Railsea (26 page)

There was a booming. A fusillade of missiles arced with dreadful laziness from the pirate train, over the rails, to rainbow down in a succession of withering explosions that sent ripped-up rail shreds & ties in all directions. One of the flying bombs hit the rear of their quarry.

Sham moaned. The caboose exploded, sent flames & metal & wood in a big splash, as well as, oh my Stonefaces, little pinwheeling figures. They landed scattered. & near those who still moved, now fitfully, injured, the earth erupted, as carnivorous burrowers smelled person-meat.

Another flurry of shots, & the train was immobilised. Over horrible minutes, the
Tarralesh
came closer. Sham could hear the crew catcalling & arming themselves. On the deck of the immobilized train the men & women waited with swords, guns & terrified expressions. They may not have been soldiers or pirates, but they would fight.

N
OT THAT IT DID
them overmuch good. The
Tarralesh
bombed them some more, spilt defenders like spillikins onto the awful ground. Elfrish’s vehicle came alongside, to an adjacent rail, & snagged the crippled merchant with grappling hooks. Hallooing to some aggressive pirate god, the fighting crew of the
Tarralesh
swept aboard, & the hand-to-hand melee began.

Sham couldn’t see much. A blessing. He could see enough. He saw women & men shoot each other at close hand, send wounded & dead flying off the train. Some fell near enough
that he could hear their cries, see them crawling on broken bones, clutching at wounds, scrabbling to get back aboard.

The sandy soil began to churn. To swirl & sink. A circle slid down into a cone. A man slid down, too, crying out. From the base of that pit scissored two great chitin mandibles, beetle-coloured scythes. Compound eyes.

Sham looked away before the antlion’s jaws closed on its meal & a scream abruptly ended. He flattened himself against the wall below his porthole. He felt as if his heartbeat was fast & hard enough to shake the train. When he looked again, the predators were fighting between themselves, & the ground churned not only with men & women but with the squabbles of giant insects & mole rats, shrews & moles. While in the ruined train, pirates took control.

Those pirates overboard & still living were rescued. The merchants on the earth were left to scrabble their own way back to their wreck, around antlion pits, the loose earth of hungry badgers.

Elfrish’s crew hauled goods out of the holds, craned & grappling-hooked & pulleyed them across to the
Tarralesh
. Watching them under armed guard were the last dejected & sobbing merchants. Sham couldn’t hear what Elfrish was saying, but he saw two or three of the defeated crew pulled out—the best dressed, it looked like, the captain & officers. They were dragged onto the pirate train, out of his sight. Sham could hear scuffs above him. A groan of horror from the other merchants, all staring at whatever was occurring above Sham’s head.

When at last the
Tarralesh
pulled away, it left behind it an empty & immobile train, a big chunk of nu-salvage for someone
to pick clean. On its roof the last of its crew, allowed by laziness to live, mourning, cold, marooned.

“What a day, eh?” Robalson said.

“What’ll happen to them?” Sham could not turn to look at him.

“Someone’ll probably come for them, maybe, when they don’t turn up where they’re expected,” Robalson said. He shrugged. He wouldn’t meet Sham’s eye. “Don’t look at me like that,” Robalson muttered. Sulkily put down a bowl.

“What did you do to those last ones?” Sham said. “I could hear …”

“Plank,” Robalson said. He made walking-finger motions. “They was the officers. I said don’t
look
at me like that. You know we lost six people? If they’d just surrendered we wouldn’t have had to do any of that.”

“Right,” said Sham, & turned back to the window. He felt like crying. He shivered. “What was under the plank? Where’d you do it?” When there was no answer, he said, “It was more antlions, weren’t it? Centipedes?” Robalson was already gone.

Sham hunted for paper as carefully as once his crew had hunted moldywarpes. Found a scrap of drawer-liner. Kept looking. Found at last a discarded pencil stub. Had to chew-sharpen it. He wrote:

“Please! I am a captive in the train
Tarralesh
. It is pirates. They have guns. They are a pirate train. They are making me show them the way to a secret if I don’t do it they will drop me into the railsea & maybe an antlion trap or something. My name is S. a. Soorap training under Capt. Naphi of the
Medes
. Please can you help me. Please also tell Troose yn Verba & Voam yn Soorap of Streggeye that I have not run
away & that I will come back! The
Tarralesh
wants to Do Harm to two young Manihiki travellers & also to me please help!! West & North is all I know where we are going. Thank you.”

Sham leaned into the dark, chattered, beckoned until Daybe came in. Sham twisted up the paper very tight & tucked it into the tracer still secured to the daybat’s leg.

“Listen,” he said. “I know this is going to be hard. You came to find me. & you don’t know how much that meant. But you know what I need you to do now?” He swept out his arm, hard, in the direction they had come. “I need you to go back. Fly back. Find someone. Find anyone.”

The bat stared at him. Intimidated by the night. It huddled, licked him, met Sham’s eyes. His heart breaking, Sham started the long process of persuading it, intimidating it, frightening it if he had to, into flying away.

A
NOTHER CARRIAGE WAS GONE, TAKEN SKYWARD IN
vengeful & tremendous owl claws. Caldera had pressed the release, as the owl had flown. Just in time but at the right time, restraining herself until those strigine talons were directly over the track on which the Shroakes’ engine had still raced, the last to be dragged up, gunning it so the train lurched forward as the carriages fell & with sparks & terrifying bangs slammed wheels-down back onto the rails. One more moment, they’d have been too high, or too far to one side or the other, & the whole vehicle would have been lost.

The Shroakes, gasping & owl-eyed themselves, had watched the metal tons of what had been their rearmost carriage hauled off into skyborne silhouette, viciously pecked as it went, & shedding shredded metal. It looked like straw & gossamer as it fell, & landed with booms & made the earth shudder.

At last they pushed on, under a huge night, in the deeps of which upsky predators made sounds. The Shroakes—

—but wait. On reflection, now is not the time for Shroakes. There is at this instant too much occurring or about to occur to Sham ap Soorap.

Look: Sham has just sent away his own, furred, little-winged friend. Once bloodstained, a poor tryer at medicine, an aspirer to salvage-hunting, & now a locked-away captive in a pirate train.

This
train, our story, will not, cannot, veer now from this track on which, though not by choice, Sham is dragged.

Later, Shroakes. Sham is with pirates.

W
HAT’S THE MATTER WITH YOU
?” R
OBALSON WAS
always shirty with Sham when Sham was sad. & the morning after Sham had finally persuaded Daybe off into the dark, he was very sad.

They were in wildlands now, oddlands, & the railsea was punctuated with anomalies. Hillocks of bridges, rotators to swivel an engine amid a starburst of rails, a multiply-holed island. Salvage. & not all old arche-salvage. Wrecks. Ranging in size from tiny scout carts to large, now-skeletal vehicles. Overgrown, weather-stripped, rusted, cold. A train boneyard.

“Someone’ll probably come for them,” Robalson had said about those stranded merchants. Sham wondered. You never knew. That night, alone, he watched the birds, none of which would come to him when he waved. He had a bit of a sniff because his heart hurt that Daybe had gone, & now he had not a single friend on this train.

& then the next morning, he looked out again & gasped. Sham held his breath, he bit his lip so that he wouldn’t scream in delight. Because at the horizon, like a miracle, as if he had
conjured it, called for it, which perhaps his beautiful bat friend had, he saw a Manihiki ferronavy train.

It moved hard, fast & well. These were some railsailors. It was perhaps three miles off. Approaching on interception course. It ran up pendants, that Sham, a trainsman now, could read.
Prepare
, they said,
for Inspection
.

A
MONG THE FLURRY
of feet & anxious preparations, Robalson stuck his head around the door.

“You,” he said. “Shtum. Not a word. I’m right outside. You make a sound …” He shook his head. “The captain’s waiting for an excuse. So you make a sound &—all sorts of stuff’ll happen.” He made a close-your-mouth motion & went.

“Attention
Tarralesh
.” An amplified voice boomed from the Manihiki train. “Prepare to receive visitors.” Sham watched it draw near on close rails, set down a cart of splendid speed & modern appearance, full of uniformed officers. He leaned, he waved, he yelled, out of the window.

Had they seen him? What cock-&-bull story was the captain offering? Had they swept away all the appurtenances of the pirate’s life? Sham heard stamping on the deck above. He did not know when he would be safe to yell. Someone was approaching down the corridor. He hesitated. He could hear a roaring argument. Sham could not make out anything, until the shouters stopped outside his cabin & his heart went into his throat & abruptly the door flew open & a tall officer in the Manihiki navy, a captain in smart black uniform, brocaded & gilded & polished-buttoned, was standing before him, yelling back at Elfrish & Robalson. The officer pointed
at Sham & yelled, “
That
boy, that’s who I’m talking about. So bring him out. You have a lot of explaining to do.”

“T
HEY BEEN KEEPING ME PRISONER
!” Sham shouted as he ran after the officer. “Don’t be fooled, sir, they’re pirates! Sir! Thank you for rescuing me!” Elfrish struggled to shut him up, to put a hand over his mouth, but Sham was moving too fast. “They want me to lead them to a secret, sir, & I don’t even really know what it is or where, but they think I recognise things & they’ve had me here for days & they’re breaking the law—”

They were outside, in creepier railscape still than Sham had seen. Ahead, the rails wove between scrubby rock hills, & into them, into brief dark tunnels overlooked by leafless trees. There were other Manihiki officers on the deck. “Captain Reeth,” they barked as Sham’s rescuer appeared.

Reeth made some imperious gesture. He was tall & looked down at everyone. He gestured for Sham to come closer. Sham breathed out, shuddering, in relief.

“You really shouldn’t listen to this idiot boy, sir,” Elfrish said, & cuffed at him. “He’s our cabin boy.”

“You said this was your cabin boy.” Reeth pointed at Robalson.

“They both are. Never have too many cabin boys. Except this one, this Sham. He’s been trouble since he joined us.”

“So you can have too many.” The officer put his hand on Sham’s shoulder.

“Certainly you can, Captain Reeth. We had him in the brig for, for thieving, sir. He stole food.”

“They’re lying!” In confused but exhaustive detail, interspersed
with expostulations of ostentatious disbelief from Elfrish, Sham jabbered his story. “You got to arrest them all!” he said. “They done all killings & robbings & they’re going to kill me! He killed the Shroakes! Smashed their train ages ago. You heard of them?”

“He’s a fantasist,” sneered Elfrish.

“He may be,” said Reeth. “But unfortunately for you we know it’s perfectly true that two young Manihikians called Shroake have departed the city. We’ve heard word that the remains of their long-disappeared family were in fact found. & these youngsters have left in a train that we are eager to find. This we also know. Now, Captain. Do you think, do you
really
think, we’ve heard nothing of the young man whose visit spurred a new generation of Shroakes to their annoying aspirations?”

He must have made some flickering signal with his eyes. His subordinates raised their weapons, simultaneously. Sham held his breath.

“If I were to check your hold, Captain Elfrish,” Reeth said, “what goods would I find?”

There was a silence. The
Tarralesh
crew fingered their weapons.
He’s got them!
Sham thought.

Elfrish sighed. “Alright then,” he said. “Yes,” he said. “It’s sort of like he says.”

“You see?” Sham shouted. “Arrest them!”

“But,” Elfrish said. With reassuring this-is-not-a-weapon motions, he withdrew from his pocket a leather wallet, held it up open to a silver stamp. “My letter of marque. I’m licensed. Manihiki seal. All official.”

A—what?
Sham thought.

“Why didn’t you just say this from the start?” Reeth said.

“Say what?” said Sham.

“Well …” Elfrish said. He grinned sheepishly.

“Tax?” Reeth said. “As a privateer, twenty percent of everything in your hold belongs to Manihiki. You’re a bloody tax avoider.”

“When you going to
arrest
him?” Sham shouted. Elfrish cuffed him, & Reeth did not stop him.

“See,” Reeth said, “here’s the thing. If his story’s true, he & you are going to the same place these young Shroakes are going. & I like the sound of the technique you’re using.” He considered.

“Arrest them,” said Sham. No one did a thing.

“I’m claiming him,” Reeth decided. “In lieu of your tax. See what I can get out of him.”

“What?” shouted Sham.

“What?” shouted Elfrish. “You can’t do that!”

“Certainly I can,” said Reeth.

This wasn’t between police & criminal, Sham realised. His insides felt like dust. The dead & robbed they’d left behind weren’t
Manihiki
merchants, after all, not the navy’s charges. Elfrish wasn’t freelance. He was a sanctioned pirate, under the purview of a government, a Manihiki agent as much as Reeth. This was an argument between colleagues. Departmental politics.

“You know,” Elfrish said, “what’s beyond the railsea? Neither do I. But you know & I know, Captain, that there’s an inverse correlation between proximity & pecuniary recompense, vis-à-vis treasure. To put it another way, the farther out the hoard, the bigger. So. What d’you suppose is
beyond the railsea
?”