The Butcher of Khardov

by Dan Wells

  “There’s something in there,” Orsus said, peering closely at the wide closed door.

  “Of course,” Gendyarev snorted, “that’s what we’ve just been talking about.”

  “But I mean . . .” He couldn’t explain it, and thus didn’t say anything more, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something inside was . . . waiting for him.

  “Are we going to call out?” asked Emin.

  Aleksei shook his head. “I’ve tried talking, and Nazarov wasn’t interested. I’ll let Isidor announce our presence.”

  They waited, and sure enough, Orsus saw a flash of orange in the sky behind the warehouse. An arrow soaked in pitch and lit with a burning brand. Emin crouched low and readied his rifle.

  “Get ready,” Aleksei said softly, drawing his two long daggers. “The fun starts . . . now!”

  The man-sized door on the front of the warehouse flew open and Emin fired in almost the same breath. A shadowed figure dropped to the ground with a cry, and another man dragged him back in while Emin reloaded. The orange glow behind the warehouse grew larger and brighter. There was only a small back door, and Isidor’s group could watch it easily: one man to light the arrows, one man to shoot them, and one to kill anyone who tried to escape. The only other exit was here, both a small office door and two-story loading door for the warehouse. It was their only escape, and because the yard fronted the river it was their only means of putting out the fire. Nazarov had to do both if he wanted his rebellion to mean anything.

  Aleksei cackled viciously.

  The door opened again, and again Emin fired into the blackness, but there was nobody there; a heartbeat later an armed dockworker stepped into the doorway, raising his rifle and thinking he was clever, only to die when Gendyarev dropped him with a deafening blast from his blunderbuss. Aleksei laughed again while his men reloaded.

  Orsus heard a sound in the alley behind them. He turned to see a pair of black-clad footpads creeping toward them in the darkness.

  “Looks like Nazarov’s not as stupid as we thought,” said Gendyarev, opening the breach of his rifle and sliding in a powder cartridge.

  “Keep your eyes on that door,” said Aleksei. “Orsus, why don’t you show us why I brought you along?”

  Orsus stood tall in the narrow alley, nearly filling it from side to side, and sized up the two footpads. One wore a hood, the other a tattered brown headband, but beyond that they were identical—dirty leather clothes, thin leather boots, and short glittering daggers. No one in the north would dress like that, Orsus knew; they were probably river men, hired off the last barge. Orsus crouched a bit, lowering his center of gravity, and held his dagger loosely in front of him.

  Headband moved first, feinting left and then plunging right, hoping for a quick first blood, but Orsus anticipated and kept his guard up, slashing and forcing the man to keep his distance. Hood dashed in quickly behind him, leaping to the left and stabbing ferociously at Orsus’ unprotected arm. Orsus let this attack go by, practically flattening himself against the right-side wall as if he didn’t care about protecting his friends at all, and Hood took the bait, overextending his thrust at a new target of opportunity and unbalancing himself in the process. Orsus reversed his sidestep, smashing his fist into the teetering footpad’s arm, dropping him to the ground and planting his giant northman’s boot on the man’s dagger hand. Headband pressed his attack while Hood screamed in pain, but Orsus’ reach was longer and his arms much faster than his size suggested. A few slashes later and Headband was backing away, clutching his face and cursing. Orsus paused to smash his free foot into Hood’s screaming face, then leaped a few steps forward to slam the other footpad’s head into the brick wall. The entire fight had taken just a few short seconds.

  Emin and Gendyarev fired almost simultaneously; Orsus whipped around to see the warehouse’s giant loading doors burst open in a hail of splinters as something enormous charged through it without even bothering to open it. Orsus had just enough time to register something tall, vaguely man-shaped, and glistening like oily metal before Nazarov’s full mob of brigands swarmed out behind it and into the yard. Aleksei screamed a battle cry, and the four thugs charged into the fray.

  Nazarov had ten men, by Orsus’ quick count, and a full six of them ran straight to the river with buckets while the other four pressed the attack alongside the giant metal monster. Orsus had never seen a steamjack in real life, though he’d heard plenty of stories: self-propelled machines with the strength of a hundred men, powered by a red-hot furnace where a heart should be. Nazarov probably used this one as a massive longshoreman, but its obvious combat applications sent a thrill down Orsus’ spine, even though it was in enemy hands. He felt an instant attachment to it, almost a kinship, that he couldn’t explain.

  The towering metal monster lurched forward, reaching out with a giant hand to knock Gendyarev away from the man he was fighting with. Gendy managed to scramble away, but only because Aleksei fought back his human pursuer. Gendyarev was bleeding freely from his forehead, and he clutched his arm in pain as he staggered to his feet. Orsus rushed the steamjack with a roar, confident that he could have some kind of effect against it, but it was as solid as a rooted tree. Emin screamed a warning, and Orsus rolled away just in time to dodge another of the steamjack’s massive iron fists.

  “Stop the bucket brigade!” shouted Aleksei, pointing with one dagger while plunging the second into a brawler’s neck. Orsus looked at the line of dockworkers gathering water in the river, then back at the steamjack. “Forget the ’jack,” Aleksei screamed, “stop the water!”

  Orsus growled but looked toward the fire. With the door gone he could see deep into the cavernous warehouse. The back wall was only faintly ablaze—Isidor’s arrows hadn’t proved as effective as they’d anticipated. Nazarov’s men would have no trouble putting out the fire, and then the battle would become even more one-sided. Their only hope of success was to stop the buckets now and let the fire grow out of control; they might defeat the enemy when they broke ranks to extinguish it or flee. Orsus knew this, and yet . . .

  The steamjack managed to grab Emin with one of its arms and raise him, screaming, into the air. It clamped down on his flailing leg with its other arm and tore the limb off almost casually, shocking even Nazarov’s thugs into a moment of silence. Orsus seemed to feel it—the tearing tension as the body came apart in his hands—and took a step toward the ’jack in a stupor of awe and confusion.

  “The water!” Aleksei screamed. “Go!”

  Orsus turned with a growl of frustration and launched himself toward the bucket brigade. Three dockworkers had already run back into the warehouse, a bucket of water in each hand, but the other three were still on the dock. One of those set down his bucket and turned on Orsus, drawing a hunting knife to defend his comrades, but Orsus lowered his head and barreled into him, taking the knife on the solid bone of his forearm. The wicked blade sliced a wide flap of skin but did no real damage, and Orsus simply kept running, crushing the man’s windpipe with his other fist before pushing him backward off the edge of the dock. The other two water-carriers were crouching down and facing the wrong direction, so he finished them even more easily, cracking their heads against each other before shoving their limp bodies into the river. At the same instant he staggered, the image of a different battle than the one he was fighting imposing itself upon him. The sudden change of perspective made him dizzy. He gripped the edge of the dock for support, but the feeling was gone almost as soon as it came.

  The battle behind him had become a nightmare. With Emin lying broken on the ground, it was all Gendy and Aleksei could do to dodge the steamjack’s bone-crushing hands and the vicious, slashing daggers of the thugs swarming around its feet. It reminded Orsus of his sudden flash of vertigo, as if he’d seen that same fight just seconds ago, but from the lofty perspective of the ’jack. He struggled to understand what was going on, but he didn’t have time to puzzle through it. The three other water-carriers returned with empty
buckets, and when they saw Orsus they fanned out to surround him. Nazarov was among them, smiling grimly. Aleksei’s group was outnumbered, and even if the warehouse burned to the ground it wouldn’t hurt them one bit: Nazarov would simply kill Aleksei and step into his place as the new kayazy boss, backed up not just by cutthroats but also by an unstoppable metal demon. Orsus watched it fight as his human antagonists circled him warily; it was huge, and surprisingly fast for its size, but there was something off. Its reactions were late—not just slow, but late. Aleksei would dodge to the side, and moment a later the steamjack would follow. The same agile speed, just . . . late, as if the ’jack were reacting a full second after its targets.

  Or it was reacting to something else altogether.

  Nazarov gestured at the dagger in Orsus’ bloody hand. “You look like you know how to use that knife,” he said, then spread his arms to reveal a pistol shoved into his waistband. “But you know what they say about bringing a knife to a gunfight.”

  Orsus nodded at the weapon. “How fast can you draw that gun?”

  “One second,” Nazarov said. “Shoot you through the face in two.”

  “Then it sounds like I have two seconds’ worth of knife fight before that gun becomes an issue.”

  He bolted forward and Nazarov dropped his buckets, reaching for the pistol. Orsus ducked low under the first man’s clumsy attack, sweeping the knife across his belly; the man staggered back, trying to hold in his guts while Orsus moved to the second man, slicing his arm, his chest, and his face in a frenzied blur of steel. The attacker howled, clutching his bleeding eye, and Orsus whipped his knife into Nazarov’s heart in the exact moment the man fired his gun. His aim was high and wild, thanks to the ten inches of glistening steel piercing all the way through his chest and out his back.

  “Two seconds,” said Orsus. “Knife wins.”

  Aleksei screamed, and Orsus looked across the yard to see him down on the ground, a knife in his leg, the steamjack crushing Gendyarev to a pulp in its giant iron fist. The other fighters had all gone down, torn to ribbons by Aleksei’s legendary skill with a dagger, but that skill wasn’t going to save him from the two-ton monstrosity already turning toward him.

  A flash of movement caught Orsus’ eye, high over Aleksei’s shoulder, and Orsus glanced up to see another man crouched in a window, peering out from the darkness with his hands raised in full view of the ’jack. The mysterious man held his hand up straight, palm forward, and a moment later the steamjack dropped Gendyarev’s mangled body. The man punched his fist forward, and a moment later the steamjack lumbered forward, advancing on Aleksei with ground-shaking force.

  In a single blinding instant, Orsus knew what was happening. Nazarov had set a trap, exactly as Aleksei had mocked him for not doing, but he’d filled the windows with something far more devastating than gunmen: the steamjack’s controller. Poised in that window he could see the entire battlefield, and the ’jack could see him, easily watching and obeying hand signals that told it what to do.

  The ’jack stomped toward Aleksei. Orsus had mere seconds to act. He shoved Nazarov’s body aside, ready to dash toward the battle, but in a flash he was inside the machine’s head again, seeing through its eyes, feeling the titanic strength of its steam-driven pistons and gears. He reached toward Aleksei with a crushing metal hand . . .

  . . . and stopped. Orsus told it to stop, and it did. He blinked in surprise, suddenly back on the ground, staring up instead of down, and dropped to his knees as the vertigo washed over him. High in the window, the ’jack marshal gestured frantically and called out, but the steamjack refused to obey. Without knowing how he knew it, Orsus was sure the thing was waiting patiently for its next command . . . from him.

  Aleksei opened one eye, peering up from where he cringed on the ground, and looked at the steamjack standing over him. “What happened?”

  Orsus swallowed, still getting his bearings. “There was a man in an upper window controlling the ’jack.” He rose unsteadily to his feet. “He’s . . . not anymore.”

  Aleksei grimaced, surveying the carnage in the loading yard. Gendyarev groaned, somehow still alive despite his injuries. The rest of the yard was a bloodbath. “What, did he see how badly he was losing and decide to join our side?”

  “No,” said Orsus, walking slowly toward him. “The ’jack did.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t understand it either.” He placed a reverent hand on the ’jack’s leg, then glanced up at the window. “He’s gone.”

  Aleksei pulled the dagger from his leg with a grunt and flipped it toward Orsus with more nonchalance than he could possibly be feeling. “Find him and kill him. I don’t want any of these traitors to survive the night.”

  Orsus caught the dagger but shook his head. “We need him alive. He needs to teach us how to control this . . .” He looked at the nameplate etched into the ’jack’s leg. ”. . . Laika.”

  Aleksei laughed, though it quickly turned to a growl of pain as he tried to put weight on his wounded leg. “Orsus, you may have just turned this horrifying defeat into our greatest success in years. I think you’re going to have a long, happy future in this organization.”

  “Thank you,” said Orsus. “I think about the future a lot.”

  Lola pulled another giant shirt from the pile of wet laundry, stretching it out like a sail as she pinned it on the clothesline. “Orsus,” she said, “do you ever think about the future?”

  Orsus looked up from the side of the wide wooden washtub. “I certainly never think about the past,” he said, scrubbing another shirt vigorously against the washboard. It was kind of her to help him, the village orphan, with his laundry, but he’d been doing it on his own for five years, ever since his family . . . well, that was part of the past he didn’t like to think about. He looked up at Lola. Her hair was tied back to keep it clear of the wet laundry but was still ringed with summer flowers and framed her face in a red-gold halo. He smiled as he couldn’t help but do every time he saw her, and she smiled back shyly. “The present’s pretty great, though,” he said, then made a look of mock consternation. “Unless you mean that in the future you might do my laundry for me, instead of just hanging it while I do all the real work?”

  She threw a damp sock in his face, laughing at the loud wet slap it made against his eyes, and he laughed with her, more peaceful and carefree than he’d felt in . . . ever, really. His life before Lola had been a cold grey trudge through a world all too eager to kill him; it hadn’t been a life at all, really, just a lack of death. But the six months since he’d met her, and the two months since they’d been officially courting, had opened his eyes to a kind of happiness he’d never known existed. It was more than just not being alone. Lola wasn’t a friend or a fellow worker or a member of Aleksei’s crew, she was a part of him. Finding her had been like finding his second half.

  The thought that any part of him, even by association, could be so soft and kind and loving had changed the way he thought about the entire world.

  Lola lifted the limp sock from his face with a laugh, then plucked the scrubbed shirt from his hands and unfurled it with a flourish. “I could never wash this much shirt in one go,” she said. “It’s like a giant flannel blanket. You could keep a whole family warm with this thing—two kids at least, maybe three if they’re small.”

  “Is that how many you want?” The words were out of his mouth almost before he knew what he was saying, but only because he’d been thinking them for weeks—for months, if he was being honest. He’d never wanted a family before, but with Lola? He wanted everything he’d never dreamed.

  Lola stared at him, shocked by the hint of marriage, but he’d come to know her eyes as well as he’d ever known anything, and the light shining forth from them now told him she was thrilled at the idea. Another smile crept into the corners of his mouth, but at the same time her smile faded. She turned away to face the clothesline, hanging the shirt silently with slim wooden clothespins.

  “Wh
at’s wrong?”

  She didn’t answer, softly fingering the hem of his hanging shirt, and just when the silence had stretched too long and he opened his mouth to ask again, she yanked the shirt down from the clothesline and brought it back to the washtub.

  “It isn’t finished yet.”

  Orsus wasn’t sure how to interpret her sudden change in behavior or what his shirt had to do with it, but he took the garment gently from her hands. “I scrubbed this one for nearly five minutes.”

  Her voice was impassive. “There’s blood on the hem.”

  “I worked on that spot for most of the five minutes.” He searched it out on the wet garment. “It won’t come out—”

  “You’re a killer,” she said, and her impassive voice cracked just a fraction on the last cold word. She looked at him, and he at her, not knowing how to answer, until at last she pulled away and went back to the basket of clothes, fumbling for the next piece of wet laundry with fingers too shaky to work.

  “I do jobs sometimes for Aleksei,” he said, “but it’s not like I’m a murderer.”

  “Don’t think I haven’t thought about a life with you,” Lola said, “because I have.” She turned to face him, tears tracing tiny rivulets along her cheeks. The beauty and sadness of it broke his heart in two. “You’re a good man, Orsus, and a hard worker. You make me laugh, and you’ve even made me dinner.” She laughed at the memory, but with it came another glistening tear. She cleared her throat and breathed deep, adopting a firm, almost businesslike tone. “You’d be a fine husband, and a good father, and I’d share my life with you and wash your giant shirts and do everything I could to make you happy, but then . . .” She shook her head. “Then Aleksei would call, and you’d go off in the night, and I’d sit at home alone wondering if you were ever coming back, and how long it might take, and how many new splashes of blood would be on your shirt when you did.”

  “You don’t have to worry about me, I know how to handle—”