Agatha H. and the Clockwork Princess

swollen river and the walls of the valley, there simply wasn’t enough space for them to turn easily en masse.

To make matters worse, the clank’s rusty mechanism ground against itself painfully, producing ear-splitting grinding and shrieking noises. The noise was driving the horses into a frenzy. Drivers were yelling and swearing, cracking their whips furiously. Others risked being trampled as they hung onto bridles and tried to physically drag the horses about. Two wagons had already tipped over, and as Agatha watched, another went down, dragging its horses onto their sides, where they thrashed and screamed trying to break free.

As the old contraption cleared the trees, a great cracked lens, set into the face of the clank, began to glow. With a flare, a focused stream of green flame shot out and set a trapped horse aflame. The panic increased, and the wagons trying to escape rammed themselves into an impenetrable tangle.

The clank lurched toward the terrified people. “Wow.” Observed Krosp. “That’s not good.” He frowned. “Wait. Don’t they have any defenses? They’re scattering like geese!”

Suddenly, a lone cart drove wildly away from the group, straight along the road toward the attacker. The clank, apparently attracted by whatever moving object was closest to it, paused as the cart swept past it and away down the road. It then swiveled about on its six legs, shot out a billow of smoke, and began to pursue the escaping wagon. Agatha realized that the road would lead both cart and clank directly beneath the ridge where she and Krosp stood.

“That must’ve been what was out in the woods.” She said. “What’ll we do?”

Krosp looked at Agatha like she’d lost her mind. “It’s coming this way! What we do is run!”

Agatha gripped her gun. “No! I’ve got to help!” So saying, she leapt over the edge of the ridge and skidded down the rocky slope toward the valley floor. While the incline wasn’t dangerously steep, she found that she was traveling faster than she had expected—and the weight of the gun she held in both hands made for some challenging problems in applied momentum.

When she reached the bottom, the wagon was hurtling towards her. Its canvas back had been charred by a close shot of the clank’s green fire, and smoke poured from the remaining covering. In the back of the wagon, Agatha saw Olga, huddled down low, gripping a strut.

The wagon slowed as the horses reached a rise in the road. The clank raised its intact claw up high, then swept it down hard. At the same time, Agatha raised her newly-built gun to her shoulder and fired.

The claw smashed onto the back of the wagon, causing it to collapse and sending the rear wheels spinning off to either side. The passengers flew from the damaged vehicle, flailing in midair. An explosion erupted from the back of the clank and its rearmost right leg blew free. The giant machine rocked wildly for a moment, found its balance, and then spotted the wagon’s driver on the ground. The man was groggily beginning to sit up when he turned to see the great clank looming over him. He screamed as it prepared to grab him with its rusty claw.

Agatha ran forward, trying to get between the man and the clank. If it followed the closest moving object, perhaps she could lure it away... but as she darted in front of the man, the clank took another step, and she was knocked to the ground. She looked up and realized that she had fallen directly beneath the device.

It was a terrifying moment. The great clank squealed above her and its heavy legs pounded the ground around her as it shifted its weight. Agatha swung her gun straight up and fired it directly into the clank’s undercarriage. The resulting blast took her breath away and she gasped as she scrambled to her feet.

The clank wobbled and staggered to the side. Agatha barely avoided one of the huge legs as she reached the man on the ground and hauled him to his feet. He stared up at the smoking device that lurched drunkenly above them.

“It’s still going!” he marveled.

Agatha yanked him out of the way of a falling bit of metal. “I hit the main engine.” She could hear the increasing distress of the mechanism. “It’s finished, it just doesn’t know it yet.”

Olga was still crumpled where the wreck of the wagon had thrown her. Agatha ran toward her with the man close behind. “You!” Agatha shouted as she ran. “Olga! Get up!” The crab clank, smoke pouring from its carapace, was slowly swiveling towards them. “Get up! Get—Ah!” The two runners jerked to a halt. As they came close they could see that Olga had landed head-first on a jagged patch of exposed rock. She was quite obviously dead. The man dropped to his knees. “Olga!” he moaned, “oh no!”

Suddenly a sound behind them made them turn. There was the clank, smoke and sparks now pouring from its joints, its gigantic metal claw descending towards them.

“LOOK OUT!” Agatha shouted. At the last second, she shoved the distraught man aside.

Agatha screamed as the claw closed, and the great lens flared. A green flash of energy lanced from the eye of the clank, igniting its captive’s skirt, hair and flesh in a ball of greasy flame. It dropped its victim and began to turn—

But the repeated firing of the clank’s heat weapon had been too much. The resilient, Spark-created energy source that had powered the damaged machine through its final rampage finally gave way, and the crab clank exploded. Flaming machine parts flew through the air, as the great metal legs slowly crashed to the ground like falling trees.

Krosp raced toward the wreckage, shouting for Agatha. At the same moment, a group from the circus wagons appeared, running up the road toward the man who was staring, horrified, at the charred figure at his feet.

CHAPTER 2

Hark to the laughter of a Spark—

All Good Folk be home by dark.

—Folk Rhyme

His memories of that day were, for the most part, blurred. So much time had passed since then—and so many, many things had happened in that time. Still, that day’s final scene would remain sharply etched in Klaus’ memory forever. It was a scene he had replayed a thousand times in his head—the last time he had ever seen her.

Where had he made his mistake?

The room itself was an intimate chamber set high in a corner tower of a castle in the mountains—somewhere in the tangle of little kingdoms that sprawled north of Mechanicsburg. The view over the surrounding town was breathtaking, a panoramic sweep that carried the eye out across the wide valley and all the way to the encircling, snow capped mountains. Although it was late, countless lights twinkled below, echoes of music and laughter floating through the tower’s leaded-glass windows.

The celebration had been going on all day. It would still, he was sure, be going strong when dawn came. The day before, the people of this town had been the terrified slaves of the Chatelaine of Red Glass, but that had all ended when Bill and Barry, the legendary Heterodyne Boys, accompanied by Klaus, Lucrezia Mongfish, and Zzxzm, the sentient magnet[9] accidentally crashed their airship into the ornamental fountain of Ruby Glass Castle. There, they discovered the hidden caverns beneath the town, and the terrible secrets they contained.

It was now forty-eight hours later. The Chatelaine’s army of luminescent fungus men had been destroyed, every hapless captive freed.

The Chatelaine’s death had been cause for rejoicing and celebration throughout the town, but it had cast a pall among the Heterodyne party. Bill and Barry always wanted to reform their enemies, not kill them. They would happily battle rampaging monsters with electrical grenade throwers or earthquake machines, but they were convinced that anyone, given a chance, could change their ways and work together to make Europa a better place. Whenever they failed, whenever a Spark was killed, they saw it as a personal failure. When the townspeople first realized they were free, the Heterodynes had silently tolerated the inevitable cheers