose up a fleet of small machines, each manned by archers in peaked caps, which sped to encounter the Roman host.

Astonished, the Roman host hesitated while the armed cataphracts galloped toward them, raising a storm of sand, while above them, the unexpected whirring air chariots advanced.

Publius, Cra.s.sus's son, had governance of the Roman flying machines and led them on a sortie against the Parthians' devices, which shot bolts with deadly force and tremendous accuracy at the legionnaires below. Publius, we may suspect, felt sure of the outcome: the cloud coursers of his Roman levitatii were beautiful machines, dazzling with gilt, prowed with icons of Medusa, whereas the Parthian contraptions were made of leather and looked scarcely fit to fly.

The two aerial forces engaged, and much damage was done by each side, as archers fired flaming arrows and the Romans' Archimedean mirrors swiveled to set the enemy aflame.

After the first skirmish, the Parthian flying devices fled, straggling away from the field of battle - and Publius, ill fated, followed, filled with delight at the enemy's retreat, calling out to his levitatii, "Do not flag! We shall cut them down out of the air!" The cloud coursers drove on in swift pursuit.

It was at this time that the Parthians revealed their tail gunners, who are famed now across the world for their deadly and destructive accuracy. It is said they shoot bolts that only gain in speed from being shot in flight - and in this way, even a retreat is turned into an a.s.sault - which is called the Parthian shot.

The Roman flyers, shocked, saw holes bored through their hulls, looked down to find their own chests pierced, their own hands riveted to their shields with a bolt, a sunburst of blood upon the bright targe. The Parthians stalled in the air and so enveloped the Roman coursers, firing on every side. Airship after airship plummeted to the ground, kicking up great gouts of sand.

Cra.s.sus, watching through the lenses, saw his son go down. He ordered his own quinquereme to fall back and land.

The Parthian flyers now returned to the earthbound fray, without Romans in the air to impede them, and began to rain down bombs of horsehair and pitch upon the legionnaires. The cohorts tried to lock their shields together to form an armored turtle that might protect them from attack by air, but as they did so, the Parthian cataphracts a.s.saulted them from the sides. The wind from machines and the sand from cavalry cast up a great sandstorm, and the legionnaires could not breathe and could not see which way to fight. They stumbled over their own dead, and their armored turtles split, revealing human meat inside.

The slaughter now was general. It is said that forty thousand men died there in the hot noonday sun. In the rear, Cra.s.sus and his advisers watched the destruction. The oculus set in the Roman eagle standard conveyed shadows and images from the front along the wire: the sand; the swordplay; the towering, armored cataphracts, breathing easily through their masks while the legionnaires gagged and collapsed below.

To his ministers, Cra.s.sus insisted, "We have not lost the day."

And then, on the lens of the oculus, a face heaved into view, laughing - surmounted with the wild topknot of a Parthian - and a voice sneered, in broken Latin, "Surely a general who hides behind his army is no father of brave Publius, whom we have just cut down out of the air. Surely there is no father of such a n.o.ble youth here, or he would come out and fight."

This insult being delivered, the Parthians shot two of the wire bearers, the line of boys who, strung back along the desert, held the oculus's wire aloft on forked poles so it could convey its images. The wire was cut, and Cra.s.sus's lens went blank. The Parthians had seized the sacred Roman battle standard.

At this - the loss not only of his son but of the shining, golden eagle standard, the aquila, symbol of Rome's might upon the field - it is said that Cra.s.sus lost heart.

Plutarch records that one of the centurions, speaking of the oculus, said, "The line is cut," to which Cra.s.sus replied, astonished, "Yes, by the scissors of Atropos," which is to say, the Fate who clips the mortal cord and removes each of us, one by one, from the weft of all that is.

Such was his gloomy state. Cra.s.sus, defeated, ordered a retreat.

The Romans fled the field, their few remaining flying machines providing cover as the Parthians, jeering, fell back. Across the desert a few thousand Roman men scrambled, many so desperate with thirst that they fell to the sand, never to rise. It was many hours before they reached Zeugma and safety.

That night, the Parthians surrounded Zeugma's walls. Their aerial contraptions drifted over the town, ready to drop incendiary clots.

A herald, fixing a long speaking trumpet to his wind mask, called down to the tent of the Roman commander, "We shall give you one night to mourn your son." All the legionnaires and auxiliaries, huddled among the debris left behind in the camp by their dead brothers in arms, heard this called down, and the word was among them that none of them would see the next nightfall.

Cra.s.sus wasted but little time cheering and exhorting his chief advisers. His rage swept over him so swiftly that he could scarcely restrain himself long enough to urge them distractedly to be strong, before he ordered his lictors to swarm the oracle engine and drag the Minervan Virgins before him, so they might be questioned, castrated, and slain.

When they were brought before him, they came with terrified and humble countenances. They being thrown down on the floor, and sharp points of gladii held to their throats by guards, they were closely questioned by Cra.s.sus. They avowed that they had in no way prejudiced the machine - and that, further, the machine could not be prejudiced, in their view, since they had removed the coin from its workings.

Then Cra.s.sus, who was livid with anger and torn by sorrow, said to them, "You claim that the machine operated perfectly. And yet twelve cohorts of men are reduced almost to nothing - a few stragglers here in the camp, and little else. The aquila, sacred standard of our nation, is in the hands of our enemy. The glory of the republic is tarnished. If my name cleaves to this battle and is remembered by future generations, it will be due only to the shame of this defeat, as ruinous as those at Cannae or the Caudine Forks. So tell me, engineers, as you grovel, in what way was this prophecy perfection? Or do you claim the vengeful shade of murdered Furius returned to brush the metal pins askew?"

The Minervan Virgins, huddled before him, exchanged their pallid looks and hesitated to speak; but they being urged by the points of the gladii, the chief among them struggled to explain himself. He delivered this speech, during which the faces of all the soldiers who stood there sank, realizing their doom: "Sirs - Consul - and Your Excellencies. If you slay us, we are dead in vain and without cause, for we performed the calculations as directed. Recall that we share your fate. We, too, shall face the Parthian sword and dart if the engine's 'Yes' should prove to have been misleading.

"We have, in the hours since we first heard of your . . . let us not say defeat, but setback . . . frantically reviewed the intelligence we gave the machine and its replies. We can find no explanation, except this, sirs . . . this.

"Marcus Furius Medullinus spent weeks telling the machine stories of battle - and weeks more telling the machine stories of tragic fate. He fed it all the tales of murder paying for murder, and generation slaying generation, and the laughter of the G.o.ds at those they have destroyed. The machine was weaned on revenge and suckled on tragic irony.

"Marcus Furius did not have to jam the machine for it to destroy you - in fact, had the coin been left in, we have discovered, the oracle engine would have malfunctioned and warned you against this confrontation. We would all have been safe. But Marcus Furius knew you would kill him. He knew you would find the coin. He knew you would remove it, seeking a clearer reading. And he knew the machine, trained in cycles of revenge, would work itself into its calculations as an agent of satisfying, self-fulfilling, and cataclysmic doom. It would play upon irony. It would figure its own prophecies and their effects into fate's equation - indeed, if it did not figure in its own role in the outcome of the battle, it would be remiss, partially blind. It operated perfectly according to its training, and it arranged a fitting catastrophe.

"This engineer, Marcus Furius Medullinus, has made us all - machine and man alike - the apparatus of his vengeance."

The lictors, the advisers, the boys stretched upon the floor, Cra.s.sus himself - they all looked about them and realized that what the young man said was true: the machine had taken stock, found its materials, and produced a tragedy. They all were cogs in its dumb operation - and the desert itself was its etched plate - the lines of legionaries in their strict formations - hastati, principes, and triarii - were strung like abacus beads in rank, sliding back and forth to tally some unimaginable disaster yet to come. The workings of the engine were vast, and in days would reach, with driveshafts and pivots, across the seas even to Rome itself.

The prophecy, almost certainly, would come true, with a disaster in every clause. All that remained was to wait for the inevitable cheap ironies to come.

The rest of the story is well known, and it is attested both by Plutarch and by Ca.s.sius Dio.

In the morning, the Parthian general Surenas drifted over Zeugma in a chariot bedecked with plumes and painted eyes and called down to the tents below that he would accept the surrender of the Roman army, offering them safe pa.s.sage if they would embrace their own defeat.

Cra.s.sus sought to make some speech to his centurions about the unflagging Roman spirit and the need for strength and the desire for death and glory. The soldiers, however, had heard the story of the stochastikon from those guards who had listened to the dismal revelations of the Minervan Virgins, and they did not wish to die in service of the lunatic's machine. When they threatened to rise up against him, Cra.s.sus relented and, with his lictors and a few of his officers, went out of the gates to parley with Surenas.

We have all heard how Cra.s.sus, on foot, met General Surenas, who hovered in a machine; and that Surenas made much of the fact that the Roman had debased himself by walking upon the dusty ground. Surenas bade Cra.s.sus step into his craft, so they both could be whisked to Ctesiphon for negotiations.

We have heard how, when Cra.s.sus went to raise himself up on the mounting step of the flying ship, Surenas jolted forward by several inches, so Cra.s.sus stumbled. Surenas apologized elaborately; but when Cra.s.sus stepped upon the machine again, Surenas shot up by several inches, so that once again Cra.s.sus fell in the dirt. We have heard how the Roman ministers drew their swords to avenge this affront to their general. We have heard how a melee followed, and the small Roman party was all slain, Cra.s.sus lying facedown among them, weeping.

There is no record of whether he was killed by a Parthian or whether, as some suggest, one of his own lictors slew him, wishing to spare him the indignity of death on a barbarian blade. Regardless: so died one of the wealthiest men the world has ever known.

When he was found to be dead, his body was bundled into the chariot, and Surenas and his aerial guard departed for Ctesiphon, and indeed, by noon of that day, Cra.s.sus descended into the capital city of Parthia, as the prophecy had foretold.

A few of the Roman army - perhaps a thousand - escaped from Zeugma. The rest capitulated and were taken prisoner. We do not know what happened to them, but there is one tale of interest, which relates that the king of Parthia eventually gave them as a gift to the emperor of the Han, from far Tartary, and that their descendants live still in the East, at a place that is called Le-chien, for they were legionnaires.

As the Parthian cataphracts rounded up their prisoners, they came across a warehouse, in the gloom of which they discovered a nonsense machine: pale youths tied to cranes in a huge bronze tub with a grinning face on the side. The Parthians looked astounded, shook their heads at the infinite perversity of Romans, shut the door, and thought no more of it.

In Ctesiphon, chief city of that country, General Surenas processed down the main avenue in his chariot with the body of Cra.s.sus beside him while the people shouted his name in joyous acclamation. He made the corpse indulge in all manner of kisses and bowings to the crowd, bending the stiffening limbs in positions of coa.r.s.e effeminacy. In the great square, surrounded by thousands of the citizens, the general stood by while a guardsman hacked off Cra.s.sus's head. Then, mocking the dead man for his infamous greed and avarice, they poured molten gold into his open mouth, so it burned away the lips and flowed out the throat. This mutilated head, this terrifying object, Surenas raised up before the crowd, and it is said that the cheers could be heard far across the desert. Thus was Cra.s.sus, as the prophecy related, showered with gold.

That night, Hyrodes, king of Parthia, flew down from Armenia, where he conducted a campaign, and there was a great feast held at the palace, and a play in celebration. The play (so says Plutarch) was The Bacchae, in which King Pentheus is beheaded and torn limb from limb by crazed women - a drama that had figured in the stochastikon's education. This play was performed in honor of Dionysus. When the final scene of decapitation was presented, an enterprising actor called Jason danced onto the stage with no plaster head but with the head of Cra.s.sus, and acted the scene with that grisly trophy clutched by its hair in his hand.

Holding it aloft, he sang: "See, citizens, what we have seized for you!

Behold the quarry we hunted on the mountain!"

Cra.s.sus's blank eyes gazed down stonily at the king of Parthia, who sat below, with his son the prince on one side and General Surenas on the other; and the king shook with laughter as his enemy's head was so abused.

Thus was the final prophecy of the oracle engine fulfilled, for indeed, King Hyrodes trembled beneath dead Cra.s.sus's gaze.

The wine flowed and there was rejoicing among all the Parthians. Sitting at this feast, General Surenas could not know that the king of Parthia, already jealous of his success, would soon have him executed. The king of Parthia could not know that his own son would try quite soon to poison him. And the prince himself could not know that his poison would fail, and that all other methods being exhausted, he should eventually have to resort to murdering his father by strangulation with his bare hands. That night, fate had not been written, or at least it was not yet calculated, and so they drank and laughed heartily while Cra.s.sus's dead eyes surveyed them. Our eyes are always blind when they view the future.

The serving women came with almonds, King Hyrodes clapped, the actor Jason pranced upon the stage, and behind him, the chorus boys, dressed as women, moving their arms in delicate dance, sang of the G.o.ds, of their generosity, and of their love for all mankind.

KELLY LINK and GAVIN J. GRANT are firm believers in the do-it-yourself ethos that powers the steampunk movement. They started a zine, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, in 1996, founded an independent publishing house, Small Beer Press, in 2000, and own two letterpresses (in various stages of a.s.sembly). They edited the fantasy half of The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror for five years, and in 2007 they published The Best of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet.

Kelly Link is the author of three acclaimed short-story collections, Stranger Things Happen (a Salon Book of the Year), Magic for Beginners (a Time Magazine Best Book of the Year), and a collection for young adults, Pretty Monsters. Her stories have appeared in the anthologies The Faery Reel, The Restless Dead, The Starry Rift, The Best American Short Stories, Poe's Children, McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, and Firebirds Rising and have won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Tiptree, British Science Fiction, and World Fantasy Awards. She worked for three years at a children's bookshop in North Carolina and for five years at Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop in Boston and has always loved reading anthologies. Some of her favorites include those edited by Helen Hoke.

Originally from Scotland, Gavin J. Grant moved to the United States in 1991. He has worked in bookshops in Los Angeles and Boston and for BookSense.com. He has written for the Los Angeles Times, Books.l.u.t, and Time Out New York and is a zine reviewer for Xerography Debt. His stories have been published in Strange Horizons, The Journal of Pulse Pounding Narratives, 3:AM Magazine, and The Third Alternative and have been reprinted in Best New Fantasy and Year's Best Fantasy.

Gavin J. Grant, Kelly Link, and their daughter, Ursula, live (and work on) an old farmhouse in Northampton, Ma.s.sachusetts.

M. T. ANDERSON has written picture books for children, stories for adults, and novels for teens. His satirical science-fiction novel Feed was a National Book Award Finalist and winner of a Los Angeles Times Book Prize. The first volume of his Octavian Nothing saga won the National Book Award and a Boston GlobeHorn Book Award; the second volume won a Michael L. Printz Honor and a Boston GlobeHorn Book Honor. Two of his stories have appeared in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. About "The Oracle Engine," he says: "Almost everything in this story, believe it or not, is taken directly from real Roman history. I added Marcus Furius, the oracle engine itself, its prophecy, and, of course, a flying ship or two. Though the machine's prophecy was something I made up, the hideous fate of Cra.s.sus and his head was taken right out of Plutarch and Ca.s.sius Dio. It just goes to show you that truth is more gory than fiction."

HOLLY BLACK is the author of best-selling dark contemporary fantasy for kids and teens. Her books include t.i.the: A Modern Faerie Tale; two related novels, Valiant and the New York Times bestseller Ironside; the Spiderwick Chronicles (with artist Tony DiTerlizzi); the short-story collection The Poison Eaters and Other Stories; and a graphic-novel series, the Good Neighbors (with artist Ted Naifeh). Holly has coedited three anthologies: Geektastic (with Cecil Castellucci), Zombies vs. Unicorns (with Justine Larbalestier), and Welcome to Bordertown (with Ellen Kushner). Her latest novel, White Cat, is the first of a new series called the Curse Workers. Red Glove is the second book. She and her husband, Theo, live in Amherst, Ma.s.sachusetts.

LIBBA BRAY is the author of the New York Times best-selling Gemma Doyle trilogy and the Michael L. Printz Awardwinning Going Bovine. She has contributed to many anthologies, including 21 Proms, The Restless Dead, Vacations from h.e.l.l, and Up All Night. She lives in Brooklyn.

SHAWN CHENG is a creator of handmade, limited-edition comic books. He is a member of the Brooklyn-based comics and art collective Partyka. His work has appeared in the SPX anthology and in The Best American Comics, at the Fredericks & Freiser Gallery in New York City, and at the Giant Robot galleries in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Shawn lives in New York City with his wife, daughter, and two cats.

Ca.s.sANDRA CLARE is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today best-selling author of the YA urban fantasy series The Mortal Instruments. She is also the author of the steampunk prequel trilogy The Infernal Devices. She lives in western Ma.s.sachusetts with her husband and two cats.

CORY DOCTOROW is a science-fiction author, as well as an activist, journalist, and blogger. He is coeditor of the blog Boing Boing and the author of novels such as For the Win and the best-selling Little Brother. He is the former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and cofounded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, he now lives with his family in London.

DYLAN HORROCKS is a writer, artist, and cartoonist who lives in New Zealand. Comics he's written and/or drawn include Pickle, Atlas, Batgirl, and Hunter: The Age of Magic. His graphic novel Hicksville has been published in several languages and won an Eisner Award. He sometimes teaches writing and drawing at various universities and art schools around New Zealand, and in 2006 he was awarded the Auckland University Literary Fellowship. For some years, he's also been running a steampunk fantasy role-playing game for a group of friends, and he is slowly writing a novel based on some of the characters and settings.

KATHLEEN JENNINGS is an ill.u.s.trator and writer who lives in Brisbane, Australia. She was raised in a very do-it-yourself fashion on a cattle property in western Queensland, by an inventive father and a mother who made her own stew and bread, with the result that steampunk and fantasy have always felt more real to her than "real" fiction. "Finishing School" is inspired by Brisbane in the 1880s (there really was a steam biscuit factory) and stories of bushrangers and daring escapes and runaway bicycles.

ELIZABETH KNOX has published eight novels for adults, two for young adults, three autobiographical novellas, and a collection of essays. Her novel The Vintner's Luck won the Montana New Zealand Book Award and the Tasmania Pacific Region Prize and has been translated into nine languages. Her young adult duet Dreamhunter and Dreamquake earned recognition as American Library a.s.sociation Best Books for Young Adults, and Dreamquake won a Michael L. Printz Honor. Elizabeth Knox lives in Wellington, New Zealand, with her husband and son.

KELLY LINK is the author of three short-story collections: Stranger Things Happen, which was a Salon Book of the Year; Magic for Beginners, named a Time Magazine Best Book of Year; and a collection for young adults, Pretty Monsters. Her stories have appeared in the anthologies The Faery Reel, The Restless Dead, The Starry Rift, The Best American Short Stories, Poe's Children, McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, and Firebirds Rising and have won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Tiptree, British Science Fiction a.s.sociation, and World Fantasy Awards. She worked for three years at a children's bookshop in North Carolina and for five years at Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop in Boston, and she has always loved reading anthologies. Some of her favorites include those edited by Helen Hoke.

GARTH NIX was born in Melbourne, Australia. A full-time writer since 2001, he has previously worked as a literary agent, marketing consultant, book editor, book publicist, book sales representative, bookseller, and part-time soldier in the Australian Army Reserve. His novels include the award-winning fantasies Sabriel, Lirael, and Abhorsen and the YA sci-fi novel Shade's Children. His fantasy books for children include The Ragwitch, the six books of the Seventh Tower sequence, and the seven books of the Keys to the Kingdom series. His books have appeared on the bestseller lists of the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, the Guardian, the Sunday Times, and the Australian, and his work has been translated into thirty-eight languages. He lives in a Sydney beach suburb with his wife and two children.

CHRISTOPHER ROWE's short stories have been nominees for the World Fantasy, Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Sturgeon, and Seiun (j.a.pan) Awards and have been reprinted and translated around the world. His first novel, Sandstorm, was published in spring 2011. He lives and works in a century-old house in Lexington, Kentucky, which he shares with his wife, the writer Gwenda Bond.

DELIA SHERMAN writes historical/folkloric/semi-comic fairy stories with a serious twist. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in many anthologies, most recently The Beastly Bride, Poe, and Teeth. Her adult novels are Through a Brazen Mirror; The Porcelain Dove, which won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, and (with fellow fantasist Ellen Kushner) The Fall of the Kings. She has coedited three anthologies, including The Essential Bordertown (with Terri Windling). Her novel The Freedom Maze and her New York Between novels, Changeling and The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen, are for younger readers. She is a past member of the James Tiptree Jr. Literary Award Council, an active member of the Endicott Studio for Mythic Arts, and a founding member of the board of the Interst.i.tial Arts Foundation. She has also taught writing at Clarion, the Odyssey Workshop in New Hampshire, the Cape Cod Writers' Workshop, and the American Book Center in Amsterdam. She lives in New York City with Ellen Kushner, travels whenever she gets the chance, and writes wherever she happens to be.

YSABEAU S. WILCE is the author of the Flora Segunda books, the second of which, Flora's Dare, won the Andre Norton Award. Before she was steampunk, she was just punk, and now she is considering trying on steamgoth for size.

We'd like to thank Kelly's wonderful agent, Renee Zuckerbrot, and her fabulous a.s.sistant, Sarah McCarry, who saved our bacon (or in Gavin's case, facon) a number of times along the way. Deb Noyes Wayshak and everyone at Candlewick for their enthusiasm. What fun they made this! The authors, especially Holly Black and Ca.s.sandra Clare, who let us bend their ears about the book as we hashed it out in Holly's car while driving from New York to Northampton, Ma.s.sachusetts. And also Cory Doctorow, Jeff VanderMeer, Liz Gorinsky, Bruce Sterling and William Gibson, Hayao Miyazaki, and all those who introduced us to the burgeoning world of steampunk!

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the authors' imaginations or, if real, are used fict.i.tiously.

Compilation and introduction copyright 2011 by Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant

"Some Fortunate Future Day" copyright 2011 by Ca.s.sandra Clare

"The Last Ride of the Glory Girls" copyright 2011 by Libba Bray

"Clockwork f.a.gin" copyright 2011 by Cory Doctorow

"Seven Days Beset by Demons" copyright 2011 by Shawn Cheng

"Hand in Glove" copyright 2011 by Ysabeau S. Wilce

"The Ghost of Cwmlech Manor" copyright 2011 by Delia Sherman

"Gethsemane" copyright 2011 by Elizabeth Knox

"The Summer People" copyright 2011 by Kelly Link