The Emperor's Railroad: A Tale of the Dreaming Cities - Softcover

Haley, Guy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0765389843 ISBN 13: 9780765389848

Verlag: Tor.com, 2016

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Guy Haley

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

The Emperor's Railroad

A Tale of the Dreaming Cities

By Guy Haley, Lee Harris

Tom Doherty Associates

Copyright © 2016 Guy Haley
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-7653-8984-8

Contents

Title Page, 
Copyright Notice, 
Bridge of the Ancients, 
The Road to Charleston, 
The Emperor's Railroad, 
Charleston, 
The Road to Winfort, 
New Karlsville, 
A Knight of Atlantis, 
Quinn's Gun, 
Blood Sacrifice, 
Quinn Departs, 
About the Author, 
Also by Guy Haley, 
Copyright Page, 

CHAPTER 1

Bridge of the Ancients

QUINN HAD TWO SWORDS. One for killing the living, and one for killing the dead.

He wore them on top of each other on his left hip. On his right he had a six-gun.

A knight's weapons.

You've probably not seen a knight. There's not been one through these parts for a long time, not since just after Quinn, and that was fifty years back. Back then I'd never seen one neither. Truth be told, when we first saw him we weren't right sure if he was what he said he was. There weren't many knights left in those days; most had fallen in the war. Times like these we live in, you wonder at people. A knight's weapons are hard to get hold of if you ain't sanctioned by the Dreaming Cities, but not impossible.

My mom, she had her suspicions. But I knew from the start that he was a good man, I swear.

So this here's the story of how I met Quinn, a knight of the angels. As it happens, it's also the story of how I ended up here in the Winfort, and got involved with a dragon along the way.

First I got to say this. Time goes, it rubs away at your memory sure as the Kanawha River rubs at its banks. Memory moves. The river is still there, but the course is different, do you understand? I'm telling you this story, and I've told it before. Maybe it changes a bit every time I tell it, even when I'm sure that's exactly what happened and it couldn't be no other way. This is a wise thing, pay attention.

It's the way people are. You never been in a heated argument that your recollection is right and that of your friend or brother is wrong? That's how bad people are at remembering truly. The words my mom said to me on our journey that I'm going to tell you, they sure as hell ain't the exact same words she used. Things happened that I forget, things happened that I remember a bit different every time I bring them to mind. Bits get dreamed up to join up the parts I do remember. And I'm getting older. Real old. My mind ain't what it was. I open my eyes and everything is colored gray. I close them and it looks like the past is drenched in gold. The future is ashes, the past is treasure, seems to me, but do you think that's really how it is? I'm not far from dead, is all. When you get where I am, I'm sure the past'll look brighter to you as well.

Memory. Biggest traitor there is.

You get others involved, telling their memories of my memories, well, when I'm gone and you tell this story to someone else, then it'll change some more. That's how memories become stories, and everyone with a lick of sense knows stories ain't the truth.

Saying that, there are some few things that never change, no matter how many times you think on them. Jewels in a box, you take them out from time to time to look at them and they never change. Some things stick in the mind unchanged forever. There were a lot of times like that on our journey.

One of them was seeing Quinn fight the first time on the edge of the Kanawha River, at the Emperor's Railroad bridge. If I close my eyes, I see it clearer than I can see now, like I'm there again and seeing it for the first time.

This is how it is: my mom's got her arms around my neck, like that'd protect me from the dead and they'd not just rip me from her. The sun is warm, but the morning cold, like they get to be in fall. The trees are got up in their finery, yellows, reds, and oranges. A Virginian morning, a late October morning. My mom's heart's beating so hard behind my head. I'm twelve, not long that age and afraid I'll not see thirteen. She is scared. I'm scared. But there's no shame in fear, not at a time like this.

That's what it's like. It's happening in my mind right now.

There was the roar of the rapids downriver, water pouring over the leavings of the Gone Before. The moans of the dead. Quinn's weapons hacking into flesh, meaty and workmanlike, not like I imagined a knight's blade craft should be. Sight, sound; but the smells are the most important. That's when you can tell it's a true memory. I can smell the soap and the light tang of sweat on my mother, the road dirt and the leaf mold from camping in the woods. The weedy smell of the river, heavy and round. The smell at our backs of Quinn's horses. Quinn himself, strong sweat, but clean and sharp, almost like lemons. Leather and iron.

And the stink of the dead. That ripe, rank stink, the shit on their hindquarters, old blood, vomit. All the hidden nastiness of the human body worn on the outside. They're the devil's affront to God.

The railroad bridge wasn't like it is now, with the trains coming over four times a week. This here is still wild country, but it was wilder then. The new bridge is big, but you got to imagine what it was in the Gone Before. In those days it didn't have a deck of wood for the trains, but a wide road of concrete for their miraculous carriages, tens of feet wide, and a road on that so smooth you could roll a marble clear from one end to the other with a little flick of your finger. That had mostly gone into the river by the time I saw it. But the piers stayed sound. That's why the old emperor had chosen it for his railroad, laying a new bridge over the old piers. Back then it was the only way across the Kanawha north of Charleston. Still is.

The dead came out of the trees as we'd come up to it. Eight of them, hop-scrambling towards us, arms out, hands grasping. They don't have no sense; they started moaning as soon as they smelled us, and Quinn had his heavy sword out before they were up the bank. If they'd waited, showed a bit of cunning, we'd have come off a lot worse. But the dead aren't people no more. One lunged up out of the brush, ripping a nasty gash down the shoulder of Quinn's big white horse. Quinn chopped down, spilling its rotten brains on the grass. The others were a ways off, staggering up from the nearer the water.

"Watch the horses," he said. He never shouted, and he was never scared. He slid off his horse — Parsifal it was called — and walked into the dead. He didn't charge, or yell. He walked down to them calmly, then set to cutting them down like he was reaping wheat.

We didn't have no weapons. Simple folks like us are forbidden the likes of what Quinn had, sharp steel and gunpowder. The dead lunged at him, clacking their teeth, raking at him with their fingernails.

These dead ones were hungry. There'd not been many folk up this way since the emperor's fall, what few there were were right here in the Winfort and did not venture as far south as the river.

With nothing to eat, the dead had chewed their own lips off. Their teeth were long and brown. Clotted blood was thick round their chins and on their chests. I hate the teeth the worst, I seen too much ill come from teeth like that. You watch me next mealtime, you'll see I can't be looking at anyone's face, in case they forget their manners and chew with their mouths open. Makes me sick because it makes me think on the unliving.

The dead were naked. When they're long gone over like that...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Tor.com
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0765389843
• ISBN 13: 9780765389848
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 176
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: preigu GmbH & Co. KG; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; Niedersachsen; 49078; Deutschland