The Woodcutter and the War-walker: a steampunk fairytale

Part 4

The woodcutter's son ran and ran until his sides hurt and his lungs were raw from the freezing air. His breath came in gasps, and between the gasps he heard himself crying like a small child, afraid of what would happen. He reached the shack and found his mother cooking, and without waiting for her to take the pot from the fire, he dragged her off with him down the steepest and least travelled trails to his grandfather's farm.

They had but reached the fences to his grandfather's fields when they heard a distant shot from the forest. The woodcutter's son looked back over his shoulder, seeing where the crows took flight from the noise.

"You go on, mother!" he said, and then he was running back the way that they had come, back to the shack that he found burning with footprints all around it, back into the forest and the trails to where the war-walker stood.

Along the way he found signs that his father had been followed. Then he stumbled across his father's rifle, discarded in the snow, and the sharp smell of the shot hanging beneath the branches. One of the horsemen lay dead along the path. A few steps further on was one of his father's dogs, run through with a spear. The other two were running wild, but they came when the boy called them. Some way still from where the war-walker was hidden, he found his father's axe, lying bloodied where the snow had been scuffed and scattered. A puddled patch of footprints and hoofmarks broke off in the direction of the nearest mountain-passes to the north.

The woodcutter's son left the trail they made and headed for the war-walker. Caution did not matter now, and he went without care. He found the war-walker standing beneath a mantle of snow, more hidden and secret than ever. Up the leg he clambered, just as he had seen his father, up to the hatch. He opened it and swung himself inside. The dogs sat on their haunches down below, whining and staring. The ladder dropped down into the snow beside them, and the boy came next with the yoke and buckets.

"Water!" he cried to the dogs, and they ran ahead to show him the way. He went to the where the waterfall tumbled over its drop, and balancing on the slippery stones, he broke the ice at the edge of the stream and filled both buckets.

They were heavy when full, sloshing from the yoke across his shoulders, and he dare not run too fast or he would lose too much of the water that he needed for his task. He climbed up the ladder, straining straight-backed and stiff-legged, and found his way inside the war-walker to where the empty water tank stood ready. Both buckets went into it, but they barely covered the bottom. Enough to start the engines and stomp around in a circle, perhaps, but no more than that. The boy released the coke from its hopper and found his flint and stone, and the tinder all ready waiting. He lit the fire, fed it with the sticks that his father had collected, and built it up until the coke rumbled into the firebox to keep it going.

With the hatch below closed and steam belching from the chimney-stack, the boy was ready. He climbed up into the dome-head and sat in father's seat just as he had seen his father do. He reached for the levers and his feet found the pedals, and when he saw that the needle in the dials had quivered into the green, he took his first step.

The war-walker raised a leg, shedding shovelfuls of snow from its giant articulated foot. Teetering beneath the trees, it swung the leg through the air above the barking dogs, and planted it back down with a crunch. The giant machine shuddered and swayed, and for a moment the boy thought that it would fall. Quickly, he took another staggering step, and the metal monster found its balance. The boy swung the war-walker's arms, and he found that their movement helped greatly to steady their owner's gait, just as if he were walking himself. He tried to take another step, with more success this time. And another. And another.

And with the dogs racing along behind it, the war-walker crashed through the forest, leaving broken branches in its wake.

The woodcutter's son was in haste, for he knew that his father's fate was in his hands. But he could not follow straight away. The dials already showed that the pressure was dropping as the small reservoir of water in the tanks boiled away. Just as his father had done all those years before, he must make the journey over the mountains alone and unaided. So he strode and strutted to the waterfall, and smashing apart the trees that hung over the stream, the boy guided the war-walker into the roar of the fall itself. The foaming torrent from the fall hammered on the armour-plating, and the boy reached for a lever that was marked with the word for 'water'.