I still don’t know why I was surprised when working with abadas took me to the east. I’d never really thought about it, but still. All of a sudden I was in a side of Zebrabwe I’d never been to before and I was feeling a bit out of my depth. Even though being a guard for caravans and trains was exactly what I’d been doing the last two years, and now, most of what was different was the landscape.
The sun was setting, the train was rocking, and we still had over an hour to the outskirts of Mwamkia. I’d disconnected my thunderer from its harness and was fiddling with it. I pulled on the cycler loop; it worked flawlessly, popping a bullet out of the chamber and loading a new one. With a bit of fiddling, I pushed the bullet back into the magazine; everything slid smoothly. Of course it did, I’d checked it all just a few minutes before. I didn’t feel like doing much else at the moment. When I wasn’t familiar with a place, going too long without encountering something bad didn’t feel right.
I looked up. Four other guards might’ve been a bit much, but after a spate of recent bandit attacks, the company I was working for had decided to step it up a little in hiring guards. Our captain, Damu Zamani, was poring over a map almost as weathered as she was, tracking our trail across the plains. Mjumbe wa Chuma, her second, was on the exact opposite side of the center aisle reading a book. (Mjumbe was lucky. She got the messenger gun.) Finally, Yaitali Mtunda and Ukuginqika Vimba were invested in a game of rasimu. All of them seemed relaxed, but if you looked closely, you could spot the movements that said they were still very much alert — roving ears, tails flicking a bit too often, glances out the window every so often. There was also the abadas’ representative, Awis Susah Kadhemen, making a drawing at a desk in the corner and about as relaxed as you could be in a tailored suit like that. I didn’t think she was also a secret guard, but. Well. She had her magic.
And then there was me, Nyama Mpya, brought on to fill an empty spot because Yaitali had suggested me. (The fact that I’d passed all the requisite tests didn’t feel meaningful at the moment.) I’d never felt more like a fifth leg in my life. I cycled the thunderer and reloaded the bullet.
“None of the trains were derailed, did they?” Vimba suddenly asked loudly enough to get through our earplugs. “In the other bandit attacks.”
“No,” Damu said tersely without looking up. “The worst they did was kill the guards if they resisted. They didn’t touch the train itself.”
“Derailing would be unwise,” Awis added in a flawless Kirakotiru accent. “If the corridor between Ihashare and Mwamkia was ever severed so blatantly, it would be in both Nagarabada and Zebrabwe’s best interests to root out the bandits to prevent further damage and keep the flow of goods and passengers alive. Even in these grasslands, it would only be a matter of time before the gang responsible was found and captured. By merely taking money from payroll trains, they keep a low enough profile to remain not the governments’ problems.”
“Hmm.” Vimba jumped one of Yaitali’s pieces and removed it from the board. “Being part of a task force to wipe those thieves off the face of the earth might’ve been interesting.” A phrase like that sounded strange in her smooth Kishina accent.
“Perhaps you can propose it to my superiors when we reach Mwamkia,” said Awis with the air of someone half-suggesting that we could eat out tonight. “They might consider it an investment.”
None of that came close to making me feel any better. My frogs started itching. I yanked on my thunderer’s cycler loop hard enough to send the bullet spinning through the air. After waiting a second, I caught it with my mouth. I might’ve been proud in other circumstances.
As I stuffed the bullet back in, Mjumbe set aside her book and came over to me. I’d barely glanced up at her when she said, “Take a walk.”
My ears twitched. “Where?” I gestured around the carriage.
“To the end of the train,” Mjumbe said calmly. “Yes, even with how close it is. It’s happened to me before. It’ll get some of your energy out. Trust me.”
I looked at her for another moment, then nodded. “Alright.” Anything to make me feel like I was doing something. I reattached my thunderer to my harness and headed for the back of the train.
There were three cars. On the very end was a… I can’t really remember why it was there, actually. Storage? Maybe. It was an old car, not much furniture, and it was where we dumped the boxes we wanted out of the way. Spare ammunition, medical supplies, that sort of thing. Next was the lounge car, where we were. Nice enough place, comfy, not too cramped. Finally, between us and the engine, was the safe car, with armor as thick as half my hoof. What did it carry? Gold, bonds, and cash. Lots of cash. Say what you will about abadas, but they pay even their janitors well. And this was just a publishing house, if the largest one in the world. I passed through the rear car and out onto the observation deck.
I didn’t know how long I’d been in the carriage, but the wind of the slipstream felt good after so long. Trying to relax, I took a seat and gazed out against the darkening plains, the rails behind us disappearing into the night. For a moment, it looked beautiful, calming. Then my gaze drifted up and I flinched.
It was the horizon that really got me. Most of my life, I’d seen a western horizon with the polished smoothness of the Serembarti grasslands, and even elsewhere, it was usually flat-ish. Now, with the peaks of the Mji Mkuu Milima in front of it, the sunset was jagged. It made my coat stand on end.
Still, at least I could see the horizon. Not like in the marshes of Uhlanga, hemmed in by trees and ferns and all sorts of other things. And if other zebras found out I thought Uhlanga was unnerving…
I kept sitting there, making myself stare out. Like staying in cold water for a while to get used to it. It didn’t get familiar, but it stopped feeling less strange. I guess it wasn’t so different from a sunrise seen from the western side of the mountains… My muscles began unknotting.
I heard the door open behind me and I glanced over my shoulder. Yaitali was walking onto the observation deck. “You lasted that long against Vimba?” I said, turning back.
“My skills at rasimu improve with every turn and every move,” Yaitali said faux-airily. “By leaps and bounds, my talent swells; I’m not an easy foe to fell.”
“And yet I still haven’t seen you win a game in ten years.” Probably more. In all the time I’d known her, I’d just been keeping track for ten years.
Yaitali snorted good-naturedly. “My strategy you can deplore; the game’s still one I much adore.”
She took a place next to me, the barrel of her thunderer bumping against the railing. “Any trouble that you’ve seen?” she asked. “Or is all quiet and serene?”
“I’ve had more eventful train rides as a foal,” I said. If I let myself relax, the gentle rocking of the train might have a chance of lulling me to sleep. Fortunately, not letting myself relax was easy.
Yaitali chuckled. “A quiet ride I much prefer,” she said, “and with me most guards would concur.”
I shrugged. “Maybe. It’s just… You went out east for the first time three years ago, right? Did you ever… feel out of place? Like you shouldn’t be there?”
Yaitali frowned slightly and drummed a hoof on the floor. “The feeling is not one I know,” she said. “You truly are tormented so?”
“Not tormented,” I said. “More… constantly nagged. I feel like…” How did I feel? “…I don’t know the ropes and I’m going to drag you all down with me.”
“You think I erred in picking you?” Yaitali laughed and clapped me on the back. “My friend, that’s very much untrue. Your role I’d never have suggested if you could be quickly bested. You’re filled with spirit, skill, and drive; without you, I’d not be alive.”
“We’re still not even for that,” I said. We probably never would be — how can you repay someone saving your life? — but I’d never miss a chance to rib her about it.
Even though she’d learned to ignore it. “This task is well within your range,” she continued. “The background here…” She gestured towards the mountains. “…is all that’s changed. There’s nothing you’ve not seen before. It’s just an escort, nothing m-”
A dim flicker of light stood out in the black and we both stopped, ears up. Yaitali had already pulled her harness into the Ready position and was squinting through her scope. She hadn’t yet flicked the hydraulic trigger bag into her mouth. “Impundulu,” she said shortly. “Perpendicular to us.”
It seemed right. Distance made the bird look small, even though it was nearly half the size of one of our train cars. “Any rider?” I asked. My own thunderer was up, if only for moral support; I couldn’t land a shot at that range.
“…Don’t think so. That’s just regular discharge. But best tell Damu, just in case.”
I saluted to her and trotted off back to the passenger car. Damu sat up when she saw me enter, and though Mjumbe and Vimba had started a new game of rasimu, they put a hold on it to listen. “Yaitali and I saw an impundulu behind the train,” I said. “It didn’t have any rider and was traveling perpendicular to the tracks, but we thought you should know.”
Damu nodded and made a vague noise of affirmation, quiet sort she was. She flicked an ear in thought, then walked to the front of the car and the intercom there. “Beg pardon,” she asked the locomotive. “How many leagues has it been since the last check?”
“Almost four and a half,” the engineer replied. There was so little static that I could make the words out from across the room. Ah, abadan expenses.
“Thank you.” Damu stood by the intercom, tapping her hoof. It didn’t take long before she said, “It’s close enough. Let’s do another impundulu watch. Are we drawing straws, or-”
Mjumbe and Vimba immediately both stuck their hooves up, saying, “I volunteer.” They looked at each other.
“You got to go last time,” protested Vimba, although she didn’t sound very serious.
“You don’t have the messenger gun,” Mjumbe said, grinning.
“You could share.”
“And in another five leagues, I just might.” Without waiting for a response, she pulled her goggles down, left the car through the front, and climbed up the ladder to the top of the car. I swore I could hear her whistling.
“You’ll get next watch,” Damu said.
Vimba nodded and made some sound of faux-frustration.
“You lot behave quite oddly,” Awis said, glancing up from her drawing. “Desiring physical conflict.”
“I’m bored,” Vimba said, shrugging. “At least if I go on impundulu watch, I can get on top of a train.”
“Yet you are not the only one. That other guard — Mjumbe, I believe her name was? — she volunteered to go as quickly as you. Is she also bored?”
“She could be,” I said. “I might’ve volunteered if I were a better shot.” I surprised myself by meaning it. “I don’t want a fight to break out, but we’ve been in here for hours.”
Awis’s ear flicked, then she nodded. “A fair point. Vimba, forgive me for misjudging you.”
“Oh, you didn’t misjudge me,” Vimba said cheerfully. “I like a good fight.”
“Then my point rests-”
Suddenly, Mjumbe’s voice cut through the night. I’ve never figured out how she gets it to project like that. “Attention! You are approaching a secure train and trespassing! Turn back now!”
For a moment, quiet. We all readied our thunderers, took up positions, and opened the windows: Vimba on the right side, Damu and I on the left. Without being told, Awis obediently dropped to the floor, took cover beneath a table, and stuffed her hooves in her ears. Smart mare. Maybe she’d been through this befo-
“INCOMING! ONE O’CLOCK!” Mjumbe yelled. Her messenger gun began booming out. I flinched and the tip of my thunderer began shaking.
“Easy,” said Damu. She would’ve murmured it if not for our earplugs. “Breathe slow, breathe deep.” Well-known tips, but always worth repeating. “Get used to the adrenaline and it’ll calm your nerves. Don’t fire too-”
Thunder began booming nearby and we were lit up as the impundulu streaked over us, lightning cracking around it. Mjumbe hollered, “Eight o’clock low! It’s got a rider!”
Hard to miss, that trail of lightning. I could make out the silhouette of the impundulu in its lightning, its wings and claws and beak in sharp relief as they shed electricity. Although it was streaking away from the train, it was already curving around for another run from the back. I breathed slow, breathed deep. My thunderer steadied. I squinted down the sights and flicked the hydraulic trigger bag into my mouth. Five years ago, the taste of rubber would’ve made me gag; now I barely noticed it.
The lightning around the impundulu ceased, but it could still see its shadow, barely. I tracked its position, then kicked my aim a bit forward to lead the target. I bit the trigger; my thunderer bucked in its harness with a sharp crack. If I hit, I couldn’t tell from the lack of reaction. I stuck my hoof into the cycler loop and worked it to cycle in a new bullet.
In the time it’d taken for me to get one shot off, Damu had gotten four. She’d probably missed, but her face was expressionless. I guess in this situation, volume of fire mattered more than accuracy. She stood up and laid a hoof on my shoulder. “Stay here,” she said, and trotted to the back of the train.
“But-” I began, but she was already gone. I snorted and looked out at the impundulu-less landscape streaking by.
“I know the feeling,” Vimba said from behind me. “Action’s happening right next door, but you need to sit your tail down and hold position.” She sighed wistfully. “Sucks, don’t it?”
“Yeah,” I muttered. “Sucks.” I’d been given a burst of action to distract me, and now I had to ignore it again.
From the back, Yaitali called, “Time to rock! Six o’clock!” Her thunderer and Damu’s ripped through the night.
My legs twitched with an urge to get back and help them, but I had my place. If the impundulu keeled off to the left, I’d be here. As thunder started crackling, I glanced towards the back of the train, even though I couldn’t see anything. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Vimba looking back as well. We happened to look at each other; Vimba gave me a sort of apologetic smile and shrugged.
The impundulu shrieked over us with a din like I’d been caught in a storm in the wet season, its own call mixed with thunder. As my coat buzzed, the train shuddered and all of the electric lights went out. A few moments later, the train lurched and started slowing a bit too quickly. I threw out a leg to brace against the deceleration as furniture slid across the floor. The thunder from the impundulu was nowhere to be heard.
Mjumbe yelped from the front of the car, the sort of yelp that comes from sharp but not-that-serious pain. “I’m fine!” she said. “Got down before it got me!” She pushed her way into the car, staggering against the slowdown, her shape muted in the dark. “How’s everyone else?”
“Fine, I believe,” Awis said casually. She stood up and lit her forehead horn to give us illumination; I tried to not stare at her casual magic. “I heard no signs of casualties.”
As if on cue, Damu and Yaitali returned from the back. “Damage report,” Damu half-barked. “Is anyone hurt?”
A brief silence, then a chorus of “no”s. I spoke up. “Want me to check with the engineer and firemare?”
“Yes, thank you, but be wary of bandits,” said Damu. “If an impundulu was waiting for us, there could be others nearby.”
My gaze jumped around as I climbed out of the car. In the dim light, it was hard to tell if the wavering lines in the dim light were the long stalks of tall grasses or the stripes of approaching zebras. Those biologists who said our stripes hadn’t developed for camouflage? Right then, I was feeling pretty sure they were full of hogwash. I crept up the rails, past the armored safe car, towards the locomotive, constantly looking around. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. The sort of nothing that makes you sure something’s coming. At least it was a nothing I was familiar with.
When I reached the locomotive, I could still hear the low, smooth whir of the turbine. Huh. I climbed up onto the engine’s footplate and knocked on the door. “Hello? I’m one of the guards. Everything okay in there?”
The door opened up slightly, the engineer peeking out. When she saw me, she opened up the door more and waved me in. I stepped into the oppressive heat of the cab and she slammed it shut behind me. Inside, the firemare was checking a thermometer above the firebox, while several panels had been pulled from the walls to expose electrical wiring that did I didn’t know what. Everything had an acrid stench that couldn’t be attributed to coal. “Anyone out there?” the engineer asked in a low voice.
“I didn’t see anyone,” I said. “Not yet, anyway. Are you two injured?”
“Effh.” The engineer shrugged. “Shook up, but we ain’t hurt. Can’t see the same for the locomotive, though. That dang bird flew right over us, hit us with a blast of lightning, and took off. Blew out every single fuse we had, and now the traction motors and carriages ain’t gettin’ any volts. We can replace ’em, we got spares, but I dunno if there’s any other problems that’ll need fixin’.”
I nodded. I knew enough about trains for that to make sense, and I couldn’t help asking, “What about the turbine itself?”
But the engineer shook her head. “She’s fine. Long as we keep heatin’ the water, she’ll keep turnin’. We just won’t get her electricity. If somethin’ was wrong with her, we prolly wouldn’t be talkin’.”
“Any ETA on the fuses? Just the fuses.”
Shrug. “Hard to say. Two, three minutes?”
“I’ll let the others know.”
The engineer nodded. “And if you see any bandits, don’t let ’em cut the brake lines, or they’ll lock the brakes on and we’re dead in the water, here.”
Was it even darker when I hopped back outside, or was that just my imagination? I edged along the train, keeping it at my back, as my thunderer twitched this way and that. The breeze carried unfamiliar scents to me and I’d never felt more lost. I was-
I snapped my thunderer to one side. Something was definitely moving. The grass here wasn’t bending right. Still aiming at that spot, I glanced around. Nothing… Nothing… There was a spot that was a touch too monochrome… Nothing… Another… Nothing… Not bending right…
I swallowed. I was halfway down the safe car, still not able to climb back into the train. So- “Who’s there?” I yelled, loud enough to notify the other guards in the train. “Show yourself!”
The sounds didn’t change, but they seemed more… still? The spots I noticed seemed to freeze, and although it was almost definitely my imagination, I felt like I could feel the train rock as the guards inside scrambled to get ready.
After a moment, a head popped up out of the grass, smiling. The mare wore a rough canvas halter and had a brass earring. Raising her front hooves in openness, she said, “I beg you, please, put your gun down. We do not wish to make you frown.”
I frowned anyway. She was rhyming and had the right clothes; were these zebras Okhala Zigwa? Supposedly. How suspiciously convenient. And that rhyme felt forced, not at all like Yaitali’s. But I couldn’t make assumptions yet. I took a step to one side, inching closer to the carriage door. Falling back into the reflex of protocol, I said, “All of you, up where I can see you.” I gestured with my hoof, not my thunderer. “You’re approaching a secure train.”
The mare and I looked at each other for a long moment. I took another sideways step. I imagined her smile no longer reaching her eyes, then wondered if I’d really imagined it. Then she whistled and gave a sharp upward nod. My entire body tensed as over half a dozen other zebras popped from the grass, but they made no movements. Lotta potential bandits. Lotta cash aboard an abadan money train. “We have no wish to cause you harm,” the mare said. “You’ve no reason to be so alarmed.”
I was alarmed. Specifically, at the bad meter. I’d never heard a Wokhala make that mistake, not even Yaitali when she was drunk. Another step. My thoughts kept running; Okhala never repeated themselves that much, either. Another step. And what sort of manipulative, heartless thugs would pretend to be Okhala, of all people? I was searching for something to say when Damu rumbled, “State your business.”
The zebras all glanced at the guards’ car. I took that opportunity to scooch over faster. “We saw the attack on your train,” the mare said, “and we wish to give you aid.”
I reached the footplate, made my way up the stairs without drawing attention to myself. Mjumbe opened the door to let me in. The carriage was dark; Awis had let her light go out. “How’d it go?” Mjumbe whispered.
“Impundulu blew out all the fuses in the engine,” I answered. “The engineers are replacing them, but it’ll take a few minutes, and there could be other problems. Also, we shouldn’t let anyone cut the brake lines or we’re stuck here.”
Damu, Yaitali, and Vimba were standing just inside the window, thunderers out. Damu glanced sidelong at me and gave a curt nod to let me know she’d heard. “Unless you know electrical engineering, you won’t be able to help,” said Damu. “Please leave.” Her voice dropped again. “You two-” She pointed at Mjumbe and me. “-check the other side. Vimba, rear. Make sure we’re not being flanked.”
We all saluted and went to our designated positions. I cracked a window open and peered into the dusk. It was windy and the grass was waving all around, all the way until I couldn’t see anymore. I kept an ear angled back towards Damu. The “Okhala” were still there, still sounded amicable. But no matter how much Damu asked them, they still weren’t leaving.
I watched the grass, endless stripes of dim green. Any gaps caused by someone pushing through were immediately filled up again as the stalks shivered in the breeze. My gaze kept roving around, trying to pick something, anything out. Nothing. The same nothing I’d felt before.
Then I heard Yaitali’s breath hitch. When she spoke to Damu, her voice was low. “We’d best be careful with these ones,” she said. “I glimpsed their flanks. They all have guns.”
My ears went straight up and I noticed Mjumbe’s do the same. That clinched it. These zebras were not Okhala; nomads didn’t have the means to easily replace bullets on the plains. I nearly turned around right then and there to send a warning shot out the window behind me, but Mjumbe just clicked her tongue at me and shook her head. Bad form to shoot if you weren’t shot at first. Instead, I leaned slightly out the window to look towards the locomotive. No problems there. That I could see.
The not-Wokhala was saying something, but Damu cut her off. “Our business here is over!” she boomed, more threatening than ever before. “We require no help from you! Please leave this train-”
One of the last rays of the setting sun glinted off something. The barrel of a thunderer being raised just out of the grass. A barrel that was pointed straight at me.
I dropped myself to one side just as the thunderer cracked; glass shattered and woodchips fell from a new hole in the ceiling. Immediately, Mjumbe’s messenger flattened the soundscape to make room for its own BANG. Half a second later, as Damu and Yaitali were dropping into cover, their own windows were blown inward by a barrage of gunfire.
All around us, gunfire started resounding, both ours and the bandits’. It was mostly thunderers, but Mjumbe’s messenger overpowered all other guns as she slamfired out into the night. I picked myself up and laid my thunderer’s barrel over the rim of the window just in time to see a muzzle flash. I centered my thunderer on it- Bang. Grass spread as an unseen body dropped.
Only training kept me from firing wildly, even as bullets zipped past my head and holes were punched in walls and the smell of gunpowder grew ever stronger. I waited for a flash, fired, recocked as I moved, repeated. I couldn’t tell if I was making a difference, but it didn’t matter. I was just buying time for the engineers. Behind me, Yaitali bit back a scream. I decided to take the fact that she wasn’t screaming screaming as a plus and kept firing. Vimba came charging in from the back and began firing out, jeering insults every time she had to pause to recock the gun. The bandits began screaming insults back and soon all the voices blended into a slurry of obscenity.
One bandit decided she had it out for me. There was one particular muzzle flash — don’t ask me how I knew it was always the same one — that didn’t go down and kept taking potshots at me whenever I poked my snout above the sill. I started shuffling more when I repositioned, but that one bandit seemed she was tracking me and kept firing. More than once, I was nicked by glass shards created from bullet impacts. I returned fire as best I could.
But my best wasn’t quite good enough, and soon my thunderer clicked when I bit the trigger. Muttering angry nothings, I hit a release on my harness and spun the thunderer around into the reloading position. I slapped my leg against my flank and the hook grabbed one of the loaders there. I tried inserting the loader into the magwell, but a bullet pinged off the windowsill just above my head; I flinched and missed with the loader.
“I hate to be a bother,” Awis spoke up in a bland voice from beneath a table, “but let me know if you need any help.” Her forehead horn sparkled briefly.
The loader popped out of its hook as I tried to jam it in. Snarling to myself, I picked it up with my mouth and snapped it into the magwell easily. “Some light would be nice,” I muttered half-sarcastically. I pulled on the tab and thanked my grandparents when the bullets slid into the thunderer smoothly.
“Blinding or merely illumination?”
I froze right before I swung the thunderer back into the ready position. But abadas could do things like that, couldn’t they? “Illumination,” I said.
“Very well.” Awis crawled swiftly over to my window and stuck her head up just enough to get her horns over the edge. A ball of light maybe half a cubit across bloomed from her forehead horn, zipped overhead, and hovered above the plain. In light, black-and-white zebras stood out among green grass exactly how you’d expect something monochrome to look in something verdant.
Now that she could see, Vimba went into overdrive, firing off shots and downing bandits like it was going out of style. She giggled around her trigger; I cringed at what must’ve been going on in her head. I drew a bead on the head of a bandit who’d been near the position of the last muzzle flash I’d been tracking. Bang. Down.
Suddenly, I noticed two lines streaking through the grass, faster than any others, too fast for me to safely track. They zipped right through the gunfire, right up to the side of the train. Relays in my mind clicked: brake hoses. They were going for the brakes. I slapped the releases on my harness and let my thunderer clatter to the ground; it wouldn’t be much help in those quarters. Not knowing how much time I had, I simply vaulted through the window and was somehow able to land cleanly. I heard Mjumbe scream my name, but I paid her no mind.
Two bandits, a mare and a stallion were already under the train, heading for the couplers, where the brake hoses were easier to access. They weren’t going for two different sets, thank ancestors. I galloped alongside the train, somehow managing to ignore the gunfire, and dove beneath the train to tackle one of the bandits just as she reached the coupling.
We rolled and bumped into the truck. Not slammed; going under the train was cramped enough that I couldn’t get much speed. I bucked out blindly with one of my rear hooves and caught the stallion in the face. Beneath me, the mare twisted around and snapped at my face. I instinctively pulled back and banged my head against the underside of the carriage. I rolled off her, she tried to roll onto me, I snapped a hoof upward and smacked her head on metal.
The brake hose was clearly visible as it snaked along the carriage from coupling to coupling. The stallion backed away from me and pulled out a knife from his fetlock, looking upwards. With the mare still dazed, I awkwardly shuffled towards the stallion in the cramped space. I didn’t know how tough the hoses were and I didn’t want to find out. Lucky for me, the stallion had tunnel-visioned trying to find the best spot to cut the line and I was able to bodycheck him hard enough to knock him over. The knife bounced from his teeth and over the rails.
He responded faster than I thought he would; his front hooves lashed out and smacked my head against the car. As my head swam, he dealt my neck another blow and I stumbled over. The mare bit down on my mane and gave me a yank to fully spin me around and drop me on my back. She planted a hoof on my neck, her back against the bottom of the train, and pushed hard enough to close my windpipe.
I immediately panicked, thrashing my legs in the desperation of suffocation, but the mare was able to tank my blows to her head, smirking. Near my tail, the stallion got back to his hooves and, after shaking his head to clear it, climbed on top of me and drove a hoof into my stomach. I couldn’t gasp; I could breathe. He raised his hoof again.
Suddenly, the grasslands were lit up by a source that was incandescent, not arcane. Electric light was streaming from the windows of the train cars and illuminating the area. The engineers must’ve gotten the fuses replaced.
And above us, the coach started inching forward.
Dislodged by the movement, the mare bailed immediately, rolling out from under the car and letting me take a breath. The stallion looked back and I couldn’t help but follow his gaze. The massive axles of the carriage’s rear truck were moving toward us. He pushed himself off me and flattened himself against the sleepers. I did the same, spreading my legs wide and turning my head sideways so my muzzle wouldn’t poke upward. I wound up looking the bandit straight in the eye.
There were only two wheels in the truck, but they seemed to take forever to roll over us, and all we could do was stare at each other. I don’t know what expression I had, but the bandit’s jaw was set and he had anger in his eyes as blood trickled from his nose. The instant the second axle had cleared him, he pushed himself up, snarling-
-only to get smashed back down by the front truck of the next car. He yelled, so he wasn’t dead, but I didn’t want to know what he felt like.
The train kept moving. The next truck was approaching fast, and it was the last one on the train. Continued gunshots kept me from rolling out and galloping alongside. But the second the train wasn’t covering me, well. Out of desperation, I stuck my hooves up.
I caught a girder on the bottom of the carriage and my front legs were nearly dislocated as the train yanked me away. Gravel and ballast scraped at my back, ripped gashes in my uniform. I kicked one of my rear legs up and managed to hook a hoof around another girder, and soon I’d managed to pull myself up off the ground.
The bandit was already gone, his last words a furious curse, but when I looked to either side, more zebras were galloping along with the train. At least half a dozen managed to leap on board and soon they were out of sight, climbing up the car. Gunshots vanished to echoes and I couldn’t hear any fighting; had the other guards missed them?
I managed to inch along the girders to the side of the car as the ground grew faster and faster beneath me. I poked my head around the edge of the carriage just in time to see a tail vanish over the roof. I waited. No sounds of conflict. I could hear a voice, though.
“Did…” Yaitali. She sounded hurt, but not too badly. “Did Mpya-” A cough. Not too wet, not too strained. “Did Mpya get back on? Or did we… leave her behind?”
“I’m not sure. I fear the latter.” Damu’s voice didn’t sound any different from any of her other times. “Did anyone else see her?”
I immediately banged the side of the car and yelled, “I’m here! I’m on the bottom!”
Silence fell, with even the rumble of the train seeming muted. One of the doors on the next car up opened and Mjumbe poked her head out. Towards the front of the train, towards the back- She saw me, and her jaw dropped.
I managed to grin against the wind. “I could use some help,” I said.
We got me back in with some tricky maneuvering. Yaitali was nursing a shoulder wound, but the other guards and Awis seemed mostly unhurt; Awis was even tending to Yaitali with a glowing horn. “I’m fine,” I faux-gasped to the others. “I just- need- to catch my breath.” I immediately dropped my voice so the bandits wouldn’t hear me. “On the roof,” I whispered, pointing upwards. “Six or seven, just from my side. I saw them climb up. Rear car.”
Damu and Mjumbe immediately looked at each other. Mjumbe pointed at the messenger gun in her harness, then at the ceiling. Although she didn’t look at me, Damu started talking to me. “Were you shot?” she said loudly. She pointed Mjumbe and Vimba to the front of the train, muttering in a low, low voice, “Cab. Protect the engineer.” They nodded and set off, Awis briefly unlocking the safe car to let them through.
“I- don’t think so.” I kept gasping, half to keep the charade going, half because my throat was still sore after having been nearly strangled. I vigorously shook my head to let Damu know for certain. “Just- my legs- ache.” That was true, but it wasn’t too bad. “How’s- Yaitali- doing?” As I spoke, I reattached my thunderer to my harness.
Yaitali coughed. It sounded fake and the grin she gave me wasn’t particularly pained. “I have- been dealt- a good few shots,” she said like she was acting. “At least- it wasn’t- quite a lot.”
Next to her, Awis delicately levitated a small bullet out from Yaitali’s wound. She shook her head and tapped the bullet a few times, which I took to mean that that was the only one. Then Awis set the bullet aside and started dressing the wound.
I wanted to trust her, but anxiety made me lean in close. “You’re okay?” I whispered to Yaitali.
She rolled her eyes and lightly pushed away. “Yes, Mom, I’m fine,” she whispered back. “ ’Twas just one shot. I’ll live. But thank you for the thought.”
Good enough. “Now what?” I murmured to Damu.
“You stay here with Yaitali and Awis, keep them safe,” Damu muttered as she stood up. “I’ll head to the rear of the train and see if I can-”
She glanced down the train and promptly kicked me in the face. We rolled in opposite directions and hit our respective walls. And before I could protest, gunfire ripped through the space we’d just occupied.
Awis dropped to the ground and yanked Yaitali away from the middle of the car. Blood fanned out from one of her legs, but she seemed otherwise unhurt. Damu plastered herself against her wall and shuffled rearwards to get a better angle; I followed her lead.
“Hey, hey,” one of the bandits yelled, “cool it, cool it, cool it!” The barrage quickly ceased. I dimly recognized the voice: the mare who’d first talked to me on my way back from the locomotive. The ringleader? “Hey, uh, guards. We don’t need to kill you. Wanna walk away from this tens of thousands of lijamu richer?”
I reached the end of the car and risked glancing around the edge for an instant so I could see into the rear car. Around ten zebras were crammed in there, all pointing various thunderers down the car. The ringleader was standing on a table behind them so she could look over them. Several dog tags were hanging around her neck, looking out-of-place against her faux-Okhala garb. There were too many bandits for us to fight head-on, but none of them was firing. I glanced at Damu, waiting to see what she would do.
“I also want to walk away from this with my professional integrity intact,” Damu said casually. “I don’t suppose I can do that as well?” Her ears were twitching, like she was trying to pinpoint the exact source of the noise.
I heard low laughter from some of the bandits. “I’m sure we can work something out,” the spokeszebra said, not quite as cheerfully as she probably wanted to sound. “Get a good story going. You were able to drive off some of those dastardly blackguards after they broke into the safe car. Shame about the courier, though.”
I glanced at Awis. She looked back at me and shrugged. I’ve seen people be more perturbed at getting served the wrong type of githeri in restaurants.
Damu stroked her chin in feigned thought. “Hmm,” she said loudly, even as she adjusted the aim of her thunderer. Right at the wall. Maybe we could take them down with surprise.
Yeah, right.
Still, I leveled my gun at the wall with her. I’d signed up to be caravan and train security. I’d known what I was getting into. I was somewhat prepared for something like this. I just wished it’d come a few decades later. Noticing me, Damu gave a sort of wan not-quite smile. Yaitali tried getting to her feet, but she winced when she put weight on her bad leg. Awis quickly gave her something to lean on.
“I think,” Damu said, raising the trigger bag to her mouth, “that you make a compelling-” She popped the bag into her mouth and began firing into the next car through the wall. I immediately followed her lead, reducing the wall in front of me to splinters. I wasn’t aiming, but that many bullets sent to that many zebras that closely packed, I had to hit something. For maybe two, three seconds, my world consisted of nothing but the sound of thunder, the reflex of recocking my weapon, the taste of biting the trigger, and the smell of burnt gunpowder.
And then the bandits started firing back.
In hindsight, I was lucky, even if that luck came at someone else’s expense. They aimed at Damu first, firing through the walls on her side, and the din of their barrage blotted out nearly everything else, even the train. Damu shuddered as she was pelted with splinters and bullets ripped her body apart and blood trails bloomed from her like fireworks.
For the brief eternal second as I watched, horrified I knew that that would be my fate if I didn’t move soon. Even though I had nowhere to go.
Except out the window.
I didn’t even think, I simply all of a sudden realized that I was outside the train, buffeted by wind and hanging by my hooves from the windowside as bullets ripped through the wall where I’d been standing. I did a chin-up; Yaitali and Awis were bolting down the carriage towards the safe car, and Damu-
Damu…
There wasn’t much left of her. I tensed up and my stomach churned. I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t even lower myself; my legs refused to listen to me. I’d seen death before, but I hadn’t seen that.
A metallic clang jarred me from my thoughts; the bandits were running into the coach, but Yaitali and Awis had already barricaded themselves in the safe car. My front legs immediately went slack, so slack I had to pull up my rear hooves to keep them from hitting the ground rushing beneath me.
I heard one of the bandits asking about a missing guard and, without even thinking, I swung myself towards the end of the car. If they looked outside- In the sureness of adrenaline, I managed to grab onto the external ladder and swing myself around to relative safety. All of the bandits were in the car I’d just left and the wall the ladder was on remained just intact enough to hold my weight, so I could hang there and let it sink in.
It only took me a moment. I knew what I’d seen; I could deal with it later. We had bandits on the train and I couldn’t stop them alone. I swallowed, forced my feelings down, and hauled my way up the ladder. With the wall as damaged as it was, I gave each rung a solid test before putting my full weight on it. Didn’t want it to collapse out from under me and either give away my position or send me tumbling to my death.
I pulled myself onto the roof of the coach. The wind whipped at my face and my eyes began watering immediately. I looked away, gave my eyes a rub to clear them, and dropped my goggles on. At least I could see, even if walking was tricky. I crept forward, moving slowly half to keep my hoofsteps quiet to those below and half to just keep my balance against the buffeting gale and the gently rocking train. I’d never been on top of a train moving this fast before and couldn’t shake the feeling I was doing something wrong.
The gap between my current car and the next one, the safe car, approached. I turned my ears downward to listen to bandits. I heard metallic thuds and angry mutters for a moment as they failed to open the door. Then silence, followed by someone banging on the door as loudly as they could. “Open up!” the ringleader mare screamed. “Or we’ll throw you and the bonehead under the wheels once we get you out!”
Yeah, good luck getting into an abadan safe car without explosives. (Maybe they had explosives; the thought of Yaitali and Awis getting pulped by a satchel-charge-induced spalling made me shudder. At least they were safe for the moment.) But it was only a matter of time before they decided to cut the brake lines or try to take the engine for more options. I managed to get from the coach to the safe without too much difficulty. In fact, the safe’s armored top gave me ridges and raised bolts to sort of brace myself against, so I made better time than before. I reached the end of the car, jumped into the tender-
Someone leapt up from the gap below and tackled me. We tumbled end-over-end before I wound up pinned with a blade to my throat.
But it was drawn away almost immediately and I was released. I blinked some of the coal dust out of my eyes; Mjumbe was restowing her knife. “Sorry,” she said. “I thought you were one of the bandits-”
“Damu’s dead,” I blurted.
The rumble of the train was suddenly muted as Mjumbe stared at me. She swallowed and helped haul me to my hooves. “Let’s speak with Vimba,” she said.
We stumbled across the coal in the tender and rolled into the locomotive’s cab. Vimba, the engineer, and the firemare were still there, safe and sound. I laid out what had happened to Mjumbe and Vimba, who watched with just barely impassive faces; Mjumbe didn’t quite look horrified while Vimba didn’t quite look angry. As soon as I finished up, Mjumbe took a long breath in through her muzzle, let it out slowly. “Okay,” she said. “With Yaitali and Awis in the safe car, they’re more secure than us. Did you see how many bandits were left?”
“Uh… No, I didn’t.” I felt my cheeks warm.
“Ten-ish, then, at most.” Mjumbe pursed her lips. “We need more intelligence. If they cut the brake lines, we’re screwed. And I’d rather die doing something than nothing.”
“I’ll take point,” Vimba said, without any further prompting. She adjusted her harness and pulled her hooves a bit closer together. “Come on.” She immediately climbed up the coal pile and into the tender. Mjumbe followed her, but it was easy to tell her steps were heavy and reluctant. I suppose mine would be, too. I started climbing-
“Hey!” Mjumbe and I both turned our head’s back at the engineer’s voice. “Y’all stay safe out there, you hear?”
“Heh. No promises,” said Mjumbe.
We unlocked the front door of the safe car, filled Yaitali and Awis in, and (against my unspoken protests) pulled Yaitali out. She couldn’t run on her bad leg, but she could shoot, and we needed every gun we could get. As Mjumbe and Vimba advanced, I said to Yaitali, “Be careful, okay? You’ve already been shot once, and-”
Yaitali interrupted with a waved hoof. “I’m thankful for your grave concern, but you would do quite well to learn that I, too, wish that I not die. I will stay safe. …At least, I’ll try.”
Could’ve done without that amendment, but good enough. Yaitali and I slunk across the train.
By the time we’d reached the coach, Vimba had stabbed her knife into the roof, using it to hang over the side and peek into a window. After a moment, she pulled herself up. “Five of them,” she said in as low a voice that could still be heard. “Talking about something, don’t know what. Didn’t see any other guards, don’t think they saw me.”
“Good.” Mjumbe licked her lips and glanced down the train. “If we come at them from the end, we could take them by surprise. Might be enough.” Shrug. “Might not be.”
“It’s the best chance we’ve got,” I said. Was it? I was never good at tactics.
“It is,” said Mjumbe. “Come on.” We started walking-
At the end of the coach, a zebra climbed onto the roof, apparently headed for the engine. He froze when he saw us, then whipped one of his legs up, pulling on a plunger with his teeth. Flare gun.
Quick as a flash, Vimba snapped her gun up and capped the bandit, right between the eyes. He looked surprised at what had just happened and seemed to tumble to the roof and off the train in slow motion. But he’d gotten the flare off. It took a moment to ascend, then it exploded above us, burning yellow and oddly beautiful in the dusk.
A moment later, thunder boomed in the distance.
“Ancestors,” Mjumbe cursed. “Come on. We need to-”
“They’re on top!”
Gunfire tore holes through the roof ahead of us and we stumbled back in surprise. Bullets punched upwards for five seconds before everyone needed to reload.
Mjumbe quickly aimed her messenger downwards and fired; several zebras screamed. As she worked the pump, she hissed, “Impundulu behind train.” BANG. Another scream. “Get to end-” Chk-chkt. “-blast it.” BANG.
I nodded almost automatically. As Mjumbe kept firing and Vimba and Yaitali added their own bullets, I trotted in place for an instant, then bolted across the ruined roof. I felt a bullet from below rustle my tail hairs, but it didn’t hit anything. I galloped, jumped across the gap between coaches, made for the rear of the train.
But when I tried to come to a halt, I misjudged. The roof was slick and the wind kept pushing me and my hooves didn’t grab the surface as much as I thought they would. I started sliding, with the end of the coach coming distressingly close. I threw myself into a tumble in an effort to stop, but that just meant I was rolling and had even less control. Slower, slower, closer, closer-
When I went over the rear edge, I was able to hook my hooves onto the roof. I didn’t have any real grip, but it was enough to swing me onto the observation deck. I hit my withers on the railing as I bounced in, but at least I was in. I groaned, rolling my shoulders, and looked forward.
There was a single bandit left standing guard in the coach. She’d been looking forward, at the fight between Mjumbe and Vimba and the others, but my sound had attracted her and she was turning my way. Still a bit woozy, I didn’t trust my aim, so I charged her.
But she was quick. She was rearing by the time I reached her and we slammed into each other with our legs pinned between us. She snapped my face and I instinctively pulled back. Which gave her enough leverage to start pushing. Despite my best efforts, I was forced backward, towards the end of the train.
Right before I hit the rear railing, I stopped pushing and dropped onto my back. The bandit overbalanced and rolled onto me; I kept that roll going, kicking her up, off me, and over the railing. I heard a single scream before she hit the ground and the train pulled away from her.
I lay on my back for an instant, staring down the tracks. Then I spotted a flicker of electric yellow in the dusk and heard a rumble. The impundulu, still some distance away, but closing slowly, managing to match even this train’s speed. Adrenaline surged through me as I rolled onto my stomach and took a quick potshot. Bang, miss; the impundulu jerked around as its handler yanked it in a more unpredictable route. But it still needed to fundamentally keep coming straight at me. It was one of my best shots of the night. I loaded another bullet and took a more careful aim.
Then I felt a hoof pressed on my withers and a gunbarrel against the back of my skull. “Hello, there,” a stallion said. “Don’t move.”
I froze. Had there been another bandit in the coach that I’d missed? I looked out. I was sort of aimed at the impundulu… Maybe-
The stallion twisted my trigger’s hydraulic piping around a hoof and yanked. The rubber tube popped right out of my thunderer, shedding fluid. Useless, now. He undid the straps on my harness and my thunderer clattered to the ground.
The hoof was removed. The barrel jabbed me in the back of the head. “Up.”
Slowly, shakily, I stood up. I was pushed around and shoved up the car. We had to step over several bodies — the bandits Damu and I had killed. At least we’d done something.
In the next coach, the barrage between the guards and bandits had stopped, with not much remaining of the roof at the front of the carriage. They were limited to taking quick potshots at each other, never getting anything close to a hit. Blood was trickling across the floor and spent bullet casings and discarded loaders were lying around the carriage, so many that I wondered how much ammo they still had.
“Yote!” the stallion yelled. “Yangu Yote! We had another guard!” He shoved me forward.
The ringleader — Yote, I suppose — was taking cover beneath a table. Hearing her name, she raised her head and looked at me. She beamed. “Ha! Excellent. Thank you very much, Ganda.” She scooched into open space, where I could see her dog tags more clearly. She’d added another set to her collection. I could tell because, even splattered with blood, it was close enough for me to read the text: Damu Zamani.
“Hey! Guardfolk! We’ve got one of yours!” Yote yelled. She wrenched me to one side and kicked me into the open below the hole in the roof. I tensed up, ready for a bullet to go through my head (either on purpose or by accident), but all gunfire had stopped. The stallion — Ganda — was still pointing his thunderer at me, glaring.
A pause. The howling wind of the train and the impundulu’s distant thunder were the only sounds. Then Vimba yelled, “And?”
Yote’s eye twitched. “So come down here and we won’t kill her!”
“You’ll just kill us all anyway,” Vimba said casually. “There’s no point. Sorry, Mpya.”
“Forgiven!” I gasped out before the thunderer was pressed against my neck. Really, what else could Vimba do? I’d bet money she was correct.
Yote clenched her jaw. “Listen to me!” she barked. “If you-”
I glanced around the coach. Aside from Ganda invading my personal space with his thunderer, they were all looking up at the hole in the roof, never sparing me more than a quick look. With my body still pinned, I turned my eyes enough to look at my captor; he didn’t have his trigger bag in his mouth, the better to scowl angrily at me.
I could work with that.
I jerked my head to one side. The thunderer’s muzzle scraped across my neck and Ganda’s weight pushed it to the ground. Before he could recover, I half-rolled, swinging a leg up to overbalance him on top of me. The thunderer was pointing into the crowd of bandits; with the trigger swinging free, I brought my hoof up, smashing the bag between it and Ganda’s face. Bang.
The bullet pinged off the safe car as I missed, but the sudden sound made everyone jump. As they turned around, seemingly in slow motion, I kept the roll going, wrapped my front legs around his neck, and reared. By the time some of the bandits had trained their thunderers on me, I was holding Ganda up as an equine shield. It wasn’t bulletproof and he’d probably break out in five seconds, max, but at least I had a moment of breathing room. I took a step back.
Vimba dropped through the hole in the roof, her thunderer discarded and her knife in her jaws. She landed on one of the bandits, slammed him to the ground, and stabbed him right through the temple. She was away almost before he stopped moving, spinning to buck the next nearest bandit into a wall.
But not everyone was distracted by my actions. Yote wasn’t. And as Vimba’s hooves connected, Yote fired into the back of her head.
I didn’t see what happened to Vimba’s face, but the splatter of blood on the wall didn’t leave much to the imagination. As Vimba went limp and dropped like a stone, my stomach churned and I froze. The other bandits trained their guns on me-
Mjumbe’s messenger boomed from atop the roof and one of the bandits collapsed. Another flinched and began turning around, only for the messenger to boom again. She fell.
Ganda had gotten his thoughts back together and dug his hooves into the floor. I stumbled awkwardly at the sudden force and collapsed with him on top of me. He drove an elbow into my stomach; I wheezed as he rolled off me. He got the thunderer in my face again, flicked the trigger bag into his mouth- Click. He hadn’t worked the action since I’d fired. The bullet in the chamber was spent.
He lifted up a hoof to work the cycler loop; I took the opportunity to kick out one of his rear legs. Unbalanced, he toppled over, and I thrust up my legs so he wouldn’t fall on top of me. I thrust my hoof into the piping connecting the trigger bag to the gun and yanked, disabling him just as he’d disabled me, and kicked him into the wall with all four legs.
Mjumbe’s messenger roared again as I got to my hooves. I looked around and half-flinched at Vimba’s body, but Yote was nowhere to be seen. Where could she go? Roof? Roof. If Mjumbe was too focused on the other bandits and missed her- I scrambled to the end of the coach, ignoring Ganda as he groggily got to his hooves, and pulled myself up the ladder.
Something was glowing red in the night above me when I reached the roof. Another flare. In its flickering light, I could see Yote jumping up and down on the rear carriage, screaming words that the wind whipped away almost immediately, waving her legs to get someone’s attention. Specifically, the attention of the impundulu and its rider, looming just above and behind the train like some kind of lightning god. It was keeping a surprisingly steady pace with the train for something so large, so fast. This rider was good.
I probably could’ve left it there. Let Yote skedaddle away and have that be that. Without my thunderer, I couldn’t shoot the impundulu down. Just sit back and let it all be over.
But, by my ancestors, she was the leader. She had Damu’s dog tags, and you didn’t let comrades be forgotten like that. I charged.
The train shook and my coat stood on end with static as the impundulu settled on the carriage. Yote dropped onto all four hooves just in time for me to tackle her. We slid across the train’s roof, towards the impundulu, hitting its claws; it squawked deafeningly and jumped away from us, in spite of its rider’s best efforts. I bit down on Yote’s tail and heaved, yanking her away from her exit.
She kicked out with a rear leg, but I was ready for it and dropped her tail the instant I saw her muscles tensing so I could step back. She hit nothing. The rider whipped her reins and yelled something; the impundulu croaked and stabbed out with its beak. I managed to jump out of the way and it drove a half-cubit hole right where I’d been standing.
Then someone clouted me from behind. I stumbled forward, bumping into the impundulu’s beak as it was withdrawn. Ganda. I half-fell, half-scrambled forward some more to avoid another beak jab; the impundulu squawked in anger. By now, I was underneath its body, right near its talons, as long as a sword and twice as thick. The impundulu made small hops as it tried to swipe at me without being blown off the train. I staggered this way and that, those razors whistling past me and missing by mere lines even as they clawed gashes in the train roof and lightning made my nerves buzz.
Ganda had reached Yote and pulled her up. They half-stood, half-danced beyond the impundulu, unable to board the impundulu as it tried to get me. The second it got me, they’d be away. Unless I could drive it off-
I drew my knife from its sheath, dodged another clawed swipe, and stabbed the leg that had just missed me. A sudden jolt of electricity through my teeth drove me away and I collapsed on my back. I bucked out with one of my rear legs, hit the knife, slammed it hilt-deep into the impundulu’s leg.
I don’t know what was louder: the roar of thunder around me or the impundulu’s pained screech. It immediately took off against its rider’s protests and I was practically pinned to the roof by the sweeps of those enormous wings. Somehow, it didn’t fall too far behind the train as it got up to speed, easily riding the slipstream. My legs shaking, I stood up-
I realized Ganda was yelling half a second before his hoof came at my face. Luckily, that half second was enough for me to duck and the anger-unaimed swing bounced off the top of my head. He slid to a stop beyond me, carried by the momentum of a charge I’d missed, and took another swing. I took a step back to avoid it, but this one was even wilder than the last and extended further out than I thought. I was clocked in the muzzle and toppled over with my head hanging over the edge of the car.
And in his frenzy, Ganda hadn’t gotten a good stance. He overbalanced, fell, rolled down the roof. His blunt hooves scrabbled at the roof, but he was able to get a hook on something right as he went off the ledge. He dangled there next to me, wind bumping him against the car.
I smacked at his thunderer, still attached to its harness. It dislodged his grip. And he fell off the train, into the dark.
Almost immediately, Yote stomped on my neck. I was driven against the ridge and coughed out a wheeze that seemed harder than usual. I somehow managed to hook my hoof around a bolt that was sticking out and haul myself back before she could throw me over.
But Yote didn’t hit me again. “Hey!” she yelled. “HEY!”
I raised my head. The impundulu was keeping pace in the train’s wake, flying right alongside us. The rider was yelling and making some motions at Yote, telling her to-
BOOM.
The impundulu went down like a stone and tumbled across the speeding plains, wings twisting in odd ways. I wasn’t sure whether the sounds I was hearing were snapping bones or my own overeager imagination, but I winced anyway.
BOOM.
Mjumbe was standing on the central carriage, messenger raised. She was already racking the pump for a third shot as she tracked the path of the impundulu across- BOOM. -the ground as it fell away, never to fly again. Her stance was rock-solid, even with the train rocking beneath her and the wind whipping her mane around.
“Mjumbe!” I wheezed.
Her head snapped up. “Mpya?” Then she shifted her stance to aim the messenger-
Yote collapsed on top of me; messengers weren’t accurate enough to hit her without also hitting me. She bit down my mane and yanked me upwards. A fetlock knife was pressed to my throat before I could do anything. “Gun! Down!” she shrieked nervously rather than yelled authoritatively.
But Mjumbe kept aiming. She shifted her hooves nervously and her ears and tail were constantly flicking in ways that couldn’t be attributed to the wind, but she kept aiming. Perhaps she could’ve hit Yote if she’d had a thunderer. But she didn’t, so she couldn’t.
“Shoot!” I yelled. Yote pressed the knife against my throat hard enough to draw blood. She was probably less than a line away from nicking an artery or vein. So if I was going to be dead anyway-
Mjumbe didn’t shoot. The train rocked beneath us.
“Back off!” screamed Yote. “I’ll kill her!”
Mjumbe didn’t back off. The wind slammed against us.
In hindsight, it was almost comical: a standoff, me with a knife to my throat by my captor, Mjumbe aiming a gun at us, on top of a speeding train… and no one was doing anything.
“You have five seconds!” Yote pressed harder. More blood. “Five!”
Mjumbe didn’t flinch.
“Four!”
“Shoot!” I yelled.
“Three!”
Mjumbe’s ears twitched.
“Two!” Blood was flowing more freely.
Mjumbe dropped.
Behind her, Yaitali already had her eye to the scope.
BANG.
A bullet whizzed past me, grazing my cheek, gone before I could even flinch. I heard something crunch behind me; Yote went limp as the back of my head was splattered with something warm and wet. I collapsed to all four legs on the roof, breathing slowly, waiting for something to happen. Nothing did.
Nothing bad, anyway. Yaitali limp-galloped to me, wincing as she put weight on her bad leg. Soon, she was right in front of me, dancing from hoof to hoof like a worried mother. “Mpya,” she asked, not quite screaming to be heard over the wind, “are you okay? Please tell me I didn’t hurt you, I didn’t mean to scare you, but-”
I blinked. Was I in shock? Maybe. “I’m fine,” I said as loudly as I could manage. My neck would’ve hurt if adrenaline had let the pain through. I placed a hoof to my cheek. Still bleeding, but not badly. “I think it happened too fast for me to be scared.” I felt my neck; bleeding worse than my cheek, but not so much that I’d fall unconscious in a moment. I tried stemming the flow.
I think Yaitali laughed; I couldn’t hear it. I turned around, cringed at Yote’s body, and somehow found it in me to pull off the dog tags around what had been her neck. I quickly tugged Yaitali forward and back to the carriage ladder.
Even with the hole in the roof, the sound inside the coach was much more bearable. Awis was cleaning things up like she was a dutiful butler rather than a high-ranking courier, moving bodies and wreckage. She looked up as the three of us entered the car. “How badly were you all hurt?” she asked.
“Just me.” My voice was still a little hoarse. “And not bad.”
Awis insisted on taking a look at me anyway and soon had my cuts bandaged up. Yaitali was fine, aside from the shoulder shot she already had, and Mjumbe mostly had splinters. For a moment, we sat there, unspeaking in the Now what? post-action confusion. We all glanced around at each other, at the wreckage we were sitting in, at ourselves. As my adrenaline bled out, I began to ache.
Then Awis stood up. “I’ll let the engineers know that the danger has passed.” She unlocked the safe car and was gone.
That seemed to jar Mjumbe and she turned to me. “Can I see those dog tags?” she asked.
I looked down. The tags were still wrapped around my fetlock; I wordlessly held them out for Mjumbe.
She hmmed and hahed as she flicked through them before shaking her head. “No one I knew,” she said. “Would you like me to hold on to them until we reach Mwamkia?”
“Yes, please.”
I somehow found it in me to glance at Vimba’s body. “Why did she jump down?”
“She chewed through ammo like a locust horde and ran out,” said Mjumbe. “She was content to sit and wait, but when you broke free, I guess she decided to take advantage. You didn’t know her, but this was probably how she wanted to die, given the choice.”
“Still a shame.”
“Yeah.”
The wind howled. I hadn’t known Damu and Vimba long enough to be sad that they’d died, not the same way I’d been sad when Bibi joined our ancestors. But they were zebras, teammates, and they’d been killed. I could grieve that much, at least.
Yaitali stood up. “This place is like a slaughterhouse,” she said. “I think we should be cleaning house.”
I snorted. “Homophones? Bad form. For shame.”
She shrugged. “The stress is throwing off my game.”
“…Okay, that one was good.”
We didn’t throw the bandit corpses overboard, just in case; Mjumbe even got Yote’s body from the roof. We still dumped them in a pile at the back of the train. Damu and Vimba were laid out, covered in sheets. The coach was still shot up, but at least there weren’t any bodies.
Awis returned and fell into conversation with Mjumbe about… something. I didn’t bother keeping track of it. Instead I said, “Yaitali? I think we’re even on the whole ‘saving lives’ thing.”
Her ear twitched, then she laughed. “Indeed, the scales are balanced, friend! So may your needling finally end.”
“Yep. Definitely. And thank you.”
I glanced into the rear car, twitched at the pile of bodies, and looked back. “Are you going to stay out here a little?” I asked. “Guarding more trains.”
Yaitali nodded. “There could be more of them about,” she said, jerking her head back. “So many trains oft take this route that you have targets every week, all kinds of loot that you could seek. As I fend off such roving bands, my service is in high demand. I think I’ll spend about a year and take what I can get out here.”
“Mind if I tag along? Just in case. Maybe you could use the extra help.”
Yaitali sat up straighter, almost smiling. “Is that truly what you want? I’d love your presence on these jaunts, but earlier you said you felt quite out-of-place upon the veldt.”
“Well… things change.” I swallowed. “I… I still feel a bit weird about coming out here. But after… all this… It’s so familiar that I know it’ll pass. And if you’re going to face more bandits like these, the least you can do is face them with someone familiar watching your back.”
“I’d gladly have you at my side! We both have saved each other’s lives; there’s no one else I would trust more in all Zebrabwe’s guardian corps.” Smiling, Yaitali extended a hoof to me.
I hooked my fetlock around hers and we shook. I realized I was grinning, in spite of everything. Yaitali had thought I could work out here, and proving that to her felt good. I’d been pushed out of my comfort zone as we got further east, but I could at least get pushed through it with a friend.
Just a shame about. Y’know. Damu and Vimba. I could get anxious about it in Mwamkia, with therapists nearby.
When I settled back down, Yaitali poked through the debris for a little while before coming back with a rasimu set. She looked at me expectantly, not needing a single word.
“Eh, why not?” I said. “It’s leagues to Mwamkia and I haven’t won against you in a while.”
