by C. L. Werner
“It will do us no good if we don’t know what ‘Wolf’ means,” the man was grumbling. “It might be a man’s name, or a place or even a code-word.”
Olt directed his ally’s attention to the cot where the earl was being tended. “If that man lives, Crocella, he will tell us everything we want to know. I promise you.” The cutthroat frowned in dismay as he watched the doctor tending Earl Alessandro as Olt continued. “I had depended on catching up to him much sooner than this. If the Bloodroot has started to bud, then there’s not much any physician can do. Unless he’s disclosed some of his secrets to the bodyguard, whatever he knows dies with him.”
Crocella snorted in contempt. “My master will not forget this failure.” He wagged his finger before the villain’s nose. “We would make powerful friends for your patron, but don’t forget we’d also make dire enemies.”
Crocella’s threats were interrupted by a commotion at the far end of the foundry. Several of the murderous crew rushed towards the iron gate as it creaked open, pistols and blades clenched in their hands. They breathed a bit easier when they saw who was intruding upon their hideout, laughing and joking as they escorted old comrades back into the fold.
Rutger swore under his breath when he saw who it was rejoining Olt’s gang: the scar-faced swamp rat from the train, and Smiler, the gatorman bokor. The human renegade walked with a stiffness in his gait and had one arm tied fast against his chest. Smiler seemed no worse for his tumble from the train, though there was an ugly black scab where his tail had been trimmed. The bokor lumbered under the burden of what Rutger at first took to be a dried-out log. As the reptile drew closer to the smelter, however, it set the thing down, affording the captive a better look. The thing was a huge alligator, at least twelve feet long from snout to tail.
A ring of curious men formed around the motionless saurian. “Hey, Smiler, that thing looks dead!” one of the rogues laughed.
The bokor grinned at the man. “Nocanbe,” the gatorman hissed in a debased Thurian. “Catched him by-an-by with my own claws.” Smiler leaned over the alligator and began unwinding the chain wrapped about its jaws.
One of the men still wasn’t convinced. “Looks dead to me,” he said, giving the brute a kick to the ribs. In a flash, the alligator burst into motion, its body twisting around and its jaws snapping at the man’s leg. With a yelp, the thug jumped back, all the color draining from his face.
Smiler grinned at the horrified man. Slowly, with careful motions, the bokor leaned back over its pet. “An’ I be puttin de chain back,” it declared, winding the steel links around the torpid reptile’s jaws.
Olt walked towards the scar-faced renegade and his reptilian associates. “You arrive at a propitious moment, Delt,” the cutthroat said. His eyes made a quick study of the hulking bokor as one of his dark eyebrows raised.
Delt scowled at his master. “Not quick enough. Smiler had to make a lot of promises to a lot of tribes to get enough warriors for that attack. They weren’t too happy with the way things turned out. My men are all in some reptile’s belly now.”
“De fellas bein’ want put me in de pot too,” the bokor elaborated. “Thinkin’ make de ju-ju stick with my bones.”
“Your reward will be worth the risks,” Olt assured them. He turned towards Crocella. “Smiler’s presence removes that problem that was bothering you. He has a certain talent for the black arts. Normally, I am loathe to rely upon the vagaries of necromantic magic.” He looked over at the doctor and the man’s increasing despair as he tried to restore the earl to consciousness. “Still, there are times when needs must.” Without further explanation, Olt snapped his fingers and pointed at the doctor. Before the physician could react, one of the thugs flanking the cot had drawn a knife and thrust it between his ribs.
“What’re you doing!” Crocella cried. “Earl Alessandro will die without him.”
Olt smiled coldly. “We don’t want to wait that long,” he said as Janos limped over to the cot. With one sweep of his trench knife, the murderer opened the earl’s throat.
“Now, Smiler, I want you to conjure up His Lordship’s spirit,” Olt told the bokor. “There are some questions I want you to ask it.” He glanced aside at Crocella. “In life, the earl might have defied me to the end. But in death, he will be helpless to resist Smiler’s magic.”
At Olt’s command, the bokor approached the cot. Removing a long sliver of bone from the bag tied about its neck, the gatorman stabbed the doctor’s body until it had a great puddle of blood at its feet. Dipping one scaly talon in the mess, Smiler drew a circle around the cot and Earl Alessandro’s corpse. At each of the cardinal points, the gatorman placed a finger cut from the doctor’s hand and between each finger it set a polished riverstone taken from its gris-gris bag. When this was done, the bokor again dipped its hand in the puddle of blood and slapped its paw against the earl’s lifeless face, leaving the imprint of its claw across his features.
Stepping from the circle, Smiler glanced about, then stalked over and snatched a bottle of sangre from one of Olt’s thugs. Spilling the contents on the floor, the gatorman set the empty bottle just at the edge of the bloody ring, scratching a triangular symbol about it, two of its points extending beyond the circle, one pointing inwards towards the nobleman’s corpse.
An arctic chill swept through the foundry as the bokor worked its magic. Smiler’s eyes took on a green cast, the talons tipping each of its claws glowing with an eerie luminescence, a ring of gibbous green runes flickering into life around it as it evoked its conjure. The gris-gris bag writhed and jumped upon its cord with a hideous vitality of its own. The light flickering down through the broken roof became dull and dingy, as though filtered through a mephitic haze.
A groan sounded from the earl’s body, betokening an agony beyond the suffering of mortal flesh. The clothes of Olt and his men rustled in a spectral wind, Rutger could feel phantom fingers tugging at his suspended body, the beaverskin hat fell from Smiler’s head and skittered across the floor.
Smiler’s toothy grin spread into a gaping hiss, its tongue shaping itself to primordial spells. The name of Kossk, the terrible swamp god, rasped across the hall, seeming to slither into every crack and crevice with vibrancy beyond mere sound. The empty bottle shuddered, dancing from side to side. Though there was nothing to be seen, Rutger had the impression that something, some invisible force was filling the bottle, being imprisoned within its glass.
“Spirit be namin’ youself,” Smiler growled when the bottle’s violence was at its height. Though the dead lips of the corpse on the cot didn’t stir, Rutger heard Earl Alessandro’s voice respond to the bokor’s order.
“I am Earl Alessandro di la Predappio,” the ghostly voice wailed. “Release me. Let me remain with the dead.”
Smiler lashed his scaly tail in agitation, jaws snapping tight at this display of defiance. “Y’ll be doin’ what I be tellin’ you, or by de great god Kossk I be leavin’ you in de bottle!” The bokor clapped its claws together, twining its talons in an arcane pattern. At once, the bottle became still and in its depths Rutger thought he could now make out a little orb of glowing light.
“What’s de Wulf?” Smiler hissed.
“Do not ask,” the spectral voice wailed.
Smiler lashed its tail again. “Ask nothin’. This command! What’s de Wulf?”
An unearthly shriek boomed across the foundry. Rutger could see many of Olt’s men make the signs of their patron Ascendants and Scions as the noise raked their ears. The bottle’s violence was such that it seemed it must topple and roll out from the triangle, but in defiance of all natural laws, it always righted itself and remained standing however far its gyrations took it.
“The cargo, the price of the Cathors,” the phantom wailed. “The passenger, the hope of the Martyns. The Wolf brings them both!”
Through the macabre spectacle there had been silence in the hall, but now the Crocella laughed and clenched his fist. “The Wolf brings them!” he shouted, trium
ph in his voice. He turned towards Olt. “It isn’t a man or a place! It’s a ship! The Jhordwolf has to be a ship! They are bringing the heir to Five Fingers!”
Arisztid Olt nodded and stalked across the hall to a table, rummaging amongst the papers stacked there. He ran a gloved finger down one page he took from the pile. “The Jhordwolf, sailing from Rhul, registered to Clan Stonehammer.” He looked up from the page. “It is expected in Five Fingers today.”
“That doesn’t give you much time!” Crocella exclaimed. “The heir might be in an awkward position without Alessandro smoothing things in Ord ahead of him, but he’s bringing enough treasure with him to buy a lot of consideration. You can’t let him or his money get that far!”
“They won’t,” Olt promised, stepping away from the table. “My patrons are just as eager to keep the heir and his treasure away from the Cathors as you are.” The villain clapped his hands together and shouted to his men. “The time is at hand! We strike at the Maiden tonight!”
The thugs hurried off to prepare themselves for the attack. Rutger could see them drawing rifles and pistols from caches concealed in hidden cellars beneath the foundry. Having seen Olt’s methods, the mercenary knew the villains were arming themselves for a massacre.
“Dismiss your wraith” Olt told Smiler. “I may have need of your magic in the attack.”
Smiler grinned at its master and bobbed its head in a nod of understanding. With a sweep of its tail, the gatorman shattered the bottle. A bone-chilling scream resounded through the foundry as the imprisoned spirit was cast once more into the darkness. Black smoke steamed up from the earl’s corpse, his skin corroding off his bones in ribbons of wormy mush.
“What about him?” Marko asked, pointing up at Rutger. It was the first time the little thief had dared to stir from his corner. Olt gave him a withering stare.
“He is no longer an asset,” the villain declared. “I should think you’d be more concerned about your own neck.”
“I just wanted to make sure,” Marko said. “Rutger Shaw is a bad enemy to make. I’d rather not have him loose and looking for me.” The thief directed a ratty smirk at the bound mercenary. “Some folks are too dangerous to let live.” The thief shuddered at the cold glare in Rutger’s eyes. His body seemed to shrink in upon itself as he hurried away to secure weaponry from one of the cellars.
Olt stared up at Rutger and started to draw the magelock from his belt. It was a brutal, long-barreled weapon, far less elegant than the one he had on the train beside the Scrapwater. It seemed modeled on an Orgoth blackdrake, all hard angles and barbaric engravings. A palpable sensation of bloodlust emanated from the gun. “Nothing personal,” Olt told Rutger as he pointed the magelock at him. “I just don’t like loose ends.”
Before the gun mage could fire, however, Delt’s hand closed about his arm. “Let me have him,” the scar-faced man growled, his broken arm flopping against his chest. “I owe him for what he did to me on the train.”
Olt glared at the wounded man until he released his arm and then holstered his pistol. “It seems my associate has other plans,” he told Rutger. “You have my condolences. Delt has lived a long time in the swamps and he’s picked up habits that would offend a Molgur.” He looked aside at his vengeful minion. “I expect you when we attack the ship.”
Delt kept his eyes glaring up at Rutger, sparing no notice as Olt and the others left the foundry. “He’s given you to me,” the swamp-rat growled. “Five or six hours, just you and me.” The scars on his face twisted as the renegade smiled. “I swear they will feel like an eternity!”
The chain from which Rutger was suspended shuddered and jerked as it clattered across the hall, drawn along by the belt bolted to the foundry’s ceiling. Delt smiled cruelly as he stood beside the steam engine that operated the mechanism, kicking lumps of coal into the stove each time the chain’s momentum slowed. Rutger felt his arms being pulled up behind his back with each shuddering halt. Too much more and he knew they would break.
When the chain was poised above the concrete drum of the furnace, Delt pulled back a lever on the steam engine’s control panel and the belt became still. “Stay there,” he told Rutger before walking to a pile of rubble left by part of the crumbling roof. He rummaged among the debris for a moment, then pulled a length of corroded pipe from the mess.
At first Rutger thought the rogue meant to beat him to death with the pipe, but Delt had something far more fiendish in mind. When Smiler had left with Olt’s men, the bokor’s pet had stayed behind. Cautiously, Delt approached the torpid alligator from behind and carefully unwound the chain from its jaws. Then, with brutal jabs of the pipe, he roused the reptile, herding the hissing brute into the open gate of the furnace. Once it was inside, Delt slammed the door closed and cast aside the pipe.
“You have no idea what I went through in the swamp,” Delt snarled up at the captive. “But you’re going to! You’re going to learn what it’s like to watch men eaten alive! You’re going to know because it’s going to happen to you!” The renegade stepped towards a lever protruding from the floor. For an instant it defied him, but then the patina of rust crumbled away and it shifted from one groove to another. In response, Rutger felt the chain he was tied to start to slide. Slowly he was descending, dropping down into the neck of the furnace and the waiting alligator.
“That thing’s a bull snapper,” Delt called out in a mocking voice. “Its jaws will pull you apart at the seams. First it’ll get your legs. Maybe that’ll be enough to sate it for a while. Maybe it’ll still be hungry and start gnawing its way up from there!”
Delt’s cruel laugh was lost in the booming crack of a pistol shot. The floor beside the renegade’s boot exploded into fragments.
“That was a warning,” Taryn shouted across the ensuing silence. Rutger twisted about in his bonds, just able to crane his neck enough to spot his friend perched atop an iron gantry. Her clothes were charred, her face black with soot. He should have known it would take more than an enraged trollkin and a firestorm to kill her. His joy at seeing her alive overwhelmed even the terror of his own predicament, making him forget for the moment his slow drop into the jaws of death.
Taryn, however, was still focused. “Release my friend or the next bullet goes right between your eyes!” she threatened.
“Infernals take you both!” Delt roared. He lashed out with his boot, kicking the lever into a different groove. Rutger’s slow descent became an unrestrained plummet as the belt released the chain.
Quickly Taryn shifted her aim, turning her magelock from Delt to the gate of the furnace. Arcane fire blazed from the gun barrel, the rune shot glowing with magical energy as it whizzed across the length of the hall to strike the side of the bolt holding the door and corroding it before it fell loose.
The shot bore immediate results. The moment the gate swung open, twelve feet of enraged reptile erupted from the belly of the furnace. Delt had time for a single shriek before the bull snapper bore him down, its jaws closing about his head as it dragged him to the floor.
Rutger lost the remainder of the death scene when he pitched full into the furnace, his body striking hard into a pile of slag. He was will cursing when Taryn rushed through the now open furnace grate a few minutes later.
“You going to just gawk at me or are you going to untie me?” Rutger demanded, rattling the chain looped around his arms.
Taryn dashed forward, using her dagger to saw away at the leather thongs. “Good to see you too,” she said.
The remark brought a laugh from the battered mercenary. “Not as good as it is to see you,” he said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but aren’t you dead?”
Looking up from his bonds, Taryn favored Rutger with an impish smile. “There are a few spots I wouldn’t mention in polite company that are probably black and blue. The trollkin wasn’t exactly gentle when he pushed me through the wall.”
The mercenary pounced on her statement. “That’s what I’m talking about! I thought you fell
to your death!”
With a final flourish of her dagger, Taryn sawed through the last binding. “Landed in the rigging.” She glanced at her clothes, making a sour expression. “I think I’m still wearing a gobber family dinner. All in all, I fared much better than the trollkin. He broke through the upper rigging and didn’t stop until a few stories lower. Got tangled in the ropes and somehow managed to strangle himself.”
Rutger rubbed some feeling back into his hands when they were free. His relief both at his escape and Taryn’s survival made him feel exhilarated. “What about the fire? Olt had his thugs torch the building.”
The woman laughed as she answered. “That gobber family I mentioned didn’t feel like being burned to a crisp. First sniff of smoke and they were scrambling down to the street like rats off a sinking ship. Just stuck to their tails and followed the rigrunners.”
Grinning at her ingenuity, Rutger embraced the gun mage, wincing as the butts of her magelocks pressed against his bruises. “Don’t ever do that to me again,” he whispered too low for her to hear. Looking past her shoulder, he saw the defiled body of Earl Alessandro lying on the bloody cot.
Grimly, Rutger released Taryn and gripped her shoulders. “They killed Earl Alessandro,” he told her.
A pained expression fell across Taryn’s features. “I know,” she said in a low voice that was heavy with guilt. “I should have been quicker. I lost Olt’s trail. If I hadn’t spotted his men leaving this building, I’d probably never have found this place.” The last was spoken with a shudder.