“Help! Help!” he heard a voice call out from down the muddy street.
Marcus turned and put a hand on the hilt of his sword. Call it instinct. A man in his twenties was halfway between stumbling and running in their direction as the final bits of flame in the stable were quenched. Even in the dark of the village night Marcus could see the approaching man was covered in grime and smoke-filth. The man found some purchase in the dirt and picked up steam only to step into a deep puddle that was slick with packed mud. His foot and the ground below it betrayed him, and he slipped and fell hard onto his back into the water. Marcus ran to his aid, taking a quick knee and grasping the man’s hand.
“Are you okay?” Marcus asked him.
He tried to speak but his air was gone. He gasped several times, inhaling bits of life until he had a full pair of lungs and could speak again. “I think my back is broken but I’ll survive. The Olderman flats are on fire, Sir. The roof is alight. We need another fire machine or we might lose the building.”
Marcus knew exactly what building the man spoke of. He’d strategized around it, dreaded it for this very reason. He looked up, and lo and behold, he could see the far edge of the building framed in orange flame. It wasn’t bad. Yet. “We will help,” Marcus said to the man, and then he yanked him to his feet. “MEN!” Marcus bellowed. The soldiers all turned on their heels, listening. “A building is on fire that we cannot lose. If it falls, many others will go with it.” He pointed to the peak of the building so they could see the fire he spoke of. Their eyes went white when they fixed on the crisis. “MOVE with me!”
As they cheered and started to organize the wagon with the pump and the hoses to move, another flaming arrow clanked off the side of the engine machinery and thudded into the mud. Another hit the ground beside it a flash later. Their dual flames went out with a collective hiss that no one paid any attention to.
In training, the Darisian 2nd Infantry cuts no corners. They are pushed until they break over and over until they do not break any longer. They do everything the hardest way, because in war, there are precious few shortcuts for anything that needs to be done. The unit had a reputation for being miserably difficult to join, and just as bad to remain a member in good standing of. To be a Ghost Maker was a badge of pride, and a sign of martial competence unmatched in Varrland.
This moment was a fine example for the reasons for the high standards Marcus and his predecessors kept for his soldiers.
As hundreds of arrows fell from the sky in the middle of the frenetic night, they were grunting, heaving, and pushing a wagon covered in at least four hundred pounds of cast iron machinery. Water hoses as thick a large man’s wrist weighing at least a hundred more pounds needed to carried, and they needed to get it all through fifty yards of three-inch-deep mud. None of the men had slept since the morning, and they had been working nonstop for hours upon hours already.
Marcus and Dunwood bellowed in sync, rhythmically, “PUSH! PUSH! PUSH!” The men responded by digging in and shoving with all their might, sludging their burden through the street a yard at a time until they rounded the corner where the ground firmed up. No water had been sprayed there in a high enough quantity to turn it to mud. The men sensed the new advantage and their pace quickened.
“There, there!” the man who fetched them said, pointing skyward at the top of the three story tall, square structure. Black curdles of smoke billowed up from the blaze that had fully engulfed the corner of the roof. He looked back to ensure Marcus had seen him, and then turned back to spot the flame once more. Marcus saw a stream of light descend, and tried to warn the man, but it was too late. An arrow pierced his face near his nose, killing him immediately. He dropped to his knees, and then fell face forward where his descent was stopped by the butt of the arrow acting as a brake, embedding deeper in his skull and ensuring a quick death. His body twisted into the dirt and came to a rest.
Dammit, Marcus thought. The man had done a single courageous thing that night, and paid the ultimate price for it.
His men either didn’t see the tragedy, or worked as if it didn’t matter. Two men grabbed the length of feeder hose and sprinted as best they could to the well that was covered by his anti-arrow roofing. Two more men went to the side of a single story home where one gave a boost to the other so he could get on the flat roof. Once up, the man on the ground tossed the hose to the man on the roof.
“Ready?” Sergeant Dunwood asked him.
Marcus spat and climbed up into the back of the wagon, assuming the position he’d just vacated minutes prior. Dunwood got across from him, and they watched the two men get the feeder hoses into the depths of the well to feed the hungry machine. One man held a hand high, thumb raised.
Marcus looked at the handle of the fire engine he was about to operate, and closed his eyes. “I’m no Artificer, machine, but if you can hear me, we need you.” Marcus grunted down and his side of the machine started its work. Dunwood lifted, and between the two they got the water moving. After watching the hose running from the well swell and thicken like a snake swallowing another snake, the hose heading to the man on the roof finally stiffened and swelled, and the water began to seep out. First it was a trickle, then a plume, and finally as the two men and the machine hit their stride, it was a geyser, spraying upward into the sky and fighting the flames above directly.
“YES!” Marcus screamed happily. Good machine! I’ll introduce you to Umaryn when this is all over. You two will get along famously.
That’s when something hit Marcus in the back, and he fell off the engine to the ground far below, hitting his head and knocking him unconscious.
—Chapter Six—
STICKING YOUR THUMB OUT
Malwynn thought Daris was enormous but Farmington was proving to be a larger beast by far. Since getting off the train at mid morning they had been walking for over an hour, leading their three horses and the lone Gvorn, and they had yet to leave the confines of the sprawling Artificer-operated rail yards.
Buildings made of brick and littered with grime-coated glass long enough to house entire trains inside were arranged uniformly beside one another, ten wide in several places, and each building had sets of tracks running in the narrow ends for just that purpose. These were the repair buildings where the steam operated relics from before The Fall were prayed to, prayed for, and repaired lovingly by an army of gray robed mechanists. Scripture taken from the halls and books of Artificer history were painted on the sides of everything flat in the yard, explaining to everyone the binding importance of the locomotives, the iron rails, and the worship of all the things that allowed for such a functional life on Elmoryn. Without the trains, and without the Guild, there was no Elmoryn. This was as much a church for the Guild as anywhere else on the world. Umaryn looked radiant, reading everything as they strode through the open air museum-factories, ticket counters, loading docks, water towers, coal bins, and peat beds. She looked confident, and at home.
This was the world she’d wanted to walk in since the twins were toddlers, and it showed on her face. If it weren’t for her joy and wonder, Malwynn would’ve been frustrated at the time they were wasting walking around as she searched for the right person to pose her request to.
James’ eyes never veered from the Cathedral of Donovan. It’s very top touched the sky, and seemed higher than the clouds. Despite it being the center of the Church of Souls in both Farmington and largely the world, it was another monument to the achievements of the Guild. They had put chisel to stone, and hammer to steel to build it for the Church after all. There was no way to gauge how tall it was; nothing any of the four had seen elsewhere on Elmoryn came close to its soaring height, and if Malwynn wagered a guess, the spiked peak of the cathedral, ringed by gothic gargoyles and carvings of ancestor spirits, hands held wide in loving supplication, was at least fifteen stories tall. More than three times the height of the building he and his sister had gotten vertigo living in back in Daris.
Its presence and size struck the
silent necromancer as arrogant, but obviously in James’ eyes, it represented a symbol of the power of his faith. Just seeing it invigorated him. His awe of it was open for the others to see.
“Here,” Umaryn said, pointing down a long loading dock that had an equally impressive train alongside it. This train hadn’t been designed for passengers. It had tall, sturdy steel cars, and open topped bins instead of windowed, wooden passenger containers. There were no ticket takers here, just the hustle and bustle and overhead cranes swinging in buckets of feed, or stone, or whatever materials needed to go elsewhere, and in vast quantities. It was the economy of Elmoryn in the smallest scale.
“Is this train heading to Eden Valley?” James asked her as they made their way under, over, and around the obstacles on the dock. They were headed to the engine, where the conductor should be overseeing the loading of their train.
“Yes,” Umaryn said, scanning for the person in charge, “there was a small sign we passed.” Her pace picked up, telling the others she’d seen who she needed.
“Should we wait here?” Malwynn asked his sister as she started to pull away with her horse Tinder in tow.
Umaryn stopped and looked at her friends, judging their worth for the conversation she would be having shortly. “Um. James, you come. Maybe your presence will be persuasive. Chelsea, Mal, stay here, and look competent. Whatever you do, don’t fucking kiss each other. You look like star crossed morons eating glue when you’re necking.”
Chelsea and Mal gave her a dirty look as she grinned, and then walked away with James and their two mounts.
“Excuse me, but are you the conductor of this train?” Umaryn asked a fellow Artificer who had just finished talking to a laborer. The woman was tiny. From the back it appeared as if the gray robe with red trim was being worn by a lost child that had snapped it up to stay warm at night. When she turned and faced Umaryn however, it was clear she was well into her forties.
“That I am. I’m Fabricator Naomi Moritz. Who’s asking?” Her voice sounded harsh and gravelly, and her skin looked much the same. The coal dust of train life had seeped into her, turning her skin almost as dark as her hair. The only color on her entire person other than the red trim denoting her knowledge of The Way came from the greenish hue to her hazel eyes.
“Fabricator Umaryn Everwalk, of Daris. This here is Minister James Hawthorne. Sorry to bother you.”
“Hello Naomi. Pleasure to meet you,” James said.
The woman looked about as work happened all around her. She made an exasperated noise. “Maybe you live there now, but you ain’t from Daris with that accent girl. Make it quick. We’re pushing off at full steam in less than half an hour.”
Umaryn felt on her heels from the woman’s brash words. “Sorry to bother. I’ll do my best. I and three of my associates have need of transport to a stop along the way towards Eden Valley. I know you’re headed that way, and the speed you’ll be moving at puts us at our destination faster than a regular passenger train. Time is very important for us on this trip. I’m here to ask you if you have space anywhere on the train for four of us plus our mounts? It doesn’t need to be comfortable.”
The woman flipped her hood back, revealing gray and black hair tied into a bun and leaned in closer to the younger Artificer, almost sniffing her. “Where are you headed?”
“I’d rather not say if that’s possible,” Umaryn said in an apologetic tone. She looked to James and hoped his Church presence lent them some credibility; some ability to leave questions unanswered on the table.
Naomi shot that notion down immediately. “I’d rather not give you a ride then. Good day James and Umaryn,” Naomi said and turned away back to her work.
Umaryn put a gentle hand on the older Fabricator’s shoulder, causing her to pause. “We’re headed to a town that may have something to do with the Empire invasion of Varrland. There are some things we need to investigate. We’re trying to back-channel as much of this as we can to stay out of the sight of any Empire spies. I can’t say much more.”
Naomi cocked her head to the side. “What town are you headed to?”
“It’s abandoned now. Has been for several years. It used to be called New Falun. A mining village.”
Naomi’s eyes narrowed. She knew something about the town. “I know the place. It’s in Scored Rock Gorge, where the ravine meets the rails. Quite a place. Nowhere else like it I’ve ever seen. You’re right though, there’s nothing left there now. Just a cracked old concrete platform overgrown by weeds we speed by right fast as we can. Why would you want to go there? What does an old hole in the ground no one left to care about have to do with the Purple Queen marching south?”
Umaryn shrugged as sincerely as she could manage. “I honestly am not sure what we’ll find, but I know there’s some history there that might be involved. My party and I need to get there quickly, and you and your train are our best hope to do that. There could be… compensation involved.”
Umaryn didn’t think it was possible but the other woman’s eyes narrowed even more. All that remained now were razor thin slits. She put on a scowl, adding to her lack of charm. “Let me see if I understand what’s happening here. Are you two bribing me? A man of the Church of Souls and a red trimmed Fabricator?”
Umaryn shuffled her feet and smoothed out her Guild robe, feeling very self conscious. She spoke just before James jumped in to defend her statement. “I would say that if you are unwilling to give us a ride out of a sense of duty to the Guild or Elmoryn, or as a favor to a fellow Fabricator, then I am saying that I can help make your life better by putting a few pieces in your pocket. I’m hoping for the first scenario, but I’m prepared for the second. You don’t seem the selfish type, but I’ve been wrong before.”
Naomi put her hands on her hips and looked at her younger counterpart, judging her statement, then her. Her hostility hadn’t abated entirely. “How’d you earn the title of Fabricator so young?”
“I’m a smith. An armor maker more than anything. I’ve dabbled in making weapons too, but I keep coming back to making armor. That’s my brother back there. That armor he’s wearing I made myself. Been at it since I was old enough to lift a hammer and sneak into the forge. You ask me how I made Fabricator so young? I made an Artifact. A set of armor made out of Plainswalker hide not too long ago. I presented it to the Daris Guildhall and they offered me membership. I’ve always wanted to be a part of the Guild. During my rite of initiation I tested all the way to Fabricator.”
Naomi’s eyes finally opened wide in approval. Her head slowly bobbed up and down as she appreciated Umaryn’s short story about herself. “I’ve heard of you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. News of your armor made the rounds here not too far back. Heard it was some pretty special stuff.”
“I enjoy it a great deal. Better armor than I deserved to make certainly. It still hasn’t revealed any of its Artifact powers yet, but I’m excited. Nothing I expected to be a part of,” Umaryn said humbly.
“Rarely do we ever expect to be where we wind up kid. I’ve been working this rail line to Eden Valley near every day for as long as you’ve been alive I suspect. I can tell you the seconds between most of the rocks and trees along the way to and fro. I like repetition. I like predictability. There’s safety in it, knowing what to expect. That’s why we adjusted our departure times on this route. No one wanted to be near that old village during the night.”
“Wait,” James said, stopping the conversation. “You know about what happens there at night? Have you seen the… the things at New Falun?”
“I have,” Naomi said, “but only at night.” She seemed somber.
“Mal! Get up here!” Umaryn yelled back to her brother. Mal trotted up after handing Bramwell’s reins off to Chelsea. She stood watching with the two animals.
“Hi,” he said to Naomi. “I’m Mal, what’s up?”
Umaryn introduced the conductor, “This is Naomi Moritz. She’s a Fabricator the same as me, and say
s she’s seen the things at New Falun. The undead there.”
Mal stiffened at the mention of the word undead. “Tell me about them,” he said seriously to Naomi.
“I don’t know much. They chase after the trains when we come through that area too early, or too late. That’s part of why we need to push off here on time. Any delay not only screws up the train tables, but it also puts us in the pass there at the wrong time. When the sun is set, and the dark of night is full, there’s trouble to be had there. Gets worse when one of the moons is full. Ancestors forbid both are full. We always have an Apostle on this run. I’ve always wondered why with so few people on this train… but after talking to you folks, it’s starting to come together.”
Mal looked at James and his sister. This could only be described as an auspicious moment.
“Can you four fight? If we’re attacked?” Naomi asked Umaryn.
“My brother and I have been through some shit,” Umaryn said without tact. “Mal knows some Neomancy, and James as I’ve said is an Apostle, so that makes three of us that know The Way in one form or another. Chelsea back there as you can see is a sergeant in Varrland’s military. That sword on her hip isn’t there to match her earrings.”
Naomi nodded in appreciation. “Then you’re of use to me. Here’s what I’ll do for you; you can ride in the end freight car. We don’t have a full load today so there’ll be space. I reckon it’s got enough room for the four of you plus your animals but you’ll need to bring some feed for you and the creatures too. No food and no stops. And you best clean their shit out of my car before you leave it. And you,” she pointed at Umaryn. “You gotta show me that set of armor everyone’s talking about. I’ve never laid hands on an Artifact before, and I’d like to say hello to one while I have a chance.”
The Echoes of Sin (The Kinless Trilogy Book 3) Page 7