Izzy spun around to look behind them. Her auburn curls swept in a wide arc around her panicked face.
“John, they’re gaining on us.”
Gaunt spun and drew his sabre. The blade was notched and bloodied from their long fight through the city. His shoulder ached from the constant clash of steel against steel. In his other hand he held his issue revolver. There were three bullets left in the cylinder.
Held in a makeshift sling beneath his coat was a globe of pure darkness that had been buried in the earth for thousands of years and had the power to kill millions.
It was the artifact that the magi of Candlehill had secretly sent them to retrieve. They knew that Zalenberg did not take the threats of terrorism seriously and that their only hope was to get the artifact out of harm’s way.
Out of Jonas Reach’s way.
John snapped the cylinder of his revolver shut. Two of his bullets he had promised to keep in case he and his wife were caught by the enemy. Spies could never allow themselves to be taken alive.
That left one bullet to give the good news to their pursuers. A group of Krazen mercenaries s piled around the corner at the far end of the alleyway. Their faces were swarthy and grim beneath their helmets. One of them spotted Gaunt and gave a cry as he raised his bolt action rifle.
Gaunt cocked the hammer back on his revolver and took a deep breath. Thirty metres was a hell of a long shot for a pistol but there was little time to aim. As the soldier was zeroing his rifle on Gaunt the pistol cracked and in a puff of smoke and cordite the bullet hit the pursuer in the collarbone, sending him back two steps and then falling down onto his backside with a muffled grunt.
The two agents shielded their faces as the bullets started to ricochet off the walls around them, whistling past their ears and knocking shards of stone from the alleyway to painfully graze their exposed skin.
Gaunt took his wife by the wrist. He pointed at the broken window that was their only means of escape.
“Izzy, go! Get to cover. I’ll buy you some time. Please. For the baby.”
The woman quickly swept her hair back and fixed it with a strip of leather. She looked grimly at her husband as she unslung the repeating crossbow from her back. Her porcelain freckled face was bleeding from a deep cut that ran from her hairline to her chin but she smiled and sharply shook her head. Then she fell to one knee and let loose a bolt that whistled through the air and lodged in the nearest pursuer’s knee. The soldier ran on for a few feet, carried by the inertia, then his leg cramped and he tumbled to the dirt. The fallen man’s howl of pain echoed down the alley towards Gaunt and Izzy. The rest of the soldiers were moving forward from cover to cover, firing as they went. Izzy and Gaunt shielded one another from the flying bullets, trying to find a clear path to the cover of the broken window. Izzy glanced back at the advancing troops as they reached their fallen comrade with the crossbow bolt in his leg. The bolt was flashing with a green light as Izzy whispered under her breath. “One…two…three.”
Suddenly the bolt exploded in burst of thick green gas. It instantly took the injured soldier’s leg off below the knee with a hissing fizz. The young man looked at his bubbling limb in horror as the acid in the gas continued to eat into the wound, then he began to jerk and writhe on the cobbles.
The rest of the troops had no time to avoid the cloud that had suddenly obscured the alleyway. For a moment all sound was muffled by the fug. Izzy and Gaunt stood frozen, holding one another and preparing to run. Then the soldiers fell from the green cloud, screaming and retching on their knees as the Wyvern-bomb effervesced in their lungs and dissolved their eyes. Mercifully it only took ten seconds for the acid to reach their brains and gift them with peace. As the green fog began to clear, eight bodies lay quickly dissolving into mush on the cobbles. Angry shouts came through the dissipating mist as more Krazen mercenaries arrived. By then Gaunt and Izzy were already running through the bomb shattered building towards their extraction point.
Gaunt held up a brass instrument that floated and spun like a compass above his palm.
“Izzy this way! If we can avoid the troops in the main square we can still reach the pickup point. There’s a local boat waiting in the harbour. I just hope we can trust the captain to wait for us. We paid him enough.”
The couple moved down the damp corridors as fast as they could. The building shook and dust and plaster fell on them as bombs and Fallen hymns continued to thunder down on the city.
They were scared, injured and exhausted but this was not the first time they had been in a tight spot. They were in trouble and they knew it but they had to keep hoping they could get home.
In the past they had been caught on a torpedoed Junk in the far eastern bay of Kaiman and spent the entire night in shark infested waters before a Navy Ironclad had picked them from the water. They had been interrogated by Krussaki bandits for a week during the War of Five Eagles, before killing their guard and escaping into the Maverzi desert. They had almost died of thirst and lost half their body weight before they made it to an Empire trading post outside Krazen.
John and Izabella Gaunt had as much respect for one another as they did love. Their seven year stint as consummate professionals for military intelligence was drawing to an end, because something more important than even the Empire had entered their lives. Something that grew and lived within Izzy’s womb. The just had to make it home safe one last time.
A Fallen wing struck the building they were in and the ceiling caved in, filling the room with splinters and plaster.
John and Izzy held each other tight until the dust settled, trying to hold their breath against the choking debris.
John put his arms around his wife’s shoulders and looked her in the eye. She was trying not to show her fear and so was he.
“Izzy, we’ve been in worse. We’ll get out of this, but we can’t let that madman get his hands on this weapon.”
Izzy nodded and wiped blood from her cheek.
“Ok, we make it to the far side of the square, and from there it’s a left turn down to the harbour.”
From behind them came shouts and the clatter of hobnail boots. Suddenly a sharp explosion was heard down the corridor only twenty feet from where John and Izzy were hiding. The soldiers pursuing them were clearing rooms systematically with explosives.
Izzy tightened her grip on her husband’s arm.
“ I can’t let them murder our baby John. I have to fight them.”
Izzy unslung her crossbow and checked the revolving drum. There were seven bolts left, two Wyvern-bombs and the rest incendiary. John placed a hand gently on her arm and lowered the bow. He wiped the grease and dust from his face and did his best to give her a smile.
“Let’s live, instead. And when the boy’s sixteen and tells us he wants to join the army, we tie him up in the cellar until he tells us he wants to be an accountant. Agreed?”
Izzy smiled back at him with watery eyes. John heard shouts from the next room and then the walls shook as another grenade exploded. He held Izzy one more time then dragged her onto her feet and pointed his sword towards the crumbling wall.
“Go, keep low and don’t stop.”
The pair crouched low, scrambling over the rubble towards the shattered wall and open ground. As they reached the daylight, they heard shouts and gunfire
then the terrifying clatter of bullets hitting the stonework around them. Izzy let out a cry and dropped to one knee, grabbing onto John’s arm for support as she fell.
“Izzy!”
Gaunt spun and instinctively fired his last two revolver shots at the soldiers that had appeared behind them, causing the attackers to take momentary cover. Seizing the moment he dragged his wife to her feet. Blood was seeping from her left thigh and she gritted her teeth in pain.
“I’m alright, I can walk if you help me.”
“Ok let’s go, straight across the square.”
Suddenly John felt a blow in his side like being hit with a burning hammer. He staggered
and stumbled as the breath was knocked from him. Izzy fell along with him onto the broken flagstones.
“John, oh gods.”
John put his hand to his left side and felt the blood seeping from the bullet hole. He tried to stand but for the moment his breath was robbed.
Izzy turned and propped herself up against the wheel of an overturned cart. She aimed her crossbow and sent an incendiary bolt back into the building. The pursuing troops backed up, shielding their faces from the intense heat. John struggled to his feet and together they moved across the open ground, trying to ignore the bullets that whistled past their ears, towards the ornate fountain at the centre of the park.
Somehow they managed to reach it without taking any more bullets and almost collapsed in exhaustion.
Against all odds, the park fountain was still operating and spewing forth amidst the carnage that was central Zalenberg. Its water was coloured bright crimson to match the flag of Zalenberg, and gushed up into the air like the final severed artery of the dying city
John and Izzy reached the fountain and tumbled over the stone lip into the red water, ducking down behind the marble wall to avoid the bullets.
There they waited, holding one another in the blood-red water.
John checked Izzy’s wound and his own. Both rounds had passed through but there could not tell how much internal damage had been done. For now the adrenaline kept them going. He brushed wet auburn curls from his wife’s face.
“Izzy, give me your crossbow, hide in the fountain head between those statues. Stay safe please.”
Izzy was breathing hard. Somehow she still retained a defiant beauty despite their hopeless situation. “John Gaunt, for the last bloody time, I am not going to hide like some dainty housewife while you prove to me how heroic you are. Besides, you’re a terrible shot with this thing.”
Gaunt smiled at his wife despite their situation. “Fair point.”
The first Krazen mercenary leapt over the wall knee deep into the red pool and aimed his bayonet straight at Izzy’s stomach. John twisted and grabbed the rifle and jerked the soldier around to face him. Another two soldiers jumped into the water with swords drawn. Izzy leveled her crossbow and sent a bolt right between the eyes of the first soldier. The bolt burst into a ball of flame that spread to the others scrambling over into the fountain behind him. John wrestled the rifle from the soldier’s hand and pushed him back before thrusting the bayonet into his midriff. John stood back to back with Izzy and laid down as much suppressing fire as he could towards the advancing soldiers, while she set as many obstacles on fire as she could between them and the troops.
When the rifle was empty John drew his sabre and cut into anything that
came close, hacking and slashing at every sword and angry face that presented itself. Izzy picked up a sword from a fallen soldier and did the same. John felt a bayonet sink an inch into his thigh before he could parry it and roared in pain. Izzy felt a thump in her shoulder as another bullet passed through her but she held fast to her sword.
Then a sudden flash of light and all the oxygen was sucked out of the atmosphere as a bomb whistled down into the square.
The blast knocked John and Izzy off their feet and under the water. For a brief moment they saw each other through the crimson pool and it was a moment of pure peace. Then they surfaced for air and all the world was fire and screams.
There were no more soldiers attacking them. The few troops left in the square were running for cover to escape the barrage. It seemed that a few scattered Zalenstein militia had regrouped and were doing their best to tackle the mercenaries, but it was clear they were no professional fighting force. John and Izzy leaned on one another and gathered their breath.
Then their blood ran cold.
Jonas Reach stood across the square. Next to him was the towering winged form of Mr. Emberdark. Reach raised his pistol and called across to them.
“Now that was a fun hunt. I am struggling to catch my breath here, but you two! Like march hares. I didn’t know anyone could run that far.”
Gaunt held Izzy tight and gritted his teeth.
“I guess that depends what’s chasing you.”
Reach laughed heartily. One of his wide set eyes was sealed shut with congealed blood and a pasty ear hung by a thread of flesh from his cheek.
“What’s your name, rabbit?”
Gaunt tightened his grip on his bloodied sword. He glanced left and right but there was nowhere left to run. He knew the boat captain would not have waited this long and they could not reach the harbour anyway.
“Name’s Gaunt.”
Reach walked forward with his pistol raised and the huge Fallen skulked after him with a mocking grin on its awful skull face.
“You’re no common thief are you Gaunt? You’re Free Reign’s finest by the amount of my men you’ve left dead in your wake. The little minx packs a punch too.”
Gaunt attempted to shield Izzy but the Krazen mercenaries were closing in all around.
They stood knee deep in the blood rich water and held each other tight. John stroked his wife’s cheek and smoothed down her hair.
“I am so sorry.”
Izzy grimaced and put pressure on her shoulder wound.
“I wouldn’t have missed any of it.”
John and Izzy looked up as other Fallen began to circle above them, waiting on Mr. Emberdark’s signal to strike.
Reach held out his hand to them.
“You can either hand it over now or I take it from your corpse. It’s all the same to me.”
Gaunt and Izzy stood back to back, ready to take on all attackers, but they knew it was hopeless.
Gaunt felt an awful flurry of emotions run through him. All he had left was the desire to go out on his feet.
“Well then I guess you’re going to have to come and take it.”
Reach gave a signal and Mr. Emberdark beat his great wings. He took off into the air and opened his mouth in the awful distorted howl that had shattered the prism containing the orb.
As the sound began, the paving stones of the town square began to lift, dragged up in an ethereal wind, cracking and tearing all around them.
Then the water of the fountain rained upwards.
John and Izabella Gaunt stood holding one another’s battered bodies in the midst of a world of crimson rain.
Then there was no more.
17
The great brass doors were opened by two wardens in ceremonial uniform and Maeve heard an officious voice within the office call out.
“Come in Scurlock, take a seat.”
Maeve gave a small head bow as she entered and marched across the plush red carpet to the desk of her watch commander.
“Sir. Thank you for seeing me.”
Commander Armand Sont-Grabben was exactly the police officer Maeve could never be. Well connected, politically savvy and absolutely career minded, he had ascended the ranks after graduating from All Souls college at a stratospheric rate, doing virtually no police work in the process. He was only a few years older than Maeve but his bearing and iron grey hair gave him the aura of a much older man. He looked at her as she stood to attention in front of the great marble palette of his desk, which Maeve noticed was conspicuously free of police reports. Behind him a skyship floated lazily past outside his huge bay window.
“Yes, yes sit down Inspector Scurlock. You want to update me on your case, or cases, I forget which one.”
Maeve straightened her uniform and pulled out a heavy chair. It scraped across the marble floor, echoing uncomfortably in the stuffy office. The commander just stared at her unblinkingly until she spoke. Maeve cleared her throat and addressed him.
“I’m working the spate of killings perpetrated by the Vigilante that has been dubbed the Plague Doctor, and I’m investigating the murders of multiple young women across the city. I believe the two cases are connected.”
Armand continued staring at her, processing how this was relevant to him.
; “And what? You believe this plague fellow is targeting women?”
“Not at all sir, that would be completely in opposition to his modus operandi. On the contrary he has been specifically targeting known figures in the criminal underworld.”
Armand leaned back in his chair and gave Maeve a wry little grin.
“Which is of course what we pay you for, Scurlock. So the want to eliminate the competition, do you?”
Maeve chewed the inside of her lip. She glanced over his shoulder at the beautiful view out of her commander’s grand window. It faced the same direction as the tiny window in her own office, but there the similarity ended.
“Not exactly sir. I think whoever this figure is, although his methods are abhorrent and he will be stopped, he may be working towards the same goal. That of targeting the demon worshipping cult that has been abducting and murdering these young women.”
Armand snorted and poured himself a small glass of port from a decanter on his desk. He did not offer Maeve one.
“Oh he’s on our side now is he? Well I’ve given specific instructions to every warden under my command to shoot him on sight, so it will be a short lived partnership, I’m afraid. What’s your means of connecting these two cases anyway?”
A shadow passed across the white marble desk as another skyship glided by outside. The ball of sorcerous energy that powered it reflected off Armand’s crystal port decanter, temporarily dazzling her. Maeve felt like helping herself to a drink and etiquette be damned. Instead she spoke quietly.
“We found an unusual weapon at the scene of his last killings. A bullet made of a substance called Grimjade that is specifically designed to attack demons.”
Armand no longer fought to disguise his contempt for Maeve and her little department.
“A demon in Free Reign? Have I just shred a Slip and been transported back five hundred years. The Demon Wars were quite some time ago, Scurlock.”
Maeve nodded.
“But a few were rumored to have survived. Disembodied. Drifting about out there in the Far Trails. If you recall, the Fallen were worshipping one such entity as recently as the last war.”
SMOKE AND BLADES Page 12