by C. L. Werner
“Looks like both you and I were out,” Rutger smiled.
Taryn was about to reprimand Rutger for staging such a reckless gambit when a single shot sounded from behind them. She felt the earl’s body spasm in her arms, looking down she saw blood gushing across the nobleman’s chest.
“Olt!” Rutger roared, almost automatically moving to put himself between Taryn and the rear cars. From over his shoulder, Taryn could see the black-coated gun mage holster his pistol and dash towards the back of the train. Having managed to regain the roof, the villain had stolen their victory from them. Taryn saw him drop down the ladder at the rear of his car, putting the carriage between himself and any vengeful retaliation from her gun. An instant later, an explosion rocked the train, and a great gout of smoke and flame leapt from between the cars. When the smoke cleared, they could see the hindmost car receding into the distance, detached from the rest of the train by the charge Olt’s men had detonated.
Rutger clenched his fist in impotent fury. “I guess I was wrong about that scum wanting the earl alive,” he fumed.
Taryn looked up from the wounded aristocrat. “He’s a gun mage,” she stated. “Even from that range, if he’d wanted to kill, he would have. Earl Alessandro isn’t dead, but a wound like this is as bad as it gets. He’ll need a surgeon and quick.”
“Which means Olt’s people will know how to find us again,” Rutger cursed. His statement brought a flash of awareness through the earl’s pain.
“No… we can’t… risk…” the earl gasped. He gripped Taryn’s arm with a bloodied hand. “Five Fingers… too much… depends…” He hesitated, licking his lips, mustering himself for a tremendous effort. “Promise… your… honor. We go… to Five… Fingers…”
Taryn stared down at the nobleman as he descended into merciful unconsciousness. The noble wasn’t a seasoned fighter, a veteran of numberless battles. She’d seen the fear that gripped him when the smell of blood was in the air. Yet he’d still found the courage to risk himself, to come to her aid. On the Spectre, he’d only been an employer to her, a talking money belt. Now… now he was something more than another puffed up Llaelese blueblood. He’d become a person she could respect. There was conflict in her face as she looked up at Rutger. Five Fingers was days away and the earl’s wound was bad. She didn’t see how he could make the journey.
“We have our orders,” Rutger told her, reading the turn of her mind. He laid a hand on her shoulder. Almost meekly, he handed Taryn her second magelock, recovered from where it had lodged against the railing. The valuable weapon’s recovery did nothing to ease the anguish in her eyes. “It’s what he wants,” Rutger told her, his tone sympathetic.
Taryn shook her head, her eyes turning from the dead soldiers lying across the cupola to the carcass of a gatorman draped over the edge of the car. So much death, so much destruction and now the earl…
She hoped whatever it was all about was worth it.
Though she doubted that anything could be.
The city of Five Fingers stretched across the tangle of islands that littered the Bay of Stone at the mouth of the Dragon’s Tongue River. Built upon the bones of an Orgoth fortress, what had once been a small outpost of smugglers and pirates had expanded to become the most infamous city in western Immoren, the black jewel in the crown of Ord.
Virtually every habitable inch of land on even the smallest of the islands had been built up over the centuries to provide shelter to those bold or desperate enough to seek their fortune in the lawless city. Great spires of stone and steel stretched up into the smoggy sky, looming above narrow streets and maze-like alleys, casting their shadows across teeming docks and shipyards. The city’s construction had been as haphazard as it had been rapid, buildings built one atop another until they resembled the stacked blocks of some imbecilic giant. A confusion of elevated walkways, bridges and rope rigging stretched between the structures, forming a cobweb hundreds of feet above the ground that danced and jumped with every sea-borne breeze. From the highest towers, great cables reached out across the channels between the big islands, securing the enormous cars of steel that slowly rumbled over the water on their steam-powered wheels, sometimes vanishing into the smoke spewed by the factories littering the ground far below.
For all its filthy appearance and stench of dead fish, Taryn felt her heart swell as she watched Five Fingers heave into view. Many times on the journey across the marshy terrain of Ord she had despaired of reaching the city. The succession of barges and river boats they had employed after leaving the train, the seemingly endless delays as they transferred from one to another, all of it was behind them now. They had done their best to leave a confused trail behind them without inflicting further delay upon Earl Alessandro, yet even so the journey had been fraught with worry. Had they really lost Olt’s men, and could the earl hang on long enough to reach the city and a capable healer? Now that they were near journey’s end, she felt as though a great weight had been eased from her shoulders.
She and Rutger had held true to Earl Alessandro’s commands, even when it seemed their employer must perish from his obstinacy. Disembarking from the train in Armandor the earl had allowed only the briefest medical attention before they were bound for Tarna aboard a steamer travelling down the Dragon’s Tongue. The apothecary who had attended the earl – for the noble would not risk the attention of a professional physician – was quite vocal in his disapproval of the voyage. The wound was more hideous than anything he had seen outside of a codex. The bullet that had struck the earl hadn’t been lead or steel, but wood, and it had splintered on impact, infesting the flesh with morbid splinters that were promoting a rapid corruption.
The apothecary said it was Bloodroot, a noxious substance drawn from a rare carnivorous tree. He explained how the assassins of Morrdh had once used thorns from that tree to murder their enemies. The healer looked dark as he related how the hideous wood was drawn to warm blood, how the splinters in the earl’s body were slowly burrowing through his flesh in an effort to root themselves in his veins. Taryn was impressed by Olt’s knowledge and cunning. The assassin had spared her and Rutger, expecting the bodyguards to appreciate the danger the earl was in. He was depending on them to force their employer to the care of a surgeon. Where, as Rutger had said, the villain’s agents would soon locate their prey.
Because of this, she kept her knowledge to herself. The earl believed his mission to be more important than his life. She wasn’t sure she believed that, but that was his choice. For her part, the image of Olt’s men rampaging through a triage or sanatorium was too monstrous to contemplate. In the end, it was the earl’s life balanced against all the innocents who might get caught in the fighting, people oblivious to both Earl Alessandro and his mysterious secret.
In his more lucid moments, of which there were increasingly few, the earl expressed an intense anxiety to reach Five Fingers before the 17th of Katesh. In his less coherent moments, when in the grip of fever, the earl raved about a consignment and “the Wolf,” whatever that might be.
There was one thing that Rutger seemed certain of – somewhere, someplace, the earl had allowed some part of whatever secret he harbored to slip. Someone knew enough about that secret to put Arisztid Olt on their scent. Clearly they didn’t know all, but how much they did know and had divulged to Olt was a problem that couldn’t be ignored. The earl, again in his lucid moments, spoke of arrangements he had made once they reached Five Fingers. Whatever those arrangements might be, they couldn’t chance the possibility that they had been compromised.
The earl had planned to disembark on Bellicose Island, the northernmost of Five Fingers’ keys, directly across from Ord’s Bold Shore. A fistful of silver made the captain of their steamer adjust his course, tarrying alongside the piers of Chaser Island long enough to disembark a few of his passengers. If somebody was waiting for them on Bellicose Island, Rutger intended for them to have a long wait.
Taryn kept an easy grip on her pistols as she strode down the pie
r, leaving Rutger to support the earl. The docks were a bedlam of activity, stevedores and steamjacks unloading a confusion of ore and timber from barges and paddleboats while a chaotic array of crates and boxes were trundled out to waiting cargo ships and steamers. Most of the laborers seemed far too interested in their own business to bother about the three strangers – after years in Five Fingers they had certainly seen far stranger sights – but Taryn didn’t want to make the mistake of letting down her guard. Short of kissing a farrow she knew no quicker way to an early grave.
North of the docks – “starboard” in the parlance of the natives – Chaser Island converged into a rat-run of workshops and stores. Even at this late hour, when lamplighters were already making the rounds, most of the shops were open and doing a bustling business. Caspian merchants haggled with chandlers over discounted volumes while Thurian ironmongers declaimed the quality of their wares to tattooed seadogs. The close confines and press of bodies soon had Taryn’s nerves on edge. Olt would have procured a new crew after the train, so there was little chance she’d recognize an enemy before he chose to reveal himself. In such close quarters, by then it would be too late.
“We have to get out of here,” Taryn hissed at Rutger as she found herself studying a knot of villainous-looking sailors who seemed unduly interested in them. When one of them gave her a lewd wink, she almost felt like laughing.
“We have to get our man somewhere he can rest,” Rutger told her. The earl had been almost able to walk under his own power when they’d disembarked. Now his vitality was ebbing and he was increasingly dependent upon Rutger to bear him along.
Taryn cast her gaze across the packed street. Half a block down the way she spotted the opening of a side-street that seemed promising. At least it wasn’t swarming with people. “We’ll make for that,” she said, indicating the side-street with a nod of her head.
The street proved to be little more than a glorified alleyway, a service road running behind a shipyard. A single gas-lamp flickered midway along the path, casting weird shadows along the walls of the opposing buildings and reflecting eerily off the hulls of the steamjacks standing idle behind the shipyard’s wrought iron fence.
Taryn felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle as she stared down the dark path. It looked like a place designed to host a murder or three, eerily desolate and remote when there was such activity only a few yards away.
“Do we go back?” Rutger asked, noting her indecision.
Taryn took one look at the earl, at the beads of perspiration dotting his forehead. Whatever the danger, they’d make better progress and draw less attention this way. Drawing one of her pistols, Taryn started down the darkened path, Rutger and the earl following a few paces behind her.
A scurrying noise overhead caused Taryn to stop short and aim her weapon skyward. There was a section of rope rigging a hundred feet above, the entire piece swaying and shuddering as a wizened figure went skittering along it, pulling itself hand-over-hand like some jungle monkey.
“Rigrunner,” Rutger told her. “Probably some gobber late for his supper.”
“Or on his way to tell Olt about us,” Taryn frowned. She knew it was her pessimism at work again, feeding itself into full-blown paranoia. However great his infamy, Olt couldn’t have eyes everywhere. Then again, with the bad luck that seemed to dog her and Rutger wherever they went, half the island was probably in their enemy’s employ!
The pair of mercenaries and their noble charge continued down the pathway, past the empty shipyard and down the odious passage between a fishmonger and a tannery. A mangy dog, its ribs standing stark beneath its patchy pelt, growled at them as they trespassed upon its meal of leather scraps and fish bones. A little further along, Taryn leveled her pistol at a sinister-looking shadow, only to find herself menacing the rusted bulk of a wrecked steamjack, a placard tied about its neck offering to sell the scrap for twenty royals.
Rutger paused for a moment beside the steamjack, running his hand along its corroded torso. Taryn frowned as she saw the sadness that pulled at his face. Rutger always had a weakness for the ’jacks, endowing them with the sort of sentiment most people reserved for living things. She started to retrace her steps, to nudge her companion from his melancholy reverie.
She had barely turned around when something dropped down upon her from above. A great weight pressed down on her shoulders and wiry legs wrapped themselves about her waist. Taryn shouted as a hand closed about the barrel of her magelock and tried to wrench it from her grasp. She started to reach for her other pistol, but the cold caress of steel against her neck sent her hand flying to her throat. Her attacker’s first rake of the knife had slashed the folds of her hood, missing the flesh beneath. Her hand locked about a leathery wrist, struggling to drag the knife away before the ambusher could try again.
Taryn could see other shapes explode from the darkness. Some, like her attacker, dropped down from the rigging above the alleyway. Others rushed at them from the shadows, lunging into the alley like river eels. They were a mix of men and smaller creatures, low-class Thurians and feral-looking gobbers. Their garb was rough and dirty, the blades and bludgeons in their hands blackened with soot to dull their shine.
The earl collapsed to the street as Rutger spun to meet the attackers. His fist lashed out and cracked the jaw of a one-eyed mugger, knocking him back into the rushing gobbers behind him. Rutger exploited the confusion to draw Jackknife from its sheath. The instant he thumbed the activation stud and set the mechanikal blade aglow, his attackers drew back in fright.
It was only a moment before the thugs recovered their determination. Snarling like a jackal, the biggest of the muggers charged at Rutger, swinging a viciously spiked club. As the brutal implement came crashing down, Rutger’s blade went flashing upwards to meet it. There was a screech of tortured metal as Jackknife ripped through the heft of the club and sent three-quarters of the weapon spinning into the darkness. The mugger stared in shock at the truncated shaft he still held, and then raised his eyes to stare into Rutger’s hard expression.
Opportunists, the thieves that had set upon them believed they had found easy prey. Now the muggers appreciated their mistake. Numbers might be on their side, but it had been impressed upon their criminal brains that they wouldn’t win this contest without suffering casualties. An easy coin was one thing, but maintaining the strength of their gang was more important.
“Leg it!” the thug spat, dropping what little remained of his weapon and taking to his heels. The other thieves quickly followed his example, vanishing with the same swiftness with which they had appeared.
All except the ambusher clinging to Taryn’s back. After that thwarted attempt to slit her throat, the gobber found he had a tiger by the tail. It was all he could do to keep Taryn’s pistol pointed away from him. To disengage from her would mean releasing that hand, a prospect he knew would mean his doom.
Suddenly, the weight on Taryn’s back grew limp and she felt the thief’s clutch slacken. Quickly, she lashed out with the butt of her magelock, but the gobber didn’t cry out when she brought it cracking against his skull. The thief simply slipped off, tumbling to the alleyway like a bag of garbage.
Taryn glared down at the gobber corpse, then raised her gaze, shocked to see a short, spider-limbed little man dressed in rough, grimy clothes standing only a few paces away. There was blood on the knife he held in his hand.
The man smiled at Taryn. She smiled back and aimed her magelock at him. The man’s eyes went as wide as saucers. “Try telling me you aren’t one of them,” she challenged. In that brief instant before the gobber landed on her back, she’d had seen this backstabbing rat among the thieves. She wasn’t sure why he’d knifed his friend, nor was she overly interested.
“Mercy! Pity!” the thief begged in a whine that was more squeak than speech. His words were Ordic but his accent was Cygnaran. Taryn thumbed back the hammer on her weapon while her other hand brushed across the dripping scratch where the gobber’s k
nife had nicked her.
“Marko Vane?” There was a mixture of shock and alarm in Rutger’s voice as he ambled towards the whining thief. The rat-faced man turned at the sound of his name, desperate hope flooding into his eyes. “Shaw?” he gasped. “Rutger Shaw!”
“You know this viper?” Taryn hissed through clenched teeth. Keeping her pistol trained on the little man, she circled around to where the earl was sprawled.
Rutger stepped closer to the thief. “Indeed,” he said. “Marko is one of my oldest friends.” His complexion colored with embarrassment as he glanced around at the shabby alleyway. “We used to make a living in places like this until the watch broke up the gang.”
Marko nodded his head with emphatic vehemence. “Those were grand times!” he beamed. “Rutger Shaw could clout the toughest bodyguard and smash the strongest lock!”
“I thought they hanged you,” Rutger said, his brow knotted as he dredged up old memories.
“Not a bit of it,” Marko said. “I had enough stashed away that I was able to bribe the sergeant of the watch. For fifty crowns he let me go under condition I never show my face in Port Bourne again. So I skipped on the first steamer I could find and headed down-river!”
Tending to the earl, gravely checking him for bleeding with her free hand, Taryn found the chummy dialog with their adversary infuriating. “This is all nice,” she growled at Rutger, “but if you’re finished, I’d like to shoot this scoundrel and get going.”
Rutger turned towards Taryn, confusion in his face. “This is my old friend Marko.”
“A minute ago one of your ‘old friend’s’ new friends tried to cut my throat,” Taryn reminded him, thrusting the barrel of her magelock towards the thief. Marko cringed back, pressing against the wall behind him.
“I saved you from Brak!” he whined. “If my boss had told me he wanted me to assault such a beautiful and gracious lady, much less the woman of my old chum Rutger Shaw, I would have never agreed to participate in this scurrilous business!”
