Sgt. Golem: Royal Mech Hussar - Stubs Soon!

I just finished discussing the supply situation when Angelica returned from the fortress. She called me and Alexander up to the bridge. "I got the captain calmed down and got some more information out of him. We're in a sticky one here. The bebok problem is bad. Sergeant Golem, there's a girl I need you to talk to.”

I tilted my head, confused by the change of subject. "A girl, ma’am?”

"Yes. A couple months ago, a young girl showed up out of the woods here at the fortress. Needless to say, this far up in the mountain, that's a bit odd. They took her in, fed her, and gave her a place to sleep. They were generally treating her like a mascot while the commander asked around for any missing persons in the region. But then she bonded with one of their chargers."

"What?" Alex perked up. "Why would they—"

Angelica raised a hand. "Just a second. From what I’m told, they had an old wreck around from the Hungarian Revolution sixty years ago set up out front of the fortress as a monument. One day it woke up. She’d bonded with it. Now it follows her around like a puppy dog."

"That's incredible," Alexander breathed.

It seemed odd to me, but what did I know. I wasn’t from around here. "I take it that’s not normal?”

Angelica shook her head. "Very few girls can bond to mechs at all. I've never heard of one connecting with an old wreck like that. Not that there's that many around, people usually salvage them. I guess this one was just too damaged or obsolete for anyone to bother."

Alexander nodded his head. "There were new models coming out all the time back then. They were building them faster than they could find girls to bond. So many died in the first part of the war they ended up with a surplus of hussar mechs."

Angelica turned to me. “A strange girl, apparently with noble blood in her veins, walking out of the wilderness and then bonding with an ancient war machine isn't exactly what we would call normal. If you combine that with your dream, I'm suspicious just what it was Baba Yaga wanted us to protect from the Red Widow.”

I stroked my new grown stubble. "Yes, I see what you mean." It was weird how seriously they were taking my dream. I’d felt like a lunatic when I told Angelica about it, but she’d gotten really worried and asked me all sorts of questions I couldn’t answer.

Alexander had a similarly contemplative look. "You think she meant the mech?"

Angelica shook her head. "I think it’s the girl."

"Really? Why would—"

"I have no idea. Who can understand the old witch? But if it's something the Red Widow is after, then it's something we should keep her from getting."

"So you want me to go talk to her?"

"I just feel like if Baba Yaga has sent you here on a mission, then—" She shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe you'll learn something talking to her. Or maybe you'll get a hunch. I have no idea. I'm completely out of my depth here." She let us see an uncharacteristic wave of doubt cross her face, clearly exhausted.

"Alright, where is she?"

"Up on the battlements, I think. They give her run of the whole fortress, but her pet only fits certain places. She's apparently been spending a lot of time up top."

"Okay.”

"There's one more thing.” Her expression grew more serious. "I'm not sure what's attacking them is really supernatural."

Back home, it would have been a given that it wasn't supernatural. Here, it seemed like a legitimate question. And somehow, the mundane explanation was the less likely one. But I was reading a lot into her tone of voice. “Go on.”

"I think the Russians may have a new weapon."

Alexander perked up again. "What sort?"

"I think it's that thing you fought in the woods."

Realization dawned. “The cloaked man.”

"Exactly," Angelica said. "It sounds a lot like what they claim has been skulking around at night. Maybe they're agents of the Red Witch, looking for the girl.”

"That’s a lot of maybes,” I said doubtfully.

Angelica leaned back in the chair and rested her elbow on the radio console. She really was exhausted. I was considering whether I should tell her to get some rest when Alexander beat me to it. "You look beat, Lieutenant."

"I know, I know. I'll go back to my room after this. I just needed to brief you."

It wasn't hard to find the battlements, once I got directions which stairs to take. I emerged from a stairwell, but not into open air.

These were nothing like battlements like I picture in stories about knights and castles, open to the sky for archers to peer over. Instead, the walls were steel plate rising taller than my head, covered over with a metal roof. Slits and hatches and sliding panels let cannons poke out their muzzles, and let in daylight, so while it was gloomy undercover, it wasn’t dark. There were two long barreled cannons rotated and stowed back away from the openings, along with several smaller pedestal-mounted weapons. It was like being inside the gun deck of pre WW1 battleship.

“Hello, golem,” a voice said behind me. I turned.

Somehow when Angelica had said a girl, I pictured somebody much younger, a child. This girl was in that indeterminate age somewhere around early teens. She had shoulder length red hair and wore a too-large soldier's jacket with the sleeves rolled up. She sat atop one of the guns, looking at me.

Behind her loomed a knight. At least, that was my first impression. Steel visor, old style breastplate and gauntlets. The newer mechs were much more streamlined, less obviously built on the model of old-fashioned suits of armor.

And he was enormous. He was crouched down now, but if I had to guess, I would say he'd be a head taller than the others I had seen. More like the Russian mechs. Those ones tended to be larger as well, although I hadn't got a good look at them standing side by side with a Polish charger.

This one's head swiveled to follow me as I approached the girl. The sense of it watching me was a feeling I hadn't gotten from any of the other mechs. This one felt ready, wary.

"Hello," I replied, and for a moment couldn't think of anything else to say.

“Hi, I’m Eva. Did you come in on that huge truck?”

"Yes, it's a hauler. We came up from below.”

“Oh, I know. I saw you coming from way down the valley."

I nodded. Some of the slots in the battlements were open. I couldn't help but take a step over and poke my head through one of them. To the north, the mountains dropped away to foothills, and in the distance, plains. Today was clear, and the view was spectacular. To the west, the mountains rose and marched down the ridges away from us.

"I've never met a golem before," Eva was saying.

I turned and tried to give my most genuine smile. "I hear we're mostly pretty boring."

"Yeah, I guess so. I read about one in a book. It was boring.”

"The book or the golem?"

She laughed. "Both, actually."

"Well, I hope I'm not too dull."

She cocked her head to one side. “Oh, I know you won't be, Sergeant. You're here to save me.”

I froze. What did this girl know? "Uh, yes, I suppose I am."

She gave a theatrical frown that vanished as soon as it appeared. "I knew Baba would send somebody to come get me, but I thought it would be an animal or a spirit. Not someone from another world."

"You know where I've come from?”

She smiled. "No, not really. But I can tell that your soul isn't from here."

My eyebrows shot up. "You can see my soul?"

She nodded, “I can, kinda."

I had a sudden flash of some of the sermons I had heard growing up with Baptist preachers and a few of the things I had done in my past. “I hope it's not too ugly.” I smiled to turn it into a joke, and she laughed.

"Oh no, it looks lovely. It's just, I don't know, different than the others."

I smiled again. "Maybe it's because I'm in a golem body."

She shook her head. "I don't think so, but I don't know why. I've never seen a golem soul before."

"Do golems have souls?"

"I don't know. You do."

I laughed again. I wasn't normally so light-hearted. This girl had such an easy way about her.

"I suppose she couldn't have sent a soulless golem to protect me,” she said.

"It doesn’t look like you need protection." I waved a hand at her metal companion.

She smiled. “Adam here is nice and all, but isn't really up to modern standards, is he?"

I took a step closer to the mech and gave it a closer scrutiny. I walked around to the side. "Oh, I don't know. The plating looks plenty thick. Do you know how old he is?"

"They say he's from the Hungarian Revolution. So that would be more than sixty years, I think.”

I nodded. "I don't know all that much about mechs, yet. But I wouldn't dismiss him so easily." A thought struck me, and I took a chance. "Do you know why Baba Yaga wants me to guard you?"

"Well..." The girl hesitated. “It's probably because I stole her fire soul.”

"Really?" I had no idea what that was, but I was here to get information. I needed to keep her talking. "What is that?"

"It's a ruby about like this." She made a shape with both hands cupped together, indicating something about the size of one of my fists. "It has a fire inside. One that never goes out."

"Ah." I didn't really understand what that meant, but it did sound like some powerful magic. "Why did you take it?"

"I..." She looked embarrassed and ducked her head, looking at me through her lashes. "I was running away, see. I was tired of living in that old hut. I wanted to get out and see more of the world. But it's cold in the mountains. I needed something to keep me warm. So I grabbed it. I wasn't really thinking. Of course she would want it back. Now you’ll drag me back to her. It’s so boring there." She folded her arms across her chest, sulking.

I smiled reassuringly. "She didn't tell me to bring you back or anything. Only to keep you safe. Maybe she’s letting you go."

"Do you think so? All the times I talked about wanting to see the world, she told me I was a silly girl. But..." She shrugged. "Maybe."

A thought occurred to me. "Do you know where she is? Baba Yaga?"

"I don't know. But this time of year, she's usually in the Urals."

"The Urals.”

“They're way over to the east."

"I know the Urals mountains." There were a lot of open plains between here and there. “Did you walk all the way from there?”

"No, we were a lot closer when I left, but usually by this time of year she’d have headed there. I kind of expect her to still be around, you know, searching for me in the woods."

"So you've been here waiting for her?"

"I was hoping she wouldn't come near this place. She tries to avoid ordinary people."

I decided to keep being honest with this girl. The things she said were bizarre, but I believed every word. “Baba Yaga told me I should take you with me."

"With you where?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. I'm only a sergeant. I don't set the destinations. But I think we're headed to Budapest." That was what I’d heard Alex and Angelica saying, anyway.

"Ooh." Her eyes got big and sparkled. A young girl imagining the wonders of the big city.

A thought suddenly occurred to me. I looked around the deck. Weapons stood around the room. Cannons at the ready, machine guns on panel mounts behind armored shutters. But no one was on duty here. “How come there’s no one else around?”

The girl shrugged. "Sometimes they keep troops here, but a lot of the time they just have lookouts up above." She pointed to a hatch in the ceiling accessed by a spiral metal staircase.

"And there's troops up there now?" I asked.

"Yes," she said, and then trailed off, looking up at the hatch. Her eyes widened, and I turned to look. At the top of the stairs were metal doors set in the ceiling itself. A dark liquid seeped through the crack in the hatch, forming huge dark drops.

One dropped down, landing on the floor, dark crimson.

Blood.

We both stared for a moment, and then the hatch in the ceiling opened. I didn't move. Instead, I unfastened the flap over my sidearm with one hand.

The door clanged all the way open. A boot appeared on the steps. Slowly, unhurriedly, a man descended the stairs. He wore black pants and a long, flowing cloak. The cloak swirled with shadows.

"Ah, shit," I muttered.

"Oh, you're both here. How nice."

I didn't recognize the face, but I did recognize the voice. It was the black-cloaked man from the burning barn, the one who had tried to kill me once already.