Still chuckling, he gingerly took one step out onto the top of the intercarriage articulation, and then another, balancing as he crossed back to car three to finish me off.
Another two steps, and he would be within stabbing range.
I decided which of my handholds was most secure and let go with the other, fumbling round behind myself.
Etrik came off the articulation, took the last step, his sword raised to rip at me, and found himself looking down the barrel of my autopistol.
It was contrary to all the noble rules of the Ewl Wyla Scryi to start a sword duel and finish it with a gun. The Carthean masters would have been ashamed of me. But I wasn't feeling particularly noble by then.
I fired just once. The shot hit him in the sternum and slammed him backwards. With a cheated look on his face, Etrik disappeared off the far side of the roof.
I was exhausted, and drained from the extreme cold, by the time I got back inside the car. The upper hallway was full of people. Stewards were ushering terrified and distraught passengers into other cars. Master personnel were gazing in perplexed dismay at the fight damage and the trio of Ves-sorine corpses. Eleena was arguing heatedly with one of the master crewmen.
Everyone looked round and someone screamed as I slithered back in through the window. I must have looked a sight: caked in frost and frozen blood from the wounds to my arm and chin.
Crezia and Aemos pushed through the onlookers and reached my side.
'I'm alright/
'Let me look at that… Golden Throne!' gasped Crezia, twisting my head to study the gash in my chin.
'Don't fuss.'
'You need-'
'Now's not the time. Is Medea all right?'
Yes,' said Aemos.
'So you're all unscathed?'
'You're wounded enough for all of us/ Crezia said.
'I've had worse/1 said.
'He has/ agreed Aemos. 'He's had worse/
Eleena was still shouting at the train master, who was shouting right back at her. He was a tall, distinguished man in an ornate, brocaded version of the Trans-Continental uniform topped with a Navy-style cap. Clearly very old, his eyes, nose and ears had been replaced with aug-metic implants: primitive, functional devices finished in boiler-metal black that probably had been handcrafted for him by the locomotive's devoted engineers. Even his teeth, framed by a spectacular white tile beard, were cast iron. His name was Alivander Suko, and I later discovered that he had been master of the Trans-Atenate Express for three hundred and seventy-eight years. He looked like a bearded locomotive in human form.