Iron Jackal (9 page)

Then, all at once, the shelling stopped. Frey’s ears were ringing and he’d be half-deaf for a day, but they were through. Silo pulled them alongside a carriage that had no windows, right in the centre of the train. A goods carriage, with a ladder bolted onto its side that led up to the roof. Silo had seen his captain’s plan.

Malvery looked from the ladder to Frey and back again. ‘Cap’n,’ he said. ‘It’s my professional diagnosis that you’re liable to get yourself killed doing that.’

Frey couldn’t help but agree. Now that the train was close enough to reach out and touch, its brutish power intimidated him. The sheer tonnage of the thing, the speed of it: how could something like this be stopped by one man?

But he’d made his decision, and he couldn’t go back. His crew needed him to make decisions and stick to them. That was how it was, these days. The old Frey would have changed his mind about now. But he was the hero of Sakkan. They looked up to him. He felt the weight of their expectation pushing him onward.

‘Close as you can, Silo,’ he said.

‘We get any closer, we gonna be under the wheels,’ Silo rumbled.

Frey looked back at Malvery, who touched two fingers to his forehead in a quick salute. ‘Rather you than me, Cap’n.’

He braced himself and fixed his eyes on the ladder. Even with Silo’s best efforts, the Rattletrap was swaying back and forth.

Well, damn it, I’ve had a good life. If I fall, I suppose I won’t feel much. Unless I get caught under the wheels and dragged for half a klom, screaming all the way until finally I—

He jumped.

It was over in an eyeblink. He felt the push of his legs, and the impact as he tangled with the ladder, but nothing in between. His mind blanked the intervening distance in a white blare of pure terror. He clung to the warm metal rungs, letting relief soak through him.

‘Go help Ashua,’ he shouted at Silo. ‘I’ll be alright.’

‘You’re a mad bastard, Cap’n!’ Malvery yelled as they pulled away, but the doctor was grinning as he did so. ‘A mad bastard!’

Well, Malvery was probably half right about that, although Frey didn’t know for sure. But mad? He wished that were the case. Then he wouldn’t have to worry so damn much.

He applied himself to climbing the ladder. Once on the roof, he pulled himself up and shakily got to his feet. The wind and heat pushed at him as he rose. It took him a few moments to find his balance.

Well, here I am,
he thought, and a smile crept across his face.

He was on top of the train, the Samarlan desert spread all around him. The sun glared from a cloudless sky, sharp as a jewel, beating on his skin. From up here, he was master of the cracked red earth, the mysterious buttes, the ghostly mountains. He’d tamed the iron beast that had threatened him. He’d earned this moment of triumph.

Silo was peeling away towards Ashua, who was a long way off to the right. Explosions followed him as the autocannons started up again, throwing up plumes of dust which were quickly snatched away as the train thundered onward. Frey saw that the shells were missing Silo by some considerable margin. They’d seemed to be landing much closer when he was in the buggy. He waited until he was sure Silo was out of danger, then turned his attention to his own situation.

His first thought was to get off the roof of the train and drop down into a carriage. His second thought was that they were full of guards, and he didn’t much fancy taking dozens of them on single-handed. The only option was the roof, then, all the way to the engine carriage. Nobody seemed to have seen him climb up, but they’d surely hear him running overhead. Once he started, he’d have to move fast.

The carriages all had large vents in the roof. He peered in to the nearest, and saw nothing but darkness. Carefully, he made his way to the front end of the carriage. The distance between this one and the next was an easy jump. Then he looked down. There was a ladder down to a door, and beneath it, the raging clatter of the tracks.

He suddenly recalled what had happened in Shasiith, while he’d been chasing Ashua. His ribs and back still hurt from that.

Don’t mess it up.

He backed away. He’d be running into a ferocious wind, so he reckoned he needed to jump as long as he could manage, just to be safe.

He took a breath, let it out, and ran.

It
was
an easy jump, in the end. It was the landing that was the hard part. He cleared the gap by a good two metres, but his ankle turned on the gently curving roof and suddenly he was tumbling and sliding, pulled to the side, towards the edge. He scrabbled frantically for purchase before his hand snapped out and found the lip of a vent. He pulled himself back to safety.

Ahead of him, the train snaked away. He counted the carriages between him and the engine.

Two horribly distressing brushes with death down, six more to go,
he thought.
Frey, what were you thinking when you took this job?

Oh yes. Now he remembered. He was thinking about Trinica.

Bess was too big to fit through the door of the carriage, but that didn’t stop her.

The guards who manned the rearmost autocannon were watching Ashua and Silo pursuing the last of the Dakkadian Rattletraps. The first they knew they’d been boarded by a homicidal golem was when a roaring mountain of metal and fury ploughed through the wall. She snatched up the nearest guard and pitched him out into the sunlight, then proceeded to rampage up the carriage, swatting men aside like flies. The men on the autocannon fought to traverse the gun, but Jez had slipped in behind Bess and she took them out with neat rifle shots. Bess ripped the autocannon from its moorings and lobbed it down the carriage, mangling several men who had been unwise enough to stand and fight.

After that, all that was left was the screaming. The Dakkadians crammed through the exit at the far end of the carriage. Some, in their panic, jumped over the side rather than let Bess get her hands on them. The carriage was clear in less than a minute.

Crake skulked in through the hole Bess had left, as she ripped her way through the far side of the carriage in search of more victims. He picked his way among the wreckage and joined Jez.

‘She doesn’t appear to need much help, does she?’ Crake observed.

‘She’s doing alright on her—’ Jez stopped, and the words died in her mouth.

Kill them.

The voice was clear as day, but it came from inside her head.

Do it for the masters (reverence respect awe). Where’s your strength? Do it, curse you!

There! She’d heard it again!

Crake was frowning at her. ‘Are you alright, Jez?’

But she wasn’t alright. The trance was on her, slipping easily across her senses, and she could
see
herself. She was standing with her head cocked as if listening, while Crake peered at her with a look of concern on his face. She’d left her body, watching herself through someone else’s eyes; and at the same time she was still in her body. Somehow the division was not disorientating.

The watcher’s sight was grey and dim, all colour leached from it. She could feel pain and a dreadful exhaustion, the kind of weariness that could only end in death. But there was no fear of the end. Only a burning, righteous anger.

Raise your weapon! Shoot them!

A pistol hovered shakily into view.

She spun around. She saw herself spin around. She raised her rifle and aimed at the bloodied Dakkadian, lying wounded in a corner of the carriage. She pulled the trigger. Shot him. Shot
herself
. The impact was as hard and real as if it had been her own body, and for an instant she wasn’t sure who had killed who.

Then the Dakkadian’s mind closed up, draining from the world like water down a plughole, and she was left staring at the corpse. It toppled over sideways and lay still.

Crake gaped. ‘Amazing. You heard him move?’

‘Yeah,’ she said absently.
No
.

Twice before she’d slid into the mind of another living being. Once it had been an animal. Once a man. But that had been almost two years ago. She’d almost come to believe that she’d imagined those incidents. She thought they were hallucinations brought on by her struggle with her Mane nature, which had consumed her in those days.

But this was no hallucination. This was real, and she’d done it.

She snapped out of her trance and gave Crake a quick, tight smile. She didn’t want Crake to suspect. He knew she was a half-Mane, but she hadn’t told him everything. And now was not the time to consider this strange ability.

‘Come on,’ she said suddenly. ‘Can’t let Bess do all the work.’

She hurried off up the carriage, following the wails of dying men.

Six

Frey under Fire – A Casualty – Another Side to Silo – Bayonets

F
rey was just getting the hang of jumping between carriages when the guards started shooting at him.

The first one caught him by surprise. He didn’t know anyone was there until he heard a gunshot and felt something whip past him, dragging a searing trail of pain along the side of his neck. He whirled, one hand clutched to the wound. It stung, but the hand came away dry. Just a graze.

There was a Dakkadian at the other end of the carriage, squat, pale and blond, with the narrow eyes and broad features of his kind. He’d climbed on to the roof and was fighting to steady himself against the wind and the rocking of the train. He aimed another shot at Frey, but swayed at the last moment and fired wild. Frey, whose balance was steadier, drew his revolver. He sighted and shot his target in the chest. The guard spun and disappeared beneath the carriages, swallowed by the roaring metal monster beneath their feet.

‘Son of a bitch,’ Frey muttered sourly to himself, putting his hand to his neck again. The graze was starting to seep. He didn’t dare think about how close he’d come to death that time.

He forged on up the train. He wasn’t far from the engine carriage now. Ashua and Silo were still chasing down the final enemy Rattletrap in the distance, their wheels kicking up dust. The sharp sound of gunfire drifted over to him.

He still saw no sign of Jez’s Rattletrap, but he was no longer worried about it. Through the ceiling vents, he’d heard some kind of commotion aboard the train. Men were fleeing from the rear carriages towards the front, howling. He didn’t need to be able to understand them to guess the cause. He recognised the wild fear of someone who’d just come face to face with the impossible.

That meant only one thing. Somehow, Bess was on board.

He took a run-up to jump for the next carriage, his confidence growing. Maybe they
would
take this train down after all. The hot, dry wind opposed him, plucking at his clothes, a hundred faint hands flurrying for a grip.

Just as he reached the gap between the carriages, a head poked up between them. A Sammie, his features handsome and sharp, skin black as oil. Frey saw him far too late to check his stride. He jumped over the Sammie’s head, but the man threw up an arm to protect himself, and it caught Frey’s foot. Frey flailed in the air and slammed down hard on the roof of the far carriage, his pistol skidding out of his grip and off the side. Pain exploded through him as the mass of bruises on his ribs received sudden reinforcements.

He tried to breathe and found that he couldn’t. Winded and gasping, he rolled on to his back, and saw another guard, this one Dakkadian, climbing up on to the roof next to him. Panicking, he fumbled for the second pistol that was stuffed in his belt, yanked it free, and thrust it into the surprised guard’s face. He pulled the trigger, and flinched as he was spattered with blood.

His lungs still wouldn’t suck in the air he needed. He got his feet under him and began to rise, drawing his cutlass with his off-hand as he did so. But he stopped halfway, still in a crouch. He was already too late. The Sammie had a pistol levelled at him, from a distance of no more than a couple of metres. Dead to rights.

A heartbeat passed, and it seemed to last an age. The world sharpened to a point. Frey took in every detail of the man who was about to kill him. The elegant, almost feminine features. Long, black hair, gathered in a queue and decorated with a complex hairpiece of silver filigree. The wonderfully worked blue silk coat, light as air, that hung down to his knees. His brocaded shirt. His beautiful pistol, worked with silver intaglios along its length.

Then the Sammie fired, and Frey’s hand moved. It was not by his will; it was pulled by the cutlass, which operated with a mind of its own. There was a spark, and the whine of a ricochet.

The Sammie stared at him, unable to understand why his bullet hadn’t found its mark. Frey didn’t give him time for a second chance. He straightened and shot his enemy through the forehead.

It took him a few more moments to get his breath back. He tipped his cutlass and examined it for damage, but he knew there wouldn’t be any. He’d barely even felt the jolt of the bullet up his arm. This was a daemon-thralled blade, and it handled itself better than he ever could.

That’s another drink I owe Crake.

He checked on Ashua and Silo. They still hadn’t managed to take care of the Rattletrap, and now they seemed to be chasing it back towards the train. In the next carriage along was the remaining autocannon, patiently waiting for its targets to stray within range.