“Did you assign him that duty?” Yara asked Amaranthe.
Amaranthe was busy unraveling the hose and hunting for the controls that would turn it on. No fewer than twenty identical red handles adorned the cab. “Uhm, no,” she said. “I believe he assigned that one to himself. Maldynado, the emperor?”
Maldynado turned sideways. Sespian had slipped into the cab behind him. He stood about six feet tall, with a build similar to Sicarius’s although less muscular, and Maldynado’s height and wide shoulders had blocked the view of him. Amaranthe made eye contact and gave Sespian a reassuring wave. He offered a quick return smile, though it had a strained feel, like that of a man stuck in a grimbal’s den and hoping the massive predator wouldn’t eat him. As far as Sespian knew, Amaranthe and her team might be no better than the enemy he sought to escape.
“What duties did you assign him?” Yara asked. Nobody else seemed to have noticed Sespian yet.
“Maldynado?” Amaranthe asked. “His job is to look pretty and get us good deals from female shop clerks and businesswomen.” She handed Basilard the hose nozzle, then screwed the other end into a spigot next to the furnace. She assumed it attached to the water tank and hoped it had plenty of pressure behind it.
“And to beat things up,” Maldynado said. “Don’t forget that. I like to thump fellers.”
“He seems expendable.” Yara pushed Maldynado’s arm away from her shoulders. “Touching.”
“Men coming,” Sicarius called.
Amaranthe pointed to Basilard. “You spray anyone who gets close. Maldynado, man the tap.” She pushed bodies aside and pulled her crossbow off her back and handed it to Sicarius. “Five quarrels are loaded and there are more in my ammo pouch.” She unclasped it from her utility belt and handed to him. “Aim for limbs, please.” Whether the crossbow would prove less deadly than a rifle, she didn’t know, but being able to shoot five times without reloading was a boon.
“Understood,” Sicarius said.
“Your job is to turn the water on and off?” Yara asked when Maldynado sidled in next to her and placed a hand on the valve. A woman whose face sported so many contusions surely had little reason for mirth, but she seemed to find that amusing.
“For now,” Maldynado said, “but if any soldiers make it in here, I’ll thump them good, and then you’ll be thanking me for the protection.”
“Doubtful.”
“Yara, I need you to figure out how to slow down the train long enough for us to clear out some of this dead weight,” Amaranthe said.
Yara’s smirk faded, and she nodded curtly, as if she’d been given an order from a commanding officer. Amaranthe pulled open a toolbox mounted on the back wall next to the coal chute.
“What’re you going to be doing during all of this, Corporal Lokdon?” came a quiet voice.
Sespian. Amaranthe had almost forgotten about him.
“Oh, I’m sure I’ll find a dangerous endeavor in which to partake.” Amaranthe rummaged around until she found a crowbar with a hook on the end. She couldn’t tell if it’d be sturdy enough for what she had in mind, but she didn’t see anything more substantial in the box. “Sire, why don’t you come stand next to Maldynado? He can protect you from the fighting, should any soldiers make it in here.”
“Protect me from my own men?” Sespian asked, then touched his neck. “The woman is the only one who-”
A shot fired from the coal car. The bullet clanged off something on the outside of the locomotive and ricocheted into the forest, but Amaranthe grabbed Sespian by the wrist anyway. She steered him away from the door to stand next to Maldynado.
“I’m sure you’ve heard the term friendly fire.” Amaranthe lifted a hand, palm toward Sespian’s chest. “Stay. Sire.”
His eyebrows flew up, which Amaranthe presumed meant people didn’t treat him like a hound very often, but his lips quirked with amusement instead of irritation. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Surrender the emperor, or be shot down,” a cry came from behind them.
“Time for water, Bas?” Maldynado asked.
Basilard held up a fist. Not yet.
Amaranthe wanted to see if her hose idea worked to keep the soldiers back, but it’d be even better if she could slither under the coal car and decouple the rest of the train before her men needed to push back a mass of invaders. Not that she was certain the train could be decoupled while in motion, but she had to try. It’d put an end to this battle much sooner.
With the crowbar in hand, Amaranthe headed for one of the exits. She glanced at a clock on the back wall on the way by. It felt as if hours had passed since they first crept back toward the emperor’s car, but it’d scarcely been twenty minutes. Another two hours until they reached the pass. Her hand tightened on the crowbar. This needed to work.
Outside the exit, Sicarius stood on the ledge, using the body of the train for cover as he fired her crossbow. Amaranthe knelt and peered at the wheels, trying to find a spot where she could wriggle through to crawl back under the train again. Yara hadn’t slowed the train down yet, and the earth and railway ties blurred past at an alarming speed. The idea of going back down there twanged at Amaranthe’s nerves, but she couldn’t walk through the soldiers to get to the coupling between the coal car and the first passenger car. It’d be easier to get to the coupling between the coal car and the locomotive, but her team wouldn’t make it much farther than the engine-less train if they dropped their fuel supply. No, she had to go under and take her chances.
Sicarius leaned out to fire the crossbow. Perched behind him, Amaranthe couldn’t see the quarrel streak away, but someone in the coal car cursed vehemently.
A return volley came, rifle balls clanging off the metal around Sicarius. He flattened himself against the body of the car. The soldiers didn’t seem to be able to get the right angle to hit him.
“Can you cover me, so nobody sees me slip under here?” Amaranthe asked during a pause in the shooting.
He looked back and down, taking in her and the crowbar. Though she hadn’t explained her plan, he figured it out. “No. You stay here with the crossbow. I’ll go.”
While Amaranthe debated whether that was an appealing offer or not, Sicarius shot another two quarrels. She wondered how he could reload the crossbow while hanging from the side of the train.
“Prepare to fire!” someone shouted from the coal car. “Fire!”
Before any guns went off, a stream of garbled curses flowed from the same direction.
“Water?” someone sputtered.
“Look out, it’s-Sergeant!”
Amaranthe allowed herself a bleak smile. Basilard’s hose work ought to add to the distraction.
Sicarius slid down beside Amaranthe, offering the crossbow. The idea of returning fire did sound less fraught, if not less dangerous, than clambering around beneath the moving cars, but she asked, “Is this because you think I’m not strong enough to pull apart the coupling or because you’re worried I’ll mangle myself trying?”
“You’re as proficient with the crossbow as I am, and you make a smaller target for them to shoot at.” Sicarius slipped the crowbar out of her grip and stepped around her, leaving the crossbow and ammo pouch in her hands as he passed.
“Don’t think I didn’t notice that you didn’t answer my question,” Amaranthe said.
Without glancing back, Sicarius stuffed the crowbar through his belt and climbed on the side of the engine toward a gap between sets of wheels. He rotated his body upside down and angled for the opening, scaling the side as effortlessly as a squirrel scampering down a tree.
Amaranthe almost yelled, “Be careful,” after him as he moved out of sight, but she didn’t want to alert the soldiers that someone was attempting to circumvent them.
A gunshot clanged off metal a few feet from her head, reminding her that she should be paying attention to what the soldiers were doing. She reloaded the crossbow from the relative safety of the doorway before creeping back out onto the ledge. Before she’d gone halfway, the coal car came into view. Several soldiers knelt behind the black hills her team had formed, ducking a thick stream of water shooting from Basilard’s side of the cab. More soldiers filled the balcony of the first passenger car, and more still knelt or stood on the roof behind them, staggered so they could fire at will. Sicarius was going to have a hard time opening that coupling without any of the soldiers on the balcony or the roof spotting him. Maybe it was pusillanimous of her, but she was glad he had volunteered for the task.