Beneath a Burning Sky, chapter 1

Zavier glanced out the train carriage’s window, watching intently over the rims of dark-tinted glasses as snow-capped mountains passed slowly by in the distance. Not that you’d have known he was above the snowline from the temperature within the carriage, it was toasty warm and the wide seats were soft and immensely comfortable.

The clickety-clack of the wheels hitting the Kolbardi wood rails that the train ran on was almost inaudible thanks to the carriage’s soundproofing, the builders really had spared no expense in the train’s construction. But then if you were going to invest in the obscene amount of steel it took to build a train to start with, comfortable interiors were almost an afterthought.

Other than the track curving slowly around the mountainside ahead there wasn’t a single sign of human presence. It was a beautiful sight and almost enough to take his mind off of his brother Kelsin, who was currently sitting two seats ahead telling what was quite possibly the most filthy joke Zavier had ever heard to an appalled looking young couple.

Kelsin drained his beer and belched loudly, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his long overcoat to the aghast stares of the couple in the seat opposite him.

You never were much of one for subtlety Kel.

Still, looking around he couldn’t deny his brother had gotten results. Over the past hour he had managed to drive almost everyone, Zav guessed that it was only sheer stubborn pride that was keeping the last two there. The young man, some lordling by his clothes, had his jaw clenched and was staring daggers at Kel. If his sword hadn’t been stowed away in the baggage compartment at the start of the journey Zav thought he would probably have challenged Kelsin by now.

“So then the prostitute walks into the bar and at the top of her lungs yells…” Zavier muted the rest of Kelsin’s joke, he’d heard this one before.

However, without a sword the young man would have to settle for a fist fight, and not many men chose that route with Kelsin after getting a good look at how broad his shoulders were, or the old knife scar running down his jawline. His brother had never been much of a swordsman but he was a world-class bar-fighter.

The two guards at the end of the carriage looked on with a kind of exasperated boredom but showed no inclination to gett involved.

Zav knew their type, if pressed on the issue their response would probably put most lawyers to shame in its attention to detail regarding the specific strictures of their job. After all, they were there to guard the door to the baggage compartment, the man in question was not attempting to enter said compartment, and so did not lie within the purview of what could be called “their problem”.

The young woman paled as Kel’s story picked up steam. Zav noted that several nuns had now become involved somehow in the grotesque tale. The young woman whispered in her partner’s ear and the man stood stiffly before marching out with her in tow.

As they exited through the rear of the carriage they had to sidle past a trolley-boy pushing a rattling drinks trolley.

“Ah, about bloody time you got here you lazy little bugger, I’ve been bloody parched,” Kel slurred, lurching to his feet and stumbling over to the cart to begin rooting around under the cloth cover.

“Ah, sir, you can’t just-”

“Ah don’t worry yourself lad, I’ll sort myself out,” he said as he straightened with a collection of bottles tucked under his arm. He reached into his pocket and dropped a handful of coins onto the tray, the intricately decorated  chittin rattling as they landed.

“Ah, looks like I’m out of people to drink with, how about you lads?” he said to the guards at the end of the carriage, “I’ve never known a guardsman to turn down a beer.”

One of the guards stood, exasperation and irritation flickering across his face as Kel tottered down the carriageway waving his alcoholic gifts.

“Sorry sir, we’re on duty. Please return to your seat.”

“Aww don’ worry, it’s just us here and I’m sure one drink won’t slow you down should a horde of pirates descend upon us,” he said, chuckling to himself.

The second guard stepped forward, nose to chin with Kelsin.

“Look mate, we’re on duty, now sit the hell down before I sit you down and you ride the rest of the trip in cuffs.”

Kel sighed, and a third hand poked out from between the folds of his overcoat holding a pistol-crossbow. He fired into the second guard’s boot, the man dropping to the ground yelling and clutching at his foot. The second guard’s eyes widened in shock and he struggled to draw his baton before Kelsin swung one of the beer bottle into his face and followed it up with an elbow, dropping the man before spinning back to the man he’d shot and delivering a nasty knee to the head.

In seconds the train was silent once more, save for the clickety-clack of the rails and a muffled groan from the man who’d been hit by the beer bottle. Down the train the young man with the cart was pulling a wooden bar from beneath it and was using it to jam the carriage door.

Kelsin turned and pointed at Zavier, who was still sitting quietly in his seat.

“Alright Zav, pay up, 100 kinza I believe the bet was,” he said, all trace of the slur gone from his voice.

Zav made a choking sound. “Are you kidding me? The bet was that you could get us past the guards using a con. That was not a con.”

“‘Course it was. That was a classic bait and switch.”

“A bait and swi… you shot one and glassed the other! How the hell is that a con? If you’d managed to get them to drink the drugged beers and knocked them out that way, that would have been a con.”

“Drugged beer?”

“The… beer wasn’t drugged?”

“Course not, they were expecting some fancy thing like that, so their attention was on the beer. They knew something was up, but they mistook what it was. Come on, that’s a damn near textbook bait and switch,” he said, spreading his arms wide, which made for a disconcerting sight given that there were two on the left side but only one on the right.

“A con should not involve savagely beating someone over the head with a beer bottle. If it did, then any mugger could call themselves a conman.”

“Oh, the carriage is empty, the guards are unconscious but you’re not a real conman,” Kelsin said, miming his brother’s voice.

“I sound nothing like tha- no, you know what, fine,” he said with an exasperated sigh, throwing his purse to Kelsin who caught it with a grin. “I see you’re not complaining about the extra arm anymore, I think maybe you owe Marr an apology..”

“I never said it wasn’t useful, I was angry because she didn’t ask before sticking the damn thing on me.”

“Well, you did agree to the deal.”

“Yeah but one arm? I’m bloody lopsided. Darrick, you done with that door?”

“Al-almost,” the young man who had been pushing the trolley said, jumping at Kel’s attention.

Shit and skyfire the kid’s green, Zav thought, and damned Sheriden again for saddling them with him. If she wanted one of her own people on the job so damn badly she could at least have loaned us someone not liable to piss themeslves at the first sign of trouble.

Zavier reached under the drinks trolley and grabbed some rope, pausing to pull his snub-barreled rifle from the pile of other equipment they’d smuggled in. He felt a familiar comfort when the wood of the handle touched his hand, he hated to part with it but sometimes the job required certain sacrifices.

He helped Kelsin tie the two guards, the one with a crossbow bolt through his foot would probably walk with a limp but should otherwise be fine. Of course, he could always ask a doctor to fix it for him, but Zav doubted he would. Most people wouldn’t make that trade.

They quickly equiped themselves from the cart. Darrick picking a hard-wood cudgel and crossbow. Kel had his double-barreled sawn off shotgun at his waist and had donned a bandoleer of flintlock pistols and ammunition. At his waist was a satchel for spent shells, no point wasting good brass heads if you could avoid it.

Zavier’s own rifle operated like a flintlock, except with a revolving cylinder that allowed him half a dozen shots before he had to reload. He carried a pair of spare, preloaded cylinders at his waist, as well as several pounds of plastic explosives.

He pushed open the first door between carriages, the chill wind that whistled in smelled of snow.

“All right, check transmittes,” he said, pressing a small earpiece into place.

“Don’t I get one?” asked Darrick.

“No. They’re bloody hard to come by and you’re only here because Sheriden wouldn’t give us the job unless she had one of her people tag along to make sure we didn’t take more than our share of the loot,” Kelsin said while pressing his own earpiece in.

“That was a little blunt,” Zavier said, “But don’t worry kid, you’re sticking with Kelsin, he can relay anything you need to know. Now then, the Audacity won’t be far off so let’s not leave them with their arse hanging out in the wind when they get here. Stick to the plan, I’ll take the engine and set the charges to separate it when you’re aboard with the loot.”

“Yeah yeah,” Kelsin said, “I heard you the first dozen times, I’m bored not stupid.”

“Well you do have a habit of going off-reservation.”

“You mean your plans have a habit of falling apart and requiring some improvising to fix.”

“Let’s just try to get through this, Sheridan says there’s four kilos of silver and one of platinum in the safe. We take that and we’ll be sailing pretty for a ways to come,” he said, stepping between carriages and pulling himself up the ladder at the back of the baggage carriage and into the icy gale that whipped along the top of the train, far in the distance he thought he saw a speck moving between the mountains.

They would need to move fast.