Moving Targets Read online

  “What’s wrong, Shaw?” Vyacheslav laughed. “Afraid of a fair fight?”

  Even as the kapitan mocked him, Rutger tossed Jackknife from his numbed right hand into his left. Before Vyacheslav was fully aware of it, the mercenary was lunging at him, striking low and shearing through the armor encasing the officer’s leg. Vyacheslav yelped, staggering back as the ruined sabaton sagged from its remaining strap and blood oozed through the torn flesh beneath. Another inch and Rutger would have chopped the man’s leg from his knee.

  His enemy’s momentum broken, Rutger exploited the respite to shrug out of his fur cloak and coil the heavy garment around his numb right hand. As Vyacheslav came hobbling back to the attack, Rutger again gave ground before him, waiting for the kapitan to present him the opportunity he needed. The injury Rutger had dealt to the Khadoran’s leg wasn’t half as telling as the wound he had inflicted upon the man’s pride. Vyacheslav would press his assault with redoubled fury now. Rutger was counting on it.

  “Come on then,” Rutger growled. “While you still have a leg to stand on.”

  Rutger was careful to remain on the defensive against his foe’s repeated lunges. He parried Vyacheslav’s sword with only the most glancing flourishes of Jackknife, feeling an icy sting bite at his fingers even from such brief contact with the frigid Khadoran blade. With each parry, he could see his enemy’s frustration growing. It was then that the fugitive kapitan made the mistake Rutger had been waiting for. The man thrust for the mercenary’s breast, overextending himself for one brief instant. Sidestepping the attack, Rutger brought the heavy folds of the cloak – still wrapped about his right hand – whipping out at the officer’s sword, trapping it within coils of fur and leather.

  Vyacheslav howled in alarm and tried to draw back, but Rutger kept a firm grip on the cloak, twisting it so that the Khadoran’s mortal arm was forced downwards. “Yield,” Rutger growled at the officer.

  “Never!” Vyacheslav snarled back, raising his mechanikal arm. Rutger thought at first he meant to slash at him with the steel fingers, but then a jet of searing steam rushed past his face, scalding his cheek. Truly the kapitan had learned some unsavory tactics since their last encounter.

  Twisting Vyacheslav’s swordarm still lower, Rutger brought Jackknife shearing through the mechanikal arm, cleaving through it just behind the elbow joint. The wreckage went spinning through the air, forcing some of the onlookers back as it crashed to earth a dozen yards away.

  Vyacheslav’s eyes blazed with hate as he glared at Rutger. All pretensions of pride and honor were drowned beneath a tide of rage and bloodlust. “Kill him!” the kapitan roared.

  Even as the Khadoran renegades started to move forward, the sharp crack of a magelock pistol filled the air. A spectral ring of runes danced around the barrel as the bullet sped towards the soldiers. The single riflemen among them cried out as the bullet burned its way through his hand. Hugging the ruined member to his chest, he let his rifle fall into the mud. The other renegades froze, watching as a lithe, predatory shape stalked out from among the refugees. A smoking pistol gripped in her right hand, a nimbus of wraith-letters slowly fading from around the gun barrel, Taryn di la Rovissi kept her eyes roving across the startled soldiers. All of them felt the menace of the unspent magelock she held in her left hand.

  Taryn smiled balefully at the guards. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking ‘she can only shoot one of us.’ Well, who wants to step forward and be the big loser?” Unsurprisingly, none of the guards offered to test the gun mage’s threat.

  “I told you to get out of here,” Rutger grumbled as she marched towards him.

  Taryn fixed him with a glare that was only slightly less enraged than Vyacheslav’s. “And you really thought I’d listen?” she asked, a tinge of hurt in her voice. “I would have thought you’d know me better by now.”

  “Who ever really knows a woman?” Rutger answered with an embarrassed smile, releasing his coat and drawing his hand cannon from its holster.

  Taryn spun around, aiming her magelock at a second formerly unseen rifleman who had started to raise his weapon. Almost sheepishly, the guard dropped his gun. “Give any thought to how we’re going to get out of this now that you’re done playing hero?”

  Rutger kept his hand cannon aimed at the guards while Taryn holstered one magelock so she could reload the other. “I was thinking I’d let them capture me and then you could rescue me later.” He smiled.

  “A little late for that one,” Taryn told him.

  Vyacheslav listened to the mercenary banter, his anger swelling with each word. “Kill them! They can’t get you all!” he shouted at his men, struggling to free himself from the cloak coiled around his hand.

  Taryn pivoted in place, waving what were now two armed and loaded magelocks at the ring of renegades. “He’s right, but I can promise at least a few of you will be soldiering in Urcaen tonight.”

  The guards backed away a pace as Taryn uttered her threat. Rutger knew it was a temporary settlement at best. He could see that the refugees were becoming unruly. Simply to maintain control, the smugglers would have to reassert their authority and bring down the two adventurers.

  A loud, metallic rumble rolled through the encampment. The refugees scattered, the slow burn of their unrest quenched by the mechanikal monstrosity that lumbered down towards the pier. Flanked by a score of angry criminals, its whitewashed chassis gleaming in the morning sun, the immense warjack vented a blast of black smoke from the smokestack rising from its back as it marched towards the fray. Rutger felt his last desperate hope wither inside him. The mechanikal giant was a mass of armored plate and steam-driven brawn, the flattened claws at the ends of its arm capable of crushing boulders like eggshells. In one fist the warjack bore an immense mace, and the opposite arm ended in a wicked cannon. A brutish stump of a head, fashioned in the semblance of an ancient warrior’s great helm, pivoted upon the pneumatic armature that acted as the warjack’s neck, surveying its surroundings with the optics buried behind the armored visor of its head.

  The thing was a Mule, an older but exceedingly tough, heavy warjack chassis. Rutger wouldn’t be certain if the giant could be brought down even if he had a battery of cannon and a squadron of Storm Knights at his back.

  The hulking machine stopped at the edge of the encampment, rotating its torso to survey the refugees to either side and remind them to keep their distance. Another blast of black smoke shuddered skyward from its smokestack and it trained its glowing optics on the two mercenaries.

  “I knew Llael would be the death of us,” Taryn quipped, careful to keep her voice even and controlled.

  Rutger kept his eyes on the Mule. “Isn’t Llael your home?” he commented.

  “Doesn’t mean I expected to be buried here,” Taryn retorted.

  Rutger wasn’t sure how accurate he could be with his arm still numb from Vyacheslav’s sword, but with a target as big as a Mule, accuracy wasn’t going to be an issue. Penetration would be the problem. Taryn knew a spell that could melt metal, but it would take an entire fusillade to bring down something like a heavy warjack, and it was unlikely the ’jack would stand still while she was taking shots at it.

  There was a stir amongst the thugs flanking the Mule. The criminals closed ranks around a bearded man who had a flat cap of ermine crunched down about his ears and a white sealskin coat hugging his stocky frame. The newcomer tugged at his long moustache with fingers festooned with a lord’s ransom in jewels. After a moment, he pointed a massive jade ring at the two mercenaries.

  “I am Boss Nikolai Viktorovich Yatsek,” the stocky man announced. “Drop your weapons now and I will spare your lives.”

  “Do we look that stupid?” Taryn scoffed. Boss Yatsek smiled an oily smile and shrugged his shoulders. He held all the cards and wasn’t about to bargain. The slightest gesture from him and it would all be over.

  “Yatsek!” a voice called out from the direction of the pier. Rutger turned his head enough to see a
man dressed in tailor-trimmed breeks and doublet jogging back towards shore. There was a lean, hungry look about his weathered face, yet it also bore the indelible stamp of the aristocrat in the sharp aquiline features and the natural poise of his bearing.

  “Please!” the man called out again as he reached the muddy shore. “If I might beg your indulgence, I would like to pay for these two undesirables’ passage.” He spoke in a cultured, refined Llaelese, the tones were those of pedigree and breeding. As if to strengthen his proposal, the man removed a leather purse from beneath the breast of his doublet.

  Yatsek tugged at his moustache again. “There is the question of my injured men to redress,” he stated in halting Llaelese.

  “Maybe you’d like to bury a few instead,” Rutger grinned, his voice carrying such menace that Yatsek pulled several hairs from his face.

  “Five goldbust for the kapitan, ten keeps for anybody else,” the man on the pier offered, speaking a precise Khadoran every bit as refined as his Llaelese.

  Yatsek laughed. “Ten koltina for the kapitan and twenty denescka for the other,” he declared, stating the payment in Khadoran coinage rather than the obsolescent Llaelese currency.

  A tense moment passed as Rutger waited to hear if their mysterious benefactor would abandon them. After a moment, the man from the pier nodded and made his way to the clerk’s table, removing the payment from the purse.

  “Be thankful that Earl Alessandro is in the habit of picking up strays,” Yatsek advised the two mercenaries. He stopped stroking his moustache and pointed his jeweled fist at Rutger and Taryn in turn. “Pray to your ascendants we don’t meet again.”

  Warily, Taryn backed away from the cordon of guards, following the earl as he strode back down the pier. Rutger started to follow her when an angry hiss brought him spinning around. Freed from the cloak, the one-armed Vyacheslav was rushing at the mercenary with upraised sword, intending to cut his foe down from behind. Rutger dodged to the side and brought Jackknife’s edge licking out at the furious Khadoran. Vyacheslav shrieked as the mechanikal sword raked across his knuckles, sending fingers dancing through the air and the Fire of Skirov crashing into the mud. The kapitan fell to his knees, cradling the bleeding ruin of his hand to his breast.

  “It’s okay!” Rutger called up to Yatsek. “This one is already paid for!”

  The angry look on Yatsek’s face vanished in a boisterous laugh as he digested Rutger’s boldness. The crime boss’s laugh soon infected the other smugglers. Hurriedly, Rutger turned around and retreated towards the boat. He didn’t want to be around when the laughter stopped.

  “This isn’t over,” Vyacheslav snarled at Rutger’s back.

  “You should retire,” Rutger called back without turning around. “Before you end up a clockwork clown at a blackpenny carnival.”

  He knew it was an un-Morrowan thing to feel, but Rutger took an awful satisfaction in the vindictive howl that followed him down the pier.

  From occupied Llael, the Ghost Ship ferried its human cargo into the lonely expanse of northern Cygnar. With the Khadoran Empire moving against the Thornwood, the maze-like mire of the Bloodsmeath had become the last resort for the smugglers who once conducted their charges downriver to Corvis. Now the hazardous route through the Bloodsmeath offered them the only route around the Khadoran army and west to Ord.

  The Spectre was little more than a cargo barge, never intended to conduct more than a handful of passengers in anything resembling comfort. So stifling were the holds below the decks that many of the refugees preferred to shiver above rather than endure the dark stink that awaited them below. Knots of desperate humanity, the last of their finery caked in the dirt and grime of their flight, clustered about the wheelhouse and the promenade. After paying Yatsek for the privilege of exile, few of the Llaelese had the funds to make the further bribes that might see a boatswain or ship’s mate turn his cabin over to a displaced family.

  Under these conditions, Rutger felt pangs of guilt that their benefactor had secured the only stateroom on the ship for his use and that of his entourage. That “entourage” consisted of a slightly worse-for-wear sellsword and a cynical gun mage from Laedry. As Earl Alessandro was quick to explain, such isolation wasn’t an extravagant indulgence but a desperate necessity.

  Shortly after the steamship pulled out into the Bloodsmeath Marsh, the two mercenaries found themselves seated in their benefactor’s stateroom, listening as the earl explained the purpose behind his beneficence.

  “You already know I am Earl Alessandro di la Predappio,” he stated. The degree of culture and refinement in the way he spoke Llaelese marked him as one of the vanquished nations’ aristocrats, perhaps even a courtier from the late king’s court. Rutger noticed that he sat with his back to the wall and facing the door. It was a habit he knew quite well from his days as a thief and bandit. A hunted man always liked to know what was behind him and to see whatever was ahead of him.

  “Not so long ago,” Earl Alessandro continued, “I was a notable personage at the royal court in Merywyn.” A wistful, bitter laugh escaped his lips. “Current events have made it prudent for me to remove myself from Llael.”

  “You are beyond the reach of Khador now,” Taryn observed. “They have enough problems inside Llael to bother about those who have fled.” From her tone, Rutger knew that she was suspicious of the earl. Certainly there was the ring of truth in his claim that he required the services of bodyguards, but from his conduct both of them could tell the earl was afraid of more than cutpurses and highwaymen.

  The earl tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair, a distant look in his eyes. “It is not the enemies I leave behind who worry me,” he said at last. “It is those ahead of me I fear. Before leaving Llael, I came to a mutually beneficial agreement with the court of King Baird in Ord. King Baird isn’t universally loved by his nobility and I fear that some of those dissident elements resent the arrangement between me and the royal court.”

  Rutger shook his head. The world of politics and royal intrigue was as alien to him as the wastes of the Skorne Empire.

  “It is more than some nameless enemy that has you worried,” Taryn said. “You have some idea of who is after you.”

  Again, the earl tapped his fingers against the arm of his chair for a time before answering. “I know you are both brave fighters. No coward would have stood up against Yatsek’s men the way you did. But I wonder how great a sense of obligation you feel towards me for intervening on your behalf?”

  “You’re paying a lot, but you’re also starting to make me wonder if that payment is enough,” Rutger said, irritated by the earl’s intimation that his ethics were questionable. So long as an employer was honest to him, he always tried to honor the letter of a contract. It was Taryn who was always looking for loopholes.

  “I have been as generous as I can be, at least for now,” the earl said. “Believe it or not, getting out of Llael was the easy part for me. At least with the Winter Guard patrolling the countryside my adversaries had to maintain a low profile. Now, I fear, they will display no such restraint.”

  “Just who are these enemies of yours?” Taryn asked.

  The earl’s expression became grave, his hands clenching the arms of his chair as though seeking to draw strength from the stout oak frame. “Have you ever heard of a man, a blackguard, called Arisztid Olt?”

  Taryn and Rutger stared at one another. It was Rutger who finally addressed the earl. “He’s the one known in some quarters as ‘the Walking Scion.’ They say there’s no crime too depraved for him to take on. He’s massacred entire villages, butchered whole monasteries, slaughtered entire caravans…”

  “Worse things than that,” Earl Alessandro said with a shudder. “Worse things, and with far fewer reasons than he has for pursuing me.” He leaned forward in his chair. “My ultimate destination is Five Fingers, in Ord. Get me there before the 17th of Katesh and I will pay you an additional two hundred goldbusts… I mean crowns.”

  Rutger wh
istled appreciatively. He glanced over at Taryn to see if she was equally impressed. If she was, she hid it well. Her face was as impassive as a plaster ascendant.

  “A respectable amount… if you expected us to fend off feral bogrin or a few bandits,” Taryn said. “But an adversary of Olt’s notoriety makes things a good deal more complicated.” Her eyes were like gunmetal when she trained them on the earl, “Complicated and expensive.”

  The earl shook his head. “I cannot afford more than that,” he stated. “If I reach Five Fingers, it is possible that I may get access to more funds.” He raised a finger for emphasis. “But I would need to get there to know for certain.”

  “A bonus for safe delivery?” Taryn suggested with a wry smile.

  “We’ll try to earn your bonus,” Rutger interceded. There had been times when Taryn had nearly spoiled a deal by pushing negotiations too far. He wasn’t going to let this be one of those times.

  “You will earn it,” the earl promised. “I left my last bodyguards behind in the ruins of Aliston Yard. I do not deceive myself that they were able to stop Olt, but at least they seem to have slowed him down.” He locked eyes with Rutger. “Now that you are engaged by me, I expect nothing less from you.”

  “If it comes to it, we’ll stop him,” Rutger assured the nobleman.

  It was the earl’s turn to wear a wry smile. “Indeed, or at least slow him down…”

  There was a chill in the air as Rutger marched along the Spectre’s hurricane deck. Rising above the steamboat’s superstructure, the deck was fully exposed to the cold breeze wafting across the stagnant pools of Bloodsmeath Marsh, presenting a climate unpleasant enough to keep most of the refugees clustered about the promenade deck below. It was the solitude offered by the situation that had drawn Earl Alessandro up here, his two protectors in tow. Despite his intention of remaining sequestered in his stateroom for the entire voyage, the nobleman had become desperate for an “airing” as he called it, even if that air stank of swamp water and pond scum.