First Draft of "Golems of Steam, Steel, and Bone" Chapter 1 - warning, very unedited draft

Grass swayed in the wind as Elisa hid under the wagon, terrified. In the last two hours many of the others in the caravan to the joint capital of the autonomous states of Lakota and Cheyenne, the city of the rapids had died. too many had died, for it to be the natives. Elisa knew enough of the folk of the plains, from seeing them during the battles of the Southern Rebellion, to see these were not the natives of the plains. Skin could be dyed, but the honor of the coup, the weapons of the leaders, those were missing.

Just beyond her reach, her younger brother, Erich, lay dead, bled out from an arrow wound, and bullets had come only afterwards to pin down the survivors, keeping them from the wounded. She had tried all morning, but those with the guns kept her from him, as well as inflicting more painful wounds upon him to increase his suffering. And hers.

She could no longer hear her father moving about inside the wagon, but the blood leaking between floorboards spoke even more than sound of his fate. He had fired back for quite some time, but her father was a alchemist, not a soldier. The eleven year old girl understood the difference, her older brothers and one sister had died in the early days of the Rebellion, when Jeb Stuart's men had raided deep into Ohio and Pennsylvania. The men who had driving them off from the town she had lived in just a few years ago had been soldiers, even if they had been Lakota. While her family had fought, it had been just as ineffective as today's effort.

Inside the wagon, the steam still hissed softly from the boiler, making Elisa nervous, for untended boilers that drove the wagons like they drove trains, could explode. Being under it was not a good place to be. Nor could the other wagons in their caravan be in better shape as far as boiler tending. The Tarkinson's wagon had already detonated, the bottom of the boiler and the steam making a crater where Jack and Delilah had been hiding under it.

The wind and the occasional skitter of rocks sliding were all there was in the air after the steam and moans of those still living. Elisa hoped her mother did not return into this mess, for it had to be a trap. The sun moved past noon, and thirst made the young girl find things she should not as important. Every drop of her father's blood, even as it congealed, reminded her of the lack of water. The hiss of the steam leaking from the boiler also provoked the yearning for water. She hoped that some of the boilers had not been fully stoked, and perhaps some water would remain for her to steal come nightfall. She also prayed for the souls of the dead, her mother, and horrid deaths for those villains in the high ground around her.

Then a prayer was answered, she heard a horse gallop in, followed by sparks from a fuse falling to the ground as the rider charged past. Dynamite was a thing she knew well from her mother's profession as a Necromancer, blasting rock formations to find the ancient remains of beasts terrible to dream of. The girl tried to make the wallow her movements beneath the wagon had dug deeper. At least the sparks had gone by her wagon. But any boiler exploding could set off others, only luck had made the Tarkinson's the only one to go in the last such disaster.

The explosion was faster than the horseman's hopes, he must have set the stick so the fuse touched a overheating boiler, for the detonation was nearly on time with the rustle of thankfully somewhat distant canvas. Blood and steam mingled with screams and the roar of a breached and freed boiler. Not just a roar, there was the movement of air Elisa had feared. The plates of the mighty vessel were separated and airborne, missiles with no brains to smite whatever got in their path. Shrapnel pitted the ground and wagon, stings telling her some of the deadly daggers from the destruction had found her flesh, but she dared not scream, less the steam covering the camp get into her lungs and kill her.

The scalding mists calmed after a bit, chilling her broiled skin for the next minute or so. Unable to hold out any longer, she screamed in pain, unable to hear herself still. This was her chance, her family's wagon was still upright, and not exploding. She moved with though as she choked on the foul fumes filling the little valley. The steam would disperse fast, and other boilers might have been struck by the debris and cook off, as her mother called such delayed events. Hands found the ladder to the control seat, pulling herself up nearly wasted what energy remained, but she reached the chair. Twists of the wrists at the center-line opened the valve, and to her satisfaction, the hiss of steam increased to a roar, as the wagon lurched against the still set brakes. It took all her might to get the hand grip to release the lever, and allow the half moons to split away from the drums.

Now came the part her father and mother had never let her do unsupervised before, tossing the control valve for the steering, to let her use the small wooden wheel before her to guide the wagon as a helmsman navigated a ship. Every motion was enhanced in the boxes of gears and valves below her seat, steam powering the shifting of the angle of wheels, not mechanical motions as in older models. It made the wagon easier to steer, not to mention making it respond like a ticklish girl, as her father once observed.

The motion of the pistons at the rear wheels began to break the bonds of friction slowly, screaming despite the morning's oil application with a noise high enough in pitch to make it through the ringing in her ears at last. The delay in moving had let too much of the lubricant settle off the piston and upper walls, but Elisa dared not stop to treat them again.

Every stroke moved the oil though, churning up the slosh as it was called, and making it once more spread out over the inner workings of the engine. Stroke after stroke built, each coming faster and smother in transition under the power of the steam unleashed at them. The wagon shook with each stroke, but moved, gathering momentum as the young woman struggled to remember more of what her mother had tried teaching her. Bits and pieces of how to use the pedals to speed up the steam flow, or choke it, and the third pedal to set the brakes by steam pressure in an emergency. Most of her memories coming to the fore at the moment were of being told, in loud panicked voices, to turn one way or another to miss trees, rocks, pedestrians and once a cliff.

With a mighty lurch over a small rock, the rear four wheels of the wagon began a steady motion, breaking her free of the thinning steam. It seemed the boiler explosion was in her favor, for she passed three men half under the sprung plate that had come this way, none able to chase her. Their screams were soft in her still deaf ears, but a sweet thing, despite the smell of cooking human flesh from the burns still inflicted upon them as she passed.

Pulling a cloud with the wagon as she began a terrible new journey, Elisa vowed to find her mother, and avenge her father and sibling. Even if it meant dealing with the devils of Hell in the flesh. A few shots came after her, but the enemy was disorganized now. Even more so as another boiler unleashed its steamy doom upon those near it, and to her recovering hearing the neighs of horses said someone had a long walk back to civilization, if they could hide their barbaric souls and hide amid gentle towns folk.