Ben had been through the plan so many times that he could see it when he closed his eyes, and without the aid of his implant—which had been pleasantly silent lately. After a final equipment check, Cyril led them outside. When Homer followed Ben, Kat stopped and cocked her head at him.
“You’re bringing a dog?” she asked.
“Yes,” Ben said, walking past her with Homer on his heels.
Homer growled on his way by her. “I don’t like her,” he said. “She smells too clean. Also, you can tell a lot about a person from their name.”
“Be nice,” Ben said. “She’s on our side … for now, anyway.”
Ben fell in beside Cyril, listening to Hound and Kat banter behind them while John remained silent. The last remnants of daylight had just faded and the stars were shining brightly. Ben thought he saw movement ahead.
“There’s more than one of them,” Homer said, sniffing into the breeze. “At least three.”
Ben reached out and gently touched Cyril’s arm, drawing his attention, and bringing them all to a halt. “There’s someone hiding alongside the road up ahead.”
Cyril launched his drone and switched to thermal vision, making it easy to pick out the four men hiding in a broken-down house. The image shifted back to normal as the drone floated closer.
“Ambush,” Cyril whispered.
“Surely, they see us by now,” Kat said. “Maybe we should just call them out.”
“I’d like to cause as little commotion as possible,” Cyril said. “We’ll try and go around them.” He reversed course, turning at the next cross street and hurrying for two blocks before turning back toward the inner wall. As they reached the next corner, they heard running and loud breathing.
Four men came around the corner and fanned out, all armed with makeshift weapons—an axe, a club, a staff, a knife.
Hound laughed, jacking a round into Bertha’s chamber. The telltale sound of a shotgun being loaded stopped them in their tracks.
“Whoa … we don’t want no trouble,” the one with the knife said.
“All evidence to the contrary,” Cyril said. “Drop your weapons and run away or we’ll kill you.”
The guy started trembling, still holding the knife.
“Three,” Hound said.
They all looked a bit confused.
“Two,” Hound said, firming up his aim at the man’s chest.
The would-be mugger dropped the knife and ran, vanishing between two houses in a matter of seconds. The other three took a moment more to comply. When Hound turned his shotgun on the nearest, all of them let go of their weapons like they’d suddenly gotten hot, then turned and ran off in different directions.
“Damn,” Cyril said. “We have to hurry.”
They reached the staging house in about twenty minutes. Cyril had already searched it with the drone a number of times, but he did one last sweep before they approached.
John led, opening the broken back door quickly, causing a single loud squeak rather than any prolonged creaking. He left the door fully open and moved inside, arrow nocked. By the time everyone had slipped inside, John had returned.
“Clear,” he said.
“Thank you,” Cyril said, sitting at the kitchen table, which was still sturdy, if not a bit unkempt. The drone left through a broken window, a large holo-screen coming up as it circled overhead, switching to thermal for a moment and scanning the nearby blocks. A group of ten men was gathered in a house a few blocks away. Ben felt his breathing quicken at the sudden knowledge.
A deadly threat had been exposed.
He had to wonder how much the enemy knew. Were they beginning a search or were they planning an assault? As he asked the questions in his mind, the drone darted forward, arriving over the house a few seconds later, scanning for an entrance point. After a few minutes of searching, the drone discovered a broken dryer vent that allowed access. Once inside, Cyril maneuvered it quietly and carefully until it reached the main rooms occupied by the gang of thugs. He piloted the drone up onto a door frame and landed it, enabling audio recording.
“This is stupid!”
“The profit is worth the risk.”
“Unless we get killed.”
“Well, I won’t, so it’s worth it to me.”
“How many men can we muster … total?”
“Thirty-four—nine with guns, the rest with blades.”
“How long do you think they’ll be there?”
“Hard to say … it looks like they’re planning an operation against the inner city.”
Cyril closed his holo-screen but kept the drone in place, recording and sending.
“We have to move to another location,” he said. “They know where we are.”
“How?” Kat asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” Cyril said. “They know … they’re coming. We have to be somewhere else when they get here.”
That was when Ben noticed the dead man. He was lying haphazardly in the corner of the pantry, a chef’s knife in his hand. Ben wasn’t entirely certain why he went to him, but he found himself drawn toward him. He looked down at the decaying corpse, shrugged to himself and bent over to search. The kitchen knife was well made but it was no combat blade. He fished around in the man’s pockets, coming up with another gold NACC coin … exactly like his lucky coin.
He stood up quickly, blinking in wonderment at the coin in his hand. A mixture of unease and exhilaration swept through him. This was the second identical coin that he’d found since they’d retrieved the egg. His coin.
Magic. It hit him like a bag of hammers. His grandfather had already taught him a basic manifestation spell, and a pretty useful one at that. He finished searching the man and found a handful of bullets that wouldn’t fit his pistol and a small folding knife of exceptional quality.
“Can anyone use these?” he said, shaking the half-full box of bullets after pocketing the knife and coin.
Hound leaned in to look, shaking his head.
Everyone else shrugged as well.
“Keep them,” Cyril said. “A handful of bullets in a fire can cause quite a distraction.”
Ben dumped them into a pouch and discarded the box.
“How about this?” he said, flipping the coin to his grandfather.
Cyril looked at it and then at Ben, who held up his lucky coin.
“You found another one?”
“On the dead man with the bullets,” Ben said. “All this time, you’ve been teaching me magic without even telling me what you were doing.”
Cyril smiled, chuckling to himself and nodding to Ben.
“You’ve been a good student,” he said, flipping the coin back to Ben. “And it looks like it’s paying off. Magic is powerful, but money is easier and far more widely accepted.”
Useful magic indeed, thought Ben, as he pocketed the coin.
“Ready to go?” Cyril asked, looking around to a chorus of nodding heads.
They left in a quiet file, moving a block away from the inner wall, then turning and running three blocks before coming back toward it and a row of abandoned houses just across the street.
Cyril stopped them with hand signals, then sent his drone into a house to scan it before leading them inside. John and Rufus quickly and very thoroughly searched the house in a matter of seconds, just to make sure.
“This isn’t an ideal location, relative to our target, but it’ll have to do,” Cyril said. “We’ll wait for an hour or so … let the muggers lose interest.”
“Fun,” Kat said. “Or, I could go and take them out.”
“No,” Cyril said. “I don’t want to kill if we can help it.”
“I won’t … I promise,” she said, drawing a sleek-looking pistol. “This is a silenced, air-powered dart gun. It fires a high-speed projectile coated with a neurotoxin. It’s semi-automatic, has a range of fifty feet, it’s quiet as a whisper, and it will drop a full-grown man within two seconds and keep him out for two hours. The toxin is a family recipe.”
>
“Seriously?” Hound said, with a big stupid grin.
“More than meets the eye, big boy,” she said.
“Are you sure you can do this without killing anyone?” Cyril asked.
“I guarantee it,” Kat said. “These guys are a bunch of amateurs. I shoot them, they go to sleep.”
“You probably shouldn’t go alone,” Ben said.
“What? You and your dog?”
“You could do worse.”
“No, I need to move quietly. A dog … no.”
“He’ll be just fine,” Ben said. “I’ll be your backup. If all goes well, I won’t do anything. If you need help, I’ll be there.”
“Those are the terms,” Cyril said.
“Fair enough … come along, dog boy,” she said.
“You aren’t trying to make any friends are you?” Ben said.
“Only with those that I might like to be friends with,” she said, offering a smile to soften her words. “Stay close, do as I tell you, and don’t get us killed.”
“I’ll follow your lead. That’s the best I can offer.”
“I’ll take it,” she said, smiling more broadly and slapping Ben on the shoulder. “You’ll do just fine.”
By three blocks from the house, Ben found himself preoccupied with wondering how Kat could be so stealthy and yet so graceful at the same time. She glided through the world, shifting into shadow as necessary, dragging Ben behind, ever aware of possible threats, and equally aware of places offering concealment.
He felt cumbersome by comparison, traveling through the night like a lumbering beast, huffing and shuffling. Within half a block, he surrendered to her guidance, judging her mastery of the night as far superior to his, and learning very quickly that he was not wrong.
She stopped a block from where the gang was holed up, sliding into a shadow that both concealed them and offered a good view of the target house.
Ben looked to the feed in his mind’s eye. It showed a thermal image of the entire house and all ten of the inhabitants. Four men with rifles and pistols were perched in the second story windows, two at the front and two at the back. Two men with rifles and pistols stood guard on the front porch. A man with a shotgun stood just outside the back door. Three men sat at a table in the dining room.
He described the house to Kat in detail, specifying where every target was and what they were armed with.
“You sure?”
“Absolutely,” he said.
“You might be more useful than you look,” she said. “We’ll move around to the back door and I’ll take him first.”
“I’m right behind you.”
Ben felt his heart rate accelerate as they circled through the broken-down neighborhood to target the guard standing watch at the rear of the house.
Kat stopped at the corner of a neighboring house, peeked around, brought her pistol up and fired once. A few moments later, Ben heard a thud.
She gestured for him to wait, standing stock-still, listening intently.
“Are you sure this is wise?” the augment asked. “You are seriously outnumbered. Perhaps I could provide a better tactical option.”
“Either help me, all the way, or be quiet,” Ben said.
The augment didn’t respond.
After nearly a minute, Kat peeked around the corner again, this time looking for the men in the window on the second floor.
She grabbed Ben’s arm and dragged him around the corner, racing for the back porch, her eyes never leaving the empty window. He followed, as quietly as he could, all the while recognizing that he was inadequate in a dozen different ways, not the least of which was an inability to move through shadow without detection.
Kat searched the downed man in a matter of moments, handing Ben his shotgun—a sawed-off, double-barrel, pistol-grip, break-action weapon capable of firing a number of different rounds. Then she handed him a belt full of shells, at least a dozen, with a tailored leather holster for the weapon.
He wrapped the belt around his waist, ensuring that the shotgun didn’t interfere with his sword and that both were easily hidden by his coat.
“Once the door opens, I’ll try to take everyone, but if I can’t, you’ll have to take the ones I miss.”
Ben felt a rush of fear … excitement … glory. He nodded, drawing his blade.
Kat opened the door, slowly, quietly, just an inch, then quickly stepped inside, stopping the door before it could hit the wall. She moved to the dining room, lithe and quiet. Ben followed, trying with all his might to be as silent as she was.
“Huh?” said one of the men as she slipped into the room, firing three times in rapid succession, taking all the men at the table in passing.
She motioned for Ben to hold position as she flitted across the room, opened the front door a crack and shot one of the guards. She waited for a moment until the second guard came to check on his partner and shot him as well, closing the door and heading for the second floor, motioning for Ben to remain where he was.
He waited while she went upstairs, listening intently. A thud, then another, then two more. She came back downstairs a few moments later.
“Come on,” she said, motioning for Ben to help her move the bodies from the front and back porches into the house. It took a minute or so, but it reduced the likelihood of an alarm being sounded.
“Good,” she said once they were finished, looking around the room like they’d just rearranged the furniture. “We should be getting back.”
Within a few minutes, they were back at the house with the others.
“Well done, and quite impressive,” Cyril said.
“Thank you,” Kat said with a respectful nod.
“It’s nearly time to make our assault on the keep,” Cyril said. “I expect someone to be along shortly. When they bribe their way in, I’ll arrange for the door to fail to latch.” He gave Ben a wink. “We’ll move quickly and assault the room, killing the two guards.”
Like clockwork, a prostitute arrived at the door a few minutes later, flirting with the guards who were only too happy to take her bribe money. More importantly, they were also distracted by her charms, letting the door close without taking care to lock it. Cyril focused his will into the moment. The door didn’t latch and the guards were too busy flirting with the prostitute to notice.
“Quickly,” Cyril said, racing toward the wall. Rufus and John were right behind him. When Cyril reached the wall, he bounded up the three steps to the landing and rushed inside, catching two men very much by surprise. John reached the landing a moment later, sending an arrow into the room.
When Ben arrived, both men were dead and Cyril had already moved through the room and killed the guard standing outside the door to the inner city. He was dragging the body into the gate room.
He brought up a holo-screen and scanned the area, looking for any sign of detection. Finding none, he closed the screen and planted an ex-plus tablet in one corner of the room.
“Let’s pile those bodies on top of the ex-plus,” he said, motioning for Ben to help him.
Doors locked and keys stolen, they entered the inner city, moving toward the center of town … the dragon temple. Cyril quietly guided them through the privileged and protected neighborhoods of Rogue City. He relied on his drone to avoid the seemingly random patrols that wandered the streets, playing cat and mouse with them on one occasion, going one way around a block while they went the other.
The few people they encountered seemed frightened by their weapons, often whispering among themselves. Cyril ignored them. Ben tried to but he knew full well that it would take just one report to the Dragon Guard and they’d be on the run.
As they neared the temple, the homes became bigger and more well-protected, with high walls and fences. The streets were lined with oil lamps flooding the area with light.
Cyril walked at a measured pace, one hand on the egg, eyes straight ahead.
“Walk like you’re supposed to be here,” he said without looking bac
k.
Ben wasn’t sure exactly what that meant but he did his best to be calm and at ease. He thought it odd that the few people looking out a window or those out for a late-night stroll seemed to take little or no notice of them, one even nodding hello in passing.
Cyril stopped when they reached the temple’s outer fence, a ten-foot-tall, wrought-iron cage surrounding the grounds in a perfect circle. Surrounding the fence was a wide footpath, often patrolled by Dragon Guard.
The entire temple was ablaze with lamps burning brightly in the night. Every railing, every roof peak, spire and pinnacle was adorned with a lamp, and not a single one was dark.
Cyril pulled up the holo-screen and did a final scan. “Guards will be around in five minutes. Let’s go.”
They raced to the fence. John immediately wrapped a stout steel chain around a section of five bars, locking it into place with a fair amount of slack. Hound slid a crowbar into the links and wound it around a few times until he had tension on the bars. Then he heaved with all his strength, and the bars bent. He pulled again and they bent farther, enough for a man to slip through. He unwound the chain and stepped inside the fence, leaving the crowbar in favor of Bertha. John quietly laid the chain down on his way through.
One by one, they entered the temple grounds. Leading the others, Cyril headed toward a side door in the temple itself. After taking only five steps, he crashed into a magical barrier that knocked him flat on his back.
“What the hell was that?” Hound asked.
“I saw a flash,” Homer said.
“Me too,” said Ben, rushing to his grandfather’s side.
Cyril took a moment to recover before he got to his feet and carefully raised his right hand toward the barrier. It lit up where he touched it, sparking and crackling. He withdrew his hand quickly, as if from a flame.
“This isn’t good,” he muttered, putting his hand on the egg and closing his eyes. After a minute or so, a plane of magical energy, red-orange in color, became visible. It surrounded the entire temple. He let go of his will a moment later and the shield slowly faded from sight.
The Dragon's Egg (Dragonfall Book 1) Page 32