Wintercraft (11 page)
Silas’s carriage headed straight for the station, and as it rolled in through the entryway every warden stood to attention, acknowledging his arrival. Then a deep sound rumbled like the bowels of the earth and somewhere to the north - still too far away to see - the oncoming train’s great wheels began to slow down.
Inside the station, the first cages were already being moved across the platform in preparation for the train’s arrival. But all work stopped and every prisoner fell silent when the ground began to tremble and a cold blue light seeped out of the darkness, tracing along the edge of the track’s boundary wall and focusing into a single blinding beam that cut through the night like a knife. The deep noise sounded again. Closer this time and unmistakable. Silas’s driver stopped the carriage right on the edge of the platform, where he climbed down, unhitched the horses and led them quickly away.
Kate could feel the train approaching, but she still could not see it. The ground shook hard. Silas swung open the carriage door and the horn wailed again, deafeningly close. He pulled her out on to the slippery platform. Light flooded the walls, the rumble of wheels echoed through Kate’s bones and the Night Train thundered into the station, groaning and grunting like a vast malodorous beast.
It was a moving stink of dripping oil, hot grinding metal and burning fumes; a patchwork of heavy repairs, newly forged metal and old hammered panels all riveted together into one scarred machine. Its massive wheels growled against the pressure of the brakes and its metal carriages rolled behind, each one windowless and terrifying, accompanied by the creaking sound of hanging chains.
The train was a monster. Its engine car was taller than a house, with a twisted steam chimney on top and a pointed grille mounted on the front designed to push anything it encountered out of the way. Kate’s head swam as a wave of putrid steam gushed from the wheels and tumbled on to the platform, carrying with it the hot smell of burning oil and churned-up dirt. The nearest carriage groaned as it settled to a stop, letting the train fall into as close to a silence as such a huge machine could get.
The Night Train stretched back endlessly down the track, no longer the grand funerary train of Albion’s last age, created to carry the dead to their place of rest, but a twisted ruin of what it had once been: a symbol of terror instead of hope. Its carriage doors opened one by one, filling the air with the shriek of sliding metal, then the first cages were rolled forward and the throbbing sound of machinery echoed inside, sending many of the prisoners into a panic.
The station was in uproar. No one wanted to be put on that train and their shouts were deafening. People fought at their locks, tried to squeeze through the bars, and two cages crashed on to their sides as their occupants tried desperately to escape. The wardens ignored them and stood in silence along the platform, their daggers glinting in the lantern light. They did not care if people shouted or fought or begged or screamed. To them, Morvane was just another town and they had already won.
‘You will not be travelling with them,’ said Silas, turning Kate away from the shouting people and leading her towards the front of the train. ‘I want you where I can see you.’
A set of three metal steps folded down from a door close to the front of the train and Silas motioned for her to step aboard. Kate looked back across the station, wondering where Artemis was amongst all of those people. Maybe if she did what Silas wanted for now, he might make a mistake, or at least leave her alone long enough for her to free herself. Something told her Silas was not the kind of man who made mistakes, but that small hope was enough to make her climb those steps with a little less fear. She was going to get out of this and she was going to help Artemis. She just didn’t have any idea how she was going to do it yet.
Kate stepped up into the monstrous carriage and was met by the dull flicker of tiny lanterns swinging in groups from metal beams overhead, but other than those beams the roof was completely open to the sky. Dark clouds moved sluggishly through the night and the jagged remains of the station’s roof criss-crossed above her. The night train was a bare skeleton of what it had once been. It had walls but no roof and no real floor besides the girders needed to hold it together. One step to either side would have sent Kate falling through on to the tracks and, if the train was moving, she had no doubt someone could easily be dragged underneath.
‘Keep moving,’ ordered Silas.
Kate continued slowly along the girder towards the centre of the carriage. To her right three rows of cages hung from chains hooked on to the beams and three more matched them on the left-hand side, swinging precariously over wide open gaps in the floor. All of them were empty.
Silas unlocked one of the cages on the right and held it still while she climbed inside. ‘This is the quietest part of the train,’ he said, unclipping her wrist chain and locking the door behind her. ‘The wardens do not patrol this carriage and I have sole possession of the prisoners carried here.’ He pulled a red blanket from a cage on the other side and forced it through the bars into Kate’s hands. ‘Get some sleep. We will not reach Fume until morning and there will be plenty of work for you to do once we arrive. You will be no good to me without rest.’
Kate shivered in the icy cold. Snow began to fall again and she waited stubbornly for Silas to walk back out on to the platform before wrapping the blanket around herself for warmth. The great train’s door slid shut and the finality of the sound reverberated through the walls. She rattled the cage door. The lock was bent a little from a previous occupant’s attempts at escape and it would not budge, so she stood in the corner of the cage with the blanket around her, clutching her mother’s necklace, not wanting to accept the truth.
She was trapped on the Night Train, helpless, just as her parents had been. Was this how they had felt the day the wardens had taken them away? How long had they survived after being taken on board? Kate knew that they had made it to Fume, but Artemis had never told her what had happened to them after that. She buried herself deeper in the blanket. She was about to take the same journey her parents had taken ten years ago and there was nothing she could do about it.
There was no way out, nowhere to go. All she could do was wait.
Crouching behind a wall just outside the gravelled garden, Edgar would have done almost anything for a blanket. His toes were numb, his fingers ached with cold and his skin prickled in the icy air.
Getting across town had been difficult enough. With time against him, he had ridden a stolen bicycle the entire way, pumping the pedals as fast as he could, taking shortcuts no warden would ever know about, dodging patrols and trying to stay out of sight while the Night Train drew closer to the town every second. He had made it. The train was still there. All he had to do was sneak on board. That part had sounded easy when he had first thought of it. Now, seeing so many wardens in one place, it was starting to look impossible.
Edgar was peering over the wall, watching for a break in the warden patrols, when a flutter of wings settled on the wall beside him and he turned to look straight down the beak of Silas’s crow. The bird strode proudly in front of him, not caring that it had been seen.
‘Shoo!’ said Edgar, slapping it away. ‘Get lost!’
The bird jumped deftly out of reach, lowered its head and let out a loud, sharp call. ‘
Krrarrk!
’
Krrarrk!
’
‘Stop that!’ Edgar tried to grab hold of it, but it moved too fast, marching stubbornly up and down the wall. ‘Fine.’ Edgar grabbed a chunk of stone and threw it at the crow’s feet. The bird clicked its beak and flapped its wings, glaring at him.
‘Didn’t like that, eh? Next time it’ll be your head,’ said Edgar. ‘Go on!’
The crow tilted its head to one side, as if listening to something far away. Then it snapped its beak viciously towards Edgar’s nose and took flight, circling up to the nearest rooftop to keep watch from a place Edgar’s stones could not reach.
‘Great,’ whispered Edgar. If the crow knew where he was, it wouldn’t be long before Silas sent the wardens out looking for him. It was time to do something.
‘It isn’t that hard,’ he told himself, looking out at the cages and shuffling his feet to keep warm. ‘Just stick to the plan.’
For his plan to work, Edgar had to choose his moment carefully. With most of the wardens loading cages on to the train there were fewer of them left to guard the ones furthest away from it. All he had to do was climb one, hide on top of its roof and let himself be taken aboard.
He stood up as straight as he dared, watching the commotion that had started inside the station spreading quickly to the prisoners still waiting outside. Edgar knew that sound well. The sound of fear. He knew what was in store for the prisoners. The Night Train was the stuff of nightmares to most people, but to him it was far more than that. He had been ten years old the day the wardens had come to claim the people of his own home town. He remembered being pushed into one of those cages, holding his brother’s hand and promising him that everything was going to be all right, even though he knew it wasn’t. He could never have imagined that, seven years later, he would be waiting for it again, trying to find his way on board.
‘This is it,’ he whispered, spotting a break in the patrols. He clenched his hands into fists, not at all convinced that he was going to come out of the next few minutes alive, and then he ran out into the moonlight, darting between the cages, searching for an empty one he could climb.
Some of the prisoners shouted at him as he sped past, but their voices were lost among the rest. Edgar ignored them. He couldn’t afford to slow down and there was nothing he could do for them anyway without a warden’s key. Then he saw them: a pair of wardens patrolling away from the rest, close enough for him to see the whites of their eyes. He ducked quickly behind the nearest cage and scrabbled beneath the wheels, waiting for them to pass by.
‘Hey! You!’
He had been too slow.
For a moment, Edgar just stared at the two men as they ran his way. Then he rolled out across the dirt, sprang to his feet and was off at a sprint, barrelling along like a wily mouse fleeing from two fast cats. He raced past five burning torches and made a sharp turn before colliding with a horse that reared up in fright.
‘Argh!’ He wriggled away from the horse’s falling hooves, scrambled under a second cage and changed direction. There was no time to climb on top of a cage now, so instead he did what no warden would expect him to do. He headed straight for the night train itself.
Groups of lanterns fanned out from the station as patrols began sweeping the rows one by one. The search was highly organised, making it predictable enough for Edgar to slip between two groups and sneak right into the station without being seen. Once inside, he crept along what was left of the main wall and ran across the northern end of the platform, jumping down on to the tracks between two of the train’s enormous carriages. He ducked down, pressed his back against the side of the platform and stopped there to catch his breath and figure out his next move. Getting that far was amazing enough, but the train would be leaving soon and he still had to find a way on board.
Once all of the front carriages were filled, the train’s brakes steamed suddenly and the wheels began to move. Edgar heaved himself up on to the metal links that held the two carriages together and, as the train rolled forward to bring the rear carriages up to the platform, he struggled to keep his feet up off the tracks, dragging himself along on his belly and clinging on to the links for safety. Every inch the train moved carried him an inch further down the platform, past wardens and prisoners alike. He had to move. Fast.
Edgar had been carried right through the station by the time the train stopped again. His hands stung as he peeled them off the icy metal and began to climb hand to hand up a vertical bar fixed to the end of one of the carriages. Once up, the snow was falling so heavily it blinded him to everything further away than two carriages in either direction. There was no way to tell where Kate would be, but if he stayed out in the open for too long he would be too cold to do anything other than curl up and hope the weather finished him off before the wardens did.
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