Hell Train (6 page)

Nicholas considered his options. He had, in truth, been in stickier situations. There had been that time in Valencia with the Mayor’s daughter, for a start. They had nearly cut his fingers off. But the door was too far away for him to cut and run. The others in the bar would never allow him to leave.

‘There is no time for this,’ he warned, trying to rise but held down on the stool. ‘The enemy is already inside your walls.’

‘Whose enemy?’ asked the landlord. ‘Not ours. This town was built by the railways. Our families were raised on iron and fire. Our men are engineers and metalworkers, and our women become wives and mothers, not sport for bored city folk.’ He had been mulling red wine over the open fire in an iron cup. It was now boiling.

‘And you would see Isabella raped to save yourselves.’

‘Let’s show the stranger our hospitality. Pour him a drink, boys.’ Two of the toughest looking farmers in the bar pinned Nicholas down and forced open his mouth. The metal wine cup was red hot and bubbling fiercely. The landlord drew up a three-legged stool and seated himself before Nicholas.
Perhaps,
Nicholas considered,
this situation is worse than Valencia.
He struggled, turning his head aside.

Outside, Isabella watched in horror, unable to act. She was shocked by the ferocity of men she had known all her life, men she thought she knew. What she was witnessing only firmed her resolve to leave. But there was nothing she could do to save Nicholas now.

The landlord lowered a pair of tongs into the fire and lifted the iron cup, carefully raising the glowing goblet over Nicholas’s open mouth. Drawing it close above the fine English gentleman’s upturned face, he started to tip it. Behind him, a tough old farmer held Nicholas’s arms by his sides.

Kicking out as hard as he could, Nicholas knocked the fat landlord off his stool, upending the scalding cup into the farmer’s eyes. The farmer roared, blinded, and fell back. The cup fell on his forehead, branding his flesh. Nicholas seized the moment to make a break for freedom. Grabbing the farmer, he slammed him into the fire, setting his hair alight.

He dashed for the door and barged it open. Seizing Isabella’s hand, he rushed from the tavern with the others in pursuit.

The pair ran as fast as they could. Isabella pulled Nicholas aside as Ivan and Josef came around the side of a building and blindly charged past.

The streets were dark and empty, both a blessing and a curse. As they reached the town’s outer wall, they saw that a platoon of bedraggled soldiers had began pouring in through the open gate.

‘The town has one road in and out,’ Isabella warned. ‘If we are to survive, we must cut across the fields.’

Panicked, she ran even faster, with Nicholas close behind.

In the penumbral gloom ahead, Nicholas could make out rows of upturned marble tablets, angled among grassy hillocks like rotten teeth. ‘Is that a graveyard?’

‘Yes. We must go through it to reach the station. From there we can follow the tracks out of town. It is the fastest way.’

As they fled toward the ragged field of corpses, their pursuers started closing in. Nicholas knew that their valises were slowing them down, but he could not possibly travel without his belongings.

Ivan and Josef were strong country lads and quickly gained ground. Then Isabella missed her footing and fell heavily, pulling him down into the grass.

Moments later, the fleeing couple were seized by their pursuers.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE TRAIN

T
HOMAS AND
M
IRANDA
had seen the torches of the arriving army wavering through the treeline, and had fallen into panic.

Miranda wrung her hands and paced back and forth on the platform. In England, she took control of every situation in which she found herself. Here, it was impossible to do so. She had never felt so powerless. ‘We don’t have the right papers,’ she cried. ‘They’ll see that we’re English.’

‘We must pray to Our Lord,’ said Thomas.

‘Is that your only solution? It’s too late for prayers.’

‘That is a blasphemy, Miranda. Remember, we are all children of God. The conventions of war demand that we be taken prisoner and remain unhurt. No harm shall befall us.’

‘And that’s it, is it? Abject surrender? Begging for leniency?’ Miranda rounded on her husband. ‘I do not understand how you can say that, when you know perfectly well that the Central Powers are not honouring the code of conduct set out by the Allies. The newspapers have been full of nothing else, for all that they have been censored.’ Her husband’s pacifism was increasingly making her angry. The world was fast descending into a fiery pit, and all she heard was the damp drizzle of appeasement. Why did the weak always pin their hopes on compassion?

But Thomas was no longer listening. She had seen him do this a hundred times before, closing his mind to anything he did not wish to hear. With each passing day of her marriage, she was becoming less and less pious. If God had chosen to speak through man, she was fairly sure He would not have picked Thomas to be his mouthpiece.

Something pricked at Miranda’s ears. The rails were pinging, softly at first, then more clearly. ‘There’s something coming,’ she said.

I
SABELLA TRIED TO
free herself from Ivan’s grip. Nicholas fought off his attackers, smashing the first man who touched him in the nose with a Marquis of Queensberry jab, only to be viciously kicked in return.

Now another advanced on him with a flensing knife in his right fist. Nicholas brought up his knee and broke the farmhand’s arm with a sharp crack.

Josef looked as if he had just realized he was required to fight for his fiancee. Physically imposing but held down by his bulk, he slowly advanced on the Englishman. Nicholas studied his solid gait, his thick arms and bull neck with dismay. He knew that one well-placed punch from the foundryman could render him unconscious. He desperately searched around for something he could use as a weapon.

Too late. Josef attacked. Nicholas had been taught boxing skills at Cambridge, but was not afraid of playing dirty. He kneed Josef as hard as he could in the groin, sending him over, onto his back. Isabella screamed. Josef threw out a hand to grab his opponent. Nicholas was faster, but he slipped on the wet grass.

Josef seized his chance and pinned Nicholas down on an overgrown grave-slab edged with iron railway spikes. Pressing his arm across the Englishman’s throat, he began to choke the life from him, bearing down with his full weight. Nicholas could pull his arms free, but this would not help his situation. He tried to bring Isabella into his line of vision, but could only hear her crying out. Josef pressed the advantage, pushing down harder.

Lights danced before Nicholas’s burning eyes. His right hand gripped the grave’s iron corner spike, desperate for leverage, and he was shocked when it came away in his hand, rusted through.

As Josef pushed down to break his neck, Nicholas stabbed at the soft flesh of his attacker’s throat with the sharp tip of the spike. The pain was enough to make Josef release his grip.Isabella pulled forward and tried to separate them, bringing Ivan with her. Josef rolled onto his back as Nicholas climbed to his feet and found Ivan running at him. He grabbed Ivan’s sleeve and spun him around, kicking away his legs to send him sprawling. The foundrymen were strong but slow.

Nicholas grabbed at the sobbing Isabella and pulled her away, snatching up her bag, making a dash for it. He had lost his own valise in the fight, but had thankfully retained the wad of banknotes inside his breast pocket.

The commotion had drawn the attention of the incoming soldiers, who were raising the alarm. More torches could be seen in the town’s streets, flickering against the walls, stretching shadows into monsters. It seemed their pursuers were uniting into a single lynch-mob.

Isabella and Nicholas could only stumble to their feet and flee from the graveyard in the direction of the station, the fiery procession closing in behind them. Now luck came to their aid, for a line of trees blocked the revealing moonlight, shielding them from sight as the soldiers swarmed among the cemetery stones, shouting to each other in drunken confusion.

As the exhausted couple passed the church clocktower, Isabella saw that the iron hands were almost at midnight. Ahead, she could make out the low black form of the station building.

‘This way,’ she called, pulling at his sleeve. ‘We must run faster.’

Nicholas had a stitch in his side. The clocktower began to strike twelve, the sharp clang of the bell cleaving through the clear night air. One more muddy field to cross, with the torchlit rabble weaving toward them.

They reached the misty station and charged up the ramp onto the platform. The single straight track was empty. Two figures were waiting at the platform edge, but it was too dark to make out their features. They were also carrying luggage, and one of them appeared to be wearing a straw boater, something surely no-one but an Englishman would do.

The soldiers had now been joined by other villagers, and were running along the path to the station in a chaotic hue and cry.

Thomas and Miranda turned, astonished by the noise of the pursuit. Just as the simple boy had predicted, the railway lines were singing, then rattling. Miranda could feel the platform trembling beneath her boots, and was suddenly filled with a terrible sense of foreboding. She leaned forward to try and see if there was something coming, but could only make out a black billow of sparkling coal-dust forming in the cut between the pines. The cinders glittered like stars falling to earth.

Then she saw two lamps like tiger-eyes, one vermilion, the other amber, swaying slightly, growing larger. The great stack of the chimney darker than the sky,
chuff-chuff-chuff
ing toward them in great plumes of choking firefly smoke, a gleaming disc of green steel, engine and coal-car and links of carriages, hurtling towards them, as the great train stormed into the station.

For a flickering second, the front of the engine had the Devil’s face, an illusion caused by shadows and smoke. Like some great extinct creature recreated in mechanical form, the locomotive thundered and wheezed to a stop with eruptions of stinging cinders and sprays of arterial oil.

Isabella looked into the carriages and froze, some distant demon roiling in her head. ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head, ‘no, not this.’ She began to back away, but Nicholas grabbed her hand. He looked into the carriages himself, but they appeared bright and bare, nothing out of the ordinary.

By now, the rest of the villagers had reached the ramp to the platform. The soldiers among them were raising their rifles. There was not a second to waste. Nicholas flung open the door of the first carriage behind the coal car, ready to push Isabella inside. She tried to resist, but she knew that if she stayed behind she would never survive the swarming soldiers. In that brief moment, she was forced to make a decision.

The soldiers opened fire. Bullets sang against the wall of the train. Miranda screamed. The decision was made.

One of the villagers made a grab at Nicholas, but caught a bullet that tore away a quarter of his skull above his right ear, sending him spinning off the platform and onto the track. His blood spattered the wheels. Nicholas froze in shock, covered with gore and flecks of white bone.

There was nothing else for it. Isabella was pulled up the carriage steps. Having come to a halt, the engine driver had seen the commotion on the platform, and was preparing to depart in haste.

At the next carriage door, Thomas and Miranda were fighting to get aboard with their luggage. Thomas was determined to leave nothing behind. For a moment it seemed as if they were not going to make it. With the train releasing its brakes and rolling once more, Isabella threw wide the door and grabbed at them. Their hands reached out and connected, from Nicholas and Isabella to Miranda and Thomas. In that brief flash of life, Isabella felt as if their fates were joined together.

Thomas reached back and pulled the door shut behind him with a bang, just as a bullet flicked his boater from his head.

Nicholas was surprised to find that the rest of their pursuers were suddenly falling away, fighting with each other and the soldiers. ‘They’re not following,’ he said. ‘Why aren’t they coming after us?’

The four new passengers crowded at the window, watching the tumult shrink away as the train pulled out and the platform receded, and they left the townspeople of Chelmsk to the anarchy of the invading army.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE CONDUCTOR

T
HEIR JOURNEY HAD
been baptised with blood. Not a good way to start.

Thomas and Miranda had collapsed into the plush velvet seats of the First Class compartment and were struck dumb by what they had just seen. Miranda was trying hard not to cry. Under normal circumstances, they would now have been sniping at each other in the way that English travellers did all over the world, fussing over the luggage, who had been responsible for packing so much, why had they not shipped one of the valises ahead and so on, but instead other questions crowded in. Why had a group of villagers run after them, and why had they fallen back just as suddenly? And where had the other couple disappeared to now? The one who looked English—where had he gone? They glanced around the six-seat carriage and found themselves alone.

‘Did you speak to them?’ Miranda asked.

‘No, but the man was definitely one of us, I’m sure of it. Had it not been for the girl we would never have boarded in time. We should find her and thank her.’

‘This dreadful war makes animals of men.’ Miranda shuddered. ‘What a frightful experience. I daresay our paths will cross theirs again. Fellow countrymen have a way of finding each other. Show me the map.’

Thomas dug in his tennis bag and produced a creased wad of densely printed paper. ‘I looked at it earlier but the last panel appears to be missing. The route goes off the edge of it.’