The Vorrh

frisky, but Maclish’s hammering on the crate, with the metal base of his whip, had soon subdued the monster’s cavorting. After placing the crate on a flatbed near the passengers’ coach, they loaded the eager, empty men into the train. The keeper gave the signal and they steamed off to be absorbed into the Vorrh.
    As predicted, the train took his wakefulness after twenty minutes. He sank into a dreamless sleep that curdled and fell, amplifying rather than soothing his hangover. Large, abstract masses bumped against him, rubbing at his extremities and dampening his elementals. The train seemed to be crawling at a sluggish pace, and the voice of the crated horror grew louder and louder in his semi-conscious skull.
    He was woken by a jolting stop, and shook his head to try to gather his senses and possessions. His whip was strangled by the vines growing out of the luggage rack, and would not come loose when he tugged at it. He knew this kind of thing happened, but this time he was unprepared; unable to dislodge it, he decided to get a knife from one of the others.
    He put his head out of the window to yell and was shocked to find no platform. The train had not reached its destination, and stood at a standstill in the middle of the forest. Looking down its length, he saw smoke and steam rising from the stationary, panting engine. He called out, expecting one of his men to report information on the hold-up, but nobody came. His headache had intensified and he rubbed the back of his neck before opening the carriage door and jumping down onto the gravel of the track.
    He walked along to the Limboia slave carriage – it was empty. So were the next three. He unbuttoned the flap of his holster as his boots crunched loudly on the stones. His steps and the engine’s puffing heart were the only sounds in the forest; even the birds were hushed. When he came to the flat-bed truck and saw that the crate was open, he pulled out his revolver and looked around warily. Nothing moved, and the trees seemed to have lost their motion, their leaves hanging outside of any breeze or growth.
    ‘Engineer!’ he bellowed towards the back of the train. It felt reassuring to shout such a matter-of-fact word amid the absence and stillness. ‘Engineer!’
    He heard a titter from behind the passenger carriage. He swung round and climbed up onto a flatbed to reach the other side. There was a small clearing at the edge of the forest, as if a straight line had been shaved out, and the Limboia were all there, side by side in a line, looking, he thought, like a ragged, regimental parade, waiting to be inspected. He spat and jumped down to their side, his pistol alert and ready. There was more girlish tittering from the line. With a pounding head and a growing nausea, which he could only put down to the previous motion of the train, he approached them, trying to hold back his rage.
    ‘What the fuck are ye doing out of the train? GET BACK IN!’ he bellowed.
    The tittering stopped and they closed their eyes in a slow, simultaneous movement. Then the breathing started: the same unified breathing that he and Hoffman had heard that first night.
    ‘Stop that! Stop that, RIGHT NOW!’ he yelled.
    The breathing doubled in volume. He was suddenly lost and obviously outnumbered. The Limboia were stationary while their chests moved in unison. The only individual movement came from the centre of the line. There stood the herald, holding something to his chest, stroking it with slow, intense gestures. Maclish made a beeline for him, closing on him, the pistol held level with the man’s face.
    ‘Tell them to get back on the train,’ he demanded, seeing a way to retake control.
    Then he saw what the herald had in his hands. The loose strips of cloth had been peeled away and the near-naked thing rolled in the manipulating hands, its lifeless limbs flopping back and forth with the movements. Maclish wanted to pull the trigger and end this, but he knew it was already over.
    The eyes of the dead, aborted child opened and stared into his. The breathing stopped, and something else rustled between the Limboia. Something was weaving itself between their ranks, rattling their place on the earth with no speed, but a vast momentum. It nudged him like the movement on the train, and he passed out; in a second, every organ in his body had halted, as if they had never moved at all. Every cell gave up in the presence of the Orm. Only his mad eyes flashed in the dead head,