The Southern Marches were a stark contrast to the ordered, telegraph-lined valleys of Oakhaven. Here, the air was thick with the smell of sulfur and unrefined peat. The Marquis's "Iron Horse" wasn't a myth, it was a loud, coughing reality that rattled the very foundations of the feudal order.
Alaric and Kaelen sat in a modified Oakhaven carriage, pulled not by oxen, but by a Lead-Acid Battery Bank and a primitive DC Motor. It was silent, save for the hum of the copper coils and the crunch of gravel.
"It's too quiet, Alaric," Kaelen whispered, gripping his rifled carbine. "A warrior should hear his enemy coming. This... this feels like a ghost sliding through the woods."
"In the 21st century, quiet was a luxury, Kaelen," Alaric replied, his eyes fixed on a pressure gauge he'd mounted to the dashboard. "But listen. Do you hear that?"
From over the ridge came a sound like a rhythmic, metallic heartbeat. Chuff-huff. Chuff-huff. SCREEE.
---
As they crested the hill, they saw it. Vane's "Iron Horse" was a monstrous contraption of riveted boiler-plate and massive, iron-rimmed wheels. It was hauling a train of six wagons loaded with timber, trailing a plume of thick, black smoke that stained the afternoon sky.
Beside the driver's seat stood Vane. He was younger than Alaric remembered, his face a mask of soot and scarred by a previous boiler explosion. He saw the Oakhaven carriage and pulled a brass lever.
The Steam Beast let out a piercing whistle of high-pressure steam.
"Architect!" Vane roared over the din. "Your waterwheels are for children! I've harnessed the breath of the earth! I don't need your 'Safety Codes', I have Torque!"
---
"He's overloading the firebox," Alaric noted, his engineer's brain calculating the thermal expansion. "He's bypassed the governor. He's going for speed, but his seams are glowing."
Vane pushed the throttle. The Steam Beast lurched forward, its massive pistons churning. It was a terrifying display of raw, unrestrained power. The heavy wagons swayed dangerously as the machine hit twenty miles per hour, a speed unheard of for land transport in 1042.
"We have to stop him before he reaches the market at Oakhaven Bridge," Alaric said, flipping a switch on his battery bank. "If that boiler blows in the crowd, it'll be a massacre."
The electric carriage surged. While Vane had the advantage of raw horsepower, Alaric had the advantage of Instant Torque and a lower center of gravity. The silent carriage darted through the trees, flanking the thundering steam giant.
"Kaelen! The tires!" Alaric shouted.
Kaelen didn't use a bullet. He used a Magnetic Harpoon, a weighted cable connected to the electric carriage's chassis. He fired it from a pneumatic launcher, the hook embedding itself in the Steam Beast's rear axle.
---
"Now, Elena's trick!" Alaric yelled.
He reversed the polarity of the DC motor, turning it into a Regenerative Brake. The electric carriage didn't just slow down, it became an anchor, using the kinetic energy of the Steam Beast to dump massive amounts of resistance back into the line.
The cable went taut. The Steam Beast groaned. Vane screamed in fury, shoveling more coal into the white-hot furnace, trying to outpull the invisible force holding him back.
"Vane, stop!" Alaric bellowed through his megaphone. "Your pressure relief valve is jammed! The boiler is going to fail!"
"I'll reach the bridge!" Vane cried, his eyes wild with the fever of a man who had finally surpassed his master. "I'll show them that the 'Vane' doesn't bend to the 'Architect'!"
Creeeeeee-POP.
A rivet the size of a thumb flew off the boiler like a bullet, whistling past Alaric's ear.
---
"Kaelen, cut the cable! Now!"
Alaric slammed the brakes. The electric carriage skidded to a halt just as the Steam Beast's main seam buckled.
It wasn't an explosion so much as a Rapid Decompression. A wall of scalding white mist erupted, obscuring the road. The massive iron boiler didn't shatter, but it tore itself off the chassis, tumbling into the ditch with a sound like a dying god.
When the steam cleared, the "Iron Horse" was a twisted wreck of hot metal. Vane lay in the mud, alive but badly burned, staring at the ruin of his masterpiece.
Alaric walked over to him, his boots crunching on the hot coal spilled across the road. He didn't look angry. He looked profoundly sad.
"You had the right idea, Vane," Alaric whispered, kneeling beside his former apprentice. "But you forgot the first rule of the 21st century, System Stability comes before Peak Performance."
"I... I was faster..." Vane coughed, a bitter smile on his lips.
"For a minute," Alaric said. "But the world needs to move for a century."
As Kaelen began to tend to the injured, Alaric looked at the scorched earth. The "Industrial War" had claimed its first casualty, but he knew this was just a skirmish. The Southern Marquis wouldn't stop at steam. He had seen the power, and now he would want the Fuel.