It took her five steps to the rear of the freight car, then Mari swung in between cars to where the small ladder leading up the back was located, pulling Alain behind her. She started climbing, glad to be hidden from the Mechanics at the front and rear of the train, pausing only to gesture Alain to climb after her.
The top of the freight car felt hideously exposed, but was actually screened right now from anyone close to the train. The lock on the small top-access door was also closed, but easier to pick than the side door would have been. Mari popped the lock in a few seconds, then beckoned Alain again, getting him down inside the freight car and following quickly. She stopped when only her head was still out in the open, listening and looking for any sign that someone had noticed. Reassured, Mari lowered herself into the freight car, swinging the door shut after her.
The car was almost full of freight, but that left plenty of room for the two of them. The sides of the car were supposed to be solid, but the car was old, the wood had shrunk and warped, and therefore there were numerous small gaps through which light and air could enter. “Welcome to our ride to Severun,” she whispered. “Stay very quiet until the train starts moving.”
Alain sat down on a crate, watching her. “We will travel in this wagon?”
“Yeah,” Mari agreed, looking around for a less uncomfortable spot. “It’ll be fast and no one will see us in here. Unless this car contains freight to be offloaded before the train reaches Severun.”
“I see.” Alain waited for Mari to continue, then finally spoke again. “What will we do if that happens?”
“I’ll think of something.”
“All right.”
She stopped to look at him. “That answer satisfied you?”
“Yes.”
Mari smiled at him, settling down onto the top of another crate. “Thanks.”
It took a while for anything to happen after that, Mari and Alain sitting quietly and listening to the Mechanics outside calling orders to each other. One Mechanic apprentice came walking down the outside of the train rattling doors to ensure they were locked. He couldn’t have seen them inside the car unless he had shined a light through one of the gaps and put his eyes up close, but she didn’t relax until he had moved on. Mari wondered if she would have recognized the apprentice if they had met face to face. The idea depressed her, and she slumped against the nearest crate, eyes downcast.
Alain’s hand touched hers, and when Mari looked up he tried to smile at her. She forced a return smile and he seemed to understand her mood, nodding silently, then leaving her to her thoughts.
The train whistle screamed, then the car jerked forward into motion. The outlying districts of Pandin rolled past as the locomotive began picking up speed and were replaced by the low hills on the northern side of vast Lake Bellad. Mari settled back and tried to rest. The crates weren’t exactly comfortable, but compared to the crowded coach from Umburan this was almost luxurious. She finally fell asleep, lulled by the motion of the train.
She awakened sometime later when she felt Alain’s hand on her arm.
“Something is amiss,” he warned.
Mari stared around. Judging by the angles of the rays of light slanting in through the gaps between the sideboards of the car, the sun was much lower in the sky, but the train was still moving at a good clip. “What?”
“I do not know. I sense a Mage nearby and rapidly getting closer, though how this could be I do not understand since we are traveling so fast.”
“He’s in front of us somewhere,” Mari explained patiently. “The train is moving toward this Mage—”
“The Mage is behind us, Mari.”
Mari just stared for a moment. “The Mage is rapidly catching up with a train? What’s he doing? Flying?”
“Flying? Of course. That explains it.” Alain looked up. He didn’t look worried, but that didn’t mean anything, since even now Alain rarely let his feelings show.
Before Mari could say anything else the freight car shuddered and rocked, its wooden top bending and creaking alarmingly. Mari stared in shock as the wood overhead burst inward at one point, driven by an enormous bird’s beak. The beak withdrew and an equally enormous bird’s eye peered into the opening, twitching back and forth as it searched for something.
“It is a Roc,” Alain explained in that same impassive tone of voice.
“Blazes!” Mari yelled, hauling out her pistol. Before she could fire, the eye jerked away, then the beak reappeared, tearing a bigger opening in the roof of the freight car. “Is it after us?”
“Probably,” Alain agreed, his voice still unnaturally calm. “It is possible that I am still not good enough at hiding my presence from other Mages, but more likely my use of spells in Pandin led another Mage to find me and follow us long enough to determine that I had gotten on the train. The Mage riding this Roc—”
“There’s a Mage riding it? That’s real?”
“Nothing is—”
“Don’t say it!” Mari flinched as broken wood showered downward and the roof of the freight car sagged alarmingly. “There’s a giant bird being ridden by a Mage on top of this car and it’s trying to kill you? That is insane!”
“It may be trying to kill you as well,” Alain corrected.
“Great! Why did I get involved with a Mage? What do we do?”
Alain had been concentrating, and now Mari felt a gust of heat. The broken wood around the opening the Roc had been widening burst into flame and the giant beak jerked away. “That should discourage it.” Alain noted.
“You set fire to the freight car we’re inside and there’s a giant bird outside trying to kill us!” Mari tried to calm herself as the car rocked violently again but fortunately didn’t jump the rails. “Can you kill a Roc?”
Alain hesitated. “I can certainly try to harm the Mage riding and controlling it. I would rather not, though.”
Mari stared again. “Why not?” she finally asked.
“Rocs are not like dragons or trolls. They have more the seeming of natural creatures, and the Mages who create them have ties to the Rocs.”
It took her a moment to process that. “You don’t want to kill the Mage or his giant, murderous pet bird.”
“The Mage is female, I think,” Alain corrected.
“Excuse me. Her giant, murderous pet bird.” Mari looked up. The fire was spreading, but had at least driven away the Roc. “Will it leave now that the car is on fire?”
Alain frowned slightly in thought. “I doubt it. We would need to startle the creature beyond the Mage’s ability to control it and also find a way to hide ourselves.”
The freight car jolted again and part of the flaming roof fell into the car as huge talons punched through the still intact part of the roof. “That does it,” Mari snapped. She raised her pistol and fired through the roof. A deafening squawk sounded and the freight car jerked once more, the talons vanishing and leaving ragged holes in their wake. “We’ve got to get out of here.” How to startle a giant bird? How to drive it away? The answer suddenly seemed obvious. “We’ve got to get to the engine.”
“The what?”
“The locomotive!”
Alain nodded, his Mage composure infuriating to Mari at the moment. “The Mechanic creature at the front of the train.”
“Close enough.” Mari holstered her pistol, making sure the holster was fastened shut, then climbed up some crates to get right under the opening which the Roc had torn in the car. The fire was still blazing but the dry wood wasn’t generating much smoke, the flames pale in the late-afternoon sunlight as they ate at the freight car. Mari studied the wreckage carefully. “The bird knocked a big enough hole in the roof that we can get out, and the fire is on the downwind side. We just need to jump up and onto the still intact part of the roof at the front of the car.” The freight car swayed wildly, the land rushing past on either hand. The train had increased speed to a dangerous velocity, probably trying to outrun the Mage creature.
She jumped up and forw
Mari caught her breath. Alain was still half off the roof, his feet dangling in open air, Mari’s right hand locked onto his arm and her left hand gripping the other side of the roof.
Moving with strong, careful movements, Alain pulled himself up and next to her.
Mari swallowed, nerving herself. The locomotive was apparently running full out, wind was buffeting them, and the roof of the freight car kept swaying and jerking beneath them. Clouds of dirty smoke mixed with bits of flaming coal from the locomotive billowed over them, bringing up frightening memories of the fire in Ringhmon’s city hall and limiting their ability to see the Roc somewhere overhead. Hopefully it would hide them from the Roc as well. “Follow me!” she yelled to Alain over the wind, then forced herself up despite her fears and scuttled forward.
There were three more freight cars between them and the locomotive. Mari wondered what the passengers farther back on the train thought of the Roc’s attack, especially the Mechanics in the last passenger car. Mages are frauds. That’s what the Mechanics Guild insists, and that’s what you’ve always been taught. How are you going to rationalize a giant bird tearing apart the train you’re riding on? You’ll be told not to talk about it, just like I was. You’ll be told to pretend it never happened. Will any of you find yourselves unable to do that, and in the same trouble I got into?
She reached the end of the roof, gazing across the gap to the next freight car. It wasn’t all that far. An easy jump. Easy if the train wasn’t thundering along the track as fast as it could move and the cars weren’t threatening to jump the rails at any moment and the wind wasn’t tearing at her and a giant bird wasn’t somewhere above doubtless getting ready to dive on her again.
Mari jumped, landing with her boots sliding for purchase on the roof and her hands scrabbling for a hold, any hold, and her body starting to fall sideways toward the ground tearing past in a blur and…she got a hold and gripped it so tightly her hand hurt.
Looking back, Mari saw Alain watching, his own eyes betraying an unusual amount of apprehension. “Come on!” she yelled. “This is easy compared to facing a dragon!”
That brought a trace of grimace that might have been a smile to Alain’s face, then he jumped, his body crashing into her. Mari wrapped one arm around him, the other keeping its hold. Alain got himself set, then glanced up and back. “Down!” he shouted.
Mari, who had already started forward again, flattened herself onto the roof of this freight car. She heard and felt another whooshing over the roar of the train. A tremendous creaking sounded just overhead and she realized it was the sound of the Roc’s feathers shifting in the wind. A shadow flashed past, Mari swearing she saw the Roc’s wing brushing the top of the car ahead of them, then the massive bird was curving up and away to prepare for another strike.
Despite her terror, Mari found herself momentarily frozen in admiration as the smoke from the locomotive parted to give her a good glimpse. The Roc seemed much like a hawk with a slightly elongated neck, but a hawk so large that the figure of the robed Mage on its back seemed no bigger than that of a small mouse compared to a real hawk. The creature swept the air with its huge wings, moving with a titanic grace that left Mari smiling involuntarily at its graceful flight. The Mechanic part of her mind told her that no bird could possibly be that big and still fly, but the rest of her didn’t care that something so lovely was impossible. “All right,” she yelled at Alain. “I know why you didn’t want to kill it.”
She got up into a crouch and ran, not stopping when she reached the gap to the next car this time but leaping across without any pause that might let fear master her. Once again she felt her feet sliding out from under her and once again Mari managed to get a handhold in time.
Alain followed, landing clumsily and squinting into the wind, one hand trying to bat away the hot cinders pelting them. “Have you done this before?” he shouted over the rushing wind.
“Run on top of a moving train? No!”
“I do not want to do it again.”
“That makes two of us.” Mari gazed upward, searching the sky and spotting the Roc winging over for another dive. “Come on!”
Another run, right to the edge of the first car in the train and over to the tender without stopping. Mari dropped onto the tender, landing on lumps of coal that shifted under her and bruised her painfully. She rolled to one side, wincing as the coal lumps dug into her.
Alain came down and hit hard, staring at her and gritting his teeth. “I did not know we would be jumping onto rocks this time.”
“It’s not rocks. It’s coal,” Mari told him.
“It feels like rocks and it looks like rocks.”
“Rocks don’t burn! It’s coal!” Mari heard something and tugged Alain down. “Watch out!”
The Roc swept past again, its beak stabbing down and narrowly missing them. Mari stared after it. “If this keeps up, I’m going to kill that thing! I don’t care how beautiful it is!”
“I understand your feelings,” Alain assured her.
Mari scrambled down the slope of the coal to the cab of the locomotive. Two apprentices stopped frantically shoveling coal into the boiler for a moment to gape at her. The Mechanic driving the train was looking forward, his face set in desperate lines.
Mari pulled herself next to him. “We need to scare it!” she yelled over the roar of the boiler and the clashing of the locomotive’s drive wheels.
The other Mechanic jerked his head over to stare at her, his face white with fear. “You made it up here from the passenger car? Who are you?”
“I’m…never mind now! Just trust me!”
“You know how to stop that thing?” the Mechanic demanded. He was well past middle age, Mari could see now, probably not far from being able to retire after a lifetime of quiet train trips across the Empire.
“Yes!” I hope. Mari scanned the skies again. “Here it comes.”
Alain was near the back of the cab, eyeing the boiler with nervousness so plain that Mari could spot it easily. In Dorcastle he had seen what an exploding boiler could do. Or perhaps he still believed the locomotive to be a creature like a Mage troll or dragon, something that could go into an out-of-control rampage if the Mechanic commanding it made a mistake.
The Roc came arcing down, talons extended this time as if it intended to pluck her and Alain from the locomotive cab. Mari tried to keep breathing as the vast shape of the Roc grew rapidly in size. Fearing she had left it too long, Mari yanked down the whistle lanyard and held it.
The whistle of the locomotive screeched like a banshee, even louder than usual because of the high pressure in the boiler. The Roc jerked upward, its eyes flaring with fear, wings backing frantically as the huge bird broke its descent and tried to flee this awful thing shrieking as if a dozen Rocs were in torment.
Mari grinned and gave Alain a thumbs-up. “It worked.”
“It will be back,” he advised. “We have to keep it from coming back.”
“How—?” Mari coughed as another wave of harsh smoke swept across them from the locomotive’s smokestack. “That’s it!” She turned on the apprentices. “Smoke! We need as much smoke as you can make!”
“Lady Mechanic,” one of the apprentices gasped, “we’re already putting out a lot, and we’ll slow down if we lower the fires by making them smoke more.”
“You can’t outrun that thing! But you can drive it away with smoke! Do it!”
Both of the apprentices looked to the Mechanic driving the locomotive, who nodded hastily. They started reducing the airflow to the fire, causing tremendous clouds of black smoke mixed with a swarm of glowing cinders to billow out of the stack. Within moments Mari was coughing, her eyes smarting.
Alain was beside her. “This reminds me of something,” he got out between his own coughs.
“I remembered it first.” They had almost died from smoke inhalation during the fire in Ringhmon.
“And, just like that time, we have to escape,” Alain added.
She gave him a baffled look, then realized Alain wasn’t just referring to the Roc. Caught up in the need to drive off the Roc, Mari had forgotten that if these apprentices or that Mechanic recognized her they would try to arrest her. If she and Alain were still in this locomotive when it stopped—and it would stop as soon as possible to deal with the burning freight car before its flames spread—one of the Mechanics from the passenger car at the end of the train might well recognize her.
Mari leaned out as far as she could on the side opposite the engineer, squinting against the smoke, tears running down her face from the irritation. “There’s a small bridge up ahead,” she said, putting her lips close to Alain’s ear so the others wouldn’t hear. “There’s a creek under it. I think.”
“You think?”
“Yes! Get ready!” Mari looked around frantically and found what she knew would be in the locomotive cab: a big mailbag with a water-resistant seal for Mechanics Guild dispatches and packages. The apprentices and the other Mechanic were engrossed in staring out the other side of the locomotive in search of the Roc as Mari tore open the bag, stuffed her pack inside, then resealed it.
Grabbing Alain’s arm, Mari shoved him to the side of the locomotive. “Good luck!” She gave him a quick kiss, then as the low trestle and the ditch that hopefully marked a creek or stream hove into view, Mari launched them both off the side of the train.
The drop seemed terrifying, whatever lay beneath them impossible to make out through the smoke and with their eyes watering so badly.
* * * *
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