Fantastic Trains

by Neil Enock

  “No! We can’t do that!” the engineer cried over the speaking tube.

  “Oh?” Reddeth’s eyebrows rose. “Fethro, I’m beginnin’ to think you’re still holdin’ out on me. Right. There’s lotsa ways to get answers outta dorfs. I’ll show you the one I think is funniest.” He climbed the ladder out of the compartment and started making his way forward.

  Grayson followed. “Reddeth, you can’t kill ‘im.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. He’s the only one what can drive this thing. He don’t need legs for that, though.”

  As his boot came down on the top layer of coal on car seven, a shock ran up Reddeth’s leg. He jerked his foot away with a yelp. It wasn’t quite like touching one of the dwarven lightning gizmos, although it moved the same way through his muscles. It felt like liquid darkness. Like ravenous hatred manifesting itself as a physical force.

  “Bog, what the hell?”

  Grayson caught up with the orc, set a hand on the coal, and jerked it back. He muttered some ancient and elaborate dwarfish curse. “Well, that’s new. Can’t be good.”

  “You think? ‘Course it ain’t good.” Reddeth thought for a moment. Make that a couple of moments. Orcs didn’t spend a lot of time thinking and the lack of experience made it take longer. “Grab a shovel and start diggin’ that thing out.”

  “We’re not throwin’ it over.” Grayson’s eyes took on a stubborn cast. In all the world, no race of people could match the hairy runts in the time-honored field of obstinance, and the brakeman looked like he might have graduated at the top of his class. Reddeth decided it was best to just move on to Plan B.

  “I just wanna get a look at it. Maybe there’s some way we can use it.”

  Grayson shrugged and went back aft to find a shovel. Reddeth hot-footed it down the length of car seven, leaped onto six and continued forward. When he reached the tender, he poked his head up, just for a second, and dropped into a crouch. A loud report barked from the cabin and a blast of whirling bits of metal whizzed over his head.

  Reddeth jumped into the cabin, swept the long-barreled blunderbuss from Fethro’s reloading hands and pinned the engineer up against the overheating engine surface, leaving him to kick the air in futility.

  “Let me down, you green-skinned fool!” Fethro shouted.

  “Not until you tell me everything you know about that thing. Let me know when you start burnin’ and I’ll press harder.”

  The dwarf’s hair began to cook, and his nerve broke. “Dammit, orc. Lemme down, for Gereth’s sake.”

  Reddeth set him down, keeping his fist on the dwarf’s collar so he could give him another taste of boiler heat if his mood turned less cooperative. “So that’s it. You’re one of those priests, ain’t you?”

  Fethro shook his head. “No. I’m just an initiate.” He pulled an amulet out of his shirt, a bronze circle of flame. “It’s my task to make sure the artifact stays out of demon hands.”

  “You’re doin’ a fine job of it. What’s the artifact? What’s it do? Why do they want it?”

  Grayson hopped down into the engine, a burlap sack in hand. “Found it.” He dumped the contents on the deck. It was smaller than Reddeth expected, a square box about the size of his fist. The cube’s surfaces bore intricate, bronze-inlayed carvings, arcane symbols that seemed to squirm as he looked at them. It made his eyes hurt. He had an urge to stomp on it, destroy it.

  Reddeth got the feeling that the urge came not from him, but from the box itself. He looked away. The urge faded, although it still seemed like a good idea.

  “You can feel it now, can’t you? The evil?” Fethro asked.

  “Yeah, but you haven’t told me why we shouldn’t just smash it. Whatever it is, I’m pretty sure letting it keep existing ain’t gonna end well.”

  Fethro glared at him with contempt. “What is it with you greenskins? Anything you don’t understand, you wanna smash.”

  “Most of the time it seems to work.”

  “Well, not this time.” Fethro drew a deep breath. “Six thousand years ago, my order battled what you might call a demon lord. It was too strong to banish, so they trapped it in that box. Buried it deep where they thought nobody would ever find it.” He scowled. “Just our luck, the mining guild decided to start diggin’ right on top of it twenty years back. So, we’ve been watchin’, waitin’ for them to find it so we could get it back and find a better place to hide it. Maybe now we can banish it once and for all.”

  “So, if we smash it, we let the thing inside loose.”

  “Exactly. Glad to see somethin’ finally made it through that thick skull.” He kneeled down to examine the box. “These runes are what’s keepin’ it in. Looks like they got a little dinged up when the miners found it.” He pointed at a couple of spots, but Reddeth’s stomach turned when he tried to look. “Now it’s leakin’ nether. That’s why we got demons on our asses. It’s callin’ to ‘em.”

  “So the master that demon guy was talkin’ about…?”

  “Is in here.” Fethro gave the box a nudge with his boot. “If they get ahold of it, they’ll let him loose. Then we got a much bigger problem on our hands. That’s why we can’t chuck it over the side, orc.”

  Reddeth muttered a few choice words on the matter of dwarves, gods and demons, their lineages and reproductive habits. “Alright, so whaddya propose we do?”

  Both dwarves shrugged. Fethro added, “Security’s your job, ain’t it?”

  Reddeth glared at the runty little piece of schmuck. Fine. He mastered his revulsion, picked up the demon prison cube and shoved it into a toolbox bolted to the bulkhead. “Lemme see a map.”

  With Grayson standing an uneasy watch topside, Reddeth and Fethro spread the map out on the deck. The engineer pointed at a spot on the parchment with a thick, soot-smudged index finger.

  “We’ll hit the grade coming up outta the valley in about two hours,” he said.

  “That’s where they’ll hit us.”

  “How do ya know that?”

  “It’s how I’d do it.” Reddeth shrugged. “Wait ‘till you’re movin’ at a crawl and then give ya what for.”

  “Spoken like you got a bit of experience.” Fethro glowered at the orc.

  “All in good-natured fun.”

  “What you people think of as fun, other folk call atrocities.”

  “Some folk ain’t got no sense of humor.” Reddeth gave the dwarf a hard look. “You wanna discuss the finer points of comedy, or you wanna figger a way outta this mess?”

  Fethro did something few dwarves ever did. He let it go. “Fine. What you got in mind?”

  “How fast can this thing run if it ain’t hauling all them cars back there?”

  The light came on in the dwarf’s smudged eyes. He grinned. “A damned sight faster, I’ll tell ya that.”

  “Good. We’ll grab some provisions outta the caboose and cut everything loose but what we need for fuel.”

  Fethro nodded his approval. “Top off the tender with the coal in car one.”

  “Works for me.” Reddeth stood and clapped the engineer on the back. “Looks like we got us a cunnin’ plan. Let’s get to it.”

  By the time the train worked its way through the foothills on the far side of the valley, and the rails bent upward into the mountain pass, they had the tender topped off and plenty of rations from the crew car. The rest of the train coasted along on the valley floor behind them. As it passed from view, Reddeth could just make out a troop of demons descending upon it, tearing it apart as they searched for their prize.

  “Damn, there’s a lotta them things,” he muttered.

  “Yeah, but they don’t seem to be all that bright,” Grayson commented as he joined the orc on the top of the tender. He laughed. “Look at ‘em! Diggin’ through that coal for somethin’ that ain’t there.”

  “They’ll figger it out soon enough.�
� Reddeth fiddled with his axe handle. “Then they’ll be comin’ for us.”

  Grayson gulped, looked up the mountainside at the rails ahead. “Maybe they can’t fly this fast.”

  “Yeah, and maybe your king’ll offer me his daughter’s hand for gettin’ that demon box to ‘im safely.” He shook his head. “If I was you, I’d keep that boomstick close.”

  The locomotive chugged its way up the pass, eating up miles with unfettered speed as the long, tense afternoon wore on. The demon horde, finished with the coal train, now hung in the sky behind them. Reddeth and Grayson maintained their vigil as the pursuing demons gained ground with each passing minute.

  A shout rose from the engine compartment, “Reddeth, get up here!” The orc swung down to find the engineer leaning out a window on the side of the machine.

  “What now?” he asked. The initiate didn’t answer, just pointed forward. Reddeth gripped a stanchion and leaned out to get a view unobstructed by smoke and escaping steam. A series of low, guttural and particularly creative curses sprang from his lips.

  A troop of demons stood waiting on the tracks before them. Reddeth tried counting them, but gave up when he ran out of numbers and decided to just chalk it up as “a bunch”. That would have been bad enough, but they had brought along a friend. A big one. From what he could see at this distance, the jumbo-sized demon was regarding them with a grimace the orc guessed to be the demonic equivalent of a smirk.

  “Fethro, how much faster can you make this thing go?”

  “Not much. If I put too much more coal to ‘er, the boiler’s sure to blow.”

  “I don’t think it’ll matter in a couple of minutes. Give ‘er all she’ll take. We’re gonna ram this thing down their zoggin’ throats.” He called back to the fuel car, “Grayson, git your arse in here. We’re gonna have guests.”

  The brakeman made his way back to the engine, joining Reddeth in piling shovelfuls of coal into the firebox. The engineer monitored the gauges and finally called a halt to their efforts. “That’s it, lads. Any more and she’ll blow.”

  Fethro threw the throttle all the way open, well past the spot marked with red paint. The engine leaped forward. Grayson lurched backward and cried in mortal terror as the change in velocity bounced him off a stack of rations and over the edge of the engine. Only a quick grab saved him from a gruesome fate, as his thick hand found a grip on the rear wall. Reddeth gave him a hand back into the compartment.

  “Sweet beard o’ the All-Mother,” Grayson exclaimed, “that was close.”

  Reddeth chuckled and clapped him on the back. “Shoulda seen the look on your face. Now that’s comedy!” The dwarf shot him an angry look, but his rejoinder got lost in the jolting confusion as the engine struck the wall of demons in its headlong flight. Boxes of provisions slid across the crowded cabin as the engine lurched up onto its right side. Not all of the demons got out of their way. A tangle of broken red and black corpses flashed by on the tracks behind them. The engine righted itself, slamming back down onto the rails. Reddeth pulled his axe from its scabbard.

  The remaining demons came at them from every angle. Numbers were on their side, and their attacks were relentless. The engineering compartment, however, proved to be a decent redoubt for the train’s crew. Fethro and Grayson maintained a steady stream of blunderbuss fire through the windows. Reddeth’s axe whirled, cleaving claws, snarling faces and whatever other pieces of crimson demon-flesh happened to get in its way. Soon, stinking black ichor and demon pieces coated the floor.

  And still, they came.

  A set of talons reached into the compartment and raked Reddeth across the back. He howled in pain and rage, and took the enemy’s arm with a downward strike. A pair of attackers took advantage of the sudden gap in the train’s defenses and swept in through a window. Fethro went down under them. Reddeth shouted something unintelligible, grabbed the horn of one of the demons, and yanked its owner away from the engineer, giving the crimson fiend an axe-head to the belly as a consolation prize. Grayson’s boomstick sang out, smearing the other one’s head across the instrument panel. Fethro squirmed out from under the remains, covered in black goo and his own blood. He tossed his weapon to Grayson, who caught it while tossing his own back to the driver for a reload.

  Another demon dropped down into the compartment. Reddeth kicked it in the gut and it fell back out through the doorway, catching itself upon leathery wings before it hit the ground.

  “Enough!” a voice above bellowed. Two thundering steps boomed, denting the roof, and a massive claw reached down, tearing the aft bulkhead and a good section of the overhead away. Sheet metal squealed in protest and tumbled off, crashing somewhere out of view.

  “Aw, we’re zogged now,” Reddeth muttered.

  The claw’s owner swung heavily down onto the exposed rearmost portion of the cabin. The engine shuddered at the force of its landing, the front pony wheels rising momentarily into the air before landing again on the rails, steel shrieking on steel.

  Grayson yelled some obscure dwarfish battle cry and fired his blunderbuss. Black spots appeared on the hulking demon’s breast, ichor spilling out onto the deck.

  The demon smiled.

  Reddeth snarled and hurled himself at the monstrosity, axe arcing to bury itself in the thing’s grotesque face. The demon swatted him with a massive backhand, like he was an annoying bug. The orc fell back into a pile of spilled coal and his axe flew from his hands, glanced off a stanchion and spun away into the gloom.

  “You mortals have fought well.” The smile never left the demon’s face. Its voice was corruption in verbal form, deep and rich, and it rumbled like thunder across a lake of fire. “Give me what I seek and I will reward you with a swift death.”

  Reddeth’s hands scrambled for a weapon. A tool. Anything to continue the fight. He found something, hard and rectangular, buried in the detritus.

  The toolbox.

  He fumbled for the latch, got the thing open, and fumbled some more until he found what he was looking for. Grabbing it, a shock of darkness jolted up his arm. Images of despair, torment and debauchery — all woven together like a profane tapestry — appeared in his head. He ignored the disturbing sensation and rose.

  “This what you’re lookin’ for?” He held up the arcane box, and the demon’s eyes lit up, baleful and glowing in the twilight.

  “Yes.” Its voice sounded almost reverent. It reached in with a leathery claw the size of a bull’s head. “Give me my master.”

  “Reddeth,” Fethro croaked, “you can’t.”

  “No zoggin’ dorf’s gonna tell me what I can or can’t do,” Reddeth growled. He took a sidelong step. “I’ll make ya a deal,” he called to the demon. Another step. “This thing here’s your master, right?”

  “No games, orc. My patience is at an end.”

  “Right. But I gotta know somethin’. I’m the curious type.” Reddeth opened the firebox door and shoved the box in front of it. “What happens if I do this?”

  The big demon laughed. The sound echoed with malice and contempt through the cramped engineer compartment. “Go ahead, little green fool. My master will be freed and you will know such torments that death would seem a welcome friend.”

  “Yeah, and you get your boss back. No more bein’ in charge for you, eh? Sure you won’t miss it?”

  The demon’s head jerked back in surprise. The light in his eyes changed. The light spoke of realization. Opportunity. Greed.

  “Ah, you get it now, don’cha? You want this ‘cause your boss wants you to want it. Kinda makes you wonder if he has your best interests at heart, doesn’t it?”

  “What are you playing at, orc?”

  “I ain’t playin’.” He swept his free hand in a wide arc, taking in the lesser demons flocking behind them. “You’re the biggest, so you’re in charge. That’s how it works with orcs, anyway. I figger it’s about the same
for you guys. I could give you this thing, and you can go back to makin’ sandwiches for it, or whatever it makes you do. You get to be this thing’s top toady again. Or, maybe you’d be interested in making your promotion permanent.” Rage and hatred flowed from the box and through Reddeth’s arm.

  The demon was listening, his focus intense. The orc took that as a good sign, ignored the demon box’s fury, and continued. “These Gereth guys could lock it away. Maybe even boot it outta this world for good. What do you guys call it, Fethro?”

  “Banishment,” Fethro gritted through his pain.

  “Yeah, that’s it. A one-way trip back to the nether. That leaves room for a new boss, don’t it?” Reddeth shrugged. “Could be your chance at the big time.”

  The giant demon was silent, pondering the possibilities. Steel wheels clattering on the tracks, the steamy chugging of the engine and the rhythmic beating of leathery wings from the following horde were the only sounds.

  “Very well,” the demon said at last, with a grin reeking of malevolence. “We have an accord.” He roared a command to his demonic army and took to the skies. The troop greeted their new master and followed.

  Grayson broke the stunned silence. “I can’t believe that worked.” He crawled across the detritus and began tending to Fethro’s wounds.

  Reddeth returned the demon box to its spot in the toolbox. “Never underestimate the lust for power, fellas.”

  “Sure, but didn’t you just give a horde of demons carte blanche to run around the country causin’ trouble? Seems like that’s gonna be a problem.”

  “Probably. I can help you guys sort that out later, I suppose.” He dug a fresh cheroot out of a pouch on his belt and lit it from the firebox. He took a deep pull, held it for a while before letting it out. He watched the smoke rise, mingling with the engine’s billowing exhaust.

  “Of course, that’ll cost extra.”

  —— « o » ——

  Nick Svolos

  Nick Svolos dropped out of high school in his senior year, joined the Navy and spent the next several years sailing around the western Pacific on the USS Enterprise. After discharge, he roamed around a bit and finally landed in software development. After his most recent job ended in a layoff, he decided to take a timeout and indulge the voices in his head by writing a novel. Now, he ekes out a living as a freelance web developer and spends the rest of his time writing about the stuff he loves, namely, mysteries involving superheroes and orcs.