Mike Wild - Engines of the Apocalypse

"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 himself 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.

He cried out in shock, twisting in mid air, and saw Freel standing on the lip of the last car. Slowhand fully expected to hit the tracks once more, but Freel's whip lashed towards him, coiling about him and slamming him against the rear of the train. Slowhand hung, dazed, and saw Freel glaring down at him, his teeth bared.

What the hells is this? Slowhand thought. First the bastard shoves me off the back of the train, and then he catches me, and now he leaves me dangling here?

This was about Jenna, it had to be. Freel was playing mind games, for sure.

The Faith enforcer stared down at him for what seemed an age, his face red, his eyes wide and wild, and then suddenly jerked the chain upward, bringing Slowhand with it. The archer clutched the lip of the car's roof and pulled himself up, and Freel snapped the chain off him, turned and walked away.

Slowhand stood, breathing hard and rubbing his wrists, staring after the man. His every instinct was to follow, to grab him and to sort the problems between them out right now, but somehow he didn't have it in him.

Instead, as the train sped inexorably towards the Sardenne he returned wearily to the cross-legged position he had adopted at the start of their journey, and once more his mind began to wander.

This time, however, his imaginings were not of naked women, of the rolling plains of Pontaine, or even of the Sardenne. Instead, they were of his sister's face, staring at him from the burning gondola of the Makennon . One word kept repeating itself, over and over in his mind. An order, delivered in his own, sure voice.

"Fire!"

It was said that a fistful of full golds could buy you anything in Fayence, but the bigger the fist the better the anything it bought. Not that any of the personal services of this town were in any way unsatisfactory. The local Lord, who maintained a fiscal and hands-on interest in them all, made sure of that. It was merely a matter of how long it would take to recover from the relaxations on offer, whether they were mental, physical, or both. Stimulation-wise, Fayence boasted it catered for all six senses, sometimes all at once, and it wasn't for nothing that the many hotels in the town were known as convalesalons.