didn’t see the dark shape sprinting toward her.
She leaped to the side. Instincts screamed in her ears, and she lifted her blade. She couldn’t see much, but she judged the figure’s height and path and angled her weapon so it had a good chance of deflecting a dagger or sword, should there be an attack.
Even so prepared, the clash of steel surprised her.
Amaranthe reacted instantly, with reflexes honed from hours of training with Sicarius. Before the blades had parted, she grabbed the person’s forearm with her left hand and yanked. Her opponent was lighter than she expected, and Amaranthe pulled the figure off balance. She twisted the person’s wrist while ramming her knee upward, angling for the groin.
But her foe was too quick. Finding the gap between Amaranthe’s thumb and fingers, the person tore the captured arm free even as a thigh came up to block the groin attack.
Amaranthe shifted, trying to get around to her opponent’s back, to wrap her arm around the vulnerable throat. She was only partially successful and caught her assailant by the shoulder instead of the neck. She latched on, gripping with the ferocity of a pit bull, and pulled her short sword back to jab at the kidneys.
The blade met only air. Amaranthe still gripped the shoulder, meaning her opponent had remarkable flexibility. She whipped her short sword toward the person’s side, but it collided with metal in a screech. Her foe twisted to face her, wrenching Amaranthe’s fingers. She was forced to release the shoulder grip and did it with a shove, thinking to put space between her and her attacker, so she could restart the encounter from a neutral position. Surely, Maldynado and Yara had to be running up to help.
Luck favored her, though, or perhaps she could claim greater awareness of the terrain. A startled grunt rose over the noise of the train’s engine, and the figure’s arms flailed. The stairs. The person’s heel must have gone over the edge.
Knowing the agile fighter would recover quickly, Amaranthe pounced. She drove her short sword into flesh. The blade scraped past ribs, angling into the tender flesh of the abdomen.
A cry came, and the person fell away. The woman, Amaranthe corrected, her mind catching up to the fact that the voice had been feminine.
She managed to keep her sword, though it was almost pulled out of her hand when the woman tumbled down the stairs. The falling figure almost crashed into Sergeant Yara who was on her way up, the lantern in one hand, an enforcer-issue short sword in the other.
Despite the gut wound, the injured woman found her feet. She jumped off the stairs, one hand clutched to her abdomen, and tried to bypass Yara and sprint for the door.
Yara raised her sword, but the other woman lifted a bloody hand, and steel glinted. A throwing knife.
“Look out!” Amaranthe barked.
Yara dropped to her belly, flatting herself to the stairs, evading the knife by inches. The blade clattered off the brick wall. Yara’s lantern escaped her grip and landed on the flagstone floor. The flame winked out, and darkness engulfed the shed again.
The fleeing fighter yanked the door open.
Grimly determined, Amaranthe judged the distance and hurled her short sword. They couldn’t let anyone escape and draw attention to the refueling station.
In the darkness, she couldn’t see her sword spinning through the air, but she could tell from the dark figure’s reaction that it struck. The woman collapsed in the doorway.
Amaranthe ran down the stairs, jumping to the floor to bypass Yara, and dragged the woman inside, away from the threshold. She checked the square outside, afraid someone might have heard the fight and would be running to investigate, but nothing stirred nearby. Everyone at the station was probably focused on the train.
The train! Reminded of the need to hurry, Amaranthe shut the door, groped about to find the lantern, and ran for the stairs.
At the last second, she remembered Yara and kept from crashing into her. “Are you injured?”
“I’m fine,” Yara said. “Your warning saved me.”
“Welcome. Hurry, upstairs. We have to get-”
A light flared to life at the top of the stairs. Maldynado stood, wearing a dazed expression as he held his lantern up and squinted down at them. Blood smeared the side of his face.
“Where’s the cursed coal?” a voice called from outside.
There was no time to discuss anything. Amaranthe charged up the remaining steps and grabbed Maldynado’s arm.
“Answer,” she said, figuring a male worker would be more likely than a woman.
“Coming,” Maldynado called, a hint of a slur to the word.
“Bastard’s drunk,” the speaker from the train growled. “Inept civilians.”
“Stand there,” Amaranthe whispered to Maldynado, pushing him toward open double doors on the wall closest to the train. “Give them a wave. Here, let me have your lantern so they can’t see you well.”
“No, no,” Maldynado said, wobbling a little. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.” He braced himself against the doorjamb.
“You can complain later,” Amaranthe said. “Just don’t let them get concerned enough to check in here.”
She hunted about for levers to extend the chute and drop coal into the waiting car below. Bins lined the walls, leaving little room for moving about. Amaranthe weaved past cables attached to a lift system for raising coal to the top level. She was lucky that she hadn’t moved far enough from the stairs to get tangled in the ropes during the fight.
The largest bin in the room connected to the chute. Amaranthe ducked behind it and found her levers. A brass plaque with pictures showed which ones to move to extend and retract the chute and to dump coal. No need for literacy for this job.
She pushed a lever, and gears on the wall rotated, their grinding audible over the idling train. The chute thunked into place. Amaranthe hesitated, not certain if she should push the pouring lever to maximum.
“Take your time, Crisplot,” the complainer from the train yelled. “It’s not like we’re on a schedule here.”
Amaranthe shoved the lever all the way forward. Maybe a landslide would flood out, burying the mouthy man. Nothing happened.
Grumbling, she poked around the front of the bin. Maybe there was some flap she had to lift to enable to flow.
“Am I going to have to come up there?” the complainer hollered. “I’ll see to it that your pay is docked if I do.”
“I’ll check on him,” came Sicarius’s voice from the water tower. He and Basilard must have already extended the hose to refuel the locomotive’s tanks. Good.
Amaranthe found a safety release up front and flipped it. A spring twanged, and a door at the top of the chute slid up. The bin contents stirred and clacked about inside, and coal poured into the train car outside. There. That ought to placate the engineer, or whoever was bellowing.
When Amaranthe came back around the bin, she found Sicarius waiting beside Maldynado.
“We had a slight delay, but we’re fine,” she told him.
“ Fine? ” Maldynado touched his temple. “I don’t think it’s right of you to make general statements like that before a thorough medical examination has been performed on all members of the group.”
“There are two soldiers riding on the locomotive with the engineer and fireman,” Sicarius said. “A corporal is directing coal and water loading.”
“Just one man?” Amaranthe asked.
“Yes.”
“The one yelling?”
“Yes.”
“Trouble maker.”
Sicarius did not deign to respond.
Yara climbed into view, holding a lantern. She stared at Amaranthe.
“Something wrong?” Amaranthe asked.
“That was an assassin,” Yara said.
