As Soren approached the railroad tracks, he kept an eye on the surrounding area, searching for the distinct movement of revenants. He saw nothing but a thin plume of smoke licking at the sky in the south, the dark spot growing larger as it drew closer.
He veered south, riding parallel to the railroad tracks. He’d check the rails for a few miles after the train passed before looping back north. If he didn’t see any hint of revenants, he’d move on, add it to his report. No use chasing a ghost that wasn’t there.
Except there was nothing ghostlike about the dead.
Soren smelled the revenants before he saw them, the rancid sweetness on the breeze making his nose twitch. The train had lost momentum and had smoke pouring from its frame, not all of which came from the smokestack. Even from a distance, Soren could see flames licking at the smoke.
“Aw, hell.”
If it derailed, he’d have to deal with the bodies. This close to the bog, he couldn’t risk the dead rising to hunt across the Southern Plains for the living. Soren revved the velocycle into a higher gear, tires churning against the prairie dirt. He narrowed his eyes as he realized the shadows lining the edge of the slowing train weren’t smoke but the revenants he’d smelled on the wind.
They moved with unnatural speed, spore-driven, mindless in every way save their desire to kill and spread what animated them. Soren hadn’t seen any of the dangerous flowering death vines around the bog that would account for the number of revenants he could pick out, but maybe they hadn’t come fromthatbog.
Someone hit the train’s brakes, and the sound ripped through the air with a ferocity that set his teeth on edge. The pitch made the revenants shriek as they raced alongside the train, which wasn’t going as fast as it could but still fast enough. Some got caught beneath the massive wheels, dragged under and torn to bits. Less for him to worry about, then.
Still a mess he’d have to clean up.
Soren lifted one hand off the steering handlebars of his velocycle and unholstered the pistol on his left hip. If he could lead the revenants away, then perhaps it would give whoever rode the train time to set up a defense, pull the steel shutters down to lock in place, and climb to the carriage roofs to fire on the dead. Train workers knew what to do during a revenant attack.
At least, they should have.
The explosion that sent the engine rising off the rails, flipping back end over front, was edged in the white-gold shine of starfire—the mark of royalty and star gods. Soren’s eyes widened behind his goggles, something sharp hooking into his chest at that display of magic, behind his ribs, the memory a fleeting thing.
More explosions had him shifting the grip on his pistol so that he could squeeze the brake lever. The back wheel skidded out, dust rising all around him as he came to a hard stop. Ahead of him, the train carriage behind the engine jumped the track and dug a deep furrow in the dirt, sending a wave of dust and grass into the air.
The cascade effect pitched most of the train carriages behind it off the tracks in a tumble of broken metal. Several other carriages remained on the track as forward momentum was lost, but the train wasn’t going anywhere after this.
Neither would any survivors if Soren didn’t reach the revenants first.
Half the dead had been caught in the starfire and the crash, but those that didn’t burn converged on the more intact train carriages. Revenants that had lost legs in the derailment dragged themselves over the ground, clawing their way to the living like moths to a flame.
Soren revved the velocycle’s engine and drove toward the train wreck, taking a wide turn around the burning engine still going through mini explosions. He couldn’t afford shrapnel in his tires or his own flesh, not with a horde to deal with. Driving past it, he saw the way the grass crackled and burned, and a chill settled in his skin, momentarily driving out the heat.
He did not particularly care to outrun a wildfire.
Soren steered the velocycle toward the rails and the damage there, putting a poison bullet into the head of a revenant that launched itself at him from the ground on stumps that passed for legs. The body shuddered and dropped, and Soren chambered another round.
Wardens were masters of alchemy and poisons. They’d built their immunity on generations of trial and error. What they’d found over the centuries for weaponry use was a mix of alchemy that could neutralize revenants, toxins that ate away at spore-filled rotting flesh. The death vines—all their various kinds—that spawned the spores were notoriously difficult to eradicate, mutating over time from the mix of poison that could still, always, be found on Maricol.
Soren’s poison-coated and poison-filled bullets were issued yearly, the chemical makeup of the toxins changing as needed depending on his assignment. They were enough, here, to put down the revenants so theystayeddown, long enough that he’d have time to burn them.
But there weren’t enough bullets in the chamber for all the revenants clawing at the wreckage, and he wasn’t about to throw a grenade into the mess, not if there were survivors. Although, looking at the twisted metal and broken train carriages he sped by, his hopes of finding anyone alive slipped a little.
Twisting the handlebars, Soren skidded around as he braked again, coming to a hard stop some distance from the wreckage and the rapidly growing fire. He flung himself off the velocycle, hearing it fall to the earth, not having time to kick down the stand. He put the rest of his bullets in between the eyes of revenants before shoving his pistol in its holster and reaching for the poison sword on his back.
His fingers curled around the hilt and unsheathed it, thumb sliding close to the cross guards, feeling for the controls blind and finding them. He toggled the small switch there, releasing poison down the center channel of the blade, the general concoction that would hopefully stop the revenants in their tracks. And if the poison didn’t, if the spores had changed too much already this year, chopping off their heads worked well enough.
He’d burn them later. Right now, Soren needed to incapacitate the damned things.
He kept his footing as he threw himself into the middle of the horde, sword gripped tight in his hand as he used it to clear a path. He chopped off arms and hands, cut off heads, and kicked the bodies aside in his race to the wreckage. Dodging a pair of revenants that lunged at him, Soren spun on his feet, getting a fleeting glimpse of the crest painted on the train carriage he’d reached.
The roaring lion’s profile, painted in gold and surrounded by the Dusk Star’s constellation, was only used by the House sitting on the Imperial throne.
Definitely royalty, then.
“Fuck,” Soren growled, taking off another revenant’s head, adrenaline spiking.
He could not leave without helping whoever was in that train carriage. If they were dead, he’d have to bring the body, and not ashes, back to Calhames as proof.
