The Way of Caine (The Warcaster Chronicles)

by Holmes, Miles

  But there! A chain in the water!

  Caine reached for it, his lungs fit to burst. It was tethered to a buoy right near the spot his boat had been hit. He grabbed it and climbed, hand over hand until he thought he might pass out.

  His head peeked out under a shattered timber, and he took a deep, gasping breath. Men were running along the docks, pointing at what remained of his boat.

  Scanning the docks just out of reach, he pondered his next move. There was nothing; no cover, no solid ground to flash to, so he was going to have to swim at least a few strokes. Worse, with all eyes looking this way and nothing but open water around him, he’d have to keep underwater to avoid being seen.

  There.

  Caine spotted a row of sloops, their anchors weighed for the night. If he could just make it that far, he should be able to flash to the sewer grate by the dock. Fearful the bulk of his armor would ruin any chance of making the swim, he hastily shed what he could. Still clinging to the buoy, he loosened shoulder pads and shin guards alike, and watched them disappear into the deep. Taking a deep breath, he steeled himself before plunging back beneath the surface.

  When at last his head broke the surface again, it was in the shadow of a sloop. Grasping the sloop’s rode, he caught his breath. He lingered a moment, able only to brood as the men along the docks marveled at the mess he’d left behind.

  “You should have been ‘ere last night. Would have been much easier.” The man named Kreel shook his head slowly. The cadence of his words, delivered in a thick Llaelese accent, sounded ugly to Caine. The man wasn’t pretty to look at either. A sardonic smile split his face wide as he gripped a tankard of ale. His teeth were crooked, and painted with whatever he’d eaten for dinner. He dragged his tongue across them, before taking a sip of the brew.

  Caine got the better of his temper. He tensed his jaw, keeping his mouth shut over the flippant remark. The fact that this informant had not yet given him any intelligence may have been a factor. From his seat in the cramped tavern, he took a sip of his own drink.

  While it was safe to say he had taken an instant dislike to the vile man before him, moreover, he was just pissed off. The vagrant’s cloak he’d covered up in smelled like a sewer and his boots still sloshed from the swim. The arcantrik generator in the back of his armor had gotten waterlogged and failed twice on the way here. These things were, of course, minor. The disaster of the night before had left blood on his hands and lingering consequences. Even that was not the whole of it, he knew.

  Then there was the thing with Ace.

  He couldn’t shake the warjacks bizarre act of loyalty, nor the feeling it had set in his gut. In a word, guilt. But … over a warjack? He took a breath. There was more to it than that. He’d never lost one before. The link in his head was gone, and it felt … awful. In a strange sort of way, Ace now felt like a hole in his jaw where a tooth had been. Except now he couldn’t stop putting his tongue in the spot, and each time he did, the nerve flared red hot at him.

  “Getting to you has … not been easy.” He admitted with difficulty across the table.

  The informant insouciantly probed his mouth with a toothpick. “Rynnard has seen fit to put us in martial law for the last few months. Not that they call it that, no! It has been a chafe, sure.”

  Caine stared at him.

  “So what do you have for me?”

  Kreel sucked in through his teeth, and then looked around in a conspiratorial manner.

  “Well he’s still here. That’s your luck. He leaves town tomorrow, ‘on king’s business.’ Tonight? Different story. Big shipment of gold into Cygnar. Or so a little peek at his ledger says. With twice as much protection as usual.”

  Caine sniffed. Fine, he thought. I could use a good fight right now. “What exactly am I looking at?”

  “I don’t know. He’s had McCoy on retainer for the past two months. Trollkin. Bouncer at glitzy gambling house, north district. He freelances for Thaddeus on the side. Bulletproof, as I hear it said. Can’t be killed, and those that try are all in the dirt now. He got a new guy too. I don’t know him. Not local. A sniper ace, what I hear. Goes by Zeke.”

  Caine pulled his chin. “Where is this happening?”

  Kreel slipped him a scrap of paper with an address scrawled.

  “West side. Cannery district. Be careful. This is as big as it gets. Maybe he intends to finish this thing with your nobles now?”

  Caine turned on that point. “And just what do you actually know about this ‘thing’?”

  Kreel shrugged, digging out a piece of meat with his toothpick.

  “Beyond what I told your boss, who knows? Thaddeus was always square, so I can’t figure why he plays this game. But his ledger don’t lie. Whatever his reason, he’s gone to big trouble to cover the tracks. I never see more than a peek at a time, behind his back. This? I saw. Payment scheduled to more than dozen of your nobles. Whatever they’re up to, it’s goin’ t’ happen ... soon.” As he emphasized his final point, another chunk of meat was dislodged from his jagged teeth, landing on the table between them.

  Caine frowned, his arms crossed. “Exactly how is it you come to know so much about him anyways?”

  “He’s my brother.” Kreel smiled most unpleasantly.

  Caine sat back, shaking his head. “Ech! You know I’m to kill him, right?” Kreel nodded, still smiling.

  “That’s the deal,” he said casually, a sidelong glance at the barkeep as she passed. Seeing Caine’s scowl, he continued. “He’s the elder son. Our father? He’s rich, but not much longer for the world. He always liked Thaddeus better. Bastard will leave him all he’s got, even though he knows … I got debts,” Kreel finished, sipping his drink while narrowly eyeing Caine from over the rim of his tankard. “When I figured out Thaddeus was up to something, I saw my chance.”

  Caine pushed out from the table in disgust. “And I thought my family had issues.”

  Kreel, pulled his toothpick out and pointed it at Caine. “Make sure the body is found. If he goes missing, it complicates matter with the lawyers.”

  Turning to go, Caine didn’t bother to look back at the man.

  “Yeah, I’ll get right on that.”

  Caine cleared the summit of the rooftops with well-timed jumps. Below, his passage went unseen by the citizens of Merywyn. It gave him a rare déjà vu. He thought back to days gone by in Bainsmarket. From such heights, he had been in control of the world, free to prey upon his marks, whoever they might be. Then, as now perhaps. The night sky had begun to clear, and with it a cool breeze from the west. Unsettled though he was, he couldn’t deny it felt good to be running high once more.

  Along the flat roof of a warehouse he made his way, gaining speed. With a tuck and roll, he blinked out of existence, to reappear over the open air of the chasm between buildings. His momentum carried with him, and his roll brought him over the buttress of a Morrowan cathedral. He landed like a cat on a solitary gargoyle.

  He paused to crouch upon the sculpture, peering at the streets some five stories down. He consulted the scrap of paper Kreel had given him. He saw the steady bustle of the main street below, lined with horse drawn carriages and countless pedestrians going to and fro under gaslight, even at this late hour. At the end of the street, he watched a covered carriage approach. On the sides of its canvas covering, a name had been written with stenciled black paint. The same name that had been written on his scrap. Next to it was the icon of a milk bottle.

  “Where are you delivering at this late hour I wonder?” Caine smiled.

  In an instant, he had flashed away from his perch, to reappear on the eaves of the cathedral a short distance away. He began running to keep pace with the cart as it advanced the length of the avenue.

  At the corner of the cathedral, he easily hopped the gap to the next building a few feet away. His feet rapped along the row of copper roofed townhouses, and he kept an eye on the cart as he went. He saw it near an alley, then slow down. He was soon close enough to hear the d
river’s coarse voice call his horse to a stop.

  From the alley, he saw shadows moving. They stepped out into the gaslight for a moment, three large men, as near as he could tell. Just as quickly as they had appeared, they piled into the back of the milk carriage, before the driver spurred his horse on. Caine had seen the glint of a pistol stuffed in the jacket of one of them. He scoffed to think what milkmen needed weapons for. He watched the carriage move off, turning right at the next intersection, and into a maze of warehouses. Beyond that were numerous buildings lined with great smokestacks and twisted scaffolding. He lunged forward, on the move again.

  He leapt, sliding down the slant of a rooftop to keep pace with the carriage. Arriving at the lip of the roof, he leapt for a drainpipe and used it to slide down a story, and onto a lower roof. He leapt clear at the last second, setting down in a crouch, his heart now racing with the fast pace he’d kept. Just in time, he saw the wagon disappear into an old factory, some five stories high. The sprawling structure was crowned with three massive smokestacks and numerous conveyor lines. On the rooftops, he could faintly make out shadows moving.

  The dairy plant.

  By all appearances, Kreel’s information had been good. There was no question there was a gathering happening within, at an hour no one had any legitimate business afoot. Caine withdrew his Spellstorms from under his cloak. He cracked them open with a flick of the wrist, checking each one with a spin of the chambers before flicking them closed once again.

  Caine was among them now. He could hear their loose talk on all sides, and he slinked down as he stepped lightly ahead. The first man he’d tailed had wandered too far from the pack, and he’d put the man down for good, but there were a half dozen more he counted spread out over the rooftop of the large factory. Occasionally, they stepped within the up-cast light of large skylights across the roof, allowing him a better glimpse of them. No less than a motley crew of dog-faced cutthroats by his estimation. There had been no sign of the rumored sniper, Zeke. Whoever was up here, he’d get to them. He had no intention of leaving guns on high once he got to work below.

  Over a length of oversized ductwork, he saw a silhouette shuffling in the dark. “Louden? Where you at lad? You don’t want to piss off Zeke now do you?” Caine crouched low, and watched the shadow pass by. The man was armed with a basic long rifle, like the first had been. Across the way, he saw another pair of thugs over the largest skylight on the roof. They were talking, and staring down at the proceedings below.

  An idea struck him.

  The skylight they stood over had large glass panes he could open. That was his entrance, and the rafters within should give him a commanding view of things. Patiently, Caine waited for the man nearest him to get closer, and flipped a Spellstorm around in his hand. He loathed the idea of using his beautiful Spellstorm as a simple blackjack, but until he had eyes on the target, there was no sense in causing a commotion. The man drew closer in the darkness. Caine lunged.

  Caine drew near the skylight, checking each corner of the roof as he went. To all appearances, the roof was his now. Just the same, he couldn’t shake the notion he was being watched. The thought was interrupted by a murmur by his feet, and a feeble hand reaching for his ankle.

  “Easy now, chum,” he whispered.

  Another strike with a Spellstorm turned club and the man fell silent. A second later, Caine stepped to the skylight and peered down. He saw large copper vats along one side, crates stacked three stories high on another. There were catwalks crisscrossed to the rafters, and circular gantries around the vats. There, in the center of the place, he saw twenty men in a loose circle around three wagons. The wagons looked exactly like the one he’d seen before. From what he could make out, not one of the men down there was a trollkin. No McCoy, no Zeke, he thought. Caine wondered if Kreel wasn’t as connected as he thought he was. Maybe it didn’t matter.

  His target was down there, sure as sure could be.

  On the factory floor, Thaddeus Montague, royal treasurer to King Rynnard himself stood out from the rogues’ gallery around him like a sore thumb. A slightly built and bespectacled man of early middle age, he nervously held a ledger while the others around him clutched at hand cannons. Moving from crate to crate and marking his ledger as he did, he opened each, revealing a breathtaking horde of gold. Caine looked at the man, lining him up along the iron sights of both Spellstorms. It could all be over so quickly. Just a pull of the trigger and the man’s brainpan would burst onto the floor, here and now.

  Aye, but that is only half of the thing, he thought with a sigh.

  Rebald had sent him here to find out what was in Montague’s head before he emptied it. With another look about the place, he sighed and re-holstered the Spellstorm. Even for him, a one man assault into the hornet’s nest below seemed near suicide. All in all, there were just too many angles, and too many exits. He had no idea how many men were in that tangle, and where the high priced talent was, if it was here at all.

  Meanwhile, of course, his target was right in the middle of it.

  Reluctantly, he slid in through the opened glass pane, and stepped down onto the crisscrossing network of rusting iron rafters to get a closer look. Carefully, he tested his weight on the old frame and then started to climb across it. Below, no one noticed. At least he’d have the element of surprise.

  He didn’t hear the whistle of displaced air until it was too late.

  Caine’s shoulder was on fire and with it his head. The shock of an impact sent him keeling over, just as he was within arm’s reach of the gantry. Reflexively, he tried flashing to safety, but something was wrong.

  He couldn’t.

  Magic was gone from his body, replaced entirely with pain. It spread voraciously from his shoulder, and he glanced there numbly.

  Somehow, a tiny crossbow bolt was stuck in him. Even as he gaped at it, his forward momentum took him abruptly out of the rafters and into open space. The gantry became a blur beside him, and he regained his wits only at the last second, shooting a hand out. He managed two fingers on the dusty metal, but couldn’t keep the grip. Momentum swung him over a little before he resumed his perilous freefall. Cursing in midair, he saw a stack of crates rushing closer. He gritted his teeth, and braced for impact.

  Over and over it came.

  He fell like a ball bouncing between two stacks of crates, with each blow he sorely regretted what armor he had shed. He landed at last on the floor, bruised on all sides, groaning. In the fall, the bolt had come loose and lay on the floor next to him, smashed and bloody. He flared his arcantrik generator to full charge, and immediately a power-field surged around him. The snub little chimneys of the generator began to belch thick black smoke.

  So much for stealth.

  From his cover, Caine’s eyes darted back to the rafters. Where did that shot come from? He scanned every corner, but saw nothing.

  As he rolled clear of the crates, he groaned to find he was now in plain sight of the assembled. His shoulder bled freely, but at least the fire in his head was gradually receding. Whoever had fired it was well equipped. The bloody thing had taken his magic, if even for a moment.

  Magic he badly needed now.

  Shots immediately bit at the ground and crates around him, and he got up with a grunt. He dove over a nearby pipeline, making for the vats along the far wall. In an instant, his pistols were out, and he cracked a few hasty shots at his enemies. Two of them found home, as men doubled over across the floor. Adrenaline began to course through his veins, and he risked a glance over the rusted pipeline. Buzzing ricochets chased him back down, but not before he had managed a quick glance at his target.

  He cursed loud enough to be heard across the entire room.

  Montague was breaking from the pack, running for the door on the far side of the room! He fought to pull his magic back. It was almost as if his leg had fallen asleep, and slowly the circulation returned. He squinted in concentration. If he could just flash away ... almost, but no.


  A hammer, from out of nowhere, came smashing down at him.

  He twisted clear of the blow at the last second, and watched as it buried itself in the rotted floorboards in a shower of splinters. Gripping the hammer, and now pulling it free, Caine saw a leering trollkin well over seven feet high, peculiarly dressed in an immaculate tailored suit. He did not look at all happy as the hammer came clear of the impact, and was raised high to strike again.

  “McCoy, I presume?” Caine gasped.

  “Ah!” The trollkin’s eyes lit up, pausing. “You have me at a disadvantage, sir. You are?”

  “Leaving!”

  Caine raised his pistols, and cracked two into the trollkin’s midriff, point blank. The beast winced at the kiss of twin Spellstorms, but to Caine’s surprise, he didn’t fall down. He paused a moment, as if savoring the pain, gradually grinding his teeth into a snaggle-toothed smile. His hammer still raised, the beast began to growl, and brought it down. Caine’s eyes were wide with horror. If ever there was a time.

  He flashed away.

  He appeared halfway across the room in cover, still cringing from a hammer that was now long gone. He sighed in relief, and shook his head. Looking up over a crate, he smiled to find Montague in the foreground, only a few yards away. Their eyes met and the shifty fellow yelped in dismay. Montague turned and dashed for a stairwell, still clutching his ledger. As he went, Caine noticed his new position had also flanked several thugs. They were shouting and pointing his way, but none of them had time to relocate. Caine took advantage, and cracked off a flurry of shots. Some gunmen fell screaming, leaving the rest to scramble for cover. In the confusion Caine made a dash across open floor to give chase to Montague. Rushing to a copper vat between him and the stairwell, he hit it with his good shoulder and rolled around behind it. Immediately the vat was pelted with shots, creating a cacophony of ricochets.