Chapter 1.5 - All

Ruby waves Nathaniel off, "I have her sir, no point in your suit getting bloody as well, perhaps those boulders over there will provide some shelter for us."

Nathaniel and Harris glance in that direction and for an instant they think they can see a the figure of a man waving them over and then he disappears behind a large rock.

" Vous êtes si attentionné, magnifique.""It’s my duty Miss, it’s who I am."

There’s a single rifle rapport from the area where the train came from above you, followed by a man yelling.
Napoleon fires his rifle, there’s a loud ringing noise as the round ricochets off something metallic and the search light remains lit, the light quickly begins to track towards his current position. He could flee down slope towards the wreckage, towards the tunnel the train was passing through when the attack began or continue to hide behind the rock he’s crouching behind.

He does here a very loud *clack* from somewhere above him, from personal experience it sounds like the breach either opening or closing on an artillery piece. As Donovan scrambles away from the middle of the wreck he spots three, no four people headed in the direction of a large group of very big boulders further up stream. Two appear to be supporting a third, at least one is a woman, he can see her dress.

A shot rings out from higher up the canyon walls, and Donovan glances over his shoulder as one of the searchlights begins to move in that direction.

Scrambling across the bottom of the of the canyon, Harris. Nathaniel, Ruby and the French woman arrive at the boulders just before first cannon shot rings out followed rapidly by three more. The booming rapport of the cannons followed but the explosions bounces off the tight stone walls seeming to come from everywhere all at once. A small hand reaches out of a thin fissure in the canyon wall.

"This way," a woman says loud enough to be heard above the cacophonous echoes of the cannons, "there’s an opening just back here."

She steps into view, "Quickly now, are there any more of you?"

Nathaniel recognizes her as the woman the bandit chose to rob his fellow passengers.

***

Donovan scrambles through the wreckage and rubble as the world behind him begins to explode. He makes it to the boulders in time to see a woman in a dirty yellow dress showing a man in a black suit into a small fissure in the canyon wall. Pebbles and rock fragments rain down from above as she looks at him covering her head, "Are you the last of them?"

One of shells ricochets off something metallic in the wreck and detonates over head. The woman screams and jumps back into the fissure.


***

Napoleon scrambles along the twisted length of the railway tracks towards the tunnel, there’s a massive crater just before the tunnel. Its glowing bowl smokes and hisses and seems smooth as water, but he doesn’t have time to admire the devastation as he hears the cannons on the airship open up and begin pounding the wreckage just as he darts into the darkness of the tunnel.

Rapid fire, smaller bore by the sound of if, probably a Hotchkiss he thinks.

The tunnels not long, 100 metres at best, he might be able to get through and scramble down the far side, might be enough cover to where he saw those other people fleeing to. He’ll have to pass through first, see what’s on the other side.

Napoleon runs about 20 yards into the tunnel, the cannons continue to fire at the wreckage and the area behind him but short of some miraculous ricochet there's no way a round could possibly get to him. Shrapnel maybe if they dropped a round right at the entrance to the tunnel. He continues to move forward and eventually ends up at the far end of the tunnel. The cannons continue to rain destruction down upon the wreck, at a much slower rate than before.

From this point he can't see the airship or the wreck but he can see the light from the fires and the collection of boulders on the far side of the canyon the survivors ran to. There's a narrow gully filled with loose rocks leading down from the tracks to the canyon floor he should be able to head down easily and the noise of the shelling will give him cover for any noise he makes.

***
The narrow opening in the canyon wall is smooth and sinuous, clearly it's a water channel. It proceeds in and up a few dozen feet before the opening up into a large round chamber perhaps twenty feet across, there's a small opening in the ceiling and another one in the wall just to his right. The floor of the chamber is covered with fine sand, rounded cobbles and a handful of large flat slabs of stone. There's a man in this room, a very large man, he's somewhat rough looking, with a well trimmed salt and pepper beard, powerful arms and a broad chest.

"Jesus Christ," He says looking at Harris and the wounded French woman, "you can put yer irons down fella, I ain't a threat and this ain't the time nor the place to cause a ruckus. Dreadful sorry about the cussin' ladies." He nods at Nathaniel when he comes in, "Howdy. Miss Kolva ... Miss Helen! There anymore stragglers or this the last of them?" He nods to Ruby when she comes in tipping his dented bowler slightly, "Ma'am."

The blonde woman in the yellow dress yells back up the passage, "There's one coming more Mr. Calahan!"

Ruby looks at Harris, "I do not sir, I must have fainted when the wreck happened and woke up atop her. It's all my fault sir, I should have held her hand or something so we didn't not get separated."

Nathaniel's pretty sure this fellow is the big bandit who picked the woman in the yellow dress out front to assist him.
"Put her on that flat rock over there," the large man says to Harris and Ruby, "oh my, that ain't pretty Miss, ain't pretty at all."

Nathaniel kneels down beside her to take a better look at the wound, there's a curved clean piece of copper jammed through the boning of her corset and then into the woman herself an inch or two below her right breast. From the angle it looks as though the corset took the brunt of the initial impact and then the fragment got wedged between her ribs.

The large man kneels next to Nathaniel as the woman in the yellow dress squeezes into the chamber followed by Donovan.
"We can look once the shelling ends," the woman says taking a long deep breath before pushing her hair back behind her ears and smoothing her dress out. Despite her trembling hands she strikes Donovan as remarkably calm.

"I have not seen her, Mr. Donovan, not since the accident." Ruby replies.

"Oh my," the blonde woman says looking at the barely conscious French woman, "you may want to be careful with that."

Ruby looks over at the Nathaniel, the big man and the French woman her eyes are compassionate and filled with sorrow, "Oh I am sorry about that Miss, oh, oh dear."

The Frenchwoman looks up at Ruby offers up a weak smile, "Ce n'est que de l'argent ma chèrie."

"You need to stop saying that Miss."

"Je meurs ma chère, pardonne-moi."

"Can she speak anything other than French?" The large man asks.

"She understands English just fine Buford, Mr. Calahan, I'm pretty sure she can speak it," the blonde woman looks directly at the Frenchwoman and raises an eyebrow, "N'ai-je pas raison, ma chérie?"

The Frenchwoman smiles she moves her hands towards the shard and then pulls them back just before touching it, "But it is such an ugly language, no?"

Scrambling down the slope Napoleon hits the bottom just as the barrage comes to an end. There wreckage is deathly quite and as he makes his way across the canyon floor towards the boulders he witnesses a dozen or more troops drop down from the airship on lines.