The group backed off, and behind them Kiel saw one of Talion’s officers—Bosun’s Mate Argan Grath, assistant to the trollkin in charge of the decks. Bloodeye looked between the bosun’s mate and Kiel and shrugged. “No skin off my back.” With that, he and the others slunk away.
Kiel forced himself to release the railing and stand straight, wiping his mouth on a ragged sleeve and mustering what dignity he could. “Thank you, Bosun’s Mate.”
“Sure, Kiel. Everyone deserves a second chance. Come with me.” Grath steered Kiel toward the main deck with an arm around his shoulders but then gave a nod to someone behind them. The world went dark as coarse sackcloth came down over Kiel’s head and he was thrown roughly over someone’s shoulder.
Kiel stopped struggling once it became clear it was useless. He soon heard the sounds of the ship docking and tromping boots. As he was carried off the ship, he could not help but think of the sea dogs’ words regarding his possible fate, and he found himself weighing the possibilities. Being a slave wasn’t so different from being an impressed sailor, he figured, but the notion of sampling poisons or being cut up for stew made him want to retch anew. He fought down his nausea, not relishing the notion of being sick while his head was in a sack.
Before long he was set down on a hard-backed chair, and the sack was yanked free. He blinked and saw he was inside a cramped office, directly before a broad desk heaped with stacks of papers and ledgers. Behind it sat Lord Rockbottom, the one-legged dwarf who was the Talion’s paymaster and the de facto mayor of the pirate town. The only other thing Kiel knew about him was that he was fond of burning people alive with his fire-belching gun.
Behind Kiel, Grath said, “This one might do. Can’t go an hour without retching. Grogspar wants him off the ship.”
Rockbottom’s eyes narrowed. “Are you literate? Read that,” he demanded, indicating the shipping mark branded on a crate against the wall.
Kiel’s heart was hammering, and he squinted to focus. “Um, lessee . . . Mercarian League. Carter and Wainway Exports. Mercir. Fragile. Do not upend.”
Rockbottom grunted and pushed a ledger toward him, tapping at a tightly scrawled list with numbers to the side. “Give me the total of the right-hand column.”
Kiel tried to focus and began adding the numbers in his head. Not easy with no quill to mark his progress, but it was a familiar task. “E-eleven thousand seven hundred and eight?”
Rockbottom’s scowl smoothed and he nodded. He turned and said sharply, “Mr. Baggerly!”
A pale man wearing a soiled visor leaned back from another desk beyond a set of shelves. “Yes, sir?”
“You’re fired! Get back to the ship.”
Looking relieved, Baggerly stood and came forward, pulling off the visor to drop it next to Rockbottom. “Thank you, sir!” he said, scrambling past Grath and out of the office as quickly as his feet could take him.
Rockbottom flipped a bright gold coin through the air to Grath, who caught it, offered a bow, and strolled out of the office. Kiel watched him go, then turned to see Rockbottom holding out the visor. He took it, mouth agape.
“Baggerly couldn’t do sums to save his life,” the dwarf said. “You work for me now. No more sailing, no more dreams of a share of the spoils. You’re mine until I have no more use for you. You’ll do inventory and double-check sums. You’ll work twelve hours a day. Steal from me and I’ll cut off one of your hands. You’ll get room and board and a salary commensurate with your speed and accuracy. You’ll treat my orders as scripture. Understood?”
Tears welled in Kiel’s eyes as he realized at last that he was not going to be killed or put back on a ship. He sat up straighter and said, “Yes, sir! Thank you, sir. You won’t regret this, I promise!”
BEFORE DEATH, RETRIBUTION
By Erik Scott de Bie
Eastern Occupied Llael, 607 AR
“Ly-Veld, lyss Scyr,” she whispered. Her mission had failed. She felt numb, already dead.
Spittle and blood flew from Nyr’s mouth as the Winter Guard punched her down. The cold, hard-packed floor slammed into her head hard enough to make the musty pit of a root cellar spin.
The younger of the two Khadorans fidgeted uneasily. He was short for a human and had a thin, weedy voice. The Iosan had learned Khadoran, but she found it sometimes difficult to follow their dialect. “Do not kill her, Voltok. Magziev Skalzi—”
“I know what the Skinner says, Rhold.” Voltok’s elbow smashed into Nyr’s nose and she twisted on the floor, shuddering. Her middle felt like something had crawled into it and died. She spat blood and spittle to clear her mouth, sending two distinct stabbing pains through her ribs. She tried to ignore them, praying to both Lyliss and Scyrah for strength.
Voltok cracked his knuckles where he stood over her, his hands wrapped in blood-encrusted bandages. He nodded to the door. “Report to the tower—tell the magziev the prisoner will talk soon.”
Rhold frowned. “And leave you alone with the prisoner?”
“I can handle her.” Voltok drew himself up. “That was an order.”
“Yes, sir.” Rhold hesitated a moment at the stairs, looking back with that odd expression. Sympathy, perhaps? Then he was gone.
Voltok loomed over Nyr as she lay at his feet, her chest heaving. He was a big man—his shoulders were as broad as an axe was long, his arms the size and shape of cannons. He’d set his helmet and gauntlets aside, the better to enjoy the brutality. He had every reason to be confident.
Nyr glared at him. He seized her throat and lifted her to her knees.
“The Skinner wants to know what your band is doing in western Llael, so far from home. Your friends were much easier to kill than you. What makes you special? Why are you here?”
Nyr thought of her duty and kept silent, even when another ringing punch opened her lip. “Ly-Veld, lyss Scyr,” she murmured.
“What?” Voltok bent over her, craning his head toward her cracked lips. “What did you say?”
Nyr lunged upward, seized his throat in her mouth, and bit down.
The soldier didn’t even have time to scream before she cut off his air. His hands opened and closed in confused spasms, and she locked her jaw like a hunting dog seizing a prize. He scrabbled at her head, but his fingers slipped in her blood. Choking and gurgling, Voltok managed to get his hands on her shoulders, and Nyr wrenched away just as he pushed with strength born of terror. They came apart with a grinding, squelching sound, and blood exploded over Nyr’s face. Voltok’s scream came out as a gurgling red fountain from his torn throat. He collapsed.
Nyr, who had earned the epithet Lingering Death, stood over the man’s shuddering corpse and spat out a gory chunk of flesh. “Before death,” she said, her Khadoran heavily accented but clear enough, “retribution.” Nyr shed her manacles with the key from Voltok’s belt, ignoring the pain ripping through her splintered middle.
She headed up the stairs from the cellar. She found Vyshkyr—her chain blade—hanging on a hook near the top of the stairs. The familiar weight of the chopping blade and chain reassured her.
The door across the small room opened. “Voltok—” Rhold stopped short and stared at the blood-smeared Nyr. He reached for his pistol.
“Ly-Veld, lyss Scyr,” she said and hurled the chain blade.
Rhold jerked to the side, but the blade bit into his neck, splattering blood against the wall in a wide arterial spray. He clamped a hand to his neck, staggered, and fell to the floor.
Knowing she could be detected at any moment, Nyr paused at the gasping soldier’s side only long enough to pull the pistol from his limp hand. Then she wrapped Vyshkyr’s chain around her arm and ran out into a broad, snow-covered field. Several other buildings were arranged on the perimeter, and she smelled the stench of burning flesh. Two Khadoran soldiers—Winter Guard—shouted from the direction of an old guard tower. The Greylord she had to kill
would be there.
The first Winter Guard raised his blunderbuss and fired. The shot exploded into the snow several feet from her. She ran at him and hurled Vyshkyr, pointing her left arm at her target. The blade sank into the soft spot under the man’s arm, piercing lungs and heart. He collapsed into the red-stained snow even as Nyr vaulted his corpse, yanking her weapon free.
The second soldier took the time to aim, but she hesitated too long. The Iosan leaped back and forth, whirling the chain blade around her. The Winter Guard fired, and the bullet exploded into the ground a few inches from Nyr’s right foot. Nyr ignored the agony in her legs and leaped up the steps to the tower, snapping Vyshkyr’s blade back into her hand. The Khadoran’s blue eyes went wide, and Nyr slashed her blade across the woman’s throat. The soldier’s head bounced down the steps.
Nyr stood before the door, refocusing. Her faith had allowed her to get this far, to endure watching seven of her fellow Iosans slaughtered. Only now did she recognize what her mind had taken in at a glance: near the steps, a charnel pile of several slim Iosan corpses, blackened and left to smoke in the winter air. They had been her escort, brave mage hunters every one. She saw them now as a sacrifice necessary to get her inside so she could kill the Greylord butcher they called the Skinner. This had not been Nyr’s original target, but now she saw the hand of the divine in delivering her here.
She heard muffled shouts from one of the other buildings. The soldiers would not be delayed by uncertainty and confusion for long. She pushed open the door and slipped inside.
Nyr felt like she’d stepped into a bank of warm fog. Grotesque smells mingled in the humid air, and beakers and other paraphernalia surrounded her, boiling over and emitting the foul vapors of a tannery. She reeled, fighting for breath, but then shook it off. Move! she told herself.
Too late.
A spear made of ice stabbed into her gut, nailing her to wall. She dropped Vyshkyr and grasped at the ice, which burned her fingers.
“Welcome,” a brawny human woman said. The magziev was sweaty in her white undershirt spattered with black, crusted blood, and her arms were stained red to the elbows. “I had hoped Voltok would learn more from you before bringing you here. But so be it.”
By Scyrah, the woman speaks Iosan! How did she learn our tongue? Nyr tried to move, but the pain in her middle was excruciating. Numbness crept outward into her body, and the blood pooling around the wound froze solid.
“I’ve long hoped for the opportunity to ply my trade against Iosans,” Magziev Skalzi said. She set down her skinning knife next to the red-and-purple form of a flayed corpse on the gore-stained table. She nodded to a carefully stitched coat of tanned skin on a frame behind her. “You have such lovely skin.”
There was a reason Analia Skalzi’s men called her the Skinner.
A smile cracked the woman’s deranged face, and blue runes danced around her left hand. Nyr gritted her teeth at the thought of dying to human magic.
“You are strong,” Skalzi said. “Voltok was hard on you. You can rest now.”
Nyr brought up the pistol she’d taken from Rhold. It shook in her fist.
Skalzi’s eyes widened, but she cloaked herself in freezing, shielding magic. “Such determination is admirable, but so is wisdom to know when you are beaten.”
Nyr pulled the trigger. The shot pierced through the ice shield to blow half the Skinner’s mouth away.
Skalzi collapsed to the floor, her eyes wide with shock. Nyr knew the Greylord couldn’t fathom how her magic had failed to stop a bullet from a crude Khadoran pistol. Nyr’s ability to slay mages relied on her conviction and faith, not the weapon she wielded.
Nyr wrenched herself free of the icy spear. Blood soaking her middle, she half-limped, half-crawled to the choking Khadoran, dragging Vyshkyr behind her. She pulled in the chain and raised the blade high over the Skinner’s ruined face. The woman sputtered, leaking blood and spit.
“Ly-Veld, lyss Scyr,” Nyr said. “Before death, retribution.”
Then a shot took her in the chest. The air went out of Nyr’s lungs, and she wavered on her knees. She glanced back and saw Rhold leaning heavily against the doorframe, his blunderbuss in one hand, the other holding a stained bandage to his bleeding neck. He looked pale. He would not outlive her long.
Feeling bitter triumph, she brought down the blade with the last of her strength.
STRAIGHT SHOOTER
By Aeryn Rudel
“Hey, Valkar,” Kurn whispered to the dwarf walking in front of him. “You got any uiske?”
Valkar glanced over his armored shoulder and scowled. “Yes. I have enough for me.”
Kurn glanced around, looking for Captain Vornek Blackheel. The captain didn’t mind a quick nip on the road, but they were guarding important cargo now, one of the first mercenary contracts the dwarves of Baram Fort had been offered in nearly two months. The captain had said drunkenness would not be tolerated on this excursion—they needed the money that badly.
“Come on,” Kurn said. “Don’t be that way. I can’t shoot straight without a drink.”
“Too bad,” Valkar hissed over his shoulder. “Now shut your hole. Murgan’s lookin’ at us.”
Kurn looked up and saw that Blackheel’s hulking second-in-command was indeed staring at him. The ogrun never drank, though he tolerated the drunkenness of his dwarven charges with grudging acceptance. What else could he do? Baram Fort was where the Searforge Commission sent its trash, the final stop for those members of the High Shield Gun Corps deemed unworthy of every other post. But this job needed to go smoothly, and Kurn wouldn’t bet on much tolerance from Murgan.
Kurn and the other twenty-one members of Baram Fort who had been chosen to escort a pair of Khadoran wagons loaded with iron ore to Skirov were all armed with double-barreled carbines, stout shields, and short-hafted axes. To Kurn, the weapons and armor felt like they weighed a thousand pounds. He never really noticed the weight when he was properly drunk.
They had been marching for two days, with another two days of it ahead of them. The road between Baram and Skirov was well known for bandits, and the Khadoran merchants had paid good silver for a safe trip.
“Right, lads,” Blackheel called out from astride his pony. The commander of Baram Fort was riding up alongside the wagons, hand on his carbine, looking over his men. “Step lively. Only a few more miles before we stop for the night.”
Kurn wondered why the captain got a pony while the rest of them had to walk. It seemed unfair. Sure, he didn’t know how to ride a pony, but it couldn’t be all that hard. He sighed. At least they were going to stop soon. He could smother his sorrows with sleep.
The wagon he was walking next to suddenly lurched to the side and came to a stop. He looked up at the driver’s bench, about to tell the stupid human driver to watch where he was going, but the words died on his lips. The Khadoran was hunched over, a black-fletched arrow jutting from his forehead.
“Oh, damn it all,” Kurn said as arrows began to fall all around them. Most were coming from the thick stands of trees on either side of the road. Both wagons had stopped now, and he heard Vornek shouting, “Shields! Shields and shooters!”
Positioning his shield in front of him, Kurn took a step to his right to butt it up against Valkar’s. Kurn was the front of the line, and after Valkar there were eight more dwarves, all with their shields locked together and their carbines braced on notches in the rims.
Arrows began thudding into their shields. One skipped off Valkar’s helmet, causing him to yelp in surprise. The dwarves couldn’t see any targets yet, and the arrows kept falling. The merchants were hiding under their wagons, shouting in Khadoran.
The rain of arrows slowed and then stopped. Kurn glanced down the line and saw that only one dwarf had been hit. It looked like Gornum. The youngest member of their group was lying on his face, multiple arrows sticking out of his back.
“Steady, lads!” he heard Captain Blackheel shout from the other side of the wagon. “Keep those rifles up!”
It was sound advice. Seconds later, the tree line disgorged a cluster of men—Kurn guessed around twenty—armed with axes and with bows slung across their backs. They looked like Khadorans. The bandits came charging across the hundred yards that separated the trees from the wagons, weapons raised. They probably figured their superior numbers would carry the day. They figured wrong.
“Let ’em have it!” came Blackheel’s order.
Kurn sighted down the barrel of his carbine and pulled the trigger. The gun barked and bucked against his shoulder, and he heard the rest of the dwarven carbines go off simultaneously with his. He missed—there was no doubt about it. Without a drink in him, his hands shook like mad. Thankfully his brothers in arms had better aim, and eight of the charging men were stopped in their tracks by Rhulic bullets. Kurn didn’t bother to fire his second barrel—he’d only miss again—but the other members of the gun corps cut down another six bandits with their second shots.
“Don’t reload!” This was Murgan. “Axes!”
Kurn slung his carbine and pulled his axe from his belt. He glanced over at Valkar, who was doing the same. There were still eight men charging toward them. With axe and shield in hand, Kurn broke ranks and charged into the first bandit. He slammed his shield into the man’s legs, knocking him over, then buried his axe in the human’s skull as he was trying to stand.
To Kurn’s relief, he saw that Murgan had joined the fight. Unlike the dwarves, the ogrun was armed with a long-hafted war cleaver and a huge steel-rimmed shield. He was an absolute terror in battle, and Kurn watched him cut a man in half with a swipe of his war cleaver, then spin in a tight circle and use his shield to brain a second bandit charging up behind him.
Kurn glanced down as he pulled his axe free from the man he’d just killed and his heart leapt into his throat. Great Fathers in council, the dead bandit had a flask on his belt! Kurn snatched the flask, popped it open, and took a swig. The stark, acrid burn of vyatka raked his throat, and he nearly fainted with delight. He took another swallow and saw the battle was over—almost. Valkar was dealing with the last bandit, and the desperate attacker had somehow knocked the gun corpsman’s shield away and was slashing wildly at him with what looked like a wood axe.
Iron Kingdoms Excursions: Season One Collection Page 3
