Moving Targets

by C. L. Werner

  Before the nobleman could respond, the already slowed train abruptly lurched to a halt, spilling passengers from their benches. Rutger steadied himself against the wall, but was too late to grab Earl Alessandro before the aristocrat was crashing into Taryn. The two landed in a tangle of limbs and epithets, the vitriol of her curses bringing a flush of color to the earl’s cheeks.

  “Your Lordship” Taryn hissed as she tried to disentangle herself, “your hand is compromising my modesty.” The earl jerked back the offending hand as though he’d been scalded. Taryn sat up, tugging her bodice back into place. A particularly clever comment flashed through her mind, but the cynical observation went unspoken. She had more important concerns than accidentally being groped by the earl. For instance the shouts and gunshots coming from outside the train.

  Crawling over the earl and a scruffy tinker who had toppled into the aisle, Taryn reached the window and stared outside. What she saw sent both of her hands leaping for her pistols.

  The train was under attack. Having moved only partly across the trellis that spanned the edge of the Scrapwater, the locomotive had shuddered to a halt, leaving the train exposed to the horde that now erupted from the bog. They were the same breed of monster that had assaulted the Spectre – gatormen. Only this time there were more than just a few dozen.

  “Wonderful, we get on a train to avoid a swamp and find one anyway…” she hissed.

  From armored cupolas fitted to the roof of each car, riflemen sent bullets slamming into the saurians. Encountering thick, scaly hides, however, few of the bullets penetrated deep enough to work any serious mischief among the gatormen. It was with a sinking feeling that Taryn saw the reptiles creeping out from the fog, stalking past the half-submerged wreck of an ancient colossal. An unholy glow emanated from their eyes, primordial bellows rumbled from their saurian chests. Spears and clubs, crude halberds, and broad-axes crafted from the jaws of swamp beasts were clenched in their scaly claws.

  Looking down the length of the train, she could make out the tendrils of magic that had wrapped themselves about the engine, disrupting the flow of steam and arcane energy. It wasn’t hard for Taryn to follow the fingers back to their source, a hulking yellow-eyed gatorman wearing a shabby coat, a beaverskin hat crushed down about its skull. The bokor from the steamer...

  The warlock was standing on the rocky headland on the far side of the trellis, but not alone. A pack of gatormen were swarming about the headland, blocking the far side of the span with old logs, boulders and even rusted scrap from the colossal they’d dredged from the swamp. It was the sight of the barricade that had thrown the engineers into panic and caused the train to slow. Now, even as the horde from the bog closed upon the train, armored soldiers climbed down from the cars, creeping out across the bridge and towards the headland. A pair of warjacks clambered down from the troop carrier at the fore of the train, directed to support the desperate effort to clear the obstruction from the tracks.

  Despite her feeling that the bokor would still be protected by its magic, Taryn raised one of her magelocks and aimed the weapon at the gatorman. Then she noticed the armored giant rising up from the mud beside the bokor. It was an enormous ironback spitter, a gigantic turtle with a spiked shell thick as warjack plate all the way down to its stumpy limbs tipped in claws the size of axeheads. At its head, a great leathery face, dominated by an immense black beak, watched the oncoming soldiers. As one of the pikemen drew too close to it, the turtle reared up onto its hind legs, towering above the man. When he stabbed at it with his pike, the turtle’s beak caught the weapon and broke the oaken stave with a single snap of its jaws.

  The soldier turned to flee, but as he started to run, the spitter’s jaws opened once more, vomiting greasy spittle across the man. The soldier screamed, stumbling as his armor began to smoke and sizzle, the turtle’s acidic juices chewing their way down into his flesh. Taryn had seen many horrible deaths, but few as grisly as a living man dissolving into a mush of meat and bone before her very eyes.

  Taryn started to aim one of her magelocks at the rampaging spitter when Rutger’s powerful grip slammed her to the floor. Her squeal of protest faded into a cry of shock as a bullet smashed into the window frame!

  “Take Earl Alessandro and his guards alive!” a stern voice bellowed. “Kill the rest!”

  The voice issued from a burly, vicious-looking man wearing a long leather duster and boots that stopped just shy of his knees. A large-bore pistol was clenched in one of his hairy hands while in the other he gripped a huge knife with a serrated blade, the sort of knife employed by trenchers and crypt-robbers. Taryn’s eyes hardened when she saw the blood dripping from the blade and the body sprawled at the murderer’s feet.

  Screams tore through the railcar as a half-dozen human thugs rushed from the rearward car. Savagely they sprang into action, slashing their way through the panicked occupants of the car with swords and knives. Women and old men, sick and crippled, the sadistic killers spared none who got in their way. Taryn darted up from the floor, ready to cut down the murderers in an avenging barrage of rune shots.

  As soon as she raised her head, bullets were whistling towards her, one tearing through the side of her hood narrowly missing her face. Taryn was forced back to cover, automatically reaching over and slugging Rutger in the knee as he started to copy her mistake.

  “They have a gun mage,” Taryn cursed lividly. She had seen the arcane energy emanating from the shots that had driven her back against the floor.

  “It’s Arisztid Olt!” Earl Alessandro wailed, terror making his voice crack. The nobleman gripped his pepperbox to his chest, looking like a scared child hugging a stuffed toy. Taryn didn’t condemn the man for his fear. Better than any of them, he knew what Olt would do to get what he wanted.

  There was another high-pitched wail as one of the murderers cut down a woman and Rutger pounded the floor in frustration.

  “Gun mage or Wurm-spawn, we can’t let this slaughter happen!” he roared.

  Taryn felt the same outrage. Such merciless savagery was hideous enough when it was wrought by gatormen or bogrin, but to see it perpetrated by men, men with minds to understand the evil of what they were doing…

  Removing a rune shot from her ammo belt, Taryn forced her mind to blot out the sounds of carnage around her. Focusing her thoughts, she quickly evoked an incantation, endowing the bullet with the arcane energies she had summoned. “Cover me,” she told Rutger. It was a risk, daring the attention of the enemy gun mage, but if they stayed where they were they were dead anyway.

  Rutger rose from behind the bench, bellowing a battlecry to draw the attention of the killers. He fired a shot from his hand cannon, exploding the chest of one murderer. A burning rune shot came whistling back at the mercenary, smashing against his armor and making him stagger.

  Taryn was in motion before their enemies could shoot again. In one smooth motion she slid out into the aisle, keeping herself low. With unerring accuracy, the skill that had won the admiration of her foster father Henri, she drew the trigger of her magelock, arcane energies swirling about the weapon as she evoked her magic. “Seek!” she hissed, and sent the enchanted bullet blazing between the press of panicked passengers.

  The rune shot slammed into the closest thug, striking him at the center of his mass and flinging him backward as though he’d been kicked by a mule. The killer’s flailing body cannonaded into those following behind him, hurling them back in a tangled heap and blocking those further back in the car.

  “Now, let’s get the earl out of here!” Taryn snarled, leaping to her feet and dragging the terrified nobleman after her. The murderers were momentarily impeded, but they’d soon be back on the attack.

  Rutger shook off the hit to his shoulder plate and reloaded his hand cannon. “What about all these people!” he shouted. “We can’t abandon them!”

  Taryn was already shoving Earl Alessandro through the door at the front of the car. “They want the earl,” she said. “They won’t b
other with anyone if they’re busy chasing us!”

  Taryn wasn’t sure how much truth there was in that statement. The sort of men who would do the things she had just seen would kill just because they could, but she didn’t have time to argue with Rutger’s chivalrous sensibilities. Sometimes she wondered if the man had lied to her all this time, and he wasn’t actually a knight errant in disguise.

  The noisy discharge of Earl Alessandro’s pepperbox greeted Taryn when she emerged out onto the little companionway between the cars. The stink of gunpowder washed over her and for an instant she was blinded by acrid black smoke. She stumbled over something lying at her feet, her hand landing in something wet and slippery. It was a pool of blood and the thing she had tripped over was the remains of a brakeman. A spear had passed clean through the man’s chest.

  “It won’t die!” the earl shrieked. Taryn looked up to see the saurian visage of a gatorman, blood streaming from where the earl’s shot had blasted the monster’s face.

  “Yes it will!” Taryn snarled, lunging beneath the gatorman’s snapping jaws to press the barrel of her magelock beneath its chin. Pulling the trigger, she sent the reptile’s brains spraying from the roof of its skull. A kick sent the dying brute flailing off the companionway. Hastily she holstered the weapon and started to reload its companion.

  Taryn whirled as she heard a low, guttural bellow behind her. Her spin prevented the long spear of a second gatorman from transfixing her, but the sharp point of the weapon caught her cloak before burying itself into the wall of the car. In spinning, she had caused the cloak to wrap itself around her, and now she found herself trapped, one arm pinned at her side. The hand holding her magelock was immobile.

  For an instant, the gatorman was actually helping her, trying to free its spear from the wall. Then its dull reptilian brain awoke to the helplessness of its enemy. Hissing its appreciation, the monster let go of the spear and started to lunge at her with its fanged jaws.

  Even as the reptile was snapping at her, the gatorman’s head was leaping away from its scaly shoulders. Foul saurian blood sprayed across Taryn as the headless corpse crashed against her. An instant later, Rutger was dragging the quivering carcass away.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, wrenching the spear from the wall and freeing Taryn’s cloak. In the same motion, he jammed the weapon against the door behind him. It probably wouldn’t hold Olt’s men long, but it might give them a few minutes of grace.

  Taryn wiped the blood from her face, grimacing at the reptilian gore on her fingers. Reaching past the earl, she started to open the door to the next car, then froze. “Rutger, we can’t take him through the next car,” she said. “We can’t lead those killers in there.”

  Rutger growled and looked back at the jammed door as Earl Alessandro struggled to compose himself, flipping open his pepperbox to replace the spent cartridges. Watching him, Taryn could see the rungs of a ladder bolted to the side of the car behind the earl. “Wait, we won’t go through the other cars,” she stated. “We’ll go over them!”

  Bellowing its primitive aggression, a gatorman rounded the side of the car nearest the ladder, a saw-edged axe clutched in its claws. The reptile’s jaws snapped at the earl as he started towards the ladder. As the nobleman recoiled, the monster started to climb up onto the companionway.

  Before the gatorman could gain its footing, Rutger brought Jackknife crashing through its skull. The flailing body toppled backwards, spilling onto another gatorman as it came charging towards the train. “Get him onto the roof,” Rutger told Taryn. “I’ll guard your back.” Almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth, the big mercenary was spinning around to confront a bellowing reptile.

  “Quick!” Taryn shouted, pulling the earl away from the wall and pushing him up the ladder, heedless of the courtesies due his social position. Just as the nobleman’s feet were on the rungs, another gatorman lunged onto the companionway, hurtling the thrashing bodies of its kin. The monster raked its claws at Taryn, and then tried to batter her with its powerful tail. Had the strike connected, every bone in her body would have been shattered, but the brutal strike was thwarted by the narrowness of the companionway, the tail slamming noisily against the side of the train, leaving a dent in the steel wall.

  The reptile didn’t have a chance to recover as Rutger dove towards it, Jackknife licking out in a sweep that took away most of the brute’s arm. Taryn pushed past the maimed saurian, jumping onto the ladder and scrambling after the earl. Once she was on the roof of the car, she reloaded and leaned back down. Her intention had been to help Rutger with the gatorman, but as soon as she stared down she saw a far more immediate peril threatening her partner.

  As she watched, the spear jamming door of the car they had just quitted snapped and the portal was flung open. A snarling marauder burst out onto the companionway. Swiftly, Taryn shifted her aim and sent a bullet slamming into the thug before he could plunge his sword into Rutger’s back.

  The killer’s death curbed the enthusiasm of his comrades who were following close behind. As their friend pitched and fell, the others darted back behind the shelter of the door.

  Down below, Rutger had finished off the wounded gatorman and was scrambling up the ladder, with another of the reptiles snapping at his heels. Despite his best effort, Taryn could see that Rutger wasn’t going to reach the roof – at least not without some help. Drawing her second magelock, keeping the first trained on the door as a ruse, Taryn fired at the gatorman. It was a hasty shot and she doubted if chance would guide it to one of the monster’s vulnerable areas. Still, it achieved its purpose, startling the reptile and causing it to lose its hold on the ladder. With a loud hiss of frustration, the gatorman crashed onto the grated platform below, its flailing claws and lashing tail blocking the door more completely than even the threat of Taryn’s guns.

  “Well, we’re on the roof. What’s the next part of the plan?” Rutger demanded when he reached the top.

  Taryn could only smile and shake her head at him as she reloaded. “If I tell you I’m making it up as we go along, promise you won’t get mad.” She made a quick inspection of their surroundings. What she saw wasn’t good. The train was in bad shape. Gatormen were swarming all around the tracks. They had brought down one of the warjacks and many of the soldiers. The bokor and its hulking ironback spitter were still concentrating on the locomotive itself, gradually forcing their way towards the engine. Smoke billowing from one of the cars suggested that the reptiles might have already fought their way onboard.

  “Behind us!”

  The warning shout came from the earl. Taryn dove at Rutger and sent both of them crashing flat against the roof. The mercenary grunted as Taryn’s elbow drove the wind from him, but she considered it far preferable to catching a bullet. A mob of brutish-looking men were on the back car, carefully picking their way along the roof. When they saw Taryn brandish one of her magelocks, the thugs went darting behind the shelter of an armored cupola. More of Olt’s crew, Taryn decided. Thwarted at the front, they had simply slipped to the back of the car and climbed up from there.

  “Give up Earl Alessandro and I will allow you to walk away,” a cold, authoritarian voice rose from behind the cupola.

  Earl Alessandro stood up, emptying his pepperbox at the voice, riddling the face of the cupola with shot. The discharge of the weapon was like thunder in Taryn’s ear, but not so deafening that she failed to hear the name the earl cried out in terror. “Arisztid Olt!”

  “Give me your answer, and quickly!” Olt demanded as the roar of the earl’s gun faded.

  Taryn felt a chill run down her spine. All the stories of Olt’s infamous atrocities rose up in her mind, a panorama of carnage and outrage to sicken even the most depraved Thamarite cultist. An offer of mercy from such a fiend rang as hollow as a Sulese love song. Surely the cutthroat didn’t think them naïve enough to take him at his word?

  Rutger was the first to spot a new danger threatening them. With a bark of alarm, the mercenary
squirmed out from under Taryn, nearly throwing her off the roof. There was good reason for his haste, however. He brought his heavy boot swinging around, kicking in the snout of a gatorman climbing up the railcar’s side. The reptile clapped its claws to its smashed fangs and toppled to the tracks below.

  “Behind the cupola!” Taryn shouted, diving for the cover afforded by the armored emplacement even as she spoke. From the corner of her eye, she could see the burly rogue in the leather coat peeking over the top of the ladder, aiming his heavy pistol. Other killers were active once more on the rearward car, creeping forward on their bellies to present as low a target as possible.

  “More trouble ahead of us!” Rutger cursed as he scrambled behind the cupola. The corpse of a soldier was draped over the side of the emplacement. The silence of the other emplacements was quickly explained by the presence of a gang of human murderers who had been prowling the roofs at the onset of the attack. Now, at the sound of shots behind them, the renegades were making their way back down the train.

  Taryn glanced at the trembling earl. “I hope whatever secret you’re keeping is worth our lives,” she hissed at him, squeezing off a shot that picked off one of the men and sent the others scrambling for cover behind one of the unmanned cupolas. She broke the breech and loaded a fresh round.

  The earl’s response was a half-intelligible stammer. Taryn didn’t catch all of it, but the phrase “future of the kingdom” was distinct. She had no time to worry about her charge, however. She kicked her toe against Rutger’s boot, drawing his attention.

  “So here’s the plan,” the gun mage told him. “I’m going to try and pick off Olt.”

  Rutger frowned. “Only problem is, which one’s Olt?”

  “I’ll be able to see the magic around him when he fires a rune shot,” Taryn said.

  Rutger’s frown became a worried grimace. “That means you’ll have to get him to shoot first.”