Lies, Waxillium thought. What do you want with them? Why are you—
The koloss-blooded man who had stolen Wayne’s hat stepped up to Wax’s table and grabbed Marasi by the shoulder. “You’ll do,” he said. “You’re coming for a ride with us, pretty.”
She jumped as he touched her, dropping her notepad.
“Here now,” another bandit said. “What’s this?” He picked it up, looking through it. “All it’s got is words, Tarson.”
“Idiot,” the koloss-blooded man—Tarson—said. “You can’t read, can you?” He craned over. “Here, now. That’s a description of me, isn’t it?”
“I…” Marasi said. “I just wanted to remember, for my journal, you see.…”
“I’m sure,” Tarson said, tucking the notebook into a pocket. His hand came out with a pistol, which he lowered at her head.
Marasi grew pale.
Waxillium stood up, steel burning in his stomach. The other bandit’s pistol was trained at his head a second later.
“Your lady will be just fine with us, old boy,” Tarson said with a smile on his grayish lips. “Up you go.” He pulled Marasi to her feet, then pushed her before him toward the northern exit.
Waxillium stared down the barrel of the other bandit’s pistol. With a mental Push, he could send that gun with a snap back into its owner’s face, perhaps break his nose.
The bandit looked like he wanted to pull the trigger. He looked eager, excited by the thrill of the robbery. Waxillium had seen men like that before. They were dangerous.
The bandit hesitated, then glanced at his friends, and finally broke off, jogging toward the exit. Another was shoving Steris toward the door.
“Wax!” Wayne hissed.
How could a man of honor watch something like this? Every instinct of justice Waxillium had demanded he do something. Fight.
“Wax,” Wayne said softly. “Mistakes happen. Lessie wasn’t your fault.”
“I…”
Wayne grabbed his dueling canes. “Well, I’m going to do something.”
“It’s not worth the cost of lives, Wayne,” Waxillium said, shaking out of his stupor. “This isn’t just about me. It’s true, Wayne. We—”
“How dare you!” a familiar voice bellowed. Lord Peterus, the former constable. The aging man removed the napkin from his head, stumbling to his feet. “Cowards! I will be your hostage, if you require one.”
The bandits ignored him, most jogging toward the exits of the room, waving their guns about and enjoying making the dinnergoers cringe.
“Cowards!” Peterus yelled. “You are dogs, each and every one of you. I’ll see you hanged! Take me instead of one of those girls, or it will happen. I swear it by the Survivor himself!” He stumbled after the retreating boss, passing lords, ladies, and the wealthy—most of whom had gotten down and were hiding under their tables.
There goes the only man in this room with any courage, Waxillium thought, suddenly feeling a powerful shame. Him and Wayne.
Steris was almost to the door. Marasi and her captor were catching up to the boss.
I can’t let this happen. I—
“COWARD!”
The masked bandit leader suddenly spun, hand snapping out, a gunshot cracking the air, echoing across the large ballroom. It was over in a heartbeat.
The aged Peterus collapsed in a heap. Smoke curled in the air over the bandit boss’s pistol.
“Oh…” Wayne said softly. “You just made a bad mistake, mate. A very bad mistake.”
The boss turned away from the body, holstering his gun. “Fine,” he yelled, walking toward the door. “You can have some fun, boys. Burn it out of your blood quickly and meet me outside. Let’s—”
Everything froze. People stopped in place. The curling smoke hung motionless. Voices quieted. Whimpering halted. In a circle around Waxillium’s table, the air rippled just faintly.
Wayne stood up, shouldering his dueling canes, inspecting the room. He was placing each and every one of the bandits, Waxillium knew. Judging distances, preparing himself.
“As soon as I drop the bubble,” Wayne said, “this place is going to erupt like an ammunition store in a volcano.”
Waxillium calmly reached into his jacket and slid a hidden pistol from beneath his arm. He set it on the table. His twitch had vanished.
“Well?” Wayne asked.
“That’s a terrible metaphor. How would an ammunition store get into a volcano?”
“I don’t know. Look, are you going to fight or not?”
“I’ve tried waiting,” Waxillium said. “I gave them a chance to leave. I tried giving this up.”
“You gave it a good show, Wax.” He grimaced. “Too good a show.”
Waxillium rested his hand on the pistol. Then he picked it up. “So be it.” With his other hand, he poured out his entire pouch of steel into his wine cup, then downed it.
Wayne grinned. “You owe me a pint for lying to me, by the way.”
“Lying?”
“You said you hadn’t brought a gun.”
“I didn’t bring a gun,” Waxillium said, reaching to the small of his back and sliding a second pistol out. “You know me better than that, Wayne. I never go anywhere with only one. How much bendalloy do you have?”
“Not as much as I’d like. The stuff’s damn expensive here in town. I’ve got maybe enough for five minutes’ extra time. My metalminds are pretty much full, though. Spent a good two weeks sick in bed after you left.” That would give Wayne some healing power, should he get shot.
Waxillium took a deep breath; the coldness inside him melted away and became a flame as he burned steel that pinpointed each and every source of metal in the room.
If he froze again …
I won’t, he told himself. I cannot. “I’ll get the girls. You keep the bandits on the south side off me. Our priority is to keep the bystanders alive.”
“Gladly.”
“Thirty-seven armed baddies, Wayne. In a room full of innocents. This is going to be tough. Stay focused. I’ll try to clear some space as we start. You can catch a ride, if you want.”
“Perfect as Preserves,” Wayne said, turning and putting his back to Waxillium’s. “You wanna know why I really came to find you?”
“Why?”
“I thought of you happy in a comfy bed, resting and relaxing, spending the rest of your life sipping tea and reading papers while people bring you food and maids rub your toes and stuff.”
“And?”
“And I just couldn’t leave you to a fate like that.” Wayne shivered. “I’m too good a friend to let a mate of mine die in such a terrible situation.”
“Comfortable?”
“No,” Wayne said. “Boring.” He shivered again.
Waxillium smiled, then raised thumbs to hammers and cocked his pistols. When he’d been young and sought the Roughs, he’d ended up going where he’d been needed. Well, maybe that had happened again.
“Go!” he yelled, leveling his guns.
6
Wayne dropped the speed bubble.
First step, Waxillium thought as he took aim, draw their attention. He began gently Pushing away from himself in the way that created a steel bubble of force to interfere with bullets. It wouldn’t protect him completely, but it would help. Unless they fired aluminum bullets.
Best to be careful. And best to shoot first.
The robbers were eagerly raising their weapons. He could see the lust for destruction in their eyes. They had been armed to the teeth, but so far, their robberies had occurred without a single shot being fired.
Rather than kill a lot of people, most of them probably just wanted to shoot the place up a little, but such situations easily grew more violent than expected. If they weren’t stopped, the Vanishers would leave behind more than shattered windows and broken tables.
Waxillium quickly chose a bandit with a shotgun and dropped him with a bullet to the head. A second followed. Those shotguns were least dangerous to Waxillium,
but they’d be deadly to the cowering bystanders.
His shots boomed in the cavernous chamber and the guests screamed. Some took the chance to run for the edges of the room. Most got down beside their tables. In the confusion, the bandits didn’t spot Waxillium at first.
He dropped another man with a bullet to the shoulder. The smart thing to do from here would have been to crouch down beside a table and continue to fire. It would take the bandits precious moments to discover who was attacking them in a room so large and crowded.
Unfortunately, the men behind him opened fire, whooping in delight. They hadn’t noticed what he was doing, though the men in front of him on the other side of the hall had seen their friends fall and were scattering for cover. In moments, the room would be a storm of lead and gunsmoke.
Taking a deep breath, Waxillium flared his steel and tapped his iron metalmind. Filling it made him lighter, but tapping it made him heavier—much heavier. He increased his weight a hundredfold. There was a proportional increase in the strength of his body, or so he’d guessed, as he didn’t crush himself with his own weight.
He raised his guns high over his head to keep them out of the radius, then Pushed outward from himself in a ring. He started carefully, gradually increasing its strength. When you Pushed, it was your weight against that of the object—in this case, the metal screws and bolts in the tables and chairs. They were swept away from him.
He became the epicenter of an expanding ring of force. Tables toppled, chairs scraped against the floor, and people screamed in surprise. Some were caught up in it, shoved away from him. Not so hard that they were hurt, he hoped, but it was better to suffer a few bruises than remain in the center of the room with what was coming.
Just to the side, he saw Wayne—who had been moving carefully toward the back of the room—leap up onto an overturned table, holding to its rim and grinning as he rode it in a rush toward the bandits back there.
Waxillium eased off on the Push. He stood alone in a large empty space at the center of the dining hall, surrounded by patches of spilled wine, food, and fallen dishes.
Then the firing started in earnest, the bandits in front of him letting loose with a barrage. He met the onslaught of bullets with another strong Push. The bullets stopped in the air, rebuffed in a wave. Given their speed, he could stop bullets that way only if he was expecting them.
He let the bullets fly back at their owners, but didn’t Push too hard, lest he strike an innocent partygoer. It was enough to send the bandits scrambling, however, and yelling that there was a Coinshot in the room.
He was in real danger now. Quick as an eyeblink, Waxillium switched from tapping his metalmind to filling it, making himself far lighter. He pointed his revolver down and shot a bullet into the floor just behind himself and Pushed off it, launching into the air. Wind rushed in his ears as he threw himself over the barricade of furniture he’d made, where some of the guests still huddled. Luckily, many were realizing that the perimeters of the room would be much safer, and were scrambling that way.
Waxillium dropped right in the middle of the bandits, who had started taking cover behind the pile of tables and chairs. Men cursed as he spread his arms, guns pointed in opposite directions, and started firing. He spun, dropping four men with a quick spray of bullets.
Some bandits fired on him, but the bullets were off aim, and swerved away from his steel bubble. “Aluminum bullets!” one of the bandits was yelling. “Get out your bloody aluminum!”
Wax spun and fired two shots into that man’s chest. Then he leaped to the side, rolling up next to a table that had been beyond his initial Push. A quick Push against the nails in the top overturned it, giving him cover as the bandits opened fire. He caught blue lines from some of the bullets, moving too quickly for him to Push out of the way.
Other bandits were reloading their guns. He was in luck; it seemed from the curses of the bandit leaders that the men were supposed to have aluminum bullets loaded already, at least in some of the chambers. Shooting aluminum was like shooting gold, however, and many of the bandits appeared to have kept the aluminum in their pockets rather than wanting to have it in the guns, where they might end up firing it by accident.
A bandit ducked around the side of his table, aiming a pistol. Waxillium reacted by reflex, Pushing on the gun, slapping it back into his face. Waxillium dropped him with a bullet to the chest.
Empty, he thought to himself, counting the bullets he’d shot. He had just two left in the other gun. He glanced over the edge of his shelter, noting the locations of two reloading bandits who had hidden behind overturned tables. He took aim quickly, increased his weight, then fired and Pushed with everything he had on the bullet leaving his gun.
The bullet cracked in the air, driving forward into the table shelter and drilling right through it, hitting the bandit on the other side. Waxillium repeated, taking down the other bandit, who was stupefied to see the thick oak table penetrated by a simple revolver bullet. Then Waxillium threw himself over the top of his own table, getting to the other side just as the men behind him got around the wounded and started firing at him.
Bullets snapped against his shelter, but it held. This time, none of them gave off blue lines. Aluminum. He breathed deeply, dropping his revolvers and pulling out the Terringul 27 he had strapped to the inside of his calf. Not the largest-caliber gun, but its long barrel made it precise.
He spared a glance for Wayne, and counted four Vanishers down. His friend was gleefully leaping off a table toward a man with a shotgun. The two became a blur as Wayne activated a speed bubble. In an instant he was in a different place—bullets zipping through the area he’d left—hiding behind an overturned table, the bandit with the shotgun limp on the ground.
Wayne’s favorite tactic was to get close, then catch one person in the speed bubble and fight them alone. He couldn’t move the speed bubble after putting it up, but he could move around inside of it. So when he released the bubble after fighting his chosen foe one-on-one, he’d be standing in a different place than expected. Foes found him incredibly difficult to track and aim at.
But in a long fight, they’d eventually catch on and hold their fire until just after Wayne dropped a bubble. It took a couple of seconds between dropping one and putting up another, the time when Wayne was most vulnerable. Of course, even when the bubble was up, Wayne wasn’t completely safe. It could be nerve-racking to know that his friend was fighting alone, enclosed by a bubble of accelerated time. If Wayne got into trouble while inside, Waxillium couldn’t help. Wayne would be shot and bleeding before the bubble collapsed.
Well, Waxillium had his own troubles. With those aluminum bullets, his own protective bubble was useless. He let it drop. More bullets pelted his table and the floor around him, the pops of gunfire echoing in the grand hall. Fortunately, he could still see blue lines pointing to the ordinary steel of the bandits’ guns, including those of a group of men attempting to flank him.
No time to deal with them, he thought. The bandit boss had sent Steris out with one of his men, but had paused by the door himself. He didn’t seem surprised by the resistance. Something about the way he stood there, imperious and in control … Something about the way his eyes—the only visible part of his masked face—found Wax, and locked on to him … Something about that voice …
Miles? The thought was a shock.
Screams. Marasi’s screams. Wax turned away from the bandit leader, feeling an unfamiliar sense of panic. Steris needed him, but Marasi did too, and she was closer. The koloss-blooded man named Tarson had her; he held her with one arm around the neck, towing her toward the door and cursing. His two companions looked about anxiously, as if expecting constables to come pouring in at any moment.
Marasi had gone limp. Tarson was shouting, and he jammed his revolver in her ear, but she had her eyes squeezed shut and refused to respond. She knew she wasn’t some simple hostage; they wanted her specifically, and therefore wouldn’t shoot her.
Good g
irl, Waxillium thought. It couldn’t be easy, hearing the Vanisher shout, feeling the barrel on her temple. A few guests hid nearby, a well-dressed woman and her husband holding their hands to their ears and whimpering. The gunfire was loud, chaotic, though he barely noticed these things any longer. He should have slipped his earplugs in, regardless. Too late now.
Waxillium ducked to the side and fired two shots into the wooden floor to cause those flanking him to duck for cover. The Terringul was loaded with hollow-point bullets specifically designed to lodge in wood, giving him a good anchor when he needed one. They also happened to lodge in flesh, reducing the chances of a through-and-through shot that could injure bystanders, which suited him just fine.
He dashed forward in a crouch and leaped onto a large serving platter. He pressed one foot against the lip of the platter, and Pushed on the bullets behind him. The maneuver threw him forward in a skid across the polished wooden floor. He broke out of the tables into open space just before the steps out of the room, then kicked the platter out from under him and increased his weight, hitting the ground and stopping.
The platter flipped out in front of him, and the startled bandits began firing. Metal pinged against metal as some of the bullets hit the platter; Waxillium responded, dropping the men on either side of Tarson with two quick shots. Then he flared his steel and Pushed toward Tarson’s gun to try knocking it away from Marasi.
Only then did Waxillium realize there was no blue line pointing to the man’s gun. Tarson grinned, his ashy face topped by Wayne’s hat. Then he whipped around, placing himself behind Marasi, whom he gripped by the neck with one hand, holding the gun steady against her head with the other.
No blue lines. Rust and Ruin … an entire gun made of aluminum?
Waxillium and Tarson both fell still. The bandits behind hadn’t noticed Waxillium’s floor-level escape on the platter; they were closing on the area where he’d been hiding. The boss still stood in the doorway, looking toward Waxillium. Wax had to be wrong about who he was. People could look alike, sound alike. That didn’t mean …
The Alloy of Law: A Mistborn Novel Page 10