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Valentine covered his ears and felt the weight of Troust come down on the back of his head. The satchel charges went off in twin booms that must have echoed in Georgia, and Valentine felt the world momentarily give way.
Surf let him up, the weird underwatery feel of the explosions' concussion sapping his strength and wits. A Quisling in a torn green uniform was at the barricade, staggering as he tried to climb over, and suddenly Valentine's backup pistol was in his hand and he shot, realizing as the bullets hit that he was killing a man trying to surrender.
More bursts of fire came from the darkness down the track. The gunfire seemed wrong.
Those titanic blasts should have been an operatic blast at the climax of the fight, not punctuation in the middle of a long, deadly symphony. His flare hung on a tree downslope, sputtering as its light died.
More whistles, low and muted to his outraged ears. Valentine saw wounded men being carried back.
Had to do something to break up the attack.
"Empty the caboose," he told Troust. "Fall back to the rock pile as soon as the cars start moving."
Valentine crept along the tracks, sheltering from the wild high bullets in the wheels, Bee trailing him like a gigantic dog. He opened each boxcar door about halfway. A goat jumped out. The other livestock looked stupidly at him, jumping and quivering at each shot.
He climbed into the engineer's cab, told the soldier there to start the train backward, and hurried to the back door.
He found Crow still posted, moving the barrel of his rifle at every sound.
"I want you to uncouple as soon as the cars have a little momentum."
"While the cars are moving?" Crow asked.
"Yes."
The cars bumped into motion, their squeals curiously innocent after the noise of combat.
Valentine gauged the train's speed.
"Now, Crow. Release!" Valentine shouted down from the engine.
Crow waited until the tension came off the coupling, then pulled it. Pressure cables for the car brakes hissed as the valves closed.
Valentine extended a hand and helped pull him back into the engine as the man working the controls applied the brakes. The rest of the cars pulled away, picking up speed on the slope.
"You did well, there," Valentine told Crow as the latter wiped his greasy hands on a rag.
The sheep and goats didn't like the motion and began to leap from the train. First a few goats, and then the sheep, all in a rush. Some went head over heels as they came off in a mass, a waterfall of wool and tufted hair. The goats' instinct was to head for high ground, and the more nimble goats made the escape up the hillside first. The sheep stuck together in bawling clumps.
Crow slipped and Valentine lunged, caching his arm. Crow's toes skipped on the tracks, sending up pebbles and dust. The train wasn't moving that fast, but the engine's tonnage could maim or kill even at a crawl. Valentine hoisted him into the engine compartment as the gunner opened up on some unknown target. Tracers zipped off into the darkness, zipping like hornets with meteor tails toward an enemy.
"Back up toward the rock pile," Valentine told the engineer, who applied brakes and sent the engine in the other direction. The gun overhead chattered again and Valentine heard casings clink into the canvas bags that prevented the spent shells from rolling around underfoot in the control cabin. Then, to the men at either side, he yelled, "Fall back! Fall back up the tracks."
Bullets rattled off the engine in reply. But the men began to move, NCOs tapping their charges on the shoulder and gesturing.
Valentine watched the spectacle of confused sheep and goats caught in a cross fire. Even experienced soldiers would hesitate to just gun down animals-there wasn't a man among them who didn't sympathize with the poor dumb brutes with little control over their fate, for the obvious reason that soldiers occasionally felt like sheep in that way-and Valentine's company used the confusion to scuttle back behind the rocks blocking the railroad cut.
The rocks were comforting in their thickness and sharp edging. There was good cover for shooting all along the fall; a crenellated wall on a medieval castle wouldn't have been more heartening.
The engineer and Crow leaped for the rocks, jumped over, and took cover, Crow leaving his rifle behind in his panic, the idiot. Valentine picked it up.
He tapped the gunner's leg. "C'mon. Leave it."
The gunner ignored him, emptied the weapon's box, and stood dumbly for a moment, as though waiting for someone to reload the weapon. Then he turned and looked down at Valentine with confused eyes. There was blood running down his face from a wound on his scalp.
"Out, back to the rocks," Valentine shouted, slapping him hard on the ankle.
The gunner finally left the cupola, slithered like a snake out of the battle seat and stirrups, and jumped out.
