When he had been a sixteen-year-old long gunner recruit, a marksmanship instructor had given him the most important bit of advice of his entire life. The bullet wanted to hit the target. That was its destiny. It was the shooter’s weakness that stood in its way.
Shifting to keep the circulation flowing to his extremities, he checked the pass again. The target would have to come through it eventually. He was certain that approaching the isolated and fortified cabin of a paranoid master rifleman would have been a stupid move. Staking out this position was the surer, but far more uncomfortable, method to get a shot. In most of western Immoren this would already be considered a harsh winter, but to the rugged Kossites of the Scarsfell, the real snows hadn’t begun falling yet. The target was a hunter who would be looking for game as long as possible in anticipation of the long winter, and when he did, he would pass through here, ready for the hunt.
Bailoch knew the feeling well.
Sivasha Padorin stood next to the roaring fireplace, staring into the flames. Bailoch’s earlier assumption had been correct. She was young, twenty at the most, and more than likely too inexperienced for this line of work. He’d been informed that her father and older brothers had recently been murdered, casualties in the constant struggle between the factions of the Khadoran underworld. The political nuances were difficult for a foreigner to grasp, but it was a constant source of work. Surely it had been a surprise when the family business had fallen on her.
Bailoch doubted she would survive long in the cutthroat butchery that passed for kayazy business, but until then, her gold would spend as well as any other’s.
They were alone inside one of the dozens of anonymous properties she owned around the city. Her bodyguards waited outside. That told Bailoch this was something she wished dealt with as discreetly as possible.
“Your target is a horrible man. He used to work for my father. We were very close once, but I want him dead for what he did to my family. He is a beast, a killer.” She was slight, but he heard steel in her voice. “A year ago he betrayed my family. My father trusted this man, treated him like a brother. Yet he turned on us and gave our most vital secrets to competitors. My brother was murdered because of him. For such treachery there can be no—”
Bailoch held up one hand. “You don’t need to explain yourself to me.”
She looked up from the fire, surprised. “You do not care what evil he has done?”
“The bullet doesn’t care. Why should I?”
Sivasha stopped. He had put her off balance. It was apparent she had already thought through what she was going to say to her hired assassin, as if she needed to justify her decision. “Very well. His name is Malko Varnke.”
“You’ve got local hires. Why do you need me?”
“You are not the first I have hired for this work; he has killed all I’ve sent before. Varnke is a Kossite, winter-born in the deepest wilds of Vardenska, where the tribes still live by the old ways. He is one with the woods, as alert as the wolves he used to hunt for a living. Since he has wronged my family he has been living in the forest, where no one can catch him unawares. And he is one of the finest shots in the Motherland.”
“It won’t be a problem.”
She paused for a long time. “He is Gifted. I do not know the particulars, as they were a guarded secret, but my father said he once served with the Greylords Covenant.”
An arcanist? Magic had a way of making jobs complicated. “My fee just went up.”
“Whatever is necessary. I cannot rest until I know Malko Varnke is dead.”
For some reason he found himself taking pity on the girl, a rare thing indeed. “A word of advice: I’ve been doing this a long time. People die. Sometimes you’re the one to kill them. Sometimes you need somebody else to do it for you. No shame in that. You don’t need to share your reasons. Giving the order is the same as pulling the trigger. It just takes will.”
“I have the will!” she snapped.
Perhaps she’d last longer than he’d first thought. “Good. That and ten thousand gold koltinas will put this man in the ground.”
The thick furs he’d bought kept his body heat trapped. He’d also purchased a compact device from an alchemist in Korsk that produced a small measure of warmth for a few hours each time its capacitor was wound. It kept his extremities from freezing off during the nights. The device had cost quite a bit, but it was worth it: Frostbite in his trigger finger could ruin everything.
He allowed himself sleep in short naps. It was a risk he had to take, as there was no one to share a watch and no way of knowing when the target would try to cross the pass. The wolves and bears of the Scarsfell would more than likely avoid the smell of man waste and gun oil. There were other, far more dangerous and unnatural predators in these woods, but they were rare, and he was a light sleeper.
In his dreams, Bailoch saw ballistic calculations, wind speed, and trajectories, but never the faces of the hundreds he’d killed.
The cold grew deepest a few hours before dawn. When he raised his head and the bear skin lifted, icy air shocked him fully awake. Bailoch immediately scanned the snow below, looking for any fresh disturbances in the perfect white expanse. The snow was so reflective that even a bit of moonlight enabled him to see that there was nothing larger than a few animal tracks. It was exactly as he remembered it, and he had memorized every detail of this terrain.
He shook a fresh inch of snow from atop the furs. The shivering came next. It would pass. Bailoch wasn’t worried about uncontrollable shaking causing him to miss. Only rookies tried to hold perfectly still when shooting. Everyone shook to some degree anyway; breathing, muscle tremors, even a heartbeat could cause the sights to move. Making a difficult shot was all about knowing your body’s rhythms and firing at the correct time. An experienced rifleman didn’t try and hold his breath—that only increased the tremors. The key was to shoot on the respiratory pause. Inhale. Exhale. Squeeze. Bang.
Only there was no bang with Silence. There was no click of the hammer being cocked, no snap of the firing pin, and certainly no alchemical roar as the blasting powder components met. His rifle was cloaked in magic that rendered it totally silent. The only noise was the buzz of the passing bullet, which anyone who had been shot at could tell you sounded like angry bees, and the impact, which sounded rather like hitting a melon with a club.
After scanning the pass, Bailoch checked his rifle. Moisture tended to condense on the blued steel during the night, and he carefully wiped it down with an oiled cloth. Dexar Sirac himself had enchanted Silence years ago, and to this day Bailoch had no clue if that enchantment would keep his rifle from rusting. He’d never taken the chance to find out. A rifleman took good care of his body and even better care of his rifle.
Bailoch moved slowly as he worked the cloth into every metallic nook. Big movements would attract the eye of anyone who was hunting him. He opened Silence’s action, then removed the heavy, paper-cased round from the chamber, took out his cleaning rod, and gave the barrel a quick pass to make sure no moisture had condensed and frozen in the rifling during the night. You always clean from the breach, never the muzzle. Cleaning from the muzzle could scratch the crown, and that could affect accuracy. He’d earned a reputation for being deadly, and he knew that wasn’t just because he was talented; it was because he was methodical. The world held lots of talented snipers, but few lived as long as he had.
The oilcloth rubbed over the magical runes engraved on the barrel and Bailoch paused. Once, long ago, a name had been carved there. The woman it had belonged to was a woman he had . . . known. But she was gone, scrubbed from his mind just as her name had been scrubbed from the steel. The sniper dismissed the thought and returned to his weapon maintenance. The scope rings were secure. The screws were tight. He rechecked the chamber—Clear—and pulled the trigger to dry fire. On a normal rifle he’d be able to listen for the metallic ring of the firing pin, but that was impossible with Silence. Bailoch was so familiar with this rifle that he o
perated entirely by feel, and everything felt just as it should. When the job was through, he would reward himself with a proper detail strip and deep cleaning of Silence’s action.
He checked the round of ammunition before reloading. Bailoch used only the best components. The special paper casing was free of blemish or tarnish. The soft lead bullet was jacketed with a thin coat of copper, which kept his rifling from fouling nearly as quickly. Less fouling meant more accurate shooting should he find himself in a protracted engagement.
Bailoch couldn’t see it, and he was certainly no Golden Crucible alchemist, but he knew that the casing held two sealed bags, each filled with an alchemical solution. When these bags were pierced by the firing pin and the solutions intermingled, they would ignite instantly and burn fast. That would create a growing gas pressure. It was the miracle of blasting powder, the wonder of the modern age.
Seeking the path of least resistance, the expanding gases would shove the bullet down the barrel at great speed, and if he was doing what he was supposed to, right into his target. The still-burning blasting powder entering the atmosphere was the cause of muzzle blast, only that wasn’t an issue with Silence’s enchantments. That made getting away, or making another shot without getting killed, much easier for him.
Bailoch may not have understood the magic behind alchemy, but putting bullets into things was what he’d been born to do.
There was a limit to how much pressure blasting powder could create inside a firearm and how fast it could hurl a projectile. The day alchemists figured out how to make it push a bullet faster was the day Kell Bailoch became far more dangerous. Gravity was a jealous constant that limited his range. Wind could push his speeding projectiles off course. In a mountain valley like this, it could be gusting in two different directions across that distance. When the time came, he would have only seconds to judge the distance and the wind, adjust his hold, and take the shot.
Silence checked, cleaned, and reloaded, Bailoch finally tended to his own physical needs. After relieving himself, taking a swig from his canteen, and gnawing on some ulk jerky, the sniper went back to his frozen vigil as the sun came up.
In the distance, a lone figure appeared, trudging through the snow.
It was time.
Sivasha Padorin poured him a drink and then poured one for herself. “To a successful hunt.”
Bailoch ignored the glass she set in front of him and reached out for the other one. A clever assassin would poison the glass rather than the drink. He took up the tumbler and eyed the clear liquid suspiciously.
“You are a paranoid man, Bailoch.” Sivasha smiled, took the glass originally intended for him, and pounded down the drink in one gulp. She grimaced, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Some of my father’s finest vyatka. It is older than I am.”
He gave her an appreciative nod. “To a successful hunt.” The favored drink of the Khadorans, made from fermented potatoes, could be used to strip the paint from a warjack. It burned going down and then sat like a fiery lump in his stomach, making him sweat. He could see why the people of the frozen north liked the stuff.
She took the bottle and poured them both another few fingers of the potent liquor. He’d already gotten the first half of his fee up front and felt fairly certain he wasn’t being set up, so the sniper took the glass, though he would pace himself in these unfamiliar surroundings. Despite her size and age, Sivasha seemed capable of keeping her wits despite strong drink, but that was expected of a Khadoran. She gulped down the second and poured herself a third.
“I must tell you, Bailoch, I’ve dreamed of that one-eyed bastard’s death. Since his betrayal I’ve feared he may someday decide to return and meddle in my family’s business again. This worry has gnawed at me.”
“What’s more important, the revenge or protecting your business?”
“In Khador, revenge is business. I want Varnke to suffer.”
Bailoch took another sip. “If all goes well, he won’t.”
She eyed him frankly. “There are many stories about you . . . .”
“I’d wager most of them aren’t true.”
“If even a fraction of them are, though, I must ask . . .” Sivasha paused. “Why?”
Bailoch leaned back in his chair and took another sip. “Why what?”
“Why do you still do this? You have been doing it for a long time, no? How long has it been?”
“That I’ve been shooting people for money?” He’d enlisted in the Cygnaran Army as a long gunner at sixteen. Then he’d joined the Talon Company, and that had been fun while it had lasted—until they’d been branded war criminals. He’d been freelance ever since, drifting from war to war and taking on various jobs. “I don’t know. Coming up on thirty years, I guess.”
“You must be wealthy by now.” Sivasha nodded at the sack of gold coins sitting on the table between them. “You command a hefty fee.”
He reached over and hefted the bag, as if he could tell the value of the coins just by the weight. Bailoch had made fortunes and lost them. Gold was necessary to live, but he was prepared to leave it behind without hesitation in order to get out of a situation alive. He dropped the sack back on the table. “Man’s got to work. I’ll earn what I can, until I run into somebody better than me and I die.”
Sivasha chuckled. “Why, you’re an amoral, pragmatic fatalist. Are you sure you’ve not got Khadoran blood?” She shook her head, already more serious. “I understand. I am kayazy. My family rose from peasants to businessmen with the power of nobles because of our hard work and cunning. And now the business is mine to protect. I did not ask for this life, but when my family were butchered like pigs, this became my life. I had no choice.” She finished her third drink. “‘Earn what you can, until you lose to someone better.’ I like that.”
Bailoch shrugged. It wasn’t often that he pondered philosophy with an employer.
The approaching figure was humanoid, dressed in furs, and approximately five hundred yards away. The drifts weren’t deep enough yet to call for snowshoes, but the footing along the narrow, rocky pass still had to be slippery. Regardless, the figure was moving quickly and confidently along the tall rock wall.
Lying prone in his insulated furs and water-resistant leather armor, Bailoch slowly removed the canvas lens covers from his telescopic sight and moved into his shooting position. Silence’s handguard rested gently on top of a fallen log. He never let the barrel rest against anything, as extra pressure from hand or rest could change the tension on the barrel and affect accuracy. The steel butt plate he set firmly against his shoulder. His cheek rested on the stock. The cold glass of the telescopic sight had been coated with a special alchemical mixture to keep it from fogging up once it was only an inch from the warmth of his face.
The magnifying scope seemed to enlarge everything a dramatic seven times, but it offered an extremely narrow field of view. It was like trying to look down a long, dark pipe to find a pinhole of light at the end. An inexperienced shooter with an inconsistent cheek position would have to fumble about to find what he was looking for. Bailoch found his potential target instantly.
The figure turned out to be a human male with a thick black beard. Long dark hair hung out from beneath his fur hat. Sadly, that description could fit much of Khador’s northern population, and Bailoch wasn’t being paid ten thousand koltinas to murder some random hunter. The optical quality wasn’t sufficient to allow him to pick out any of Malko Varnke’s distinguishing features at this range. He settled in to wait for the man to get closer. His finger would remain indexed outside the trigger guard until he was ready to fire, but the simple wire crosshairs continued bouncing back and forth across his view of the Khadoran’s chest.
Four hundred yards.
The man was making good time. Fit and strong, the sure-footed woodsman moved quickly from rock to rock, avoiding the wide white spots that could be concealing crevices. He looked to be somewhere in his forties; they were about the same age. The man was dre
ssed like a Kossite, in grey and black furs, and carried a long rifle slung over one shoulder.
Three hundred yards.
The Kossite paused on top of a jutting stone lip to survey the rest of the pass. He was wary. As he turned his head side to side, Bailoch confirmed that he wore a black patch over his left eye. That matched Sivasha’s description of the target. If there was another Kossite hermit in the area with one eye, he was about to have a very bad day.
Satisfied that the pass was clear, Malko Varnke hopped down from the rock and continued on at his swift pace.
Bailoch could easily take the shot now. The sun had peeked over the mountainside, and with the light-amplifying properties of his telescopic sight, he could see clearly enough. The wind was strong, though. He glanced at the pine trees around him, watching how the branches rippled. Then he looked back across the pass, watching the patterns and eddies on the surface of the snow. Five miles an hour eastward at his position, with gusts ten miles an hour across the clearing to the west. Nothing he couldn’t compensate for.
Two hundred and fifty yards.
Silence was one of the most accurate firearms in Western Immoren and Bailoch was one of the best shots. He was deadly with the most cumbersome of blunderbusses; a precision instrument like this simply increased his potential. His rifle was a magical marvel, capable of shooting a two-inch group at one hundred yards. He could take Varnke from here but held on, having memorized the layout of every rock, bit of plant life, and patch of ice in the pass. The Kossite was moving between some tall rocks, which would provide him easy cover in case of a miss. Bailoch picked another spot: mostly open snow atop grass, with no real cover for ten yards in either direction and a two-hundred-foot-tall, icicle-covered rock wall as a backstop. If he missed, he’d still have time to get off a follow-up shot.
Ever so slowly, Bailoch moved his right hand to his mouth and pulled off his leather glove with his teeth. Then he returned his hand to the firing position on Silence’s stock. It was ice-cold to the touch. The sniper shifted his body slightly, so as to not put as much pressure on his chest. His breathing was slow and easy.
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