by Ari Marmell
“Could you honestly keep up? Can you even stand up?”
Katherine’s answer lodged in her throat, refusing to rise any higher.
“Catch up with Halcourt. Go home. We’ll finish this for you.”
“I’m sorry . . .”
“Don’t be stupid. You’ve done Cygnar proud.”
Again Katherine’s grip abruptly tightened; she scarcely noted Dignity’s wince. “The blast . . .”
“What about it?”
“The east wall? The balcony? They were barely singed. The charges were set not to touch them.”
“Are you—”
“Yes, I’m sure. Seen enough bombs in my time.”
Dignity’s gaze grew vague for a moment. “You clever bitch . . .”
“Excuse me?!” Katherine demanded.
“Not you. Vorona. Take care of yourself, Lieutenant.”
“Wait . . .”
But Dignity was already gone, snapping questions at anyone who would listen, and all Katherine could do now was curse her injuries and wait for the soldiers to come and help her up.
***
“That one.” Serena craned her head toward one particular house, a large but not overly luxurious affair on an avenue full to bursting with others very much like it. Constructed for the moderately successful and newly rich of the Outer Ward, they lacked the ornate gardens, classical statuary, and vast unnecessary wings of Old Town manors, while still boasting enough space and amenities to comfortably house any four New Town families. “He ducked in there, around the back.”
“Are you . . . ?” Wendell hunched forward, hands resting on his knees, oblivious to the mutters of several coat-wrapped pedestrians who had to swerve around him. “Are you certain?”
“I’ve kept my eyesight better than you have. My stamina, too, apparently.”
“We’re neither as young as we used to be,” he grumped at her.
“Maybe not,” Serena mused, “but it looks like I’m closer.”
The mechanik’s glare could have fired up the engine of a dormant ’jack entirely on its own. Serena couldn’t help but snicker, though she grew serious again quickly enough.
“Do we go in?” she asked.
Wendell wiped the sweat from his brow before it could begin to freeze in the evening chill. His hand came away dusted in snow, and only then did he notice the gentle flurries, dancing in the breeze, which had begun to fall sometime during their pursuit.
“We don’t actually know what happened back there. We need more information. We’ll go around, see what we can see.”
In back, the yard was divided into garden plots, though of course little actually bloomed this time of year. A simple wooden fence demarcated this property from the next, and a single stone fountain stood beside it, lightly frozen over.
What attracted the soldiers’ attention, however, was the back door, currently standing ajar.
Wendell withdrew a heavy pistol from amongst the tools on his belt, while Serena—after a quick peek inside to judge the width of the hallway—-produced a long fighting knife, foregoing the rifle that hung from her shoulder.
“Cover me,” she whispered, then slipped in through the open door, Wendell two steps behind.
They found themselves in a small foyer, an open coatroom to one side and a clear view of the sitting room beyond. Like the house and its surrounds, the furniture was comfortable without crossing into ostentatious. A faint layer of dust and even fainter stale odor suggested the place hadn’t seen much use or cleaning in weeks, but the faint imprint of shoes in the thick shag carpet could only have come from a far more recent visitor.
Serena slipped in, crouching, while Wendell swept every corner with his pistol, but no enemy lurked within the room. The both of them did, however, hear a faint shuffling from a chamber off to the left. Creeping in unison, they positioned themselves on either side of the doorway and peeked around the jamb.
Beyond was a cozy library, the younger cousin of the one in Surros Manor. The bookshelves were less tightly packed, the fireplace smaller, the thickly upholstered chairs fewer in number, but it conveyed almost precisely the same atmosphere.
Or would have, under normal circumstances.
Idran di Meryse—alchemist, extortionist, perhaps the greatest threat to Cygnar in recent memory, for all that most Cygnarans didn’t know it—lay sprawled on the carpet, marinating in his own blood. His throat gaped in an obscene leer, muscle fibers and a sliver of trachea protruding in a withered, awful bouquet. Beside him, also soaking in the gory bath, was a large tome, its pages hollowed out to create a storage niche.
And crouched beyond him, collecting sheets of paper from where they appeared to have fallen—perhaps during a brief and clearly one-sided struggle—was a severe, narrow-faced woman with black hair, an equally black long coat, and the last fading remnants of a grotesque bruise on her face.
Serena and Wendell both jerked back from the doorway. Neither one needed a word to know that this couldn’t possibly be good, to take a pretty good guess at what they were seeing. Wendell raised three fingers; Serena nodded sharply.
Two fingers . . .
One.
Again she lunged through the door first, knife raised, skirting quickly around the puddle of gore. He followed after, ready to fire, boots hitting the carpet with an unnerving wet splurt.
Other than the alchemist’s slowly cooling corpse, the two of them were alone in the library.
Seconds. They’d taken their eyes off the room for mere seconds! How—?
Even afterward, the mechanik couldn’t begin to guess where she’d concealed herself. She was just suddenly there, blade flashing. The impact sent Wendell staggering back into the sitting room, bleeding from an ugly gash on his chest; only the thin plates of armor worked into his coat had prevented a mortal wound. His pistol skated across the floor to vanish under one of the chairs.
“Not as silent as you think you are,” she purred in her thick Khadoran accent. And then she was diving over him, tumbling back to her feet on the far side of the room, as Serena appeared behind her, slashing with her own blade. Not yet able to regain his feet, Wendell rolled from between them and fetched up against the legs of a small table.
Serena sidestepped, slinging the rifle from over her shoulder into her free hand, at the same instant the Khadoran—Vorona, Wendell assumed, based on Dignity’s description—charged. No way the older woman could have her weapon up and aimed before the spy closed . . .
But Serena, while not the close-range fighter Vorona was, was no fool. Rather than raising the rifle to her shoulder to fire, she drove it down, using it as a club to strike at the other woman’s knee.
Vorona hissed at the pain, though she avoided enough of it that the injury didn’t appear crippling. Then, as fast as Wendell had ever seen, even in his youngest days of CRS training, she lashed out with her free hand, grabbed the rifle, and twisted it like a baton.
The weapon discharged, eliciting a rain of powder from the ceiling above. Serena stumbled, yanked off-balance by the shoulder strap, now twisted around her wrist and forearm. Vorona’s good knee rose, cracking hard against the extended elbow. Serena locked up, her entire body shuddering with the shock.
And Wendell, just now staggering to his feet, could do absolutely nothing as Vorona’s blade punched up under Serena’s jaw, stopping only when the tip lodged against the inside of her skull.
Serena’s face twisted—in confusion, it seemed to Wendell, more than pain—then went slack. Vorona had Serena’s own blade in her fist, to replace the one currently wedged in the long gunner’s head, before the body fell.
Wendell was sure he shouted something, though he never could remember what.
“I am sorry about your friend,” Vorona told him, though from her tone she might have been apologizing for taking the last sandwich. “If you’d simply let me go on my way, none of this would—”
Snarling, Wendell drew his own service blade, very similar to Serena’s own. For the firs
t time, Vorona actually looked surprised.
“Really, old man?”
“You’re not leaving this house.”
“So be it.”
She came on like a tornado, swift and relentless. Drawing on everything he’d ever learned, Wendell snapped a kick into her already injured knee. Vorona staggered, and he was on her. Metal shrieked as his blade grated against hers, and they both knew that she’d only barely raised the parry in time.
Wendell also knew, though, that he could keep this up for only seconds before she got her bearings.
He lifted a foot from the carpet, feigning another kick, and then leaned in across her arm, catching it in a joint lock, forcing it back, shoving her further off balance . . .
Vorona jerked aside, slipping from his grip, though she jarred the flat of her blade against him, knocking it from her grasp, in the process. Unwilling to let her put any distance between them, he slashed awkwardly, grinned as he felt fabric and flesh part.
They both straightened, facing one another across perhaps two yards of the sitting room. Blood poured from the gash he’d just put in her thigh; nowhere near the artery, more the pity, but certainly painful enough—-especially considering it was the leg already injured.
“You’re no mechanik,” she accused, as though he’d somehow personally misled her.
“Sure I am. I’m also Reconnaissance.”
“Of course. I should have recognized the technique.” Grunting, she pressed a hand to the open wound. “Perhaps we should—”
Gods, she was fast! She made a hurling motion, spraying a cupped palmful of her own blood at Wendell’s face. Instincts as old as the human race had him twisting aside, blinking to protect his eyes, before he even knew what it was she’d thrown.
She was already on him before he recovered. Her first strike shivered the bones in his wrist, numbing his arm and sending his blade across the room, perhaps to go in search of his pistol. Her second caught him in the gut, doubling him over, driving the air from his lungs.
Had her leg not been injured, weak, the knee that followed up would probably have shattered his jaw, cost him teeth. As it was, he felt something give inside his nose. The world vanished briefly behind a shower of sparks.
As they began to fade, his vision to clear, he found himself staring up at the ceiling. He knew he had to get up, to move, to do something, or he was dead—but his body utterly refused to translate that knowledge into action.
And why were the flashes and speckles growing worse rather than fading? So bright were the streaks of blue flashing before him that he almost had to squint to avoid . . .
Blue? Oh.
That wasn’t the pounding of blood in his ears and agony in his head, at least not all of it. He finally identified the gunfire, the blasts as whole sections of wall simply went away. He heard a few growled syllables that might have been Khadoran profanity, heard the patter of footsteps, saw the hem of a navy blue coat flap in and out of sight.
Wendell’s heart almost stopped when he felt hands on his shoulder, until he realized they were gently helping him sit, recognized the face looming above as Ben’s.
“Careful, Master Sergeant,” she said softly. “Careful . . .”
He started to speak—and then screamed, instead, as Benwynne reached out and did something to his nose. Wendell hovered on the very edge of passing out, and the Sergeant went blurry behind a sheen of tears.
“It’s set,” she explained simply.
“But is it still attached?!” he demanded breathlessly. Then, struggling to bring himself under control, “Ben, she’s got the formula . . .”
“I figured. We’re after her, almost the whole squad. She’s got nowhere to hide.”
“Serena?” He knew it was stupid, knew he sounded like a plaintive child even as he asked, but he couldn’t help it.
“She’s gone, Wendell.”
His chin sagged to his chest, renewed grief threatening to overwhelm him; he released it in one long breath. Later, there would be time for mourning. Later . . .
“How did you find us?”
“Gaust and I were following you, a few streets back, while you trailed that Khadoran bitch. We lost you here, though; didn’t see you duck into this house.
“Gaust sent word to the others. We figured if we could gather everyone, we could make a more thorough search. We’d still be out there waiting if we hadn’t heard Serena’s rifle.”
The rifle that had gone off only as Vorona yanked it from Serena’s hand. Serena never actually had a shot . . .
He didn’t say it. It wasn’t something Benwynne needed to hear.
“Help me up, please, Sergeant.”
“Wendell, you should probably rest a little—”
“Please.”
It wasn’t too hard to stand, not with her aid, and he only stumbled once before finding his balance. A nod of thanks, and then he very carefully crouched beside the nearest chair, fingers stretched to retrieve his knife and pistol.
“Wendell, there’s not a street for blocks in any direction that doesn’t have at least one of us watching it. She’s not going far.”
“Still,” he said, knees and calves trembling as he straightened, “I want to be there to see it.”
He didn’t add If you’re right. He didn’t have to; he knew she heard it regardless.
***
Atherton dashed down the center of the avenue. Between the thickening flurries and his own breath, everything before him blurred, shifted. He felt like he passed through infinite layers of gauzy curtains, perhaps, or cobwebs.
Still, the gas lights of the Outer Ward burned bright at almost every intersection, and the sun still peeked over the city wall to the west, if only by the narrowest sliver. It wasn’t much, but at least so far, it allowed him—or, if not always Atherton, then someone—to keep their enemy in sight.
Oh, she’d tried every trick to lose them. Slipping into knots of late evening pedestrians; pushing through a shop over here that was still open, a private house there with its doors unlocked. At one point, she’d ducked out of view long enough to scramble up a drain pipe, and the Cygnarans might well have lost her then—save that Atherton had been wise enough to station Ledeson on the rooftops, running parallel to their pursuit. Now, the diminutive commando sprinted beside him, keeping up tirelessly, and one of the others had assumed roof duty. At every crossroad, Atherton glanced right or left, and every time he spotted rushing figures against the falling snow: More of what was left of the squad, on neighboring streets, ensuring Vorona had no easy means of escape.
She was headed somewhere, though, not just fleeing at random; her choices were too methodical, her path too unswervingly northwest. With her pursuers so close, it certainly wasn’t a safehouse or hidey hole, so where . . . ?
It was Dignity, who had appeared at Atherton’s side at some point over the last three blocks, breathing as easily as if this sort of sprint were an everyday affair, who pieced it together first. “She’s heading for the gate!”
“What’s she going to do, fight her way through an entire guardhouse? Talk about desperate . . .” The gunmage trailed off at Dignity’s pinched expression. “You don’t think . . .” He struggled to catch his breath. “Don’t think she’s planning to fight through a whole team of guards, do you?”
“I think that Vorona’s had two weeks to develop an exit strategy. She may not have anticipated pursuit, but she bloody well has a plan of some sort!”
As if in deliberate confirmation of that guess, Vorona yanked a device, bulkier than a heavy pistol, from a large satchel at her side. Without slowing, she aimed it straight up and fired; even through the flurries and low-hanging clouds, the sky lit up like Morrow’s own candle.
“That can’t be good,” Dignity muttered.
Atherton shouted something impolite and fingered the butt of a pepperbox. Again he strongly considered taking the shot, and again reluctantly decided he couldn’t afford to. Even his runebullets weren’t completely unerring. Vo
rona’s speed, agility, and borderline supernatural ability to know when an attack was coming had already allowed her to avoid two of them, and while the streets were far from crowded—and growing even less so, as Cygnaran soldiers stormed across the district—there remained sufficient civilians that collateral damage was a real concern if he missed.
He’d never have admitted it aloud—certainly not to Dignity!—but Atherton couldn’t help but feel a grudging admiration for the Khadoran operative. He’d seen the ugly wound on her leg, and the occasional constellation of red specks in the gray snow that proved it wasn’t getting any better. And still she’d maintained her lead, ran with no obvious hitch in her stride. It was the sort of unyielding iron will Atherton had read about in the pulps, but never thought to see, and felt sure he’d never possess himself.
The massive curtain wall hove into view, rising between and then over the rows of buildings. The wall—and then the gatehouse, its iron-banded gates and shadowed barbican forming one of the many maws that could either provide ingress to Leryn or chew an intruder to pieces, depending upon its mood. Lanterns blazed on either side of the manmade tunnel and within the windows of the structure itself, clearly outlining a dozen sentinels, pikemen and riflemen both, stationed beside the passage or atop the wall. Most had turned their gazes inward, perhaps attracted by Vorona’s flare.
Atherton grinned, a horrible rictus thanks to his growing exhaustion. “Seems she’s planning to fight her way out after—”
From somewhere out in the cloaking flurries of snow, perhaps as far as the scattered trees that grew no closer than several hundred yards from the wall, came a salvo of rifle fire.
At that range, in the inclement weather and growing whiteout, even the champions amongst the Widowmakers couldn’t have aimed those shots with any accuracy. And indeed, they appeared to be shooting wild: Bullets smacked into the curtain wall, disintegrating into powder and scrap, doing no harm whatsoever.
The guards, however, reacted to the unexpected attack exactly as soldiers do: They dove for cover. For an instant, they could see nothing at all; for an instant more, they were too busy scanning the snowy nothingness for any sign of the oncoming enemy.
