Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #13 April 2015 | Page 13

ment lights to illuminate the snow beside the track
and she peered out across a lonely landscape of low
treeless hills.
The door slid open, Poul returned. ‘there’s a snow
drift blocking the track. It’s too deep for the plough,
we’ll have to dig through.”
“How long?” She wanted to keep moving.
He reached for his fawn woollen coat, ‘the soldiers
are already out there. Captain Higgins has called for
volunteers. I said I’d help.”
She barely knew him but all at once she wanted him
to stay. He wasn’t weak, of course not, but other men
were stronger, with better clothes. Her red Angora
scarf hung on her own side of the door, with her furtrimmed grey cloak and hat. “Here,” Chloe looped her
scarf round his neck. “Be careful.”
“It’s only snow,” he said jauntily, “And thank you.”
#
During the morning the sky cleared to a frigid pale
blue. Towards noon Chloe put on her cloak, hat and
gloves and descended the steps onto the creaking
snow. The air was bitterly cold. Other passengers
stretched their legs or shared a hip flask.
The single track ran along the base of a low ridge,
wind blowing across the open ground had drifted
snow against the base of the slope. Chloe lifted the
hem of her cloak and walked towards the great engine at the front of the train. Standing on the terminus
platform, Ice Maiden, in its silver and blue livery had
seemed huge and sleek. Here on the ground beside the
track she was enormous, her towering bulk like a force
of nature. Heat still radiated from the great boiler,
refrozen snow melt hung in glassy stalactites from the
running plate and buffers. The great steel wheels were
taller than Chloe, the pistons and armatures bright, the
cylindrical streamlined boiler and furnace higher than
a house. It seemed impossible that mere snow could
halt such a vast machine.

Ahead of the engine, handsome young Captain Higgins directed his soldiers and volunteer passengers
with energy and flair. Chloe looked carefully but could
not see Poul. Then she saw a flash of red, her scarf.
There he was, to the left of the line, ordering a work
gang of his own.
Chloe sensed movement up on the footplate. ‘Tea,
Miss?” a deep voice rumbled. She looked up to see
the stoker, six and a half feet tall with a great curling
red beard, a grimy dark blue boiler suit stretched over
his barrel chest. His teeth flashed white as he smiled.
“We’ve just had a brew.”
‘Thank you.”
The stoker swung down one handed from the brass
hand rail, pulled off a glove and handed Chloe an
enamel mug by the rim.
“Mind the coal dust, miss, it gets everywhere.”
The driver joined them, a wiry older man with a shortbilled canvas cap on his head, a knotted red kerchief
round his neck.
Chloe sipped the hot and very sweet tea and watched
the diggers. “How much longer, do you think?”
“Half an hour, miss. They’re just clearing off the top,
the plough will shift the rest.”
Mist from the drivers breath passed over Chloe’s head.
She laughed and blew from her own mouth. “We’re all
steam engines today.”
To the right the ridge rose a hundred feet, on the left
flat hills rolled away to a smoky violet horizon. The
scrape of the shovels, the crump of shovelled snow
and slow hiss of steam were the only sounds in the
enormous unmoving landscape.
Chloe shivered. “When will we catch up with Northwind?”
The driver and stoker exchanged a look. “Nobody
knows how far this line runs,” the driver said. “The

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