Moving Targets

by C. L. Werner

  “Alessandro was done for,” Rutger said, trying to reassure her. “Even Olt knew that. That’s why he set that gatorman sorcerer to work on him.” He clenched his fists as he recalled the hideous spectacle. “Olt knows everything. Alessandro’s secret is coming in on a ship called the Jhordwolf.”

  “Not now,” Taryn scolded him as she freed his legs. “We have to get out of here before that beast decides it’s hungry again.” She eyed him critically as Rutger rose to his feet, frowning at the way he staggered. “Can you walk?” she demanded.

  “I’ll be fine,” Rutger assured her, “just let me get my bearings.”

  Taryn pushed him back when he would have led the way through the gate. Both pistols were in her hands when the gun mage emerged from the furnace, turned towards the bull snapper. She uttered a sigh of relief when she found the beast torpid, its fury sated by the parts of Delt it had gulped down.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Taryn hissed at Rutger, afraid the sound of her voice might stir the alligator.

  “We have to stop Olt,” Rutger declared. He winced when he saw the incredulous look in Taryn’s eyes.

  “Earl Alessandro is dead,” she reminded him. He could see she was fighting down the emotion in her tone, forcing herself to be the cold, practical professional. “That means no more paydays,” she said.

  “This is more important than money,” Rutger said. “It isn’t just cargo on that ship. There’s a passenger, someone the earl said was ‘from Martyn.’ Don’t you see? All of his talk about the future of Llael, the last hope for his kingdom? Taryn, the cargo, the treasure for King Baird, they’re payment, a bribe to the Kingdom of Ord to shelter an heir who might unite the Llaelese and restore their nation!

  Taryn shook her head. Keeping her magelocks aimed at the lethargic alligator, she kicked a bloody weapon belt from the gory mess that had been Delt. Scowling at the remains, she holstered one of her guns and picked up the belt, handing it to Rutger. The mercenary nodded as he saw the holstered pistol hanging from it. Wiping away the worst of the gore, he buckled it around his waist.

  The gun mage nodded at the rearmed Rutger. “Heir or no, Llael is lost, and you’ll be the death of us yet, but I know when you won’t take no for an answer,” she said before she hurried into the night.

  Stealthily, the tiny fishing boat edged its way across Heir’s Finger Channel towards the darkened shore of the island. While the lights of Doleth and Bellicose blazed away across the water, the small island set between them seemed utterly devoid of life, just a forbidding spire of black rock rising from the channel.

  Taryn knew it was far more than it appeared to be. The desolation was just an illusion and there was a suggestion of light rising from the starboard side of the island, blocked from sight by the intervening hills rising along the island’s spine.

  Something Rutger had overheard Olt say had stirred a memory in Taryn’s head. On the voyage down the Dragon’s Tongue, she remembered the captain mentioning taking on coal in Five Fingers at a place called the Winking Maiden. The Winking Maiden turned out to be the smallest of a set of islands in the middle of Heir’s Finger Channel called the Three Maidens. While the other islands were simply stepping stones between Bellicose and Doleth, the Winking Maiden was different, given over to coal yards and facilities to refuel the many steamships making port in Five Fingers. If the Jhordwolf was going to offload cargo discretely, the one place it wouldn’t draw attention was the docks at the Winking Maiden. Any observer would naturally assume she was taking on coal, not unloading passengers.

  Stealing a fishing boat had been a matter of almost embarrassing simplicity. The shores of the islands were littered with all sorts of dinghies and rowboats. The two mercenaries had simply marched down to the beach and pushed one of the vessels into the water. Navigating the sharp currents in the King’s Finger Channel had been the real ordeal, but Rutger’s brawn had eventually carried them through.

  Now they were staring up at the dark mass of the island, the mounds of coal heaped along its spine looming above the beaches like black hills. There were a few supply stations scattered along the larboard side of the island, most of them were ranged along the starboard side where the current wasn’t as strong and ships could dock more easily. Taryn had a feeling the Jhordwolf would choose isolation over convenience. Her impression was borne out when they spotted the iron-hulled bulk of a Rhul steamship lumbering towards one of the supply stations.

  “We have to hurry if we’re really going to do this,” Taryn said as she watched the ship drawing closer to the island.

  “We have to do this,” Rutger grunted back, throwing his tired muscles into a desperate effort. “We can’t let Olt get the passenger.”

  Taryn shook her head. “I still fail to understand why any mercenary should risk their life for free,” she complained. It wasn’t the prospect of losing money that troubled her, she already had the earl’s gold stashed away in her pouches, but the probability of losing something even more valuable.

  “Think of it as an investment,” Rutger joked. “We save the possible future king of Llael, and who knows where we might go.”

  Taryn shot Rutger a black look. “We’ll end up in front of Khardoran firing squad, like this supposed heir,” she grumbled. Turning her attention to the shore, she sighed. “So what’s your idea? You charge in and take on Olt and twenty thugs while I sit back and try to pick them off one by one? Preferably before they kill you.”

  “The idea is we get onshore and warn the ship,” Rutger said. “That’s all we need to do to spoil Olt’s plan. He doesn’t have the manpower to take on a fully prepared Rhul steamship.” The mercenary directed a reassuring smile at her. “Believe me; I’m not planning on tackling Olt’s crew of murderers all by myself.”

  The boat nudged onto the rocky shore. Rutger dropped down and dragged the vessel up past the tide. “I’ll make it up to you,” he promised as reached a hand out to help Taryn onto land.

  The gun mage ignored the offered hand. “Just don’t get yourself killed,” she warned him, quickly averting her face lest he see some emotion there she would prefer remain hidden.

  Rutger was about to voice some witty rejoinder when the sound of boots charging across the rocks brought him spinning around. In the moonlight, they were only dark shadows, but there was no mistaking the gleam of naked steel in their hands.

  “Rutger!” a voice cried out from the dark. “Beware! Olt’s men!”

  The warning stripped away the last hesitation and quickly Delt’s repeating pistol Taryn had given him was ripped from its holster. In a burst of flame and smoke, he fired the weapon into one of the shadows. Taryn was quicker still, while Rutger was aiming his second shot, she was already breaking open the breech of her magelocks and reloading after a round of fire. Men fell before the fusillade, but on Rutger’s fourth shot the cartridge misfired and he cursed the weapon as Taryn gunned down two more before the final enemy took to his heels and dashed up the shore. Before he had gone more than a few yards, a shape detached itself from a pile of coal and pounced on the man’s back, knocking them both to the ground. After a short struggle, the ambusher rose to his feet and started slowly towards the victorious mercenaries.

  “Marko,” Taryn hissed, recognizing both the voice that had cried out and the craven method of ambush the lurker had employed.

  “Rutger… and the lovely Lady Taryn!” Marko exclaimed as he drew near. “You don’t know how happy I am to see you…”

  “Surprised more like,” Rutger growled at him, making the thief’s ingratiating smile falter. “Surprised to see us alive.”

  Marko flinched at the accusation, all the more for the truth behind it. “I had no choice. You’ve seen Olt! You know the kind of man he is! Why his crew of murderers hasn’t left a living soul this side of the island! And they’re going to do the same to the Jhordwolf when she docks! If I’d done anything…”

  Throughout the rogue’s whine, Taryn had glared at him in stony silence. Now, in a bur
st of violence, she brought the barrel of her magelock smashing into the side of his head. Marko gasped, then flopped to the rocks. Rutger leaned over the thief, setting a hand against his chest.

  “I thought you were going to kill him,” he said in a voice without reproach, obviously having felt the same temptation.

  Taryn continued reloading her pistol. “It’s still on my agenda,” she said. Raising her gaze from the beach she watched as guide lights flickered into life on one of the towering steam cranes that were scattered among the supply stations. “Unless I miss my guess, that’s meant to draw the Jhordwolf in.”

  Rutger fumbled at Marko’s belt, removing the pistol and sword the thief had acquired from Olt’s arsenal. They were poor replacements for his mechanikal sword and hand cannon, but they would have to suffice.

  “We’ll have to hurry then,” he said. He looked out towards the steam cranes. “The one advantage we have is surprise. Olt won’t be expecting us.”

  Taryn frowned at his reasoning. “His men were using blades for a reason,” she said. “Probably he didn’t want the sound of a shot warning the ship. If he heard us shooting, he’ll know someone else is around.”

  “We’ll just have to chance it,” Rutger said.

  “Exactly how much is a royal heir worth on the open market anyway?” she demanded as she raced after him down the beach.

  The Jhordwolf was already tied to the dock when Taryn and Rutger reached the supply station. The two mercenaries kept to the concealment of the buildings, slowly edging their way past the warehouses and work sheds. They tried to ignore the fresh corpses pilled in the shadows.

  A cluster of figures stood at the foot of the dock, waving up at the ship’s Rhulic crew. Taryn noted the burly frame of Janos, and Rutger spotted the stocky Crocella, a cloak drawn up about his neck to conceal his identity from the dwarves onboard.

  In all there were about a dozen men waiting to greet the ship, but neither mercenary could pick out Arisztid Olt among them. The question of where the gun mage might be was answered once the steamer was secured and some of the crew began to descend the gang plank. There was a thunderous commotion from one of the warehouses as a gigantic shape burst through the wooden wall. At first, Taryn thought it might be one of the station’s laborjacks, for there were several of the machines standing idle among the buildings. Rutger quickly corrected her mistake. The machine wasn’t a laborjack. It was a modified Ordic warjack, a Toro. It was a towering behemoth of steel and bronze, standing almost twice the height of a man. The warjack’s right arm was built in rough semblance to that of a human, its steel talons clenched tight about the hilt of an enormous sword. The left arm supported a vicious-looking gun carriage, the armature fixing it to the ’jack’s shoulder reinforced with a cluster of struts. A single smoke stack rose up from a back swollen by an enormous steamplant. The head that protruded from between those shoulders was cast in the semblance of an ancient warhelm, tube-like vents projecting from either edge of the mouth-like grill. Two narrow, slit-like optics glowed from the sides of what could be called the Toro’s face. The metal monster didn’t belong to the station. It belonged to Arisztid Olt.

  “That never walked off an assembly line,” Rutger observed as he watched the giant machine lumber forwards on its armored legs. “Olt’s had some extensive customization done to that thing! Just look at the chain-cannon!”

  There was an edge of awe in Rutger’s voice, the jack marshal appreciating an impressive piece of machinery. Taryn’s view was far less appreciative. Her fingers played across the grips of her magelocks. “Rutger, even with the most corrosive spells I know, I don’t think I could make much more than a dent in that thing.” With an effort, she tore her eyes away from the steel behemoth, fixing her gaze on her companion. “How are we going to stop it? If we go down there, we’ll just get ourselves killed.” To her it seemed an obvious estimation of the situation, but she wanted to make sure Rutger understood it too. The odds had been long enough already, but with Olt’s entire crew and that mechanikal monstrosity, the deck was hopelessly stacked against them.

  Rutger nodded, his expression turning grim. “We still might get our chance. Olt wants the heir alive, so it’s possible we could help him escape into the city.” He clenched his fist in a gesture of impotent fury. “I just wish there was some way to help those poor souls on the ship!”

  Taryn felt a shudder run through her. Her magical abilities didn’t run into divination or prophecy, but she didn’t need to be a seer to know what would happen. Olt had already displayed his ruthlessness. He might need the heir alive, but that protection wouldn’t extend to the rest of the ship. Feeling helpless, she turned her gaze back to the dock. As the steel giant stalked forward on its steam-driven legs and sparks flew from its smokestack, its armored head swung towards the Jhordwolf and a feral growl rumbled from the vents in its helmet-like face.

  Small beside the huge warjack, Olt appeared and marched alongside the lumbering machine. “Amok!” he called to the metal monster, causing the iron face to rotate and stare down at him. Olt pointed his gloved hand at the ship. “Total massacre! No survivors!”

  Steam rippled about the Toro’s hull as it advanced on the ship, a deafening, bloodthirsty roar thundering from its vents. As it charged forward, Amok raised its left arm, the arm that ended in a large-bore gun barrel. The cannon came to life, blasting the decks of the Jhordwolf with rounds, butchering the Rhulic crew in bursts of shrapnel.

  The slaughter was repeated on the dock as Janos and the other killers sprang into action, pouncing on their stunned victims before many of them could move. A few tried to make it back to the ship, only to be thwarted when Smiler lunged up from the black waters of the channel and tore into them with claws that burned with malignant rings of runes.

  “Murderous scum!” Rutger cursed, punching the wall of the shed beside him in anger. Taryn was sure it didn’t help his sense of guilt that Janos was using Jackknife to kill his share of the crew.

  Suddenly her attention became fixated on the struggle near the gangplank. A pair of armored men was attempting to defend a comrade from the rampaging Smiler. The third man was dressed simply, everything about him was nondescript except the young, handsome face peering out from beneath his wide-brimmed hat. There was something about that face and the way the youth carried himself that reminded her of Earl Alessandro. A question flashed through her mind: why was it that the earl had been entrusted with the welfare of this heir of old King Rynnard?

  Taryn was just alerting Rutger to her suspicion when she discovered that she wasn’t the only one who had noticed the youth. Stalking away from the shadow of Amok, Olt shouted a warning to the raging gatorman. “I want the boy alive!” he punctuated his command with a shot from his magelock. Azure runes danced around the pistol in a ring as the cutthroat’s rune shot flew towards his foes. The glowing shot slammed into the skull of one bodyguard, then burst from the back of his head to strike the other in the eye. Bellowing, Smiler charged across the fallen guards, ripping the long sword from the youth’s grip and smashing him flat with a sidewise blow of its tail.

  Janos and a few of the other thugs rushed forward to take charge of the stunned boy, lashing his hands behind his back with leathern cords. The decks of the Jhordwolf had been cleared by the warjack’s murderous salvo. If any of the Rhulic crew still lived, they had retreated into the bowels of the ship.

  Olt detached several of his murderous crew to climb aboard. The others he told to help Crocella. Under the traitor’s direction, the men raced to one of the work sheds, exhuming barrels of explosives they must have hidden there.

  “Into the holds,” Olt told them. “Crocella knows where they will be most effective. Find the treasure. We’ll take all we can carry. The rest we sink with the ship!”

  One of the rogues hesitated as he hefted a barrel of explosives to his shoulder. “Sink it?” he asked.

  Crocella rounded on the man, teeth showing behind his beard. “This isn’t about plunder!”
he growled. “It’s about honor!”

  Olt waved the man onward, directing him to join the others rushing up the gangplank. “We’ll get paid just for keeping that treasure away from the Cathors,” he assured them. Turning towards Janos’s prisoner, the villain’s face pulled back in a cold smile. Gloved fingers closed about the boy’s chin, lifting his head, forcing it from side to side as Olt’s cold eyes examined his countenance.

  “The boy is to remain safe,” Olt told Janos. “He’s worth his weight in gold.” The killer smiled coldly. “Quite a bit more than that,” he mused. Releasing the boy’s chin, Olt walked over to the armored Toro. “Stay here, Amok,” he ordered the machine. He pointed at the automaton’s smoking chain-cannon. “No shooting,” he told it, eliciting an angry growl from the vents in its helm. “I don’t want you blowing up the ship while I’m onboard,” the cutthroat growled back. Amok shifted its weight from one foot to another, pivoting its torso from side to side, looking for all the world like a sullen child.

  “Don’t worry,” Olt told the warjack as he walked off to join Crocella in the hold of the Jhordwolf. “There will be plenty of killing for you to do later.”

  When Olt and most of his gang were down in the hold, Rutger grabbed Taryn’s arm. “We have a chance now,” he told her. “Maybe we can’t save the treasure, but we can still save the heir.” He pointed to the dock where only Janos and Smiler had been left to watch the prisoner.

  Taryn moved Rutger’s hand, pointing the finger away from the men and towards the Toro. “And what is that thing going to do while you’re getting the heir? Count its rivets?”

  “You’ll have to distract it for me,” he told her, a trace of guilt in his tone that Taryn picked out immediately.

  “What do you expect me to do?” she asked, already knowing however crazy it was, she was going to agree to it.

  “I need you to operate the crane,” Rutger told her. “In activating the arcane lamps along the arm of the crane, Olt’s men have powered up its steam engine. It would take only the throwing of a few levers to set the entire machine into motion.”