Guns of Alkenstar

by Unknown

  They waited for what seemed a long time before the lanterns drew near, amid the sounds of many booted feet and low mutters of conversation.

  Then light swelled and a dozen-some men strode past, looking neither right nor left. Six lanterns, everyone in uniform—heavily-armed Parliamentary guards—except the richly-garbed, bearded man who strode in their midst. He never looked in their direction, but the three watchers all knew him: Drael Kammantur, High Chamberlain to the Grand Duchess of Alkenstar.

  One guard turned to look back as the great door swung closed behind the party, but Kordroun had gently pushed their own door almost closed by then. He remained unmoving for seven breaths that weren’t as slow as they should have been before cautiously easing it open again—onto utter darkness.

  Unhooding his lantern, he rose and muttered, “Come on.”

  “The High Chamberlain, here in the cellars of the Gunworks? What’s he doing here?” Ralice hissed, as she unhooded hers.

  “Coming back from doing what we’re trying to do, most likely,” Gelgur told her grimly.

  She looked from him to Kordroun.

  And saw on two tight-lipped faces the same war between fury and despair.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Kordroun opened another door—and stopped dead.

  “The Ironmaster is as beautiful as she is deadly.”

  There was no place to hide this time, not from all the lanterns in the room ahead, and the armed bodyguards holding them. No uniforms beyond identical dark leather jacks—and the person in their midst was the Ironmaster of Alkenstar.

  She was standing over a body sprawled on the floor, that trailed fresh ribbons of blood across the smooth-worn stone underfoot.

  Many guns flashed as they were drawn, as Kordroun raised his lantern so its light fell on his face, and said briskly, “High Shieldmarshal Kordroun, with two sworn agents. Ironmaster, we were coming to confer with you.”

  The cold-eyed, beautiful woman who wore half a dozen holstered revolvers on cross-belts down the front of her black bodice gave him the faintest of smiles, ignoring Gelgur and Ralice. “Kordroun, I may have more work for you.”

  She waved at the body. Kordroun advanced to look at it, pretending not to notice all the guns now trained on him.

  It was Parliamentary Minister Prostor Blaklar. By the looks of him, he’d been riddled with bullets. Very recently. His face was a mask of blood, bullet holes, and frozen staring horror, his hands raised in claws to try to fend off death. Vainly.

  “I fear any confidential discussion you may have hoped to have must wait,” the Ironmaster added. “Show me your weapons. Slowly, of course.”

  Wordlessly Kordroun set down his lantern and drew out his guns, holding them between thumb and forefingers, and keeping them pointed at the floor. Watching him, Ralice followed suit. Gelgurs spread empty hands.

  That earned him a prompt, ungentle search from five of Vryle Summairtar’s bodyguards, as more of their fellows strode to take and present the proffered guns to the Ironmaster.

  Who waved them back to their owners.

  “Obviously the wrong sorts of weapons to have slain the Minister, here,” she said coolly. “Leave this place, and return whence you came. I’ll send for you when I’ve time for discussions.”

  “Vryle,” Bors Gelgur asked then, keeping his voice as cool as hers, “can you tell us why Daerold Loroan might be entering the Gunworks at this time of night?”

  The Ironmaster crooked an eyebrow, allowing mild surprise to appear on her serene face. “Trademaster Loroan? That’s very curious. Did you see him enter the Gunworks?”

  “We did, Ironmaster,” Kordroun said stolidly. “It was the Trademaster, without a doubt. We all saw him.”

  “Ah,” she replied lightly, sounding almost bored. “I did not.”

  And with that, the Seneschal of Security for the Grand Duchy of Alkenstar turned away, black-hued armor gleaming momentarily—almost mockingly—from one shapely shoulder.

  “I trust you’ll get to the bottom of this smuggling problem soon,” she added over her shoulder. “And that when you do, you’ll report promptly to me. And only to me.”

  Without waiting for a reply she departed through a far door, her agents clustering around her with guns still drawn, six of them watchfully facing the high shieldmarshal and his two companions as they backed away.

  The door closed, leaving them alone with Blaklar’s body.

  Ralice looked down at it, then back up at the door the Ironmaster had vanished through. “What—?”

  That was as far as she got before Kordroun clapped a hand across her mouth and Gelgur plucked at her arm to start leading her back the way they’d come.

  “Hurry,” was all the high shieldmarshal said, once they’d closed the door on the dead minister and started back along the passage.

  Three doors and two rooms later, he asked, “This one?”

  Gelgur shook his head. “The next one on was better. We can strike from both sides.”

  Ralice gave them both a frown, but held silent.

  Then they came to the cellar room where Gelgur pointed to an alcove and then stepped into another across from it, dragging Ralice with him.

  “Keep very quiet,” he whispered in her ear, closing a painfully tight hand on her shoulder to reinforce his order.

  “Is this because of the Ironmaster?” she dared to whisper back.

  “She was as purringly calm as always,” Gelgur muttered in reply, not seeing—or pretending not to see—Ralice’s shiver. He drew forth one of the icewine flasks, then his knife, and held them ready. Then he and Kordroun pinched out all the lanterns.

  Darkness fell like an abyss around them.

  To Ralice, her own breathing seemed like a loud, panting storm, but she couldn’t hear her two companions at all.

  Unmeasured time passed.

  Something dripped once, far off, throwing out the faintest of emphatic echoes.

  Then she heard something closer. A moment of grating. The door at the far end of the room.

  Another soft, brief sound—movement, but just what, Ralice couldn’t identify—and then there was a sudden flurry in the darkness, a scuffle and a grunt and three heavy thuds, Gelgur vanishing from beside her.

  Then silence again, that was ended by the skritch of a flint striker.

  Kordroun’s lantern flared, and she saw a man sprawled on the floor, face down and senseless, between Kordroun and Gelgur, who were both kneeling.

  “Bring the lanterns,” the old gunmarshal hissed at her.

  Ralice obeyed, peering. She was sure she’d never seen the man before.

  “Dead?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” Gelgur said grimly. “Come.” He handed her back her lantern, lit again, and they hurried on, back through the Gunworks cellars.

  When they reached the wall-box again, Kordroun halted them. “Well?”

  “She’s in on it,” Gelgur replied. “That was Pelkur. One of her personal agents; a Bloodsworn.”

  The high shieldmarshal stared back, pale-faced. “Yes, but is she with Loroan? Or against him?”

  “What I don’t understand,” Ralice asked, trying not to sound as small and frightened as she felt, “is if the Ironmaster is mixed up in this, why’d she gather us together to investigate? Why not forbid us—and every last gunmarshal—to pry here or ask there?”

  Gelgur gave her a tired smile. “She wants scapegoats. I suspect all Alkenstar is going to learn that we three dastards are responsible for something dark. Soon.”

  Kordroun nodded, let out a gusty sigh, and growled, “This way. We hurry again, of course.”

  “Of course,” Gelgur agreed sardonically.

  They hurried.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  “These… shouldn’t be here,” Kordroun said grimly, crouching to avoid scraping his back on the low, arched stone ceiling of the tunnel. Seven sturdy and all-too-familiar gun crates, clearly branded with the Gunworks mark, were ranged on trundle-sledges down the greased cente
r of the tunnel, hooked together with cables and ready to be dragged out. “Smuggling work, I think.”

  Ralice gave him a dubious look. “Why would they leave anything here, where someone is bound to find it?”

  Gelgur looked back the way they’d come. “Trap or warning—or they just don’t care who sees, because they’re all in on it. Shouldn’t we just get gone, and leave the back-patting and jaw-scratching for later? There are marshals everywhere—and I need a drink!”

  Kordroun’s presence had got them past five challenges so far, but if the Ironmaster was caught up in this somehow, a high shieldmarshal’s presence wouldn’t grant free passage forever.

  Ralice gave Gelgur one of her glares. “Just a moment. Or two. Surely your thirst can last that much longer.”

  “They could be trapped,” he muttered.

  She sighed. “So they could. However, I’m a gunhunter. I investigate things. Dangerous or not.” And she undid the latches of the nearest lid.

  They all hunkered down as she slowly and gingerly, with the barrel of her revolver and listening for the clicks of springs or triggers, lifted the lid.

  Nothing happened.

  After a moment or two more of tense silence, Ralice rose cautiously until she could peer in.

  Her face changed, and she sank down again.

  “Either of you care to identify who it is?” she asked tonelessly, swallowing. “The… the head’s got turned around.”

  Gelgur stood. The corpse in the gun-case had been dismembered—somewhere else, because the case wasn’t full of blood, and long enough ago that the gore had dried—and its severed head was lying sideways-up. “Eldel,” he said flatly, after one look.

  “Anything underneath him?” Kordroun asked.

  Gelgur looked again. “No.”

  The high shieldmarshal nodded and undid the latches of the next case. When he levered the lid up—using the butt of his revolver, and raising it on the side facing away from him—a faint ticking began.

  Hurriedly but gently he lowered it again and sprinted after Gelgur and Ralice, who had hastily scrambled back out of the tunnel, back into the Gunworks cellar they’d entered it from.

  “This way,” Kordroun said grimly, rushing across it. “We’ll take the other way out. Up a level, then three cellars that way—they’re all linked—and out down by Oldcogs.”

  Nodding, Gelgur and Ralice ran with him.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  “They must’ve grown too bold and successful to care overmuch if they’re discovered,” Kordroun muttered, as they panted in near-darkness in front of a closed door, trying to get their breath back after a seeming eternity of running. “Where we found Eldel—that’s a tunnel duty marshals check often. If I were a smuggler, I’d steer clear of it, and use this way we’re taking now. No patrol would find me or what I was smuggling down here.”

  “Eldel was meant to be found,” Gelgur reminded him. “That was a trap.”

  Kordroun nodded. “Yes, but if a blast damages that tunnel, shipments up to Cloudreaver will have to use this way, unless they’re planning to put them on mules and take them in the open! It makes no sense to—”

  Finding the right key on his ring, he unlocked the door, swung it open to reveal utter darkness, and reached confidently into the unknown.

  “There’s a catch, just here, to unlatch the portcullis and give us light, too, and—ah! There!”

  There was a klack. Triumphantly, the high shieldmarshal stepped back.

  And kept on backing, dancing involuntarily, as a harsh, clattering hail of gunfire spat out of the darkness into his face.

  Chapter Six: No Safe Haven

  The point-blank stream of bullets took the front of the High Shieldmarshal’s head off as it drove him back, a loose-limbed, dancing dead puppet, until Gelgur plucked him out of the line of fire.

  And stared over the limp, heavy body at Ralice, who was biting one knuckle hard to keep from screaming.

  There was another, lower klack as the last firing triggered the clockwork that started the next battery of gun-barrels, and the gunfire started to pan sideways.

  Gelgur flung himself over on his back with Kordroun’s body on top of him, but before they’d bounced to a halt, the next battery had kicked in and the hail of balls were tracking back in the other direction. Ralice flung herself away, kissing the floor in her haste.

  Then the firing ended, so abruptly that its echoes rang in their ears. They could smell scorched gunpowder, but see nothing beyond the dark doorway.

  The dim light they were working in came from far behind them; a fixed gas-jet that was high up, out of reach.

  It shed just enough radiance for Gelgur to make out the fear on Ralice’s face, and that she was silently mouthing, “What now?”

  He pointed at her and back the way they’d come, then slid free of Kordroun and pantomimed crawling.

  When she nodded and obeyed, he tore a strip off the tail of Kordroun’s jerkin, and crawled after her.

  Twice he held up a hand to halt and listen, but there came no sounds from the doorway or the cellars they’d come through.

  Gelgur wanted Ralice to climb on his shoulders and light the jerkin-scrap in the gas jet, but she gave him a disgusted look and ordered, “You climb on mine, old man.”

  He shrugged and obeyed, coming down with a flame that would light their way for not all that long, by the looks of it.

  They split as far apart as the passage would allow, and went back to the door. Gelgur tugged off one of Kordroun’s boots, dropped the flaming scrap into it, and tossed it through the doorway.

  A portable frame had been set up inside the door, and on it were mounted half a dozen trap guns, clockwork rows and clusters of gun-barrels connected to tripwires; the sort of weapons that guarded the most important Gunworks vaults.

  The tripwires were running everywhere. One battery pointed limply at the ground, and was spewing faint curls of smoke—obviously the one that had killed the High Shieldmarshal. Most of the rest were still loaded.

  Gelgur picked up the heavy, faceless mess that was Kordroun. Hefting the larger man up in front of him as a shield, he staggered forward, right through the doorway.

  Soon enough a second battery started up, and he flung himself at the floor, not caring where Kordroun’s body fell, reaching up with his knife to try to jam the clockwork or force the barrels upward.

  He managed the latter, murdering the ceiling loudly as he fought to sever the triggers leading to the last two batteries.

  After some furious sawing of wires, succeeded.

  His improvised lamp had gone out, and he went on working by feel, wresting barrels from mounts and shaking out balls and wadding, scooping some of them into his pockets.

  Then he kicked the frame over and flung himself back out of the doorway, in case the frame itself was trapped.

  Nothing happened.

  Ralice was peering at him suspiciously. “We’ll need another light; more cloth for the gas-jet. Get him back out of there—and I’ll be having his gun.”

  Gelgur obeyed her wordlessly, handing her Kordroun’s revolver and powder-pouch before looking for anything else useful.

  The sword, of course, and the marshal’s cloak—Ralice shuddered at its gory state, but Gelgur wadded it up for carrying—then Kordroun’s coin-purse, a nasty little boot-knife and a matching saw, and a second, smaller gun—a single-shot flintlock.

  “Here,” he said to Ralice, holding it out. “Lighter. Easier for you than the revolver.”

  Her look of dismissal was withering.

  She was still giving it to him, with enthusiasm, when they heard the first faint marshals’ shouts, from the cellars they’d come through.

  Wordlessly they rose and rushed through the dark doorway, past the trap-gun frame and on.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  It seemed they’d been fleeing forever, rushing through near-darkness, up stairs and through doors and across darkened rooms. The heart of the Gunworks never slept, but its exten
sive storage warrens were another matter.

  They were stumbling-tired now, and the shouts and bobbing lanterns were getting closer.

  As they plunged into a new passage, Gelgur changed direction again, and Ralice hissed, “Where are you going?”

  “Trust me,” he breathed, plucking at her shoulder and whirling her through a doorway right beside the one they’d just emerged from. ” I know these ways well from years of patrols. I’m doubling back into the Works, to try to throw them off. They think we’re trying to get out, and are heading for the routes we’ll have to take, yes?”

  “Yes,” Ralice hissed wearily. “I just hope you know your way bet—”

  Gelgur’s hand clapped across her mouth, hard and heavy.

  Enraged, she opened wide to bite—and froze.

  “The two we’re looking for,” said a deep, drawling voice that couldn’t have been much more than six paces away, on the far side of a wall of stacked crates, “are Bors Gelgur, an old drunk and retired shieldmarshal who may still have his uniform, and a kitchen wench by the name of Ralice Morkantul, who looks more like a big, burly lad. Gelgur knows the Works well, and is probably trying to get out the wagon-port nearest the Oldcogs and Tankard tavern. I’ve men waiting there already, but if we can catch the two of them between us and those doorguards, we can prevent them doubling back, and save having to hunt them the length of the Gunworks. So through here, and all eyes alert!”

  A door creaked, and booted feet shuffled. Gelgur and Ralice waited, immobile and silent, for what seemed a very long time before Bors took his hand away.

  “Sorry,” he whispered gruffly. “You recognize the voice?”

  Ralice shook her head.

  “Trademaster Daerold Loroan.”

  Ralice frowned. “He’s not a marshal, and never has been.”

  “Yet the marshals are obeying him,” Gelgur said grimly. “This runs as deep as we feared. Come.”

  Without a word of protest, Ralice followed him into deeper darkness.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  “Where are we now?”

  “Where they keep acid to etch inscriptions in gun barrels. The damage the spills do are why this is deeper than the storage cellars.”