Moving Targets

by C. L. Werner

  EXILES IN ARMS: VOLUME ONE

  MOVING TARGETS

  C.L. WERNER

  Cover by

  MATHIAS KOLLROS

  Illustrated by

  ANDREW BOSLEY

  privateerpress.com

  skullislandx.com

  CONTENTS

  MAP

  PART ONE

  PART TWO

  PART THREE

  IRON KINGDOMS INDEX

  PART ONE

  Early Katesh, 607 AR

  “Don’t even think about it...”

  The warning was uttered in a low, angry hiss, lashing out with a whip’s stinging bite. The tall, broad-shouldered man to whom the threat was directed visibly winced as the whisper struck his ear. Despite the brawny musculature lurking beneath his heavy cloak of Khadoran furs and the steel confines of Llaelese mail, despite the vicious sword and heavy hand cannon swinging from his belt, and notwithstanding the scars of a hundred battles marring his tanned, warrior’s body, he felt a shiver course through him whenever he provoked the displeasure of that warning hiss. After years defying man, monster and infernal, Rutger Shaw had met his match.

  If only she saw things that way too, felt that he was her match, Rutger might consider himself a contented man. As it stood, he didn’t dare confess the depth of his regard for the speaker, Taryn di la Rovissi.

  Her lithe frame bundled in the folds of a bearskin robe and although her aquiline face was hidden in the shadow of a leather hood, it was still easy for Rutger to discern his companion’s irritation. The way she fiddled with the twin pistols swinging from her belt, her fingers teasing across the worn wooden grips, her thumbs rubbing each steel hammer spoke of trouble. It was a habit Rutger had become accustomed to in the months since he’d first made the acquaintance of Llaelese gun mage.

  From a chance encounter across blades in the city of Leryn, Rutger and Taryn had become comrades in arms, plying a mercenary trade amidst the chaos of occupied Llael. What had started as an association of convenience had grown into a deep friendship as they shared the dangers and deprivations of an adventurer’s life. They’d become well versed in taking coin with mercenary companies in the conflict, aiding the beleaguered Llaelese nobility in the waning days of the war, assisting the unbowed Resistance once the Khadoran occupation became complete. It seemed to Rutger there hadn’t been a quiet moment since he’d met Taryn.

  Rutger turned his eyes from his companion and cast a lingering gaze across the bleak landscape beyond; rolling hills covered in the nude blackened husks of trees, the lonely stalks of brick chimneys rising from mounds of rubble, the long gouges across farmyards and meadows where trenches had been dug. The rusted hulks of warjacks lay half-buried in the mud, their frames stripped of all that could be salvaged by the victorious Khadorans. The shattered remains of a Morrowan way shrine, its walls pitted with the marks of bullet and blade, its shingle roof shattered by the blast of some distant explosion. Some pious soul had placed a crude thatch covering across the broken roof in a feeble attempt to keep the rain from falling on the plaster image of Morrow standing upon the shrine’s altar.

  Making the sign of the Ascendant Rowan, Rutger nodded respectfully to the shrine and to the efforts of the unknown person who had done what little they could to restore the place’s dignity. It seemed appropriate to him to invoke the patron of the downtrodden to bless the place. The time for more militant Ascendants like Markus and Katrena had passed. What Llael needed now was mercy and kindness, not swords and guns.

  It had taken Rutger a long time to accept that unhappy fact. Indeed, a part of him still wanted to help the Llaelese Resistance no matter how doomed their cause might be. Taryn had urged him for months to give up the fight, to leave Llael to its conquerors and seek safer – and more profitable – pastures. After all, what did it matter in the end if the coins minted in Merywyn bore the image of a king or an empress? Her pessimism eventually overcame Rutger’s stubborn sense of obligation and duty. The Khadoran presence in Llael grew stronger by the day, while the Resistance continued to weaken and wither. Staying would only get both of them killed.

  And it would be both of them. Rutger knew that however much she might rail against the hopelessness of the Llaelese cause, Taryn would never leave without him. Much as she might scorn codes of chivalry and honor, there was a deep streak of loyalty under all that cynicism. No matter how dire the situation, she’d always stayed true to a comrade in arms. Through all their ordeals against the Khardorans, she’d never abandoned him. It was that fact that had finally swayed his mind.

  “Rutger,” the angry hiss came again. “Don’t get involved. It’s none of our business.”

  The big mercenary glanced aside at Taryn, and then looked across the clearing to the cause of her anxiety. Leather creaked as his gloved hands clenched into fists, his eyes growing cold and hard behind the lenses of his goggles. She had been right to warn him, but it was wasted breath. There wasn’t a chance this side of Urcaen that he was going to stand back and do nothing.

  A fishing village had once stood within this clearing before being destroyed in the war. Now, amidst the burnt timbers and broken masonry of the old village, a new one had arisen, a confusion of tents and wicker shanties that stretched from the encroaching stands of swamp-pine to the edge of the stagnant marshlands. There was only one patch of open ground amidst the camp, a wide swathe leading down to a long, timber pier stretching out into the marsh. The pier ended in the midst of a free-flowing stream, the most navigable of such channels to wind its way through the brackish environs of the Bloodsmeath Marsh. Once, the pier had served the rowboats and barges of the village. Now it provided anchorage to a far different vessel.

  It was named Spectre, an appropriate title for a boat that had become almost mythical among the people of Llael as the “Ghost Ship.” A decrepit, two-funnel steamboat, the black paint of her hull peeling and faded, several of the floaters on her paddlewheels chipped and splintered, the paddleboxes atop the great wheels cracked and scarred, it had been many years since the ship had plied the Oldwick and conducted more respectable trade. Now she had become a parasite, a scavenger picking off the carcass of old Llael, feeding on the misery and sorrow of a conquered people.

  A steady file of refugees trooped down the pier, walking in desolate silence towards their chance of escape from the Khadoran occupation, perhaps the only avenue open to many of them. Due to the increased activities of the Resistance in the region, the Empire had tightened its grip along the border, seeking to choke off the supplies being smuggled in to the Llaelese and at the same time prevent any rebels from slipping over the frontier. It was the first step in Khadoran ambitions for taking the Thornwood and prosecuting war with Cygnar. Even the most neglected corners of the frontier were being drawn into the iron grip of the Empire, patrolled by troops of Winter Guard. In the entire region, only the “Ghost Ship” remained as a sure route into the Kingdom of Ord.

  As a final slight against the dignity of the refugees, the last step in their exodus was through a cordon of criminal renegades, henchmen of the crime boss Viktorovich Yatsek. With a sufficiently substantial bribe, the smugglers would allow them to depart on the Spectre. With the eye of the Empire turning upon the Thornwood, soon there would be no shadows left for such criminals to hide. By the time the army came calling, Yatsek would be long gone, safe back in Khador with a fat chest of gold. This would likely be the last voyage for the “Ghost Ship,” and the last chance for the smugglers to exact their toll upon the Llaelese refugees.

  As Rutger looked towards the shore and the table where the smuggler book-keepers sat, he saw a sorry spectacle. A Llaelese man was on his knees pleading with a disinterested-looking clerk. According to the man, his money-belt had been stolen in the night – a
mid the misery of the refugee camp there was no shortage of thieves – leaving him destitute of the funds to procure passage for himself and his family.

  “Everyone pays,” the unsympathetic smuggler declared with a flourish of the quill in his hand. A grim smile twisted the book-keeper’s face. “One way, or another, everyone pays.”

  A comely woman rushed forward with a despairing shriek. Furiously, and without thought or concession to modesty, she unlaced her bodice and drew a string of gemstones from where it had been concealed beneath her clothing. Trembling, she thrust the gems towards the clerk.

  The smuggler let the string of stones drop into his hand, squinting at them through one eye. “This will compensate the boss for two emigrations,” he declared. The grim smile was back, the quill lingering once more over the ledger. The book-keeper looked past the man and his wife, at the three young children behind them. “Decide who goes and who stays. Unless, of course, you have more baubles hidden away,” he added with a lewd wink at the woman.

  “What’s he telling them?” Rutger asked Taryn. Her command of Khadoran was better than his. He’d been brought up in Cygnar, with little exposure to either the Empire or its language until he’d served with the trenchers at Fellig.

  Taryn hesitated, then with a nervous pause explained to Rutger the smuggler’s effort to extort more money from the refugees. Rutger’s expression darkened as she related the sordid details.

  “We can’t help them,” Taryn said this time with an edge of panic in her voice. Rutger barely listened to her, hearing only the wailing children and the sobbing parents.

  “Wurm’s teeth we can’t,” he growled. “We’ve saved enough to pay for them too.” He cast a wary eye at the armed bruisers holding the crowd back. “Watch them and see I don’t bite off more than I can chew.”

  Taryn fingered her magelocks. “You know I have a light appetite. Especially at close quarters,” she warned him.

  “Think scary, not fatal,” Rutger advised. His fist clenched around the hilt of his sword as he heard the children crying again. “Leave the rough stuff to me.” Angrily, the armored mercenary pushed his way through the crowd.

  The thugs shifted forward as they watched Rutger advance, lowering their pikes and drawing swords. Rutger ignored them, his eyes locked instead upon the family groveling before the clerk. He watched as the book-keeper dipped the quill towards the inkpot and started to write in the ledger.

  “Khardovic’s Crown!” the smuggler cursed as something crashed down onto the table, upsetting the inkpot and splashing him from forehead to chin.

  Rutger held up his hands as the guards rushed towards him and gestured at the object he had thrown at the book-keeper. “That’ll pay for the family’s passage,” he declared. The smuggler wiped some of the ink from his face, blinking down at the leather pouch lying amid the ink. Several gold coins had spilled from its mouth.

  In a flash, the book-keeper had the pouch in his hand, jostling it to judge its weight. Still blinking ink from his left eye, he waved his hand, dismissing the refugee family. “This pays for them,” he declared in rough Llaelese. “But what about you?”

  Behind him, Rutger heard a groan of disgust. Taryn was always chiding him for his soft heart. It wasn’t that she was indifferent or callous, just a good deal more prudent. She’d grown up in circumstances far different from his, forced to fend for herself almost from the cradle. In her world, before you helped anyone, you helped yourself. Judging by the depth of emotion in that groan, she had enough coin stashed away to pay for both of their passages. He knew he didn’t need to tell her he would make it up to her.

  Before Taryn could step forward and offer the wormy little smuggler a bigger payout, however, the opportunity was lost. “This man is a traitor and a rebel,” snarled a vicious voice from beyond the ring of smugglers. “He’s worth a lot more in bounty money.” The guards parted, admitting a towering Khadoran wearing a tattered Winter Guard kapitan’s uniform, but no remaining insignia, on his bearskin hat. He did bare a scowl that could have chilled the heart of a trollkin on his cruel face. The long leather coat the former officer wore didn’t conceal the bulky metal arm fastened to his right shoulder, a little stream of smoke rising from the exhaust pipe on its side.

  “Rutger Shaw,” the Khadoran growled, making the name sound like the vilest curse imaginable. “I’ve waited a long time for this.” The former officer lifted his metal arm, steam venting from its power plant as he clenched its fingers. “Every time I should have held a sword in my right hand, I’ve thought of you.”

  His command of the language might not be fluent, but Rutger was able to follow the menacing tone of the former ’kapitan’s words. Moreover, he recognized this officer. Of all the people he could have run into on his way out of Llael, there wasn’t any he could think of who would be worse. “Vyacheslav Lavrenti,” Rutger sighed.

  The kapitan’s cruel face split in a smile that made the earlier scowl seem comforting. “I am pleased you remember me, Shaw. It will make killing you all the more pleasant. Where is that gun-toting she-witch of yours?”

  Rutger managed a smile. He’d picked up enough of Vyacheslav’s words to know the kapitan hadn’t seen Taryn. As discretely as he could, he warned Taryn back with a wave of his fingers. If Vyacheslav hadn’t spotted her then there was no sense letting him know she was around. It was bad enough that he’d been caught. While Vyacheslav was dealing with him, Taryn would be able to slip away.

  “She went ahead of me,” Rutger lied. “By now she is probably in Caspia looking for another contract.” He looked at a few renegade soldiers behind Vyacheslav, then smiled at the massive Khadoran. “I see your idea of a “fair” fight hasn’t changed.”

  The kapitan glowered at Rutger. “I shall content myself that Morrow has answered half my prayer then,” Vyacheslav declared. He snapped the fingers of his left hand and one of his men stepped forward, placing a rune-inscribed sabre in his former kapitan’s palm. Vyacheslav made a dramatic flourish with the blade. “I’ve had a long time to learn to use a sword with my left hand,” he said.

  Rutger started to lower his arms only to hear the click of a hammer being drawn on a renegades’ rifle. “Afraid of getting your sword dirty?” he demanded.

  “Lower your weapon!” Vyacheslav barked. “This dog is mine!”

  Rutger reached to his belt, drawing his sword. As the mechanikal device left the scabbard, the runes etched along its length began to emit a sapphire radiance. An arcanist from the Order of the Golden Crucible had bestowed the blade on Rutger in return for his services helping him escape from occupied Leryn. The runeplate embedded in its hilt endowed it with magical energy, power enough to sheer through troll bone. After seeing its efficacy against the armor of Khador’s warjacks, Rutger had christened the blade “Jackknife.”

  Some of the bravado faded from Vyacheslav as he saw Rutger draw his sword, the renegade kapitan shifting his right shoulder away from the mercenary in an automatic, unconscious motion. A moment later, the officer’s face grew flush with anger and shame as he fought down the fear that had momentarily gripped him. He glared at the circle of smuggler guards, then at the crowd of refugees beyond them, his eyes daring any of them to acknowledge his moment of weakness.

  “Last time you may have taken my arm, Shaw,” Vyacheslav spat, switching to a stilted Llaelese to ensure his foe understood him. “But, this time I am ready for your tricks.” The Khadoran’s fist clenched tighter about the fur-wrapped hilt of his sabre, depressing the activation stud concealed there. At once the blade was surrounded by flickering blue flames as the runeplate fitted into its tang sent arcane power coursing through the weapon. “This is the Fire of Skirov,” the kapitan declared. “It is the last thing you will ever see!”

  “Not much to look at,” Rutger baited his foe, tracing the point of Jackknife through the mud at his feet. Since their first meeting in the trenches of Redwall, there was one thing for which the kapitan could always be depended upon: his short temper. By
feigning a nonchalance he didn’t feel, Rutger hoped to goad his enemy into making the first move – and the first mistake.

  Vyacheslav proved true to character. Growling like an enraged snow tiger, the kapitan rushed at Rutger. The mercenary retreated a pace, bringing Jackknife whipping up from the ground and sending a spray of mud straight into the Khadoran’s face. The man’s charge faltered as he reeled back, his swordarm sweeping across his eyes to shield them from the muck.

  It was an underhanded tactic, but Rutger had lived as long as he had by adopting the philosophy that any fight worth winning was worth fighting dirty to win. He didn’t give Vyacheslav a chance to recover from his surprise but rushed straight at the Khadoran, bringing the glowing edge of Jackknife slashing down at the man’s unprotected side. He put less force behind the blow than he might have. His intention was to put his foe out of the fight rather than kill him. His own restraint was his undoing. Before his sword could connect, the Khadoran’s blade was sweeping around to parry the attack.

  As the two swords met, Rutger felt a stinging numbness flow up his arm, an ethereal chill that nearly made him drop his weapon. He could see little bubbles of frost clinging to Jackknife and the glove that gripped it. “Fire of Skirov” indeed! Despite the illusion of blue flames crackling around it, the Khadoran blade was attuned to the icy magic of winter and snow. Vyacheslav might not have learned to control his temper, but he’d learned some new tricks just the same.

  The kapitan grinned as he watched Rutger retreat before him, savoring the alarm he saw growing in his enemy’s eyes. “Do you want a Morrowan or a Menite funeral?” the Khadoran mocked. “Or would you rather I just leave your carcass out for the creatures of the Wurm?”

  “Why, you planning a family dinner?” Rutger taunted in reply, drawing an inarticulate snarl from the kapitan. Rutger continued to retreat, trying to rub feeling into his numbed right arm. Vyacheslav pressed him, slashing at him with his deadly blade, forcing his foe to give ground before him. The mercenary could see the gloating overconfidence building in the kapitan’s face each time he fell back and refused to cross swords with him.