by Ari Marmell
For long, endless seconds, as she battled both inertia and the gradual curve of her iron pathway, the most famous locomotive in Cygnar teetered on the edge of derailment.
Thanks be to Morrow and the nation’s finest craftsmen, the wheels regained their precarious grip; the train righted itself rather than flopping belly-up . . .
And shuddered to a violent stop with only its foremost pair of wheels protruding over the edge of the broken rails, where an earlier explosion had severed the line for a span of two or three horse-lengths.
One hand on the wall, Benwynne hefted herself from the floor beside the instrument panel, absently wiping away the blood from an angry gash across her forehead. Her furious scowl had only begun to form, drawing new and interesting shapes in that crimson smear, when Wendell—rubbing where several of the protruding levers had jabbed him in the ribs—pointed out the windscreen.
The sergeant took one look at the ruined track, nodded her understanding, and turned toward the doorway behind her.
“All right, nap on your own time! Everyone up and out! Trenchers forward, long gunners rear, eyes to all sides! Gaust, swing wide and bring your people around from the—” She paused just long enough to orient herself and note the position of the late afternoon sun. “—northeast. Return and report if possible, but you have permission to engage if necessary.
“Bulldog, trenchers’ left flank. Shepherd, right. Wolfhound, scout from the southwest, engage at discretion. Deploy!”
To the not-so-musical accompaniment of cranking gears and steel footfalls, Benwynne’s squad streamed, ant-like, from the Lady Ellena and pressed through the clinging cold toward the walls of Bainsmarket.
***
The grasslands, hardly a jungle even at their most lush, were little more than patches of bare earth with the sporadic, crispy blades of frost-embalmed tufts. The fields lay barren, former and future rows of wheat demarcated only by spindly wooden stakes. Despite the chill and the battering gusts that sputtered in winter’s sickly wheezing, no snow or sleet flounced through the air to obscure vision.
There was, in short, nowhere to hide.
Atherton’s commandos hid anyway. Even he could barely pick them out, creeping on bellies and elbows like oversized millipedes, and he knew precisely where to look.
The gunmage himself, moving at a low crouch, knew that, though his talents of stealth were nothing to be derided, when compared to his men he could not have stood out more strongly if he’d been a heavy warjack.
On fire.
All he could do was seethe with envy—not that he’d ever admit it to anyone, or ever trade his own training for theirs—and hope that his own lesser skills would suffice.
And so they did. The unit reached the walls of Bainsmarket, slabs of granite that really ought to have been taller and thicker in this age of modern weaponry, without drawing a single shot or cry of alarm.
The modest height of those walls was hardly Bainsmarket’s only stumble in security. A trade city, a hub of commerce, protected from the nearest hostile nation by two hundred miles of deepest, darkest forest, its urban planners had always favored accessibility over impediment. More than a dozen gates provided ingress through the ramparts, some sized for moderate foot traffic, others large enough to admit heavy carts or locomotives of the Cygnaran railroad.
And while each was capable of slamming shut, hunkering behind bars of steel and slabs of banded wood, they had all hung open for so long that many of Bainsmarket’s native adults had never seen them closed.
Rather than slip through the gaping tunnel the Lady Ellena would have traversed on any normal day, Atherton chose a narrow footpath some few hundred yards northeast. It made, he figured, a far less alluring target to whoever or whatever attacked the city.
Just as he and the commandos neared the opening, a small stream of panicked citizens began pouring out. Most were dressed for everyday business, in vests and trousers or skirts of muted colors, and coats too light for more than a few moments in the cold. Only a few carried any sort of baggage or satchels; not an organized evacuation, then, but a haphazard crowd of fleeing townsfolk.
Atherton grabbed the shoulders of the first refugee in reach: a middle-aged fellow with a pale, sweat-shiny face and hastily misbuttoned coat. “What’s happening here?” Then again, more loudly, bodily hauling the gibbering man around to see the golden Cygnus on his uniform, “What happened?”
“Khador!” The townsman’s tone was so shrill Atherton winced, and had to stop himself from asking if the man had recently been injured in an unfortunate spot. “Khador’s attacking! Artillery outside the northern walls, warjacks in the streets . . .” He broke off in a horrified sob.
The gunmage shared a sidelong glance with Hartswood, the nearest of his commandos. “Saw all this yourself, did you?” Atherton asked flatly.
“No, just the fires, but my friend’s brother saw—”
“Right.” Atherton released the man’s shoulders as if they’d abruptly sprouted mildew. “On your way, now.” Then, to his soldier, “I don’t know that questioning any of the others is likely to prove substantially more helpful.”
“Doesn’t seem likely, sir,” Hartswood agreed.
“Right,” the corporal repeated. “Detail two of the boys to hang back and make sure these people all get clear safely. The rest of us, we’re going in.”
Hartswood relayed his orders, and then Atherton, along with four of his men, were pushing through the tide of refugees into Bainsmarket proper.
It was a more sprawling, broadly built city than those to which Atherton was accustomed—thanks, again, to its mercantile needs. The avenues stretched wide, to accommodate multiple carts; the city blocks were long on all sides, so that more storehouses and businesses might be crammed along the busiest thoroughfares. Rather than providing a sense of space and freedom, though, it all somehow combined to make Bainsmarket more claustrophobic than fortified Caspia or mud-carpeted Corvis. The sheer desperation, the obsequious need to please any and all potential customers in the naked scrabble for patronage or coin, weighed more heavily on the air than the buildings themselves.
At the moment, those streets were rivers of chaotic flesh. Citizens and visitors tried to figure out which way to flee, or even what they fled from. Thick smoke and rank sweat made simple breathing a test of endurance. The blue-and-gold of the city garrison appeared only sporadically throughout the crowds. Whatever happened, it’d clearly thrown the local soldiers into disarray—or worse.
As best Atherton could tell, around a dozen explosions had rocked Bainsmarket, and while none had been overwhelmingly powerful, the vast spread of the detonations had caused more panic and disruption than any single blast, no matter how potent, could have managed.
Probably the point, that.
“Sir!” This from Ledeson, a tiny man—shorter than some dwarves—who’d nonetheless proved himself a valuable soldier. “There! Forward left!”
Even if the knot of people at whom Ledeson pointed hadn’t been sprinting in almost military formation, heads down and arms pumping, from the doorway of a large warehouse, Atherton would have known them for what they were. He recognized the posture, the attitude, the motions, the breed.
Damn mercenaries.
First things first, though. Guns-for-hire usually had some pretty specific reasons for running like that.
“Cover!” Atherton shouted.
Flame erupted from the warehouse windows, flung the door from its hinges, sprouted through weak spots in the roof like the peaks on some infernal crown. The walls contained the worst of it, though, thank Morrow for small favors. The civilians on the street, while further terrified, were no more injured than the commandos who’d dived behind the nearest shelter.
“Gentlemen,” Atherton announced, brushing road dirt from his coat as he stood from behind an abandoned wagon, “I would like to have a stern word with those fellows regarding the proper treatment of public property.”
Once more the commandos vanish
ed, disappearing this time into the scattering crowd, and the gunmage calmly started down the same street the mercenaries had taken.
After that, the gunfire was more than enough indication of which way to turn.
Atherton advanced up the block, coat flaring behind. Before him, two of the mercenaries already lay dead, both stabbed from behind before they’d known they were in danger. The remaining five crouched in adjacent doorways, exchanging fire with unseen opponents—Hartswood, Ledeson, and the others—sheltered behind similar doorways and the ever-more-shredded carcass of a dead horse.
The first mercenary saw him coming half a street away. Even from that distance, Atherton saw the man’s eyes flare from gibbous to full, saw his mouth open in a shout. The sellsword’s weapon, a blunt-nosed carbine, swiveled his way, the barrel a gaping, ravenous maw.
The gunmage permitted himself a smile, and kept walking.
The carbine quivered. Atherton took another step—and then seemed simply to fold.
Between one footfall and the next, he jackknifed to one side from the waist up, pivoting in the process. A simple move, somehow simultaneously awkward and graceful, was all it took to shift him just out of line with the barrel.
The abrupt movement, as he’d known it would, startled the mercenary into firing.
The bullet flew harmlessly by and Atherton straightened, coming out of his spin with both hands full of pepperbox. Two cerulean auras flickered, two ensorcelled bullets burst from the twinned weapons. The first blasted clean through the man who’d shot at him, the stone wall behind him, and the second shooter behind that, concealing the entire doorway in a cloud of powdered granite.
The second struck two doorways down, punching into the chest of one mercenary, lifting him from his feet in defiance of all physics, and slamming him with bone-crunching force into a second. Both flopped and thrashed, screaming, into the street. The gunmage fired again, putting a single mercy shot through the pair of them.
“By my count,” Atherton called cheerfully, “that leaves one of you! Some friendly advice? Surrender’s a solid option.”
A rifle spun from behind a corner of the building, followed by a heavy pistol and a long dagger. Hands clasped firmly to the back of his head, a raggedy and unkempt thug in even more raggedy and unkempt leather armor stepped sullenly into the open.
“Wise choice,” the corporal noted. He watched the scurry of activity as his commandos swooped in, searching and securing the prisoner. Only then did he approach, idly tapping the barrels of one pistol against his chin in a gesture that, for anyone but a gunmage, would have been the absolute height of foolishness. “You’re not going to make me waste my time and yours with threats, are you?”
The mercenary’s scowl deepened until it seemed his jaw might actually fall off and scamper away on its own, but he shook his head.
“Good. A few easy ones to start with, then.”
Indeed, it was a very brief question-and-answer exchange that followed. Yes, as the fellow understood it, Khador had paid for the operation, though it had been a local who’d actually hired most of the men. Yes, their plan was to disrupt the railway and the transportation of supplies to the front. No surprises whatsoever, thus far.
Then the prisoner came around to the name of the man who’d hired them, the commander of the whole operation—and Atherton wasn’t smiling anymore.
“Thamar’s crotch . . .” Ledeson whispered, nursing a grazing injury to his left arm.
Atherton nodded. “About the size of it, Private.” Again he hefted this pistol to his chin, whispering softly over the rune-scarred, unnatural steel. Energies crackled, hair stood on end, and for the briefest sliver of a second, it sounded as though something within the barrels whispered back.
Finally, he aimed at the sky, and fired. Like a shooting star in reverse, a faint cobalt gleam shot upward, hovered, and then hurtled away toward the southwest.
***
By the time evening began to paint Bainsmarket with its palette of shadows, Cadmoore’s trencher unit had already secured the closest intersections, while Dalton’s long gunners kept to the track and the massive gateway through which their train would have entered. Benwynne surveyed the city—what she could see of it, anyway—from the shadow of the barbican. She saw the rails leading away, reaching toward the horizon and the unseen railroad station before being swallowed by the intervening blocks. Only a few streets converged here, allowing for pedestrian traffic along the curtain wall and—so she supposed—providing train, track, and tunnel access to maintenance workers. As such, she wasn’t faced with a large population of civilians; only a few townsfolk peeked from nearby buildings, mostly squat and heavy workshops of this sort or that, and they all obeyed when the soldiers waved for them to stay inside.
“Corporal Cadmoore!” she barked.
“Yes, Sergeant?”
“Until Gaust’s commandos pop up, your people are eyes and ears. I want small groups scouting up-track and along that road, that road, and that road. They are not to advance more than a two-minute run from us, but I want them to at least try to figure out what in the name of Thamar’s tits is happening in this damn city!
“Dalton, have at least two rifles covering each team until—”
Every face turned skyward as a tiny speck, shimmering through shades so blue they’d make the sky curl away in shame, soared over the buildings and plunged to earth. So swift did it come that Benwynne hadn’t even time to draw breath, nor any of her people to seek cover, before it struck the ground a yard from her feet.
Rather than any sort of detonation, however, sizzling arcs of sapphire energies danced across the dirt around the impact. Benwynne, trying to make sense of the surreal image, couldn’t decide if it looked more like a dancing spider or a spectral onion.
“Gaust,” she snarled at her absent corporal, “what the hell are you—?”
The lightshow faded, revealing a small concavity where the bullet had struck—and, of far greater interest, an array of cracks in the frost-dried earth.
Cracks that, impossibly, spelled out a word.
“When,” Wendell grumped, appearing at Benwynne’s side, “did he learn to do—”
And just like that, he fell as speechless as Benwynne. Presumably because he, too, had read the gunmage’s abbreviated message.
Not a word, this, but a name. A name that changed everything the sergeant had planned.
Magnus.
She finally broke her silence with an enraged, almost primal hiss, and she was far from the only one to do so. It was a name with which all of her seconds, and most of her soldiers, were only too familiar.
Asheth Magnus, a high-ranking warcaster under King Vinter IV, and now, under Leto IV, Cygnar’s most reviled traitor.
And its most dangerous. For Benwynne, around that name, a lot of puzzle pieces slipped into place.
“I suppose,” she told Wendell, her voice rubbed rough across the thorns of her sprouting fury, “we know how they managed to sneak a full company of mercenaries into Bainsmarket under CRS’s nose. Nobody knows our procedures and defenses better than that one-armed bastard! I’ll bet he just drooled at the opportunity to aid Khador’s offensive . . .”
“It also means,” the mechanik noted, “that he knows exactly how and where to hit the city to most effectively cripple it. Frankly, if he’s behind this, I’m surprised Bainsmarket hasn’t already fallen entirely.”
“True.” Benwynne chewed her lip briefly in a very unmilitary gesture. “It can’t be a full military incursion,” she mused aloud. “No way he could have crossed the border without being detected. And if he had to sneak in, he’ll be missing his heavy equipment. Still . . .
“The bombs we’ve seen so far aren’t enough, Wendell. He’s not done, not by a long shot.” Then, more loudly, “Dalton! Cadmoore! Belay my previous orders and get over here!”
Once all four officers had gathered, a hurried discussion was enough to convince them that they probably had a handle on the overall gi
st of Magnus’s plan. These first explosions would assuredly have taken out a few military installations—including the storehouses and workshops for any local ’jacks—as well as a number of more lightly guarded civilian targets. The subsequent panic and disruption of the Bainsmarket garrison would then open the door to more vital military and political objectives. The surviving local units would have been scattered, caught off-guard, easily picked apart—not for long, but Magnus wouldn’t have needed long.
The squad had arrived before the invaders reached that stage of the operation, assuming that was, indeed, the plan. Benwynne, only moderately religious, offered a quick prayer of thanks to Morrow for their fortunate timing.
“None of which does us much good, really,” Cadmoore pointed out, scowling. “We don’t know where in the city he’s set up, what his specific targets are—”
“We can pretty safely guess at a few of those,” Wendell interrupted.
“A few. Not all. And even if we knew them all, you see enough of us to cover them all?”
“What are you suggesting, then, Cadmoore?”
The trencher corporal and Sergeant Benwynne actually answered simultaneously. “Draw him out.”
Cadmoore flashed a tight smile at his commander and allowed her to continue.
“We need to make him see us as a threat too big to ignore,” she said. “Make him think he has pressing need to take us out before he moves on to more vital targets.”
“And how do you suggest we do that?” Dalton asked, her voice even more gravelly and grinding than usual. “Formal invitation?”
“Actually . . .” Benwynne’s whole face shifted as she broke into a half-mouthed smirk. “Cadmoore, new orders. I want your people collecting rubble. Pull down empty buildings if you have to. Start marking out some trenches outside the curtain wall, too. We’re digging in, and I want to be able to hold this position from both directions.”