Joseph Lewis - Halcyon

“The train?” Berkan called from the wagon. “Is it the train?”

“I think so,” Lorenzo answered. “The engineer may be hurt. I’ll go.” He lashed his mare into a gallop and dashed away down the dusty highway.

Qhora let Wayra carry her forward a few more paces before her curiosity overwhelmed her and she clucked the great eagle into a sprint. She heard the sergeant call out to her, but she couldn’t understand him and she knew he was only telling her not to go.

Wayra ran swiftly, but not as swiftly as Qhora knew she could run. She wondered if the poor bird had grown weaker after the long months in the cold Espani stable, but then she thought that the hard gravel road might be the real problem. With a nudge to the right side of the highway, Wayra leapt down the embankment, across the drainage ditch, and onto the grassy flat beside the railway. Now they began to sprint, to race the wind. Wayra dug her cruel talons into the soft earth and come as close to flying as she ever would. Qhora let the wind catch her hair and cloak and felt them flapping behind her. She wanted to tear the lace from her throat and the skirts from her legs and ride, ride, ride to the ends of the earth as she had as a little girl in the highlands of a faraway land where men tamed beasts instead of machines.

All too soon, the smoking remains of the engine appeared before her and she pulled Wayra back into a heavy-footed strut. To her left, she saw four long buildings rotting in the midday sun. The windows and doorways hung open and empty, revealing the long dusty hollows of the little market.

Perhaps the farmers in the hills once used this place to sell their produce to travelers or merchants on the road. How long have they stood empty like this?

They thumped through the tall grass toward the smoking wreckage and Wayra lowered her head, hissing. Lorenzo appeared at the edge of the road above them. He dismounted and ran down to stand beside her.

“Do you see him? The engineer?” Enzo jogged around the far side the engine to search.

Qhora let Wayra stalk forward slowly, picking her path carefully around the sharp bits of metal hiding in the grass and the boiling puddles that steamed in the mud.

She smells something. Is it the engineer? Is it blood?

The gray engine looked mostly intact except for the thin gashes in the boiler where the steaming water was trickling out. But as she approached the cab, the full extent of the damage was revealed. A second engine with a smaller black boiler had crashed into the gray locomotive. The black engine’s huge cow-catcher had split the back of the gray engine’s cab in half, peeling the steel open all the way up to the back of the boiler where the gauges and levers now stood nose to nose with the black engine’s head lamp.

The sooty-faced engineer lay slumped over the twisted metal rail, blood dripping from the tips of his outstretched fingers. Qhora whistled for Enzo and continued past the body along the black engine to a much larger cab where she found another unconscious engineer, two groaning men in pale yellow jackets, and a woman in a long white coat lying in the grass.

“Enzo?”

“The engineer is dead,” he called from the gray engine.

She nodded. Of course he is. That’s what happens to everyone in this country. Well, most of them. She pointed to the men in yellow who looked to be breathing. “These two survived.”

“Who?” He jogged up beside her, then climbed into the black engine’s cab to check on the motionless driver. “He’s dead, too.”

“Check the other men.” Wayra stalked past the engine toward the figure in white spread-eagled in the waving green grass. The woman had a prominent nose, sharp cheeks, wide lips, and a thick mane of black hair bound in a heavy braid. There was a dry and leathery texture to the lines around her mouth and eyes. Qhora decided to risk her broken Mazigh a bit more. “Hello? Are you alive?”

The woman twitched, her eyes fluttered, and she groaned.

Qhora frowned and looked back. Lorenzo was helping one of the men in yellow to sit up. On the road above them, the wagon rolled into view beside the deserted marketplace. Berkan and his soldiers jumped down from the wagon and trudged down the embankment toward the wreck. Qhora turned back to the woman in white and saw that her eyes were open. The woman’s hand darted into her coat as she sat up and a long thin knife caught the sun’s light.

This is getting tiresome. Qhora tore her dagger free of her belt and cried, “Enzo!”

Two bullets pinged off the gray engine’s boiler just above his head and Lorenzo ducked back again, clutching his slender sword in one hand and squinting at the wide expanse of grass that offered everywhere to run and nowhere to hide. He scrambled around the front of the engine across the railway tracks and looked up the embankment at the wagon standing in the shadow of the decaying marketplace. Berkan and his soldiers were crouched in the tall grass, rifles at their shoulders, firing carefully at the gunmen hiding in the black train engine. But Lorenzo could not see Xiuhcoatl or the huge fanged cat. And he couldn’t see Qhora.

After a burst of rifle fire, the hidalgo leapt from his hiding place, dashed across the grass, and threw himself down into the dusty drainage ditch a moment later. He paused to catch his breath and listen to the guns bark and crack, the sounds echoing off the pale and cloudless sky. Peering out through the grass, he could just barely see the two gunmen hiding in the cab of the black engine.

It had all happened so fast. The men in yellow woke up. The woman in white woke up. Shouting. Guns. Knives. Running. There hadn’t been a moment to speak or even to think, only time enough to run away and hide, and to listen to the pounding of his own heart.

These are no desperados. These aren’t thieves or even murderers. No common criminal could have taken a train engine from Arafez. No, they’re something else. Mercenaries. Assassins. Someone wants us dead. Someone wants Qhora dead.

He sheathed his sword and scrambled up the slope to the gravel road and then dashed behind the rotting remains of the market plaza. Berkan shouted at his men, and through a crack in the wooden wall Lorenzo watched the soldiers crawl forward down the embankment toward the engine and the men in yellow.

“Qhora?” He scanned the dusty yard between the abandoned buildings, but there was no sign of life. Drawing his espada once more, he crossed the square and began skirting each stable and stall, looking for footprints and listening for footfalls.

She has to be here somewhere. Somewhere close. Dear God, let her be alive.

A man shouted off to the right and Lorenzo ran in that direction. It was Xiuhcoatl’s shout, one the hidalgo had heard before in the New World on the killing fields of Cartagena. He rounded the last market stall and saw the old Aztec slashing his obsidian sword at a tall woman in white. The woman danced back and forth, easily slipping beyond the macuahuitl’s reach. She held a stiletto in each hand, one by the handle and the other by the blade.

Beyond the fighters, Lorenzo saw Lady Qhora mounted on Wayra with the revolver in her hand. She was aiming at the woman in white, but every few seconds she would put her hand down and shout at Xiuhcoatl in Quechua, “Move! Get away from her!”

Lorenzo jogged out from the shadows into the bright afternoon sun with his espada at the ready, and he yelled, “My lady! Don’t shoot!”

He saw her frown at him, but to his relief she lowered the gun into her lap.

Then Xiuhcoatl screamed and Lorenzo saw the thin dagger buried in his throat. He dashed forward even faster. No! When did that happen? How is that possible? The old warrior clutched at his neck with one hand as he tried to swing his heavy sword in the other. He staggered off balance, gurgling, blood streaming from his mouth.