Merciless Reason (19 page)

When I had finished stabbing, Duffy's abdomen was a torn and bloody mess, his innards starting to slop like giant worms through his clutching hands. But I knew he would still take some time to die, and it would be an agonizing death. Miriam was crouching down against the cauldron, wailing so hard she could not take a breath. I tossed the cur backwards into the old cauldron, where he coughed and groaned as the blood pooled around him. I spat on him and then turned to her, as she pointlessly tried to use her handkerchief to cover his wounds.

“There he is, my darling, the man who would use you as if you were any silly old trollop with more money than sense. And he has learned what it is to cross the Wildensterns. Do not waste your tears on this jack-gagger, my dear. If it is God's will that you be taken in by him, then you should pray for his salvation, and your prayers will surely be answered. Or perhaps your Dagda's cauldron will cure his injuries and bring him back to life. Either way, I will leave you here with him, as you seem to enjoy his company so much. When you decide to start behaving in a manner befitting my wife, you may show your face upstairs again, where I will be waiting. I will send down some men in a while, to empty that chamber-pot of yours.”

I left her with those words, and did not look back. Her sobs, and the tortured cries of the dying man, followed me up the stairs. Neither sound gave me great satisfaction.

XX

“PREPARE TO REPEL BOARDERS”

“WILDENSTERN.” A VOICE BROKE INTO NATE'S THOUGHTS.
“Rouse yourself, man! The dogs are at our heels!”

Nate blinked and looked up Dempsey.

“What is it?”

“Come and see for yourself.”

Nate marked his page with a piece of string before closing the journal and rising to his feet in a stiff motion. His body was feeling the strain of the days of travel, as well as the aftermath of the recent gunfight. A bolt of pain shot through his shoulder and he grunted, shrugging it away. He moved down the aisle of their second-class carriage, following Dempsey towards the rear of the train. They went through two doors to the next carriage, striding between the rows of wooden seats in the third-class carriage—one had to travel second-class to get cushioned seats. Nate noticed people were peering out the left-side windows at the scene thrown into silhouette by the setting sun. Nate stopped to see what they were looking at, but Dempsey gripped his arm and kept him moving.

Dempsey had told him about Harmonica, the American bounty hunter who was dogging them. His real name was Thomas Radigan, a former US marshal of Polish and Irish descent. The man was famous in his homeland for his determination and resourcefulness. He had turned in his badge and become a bounty hunter after the law had failed to catch his brothers murderer. Ever since, he had devoted himself to the manhunting profession with fanatical resolve, tracking down any criminal with a substantial price on their head. Once he took on a job and set himself on the trail of a quarry, he never failed to finish the job. Now it would be a matter of professional pride with him that he make up for the fouled-up ambush in Limerick. He had earned his nickname by playing the harmonica to condemned prisoners he had caught, as they walked to the gallows. Dempsey had assured Nate that they hadn't seen the last of this human bloodhound.

The train was composed of a steam locomotive pulling a tender—carrying the coal and water—along with six passenger carriages and a guard's van at the rear. The door to the guard's van was unlocked, and three of Dempsey's men were already inside. The uniformed guard was sitting in high dudgeon on a bench alongside some large sacks of mail, where he had obviously been instructed to sit down and shut up. He scowled at Nate and Dempsey as they stepped out the door at the back of the railway car and onto the wide footplate, buffeted by the wind and swaying slightly with the motion of the train.

“I expected to cross paths with him again,” Dempsey growled, scratching his jaw through his beard. “But I never saw this coming.”

Holding onto one of the roof supports, Nate stared out at the dusk-lit landscape, and at the six velocycles racing across the fields, weaving past trees and leaping hedges and fences in pursuit of the train. Each engimal carried a rider, and the man in front wore a fur-felt cowboy hat and duster coat.

The creatures snarled and screeched, relishing the thrill of the chase. Their wheels left scars in the soft earth where they swerved or jumped or accelerated, spraying soil and tearing through undergrowth. Harmonica took his hat from his head and whooped as he waved it forward, urging his posse onwards after the train. They were closing the gap quickly—the steam locomotive was the fastest form of travel in the Victorian age, but only if you left engimals out of the equation. There wasn't much that could outrun a velocycle.

“It gives a whole new meaning to ‘catching the train', doesn't it?” Nate observed. “No expense has been spared, apparently. Those are Wildenstern beasts, I'd know them anywhere. There can't be more than eight or nine of the creatures in the whole of Ireland. So what do we do now?”

“Prepare to repel boarders,” Dempsey replied, leaning on the door and nodding to his men. “Tell the others to make sure they don't get ahead of us. Shoot the blackguards out of the saddle if you have to. I don't think Harmonica's enough of a lunatic to try and derail the train, but he might try and block its path. And we don't know if they've got more men on the way to catch up with us. I wouldn't put it past him to have more of them to meet us when we stop at Roscrea. If I have to, I'll put a gun to the drivers head and push on through every bloody station between here and Dublin.”

The three headed back up the train to spread out along its length and pass on instructions to the rest of their crew. Dempsey drew a revolver and turned towards the back of the carriage.

“Two of them have gone ahead,” Nate said, pointing at the pair of riders careering over a field to reach the front of the train on the right-hand side. “And the cowboy is going up the left. You'd want to mind they don't get to the driver before your men do. The last thing you want to have to do is lay siege to the engine.”

“We have it covered,” Dempsey retorted.

In the short time he had known the sailor, Nate had yet to hear the man speak to him in any kind of friendly tone. It seemed Nate could never be forgiven for being a member of the family who had stolen Dempsey's son.

Gunshots rang out, and Nate ducked down behind the low wall at the end of the footplate, but he knew that the thin sheet of iron might not stop a rifle round, or even that of a powerful handgun like the '44 he pulled from his jacket. Two of the riders were making a play for the end of the train. Bullets smacked into the walls and chassis of the train, some ricocheting off at dangerous angles. Dempsey stepped inside the back door and smashed the window. Nate darted in behind him and the sailor used the door as cover, taking careful aim through the broken window at the two riders speeding up alongside the train.

Nate used the butt of his gun to punch through a side window and fired two shots at the nearest rider. His first missed, but the second struck the engimal in the flank. It shrieked and flinched, its rear wheel slipping sideways, nearly throwing its rider. But then regained its balance and, enraged, it rushed forward even faster. But in doing so, it came closer to the guards van. Nate took a bead on the man on its back and put a shot through his leg. The man tumbled backwards off the velocycle, somersaulting to a halt in the middle of the field. The engimal kept hurtling on alongside, oblivious to the fate of its rider.

Dempsey had injured the other engimal, and it had limped to a standstill, watching the train speed away. There was one left, coming directly up the tracks behind them, the engimal balancing perfectly on one of the rails and using its smooth surface to race ever faster forward. The man on its back was an expert marksman. Whenever Dempsey tried, to take a shot, the rider put a bullet through the door with unnerving accuracy.

Dempsey's gun jammed and he ducked back behind the wall, pointing the barrel away from him as he tried to eject the troublesome cartridge. Nate grabbed one of the sacks of mail piled up beside the guard, who now cowered in one corner of the van. Carrying the heavy sack to the door, Nate peeked out and saw the third rider was only a few yards from the rear of the train, his velocycle's wheels still lined up perfectly on the rail. That peek nearly cost Nate his life—a bullet split the doorframe where his head had been only an instant before.

“One of Harmonicas trick-shooters,” Dempsey rasped. “Can probably shoot like that while standing on his head and whistling
Dixie
. He can keep our heads down until he's on board, but we'll take him when he sets foot on the train.”

“I don't think he means to,” Nate replied, hauling the sack up behind him and wincing at a twinge in his injured shoulder. “When I looked out, he had a stick of dynamite in his other hand. He's just going to blow up the whole bloody van.”

Dempsey's burst of foul language was drowned out by the sound of three more rounds passing through the wall. Nate kicked the door open and, staying clear of the doorway, he hurled the sack of mail off the back of the train. There was a thud, a crash, a scream and a thumping clatter as the engimal ran headlong into the weighty sack and flipped over, tumbling over its rider and bouncing along the tracks behind the train. A moment later, there came the loud punch of an explosion as the fuse on the stick of dynamite dutifully did its job.

“First time I've sent a letter in years,” Nate remarked, glancing out through the doorway. “And to think Daisy claimed I never understood the value of writing.”

Dempsey was already ignoring him, turning to look out the side of the train.

“I can't see any of the rest, can you?”

Nate studied the landscape beyond the side windows, but could not see any of the other riders. One of the Fenians, a spry, middle-aged navvy dressed in a velveteen jacket and a mismatching flat cap, came through the door from the next carriage.

“Thir on the roof,” he said in a toothy Limerick accent. “Two of thim, at least. Mebby three.”

Nate met Dempsey's eyes and nodded.

“Let's take the fight to them,” Nate said. “I'll climb up at this end, you go through and try to come up ahead of them. We'll throw the bloody coves right off the train.”

Dempsey jerked his chin out in agreement.

“Jaysus, thet sounds awful dengerous,” the older man objected.

“I'm on for it,” Dempsey sniffed. “Can't be harder than standing on a deck in a storm.”

Nate went out the back door to the ladder leading up to the roof. He was starting up it when the Limerick man peered out at the passing farmland, and then looked at his watch.

“Wait, wait!” the older man called. “Wait just a minute.”

Nate hesitated as the man held up his hand and looked out. A harsh scraping sound carried back from the front of the train. It grew in volume, a dragging, clattering noise that caught the screams of two men up in its commotion as it swept past on the roof above. Nate, Dempsey and the Limerick man caught sight of a tree passing away behind them, its branches overhanging the track. One bounty hunter was sent flailing off the roof and onto the rails, coming to a rest in a battered heap. Another was caught in the branches of the tree, looking utterly stunned.

“Thet'll be the Scrapin' Tree,” the Limerick man said. “Any reg'lar pessenger on this train knows it. Always gives yeh a fright hearin' it drag across the roof like thet, if yer not riddy fer it.”

Nate and Dempsey watched the Scraping Tree whisk away into the distance and they shared a smile.

“Excellent,” Dempsey said. “All right, Sean, you stay and keep watch here. We'll go forward and make sure we've got clear of all of them.”

Nate followed him as he went out the door, walking past the terrified train guard who had buried himself in mail sacks and now spouted a stream of verbal abuse at them as they passed him.

There was uproar on the train. Women were screaming, men were shouting, children were crying. Half the passengers on the train were crouching down under the windows, their arms over their heads. The other half were on their feet, in an attempt to see what was going on. Dempsey and Nate pushed through the throng of bodies, trying to find the Fenians scattered along the train's length. Dempsey stopped to question each one, checking to see if any of the bounty hunters had got on board. Clancy was leaning up against his window, pistol in hand, but his face was pale and there was a rattle in his breathing. Nate knelt down next to him and urged him to lie back down. His manservant was having none of it, so Nate gave up with a smile and a shake of his head and went on after Dempsey.

The sailor stepped out of the front door of the second car on his way to the leading carriage—the only first-class one. The butt of a sawn-off shotgun cracked against the side of his head and he slumped down onto the footplate, the top half of his body hanging dangerously over the gap between the buffers and the coupling joint holding the two carriages together. Another few inches and he would pitch over into the gap and fall under the wheels. Harmonica swung through the door. He was missing his cowboy hat, but his long, tan-colored coat flowed out behind him like a cloak and the barrel of his gun was already leveled at the point where Nate's chest should have been.

Nate was crouching low to the floor, his head down. As the American came through, Nate lunged forward, driving his shoulder into the man's midriff and carrying him back out the door. Harmonica tripped over Dempsey's limp form and smashed through the door into the leading carriage. He was getting to his feet when Nate followed him through, knocked the shotgun to one side and slammed the heel of his hand into Harmonica's solar plexus, just below the arc in the ribcage. The blow took the wind out of Harmonica's lungs and knocked him back along the aisle between some shelves of luggage. Nate jumped after him, but Harmonica caught him with a front kick that shoved him right back over on top of Dempsey. Nate nearly tipped the unconscious man into the gap between the carriages, and only just grabbed his belt in time, hauling him back onto the narrow footplate. Harmonica brought his gun up and Nate kicked it aside again, throwing himself forward once more to prevent Harmonica getting a bead on him.