Exiles in Arms: Night of the Necrotech Read Free

into the barrel of a gun. The man behind that gun was lean and wolfish, his clothing well cut and elaborately embellished. He wore soft grey breeches, and his grey frock coat shone with rich embroidery, the silver thread outlining maritime shapes that flowed up to a luxurious fur collar. Rubies glittered from the beveled neck of his sharkskin boots, and gold chains lay atop his silken shirt and vest. The gunman smiled when he saw that his victim recognized him.
    “Lorca,” the chief said, fairly spitting the name.
    The gunman’s eyes glittered like chips of ice. “Aren’t you glad you found what you were looking for?” He discharged the pistol into the gang chief’s face and kicked the twitching body back into the hold.
    Lorca imagined his friends below would appreciate something to play with.

CHAPTER I
    T he street was properly known as Tordoran Way. In ages past, it had entertained pretensions of grandeur, even displaying a line of iron lampposts along most of its length. Jewelers and gem-setters of the best caliber had congregated here, the concentration of wares and services throwing the neighborhood into such prominence that no wealthy visitor to Five Fingers would imagine leaving the city without at least once making a pilgrimage to Tordoran Way. As the fame of the area spread, sculptors, painters, and other craftsmen of artistic mind were drawn to it. Soon, a thriving artist’s colony had grown up around the street.
    Such a concentration of prosperity drew many greedy, envious eyes. First the pickpockets and cutpurses came, jackals who fleeced the wealthy clientele. After the scavengers came the gangs who preyed upon the shops themselves, hijacking shipments and robbing merchants. Finally, as the reputation of the neighborhood blackened, the racketeers arrived, promising protection in exchange for a percentage from each business. Such evolution from prosperity to extortion was the unwritten law in Five Fingers. The arrival of the racketeers should have brought with it a measure of badly needed security and stability. Unfortunately, Tordoran Way had grown too fast and become too lucrative by that time. The high captains, masters of the city’s criminal underworld, all coveted the street. None of them would compromise, and the result was months of gang warfare.
    By the time the dust settled, dozens of thugs and gangsters had died. The artists fled to quieter parts of the city. The nobles and dilettantes found safer places to patronize. Many of the jewelers and gem-cutters, their livelihood tied up in the properties they had struggled so long to build, were left behind to eke out an existence selling whatever wares they could secure cheaply and unload quickly. A new name was bestowed upon the once-exclusive Tordoran Way. Now the inhabitants of Chaser Island referred to it as “Blood Alley,” in memory of the gangsters who died trying to claim it for their high captains.
    Whereas wealth had deserted this little corner of Rivergrav North, crime lingered, becoming more brutal and desperate in direct proportion to the poverty of its victims. Many times since the wars of the high captains, Blood Alley earned its gruesome name.
    The ragged huddle of a beggar, almost shapeless beneath the mass of sailcloth bundled about him, cringed in the doorway of an abandoned shop. The group of villainous-looking men who marched boldly down the ill-favored stones of Blood Alley gave him no notice. Once in their cups, with coin in their pockets and wicked humor in their hearts, the roughs might have been inclined to make sport of the beggar. Now, however, they had no attention to spare. They were wolves on the prowl with minds only for the hunt.
    The gang called itself the Sea Wolves, the terror of Blood Alley, and around each man’s neck hung the leathery fold of a dried wolf ear. They were accomplished in the brutal art of the smash and grab, attacking shops with the mindless savagery of a rabid burrow-mawg. They stole anything