by Mike Wild
He could see tarnish number one ahead of him right now. The archer had hardly believed it when he'd finally been introduced to the man he'd be working with and, pulling the belt holding his special arrows taut across his chest, he nodded now to Jakub Freel. The enforcer nodded back noncommittally, the barest of acknowledgements and hardly the greeting of a comrade-in-arms. The atmosphere between the two of them had been neutral while Hooper had been around but distinctly cooler in her absence, each tolerating the other's presence only because they had little choice in the matter. Considering the loss they had both endured, and the circumstances of it, they were hardly going to become bosom buddies were they? He would have to keep an eye on him.
Tarnish number two was another matter. Standoffish in a different way and for reasons he was still struggling to understand, Gabriella DeZantez was perched on an upturned railway sleeper as he neared her, sharpening her twin blades on a stone and examining the results with a practiced, expert eye. A fresh surplice was bulked out with armour, gleaming beneath the cloth. She wore it utterly naturally, as comfortably as a second skin. Slowhand had come across a number of the Swords of Dawn in his travels - had even, on occasion, had cause to avoid them - but he could remember few, if any, who had looked so born for the role. What had caused her to relinquish that role until now, he didn't really know, but her reaction to him the previous night suggested that, one way or another, she had been badly hurt at some point in her past - the kind of hurt that could only have been caused by a man. Who that man had been, and where he was now, he couldn't begin to guess.
DeZantez glanced up at him as he approached, and Slowhand smiled rather than nodded. What the hells, he thought, it might be a fault of his but the woman had helped to save his life and he couldn't help still wanting to break the ice.
"I didn't get chance to thank you," he said. "For last night."
"You make it sound as if we lay together," DeZantez said, her attention having returned to her blades.
And he'd thought they'd worked together so well. "No, I didn't mean -"
"I know what you meant, Slowhand. It's just a little irksome when you couch everything in innuendo."
He found himself staring at the top of her head, and swallowed. "That wasn't what I -"
"As for the fact I saw you naked last night, don't make the mistake of thinking it has planted a latent seed of desire in me. It hasn't."
Slowhand tried a grin. "Most girls remember the sight, at least."
"I'm not most girls. And most men I've seen naked were wetting themselves or worse as they pleaded for their lives within the gibbet, which tends to temper any erotic aspect, believe me." She looked up. "Let's get this clear. We work together, that's all."
Slowhand's grin faded. "Look, is there a problem here? I mean, more than just me?"
"Your girlfriend is gone."
Ah, yes. That had been the other part of the plan. When it had been arranged for Hooper to leave to stop the Engines that morning, she was meant to have taken DeZantez along.
"I know. She gave me a goodbye kiss."
"She was meant to be in my custody. That was the deal I made with the Overseer."
Slowhand shrugged. "Yeah, she told me. Thing is, it's nothing personal. Hooper has a problem with authority. And she likes to work alone."
DeZantez made a particularly violent sweep along her blades with the sharpening stone, making Slowhand wince. "She isn't coming back."
"What? Of course she's coming back!"
"Then why did she sneak out of here before daybreak?"
"Because she could."
"Not funny."
"Not meant to be. But she left you these."
DeZantez looked up. The weapons she had returned to Kali after the library were being proffered to her once again.
"The Deathclaws?"
"The Deathclaws. She thought you might make better use of them than she could."
"But they must be priceless."
"Oh, they are. She asked me to ask you to consider them as bail. If she doesn't come back. To fix a church roof or something..."
DeZantez hesitated, then said in a resigned tone, "The City Watch reported her heading south-east, not due east towards the Plain of Storms. What's she up to?"
"Said something about having to make a house-call first. Don't ask me why because I'm always the last to know. It's what she does."
"Slowhand," DeZantez said after a second. "Do you trust her to get the job done?"
"With my life."
"That might come to be the case."
"I can handle myself."
"I don't doubt it. But I mean will she succeed, before the Pale Lord mobilises?"
"She said she'll rendezvous with us the day after tomorrow, at 'the pulpit.'"
"That doesn't give her much time."
"She'll make it. You might have noticed she has a rather unusual Horse."
DeZantez nodded then slid off the railway sleeper and sheathed her blades. She accepted the Deathclaws from Slowhand, attaching them to her belt.
"Then I guess it's time we got this show on the road," she said, and pointed.
Slowhand turned to see Jakub Freel striding along the tunnel past them, climbing onto the front carriage and waving back along the train's length. It was a signal to the gathered soldiers, and all along the tunnel they picked up their gear and boarded the carriages.
Slowhand stared at Jakub Freel. The enforcer was in command of this particular train and, as such, could have waved Slowhand aboard too. But he just stared as if he didn't care whether Slowhand boarded at all. The archer shrugged and grabbed a rail on the side of the last car, using it to swing up onto the train's roof where he had already decided he could serve the expedition best by riding shotbow. DeZantez mirrored his move, opting for the first car, as far away from him as she could get. It wasn't - he hoped - personal. Whatever the darkness that had come for Katherine Makennon was, for all they knew, it could still lurk somewhere in the tunnel ahead, and they would all need to be on the alert.
The train lurched beneath him and was off. There was a long journey ahead and Slowhand settled himself down into a cross-legged position, watching the curved, moss-covered ceiling of the tunnel roll by. It grew monotonous over the hours, the train seemingly limited by its funicular cable to trundle along at only a few leagues an hour.
Despite the danger of their situation, Slowhand found the rhythmic clacking of the train soporific and, tired from his almost sleepless night and lulled by the soft, warm breeze created by the train's passage, he began to nod off. Dimly aware that they were passing beneath the Anclas Territories right now and would, in an hour or so, be under the Pontaine plains, he found himself traversing them overland rather than underground.
He was flying above flowery, rolling fields, and in each field beneath him naked women danced from behind giant blooms to frolic and wave at him as he passed. Slowhand smiled, his clothes vanishing like thinning clouds, and saw he was over Miramas and Gargas, now. Their streets were devoid of naked women, but every bedroom window was flung wide, a happy, expectant trilling coming from within. Slowhand swooped down, but before he could pass through any of the colourful curtains that fluttered invitingly in the breeze, he became aware of something else - something beyond the towns - a great, dark mass on the distant horizon that swept to the east and to the west as far as the eye could see. It seemed that whatever worries were playing at the back of his mind wanted in - there was no escaping the Sardenne Forest and its appearance halted his reverie like a slap in the face. Literally.
Ow.
"Wake up." Gabriella DeZantez said. "We've got trouble."
"What kind of trouble?"
"The tunnel roof," the Enlightened One said. "Looks like the Pale Lord left a few of his friends behind."
Slowhand followed her gaze forward and upward and swallowed. A few? He thought.
Where the front of the train was nosing into darkness, the gently curving rock that they had been passing beneath s
eemed rougher somehow, and the reason could be made out as they drew close. Perhaps a hundred or more of the Pale Lord's soul-stripped were clinging to the roof of the tunnel like insects - blackened by tunnel grime, their whitened eyes their only distinguishable feature.
"Oh, crap," he said.
"My thoughts exactly." DeZantez responded.
Both she and Slowhand raced along the carriage roofs, shouting warnings to those within. There was little the occupants could do to escape the impending threat, however, and little room to use any of their weapons effectively. Their only real recourse was to steel themselves as best they could and raise shields at each car's entrance. Consequently, of course, any proactive defence of the train was left to those who rode on its roof, and Slowhand was actually quite pleased to see Jakub Freel climbing up from the driver's cab as the first of the soul-stripped dropped from the dark.
"Here we go," DeZantez said. Her jaw was set and her weapons drawn - the claws rather than her blades, Slowhand noted, if only because they were the only effective weapon against their current foes.
All he had was Suresight, but despite his trusted bow's failure - through no fault of her own - to halt the soul-stripped previously, he raised her anyway. The arrows would do little damage, he knew, but damage wasn't his intention. He let fly again and again, targeting the dropping soul-stripped half way between tunnel roof and train, aiming not for the vitals but for peripheries - shoulders, hips and thighs. Because the archer's intention wasn't to drop the soul-stripped as they landed, but to hit them before they did.
One soul-stripped, two, four and then ten were hit in mid air by his arrows, solid impacts knocking them sideways in their descent, away from the train. The soul-stripped spun helplessly, silently down to the tunnel floor on either side, hitting the sides of the tracks with a crunch of muscle and bone, twitching rapidly where they lay.
Slowhand couldn't get them all, of course, and inevitably many landed on the roof. Thankfully, most of those the archer missed were immediately intercepted by DeZantez and Freel in a blur of claws and chain. The Deathclaws were, as expected, singularly effective in despatching the cadaverous forms, slicing and amputating them at every joint, but Freel suffered the same handicap as he. But his whip lashed out to wrap around ankles and wrists, flipping the soul-stripped from the train.
But even all three of them couldn't handle everything, and those of the soul-stripped who escaped their triple defence began swinging themselves down into the cars below.
Orders were barked and what weapons could be used came into play, but the relentless and uncaring manner in which the Pale Lord's puppets threw themselves at their targets, scrabbling ferally, took its toll. Slowhand stared over the edge of the train at the warriors, young and old, being tossed to the tunnel floor, where he witnessed the true horror of the soul-stripped, the means by which the Pale Lord was building his pillar of souls. Each soldier who fell was instantly seized upon, drawn up into a lover's embrace as a cold mouth was pressed to theirs. They quickly surrendered to the Pale Lord's puppets, their eyes rolling back in their heads, their skin paling to a waxy sheen. For a few moments they lay still, before rising up to join their new brethren.
"They just keep coming," DeZantez said, suddenly next to him. The claws she wielded were ribboned with flesh. "How many more are there?"
"Let's find out," Slowhand said.
It had been his intention to save the special arrows he had adapted for use in the Sardenne but, of course, things rarely turned out as intended. He plucked one of his naphtha dipped creations from his belt and struck it against the flashpad he wore as a ring, igniting the arrow as it launched. The billowing projectile arced through the tunnel and illuminated the way ahead.
Freel was silhouetted in the heart of the fire, his squall-coated figure striding up the train, whip lashing left and right like something out of the hells. But beyond him were the hells themselves.
It hadn't been a one-off gauntlet they'd been passing through. Some few hundred yards ahead, there was another mass of them. Only this time the dark shapes didn't just cover the tunnel roof but the tunnel's sides, and thickly blocked the tracks themselves. The soul-stripped were everywhere and they went on for ever.
"Lord of All," Gabriella breathed, "the tunnel may as well end here. We'll never get through alive."
"We'll get through," Slowhand said.
Setting his jaw manfully, he smiled at Gabriella and raced for the train driver's cab, jumping in next to the man's sweating, but so far untouched, form.
"We need to use the train as a battering ram!" Slowhand shouted. "Can you crank it up to top speed?"
The driver nodded and thrust a lever forward. Slowhand was hardly rocked off his feet. They had gained maybe a third more speed. At a push. If this was the train's top speed, the only thing it was going to be capable of battering was a fish.
"What? That's it?"
The driver nodded again. He flinched as a number of soul-stripped crashed onto the front of the train and ripped at the metal cage that protected the cab. Though two of them tore their arms away in the attempt, the cage thankfully remained intact. "It runs on cables," he said through clenched teeth. "And the cables' speed is regulated by controls at either end of the line."
Slowhand shot an arrow into the eye of a soul-stripped who had worked out the cab had a side door, and booted it away. "Then what the hells does it need a driver for?"
"To flip the lever that moves the grip from the slow to fast cable!"
"The grip?"
"Under the train!" He stared at Slowhand as if the last thing he needed was an idiot. "The grip grips the cable and the cable pulls the train!"
Slowhand just stood there, desperately considering his options. Going back to DeZantez and telling her he'd set his jaw for nothing wasn't one of them.
Grip, cable, cable, grip, he thought - come on, Slowhand, you're an archer, and cables are just like thick bow strings, right? Is there anything you can do with them?
"What happens if the grip slips off?" He asked.
"The train stops."
"I mean, how do you put it back on?"
"There's an access panel under your feet."
Slowhand looked down, tore open the panel. The track below was hardly racing by but, this close up, it was a little unnerving. He fixed his attention on the cables instead - three of them, not two as he'd expected. "There's a middle cable here that isn't moving," he shouted to the driver. "What does that do?"
"It's the torque cable," the driver shouted back. "It regulates the tension in the other two."
"And if it severs?"
"What?"
"If it severs, what would happen then?"
"I don't know. I guess the other cables would snap and whiplash away."
"Like the one we're attached to now?"
"Yes but -" The driver paused. "Oh, no. No, no, no..."
"Bingo," Slowhand scrambled back up out of the cab. More soul-stripped had landed on the train's roof in his absence and he simply didn't have time for them. As Slowhand raced back towards the train's rear he aimed Suresight as he moved, loosing naphtha arrows with such force that their flaming shafts simply punched any attacking soul-stripped into the air, off the train, and out of his way.
He paused only once, grabbing one of the Deathclaws from a surprised DeZantez's hand, before reaching the end of the train and launching himself into the air.
Slowhand landed on the tracks behind, rolled, and swung the claw through the torque cable. It severed immediately and began to unravel, as did the one pulling the train. The archer grabbed onto its end, allowing the whiplashing cable to carry him into the air and back towards the train. It arced above the last carriage and he let go, crashing onto the roof, and immediately shouted a warning to DeZantez, Freel and all of those in the cars below.
"Hold on tight!"
Beneath him, the train, still gripped to the cable which was no longer restrained at one end, began to pick up speed,and Slowhand threw h
imself flat.
The front of the train ploughed into the wall of soul-stripped, bucking slightly on its tracks as it did. As always, there were no screams of cries of protest from those it hit, but a series of sickening fleshy crunches and a rain of dismembered body parts. The rattling and clattering of the train's wheels faded as the vehicle travelled not on bare metal but a thick layer of gore and blood. Slowhand cautiously raised his head and found himself staring into the blood-spattered face of Gabriella DeZantez. He offered her a hand up.
"You okay?"
"You know the personal motto of every Sword of Dawn. 'I always rise again.'"
Slowhand smirked. "I thought that was my motto."
DeZantez shook her head. "Quick thinking with the cable."
"I'm sure you would have thought of it yourself," Slowhand replied.
"Oh, I did. I just wanted to see how quick Slow was."
Slowhand nodded with a small smile, an acknowledgement that the prospect of their working together might not be as bad as it had seemed. He found himself staring up at Jakub Freel too, but the leather-clad man merely wiped a patch of gore from his cheek and slapped it to the train's roof with some disgust.
"It might not be over yet," he said, with no hint of gratitude. "We need to check for stragglers, any of them that might still be on or near the train. I'll check the front, DeZantez you get the sides, and Slowhand, you get the tracks to the rear."
Slowhand picked himself up, nodding as he wiped away gore. He made his way back down the cars and looked down. But other than the occasional piece of limb or bloody chunk of flesh being dragged along in their wake, there was nothing - the soul-stripped were gone.
Slowhand bowed slightly, placing his palms on his thighs and breathing a sigh of relief, when a hard shove in the small of his back sent him flying into the air.