Merciless Reason

by Oisin McGann

  Holding onto one of the roof supports, Nate stared out at the dusk-lit landscape, and at the six velocycles racing across the fields, weaving past trees and leaping hedges and fences in pursuit of the train. Each engimal carried a rider, and the man in front wore a fur-felt cowboy hat and duster coat.

  The creatures snarled and screeched, relishing the thrill of the chase. Their wheels left scars in the soft earth where they swerved or jumped or accelerated, spraying soil and tearing through undergrowth. Harmonica took his hat from his head and whooped as he waved it forward, urging his posse onwards after the train. They were closing the gap quickly—the steam locomotive was the fastest form of travel in the Victorian age, but only if you left engimals out of the equation. There wasn’t much that could outrun a velocycle.

  “It gives a whole new meaning to ‘catching the train’, doesn’t it?” Nate observed. “No expense has been spared, apparently. Those are Wildenstern beasts, I’d know them anywhere. There can’t be more than eight or nine of the creatures in the whole of Ireland. So what do we do now?”

  “Prepare to repel boarders,” Dempsey replied, leaning on the door and nodding to his men. “Tell the others to make sure they don’t get ahead of us. Shoot the blackguards out of the saddle if you have to. I don’t think Harmonica’s enough of a lunatic to try and derail the train, but he might try and block its path. And we don’t know if they’ve got more men on the way to catch up with us. I wouldn’t put it past him to have more of them to meet us when we stop at Roscrea. If I have to, I’ll put a gun to the drivers head and push on through every bloody station between here and Dublin.”

  The three headed back up the train to spread out along its length and pass on instructions to the rest of their crew. Dempsey drew a revolver and turned towards the back of the carriage.

  “Two of them have gone ahead,” Nate said, pointing at the pair of riders careering over a field to reach the front of the train on the right-hand side. “And the cowboy is going up the left. You’d want to mind they don’t get to the driver before your men do. The last thing you want to have to do is lay siege to the engine.”

  “We have it covered,” Dempsey retorted.

  In the short time he had known the sailor, Nate had yet to hear the man speak to him in any kind of friendly tone. It seemed Nate could never be forgiven for being a member of the family who had stolen Dempsey’s son.

  Gunshots rang out, and Nate ducked down behind the low wall at the end of the footplate, but he knew that the thin sheet of iron might not stop a rifle round, or even that of a powerful handgun like the ’44 he pulled from his jacket. Two of the riders were making a play for the end of the train. Bullets smacked into the walls and chassis of the train, some ricocheting off at dangerous angles. Dempsey stepped inside the back door and smashed the window. Nate darted in behind him and the sailor used the door as cover, taking careful aim through the broken window at the two riders speeding up alongside the train.

  Nate used the butt of his gun to punch through a side window and fired two shots at the nearest rider. His first missed, but the second struck the engimal in the flank. It shrieked and flinched, its rear wheel slipping sideways, nearly throwing its rider. But then regained its balance and, enraged, it rushed forward even faster. But in doing so, it came closer to the guards van. Nate took a bead on the man on its back and put a shot through his leg. The man tumbled backwards off the velocycle, somersaulting to a halt in the middle of the field. The engimal kept hurtling on alongside, oblivious to the fate of its rider.

  Dempsey had injured the other engimal, and it had limped to a standstill, watching the train speed away. There was one left, coming directly up the tracks behind them, the engimal balancing perfectly on one of the rails and using its smooth surface to race ever faster forward. The man on its back was an expert marksman. Whenever Dempsey tried, to take a shot, the rider put a bullet through the door with unnerving accuracy.

  Dempsey’s gun jammed and he ducked back behind the wall, pointing the barrel away from him as he tried to eject the troublesome cartridge. Nate grabbed one of the sacks of mail piled up beside the guard, who now cowered in one corner of the van. Carrying the heavy sack to the door, Nate peeked out and saw the third rider was only a few yards from the rear of the train, his velocycle’s wheels still lined up perfectly on the rail. That peek nearly cost Nate his life—a bullet split the doorframe where his head had been only an instant before.

  “One of Harmonicas trick-shooters,” Dempsey rasped. “Can probably shoot like that while standing on his head and whistling Dixie. He can keep our heads down until he’s on board, but we’ll take him when he sets foot on the train.”

  “I don’t think he means to,” Nate replied, hauling the sack up behind him and wincing at a twinge in his injured shoulder. “When I looked out, he had a stick of dynamite in his other hand. He’s just going to blow up the whole bloody van.”

  Dempsey’s burst of foul language was drowned out by the sound of three more rounds passing through the wall. Nate kicked the door open and, staying clear of the doorway, he hurled the sack of mail off the back of the train. There was a thud, a crash, a scream and a thumping clatter as the engimal ran headlong into the weighty sack and flipped over, tumbling over its rider and bouncing along the tracks behind the train. A moment later, there came the loud punch of an explosion as the fuse on the stick of dynamite dutifully did its job.

  “First time I’ve sent a letter in years,” Nate remarked, glancing out through the doorway. “And to think Daisy claimed I never understood the value of writing.”

  Dempsey was already ignoring him, turning to look out the side of the train.

  “I can’t see any of the rest, can you?”

  Nate studied the landscape beyond the side windows, but could not see any of the other riders. One of the Fenians, a spry, middle-aged navvy dressed in a velveteen jacket and a mismatching flat cap, came through the door from the next carriage.

  “Thir on the roof,” he said in a toothy Limerick accent. “Two of thim, at least. Mebby three.”

  Nate met Dempsey’s eyes and nodded.

  “Let’s take the fight to them,” Nate said. “I’ll climb up at this end, you go through and try to come up ahead of them. We’ll throw the bloody coves right off the train.”

  Dempsey jerked his chin out in agreement.

  “Jaysus, thet sounds awful dengerous,” the older man objected.

  “I’m on for it,” Dempsey sniffed. “Can’t be harder than standing on a deck in a storm.”

  Nate went out the back door to the ladder leading up to the roof. He was starting up it when the Limerick man peered out at the passing farmland, and then looked at his watch.

  “Wait, wait!” the older man called. “Wait just a minute.”

  Nate hesitated as the man held up his hand and looked out. A harsh scraping sound carried back from the front of the train. It grew in volume, a dragging, clattering noise that caught the screams of two men up in its commotion as it swept past on the roof above. Nate, Dempsey and the Limerick man caught sight of a tree passing away behind them, its branches overhanging the track. One bounty hunter was sent flailing off the roof and onto the rails, coming to a rest in a battered heap. Another was caught in the branches of the tree, looking utterly stunned.

  “Thet’ll be the Scrapin’ Tree,” the Limerick man said. “Any reg’lar pessenger on this train knows it. Always gives yeh a fright hearin’ it drag across the roof like thet, if yer not riddy fer it.”

  Nate and Dempsey watched the Scraping Tree whisk away into the distance and they shared a smile.

  “Excellent,” Dempsey said. “All right, Sean, you stay and keep watch here. We’ll go forward and make sure we’ve got clear of all of them.”

  Nate followed him as he went out the door, walking past the terrified train guard who had buried himself in mail sacks and now spouted a stream of verbal abuse
at them as they passed him.

  There was uproar on the train. Women were screaming, men were shouting, children were crying. Half the passengers on the train were crouching down under the windows, their arms over their heads. The other half were on their feet, in an attempt to see what was going on. Dempsey and Nate pushed through the throng of bodies, trying to find the Fenians scattered along the train’s length. Dempsey stopped to question each one, checking to see if any of the bounty hunters had got on board. Clancy was leaning up against his window, pistol in hand, but his face was pale and there was a rattle in his breathing. Nate knelt down next to him and urged him to lie back down. His manservant was having none of it, so Nate gave up with a smile and a shake of his head and went on after Dempsey.

  The sailor stepped out of the front door of the second car on his way to the leading carriage—the only first-class one. The butt of a sawn-off shotgun cracked against the side of his head and he slumped down onto the footplate, the top half of his body hanging dangerously over the gap between the buffers and the coupling joint holding the two carriages together. Another few inches and he would pitch over into the gap and fall under the wheels. Harmonica swung through the door. He was missing his cowboy hat, but his long, tan-colored coat flowed out behind him like a cloak and the barrel of his gun was already leveled at the point where Nate’s chest should have been.

  Nate was crouching low to the floor, his head down. As the American came through, Nate lunged forward, driving his shoulder into the man’s midriff and carrying him back out the door. Harmonica tripped over Dempsey’s limp form and smashed through the door into the leading carriage. He was getting to his feet when Nate followed him through, knocked the shotgun to one side and slammed the heel of his hand into Harmonica’s solar plexus, just below the arc in the ribcage. The blow took the wind out of Harmonica’s lungs and knocked him back along the aisle between some shelves of luggage. Nate jumped after him, but Harmonica caught him with a front kick that shoved him right back over on top of Dempsey. Nate nearly tipped the unconscious man into the gap between the carriages, and only just grabbed his belt in time, hauling him back onto the narrow footplate. Harmonica brought his gun up and Nate kicked it aside again, throwing himself forward once more to prevent Harmonica getting a bead on him.

  His left hand gripped Harmonica’s right, forcing the gun away as his right hand blocked the forearm strike the American aimed at his jaw. With the wound in his left shoulder aching with pain, Nate butted the man in the face and slammed his right elbow into the man’s chest a couple of times. He rammed the hand holding the gun against the luggage rack, trying to break the American’s grip. Harmonica got his left fist round Nate’s guard and caught him with a powerful hook across the side of the head. Nate’s vision swam, and the jolt allowed Harmonica to bring the shotgun up towards the other side of his head, firing off one of the barrels. The shot missed, but the deafening detonation burst Nate’s eardrum and the muzzle-flash burnt the side of his head, making him scream. He fell backwards, but Harmonica grabbed hold of his jacket in his left hand, trying to level the gun at Nate’s head again and empty the second barrel at him.

  With his head pounding and a terrible whining, screeching pain in his left ear, Nate struggled to stay conscious. He brought his knee up between Harmonica’s legs, folding the man over, and with his right hand whacked the American’s head off the edge of the luggage rack. Harmonica fell back, but his reflexes were lightning-fast. The barrel of the gun came up, his finger tightened on the second trigger … Nate seized a stout leather suitcase and jerked it from the luggage rack just as Harmonica fired his shot. The suitcase took the force of the blast, the front of it bursting open like an impact crater. The clothes tightly packed inside it were reduced to rags, but they absorbed the shot and it was only the power of the blow that caused Nate to stagger backwards. He recovered himself as Harmonica swore and pulled a revolver from his belt.

  Nate threw the remains of the suitcase at him, then grabbed a traveling trunk off the rack and hurled that with all his strength. The bottom edge of the trunk fell on Harmonica’s shins and one of them broke with an audible crack. The American cried out in pain and frustration, twisting as if trying to escape the pain. Nate drew his own revolver and cocked it, aiming it at Harmonica’s head. Harmonica stopped moving, glaring up at Nate as he tried to suppress the agony that wanted to show itself on his face.

  “Go on then,” he snarled. “Get on with it.”

  Nate glanced past the wounded man, holding his left hand up to his bleeding left ear, feeling the singed hair, and the blistered skin that seemed almost numb compared to the roaring pain in his eardrum. He hadn’t even noticed that this carriage was half full of passengers. A dozen faces stared at him in fascinated terror around the doorframes of the first-class compartments. Shrugging his aching shoulder, his face screwed up in pain, he swallowed and found his throat was desperately dry.

  The train’s chuffing was slowing down, indicating that it was approaching the station at Roscrea. Soon there would be more people around, perhaps even more of Harmonica’s men.

  Every instinct in him was telling Nate that he had to finish the American here and now, or face having to deal with him again later. Some enemies would just keep coming back at you. Showing them mercy simply gave them another chance to kill you. Nate dropped the barrel slightly, raised it again, squeezed the trigger almost to the point where the hammer dropped … and then stopped himself, shook his head and sighed as he eased his finger off the trigger. He looked at the horrified faces of the people along the aisle behind Harmonica. This was what happened when the lives of the Wildensterns spilled out into the normal world. It was this kind of stupid, unconstrained violence Nate had sworn to bring to an end years ago, along with Daisy and his brother, Berto. But it never seemed to end.

  “You lose your hat?” he asked the American, speaking in a voice that was just a little bit too loud—he couldn’t hear himself properly over the whining in his burst ear.

  Harmonica scowled, coughing as he clutched his broken right leg.

  “Fell off when I jumped onto the train.”

  “Kind of makes you stand out over here. We don’t go in for them in Ireland.”

  “It’s my lucky hat.”

  “Should’ve kept hold of it.”

  Harmonica snorted and looked away, his ridged face crumpled like old leather.

  “It’s the man you’re working for who’s the murderer,” Nate told the American. “And he’ll do a lot more killing unless I get home and put a stop to it. Now I know your reputation, Radigan. You were a lawman once, right? Well, this is one of those situations where the law can’t help. The man I’m up against is too powerful for the law to touch—especially in this country. You understand that kind of man, don’t you? Right. Then you’ll know how he uses people like you. And you have been used, Radigan. To him, you and your men are just a bunch of guns for hire. You’ve been had. I’m guilty of a lot of things—most of them committed against the people who loved me and relied on me—but I’m no criminal. Now, I’m going to let you off at the next station. If you like—and you’re able to pick up the men we’ve left scattered across the landscape—you can come back at me further up the line and we can do all this again.

  “So it’s up to you: if you want to get yourself killed—and maybe even some other, completely innocent folk along with you—by working for the most dangerous criminal in this country, by all means keep up your little quest. Or you could take your Wild West extravaganza and just piss off back to America and hunt some real outlaws. God knows you’ve enough of them over there without having to come here looking to import them. Anyway, you can mull over it all after you drag your sorry backside off the train.”

  Harmonica took a breath and hauled himself up into a standing position, using a doorframe for support. His right shin was fractured, but the bone had not penetrated the skin. Leaning his weight on his other leg,
he hissed through this teeth and regarded Nate with a piercing look.

  “Consider it mulled,” he rasped. “I know things about people, Mister Wildenstern. And you have killed—but you’re no killer. Not the pure-bred kind anyways. This job always had a stink to it an’ now I know why. I won’t apologize to you, ’cos it’s likely you’re no more free of guilt than I am, but I’m sorry about the injuries to your manservant, as he was just doin’ his job. And I’m sorry that these people were put in peril for the sake of some lies and some dirty money.”

  He picked up his truncated shotgun and slid it into the large pocket of his duster coat. Taking out a wallet, he removed a few pound notes and tucked them into the remains of the suitcase he had destroyed. More than enough to pay for the loss of its contents.

  “That’s for the damage that I caused to that person’s property. I’ll pay for any damage to the train too. As for you, Mister Wildenstern, well … I don’t believe in no God no more, but if it’s your fate to confront this man you speak of, then I wish you on your way to it and whatever comes of it. We all have our journeys to take.”

  The train was pulling into the small station now. The last of the sun’s light was fading from the station and there weren’t many people standing waiting on the gloomy, lamp-lit platform. Harmonica looked out from the illuminated interior of the carriage, through the window nearest him, seeing more of himself reflected on the glass than he could of the faces beyond it.

  “And may justice prevail,” he added. “In whatever form it takes. Though I must admit that’s another kind of faith that I’ve lost along the way.”

  “It was a faith I never had,” Nate said.

  “Then that, Mister Wildenstern,” Harmonica said, “speaks of a very sad life indeed. I can only hope you find yourself a happier one, once you’ve done what you have to do.”