Кристофер Голден «Baltimore, or The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire»

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BALTIMORE,

or,

THE STEADFAST TIN SOLDIER

AND THE VAMPIRE

by Mike Mignola & Christopher Golden

For Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Herman Melville, Hans Christian Andersen,

and my wife, Christine.

—M. M.

For Maurene Golden, Denis Golden, Brian & Mary Golden, Gerry Golden, Terry & Diane Golden, and George & Elaine Sacco, and in memory of Richard Golden and of my father, James Laurence Golden, Jr. Your unwavering support and enthusiasm have always meant the world to me.

This dedication is long overdue.

—C. G.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors would like to express their profound gratitude to Anne Groell, editor extraordinaire, for her tireless energy and enthusiasm, and for insights that truly gave Baltimore a little something extra. Our thanks also to Josh Pasternak and to Glen Edelstein and the entire Bantam team. Special thanks, of course, to our spouses and children, for putting up with us. And a special thanks to Guillermo del Toro. He knows why.

PRELUDE:

REQUIEM

______

"There were once five and twenty tin soldiers,

all brothers, for they were the offspring

of the same old tin spoon. "

—The Steadfast Tin Soldier

by Ham Christian Andersen

On a cold autumn night, under a black sky leached of starlight and absent the moon, Captain Henry Baltimore clutches his rifle and stares across the dark abyss of the battlefield, and knows in his heart that these are the torture fields of Hell, and damnation awaits mere steps ahead.

On one knee he pauses, listening, but the only sound comes from the chill autumn wind that carries with it the stink of death and decay. Baltimore gestures to the men picking their way through the darkness behind him, then moves in a crouch toward a small rise that could be a mound of war-torn earth ...

or a hill of corpses.

He falls to one knee behind the mound, which is indeed an innocent pile of dirt, excavated in the process of digging a trench. But Baltimore feels no relief at the discovery, save that the small mound provides better cover than corpses would have. Bullets pass through putrefying flesh far easier than through hard earth.

In the thick of the night, only a madman would attempt to cross the ravaged No Man's Land that separates his battalion from the Hessians. The blasted tundra is furrowed with dank, muddy trenches and strewn with the bodies of the dead. Bales of barbed wire are stretched in winding serpents across the field.

Yet madmen they are. The battalion commander has determined that someone must traverse that damned earth in the dark and bring the fight to the enemy. Desperation demands it. Without some twist of fate—brought by gods or men—the dawn will find them in circumstances most dire.

The mission has gone to Captain Baltimore.

He has led his platoon away from the safety of the battalion camp, out of the forest that now seems so far behind them, and fifty yards into No Man's Land. Ahead lies at least four times that distance before they will reach any decent cover. The Hessians are camped in thick woods on the other side of the battlefield.