Exiles in Arms: Night of the Necrotech (26 page)

“The Cryxians spoiled my game. Taryn got the drop on me and it was all I could do to keep from getting pulled apart by a thrall. I had another try at her at Volkenrath’s estate, but again the undead made things complicated.” He laughed when he noticed Rutger’s eyes widen again. “She didn’t tell you about that either?”

Rutger glared at Kalder. So that was why Taryn had been so tense and reclusive. That was why she’d refused to help Parvolo and why she’d tried to sneak away. She was worried Kalder would show up again. When she confessed to Rutger that she was scared, it wasn’t fear of the Cryx, or even fear for herself, but fear that if Rutger was around when the bounty hunter showed up again, he’d be killed.

“Don’t worry about what she did or didn’t tell me,” Rutger said. “Worry about what you’re going to say that’ll keep your head from being splashed across that wall.”

“I know where that thing took her after your fight over the channel,” Kalder said, smirking. “One of my informants saw it when it came to land.”

The news staggered Rutger. For an instant, his aim on the bounty hunter wavered. The hope that had been rekindled inside him wanted so desperately to embrace this information, to accept it. Rutger refused to let it take hold. He knew only too well the pain of cheated hope. He turned his gun back on Kalder and took a menacing step forward.

“Alive?”

The smirk faded from Kalder’s face when he took stock of desperate, barely restrained fury boiling inside the mercenary. With exaggerated solemnity, Kalder shook his head. “My informant wasn’t close enough to tell. But does it matter? If the Cryxians have her, live or dead, can you resign her to such a fate?”

“Damn you,” Rutger hissed.

Kalder smiled. “I’m gambling that she’s still alive, Shaw. She’s worth a lot more to me alive than she is dead.”

“This informant of yours, can you be sure he’s telling you the truth?”

The bounty hunter laughed at the question. “People don’t lie to me. Not twice, anyway.”

Rutger could believe that. In Cygnar, Kalder had been infamous for his brutality and ruthlessness, a firm believer in the old adage that fear was the most powerful motivator a man could command.

Rutger holstered his hand cannon. He’d reached a decision, one he felt he had no choice but to accept. If Kalder knew where Taryn had been taken, then there was nothing he could do except agree to whatever the bounty hunter demanded.

“You’ve explained why I need you,” Rutger said. “Now tell me why you need me.”

Kalder rose from the lobster cage and paced across the shop. “Your opinion of my abilities is gratifying, but even I’m not going to stick my head into a nest of Cryxians. Not alone. I’m practical enough to recognize when I need help.”

“Why me?” Rutger asked.

The bounty hunter laughed. “Because you’re the one man I know who isn’t going to balk at the prospect of facing the horrors of Cryx. The list of people crazy enough to help me right now is a short one and you’re my best option. You’re not going to turn tail and run at the first sniff of a thrall or bonejack.” A cold gleam shone in Kalder’s eyes. “And, when things are finished, I know you won’t try to collect the bounty yourself.”

Rutger’s expression darkened. “What makes you think I’ll let you collect it?”

“Your word of honor,” Kalder said. “Most people, that wouldn’t mean anything, but I know you, Shaw. I know when you give your word, you keep it.”

Rutger shook his head. “Save her from Cryx just to turn her over to you?” He scoffed. “She’ll be just as dead.”

“At least she’ll only be dead,” Kalder pointed out. “That’s better than what the Cryxians will do. A damn sight better.” The bounty hunter shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe I won’t see things through to the other side. Maybe neither of us will.”

“And if we do? I’m supposed to just stand by and watch you ride off with Taryn tied across your saddle?”

The glint in Kalder’s eye hardened. “No. I don’t think either of us would like that. If we both survive after she’s been rescued, we’ll duel for her. My pistol against that artillery piece you carry.” Kalder laughed when he saw the reluctance on Rutger’s face. “Maybe you think you’ll get a better offer someplace else? I’d remind you that if she is alive, time is as much our enemy as the undead.”

It was despicable, bargaining over Taryn like she was a side of beef. The desire to grab Kalder and twist his head off was like a fire in Rutger’s veins. Only a bounty hunter could suggest such an abominable proposition. Only a man without any choice would agree to it.

“I want your word there’ll be no tricks. You deal fair by me until Taryn is safe.” Rutger’s eyes filled with hate. His face twisted with contempt. “Swear on the graves of your wife and child.”

Kalder smiled. “You have my word. No tricks until she is free. On the cherished memory of my family.”

The bounty hunter walked toward Rutger, offering his hand. Rutger snubbed him. “Just lead me to Taryn,” he growled.

“First we’ll need that warjack of yours,” Kalder said. “We need every edge we can get.”

The stench of decayed flesh permeated the atmosphere within the underground chamber, stifling even the odor of burning necrotite and the coppery tang of spilled blood. The light of arcane lamps and tallow candles was turned a sickly hue by the Cryxlight that blazed from the soul furnaces of the undead machines. The same glow emanated from the soul cages dangling from Moritat’s belt as the necrotech scuttled about his sanctum, muttering to himself. The machine he labored upon was a giant of steel and bone. Entwined within its mesh of wire and sinew were pieces plundered from the hull of a Buccaneer and parts stolen from the bodies of a dozen men. Moritat grinned as he studied his handiwork, sometimes clucking to himself in an amused manner.

“It is a cruelty of the universe that the mortal mind is doomed to decay and dissolution just as it begins to understand, to truly understand, the patterns of the world around it.” Moritat used a set of tongs to pull a fleshy ribbon away from the machine’s armature. He raised it to the rotten stump of his nose and sniffed at it experimentally. Frowning, he tossed it aside.

Chains clattered against stone as Lorca struggled in his bindings. Moritat had relocated his lair from the necrotite-filled grotto to the old Orgoth dungeon above it. He had proudly extolled the virtues of his new laboratory, the pits and cells that afforded such convenient storage of materials, the still-functional torture devices that promised such intriguing ways of breaking those materials down into their desired components. The half-effaced reliefs of grinning infernals glowering from the walls lent the place, in the necrotech’s opinion, a most delicious ambiance, an inspirational quality that set the mind wandering down new avenues of creativity.

For Lorca, the place was a charnel house of horrors. Corpses in every state of decay were piled about the chamber, awaiting the attentions of Moritat and Azaam. He’d seen for himself the atrocities visited upon the captives the Satyxis brought into the place, made all the more horrendous for his suspicion that the Cryxians had employed necromancy to keep the victims alive well after death should have ended their suffering. Once the screaming stopped—sometimes even before—Moritat would begin cutting out the portions of his victims he felt had a place in his new creation. Lorca didn’t want to think about that moment when the monster’s attentions would turn toward him.

“You still need me!” Lorca shouted, desperate to make himself heard, to drive home his point in Moritat’s crazed brain. “Even if they believe you’ve been destroyed, the Ordic Navy will still be watching every ship closely for even a hint of necromancy.”

Moritat busied himself removing the tendons from a human arm, inspecting each bit of tissue with a cloth measuring tape. “Thanks to the Dragonfather, we of Cryx needn’t fear such doom. Our minds expand beyond the paltry years of our fragile flesh. For us there is no tyranny of the grave, no slow slide into senility and decrepitude.”

Across the chamber, Azaam moved away from the stone table where the portions of her last victim lay strewn. The witch’s skin was coated in fresh blood, the fluid glistening with a sorcerous sheen as it was drawn into her wrinkled flesh. The blood hag had used the process to revivify herself for years, but each time the treatment was less successful than before. The effects lost potency and duration as her body acquired a natural tolerance to the enchantment. After the fight on the cable cars and the extent to which she’d been forced to draw upon her magic, Azaam’s vitality was a mere flicker. As she heard Moritat discussing the immortality of Toruk’s chosen servants, she stepped forward.

“You’ve promised to bestow the gift of longevity on me,” she said, bowing before the necrotech. “To remove the shadow of the grave from my flesh.”

Moritat stared at her with his putrid eyes, scrutinizing her as he might a peculiar insect.

“I have served you loyally, master,” Azaam said, frightened by that cold, analytical stare. At times, lost in the depths of his many experiments, Moritat seemed to forget who she even was. She feared this was one of those times. When the necrotech looked away from her and back to the helljack he was assembling, she was certain of it. There was an alarming grin on Moritat’s grisly face, the amused smile of an idea Azaam didn’t want taking shape.

“The ship was destroyed,” Azaam said, just as if she hadn’t told Moritat the same thing hours before. “I ensured that there could be no doubt of a strong Cryxian presence. Caracalla deployed your Scuttlers against the raiders’ boat,” she added, referring to the amphibious bonejacks Moritat had crafted from his Helldivers. “They performed remarkably.” Something more primal than mere panic flared through Azaam when she saw the grin was still on Moritat’s face.

She backed away from the necrotech, then dashed toward one of the cells, waving her clawed hand at the unconscious woman locked inside. “Look! I even brought you the mortal who dared harm you! She will make a most fitting subject for your experiments!”

Moritat scurried away from the helljack, his eyes glittering as he stared at Taryn’s sprawled figure. There was no vindictiveness or anger in the necrotech’s gaze. He was above malice or any other pettiness of emotion. He’d left that behind with his mortality. Still, as he looked at the woman he tried to estimate her dimensions. The tendons in her legs might be just about right for his purposes.

Reluctantly, the necrotech shook his head. He waved a claw at the gruesome shade of the pistol wraith. The phantom was standing directly opposite the cell door, the ghostly embers of its eyes fixed on Taryn. Stuffed beneath the wraith’s gun belt were her magelocks. The ghost had maintained its vigil ever since Azaam and Caracalla brought Taryn into the dungeon, waiting for her to recover from the ordeal of her capture.

“I fear there is a prior claim on that one,” Moritat said. He scratched at his chin, scraping a furrow in the rotten flesh. “Still, perhaps when he is finished . . .”

The necrotech smiled and looked again to Azaam. The witch felt like a piece of meat in a butcher’s shop under that ghoulish stare.

Caracalla’s sudden agitation drew Moritat’s attention away from her. Ever since he brought his laboratory up into the dungeon, the necrotech’s creations had been behaving oddly. The bonejacks had proved so troublesome that he’d disassembled two of them and sent the others into the grotto below. Now the overseer was acting up, its arms and tentacles shifting and weaving madly about. The thing faded slowly into shadow as it drew upon its reserves of arcane energy, then gradually faded back into view as it dissipated those energies.

“The light burns with such fiery sound,” the leftmost skull clattered.

The right skull champed its jaws together. “It fills me with the cold chill of old tombs. Such delights to be found and savored, such treasures to be unearthed. Mortals are such fools to bury away all that is beauteous and sweet.”

The central skull continued what had become an unceasing moan, a wail that adopted a certain cadence and rhythm. Only a creature as ancient as Moritat recognized in that undulating groan the echoes of lute and mandolin, the shadows of songs long forgotten.

Moritat made no move to subdue Caracalla. He scurried over to the overseer, sank down on his spidery legs, and simply watched the machine’s antics like a child fascinated by a new puzzle.

Azaam backed away from the necrotech, leaving him to this new study. As she withdrew, Lorca called out to her.

“Your friend is insane. He won’t hear reason, but you’re not mad. Listen to me, you still need me. You’ll never get all this necrotite out of Five Fingers without my ships!”