the sulphurous fug over the yard. Twenty or so trucks were behind each engine, low-sided and open to the elements, many already crammed with soldiers. There were divisions of foundrymen armed with sledgehammers and wearing thick leather aprons, units of the city guard in enclosing armour, hordes of animals, crews of bobbleheaded sailors, weird blobs and cute robots. Officers, animal, man and otherwise, boarded the few passenger coaches attached to each train. Richards' unit's turn came and they were directed up onto the freight wagons, helping hands grasping and pulling them up, for there were no ladders.
The yard was deafening. Engines coughed and whistled. Trucks clattered and banged. Everybody was shouting. The ground was restless under the tread of the army. Men came down the trains' sides, passing up rations and canteens of water, hallooing as they went. Railway workers followed, slamming up the trucks' sides and locking them with rattling pins. They did not meet the eyes of those who stood within.
With a lusty hoot the first train pulled away in a cloud of steam and smoke. A cheer went up from the men and beasts aboard and they struck up a song. This one contained the vanguard of the army, a forward corps of city lancemen and scouts who stood in their trucks with their thogs, soothing them as they mooed and stamped their six hoofs.
'Look at those poor things,' said Tarquin as the thog cars rumbled by. 'Eyes rolling all over the place. Someone really should do something about that.'
Another train pulled out, long trucks racked with light artillery, its attendant guards and units of the larger animals riding behind. Then the foundrymen. Time passed, and Richards' mind drifted.
His train's departure took him by surprise. His legs ached from standing still for so long, and he started when the engine took up the slack and dragged his train forward inch by squealing inch. A paw took the crook of his elbow, preventing him from falling.
'Steady there, friend!'
Richards looked up into the face of a hare. 'Thanks,' he said. 'I didn't expect that.'
'I know what you mean!' said the hare. 'Exciting, isn't it? Oh, how I have long longed to march to war! Imagine! A hare like me smashing Penumbra's evil forces! I am lame and cannot run.' He patted a crooked leg. 'My brothers and sisters are swift as the wind, and have joined with the scouts. I thought a life of adventure beyond me. But here I am, here I am! The opportunity for glory at last, here I am!'
Several of the other soldiers had faint smiles, half-daring to imagine victory. A forlorn hope; any division with minimal armour and lame hares as part of its set-up probably did not rate highly in strategic planning, thought Richards.
'Yeah,' said Richards. 'Great.'
'Friend! You seem to be uninspired. Think! Here you stand, taking the fight to our enemies, allies at your side. Oh, I shall write a poem about this! Yea, a paean to glory.' With this he scribbled down some notes in a book he produced from a pocket.
'Sorry,' said Richards. 'I've a lot on my mind.'
'Indeed?' said the hare genially, glancing up from his book. 'Pray tell me your troubles. We have a long journey. A burden shared is a burden halved. And it may make a good poem.' The train went into the tunnel, a dark world lit by skirling sparks. Richards exited the tunnel with ears ringing and stinging eyes. The hare was not put off. 'Is it some young lady? Some darling you have left behind?' He waggled his eyebrows. 'Maybe a leveret or two back home in the hedgerow? We all have worries, my friend. But fear not, we are to be victorious! Mr Spink told us. It is assured by the stars themselves. And what has a brave warrior like you to fear? I see from your lion-cloak you already have some skill at arms. Tell me how you vanquished such a ferocious beast. I shall pen you a rhyme to memorialise your deed.'
'I do beg your pardon,' said Tarquin smoothly, his amber eyes rolling open. 'It's not quite the stuff of saga. He had a lot of help.'
'Ah,' said the hare fearfully, 'I see.'
'Now leave us alone,' said the lion, 'I don't like to be reminded of it and your chatter does grate on the nerves. I ate a few poets in my time. They didn't agree with me.'
The hare pounded the truck with his good foot. Quivering, he turned to the others. 'How about a rousing song?' he said nervously. He started to sing, but it fell flat. No one joined in. All of them looked at Richards warily.
'Nice,' he muttered, turning to look out of the truck.
'He was extremely annoying,' said Tarquin, loud enough so all could hear it. 'And I do so hate being annoyed. Almost as much as I hate poets.'
Richards pulled his helmet onto his head. 'You're a great help.'
The train proceeded onto a viaduct leading down from the city. A hundred metres of clear air were between Richards and the ground where the bridge piers rooted themselves in the minedout plateau. The track ran close to the valley that divided Pylon City's domains from the Magic Wood. Dense brush cloaked the chasm to the bottom. The river looked like a ribbon of steel, hammered into perfect loops and laid into a model world.
'Bloody hell, that's a long way down.' Richards was feeling a sensation he thought might be vertigo. He didn't like it much.
'Relax,' purred Tarquin. 'We'll be fine, provided there isn't another earthquake.'
'Oh, thank you,' said Richards. 'Thank you ever so much. That makes me feel so much better.' The viaduct went down in a long curve, bringing them closer to the valley edge until it straightened out as the track hit the ground. The railway ran on the very edge of the canyon, but if Richards looked to the front of the train or off to the west up to the moors, he could pretend it wasn't there.
The men and animals of the train made themselves comfortable, sitting on the sides of their trucks or on their knapsacks. Conversations started up.
By the time they had left Pylon City it had been past midday, and the landscape they travelled through was one of afternoon. Bright light diffused through clouds like wire wool, a glare that picked out every pockmark on the plateau. Slagheaps and open pits ringed with cranes rushed by. Spurs to the railway ran to quarries cut into the moor, an industrial moonscape, where only tufts of colourless grass, lank and sparse as hag's hair, thrived.
'It is horrible, is it not?' said the hare.
'It is,' agreed Richards, tapping his fingers on the truck. The hare glanced concernedly at the lion.
'Don't worry about him. He's mostly all mouth now. The most biting thing about him is his wit, and that's not very sharp.'
Tarquin bared his teeth.
'It appears we are heading south, off the plateau,' said the hare, 'to bring Lord Penumbra to battle where the land slopes into the Broken Lands, a fine defensible position. It will prevent any advance by Penumbra up The Rift, and ensure that Jotenlend, the source of much of Pylon City's food, is protected.'
'Sounds good.'
'Ah, you know a little military theory?' asked the hare eagerly.
'No, not really,' admitted Richards. There was so much he did not know while the Grid was denied to him. 'My partner does all that.'
'Well,' said the hare, 'this is of course only my supposition, but it is the most sensible course of action. I have studied many of the great generals of Pylon City and the long war poems,' it said shyly.
'Odd hobby for a hare,' said Richards.
'Many of my brothers and sisters revel in the wild chase and the feel of the wind in their whiskers, but this pleasure is denied me. So I developed interests outside of the ordinary.' It paused. 'Like poetry!' It looked at Richards expectantly with that 'ask me to read you one of my poems' type expression that poets get. Richards stared blankly back at him. The hare became bashful and turned away.
The ruined world changed piece by piece to a landscape of scrubby fields and the clouds cleared. The train passed close by rough dwellings, hugely tall with doors three times bigger than a man, their walls made of enormous boulders. Of the Jotens, there was no sign.
The sun set. The sky above the train remained a pure lightblue for a time, and the men gambled at knucklebones until it was dark.
Richards tried as best he could to get comfortable. He watched the alien sky. Away from the glare of Pylon City's sodium lamps, the stars twinkled brightly, competing with the sparks the train pumped into the night with its smoke.
