Mike Wild - Engines of the Apocalypse

"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 seemed 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.