“Fuck off, worm. I won’t forget this,” she growled.
“Neither will I, and I’m the one you should worry about.” I took a step forward, watching Gabaril and the guards move back like a school of fish sensing a predator. Good. I was a predator, and they were in my feeding zone.
I heard a distinct click and knew a weapon was on me, though I wasn’t sure what it was. “Crossbow?” I asked, watching as Gabaril nodded.
The guard farthest away held a stubby black crossbow with a thick metal bolt in it. It was trained on my heart in a solid grip, and he had the bearing of a veteran. I stopped moving forward but shook Hardhead’s bag lightly, shifting the contents around to release a bit of the growing stench inside. “Can we move on to business, or are you trying to deny my claim? It seems like an important detail right about now.”
“Your alleged bounty is not my decision, Jack,” Gabaril said, and now she was genuinely mad.
I spoke to Mira without letting my eyes leave Gabaril. “That doesn’t sound good at all.”
“I think he’s going to cheat you out of the bounty,” she said. Shaking her head, she looked like a pretty suburban mom who’s just found out her kid is smoking weed. Disappointment painted her features as she let out a heavy sigh. “Typical.”
“If I may?” Lasser interrupted.
I turned to him as if he’d just appeared, waving my free hand that he should continue with whatever sage thing he was about to say. “Of course, sir. You have something to add?”
“In fact I do. Perhaps we could actually see Wetterick before this unpleasant morning strays further from good manners?” Lasser asked. When Gabaril prepared to answer, he held up a hand with an apologetic tilt. “I should mention that Natif has a crossbow of his own trained not on your man, but on you, Mistress. Natif, if you will?” he called back in a pleasant voice, like hailing a friend.
Natif waved from across the street, all but invisible in a gray robe. “Hello, friends. Lovely clear air for a shot, innit?”
“I guess that means Berec is your spy,” I said. “No wonder you’re not worked up about it.”
“I’m a practical man, Mister Bowman. I like to know who I can count on,” Lasser said.
“Lower your weapon, Teague.” Gabaril didn’t look to see if he obeyed, but he did, with a reluctant collapse of his arms.
When the crossbow was pointed at the ground, Lasser spoke to Natif again, and this time there was a frost to his tone. “If he twitches, put the first one in her eye. Put the second one in her heart.”
“Got it, boss,” came Natif’s cheerful voice. He really was good help.
“I hope this puts to rest any thoughts of your men rushing us while getting Mister Bowman’s just reward?” Lasser asked. He wore a patronizing smile like he spoke to a stupid kid who’d just been caught shoplifting. The guy was an asset. I made yet another mental note to keep him on my side, no matter what.
“Tell the squad to stand down and post a runner. I want any incoming patrols to wait outside the compound. I don’t want anyone getting...confused,” Gabaril said sourly.
“Confusion, of course. It leads to so many problems, but I’m glad we’ve reached this understanding,” I said. It was time for some mild diplomacy, because I’m a carrot and stick kind of guy. “Gabaril, what’s your title?”
She looked surprised, then suspicious, then just tired. “Captain.”
I nodded, then gestured to the gate. “Captain, after you?” She didn’t smile, but she didn’t frown either, so the term of respect had done its job. I knew when to stop giving someone shit, and this was such a moment.
We filed into the tent, flanked by Gabaril and two men, both who replaced the original guards that met us at the gate. These men were smaller, more intelligent-looking, and to my absolute shock, wore pistols in well-made holsters. If there were guns, then my negotiating position had just dropped in the shitter, but I kept my face neutral as Gabaril parted the sea of humanity already clamoring to see Wetterick, depositing us less than thirty feet from the man himself.
“Gentlemen, a moment for me to discuss manners with my friend? She’s just in from the Empty,” I said, cutting my eyes toward Mira as if she was barely civilized.
They gave me a knowing smile, then the left guard spoke, his voice low and harsh. “Good idea. The boss doesn’t care for ferals.”
“My thanks,” I said, turning to Mira and Lasser with a grateful look. I lowered my voice and began chopping my hand down as if issuing orders. “Lasser, can you signal Natif to find Berec? I know the little prick is out there, and I don’t want him taking potshots at us to win over his patron.”
He didn’t speak but looked over my shoulder into the crowd outside the main gate. In a flash of recognition, I saw him make contact and smile. “He’s already on the watch. You’re covered.”
“Perfect. Here’s the play, and it could happen fast, so pay attention. If it goes to shit, get out. Leave me and run, meet at the House, and I’ll find my way there if I can. If not, run fast and far. I know Wetterick’s type. He’s not the forgiving kind.” I drew a breath and began to slow my heart, getting ready for the meeting. Losing my cool would serve no one, let alone the task of keeping my head attached to my shoulders. “If he tries to hustle us on the coins, we walk away. If he threatens us and we can leave, we fight another day. If he tries to take us out, I’ll kill as many as I can until I’m down. We clear?”
“Clear,” Mira said. Lasser nodded. We were set.
“Let’s go meet our mark,” I told them, turning to the guards with the kind of smile I reserved for female bartenders pouring my whiskey. “Gentlemen, we’re ready.”
“You better be,” one of them muttered, and the crowd parted before us to reveal Wetterick and his personal team. To my surprise, he didn’t have an advisor, just three hulking soldiers with expressions ranging from angry to cunning. Their hair was shaved, revealing heads with an array of white scars from previous fights. Two had noses that were flattened; one was missing half an ear, and all three had hands the size of skillets. They were his personal enforcers, and the two who stood were towering over me like thunderclouds.
The third sat in a chair that groaned with his weight, counting coins on a table made from black wood that was polished like a mirror. A nervous scribe was marking amounts in a notebook, his pencil flying as he stacked and restacked silver and bronze coins that tinkled with the sound of extortion. What he did next stunned me into a second look, but I managed to keep the shock off my face by averting my gaze after an instant.
The scribe had a tablet computer, and its screen was lit.
A careful look revealed a power cable running back to a pair of fan-like solar panels smaller than a book, lined with an unmistakable shine. Recharging panels and in working order. My opinion of the technology around me advanced yet again. I kept my eyes focused on the task at hand and stepped to the counting table with a confident stride.
With a soft thump, I put the reeking bag on the table, careful not to dislodge the scribe’s work. I could appreciate a working man and had no issue with him—yet.
Wetterick stared at the head with a slight smile. I expected a warlord but found a politician. He was handsome, with dark hair and light eyes that might have been gray, a trim beard and simple shirt of green fabric that looked more expensive than anything in the tent. His feet were bare, legs clad in pants woven from bleached linen and more of those idiotic symbols running along the outer seams. They were familiar and exotic all at once, and when he saw me looking at them, he smiled. It made him seem reptilian, as the smile never touched his eyes.
“You understand the language of Hightec?” he asked me. His voice was light, cultured. A gentleman in every way, except for everything else about him.
The symbols clicked into place, and I had to fight not to laugh at his fashion choice. He had, along one seam, the symbol for a USB cable, a vintage floppy disk, and an external drive of a design I didn’t recognize. Technology had advanced
a bit since the day I entered the tube, even if fashion had regressed.
“I do. It was my job before I changed careers,” I said. I didn’t offer him a title, because I wanted to keep my options open.
“What is your new path, if not Hightec?” His brow lifted with what he thought was arrogance, but it came across as bitchy.
“May I?” I gestured at the bag.
Wetterick’s men stiffened, but he quieted them with a lazy wave. “Of course.”
I opened the bag and pulled out our old friend Hardhead, dropping the remains on the table with a flourish. “I’m in pest removal. I started with him.”
A gasp rippled through the tent, rising into a hum that threatened to break out into an open roar. One of the big guys turned to bellow at them but never even had to speak. The people feared Wetterick and by extension, his muscle. In seconds, the tent was quiet again, with only the bustle of the post outside Wetterick’s compound breaking the silence.
Without his eyes leaving Hardhead, Wetterick spoke to the man counting coins. “Salas, send word to open the eastern road and start caravans again. I want wheels rolling by the end of day or I’ll have the captains flayed.”
“At once, sir.” Salas snapped his fingers, eyes flashing as he began to berate a boy and girl in low tones of authority. No matter what year I was in, shit always rolled downhill, and the kids looked scared and annoyed as they left the tent with speed. Several people left behind them, clearly relieved that the lanes of commerce were open again now that Hardhead was little more than carrion. The engine of profit snarled to life with a single word from Wetterick, and I wondered how much he earned from skimming the trade since he sure as shit wasn’t offering real protection. Hardhead’s skull in my possession proved that little hiccup in his power structure.
“You killed the beast?” Wetterick asked me, his eyes bright with curiosity. He was interested, though I wasn’t exactly sure why. He knew the answer, but he might be a simple jock sniffer, if better dressed and in a position to indulge his weakness for tales of valor.
“I did. It was in the process of eating some of your men. I’m sorry, I wasn’t able to save them,” I said. To my surprise, I meant it. They were soldiers, and they died badly. Regardless of their boss, no one deserved being eaten alive.
“How many men?” he asked me. Mira moved forward slightly, and Wetterick inclined his head that she should speak. It might have been a sign of respect if his eyes hadn’t lingered on her body. My eyes flattened in response to his roaming gaze, but he was looking at her, so he didn’t see my reaction. It was for the best, and I let a breath trickle from my nose to cool down.
There would be plenty of time for fighting if I marked his goons correctly. As to their eyes, all were on me, not Mira. That was as good as a neon sign. They were more than just common muscle. They were something primal, and a critical cog in his operation. I knew I would find out their true nature soon enough because men like Wetterick didn’t have unused weapons.
“Ten at least, but it was a mess,” I said.
“Ten men. Two entire patrols,” Wetterick said in disgust as I filed away the size of his patrols for future use. He was sloppy to reveal something like that, but in his defense, he seemed arrogant as well as stunned by that number of men being eaten alive. Recovering quickly, the smile returned to the bottom half of his face, and I saw him lean back in his chair. It was an adjustment of power, not comfort. He was deciding how best to fuck me out of the reward, and we both knew it.
The answer turned out to be right in front of me the entire time.
“Naturally, you’ll want the reward?” he asked me, but the question was for everyone else. It was a bit of theater for him; red meat for the crowd who were going to see him flex his muscles and prove once again that he had more juice than anyone else in the post.
“Naturally,” I said.
He began to fuss with his sleeve, shaking his head like he was going to give bad news to a child. “I believe that rewards should be earned, and there’s no evidence that you didn’t find Hardhead already rotting in the sun.”
“The fuck I did—" I spat then bit my tongue. Let him have his say. I had my suspicions where things were going, and by her body language, so did Mira. Lasser was silent as a stone, watching everything with an intensity that had weight.
Again, Wetterick waved in that feminine, disdainful way. “As I was saying, I believe in giving people a chance to earn their rewards, and I have just the thing in mind to do so with you.” His three personal guards tensed, having seen this movie before.
I interrupted the proceedings before things could get out of hand. “Am I to understand that you are, after all, a man of your word?”
Wetterick looked wounded. “Of course, I—”
“Then you understand how important hospitality and respect can be, even to someone like me?” I asked.
It was a moment before he answered with a drawn out, “Yes, I do.”
I spread my arms wide, a look of disbelief on my face. “Yet here we are, under your tent, meeting with you for a reward I have earned, and I haven’t heard an offer of anything so simple as water. No wine, no chair, no greeting, nothing. Am I to understand that this—behavior—is supposed to make me trust you? That I am safe in your home, despite how hard this place is? That my guests are safe too?” I held out my hand to Mira and Lasser, who had the excellent sense to look worried.
My insult did the trick. Wetterick was a rooster in a robe, and his pride was easy to cut.
“You are most certainly safe under my tent! I’m not some filthy savage, like—like others,” he sputtered, nimbly avoiding using Mira as an example of the kind of people he thought himself better than.
“Then I have your word that we are here as friends?” I asked.
“You do,” Wetterick said. His frown vanished when he saw me smile.
I bowed, rising with a laugh. “Nothing personal, friend,” I said, launching myself forward, leg extended to shatter the chair leg under the biggest guard, who looked more surprised than angry. Before anyone could move, I snapped the chair leg in two and drove one half into the beefy guard’s neck with a grinding strike that made the skin of his thick neck bulge, then split as it gave way to the splintered end.
I held the second half out toward Wetterick’s other guards, who had their guns drawn and pointed at the center of my face.
“Say the word, boss,” one of them rasped. The stench of blood was heavy in the air as the guard I stabbed sagged to the sand, then went still.
“Hospitality, Wetterick.” I smiled, watching his face. He was purple with rage, teeth locked together in a deathmatch for control of his tongue.
“Lower your guns,” Wetterick hissed.
I stared at him, and then the guards. “I’ll fight both of you fat fucks at once, or together. That’s what you were going to offer me, right? Some bullshit kind of challenge in which the winner got the coins?”
Outmaneuvered in front of traders and his people, Wetterick made the right call. “Something like that. You’re a step ahead of me, it would seem.”
“Make that two. Now I only have to fight that pair of meatheads instead of three. Which one of you wants it first?” I asked, reaching for my blades.
“Not here,” Wetterick said. He knew he was going to lose, and that meant he had to get me in the open where someone else could get a shot.
I turned to Lasser. “We have covering fire?”
“We do, Mister Bowman.” He gave Wetterick a dry smile, flicking his eyes out into the crowd at imaginary companions.
“Berec is being...questioned right now. Caught him on the way in, and as to your other helpers, well,” I smiled in apology, lifting my hands in a shrug, “they seem to have melted away after seeing how this is turning out.”
“I suppose you’ll just take the coins, then?” Wetterick asked. His champions both looked disgusted at the possibility of letting me murder and steal in one meeting. They were bullies. They weren’t used
to being met with equal or superior force, and their only reaction was violence.
I was counting on that. Hell, I was looking forward to it. I hadn’t really gotten used to my new body, even after the fight with Hardhead.
I could feel the sneer on my face. I hated the tent, the asshole under it, and his goons. To hell with taking anything.
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of doing something so crude. I’m an honorable man, just like you.” Snapping my blades out, I motioned to the big bastard on the left. “I insist on earning my reward.”
Wetterick had seen enough. “Carron, Rolf. Together. Gut him.”
The guards charged me with a roar, scattering everyone like a panicked herd of wildebeest. Only Mira and Lasser stepped away with care, retreating a few steps while drawing their own weapons. I had backup in case things got dirty, and that let me focus on the task at hand. I didn’t just need to win.
I had to shame them both.
Carron was even more muscular than Rolf if such a thing was possible, but like many big guys, he wasn’t mobile. He charged me like a wild dog, sweeping a longsword out in a glittering arc that covered two meters of space in a flash.
I chose not to engage, tripping him with a foot and crushing down on his instep, feeling small bones break as he twisted to try a backhand cut that was faster than I planned for. The blade caught my leathers but slid past on my upper arm to spin harmless into the air between us. The blow served a purpose. It made a delicious chill crawl up my spine as I entered that place where combat is real and time slows down.
I knew they were too strong for a normal man, but I didn’t think of myself as normal, not since the moment sun streamed into my eyes from a day far in the future. With a sliding spin, I back cut with a blade to split Carron’s calf muscle in a spectacular spray of blood. He shouted in pain but tried to hit me with a closed fist, his other hand still holding the longsword in a loose, professional grip. I spun away to address the growing presence of Rolf, who was faster and smarter than Carron.
I knew this because he approached me in a balanced stance, hands extended in a forward grip on a sword that was more than a meter of heavy steel. With a savage down strike, he met my blades in a crash of metal that sent shockwaves through my body. It was like being hit by a building, but I saw that my strike unnerved him. Not only did I not collapse, I was able to push back and lash out with a foot, catching him in the belly hard enough to stand the big boy up, wheezing.
Future Reborn Box Set Page 9