Exiles in Arms: Night of the Necrotech (12 page)

Gagging and coughing, Taryn stumbled out into the dry dock. As soon as she was in the open, she wiped the dust from her eyes, drew down her goggles, and started back. But the sight of a certain dirt-covered Cygnaran sell-sword stumbling out from the ruins changed her mind. She rushed over to Rutger, leading her stunned partner toward the slightly less noxious air by the channel.

“That was noisy, but it worked,” Taryn said once they were clear of the old dry dock. She frowned as she noted all the people swimming in the filthy water of the channel, striking out in every direction. Already, she could hear alarm bells sounding all across Southhold Prow. Even in such a dilapidated district, hundreds of terrified people flinging themselves into the channel and an explosion that could have rattled the teeth in the lord governor’s statue was going to draw attention. She wondered how long it would be before the watch were swarming all over the place.

“I don’t understand it,” Rutger said, shaking his head. “I didn’t tell him to do anything.”

Taryn knew she should be sympathetic to her partner’s distress, but at the moment she was more concerned about the watch showing up, or some leftover Cryxian horror crawling out of the Scrapyard. “Your warjack probably just saw the chance to do a lot of property damage,” she said.

“No, he saved us,” Rutger said. “I didn’t know what to do, but he did.”

Taryn laughed. A steamjack might be capable of some rudimentary initiative, but to believe it capable of having its own ideas and making its own decisions was nothing short of absurd.

She heard something stomping through the dry dock. Something big. She spun around, magelocks drawn. Rutger heard it too, pulling his hand cannon from its holster as he rose to his feet. Both of them had the same idea. The missing Deathripper.

When the source of the sound rounded the corner, Taryn rolled her eyes in disgust. The delighted cry that Rutger made didn’t help her attitude.

“Rex!” he shouted, rushing over to the dust-covered behemoth, inspecting it for any critical damage.

“Check it for dents later,” Taryn said, looking anxiously back at the Scrapyard. “Let’s beat it before anything else comes strolling out of there.”

Rifles barked, riddling the cadaverous monster with bullets. Despite the havoc inflicted upon it, the undead horror still managed to limp toward the watchmen, dragging its broken arm and the dead weight of the huge gauntlet bolted to it. Before the militiamen could fire another salvo into the crippled mechanithrall, their commander stepped out from the firing line, raised his pistol, and sent a bullet smashing through the abomination’s skull. The ghoulish light shining from its sockets faded as it pitched down the stairs.

“Recover and advance!” the bull-necked lieutenant ordered, not quite hiding the tremor of fear in his voice. The clatter of riflemen reloading their weapons sounded as they slowly mounted the stairs. To many of the denizens in Five Fingers, the watch was simply a corrupt, ill-trained rabble, little better than the gangs they were supposed to suppress. Not so for Lieutenant Emil Trask. The pride he took in the quality of the men under his command was the very core of his existence. Even in the face of something as monstrous and terrifying as an open attack by the Nightmare Empire in the middle of the city wasn’t enough to make them forget discipline and drill. Every day, he gave thanks to Ascendant Markus that he’d been given the chance to serve a man like Captain Nestor Parvolo. He could hear the officer’s voice barking out orders below.

“Carry on, Sergeant,” Trask told his own subordinate before descending to the arcade. He tried not to pay too much attention to the bodies stacked against the walls of the stairwell, feeling sweat bead in his palms as he caught horrible glimpses from the corner of his eye. The handiwork of Cryx was almost as ghastly as the monsters they crafted with their obscene magic.

Trask found Parvolo interrogating a shivering survivor. He knew the routine, the questions that would be asked, the dull half-coherent answers that would follow. There were few who could understand the strange motivations that moved the fiends of Cryx, and even fewer who would want to. The idea that these abominations could strike at will in Five Fingers was hideous enough to occupy Trask’s nightmares for years.

With a weary shake of his head, Captain Parvolo dismissed the terrified man, entrusting him to a constable’s care. All night they’d been ferreting out survivors from dark corners and hidden crawlspaces. Taken in concert with the refugees they’d found cowering throughout Southhold Prow or fished from the channel, there had to be upward of a hundred witnesses Parvolo could draw upon to try and make sense of what had happened here.

“We’ve finished clearing out the thralls on the fourth tier,” Trask said, almost managing to mask the tremble in his voice. “I think those might be the last.”

“Don’t let your guard down,” Parvolo said. “With these horrors, you have to kill them twice and call a priest to check your work when you’re done.” He glanced at the ceiling as gunfire thundered from overhead. “How are the men holding up?”

Trask repressed a shudder. “Better than might be expected. This isn’t like clearing out a nest of Waernuk’s smugglers or breaking one of Hurley’s extortion rings.”

“I know,” Parvolo said, slamming his fist into his palm. “But it has to be done.”

“The men know that,” Trask told his commander. “They have your example to thank for that, sir. You’ve shown them that duty is more than just something you sell to the highest bidder.”

“There are too many who think it is,” Parvolo said. He didn’t need to mention names, not with Trask. Not with any of his officers. They knew the other captains were bought and paid for, as was Commander Middleton. Parvolo was a lone bastion of incorruptibility in a sea of bribery, nepotism, and graft.

Parvolo looked across the scarred floor below the spectator platforms. “This was one of Volkenrath’s places.” It wasn’t a question. With less than one watchman for every two hundred inhabitants, there were entire districts in Five Fingers that were simply dead zones as far as the law was concerned. Most of Hospice Island was such a place. So long as nobody important was molested, the high captains and their underlings were permitted to do as they liked. It took something truly monumental to bring the watch into the lawless hinterlands.

Cryxian creatures in the city was about as monumental an incident as anyone could ask for.

“It’s a nightmare,” Parvolo said, staring down at the rows of bodies stacked across the floor. “I don’t even know how I’m going to make a report to the lord governor. I’m not even sure where to start.” The captain looked back at Trask and favored him with a bitter smile. “I do know where to start. Those ‘heroes’ the survivors have been talking about, the ones who kept this place from becoming even more of a slaughterhouse than it is. I don’t care how we do it, but I want them found.”

Trask shuddered as an agonized shriek sounded from above. An instant later the roar of rifles drowned out the echoing scream. The lieutenant wondered what his men had found and who had been the watchman unfortunate enough to find it.

“We’ll track them down, rest assured,” Trask said. “After cleaning out these monsters all night, anything else will be easy.”

CHAPTER V

A
n oily, evil quality clung to the air within the subterranean passage. Lorca prided himself on being a practical man, not prone to superstition or imagination. He believed in cause and effect, in what he could see and hold. Yet as he walked through the dank, murky tunnel, even he could sense the wrongness of the place. Necrotite, alchemists claimed, was something like coal that had been exposed to malignant spiritual influences for prolonged periods. It only had to be processed and refined in order to become usable. The vibrations of all violence and cruelty lingered long after the deeds themselves. It seeped into the very earth, percolating down into rock and stone. Given enough time and the right conditions, that evil could be harnessed as necrotite.

Lorca wasn’t sure how much of the alchemical theory he believed. What he did believe was that necrotite was a valuable commodity, better than its weight in gold if only someone had the nerve to exploit it.

Luck, he’d always maintained, was something only fools put any trust in. Yet Lorca had to admit it was chance that brought him knowledge of a necrotite vein beneath Five Fingers. If Habber were a better gambler, the discovery would never have fallen into Lorca’s lap. Owing two thousand crowns in one of Volkenrath’s places had put the smuggler firmly under the gangster’s thumb.

If Habber were better at his chosen profession, he’d never have resorted to hiding contraband here, a place even an impious murderer like Lorca would have thought twice before defiling. Poor Habber. He never appreciated what he’d found. Lorca imagined the first inkling the smuggler had of the true value of his discovery was when he tried to use it to pay off his gambling debts. There had been an almost absurd look of shock on his face when Lorca slid the dagger between his ribs.

Unlike the smuggler, Lorca knew what he had. He knew what he could get with it, the one thing more valuable than money.

Thinking of his ambition brought a scowl to Lorca’s face. His arrangement with Azaam and Moritat represented a great investment of resources, not to mention risk. Colluding with the Nightmare Empire was serious business across all the Iron Kingdoms. If he were caught, no amount of gold could save him from the gibbet.

There was a brooding anger in Lorca’s step as he emerged from the tunnel into the underground grotto. Somewhere above his head were the forgotten vaults of an Orgoth torture theatre, ancient cells where the barbaric invaders had visited their inhuman cruelties upon the people of western Immoren. The essence of those cruelties had seeped into the ground below, maturing over the centuries into the glistening black ore Lorca could see embedded in the cavern walls.

The timber casings of mining ribs and the steely frames of mud pumps were scattered throughout the cavern, along with stacks of reinforcement beams, boxes of digging tools, crates of boring equipment, and the sprawling mass of a shale shaker to clean the necrotite ore. Moritat had extolled this vein as the richest he’d ever encountered. All of this was a physical manifestation of Lorca’s investment.

Now he expected a return on that investment.

Something stirred from the shadows. Lorca couldn’t say if the thing stepped out of the darkness or simply manifested in the glow of his lantern. Either way, it appeared with supernatural silence and abruptness. It was a withered, fleshless phantom, only the last patches of shriveled flesh clinging to its exposed bones, a few wisps of faded hair hovering about its skull. The specter was shrouded in the decaying cloak and doublet of centuries past, golden buckles and brocade lost beneath layers of tarnish and corrosion. The apparition’s bony arms were crossed against its chest. In each skeletal talon, it gripped a massive and archaic pistol. The iron barrels of each weapon were elaborately engraved with magical symbols.

Lorca forced himself to stare into the ghostly eyes of the phantom sentinel and ignore the terror its presence sent through his flesh. “I’ve come to see your master,” he said. The wraith studied him with its corpse-fire eyes, the only trace of animation in its deathly shape. After a moment, with the same suddenness of its appearance, the ghost was gone, withdrawn back into the darkness.

The gangster hastened onward lest the ghoulish guard return.

The sputtering light of steam-powered illuminators and the sickly glow of alchemical lamps revealed the presence of Lorca’s fearsome allies. With the authorities swarming over Southhold Prow, they’d been forced to abandon the warehouse hideout, relocating to the cavernous necrotite mine. Even through the fire of his anger, he felt the frigid clutch of fear as he watched the Cryxians at their labors.