Moving Targets

by C. L. Werner

  Taryn tried to make her tone flippant. “I didn’t say it was a perfect plan. I kill Olt, the goons coming up from behind should loose heart and let us be.”

  “Or become enraged and try to avenge their boss,” Rutger said. “What’s my part?”

  “Keep the earl safe and handle that crowd up ahead,” Taryn said.

  “Want me to take the gators too?” Rutger asked as he smashed his boot into another saurian head poking over the edge of the roof.

  “We’ll flip for them,” Taryn said, throwing her body into a diving roll that carried her clear of the cupola. As she threw herself forward, she fired a round into one of the thugs on the rearward car. The body went tumbling backwards, rolling across the man behind it before pitching to the rails below.

  The survivors on the rear car went scurrying back to cover. Only one man didn’t retreat. Scowling and sinister in his black coat, his blue eyes glaring from an almost skeletal face, the villain raised the gilded, gem-studded pistol in his gloved hand and coldly prepared to fire at Taryn. She could see the arcane energies swirling about the gun mage’s pistol as he cast his spell. Grimly, she aimed her own magelock and started to whisper her own incantation.

  The train suddenly lurched and began moving again, nearly throwing Taryn from the roof and causing both her and Olt’s shots to whistle impotently through the air, both spells interrupted by the sudden motion. Gripping the thin steel rail that ran along the edge of the car, she found herself staring down into the fangs of a gatorman. Coldly she struck beast in the face with her magelock but didn’t linger to watch the monster fall onto the tracks. She was already scrambling back for the cover of the cupola.

  When she was back behind the cupola, Taryn took the chance to examine their situation. The train was in motion again, steaming across the trellis and out onto the rocky headland, sluggishly pushing through what elements of the crude barricade the soldiers and warjacks hadn’t cleared away. Near the engine, the cars swayed dangerously on the trestle but Taryn didn’t have time to consider the oddity. Rutger was kicking and slashing at the gatormen trying to climb his side of the car and occasionally lifting himself above the cupola to fire his hand cannon at the thugs ahead.

  “Trust you to take the easy part of the job,” Rutger joked when he noticed Taryn’s return. His tone became grave as he asked “Did you get Olt?”

  Taryn shook her head. “Looks like we’re in for the long slog,” she told him.

  “Maybe we should ask them to surrender,” Rutger offered. He jabbed a thumb at the car ahead of them. “I recognize the goon leading those killers. He’s the same swamp rat I saw before the gatormen attacked the Spectre.”

  Taryn peeked around the corner of the cupola. The scar-faced thug was roaring a string of commands and curses, alternately using Thurian and a debased Cygnaran to berate his underlings. Strangely, the louder the man’s curses, the more speed the train seemed to gain. Soon it was steaming away under something approaching its former velocity.

  The reason for that increase in speed soon reared its grinning face. Peeping over the front edge of their car, one claw clamped atop its beaverskin hat, was the bokor. The gatorman had abandoned its magical assault against the engine to take a more direct role in the attack. “Seek!”, Taryn hissed as she sent a bullet through a tangle of thugs straight at the fanged grin. As she had half-feared, the shot was thwarted by the monster’s sorcery. A leather bag hanging from the bokor’s neck glowed a sickly green. In response, she thought she could see the residue of her bullet evaporating in midair.

  Rutger aimed his hand cannon at the bokor, hoping to at least drive the gatorman off. Before he could fire, however, a new crisis struck. The burly thug from the ladder had reached the roof and availed himself of the chance to seize his target. Lunging into the cupola, the killer seized the earl.

  He didn’t hold his prey long. As the thug seized Earl Alessandro, Rutger spun around and tackled the renegade. The three men became a tangle of thrashing limbs, sliding and tumbling about the copula. Their dangerous predicament was rendered even more hazardous as the entire car began to shudder and quake, lurching to one side, dragged down by the tremendous weight clawing its way up toward the roof. The dull black eyes of the ironback spitter glared balefully at the humans, its beak opening in an angry hiss.

  Taryn’s mind railed at the recklessness of what she did then. Idiot stunts were Rutger’s forte, not hers. Even so, she found herself rushing across the rocking car, leaping past the snapping beak of the spitter, expecting every instant to have her bones dissolved by the reptile’s acid or her body shriveled by a spell from the bokor or her flesh pierced by a bullet from the gun mage. No such fate reached out to claim her, however. The turtle was too occupied trying to climb onto the moving car to direct much of its tiny brain to its foes. The bokor was more interested in the struggling mass of bodies rolling towards it, its eyes taking on an eerie green as spell runes appeared around it. Olt, for his part, seemed content to leave the earl’s capture in the hands of his minions and allies. He was nowhere to be seen.

  She could see a three-foot long, crowfoot wrench fastened to the top of the roof where it could be easily reached by a brakeman. Holstering her magelocks she unfastened the hooks that held the heavy tool in place. Taryn turned towards the bokor and brought her improvised weapon smashing down at his skull. The monster’s sorcery had protected it from her rune shots but she was trusting that it wouldn’t prove so effective against a more direct assault. As the wrench came crashing down, Taryn felt a strange resistance retard the momentum of her blow, robbing it of much of its impact. Even so, there was enough force left to crush the brim of the bokor’s hat and rattle the saurian brain inside its scaly head.

  The reeling bokor slumped against the side of the rocking car, its claws tenaciously holding onto the railing. One good kick could have sent the brute falling under the wheels, but Taryn didn’t have time for such finality. Dropping the wrench she drew and aimed her still-loaded magelock. Forming magical energies into a cohesive purpose she sent a rune shot roaring into the thrashing tangle of bodies. With arcane accuracy, the rune shot smashed into the leg of the thug, missing the flesh of his opponents. Rutger took the opportunity to pound his fist into the thug’s face, bouncing the killer’s skull off the roof. A few such strikes, and the thug went limp. Taryn reached down and pulled the earl onto his feet.

  “Things are bad here,” Taryn told Rutger, pointing out the ironback spitter.

  “Take the earl forward,” Rutger said, glaring at the hideous monster. “We’ll have a better chance against scar-face and his goons!” He grabbed his hand cannon from where it had fallen during the fight. “I’ll provide cover,” he promised. He saw the worry in Taryn’s eyes. “And I’ll be right behind you,” he added.

  Taryn swung the dazed Earl Alessandro around. “We have to keep moving!” Taryn shouted at the earl, pointing him towards the car ahead. At first the nobleman balked at the prospect of leaping across the gap between the cars, but a shudder of their own car, followed by the furious hiss of the ironback spitter as it climbed onto the roof decided him. With a frantic cry and eyes clenched close, he threw himself onto the forward car. The earl’s cry became a yelp of terror when he landed and started to slide off.

  Taryn took her own fear in hand as she watched the rails flashing beneath the hurtling train, feeling the momentum of the locomotive tugging at her body and trying to throw her from the roof. The train was leaving the headland, heading out across a long timber trellis that stretched out over a wide expanse of swamp.

  Clenching her teeth and holstering her magelock, the gun mage leaped to the forward car. Like the earl, she wasn’t able to compensate for the momentum of the train, her jump ending in a wretched sprawl that set her hands flailing about for any kind of anchorage. The wind whipped about her, dragging her from the roof, threatening to fling her off into the mire beside the tracks.

  Before she could be thrown to her doom, a hand closed about her arm
and retarded the drag. Taryn found herself staring gratefully at Earl Alessandro. The nobleman was still pale and there was a tremor in his limbs, but he’d recovered enough of his composure to wrap an arm around the railing running along the edge of the roof.

  “I thought we were supposed to be protecting you,” Taryn quipped as relief exorcised the panic from her heart. Almost at once, there was a resurgence of terror as she looked around for Rutger. A furious hiss sounded from the car behind them and Taryn felt a new dread claw at her gut. She knew what she would see before she saw it.

  Rutger was playing the noble hero again. The brave idiot had stayed behind to keep the ironback spitter from pursuing her and the earl. He’d already emptied his hand cannon into the thing, which had all the effect of using harsh language against it. The spitter was now towering over him, the roof of the car buckling beneath its enormous weight with each thunderous step it took. Anyone with an ounce of common sense would have fled, but Rutger just stood there, the runes of his sword glowing as he activated the mechanikal blade.

  Taryn started to draw her magelock to protect Rutger, but the instant she turned the weapon towards the turtle, it was struck from her grasp, sent spinning across the roof to lodge precariously against the hand rail. With arcane precision, Olt had shot the pistol from her hand. Taryn could see the spell runes slowly fading from around the gaunt villain’s gun as he reloaded his weapon, his voice shouting into the wind.

  “Janos! Delt!” Olt cried out. “Fetch all our prizes before the Ironback eats them!”

  Taryn could see the rogue Rutger had been fighting rouse himself and start to crawl along the roof of the car, his trench knife clenched in one hand. Beyond him, four more thugs were climbing onto the roof or leaping across from the rearward car. Between them and her, Rutger was engaged with the spitter, dodging the clumsy sweeps of the reptile’s claws while slashing at it with strokes that couldn’t do more than scratch its ghastly shell. Taryn couldn’t understand how anything natural could withstand the force of Jackknife until she noticed the green spell runes surrounding the monster and remembered the bokor clinging to the ladder below.

  She felt her blood turn to ice. Their enemies were in full force and she had only one loaded pistol to fend them off. If they were to survive, she had to stop all of them.

  “Rutger!” she shouted. She looked back to see if her partner heard her. Everything depended on him coming through. If not, the desperate idea she’d had would come to nothing. “Line the trench!” she cried, using one of the simple codes they’d developed between themselves. In this instance, it meant Rutger was to fall back to the high ground – the center of the roof. If he could manage that, and if his gigantic playmate would be obliging enough to follow him…

  Taryn dropped into a crouch and leaned over the side of the car. Her hood billowed about her head as the wind tore at her, the terrain racing past in a blur as the train sped across the Ordic landscape. For a sickening moment, she felt herself start to slip, and watched the slimy surface of the swamp rise towards her.

  A fierce grip closed about her legs before she could slide from the roof. Taryn glanced back, and saw the earl embracing her. She nodded to the nobleman, then darted a look back at Rutger and his hideous foe. Rutger had heard her. He’d moved himself to the middle of the roof, and the ironback spitter was following him. A few more seconds and it would be precisely where she needed it to be. Taryn smiled as she saw Olt and his men on the rearward cars. Gritting her teeth, she leaned back over the side of the roof, determined to take her shot.

  Exerting every muscle in her lithe body, Taryn struggled against the roaring wind. She was fighting to secure the angle she needed, the position she required to accomplish the impossible, all the while hidden from Olt’s view.

  Only a pistoleer had the understanding of angle and trajectory necessary to conceive so bold a plan, only a gun mage had the skill and ability to make it reality. ‘Seek” the gun mage whispered as she fired her magelock. The rune shot whistled over Rutger’s ear as it drove upwards, finding the black eye of the spitter in an explosion of blood and jelly.

  The ironback flailed in agony, and in its pain it did exactly what Taryn wanted it to do. The hulking brute lost its footing. The spitter came crashing down, its tremendous weight crumpling the roof of the car. The momentum of the train sent it tumbling backwards. Taryn had fired from the precise angle to send the dead bulk jouncing back into the path of the oncoming killers. Like a rolling siege engine, the spitter smashed into the men, battering them aside like rag dolls and sending their broken bodies hurtling from the train. The foremost thug was splashed into a pulpy mess as the bulk crashed into him and kept rolling. The sight sent the injured rogue with the trench knife scurrying away, his courage shattered.

  Olt’s men on the rear car panicked as the hulking mass bounced over the gap between carriages and came careening towards them. Scrambling for safety, their retreat was doomed. Bones were smashed to paste beneath the beast’s weight. Only the cutthroat Olt himself was coolheaded enough to grab the guide rail running along the edge of the roof. Holstering his magelock, he hurriedly slung himself over the side an instant before the titanic carcass could crush him as it had his followers.

  “Pull me up!” Taryn shouted at the earl, the thrill of her accomplishment ringing in her voice. The next instant, the hold on her legs was gone and she was falling. Desperately she lashed out, hooking the window of the car with her pistol as she fell to arrest her downward spiral. She screamed as her arm was nearly wrenched from its socket. Above her she could hear the sounds of a furious struggle.

  Ignoring the agony in her arm, Taryn swung her body upwards, catching the railing at the edge of the roof with her feet. Using the muscles in her legs, she pulled herself up.

  Gaining the roof once more, Taryn found that the earl had been seized, grabbed by scar-face. The rogue was trying to knock a jeweled dagger from the nobleman’s hand while at the same time snarling orders to the two renegades with him to “help Smiler.”

  “Smiler,” it seemed, was the gatorman bokor. With its warbeast vanquished, the bokor had climbed onto the roof to make a more direct attack on Rutger. She could see the reptile’s claw ringed by spell runes as it slashed at him. She felt horror twist at her gut when she saw the way Rutger’s coat withered and went wormy when the bokor’s claw glanced across it, as though years of decay had been thrust upon the garment. She didn’t like to think what the reptile’s magic would do to flesh should it gain a hold on the man himself.

  For his part, Rutger was unable to get close enough to Smiler to bring his blade to bear. The gatorman was keeping him back with vicious sweeps of its tail, then lunging at him with its ensorcelled claw each time he staggered back. Rutger had lost the momentum of the fight and it would take only the slightest push to turn the affair into a disaster.

  Taryn reloaded her remaining pistol and prayed it was still working after using it as a wedge. Coldly she hissed the word “Seek” as she evoked the enchantment of her rune shot. Arcane energies swirled from the weapon as the bullet sped towards the two thugs trying to intercede in the fray. The bullet slammed into one of the thugs, the impact hurling him into the other rogue. Both men were sent sprawling, screaming as they fell from the roof of the train to the muck of the Scrapwater thirty feet below. Scar-face spun around at the unexpected attack, holding the earl before him like a living shield. He had a pistol pressed to the earl’s head. Even if Taryn dropped him, in his final spasm scar-face might send a bullet crashing through Earl Alessandro’s skull.

  “Put down the gun, witch!” scar-face snarled. “Or I’ll kill him!”

  Taryn could only glare at the murderer. He kept eyeing her empty magelock, and she kept it trained on him in a gamble that he hadn’t seen her empty it before turning. She knew the instant the threat of her weapon was gone, scar-face wouldn’t hesitate to shift the aim of his pistol and shoot her down. The man might be under Olt’s orders to keep the earl alive, but he was also de
sperate. The possibility that his chief had been thrown from the train by the ironback spitter could make him bold enough to defy the cutthroat’s commands.

  Before the issue could be forced, a pained bellow rose from the rearward car. In a flash of mechanikal steel, Rutger had gained the advantage over the bokor. Slapping at him with its tail, Smiler had misjudged the careful strategy of its enemy. This time, Rutger didn’t leap back. Exposing himself to the sweep of that ensorcelled claw, Rutger chopped down at the gatorman’s tail, shearing through it and sending a foot of leathery flesh flying into the air.

  The stricken bokor sprang back, clinging to its injured member. Rutger lunged at the reptile, bringing his boot up and kicking into the monster’s gut. The gatorman was knocked back, sailing out over the edge of the roof. Its bellow of rage faded away as it hurtled down the side of the trellis and vanished into the swampy muck far below.

  Rutger didn’t linger over his enemy’s destruction, but spun around to confront the renegade holding the earl. He smiled viciously at the scar-faced rogue and drew the hand cannon from his belt. “Go ahead and kill him,” Rutger growled, sending a tremor of panic through Taryn. “I’m sure after all the trouble your boss has gone through to take Earl Alessandro alive, he’ll be real happy with you!” Rutger’s grin took on a cruel, gloating quality as he saw the rest of the man’s face turn as white as his scars. The mercenary gestured with his hand cannon. “At this range, this is going to make quite a mess, you know.”

  Snarling in outrage, scar-face shoved the earl away and dove to the far-side of the train. Taryn rushed to grab the reeling nobleman before he was dragged from the roof. She shouted at Rutger to stop scar-face before the man could leap from the train. Rutger just stood and watched their enemy escape.

  “Why didn’t you shoot him?” Taryn demanded. Rutger just shook his head and aimed the hand cannon into the air. He pulled the trigger, but the only response was the dull click of the hammer against a spent shell.