“Let’s trade,” she said. “Find the others, and as soon as they have Sespian, cut a hole in the ceiling so we can get out that way.” Amaranthe didn’t like the vision she had of leaping from rooftop to rooftop with soldiers shooting at them from each balcony, but now that they’d been forced to move before the landslide distraction, she didn’t see that they had another choice, not if they wanted to get back to the locomotive.
More glass cracked behind her. Amaranthe grabbed her crossbow and strode back to the door, only to find the glass hadn’t yet broken under the soldiers’ assault.
She spun around, looking for what had shattered.
A weapon fired, and a bullet whizzed past her ear, stealing a tuft of hair. She lunged behind an upturned table, her heart thundering in her chest, and tried to see where the shot had come from.
There. A soldier was hanging from the roof by one hand and knocking broken shards of glass away from one of the side windows, trying to make a hole large enough to crawl through. He’d discarded the one shot pistol, but the determined fury on his face said he’d have no trouble strangling Amaranthe with his bare hands once he got inside.
Amaranthe thumbed the tab open on the smoke grenade and set it where it’d cloud the air between her and the soldier and also between her and the door. Crossbow in hand, she jumped onto a chair near the intruder. He saw her coming, but he couldn’t stop her when he was dangling from one hand outside the train.
“Go back to the other car,” Amaranthe said, trying to look like a crazy woman who would love shooting him, as she aimed the crossbow at his face.
Thanks to the smoke wafting everywhere, her bloodshot eyes probably were crazy looking, but there was no fear on the soldier’s face. Lips curled into a ferocious snarl, he thrust his arm through the window, grabbing for the crossbow. The length of his reach surprised Amaranthe, but she pulled the weapon back, evading him. The soldier let go of the roof and gripped the glass-filled frame of the window with both hands. Blood streamed down the broken pane, but he didn’t seem to notice. He pulled himself forward, trying to thrust his broad shoulders through the window, even as his legs dangled outside, thumping where they bumped against the train wall.
Amaranthe’s finger tightened on the trigger. She couldn’t let him in, not when more would follow, but if she shot him, if they shot anyone…
Bashes continued at the door she’d come through, and the chair she’d used to add strength to the lock fell away. A crack sounded, the thick glass finally giving.
Amaranthe flipped the crossbow around, gripping it by the lathe. She swung the weapon at the soldier’s face like a club. He couldn’t dodge, not when he was wedged part way through the window, and it cracked against his skull. Reverberations coursed up Amaranthe’s arm. She gritted her teeth and swung again.
It wasn’t a good solution, but it was the best she could come up with. If he was forced to let go and fell, he might still live. If she had to shoot him…
The man roared in pain, but hung on with the tenacity of a tick. She refined her attack and aimed for his hands instead of his head. Despite battered, broken fingers, he refused to let go.
Footsteps beat against the roof. Amaranthe glanced over her shoulder, hoping Maldynado had burned an escape hatch and that was the sound of her men climbing out, but that wasn’t the case. Maldynado and Basilard were standing in the middle of the aisle, pointing upward and arguing. She didn’t see Sicarius, but smoke obscured the back half of the car. Either way, that wasn’t him up there. There was far more than one pair of feet making those thumps.
Another window broke on the other side of the train. In the seconds she’d been distracted, Amaranthe’s soldier had crawled farther inside. Her swings grew harder and more desperate. He knew she wasn’t trying to kill him, and he wasn’t going to give up.
Frustration burned Amaranthe’s eyes almost as must as the smoke. They weren’t going to be able to get out of this. If soldiers were on the roof and on either end of the car, where could her team go to escape?
“Let go, curse your ancestors,” Amaranthe growled at the soldier.
“Die, bitch,” he spat back.
Something in his tone made her pause. Defeat? The soldier had stopped pushing through, and he was glaring at her and breathing heavily, but his eyes had a glassy mien. Maybe he’d sucked in enough knockout gas to dull his senses. Or maybe he’d lost enough blood to do the same. He’d probably done more damage to himself crawling through the glass than he’d received from her beating.
Something brushed Amaranthe’s shoulder, and she spun, crossbow clenched in her hands.
Sicarius stood in the aisle with Sespian slung over his shoulder and a pistol in his hand. His eyes were grim above his mask, and blood spattered his hands and face. Sespian wasn’t moving.
“They’re on the roof,” Sicarius said, his voice distorted by the mask. “We’ll have to start shooting people if we hope to escape.”
“No,” Amaranthe said.
A slam sounded at the door, and more glass cracked. Smoke hid the window, but she knew it was weakening.
“Then we’ll be captured,” Sicarius said.
“No, give me another option.”
Maldynado and Basilard joined them. Maldynado waved the torch. “I stopped trying to cut through the roof when people started climbing around up there. There’s all sorts of wood in here. I could light the place on fire.”
“With us inside?” Amaranthe asked. “That’s not the option I had in mind.”
A window broke in the middle of the car, and shards of glass flew inward. Basilard ran to take care of the intruder.
“Everyone in here is down, but there’s a man in the corner that was trying to get up,” Maldynado said. “I think this stuff is already wearing off.”
Amaranthe stood, eyes searching the car, seeking inspiration. If they couldn’t go out the windows, through the doors, or through the roof, the only way open was…
She arched her eyebrows. Down. Was down a possibility?
“How much clearance is there beneath the cars?” Amaranthe tried to picture the area between the wheels in her mind.
“You’re not serious,” Maldynado said.
Amaranthe looked at Sicarius, figuring that with Books not around he’d be most likely to know the answer. He was staring at her, probably thinking exactly what Maldynado had said.
“Could we crawl underneath the cars and couplings to bypass the soldiers and get back to the engine?” Amaranthe asked, though she grimaced as her gaze fell on Sespian. With him unconscious, someone would have to carry him, and she couldn’t imagine there was enough clearance for that.
“Boss, you’re not serious,” Maldynado repeated. “Are you? That’d be hard enough if the train were standing still. Even if there’s enough room…” He shook his head. “Miss one handhold or let your foot slip free, and you’d fall and be mangled to death under the wheels.”
Amaranthe grabbed the cutting torch from him. “I’m going to take a look. Give me two minutes.” She waved to encompass the windows and doors, or, more specifically, the soldiers trying to batter them down.
She stepped over unconscious bodies to find a spot in the middle of the car, then yanked out a dagger to cut away a square of the carpet. She wasn’t ready to start a fire. Yet.
A shot fired, and a lantern on the wall exploded.
“You idiots are going to shoot your own emperor!” Amaranthe yelled.
“Surrender or die!” someone yelled back.
“Surrender and die is more likely,” she huffed, shoving the severed carpet patch away.
Amaranthe maneuvered the blowtorch into position and found the trigger. A funnel of flames shot out, and she cursed, yanking it back so it wouldn’t light a nearby chair on fire. She found an adjustment knob, and the flame narrowed into a tight beam. She applied it to the floor, hoping it would perform as promised and cut through metal. The floor, she feared, would be thicker and sturdier than the roof.