Chapter Sixty-Five - The Not So Great Train Robbery

No art? Just some rando's POV, don't get attached.

***

They could hear the train coming long, long before they saw it. The damned things were loud. Their wheels clacked constantly, a sound which echoed through their forest, and the engine chugged, a sound as unnatural as the machines themselves. 

Randal Treefriend shifted his weight from foot to foot and took a few deep breaths. The time was almost here. 

He raised an arm up, and the signal went out, repeated through bird whistles until the entire crew knew that it was time.

His heart was beating fast in his chest, but he grounded himself by looking around. He had twenty of his best with him, all mid third-tier in combat classes. [Rangers] and [Druids], mostly, though there were a few [Bandits] as well. It was nearing the later evening, the sun well on its way to setting. They had perhaps twenty minutes of light left. 

Already, torches were being lit, leading down dead-end trails. His people all had abilities that would let them see in the dark, the idea was to mislead anyone attempting to chase them through the forest at night.

These woods were no place for the unprepared. They were dangerous. Deadly. Some of the people on that train might find out the hard way that the real world wasn’t like their cushy cities.

Unfortunate, that they had to turn to this. 

The train came around a bend in the distance, cruising along at a decent pace. It was moving into a long, straight passage, one that would hopefully allow the conductors to see that their tracks were blocked.

A tree had been felled, one of the smaller ones, and it was laid across the tracks. It was nonetheless a large tree, and the train would have no choice but to stop. 

A loud squeal screeched out into the woods and the train started to slow.

Obviously, that wasn’t enough. Their goal here was twofold. Earn enough to make the endeavor profitable, and damage the trains. Randal was here for the forest, but about a third of the crew were chasing gold. 

So, at his signal a second layer to the trap was sprung. 

The train had large sails above it. They were mounted on unfolding poles, angled so that they wouldn’t catch the wind as the train moved, but instead they were made of mana-absorbing materials.

At full sail, the train looked like some sort of mechanical lizard monstrosity, with sails deployed atop every car and feeding the magic in the air into the huge engine at the front.

A long chain was pulled taut, set just a foot above the roof of the engine and strapped to trees on either side of the track. 

The train’s sails rammed into the heavy chain and it acted like a garrot wire, snapping the sails apart one after the other sending cloth and steel and wood flying. The chain gave in ten cars in, but it had done the job. Sparks of magical energy flicked around, snapping at the air and Randal imagined that several things had just shorted out in the train, not that he really knew how they worked.

The train managed to slow down enough that when it impacted with the trunk in its path it was moving at a slow log. The engine car rammed into the wood, lifting and then it jumped off of its tracks. Fortunately, the train finally stopped only a dozen paces later, and the unseated car didn’t topple over. 

“Alright, move!” he shouted.

The order carried through across the line, his ‘bandits’ leaping up and into the train. There were a few screams, and people panicking, but his guys knew what to do. These trains mostly carried workers and city folk, they weren’t the sort to have the levels of disposition to put up a fight. 

The engine was one of their first targets. The train’s conductor was ripped out with a yell, then quickly tied up. 

He wanted the man dead, but... no, they couldn’t. There were lines that couldn’t yet be crossed. 

His job was a little different. There was money in making people empty their pockets, sure, but the real money came from a more delicate operation. He stepped into the first passenger car, then paused at the entrance, adjusting his clothes before he took a deep breath and kicked the door in.

A few people yelled. 

“Alright, everyone calm down!” he shouted. “This is a robbery. Forfeit your valuables, drop your weapons, and everyone will be just fine. And don’t think that we can’t tell if you shove your precious jewels into your inventory.” He pulled out his sword and pointed the tip from one person to another. He paused on one of them. 

A Titled. The man was at the bar, and when their eyes met, the Title shook his head.

Randal raised a hand and made a pair of quick gestures. No touching that one. 

He was glad that they had worked out a few signals like that. They needed to know when to avoid some fights. He trusted his guys. They were tough, and having so many third-tiers made them a real threat. Even the guard of a small city would hesitate, but a Titled? 

He moved through the car, scanning people one by one. Mostly nobles, mostly humans, though there were a smattering of elves. He pointed to some of them and made a second gesture. [Lords] and [Ladies] people that looked like they’d fetch a nice price.

He made it to the back, where a group of four eyed him. A [soldier], a [Jester] and [Engineer] and a [Seamstress]? He dismissed them for the moment. Not nobility. The one elf in the group had the look of an easterner to her, so maybe, but it was unlikely. Probably the retinue of one of the others.

At the end of the car, he came around and stood there, watching his men at work. The first step was stealing valuables. Watches, rings, bracelets and jewelry, even a few particularly nice coats. They took a perverse pleasure in making the noble lords give the coats off their backs. He had some strict rules about not stripping the ladies of anything but their valuables. 

Not so much because he was a decent man, but because it would cause more trouble when it got out. People were weird like that. Take a man’s life and it’s cruel, but understandable. Grope a noble-lady and that was crossing a line into a sort of villainy most foul. 

That only counted for the noble ladies, however. The second phase started, and some of the nobles were made to walk out at crossbow point.

Then some [Maid] made a fuss, tugging at the sleeve of one of his men.

Ah, time to make an example. It was best done with a commoner rather than someone they could ransom. 

“Let master go!” the woman said. She wasn’t even a particularly nice one, some upper middle-aged bint.

His boy shoved her back, then glanced at him. He made a quick sign.

“Come here,” the man said. He grabbed her, taking a knife out and holding it to her throat. “Look’ master’ at what happens when you don’t listen, goes for the rest of you too.”

“Unhand her.”

The voice snapped through the car. Alone it wouldn’t have registered. People were muttering, crying, making noise.

What made it stand out was the wave of magic that followed it. Potent. Dangerous. It was magic ready to form into a spell, the kind of thing that happened when a powerful mage was on the brink of casting something powerful.

The woman that has spoken rose gracefully from her seat. The [seamstress]? Though, now that he looked... Her job had changed. [Swordmaster], at level 75.

Dammit. 

“Unhand the maid,” she demanded.

“You think we take orders from you?” the man asked.

“If you’re going to make an example of someone, kill one of the nobles, but do not harm the maid.”

The words took a moment to register, and Randal wasn’t quite sure he understood.

“You’d... rather we kill one of the nobles?” he asked.

“Evidently. They don’t matter. But do not harm the [Maids]. They are under my protection.”

“Hey now, how about you--” Randal began. He gestured at her with his sword. 

He didn’t expect her to grab it by the middle, or for her strength to be so that he couldn’t pull it free from her grasp. Then she balled her hand into a fist, and the watched as the end of his blade crumpled like it was made of paper.

“Unhand the [Maid],” she said calmly. “Or you die.”

Randal was about to order his man to do just that, then the Titled at the bar spoke up. “You’re making a big fuss over a maid, Swordmaster,” he said.

“And you’re making no fuss at all, coward,” she replied.

The Titled stiffened.

She was turning her gaze back to the man who held the maid when that man did the last stupid thing he’d ever do. “I ain’t taking orders from no hag,” he said. He brought the knife around, fully intending to slice the [Maids] throat open.

The [Swordmaster] was standing next to him.

There was a magical shield up, a thin, glowing barrier that protected the maid.

His man exploded. Everything from the shoulder of the arm holding the knife to his feet was ripped apart, as though it had been pushed through a meatgrinder at terminal velocity. Bits of bone and meat splattered across the cab.

People screamed, but those same screams were muffled by the horror of what had happened. 

The [Swordmaster] casually slid her sword away, then she took the man’s remaining arm and tossed it onto the meat slurry on the floor before she turned to the maid. “Are you well? No, no, don’t cry. It’s unsightly for a maid to cry. Here, take my handkerchief. That’s right, you’ll be just fine. How about you go back and prepare yourself a nice warm cup of tea? That’ll settle your nerves.”

Randle felt like maybe he needed to settle his own nerves.

***