by Oisin McGann
“Come on, come on!” Nate screeched, struggling to free the velocycle.
Tatiana pushed down with her feet too but it was useless. The roof collapsed inwards, sending them tumbling into the building. They plunged through the hay store on the first floor, which slowed their fall before the boards gave way under Flash’s plummeting weight and they crashed through to the ground. Tatiana screamed as she landed heavily on her side. Nate had the breath knocked out of him and hit his head against a broken rafter.
The grooms hurried to the scene, standing uncertainly, reluctant to lay hands on this man who had once been one of their masters. Nate rose from the wreckage of wood and hay, bloodied and covered in dust.
“Get out of my way,” he snarled. And they did.
Pulling the velocycle onto its feet, he picked up his sister and helped her onto the saddle behind him. The engimal shook itself and snorted steam and then it reared, its back wheel grinding smoke off the ground. They lunged forward, out of the stable doors and round the house towards the front gate. The speeding shape raced across the grass, through the company of cavalry, startling horses and raising angry shouts from their riders. The war engimal, a navy-skinned creature the size of a large coach, with six wheels and a triangular head jutting with tusks, looked on dispassionately. It did not move without orders.
It turned to watch the velocycle skid onto the cobbled driveway, sprint down between the two rows of poplar trees and disappear out of the gate. When it turned back to face the front, what it saw caused it to rise up on its hind wheels with a frightened squeal, throwing its rider. The fearsome war engimal staggered back, swiveled and bolted for the forest at the side of the house. The horses followed it with wide, panicked eyes.
From around the other side of the house, crushing the cobbles beneath their feet, the ground shaking beneath their great weight, came Trom and Colossus. On the back of the bull-razer, holding the reins, was Slattery, with Elizabeth beside him. Hugo and Brunhilde rode the juggernaut, and from the top of each behemoth, lengths of snake-chain coiled and reached out at the will of their master. And Hugo, wearing his chain mail once more with his suit and top hat, screamed an exultant battle cry as his monsters chased down their prey.
XXXIII
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING PUNCTUAL
NATE LOOKED BACK, but could see no signs of pursuit. He wondered how long it would take Hugo to get clear of the Viceroy’s soldiers, marshal his own forces and come after the fugitives. Nate just needed time to reach the train station in Kingstown. Abraham would meet him there with Daisy and Roberto so they could make their escape together. He squeezed Tatty’s hand where it clung to his waist. He was hoping the British would delay Hugo for a while, but the first moves had been made, at least. He had to time this right. The timing was crucial.
They had covered more than three miles and were scrambling up a narrow sloping lane when the flock of leaf-lights struck silently and without warning. They swooped into Flash’s path and swept across Nate and Tatty, their sharp edges cutting like a hail of glass shards. Thrown out of the saddle, brother and sister landed hard on the ground in a sprawling heap. Nate rolled up onto his feet, then dropped into a crouch to shield Tatty, pulling his jacket over her head again as the engimals came in once more, sweeping over him, raking their blades across his shoulders and back. He cried out, as much in anger as in pain. There seemed no way to fight these elusive creatures. Pulling out his revolver, he fired at them, over and over again, knocking two or three from the air, but there were dozens more and now his gun was empty. He frantically tried to reload before they came back in again, fumbling rounds into the chambers.
But they were changing tactics. The leaf-lights rolled together as they dived, wrapping into a single long spear-shaped formation that picked up speed as it solidified. Nate dived out of its way at the last moment, only to face it again seconds later as it spun and came at him from the opposite direction. It was only feet from him when Flash reared up on one side, blasting a jet of steam from its nostrils. The leaf-light javelin shot through the gushing, boiling-hot steam, and there was a high-pitched buzzing as the projectile burst into its component parts. The leaf-lights swirled in confused pain. Nate seized his jacket and swung it over them, gathering as many as he could in the material and bunching them together before swinging the thrashing bundle hard against the ground, over and over again until it went still. He jumped on it a few times for good measure.
The few remaining engimals fluttered up into the air, out of his reach. But just four or five of them could offer no threat. Nate heaved in deep breaths, wincing at the pain from a hundred small cuts. He noted with satisfaction that the older ones were already closing up. His inherited defenses were kicking in, his healing accelerated by the adrenaline coursing through his body. His muscles felt charged up from the rush, and despite the pain, a smile split his blood-stained face.
“That wasn’t the act of a slave!” he said fondly to Flash, slapping its side. “You roasted them! By God, I’ll make a warhorse out of you yet!”
“You’re enjoying this,” Tatiana said miserably.
He didn’t answer, picking her up instead and getting into the saddle before helping her on behind him. No sooner had Flash started forward than they heard a sound like a cattle stampede and the ground started to tremble. Smashing through the trees behind him came Colossus, with Hugo and Elizabeth riding on its back. Trom rumbled along not far behind. They could not match Flash’s speed, but whereas the velocycle had to work its way round the landscape, the behemoths could trample a line straight through it. Elizabeth’s leaf-lights had bought them all the time they needed to catch up.
High hedges barred the way on either side, so Flash was forced to go uphill. Colossus was driving through walls and hedges to cut them off, while Trom lumbered up from behind. Flash brushed past only an instant before Colossus charged across the laneway. A chain snaked out, its link mouth catching onto Flash’s right rear leg and starting to pull the velocycle back. Nate drew his pistol and shot the snake-chain twice in the head, severing it. But another was already locking onto the saddle behind Tatty. It yanked them back as Colossus turned and threatened to pull them under the juggernaut’s wheels. Nate couldn’t reach round to aim at the chain’s head.
“Hang on!” he yelled.
There was slight slope on the huge engimal’s head—enough for Nate to spin Flash round and, with its wheels spinning wildly, ride the velocycle right up onto the juggernaut’s shoulders and over its back. Nate kicked Hugo out of his way, shooting the chain where its tail anchored it to the juggernaut’s carapace. Still dragging the rest of the snake-chain after him, he rode down Colossus’s tail … and straight out in front of Trom.
Nate jinked right and the slow-witted engimal followed him, its shovel-shaped jaw digging into the ground and throwing up earth like a sea wave, bearing down on the velocycle and its riders. Nate rode Flash up, tilted almost horizontal along the wave, bursting out at the end of it as Trom’s enormous jaw rammed straight into the side of the juggernaut, bringing both behemoths to a juddering halt, chains slapping against their armor like tentacles.
The behemoth’s riders had no chance to use their firearms before Flash and its riders disappeared over the crest of the hill. The snake-chain that was still hanging onto their saddle now coiled up and swung its three yards of tail over the front of the velocycle, wrapping around the riders like a constricting snake, trying to crush the life out of them. Tatty took the pistol from Nate’s hand and calmly shot the thing in the head.
The two fugitives and their mount made it to the small, red-brick train station by the sea with time to spare. The train was still there, its barrel-shaped iron locomotive seeping steam as it sat waiting to depart. They were a strange sight to behold: the Beast of Glenmalure, being ridden along the platform by two bedraggled, bloodstained members of the gentry—one a young woman in men’s clothes. Daisy and Abraham, who had been anxiously watching out for them by the door of their train compa
rtment, ran up to greet them.
Nate and Tatiana dismounted stiffly, sore and tired. The thrill of the chase had left them and now they were feeling the aftereffects. Daisy hugged Tatty, examining her wounds with concern. Nate and Abraham shook hands, no longer master and servant, but still unable to be equal. Abraham handed Nate a rapier in its scabbard and Nate drew it out a few inches to check the sharpness of the blade.
“They’re coming,” he said at last, looking up at a single leaf-light that floated in the air above the roof of the station building. “We have a few minutes at most.”
“Could the train outrun them?” Daisy asked.
“An engine like this can do nearly sixty miles per hour, ma’am,” Abraham told her. “More than Trom could manage, I’m sure. I’m not certain about the juggernaut.”
“It’ll be all right,” Nate said confidently.
“You’re sure this will work? That Roberto won’t be put at any risk?” Daisy persisted.
“All aboard!” the train’s guard bellowed, blowing on his whistle and moving along the train to close any open doors.
“No,” Nate replied, looking her in the eye. “I’m not sure of anything. We can only try.”
“I suppose we can,” she sighed, nodding. “All right, then. Let’s do this. And may God go with us.”
“Any help at all would be appreciated,” Nate said as he helped her up into the carriage.
He turned to shake hands again with Abraham.
“This is where we part ways,” he said. “I hope I’ll see you and your brothers again soon. Good luck.”
“I think you will need the luck more than we will,” Abraham told him with a grim smile. “God-speed, Master Nathaniel.”
“And to you,” Nate responded, gripping the other man’s hand tightly.
And for the first time in years, Nathaniel offered up a heartfelt prayer; just in case there was anyone up there still listening.
The locomotive started out of the station, southbound. Heaving and hissing, its pistons pushing the central driving wheels, which stood taller than a grown man, it gradually picked up speed in a cloud of smoke and soot and steam. It breathed like an asthmatic buffalo, but there the similarity with a living beast ended. This marvel of the Victorian Age had little in common with any animal, particularly the vigorous, fluid and tireless movements of engimals. But it had changed the landscape of this century in a way that they never could, and the iron engine moved now with seemingly unstoppable momentum, steadily gaining speed.
Its puffing grew louder and faster as they left Kingstown behind them and carried on along the rails and down the coast. The driver looked out from under the arched roof, through the round window of the cab at the track ahead, as the other engineman shoveled coal into the firebox and watched the boiler’s gauge with an experienced eye. The engine panted quickly now; traveling at speed, it passed through pastoral land, which dropped away to the sea on its left; fields dotted with clachans and villages on its right.
Suddenly the man looking out of the window let out a cry of warning, reaching for the controls. The engine’s brakes squealed, quickly followed by the brakes in the guard’s van behind the carriages, but these trains could slow down no quicker than they could accelerate. There was a shriek of metal sliding against metal as the wheels scraped sparks off the rails. The enginemen blew the whistle in alarm, the train skidding inexorably towards its doom. The carriages’ buffers impacted against one another as they were slowed suddenly from either end, and inside, people were thrown from their seats. Panic ensued.
And then the massive bull-razer the driver had seen careering towards them on a collision course crashed into the side of the locomotive, smashing the twenty-five tons of iron off its rails and sending it toppling over on its side. The six-wheeled tender tumbled after it, carpeting the ground with lumps of coal before it was pummeled aside by the carriages slamming into it from behind. Half the train followed the locomotive off the rails … and then, with a deafening crunch, the juggernaut rammed the guard’s car, sending it over on its side and pulling the rest of the carriages with it.
Hugo stood up and gazed out on the devastation and saw that it was good. From the back of Colossus he could see the entire train lying on its side in ruin. Steam billowed up from the split boiler in the locomotive and smoke gushed from the twisted, punctured smokestack. People were starting to emerge, climbing out through the doors and shattered windows. Slattery blasted the roof of the train twice with his shotgun and there was more screaming.
“We’re looking for four people!” he roared, casually reloading the weapon. “Two ladies, a young gentleman and his cripple of a brother. They are all we want. The rest of you may flee in safety!”
He jumped down from Trom and strode over to the wreck, climbing onto the first carriage. Elizabeth stayed on the bull-razer’s back to keep watch in case any of their prey tried to escape. Hugo and Brunhilde climbed onto the side of the overturned train at the other end and started to walk down its length, each armed with a pistol and a sword. Brunhilde still wore a smart crinoline dress, and she held the hoops up with one hand as she climbed, revealing her bloomers in a most undignified manner, looking like an uncouth little girl determined to join in the boys’ games.
The three met towards the rear end of the first-class carriage. Looking down through the remains of the glass in the windows, they found what they were looking for: Daisy, Tatiana and Roberto lay semiconscious in a sprawling heap on the internal wall of the compartment.
“Where’s the other one?” Hugo hissed.
Elizabeth saw her brother’s posture change and immediately knew something was wrong. She had regained her leaf-light cloak, looking a little worse for wear but otherwise undamaged. She raised her hand, ready to gesture the little engimals into attack. Instinct made her look round at that moment and Nate’s fist caught her square across the cheekbone and knocked her flying. She fell off the far side of Trom’s back, landing head-first on the dry turf. Nate dropped down and glared at her as she lay there, seeing the jagged angle of her neck. She wasn’t dead, but she was close enough to it for now. The leaf-lights continued to wait patiently for instructions from their silent mistress.
On the carriage, Daisy had been pulled up through the door, and now Brunhilde was gripping her by the hair and banging her head against the wooden wall of the carriage.
“Where’s the delicious one?” the gibbering woman asked, yanking on Daisy’s hair to bring their faces nose to nose.
“You’ll see soon enough!” Daisy snapped back, tears in her eyes.
Her hand found the pocket hiding the syringe and felt that it was still intact. Brunhilde smacked her head against the wall again and Daisy let out a cry. Her body was already racked with pain and each impact shot bolts of it through her skull. Hugo leaned in through the window.
Tatty was struggling to get to her feet and Roberto looked in terrible shape, lying unconscious on twisted limbs, his stretcher fallen on top of him.
“He wasn’t on the train,” Hugo said softly Then he bellowed it. “He wasn’t on the bloody train!”
Flash’s engine came upon them in a sudden roar and Nate leaped from the engimal’s back as it piled into Slattery in a high-speed charge that hurled them both off the side of the carriage and over onto the ground below. Flash got back on its feet. Slattery did not.
Nate came to a running stop as he drew his sword and almost managed to drive the point of it into Hugo’s unprotected thigh, but the Patriarch drew his cutlass with blurring speed and parried the strike. They pulled apart, swords in the guard position.
“You used your own family as bait to draw us out,” Hugo remarked with a mixture of disgust and admiration. “Have you no conscience?”
“To be honest, I didn’t think you’d actually crash the train,” Nate admitted. “I thought you’d just block its path.”
In fact, the ferocity of Hugo’s assault had wrecked Nate’s plans, and the sight of all the dead and injured had sh
aken him to the core. But it was too late to do anything about it now.
“You still have much to learn about the use of force,” Hugo told him, and lunged in with an attack.
Nate swept it aside, cutting inside Hugo’s guard at his torso, but the Patriarch’s chain mail saved him. He came back at Nate in a repost that nearly drove the point of the cutlass into Nate’s belly. Nate beat it down and twisted his own blade around it as it came back up, binding it and sweeping it aside once more. He struck out with a kick to Hugo’s solar plexus, throwing the older man backwards and following him, blade driving forward. Hugo dodged the strike, flipped back onto his feet and came at his younger opponent again with a bewildering series of jabs and thrusts. Nate was astounded by the old man’s strength and speed. With skills honed during years of medieval battles, Hugo began to drive him steadily backwards.
Brunhilde rose up, taking her pistol and drawing a bead on Nathaniel as the two men fought with a frantic clashing of steel. Daisy seized her chance and, pulling the syringe from her pocket, went to jab at Brunhilde’s side—only to find her wrist caught in a crushing grip. Brunhilde’s hand had moved impossibly fast and without her even looking, and now she was forcing the needle back. She turned on Daisy, her mouth open in a shrill battle cry, the gun raised not to shoot, but to beat her victim to death in an animal frenzy.
Daisy’s thumb jammed the hypodermic’s plunger home, spraying the poison into the mad woman’s face. Brunhilde yelped, knocking the syringe from Daisy’s hand so that it smashed against the wall of the carriage. She staggered up onto her feet, letting out little cries, rubbing her eyes as if they were burning. She gagged on the toxins in her mouth.