The Best of Penny Dread Tales (29 page)

I felt a thud.

I felt a bounce.

I felt a thud.

I felt a bounce again.

I opened my eyes to see that I had landed in the center of a net made entirely out of jungle vines and bamboo posts. As far as I could see over the side of the raft, I could tell that this structure was built to protect anyone from falling into the bottom of the waterfall too harshly. My first instinct was to believe that Quee-Zay had saved my life, but he would not have had the time to run away, descend a cliff, and build this highly supportive structure in the time it took me to make peace with the universe.

My contemplation of this was cut short when the air above me was overshadowed by the tribal chieftan, who, while standing over me, emitted a belly laugh that was so immense it rocked the entire safety net and raft along with it. I was untied and taken back to Quee-Zay’s side, and it was relayed to me that this whole business about sending foreign men over the falls was all simply an elaborate practical joke played on, as the chieftan put it, “Any scrawny outsider without the stomach to become a proper meal.”

We were escorted back to the village where our comedy act was revered by all the natives assembled. Our clothes were dried, we were fed frozen fruit paste and coconut stalks fried in oil. We were also given a daguerreotype taken of me mid-fall.

We were asked to possibly stay among the tribesmen as honorary spiritual leaders who were tasked with bringing their youthful female charges into womanhood, but, having had enough excitement for one day, we instead opted to return home. After bidding farewell to the tribe, we hiked through the now clean path out of the jungle and returned to the space where the T.I.M.O.T.H.F.Y would lock onto our coordinates and return us to our universe.

I’m reasonably certain that it was the combination of the native food with exposure to the torrential waters that has me in the condition I’m in at the moment. It has hurt me only in that I sincerely hoped to deliver these findings in person, but the need to bathe daily in kelp and be rubbed in goldfish oil has been preventing me to do so. While there’s still much more of the continent of Appricotta to explore, I believe that the work I’ve done on this expedition has moved us progressively forward in our ongoing quest to better understand the wild dimensional continent. I also hope that this excursion has proven that I am worthy enough to once again be tenured by the university and be awarded a crew for purposes of further exploration.

Pretty please with sugar on it?

—R.J. Bricabrac

***

Budapest Will Burn

Jonathan D. Beer

To the soldiers that encircled it, the city seemed to be aflame. Dark smoke hung in thick palls, obscuring the churned soil and flickering muzzle-fires that marked the siege’s edge, in and amongst what had been the city’s southern districts. There was no pause in the crash of cannon fire, the scream of shells and rumble of shot striking hard-packed earth and stone.

Budapest was on the edge of ruin.

The Ottoman army had struck the city with systematic ferocity. Engineers mapped the fortifications while sweating soldiers dug a network of trenches and artillery parks that encircled the southern fringes of the city. Hundreds of cannons, hauled from the famed foundries of Constantinople across the length of the Balkans, were manoeuvred into place in their embrasures.

On the tenth day of the siege the batteries had been unmasked and a storm unleashed against the city. An unending rain of iron shot crashed through the Hungarian defences, unseating cannon and shattering stone. Wide-muzzled mortars lobbed shells over the walls to burst in clouds of shrapnel or alchemical fire.

Behind vast fortifications, the twin cities of Buda and Pest trembled and tore at themselves in fear. All knew that the city’s end was near. Exhausted artillerymen and bleeding soldiers felt it through some arcane instinct. Terrified civilians whispered it to one another. Such slaughter could not be endured; no army, no city, could take such punishment for long. Hungarian privates and generals alike watched the Ottoman lines in resigned, nerve-deadened fear for the inevitable massing of infantry that would precede an assault, an attack that would end with the city in flames.

Behind the walls, sheltered from the siege front but no safer for it, Budapest quaked in terror of what was to come.

***

On most days Margaret Island was a delight in late afternoon. Broad leaves softened the summer sunlight and cast dappled shadows on the wide avenues of the park. Couples walked arm in arm, happy that the din of the city was barely audible over the Danube’s passage. The worst one had to worry about were the groups of raucous students that terrorised the boulevard, on the lookout for unescorted ladies to make sport with until the evening drew in and the band began to lure folk to the pavilion’s dance floor.

The sound of cannon fire roared between the trees. Anne-Cathleen Béres closed her eyes and wished with every fibre of her being for it to be such a day.

She stood alone in the shadow of a tall cypress tree to one side of the wide cobbled path that led into Fort Beatrice. At her back the fort loomed, its ancient stone and crumbling mortar offering little sense of surety or sanctuary. Her husband, Sir Gusztáv Béres, was within, in deep conference with the old, medal-bedecked men who commanded the city’s garrison. Gusztáv was the Master of the Royal Armoury, a position of fragile influence and wearying responsibility.

Anne-Cathleen had begged Gusztáv to keep her at his side before he left for the meeting, pleading frailty and anxiety that were all too easily feigned. He had acquiesced, as ever, and had dutifully held her hand in a way he thought comforting as their carriage made its way to the ferry that had brought them here.

She glanced around, afraid that she would be seen alone in the park. She scolded herself for the fear she felt. Before Gusztáv’s carriage had left their house in Buda, Anne-Cathleen had despatched the scullery boy to find Ábel for her, bribed into loyalty with a fistful of silver forints. Now she waited, afraid for the first time of the subterfuge she had embraced so readily only weeks before.

Anne-Cathleen had met Ábel Valzeck at a dance at the Margaret Island pavilion. He had strode through the cream of Buda’s society with a sense of purpose that ill-suited his clearly inferior station, wearing an evening-suit that had seen better days, possibly serving as scarecrow’s dress. Her friends, if she thought of the fawning, simpering creatures she was forced to keep company with as friends, had laughed openly at the way he approached Anne-Cathleen to ask, in a prickly, prideful way, for a dance. She had accepted his hand simply to spite the silly girls.

Ábel had danced terribly, but he was an astonishing lover. Although their ages were only a few years apart, Anne-Cathleen found Ábel wondrously simple; the epitome of masculine passion and wonderfully eager to please. His attentions thrilled her jaded spirit; his naïve, impassioned views challenged her cynicism. Ábel embodied the idealistic youth that she had been denied by an early marriage.

He was a radical and a revolutionary, an anarchist of the highest principle. She had laughed at him when he had told her, his voice low and filled with sombre sincerity. That was the closest they had come to ending their affair. Henceforth Anne-Cathleen had carefully made only the lightest of jibes, enough to rile him and give him leave to pontificate and expound in his way. He and his radical friends, his comrades, would topple the Diet; topple the world given the chance. Ábel believed fervently in the Enlightenment ideals of Equality and Liberty, lost in young dreams that Anne-Cathleen could not conjure and barely envied.

Her dreams were much more selfish.

For five long weeks they had met in parks and cafés in Pest, secret trysts that flavoured an otherwise meaningless existence. Then the war had come, and with it the fear. Fear had gripped the streets, driving folk indoors to bar their windows and hug their children. Man-made thunder roared through the city, carrying with it echoes of violence and madness. The war had always been a far-off thing, the army’s triumphs and tribulations a source of gossip. To see and hear it first-hand, battering at the gates of her home, terrified Anne-Cathleen to her core.

The sound of footsteps brushing through grass broke her reverie. She turned; Ábel padded through the short grass, wearing long riding boots and a wool coat that was torn and muddy. A pistol hung at his hip, and a white cotton bandage was wound around his blonde hair, almost concealing his left eye. She had never seen him look less like himself. Anne-Cathleen ran to him, surprised to feel tears of concern prick her eyes.

“Hush, Anne, hush.” Ábel cooed reassurances, his deep voice momentarily overpowering the distant guns. His arms encircled her tightly, and she felt the weave of his cotton shirt against her cheek.

Anne-Cathleen lifted her face up to look into his and saw nothing but concern for her etched in his features. He was handsome, even with the bandage, with a quick smile and thoughtful eyes beneath a broad, furrowed brow. But for his eyes, Ábel always put her in mind of a farmhand, proud and content in his naïveté. He stared back at her, a reassuring grin failing to hide his anxiety.

Anne-Cathleen squeezed his hand with hers, forcing a smile to her lips. “What happened to you?”

“Nothing, nothing that will not mend.” They spoke in French, Anne-Cathleen’s native tongue; Ábel took such pleasure in giving her a glimpse of her homeland. She glared at him and raised her free hand to feel the edge of the bandage. He leaned back and relented. “I was set upon in the street, but there is nothing to worry about.”

“But you are wounded.”

“It’s a scratch. Really, Anne, I am fine. Why are you here? You should not be out alone. Why on earth did he bring you here?”

Anne-Cathleen continued to grip Ábel’s hand, pulling him into the shadow of the cypress. “Gusztáv brought me because I told him to bring me. I had to see you. The city is panicked; people in the streets have lost all order. The maid told me there have been riots in Pest and that the constabulary house in Józsefváros has been set alight.”

“There is worse,” said Ábel, his good looks marred by a grim expression. “Food is running out. The markets have not opened since the siege began, and you know what prices were like before the Musulmen closed us up. Gangs are taking over the communal wells and pumps. Neighbours are turning on each other for the basics of life.”

“Ábel, you must get me out of the city. I cannot stay here. We must leave, together.” The words tumbled out, fuelled by a desperation that she could see pull at Ábel’s heart.

His frown softened. “Darling, if only we could. But there is no way for us to leave, no way for me at any rate. Surely he can get you out?”

“I do not want his help,” she lied. Anne-Cathleen had asked and demanded and finally begged Gusztáv to find her a place aboard one of his steamers heading up the Danube, or to use his influence to find her a berth on one of the few remaining airships that lingered in the skies over Budapest. He had insisted that she stay with him, refusing to allow any notion that Budapest could fall to enter his mind. “I want to leave with you. Ábel, we can escape together!”

He was not taken in by her obvious manipulation. “Or is it that you need my comrades to help you because your husband will not?” demanded Ábel. Anne-Cathleen felt a roughness in his tone that she had never heard before. Tears, real and unforced, rolled in slow drops down her cheeks.

“I am scared, Ábel. The city is doomed, and we will all die or worse when the Musulmen break in. I cannot die here!”

Ábel grasped her in his arms again, unable to look at the sorrow in her eyes. “You won’t!” All hint of his anger evaporated as suddenly as it had appeared. “I swear it, my love; you will not die here.”

Anne-Cathleen struggled against his grip, but he held her tightly. Panic that she had contained for days burst free, her reserve breaking down before a man she had known for mere weeks.

“I must get out, please come with me.” She sobbed into his chest, soaking his shirt with pent-up emotions. She clung to him, simultaneously craving the physicality of his presence and hating herself for such a self-pitying display.

“It is not up to me,” said Ábel after she had subsided. She let go of him and hastily wiped her eyes.

“But I am asking you.” She drew herself up, although her eyes were barely level with his chin. “I have money,” she said quietly.

“It is not a question of money,” said Ábel.

“Then what? Why would they not help us? Why would they refuse you?”

Ábel was silent. Anne-Cathleen said nothing, still embarrassed by her display of fragility. She watched him, confused by his indecision and resistance. He, like Gusztáv, had never denied her anything before.

He paced a few steps away from her and looked to the south, towards the sound of cannon fire and death. He looked afraid, if she could credit it. It was an emotion that did not sit well on him; Anne-Cathleen had never seen him struggle with indecision. He had always been resolute, unflinching. Forthright.

He turned to her. “I will do what I can. There is an airship leaving the city tomorrow, the
Artemis
. I, we, have had dealings with her captain. There might be a place on it for you.”

She smiled and stepped into him. She pulled his face to hers, magnanimous in victory. His kiss was soft and gentle; sad, even. Anne-Cathleen suddenly felt guilty. “A place for us. You are coming with me.”

He smiled back at her.

***

The sun set on the eleventh day of the siege, and the Ottoman guns fell silent.

At first none on the Hungarian earthworks noticed, their senses dulled by two days of unending assault. Slow realisation dawned, men noticing the absence of what had been ever-present. Grins and shouted words drifted up and down the walls as soldiers who stood ten metres apart were suddenly able to converse once more.

Darkness came upon the lines in a rush, dusk lasting only moments. The sudden silence from the Ottomans provoked panic amongst the commanders within the city, and the young night was broken by bugle calls for assembly and cries for reports of the enemy massing. There was nothing; no movement in the Ottoman lines, no hint of a reason why they had chosen to halt their systematic bombardment.

As stars began to prick the midnight sky, sentries were stood down and replaced while reserve battalions were allowed to disperse and return to their billets. Opinions were traded as to the reason for the reprieve. The maudlin assumed the Ottomans were so confident in victory they could take their time. The optimistic prayed the Hungarian field army was returning to relieve the city, and the Ottomans were abandoning their short-lived siege.

All took advantage of the silence to claim a night of unbroken sleep.

***

Anne-Cathleen stood with one hand against the window of her drawing room, her face illuminated by the light of civilisation burning. Budapest may not yet have fallen to its besiegers, but it had lost itself. The city had descended into a madness of its own making.

She was on the top floor of the townhouse, looking out at Buda through a large semi-circle of glass framed by an arch tall enough for her to stand beneath. A thin bench, upon which sat a large carpetbag filled with clothes and her most treasured possessions, ran the width of the window, but she did not feel like sitting. The view held her, fascinating as much as it was terrifying, revolting as it was enthralling.

The window looked to the south, over the deserted streets and the rooftops of Buda. Fires studded the darkness, stark against the vague silhouettes of towers and houses. From her vantage point Anne-Cathleen could see the riverside market square where she occasionally walked. It was full of people, and though night had set in, she could see individuals clearly, their savage stances lit by burning torches and the lamps of a river steamer moored alongside the dock.

The steamer’s captain was in a dangerous position. Though Anne-Cathleen could not hear the exchange, she had a fair idea of what was happening. The mob had gathered in the square as night fell, demanding passage on the steamer, and the captain was justly refusing. Anne-Cathleen felt she was watching some grotesque parody of her own emotions play out in the square; desperate fear, the instinctive desire to survive, directionless anger.

She was too far away to discern faces, but she clearly saw a man on the quay’s edge draw his pistol. The captain started back, gesturing frantically at his crew. Horrified and utterly impotent, Anne-Cathleen saw the steamer’s men pull weapons from their belts. The pistol’s muzzle flashed, and a cloud of red erupted from the back of the captain’s head. She turned away in disgust, fighting nausea. She looked back. Bright flashes of fire and puffs of powder smoke edged the dock. Many in the crowd were running, fighting against the press to flee the guns of the steamer’s crew, but others were shooting or throwing bricks and cobbles.