The Book of Koli (Rampart Trilogy #1) - M. R. Carey Page 0,154

from me pushing it, so I tried something else. I already seen that the butt was built like a regular barrel, with iron hoops holding in the wooden staves. I worked the end of the pole I was holding under the topmost hoop, and I shoved as hard as I could. The band bent, buckled and finally broke away clean where I was pressing on it. The staves sprung out, free at the top though they was still held at the middle and bottom. Oil poured through the spaces that was opened between them.

I scrambled back hasty. Ursala waited until I was clear, then snatched up the one lantern we had kept and flung it. It landed in the spreading puddle of oil, which went up like nothing you have ever seen.

The people retreated as quick as they could in front of the wave of fire, and I was glad to see it didn’t catch none of them, except for one man who got splashed on his legs and fell to the ground, rolling and shrieking. But the people wasn’t what we was aiming for. We was aiming for the train. I had broke the hoop on the side closest to it, and now the fire run up to it and under it and all around it.

I hoped it would catch straightway. It didn’t, but there was yells and screams, loud enough so we could hear them over Monono’s alarm, as the wall of fire climbed up the side of it and licked at the windows. The people that was running towards us stopped and run for the train instead. Then there was kind of a flowering of light from one end of the train that come with a noise I could only just hear, like soft cloth tearing, and fire filled the inside quicker than you could clap your hands. It was not the oil that done that, I think, but something else that was stored inside the train that took fire from the heat.

We had done all we could to make confusion and mischief. Now we turned and run.

This was either the cleverest part of the plan or the stupidest. If we had run for the wicker fence and the door in it, we would of had to go through all of Senlas’s people. Finding that door in the dark would of been hard enough even if we wasn’t running for our lives with everyone’s hand against us.

So we didn’t do it. We run into the tunnel instead. Away from the light, into the solid darkness that didn’t seem to have no end.

The alarm stopped. The sudden silence, though it don’t make no sense to say it, was as loud as thunder after the lightning lit down right beside you.

51

Ursala had said to stay close to the wall. I done that, putting out one hand so I could feel my way. She also said to walk, but I run flat out at first. A panic filled me, and I didn’t have no choice. I might of kept running for ever except there was some water there, a deep puddle of it that I didn’t see but charged right into. It slowed me down enough so I got some control over myself.

“Ursala!” I whispered. I had lost all sense of where I was in the deep dark, and didn’t have no idea if she had stayed with me.

“She’s right behind you, Koli,” Monono said. “On your left.” I turned to look, and right away I wished I hadn’t, for I seen something back in the cave that isn’t never going to get washed out of my mind.

We thought our setting the train alight would stop Senlas’s people from following us. They would have to stop first and put out the fire since the train was the chariot their messianic meant to ride into the world that was lost as soon as he got round to finding it again.

But they was not putting out the fire. They was jumping on board the train. Scrambling each over other, pushing and shoving and fighting to get theirselves to the front and up through the doors, into that great big white-hot blaze inside.

I slowed and stopped, not able to move no further for the horror of it and the disbelieving. I could not make no sense of it. Then Ursala run into me, and near to knocked me down. She give a yell, and her hand brushed past me as she thrust with