Exiles in Arms: Night of the Necrotech Read Free Page B

his gang toward the jewelry shop.
    Marcheti leaned over the cracked clay bowl resting beside the beggar’s stump. He spat on the few alms there. “Don’t spend it all in one place.” He sneered at the cripple, rising to rejoin the gang.
    “Mercy, master,” the beggar said, lifting the bowl with one hand and shaking it so the black pennies rattled.
    The thief rounded on the beggar with a snarl. Before he could kick the wretch, however, the beggar’s free hand grabbed his belt and pulled him down. As Marcheti fell, the beggar shattered the bowl across his head.
    The sound of the breaking bowl and Marcheti’s howl of pain brought the other Sea Wolves spinning around. They stared in shock as the beggar rose from the gutter and threw off his filthy cloak. Beneath, he wore a suit of heavy armor. With one hand he reached down and pulled away the fake stump tied to his knee. It was his turn to sneer as he stamped some feeling back into the leg he’d sat upon, hale and whole as any of the Sea Wolves.
    Vigo laughed as he drew his sword. “So the little Rhul-rat hired himself a watchdog?” His other hand fished a crooked dagger from one of his pockets. “I hope you enjoyed your playacting, friend, because when we finish with you, it’ll be for real!”
    With a flourish, the mercenary brought his own sword from its sheath. Much of the bravado faded from Vigo’s face when he saw the massive mechanikal sword in his adversary’s hand. “Care to surrender now,” Rutger Shaw asked the thug, “or are you going to make me work for my pay?” He thumbed the activation stud in the hilt of his sword. The runeplate fixed to his blade blazed with magical energies.
    Vigo took a step back, then glanced at his men. They were still seven to the mercenary’s one. The realization brought a snarl to the thug’s face. “Make the bastard bleed,” he said.
    “He’s only one man,” Vigo snapped when none of his men seemed keen to meet Rutger’s blade.
    The crack of a pistol boomed through Blood Alley. Vigo yelped as the bullet struck the hilt of his sword, tearing the weapon from his hand. He spun around and glared at a second mendicant. This one gripped a smoking gun.
    “He might be one man, but he has friends.” The shooter shrugged off the sailcloth cloak, revealing a tall, dark-haired woman in oiled leather armor. The gun in her hand was a richly engraved magelock. Slowly, she lowered the spent weapon and raised its mate. “That’s your only warning,” said Taryn di la Rovissi, her voice like the lash of a whip. “Don’t waste it.”
    The Sea Wolves looked uncertainly at their leader. With the glowing blade of Rutger’s sword before them and the threat of Taryn’s magelock behind, the gang appreciated the trap they’d fallen into. For an instant the tableau held. A moment more and the ruffians might have laid down their arms.
    The tension was broken by the man both sides had forgotten. Sprawled in the gutter, blood oozing from his scalp, Marcheti rolled onto his side and drew the pistol from his belt. The thief was an indifferent shot at the best of times, and with his head still ringing from the bowl smashing into it, his aim was still more atrocious. The shot he fired at Taryn went wide and slammed into the wall some distance behind her. The menace arose not from the bullet but the confusion it brought.
    Taryn dove for cover, throwing herself across the street in a long sprawl that sent her headfirst into the opposite gutter. Rutger spun and smashed his iron-toed boot down on Marcheti’s hand, crushing his fingers into a mash of splintered bone. The thief’s agonized shriek rang out across the square.
    The Sea Wolves leapt into motion. Two of the thugs rushed at Taryn while a third ripped a pair of his own pistols from the pockets of his coat. The pistoleer’s first shot gouged the cobblestone just beside Taryn’s head. She rolled onto her side. Runes blazed around her gun. “Seek,” she hissed as she pulled the