Jonathan slipped back to just behind the coal car and set his lamp on the other side of the coupling so that any guards looking at him would have a much harder time figuring out what he was actually doing, then he pulled the pin.
Well, he tried to, but there was too much load on the car and the thing wouldn’t budge. Rather than make a scene, he collected his light and moved on to the next car. He learned from the rail yard that engines accelerated so slowly because of the weight they were pulling. An engine with nothing attached could actually move quicker than any horse. According to Kaspov some of them could move so fast that they could derail themselves if they weren’t careful.
Jonathan had no intention of moving quite that quickly, but if he could get out of here before a guard caught him and blew his head off with a brand, that would be great. This coupling wasn’t under as much load for whatever reason, and Jonathan was quickly able to disconnect the first three cars from the last five. His heart hammered in his chest as he did it, but as he stepped back and started slowly back towards the front of the train, he didn’t think anyone had noticed what he’d done. It would remain all but invisible until he cranked the throttle wide open, too. Now all he had to do was get the conductor out of the cab and take control of the train.
Jonathan had no idea how he was going to do that. Was he really going to kill a dwarf who’d done nothing wrong, just to escape? The idea seemed monstrous on its face, but after that initial reaction faded, he was left with the cold certainty that it was no less monstrous than everything the dwarves had done to him.
That certainty didn’t make the idea of killing someone who hadn’t done him any wrong any easier, though. The very idea that he was having to make such a terrible decision as he slowly walked to the engine made him feel like he was right back where he started three years ago. This had all started with his older brother telling him it was okay to murder people just because they were just dwarves, and they’d done him some hypothetical, indirect wrong. Wasn’t that the very same argument that Jonathan was making to himself now? That it was okay to kill the conductor because other dwarves had decided that locking him up for years had been the right thing to do according to the law?
The realization stopped Jonathan in his tracks. He was paralyzed by the idea that if he did this, he’d be no better than his brother, or would he?
The dwarves had never wronged Marcus. Not really. He might not have liked the way they’d done business, but they’d never actually hurt him until he’d tried to rob their train. The same wasn’t true for Jonathan. Not only had they stolen years of his life in Khaghrumer and stolen Anda away from him just when he was finally happy, but they’d sent him to a place where the temperatures alone would have already killed him if not for his magic and stubbornness. It was the same place they planned on keeping him until he died.
Jonathan was overwhelmed. He wasn’t smart enough to say when such an act crossed the line from murder to self-defense. He just knew that killing anyone, even for the best of reasons, felt wrong to him. He started walking again anyway, though. He wasn’t entirely sure he could do it, but he was sure that living with the guilt of taking a life or dying in the attempt would feel better than trying to eke out what more day in this sweltering hellhole.
When he reached the engine compartment, he pretended to look around the wheels and the step long enough to put the conductor's mind at ease while he built up the nerve. He almost chickened out several times, but eventually he forced himself to do it, and he knocked on the door.
His first instinct had been to try to rip it open, but at the last minute, Jonathan realized that with a goblin on the loose, it would definitely be locked. In the worst case, trying to open the locked door would cause the dwarf to sound an alarm immediately, but even in the best case it would make him intensely suspicious.
As the conductor slid open the window slide, Jonathan could see that even this much had made the sour dwarf plenty suspicious.
“What do ye want?” the dwarf spat at him. After studying him a moment, Jonathan decided it wasn’t actually suspicion on his face, but frustration. Dwarves had different cues for these sorts of things, and even if one didn’t have a beard, sometimes it could be hard to tell exactly what flavor of annoyed they were.
“Sorry… Sir… Master Dwarf Sir,” Jonathan stumbled over his words as he acted far more clumsy with the stone tongue than he actually was. “I just—-”
“Hey, that’s not bad for a coldblood,” the conductor interrupted with a laugh, giving Jonathan plenty of time to look behind him and make sure that they were alone. “Keep at it, and in another decade or two ye just might have the stone tongue down pat.”
Clearly the dwarf didn’t think that was true, but Jonathan pretended not to notice. “It’s just that… I need… the shroud…it needs to open so for the gobblers, can I check…please.”
The dwarf fought to keep a straight face, and for a little while his frustration was banished by the chance to feel entirely superior to a Man. That was all the justification Marcus would have needed, he realized as his grip tightened on the knife he was holding behind his back.
“The shroud?” The conductor asked, laughing. “There ain't no way that anything under there is alive with the boiler idling like this. Ye can take my word for it—”
“The guards say after this… ummm… you can go… last check,” Jonathan lied.
“Well, why didn’t ye say so, lad,” the dwarf practically yelled at him as he unbolted the door and started to open it. “The sooner we get this over with, the sooner I can get back on schedule.” The conductor came bound out of the car, so quickly he practically knocked Jonathan over in his rush to get to the engine fairing and get it open to confirm no goblin infestation existed.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
As he turned the knobs to open the compartment, Jonathan stood behind the entirely defenseless dwarf. Jonathan hadn’t initially planned to use the dwarf’s frustration at being late against him, but in retrospect it was always the best plan. There would be no better opportunity to deliver a deathblow without a fight than right now.
But he just couldn’t do it.
It simply wasn’t in Jonathan to murder anyone in cold blood, human or dwarf. The best he could manage to do was to pull his knife and point it at the dwarf.
“As ye can see, there’s no…” the dwarf’s words trailed off as he felt the knife poke against his back.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Jonathan started, but the dwarf ignored him, pivoting and taking a swing at the taller opponent. Jonathan was only just able to step back in time.
“Ye just made the worst mistake of your whole miserable life, giant,” the dwarf spat, walking towards Jonathan while he back peddled impotently.
“I just want to… no, need to, but the guards…” Jonathan babbled, making a couple feints with the knife, but the dwarf in front of him could see he didn’t have the stomach for blood.
“Don’t ye worry. I’ll rip your arms off and beat ye with em before the guards ever get involved.” The dwarf charge him then, but only a few steps before he pulled up short as Jonathan blasted a jet of fire at him. He might not be able to use magic directly on dwarves, but they caught on fire as easily as anything else, and beside the train he had an infinite amount of fire to play with.
The dwarf cowered for only a moment, but by the time the flames dissipated, Jonathan was already in the engine cabin and slamming the door shut. By the time the conductor reached the door, Jonathan had locked it and slammed the slides shut on both doors.
“Ye get out here right now and fight me, ye slimy bastard!” the dwarf yelled, but it was too late. There was nothing he could do, and Jonathan ignored him as he focused on orienting himself. It had been months since he’d been inside an engine, and even when he’d been doing it every day, he was still pretty hazy on the details.
A quick check showed the pressure gauges looked good, so he started turning the large wheel in the center that control the flow of steam that made the whole thing work. As soon as he’d turned in three turns, he could feel the engine start to slowly lurch to life, and as soon as he’d turned it five times he heard the first bullet ricochet off the side of the engine.
Just because the doors were metal didn’t mean they were bulletproof. The dwarves in Khaghrumer had been very clear on that distinction, and Jonathan watched with trepidation as first one marble shaped dent appeared in the door, followed by another, and then another. Eventually one would get through he realized, and when it did, it would probably bounce around in this cramped space until it found his flesh.
It wasn’t just the sounds of shooting that had him on edge now. It was the orders being barked as well as the sound of the alarm gong ringing in the distance. Everyone was aware of what he’d done by now. Escape or die were now very clearly the only two options.
He quickly realized that his only choice was to disarm the dwarves that were doing the shooting, so as the engine started to pick up speed, Jonathan reached out and detonated the powder flasks of every dwarf he could reach.
Every weapon went off almost as much as Jonathan reached out clumsily, and he cowered briefly at the cacophony. Then he heard a secondary explosion. One that he didn’t trigger. Not on purpose, at least.
Jonathan turned to the slits between the panels on the window facing the mill depot, and looked back. Suddenly the guards had forgotten about him. There was a fire on the loading dock, next to several large casks. Some dwarves were running toward the flames to try to put them out, and some were running away to try to save their skins.
Neither of them were successful, because seconds later the first barrel exploded in a fireball that sent those closest to it flying.
Jonathan didn’t even have a chance to flinch before that explosion set off the next two. For a few seconds he couldn’t see anything at all besides fire, but he could hear more explosions past the curtain of flame, extending back into the warehouse. Or maybe even the mill itself.
He could feel the heat of the flames even from this distance, and pushed it away as he watched what was happening with a combination of fascination and horror. He hadn't meant to do this, but he knew that it was all his fault. There was no escaping it. Some stray spark, or flash of power had gone farther than he’d meant to and now the whole mill was burning down. Part of him was glad that it was happening, but the rest of him couldn’t help but think of all the prisoners that were going to die that had never done a thing to him.
The train was moving, almost as fast as Jonathan could run, as it approached the tunnel and he first heard the sound of stone cracking. It was a deep rumble that he felt as much as heard, as some part of the cavern not so far from him gave way and hundreds of tons of stone fell to the floor.
Even as fast as it was moving, though, he wasn’t sure he was going to be fast enough to outrun the damage he was leaving in his wake. The engine disappeared inside the tunnel, and Jonathan quickly slid aside the front covers and fully opened the train's glow stone aperture, so he could see what was coming next. He could see dust and pebbles falling from the ceiling as he continued into the dark faster and faster.
The sounds of explosions were dimming with distance, but the sounds of collapse were, if anything, getting closer. The throttle was already all the way open, though, and the pressure gauge was reading close to the red part. There was nothing Jonathan could do. Even adding coal wouldn’t have helped, so he crouched there, praying quietly as the tunnel continued to shake, and he tried to outrun his own destruction.
A few seconds later, the train was rocked hard by a boulder that struck it somewhere behind the engine. The wheels squealed, and a shower of sparks flew up, but the train managed to stay on the tracks a few moments longer, but the next blow slammed the train against the wall with an insane amount of force.
No - not the wall, Jonathan realized as he was thrown against the left wall. That was the ground. The collapse had toppled the train on its side like a toy, and any moment he would be buried alive along with all the unfortunate dwarves he’d just killed.
He could accept that, he decided as he was slammed against the steel door hard enough to see stars. The ground continue to shake as he struggled to remain conscious from the blow.
It was a loosing struggle, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was that if he was going to die, he would die free.