Morris De Wolf, a master interrogator, strategically positioned himself on the building adjacent to Happy Print. He had misled Van Seur into believing it was called Frin's Press, a simple ploy to extract the location of the print shop. The best interrogations, he knew, didn't happen under fear of retaliation or in a controlled environment. They occurred when the source was unaware intel was being collected from them.
Finding the print shop was easy. Happy Print was an ironically cheery name for such a crooked and dark place, but that was true of all Stalpia now.
He, Benedict, and Sky had discreetly circled the area beforehand, noting guards, marking exits, and stashing gear. They planned at least five contingency escape routes and dismissed twice as many unsuitable alternatives.
Four sentinels surrounded the outside. Anubis himself waited in the printing loft along with the girl. She was young, maybe in her late teens. Morris was surprised by that. He had expected her to be an old crop. Apparently, her captors had removed the crop ring and made her youthful again. Morris didn't know that was possible. The target now couldn't be older than twenty. Even from the building next door, Morris heard her swearing at Anubis and making unholy promises about what she would do to his corpse. That made him crack a smile.
Morris was surprised Anubis wasn't joining the war party that had left the Stalpia for Julleck. But then again, the lich must have had great faith that Van Seur would come for his friend.
Morris checked his watch. Two minutes. He was already in position. He made an uncomfortably tight fist, held it for several seconds, opened his hand wide, and took a deep breath. His little ritual helped him focus through the adrenaline, which still accompanied Morris in his operations. As an amateur, he had mistakenly thought he could train the adrenaline away. That was before he realized how addictive it could be.
Morris was an intelligence agent and a member of the king's cell before Rahashel toppled the Nosmerian government. When the courts killed the king and seized Stalpia, the King’s Cell considered themselves effectively relieved of duty. Their oath was to the king, not to the country.
Seeing the king reanimated validated Morris' decision. When his ghoul raided the tomb, it showed no signs of recognizing the operative. Morris didn't know if people were revived and corrupted when turned into ghouls or if something else wore their bodies like a coat. Doctor Aarts said they were rewritten and programmed to act, but even the best minds could only offer conjecture at best.
The king's cell was truly efficient because it acted with the king's authority and little accountability. In a way, not much had changed. Now, they answered to monetary authority, arguably the most divine form of power. Money often succeeded where kings failed. Nosmerian cash was losing value, disturbing news to the trio. People were less willing to part with wares, and services were shutting down in light of Rahashel's reign. So they had to change with the times. The splinter from the king's cell had agreed to fight with Nine Fingers for a commission of tiles. Nobody really understood what tiles were, but they were of value to Court Rahashel, so they would one day be of value to those who still lived in Nosmeria.
Morris rechecked his watch. Sixty seconds. They really only had one shot at this. But his colleagues were well trained and apt at adapting to plans gone wrong. He glanced over to Skye Brink, the youngest member of the king's personal enforcement agency. Skye lay on the building across the street. Morris only noticed him because he knew where to look. Skye had his back to the wall in the top story of the building opposite them. Morris could only just see the edge of his shoulder. Anubis wouldn't have even been able to see that much from his vantage in the loft.
The minute's last seconds ticked to zero, and Morris heard the sound of horse hooves thundering against the cobbles. Benedict Smulders charged down Black Tile Junction at a gallop. He whooped and cried like a maniac, hoping to lure Anubis to the window's edge. It must have worked because he raised his harpoon gun. With a hiss of premernox, comparable to the noise of a blunderbuss, the dark barbed projectile shot into the loft, a black cable following behind. Morris couldn't see Anubis. Anubis was in the building adjacent to him, but he heard the lich curse at the line pulled taut.
Go.
Morris caught his first glance of the jackal-headed lich as Anubis was ripped out of the loft through the broken bay window and dragged behind Benedict's horse. He didn't have time to watch.
Morris hit the spark trigger, and twelve mini charges popped in a circle on the roof of the printing press next to him. He jumped from his roof to the printing shop, his feet landing square in the middle of the circle made by fist-sized holes, and the whole thing gave way under his weight. Morris dropped into the loft between two presses.
Two ghouls he hadn't counted on leaped from their hiding place.
His hands moved on their own, and he shot one before he mentally registered that they were there. He flipped out the old cartridge, fed in a new shell, snapped it shut, cocked it, aimed, and shot the second in the heart before the first hit the ground.
The girl with dirty blond hair whirled on him, kicked him square in the shin, and almost fell to the ground in the process.
Morris yelped at the sudden attack. He had assumed, after being held hostage by liches and ghouls, she would have known he was an ally.
The girl bolted for the back door, favoring her right leg. She hopped on it twice, intermixing a short bump step with her left foot between in a skip-hop gait. She clutched Van Seur's hat as she fled.
"Van Seur sent me," Morris said, then cursed as he remembered that was his new name. "I mean — "
"Peter?" she finished for him as she skidded to a halt.
"That's right! Let's go!"
Morris grabbed her by the hand, pulling her around the heavy machinery and through a broken door.
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Outside, the hiss of Skye's rifle sounded as he dropped the ghouls outside the front.
When they got to the back, the ghouls guarding rear access must have run to investigate the front because they met no resistance. Morris pulled Iris across Baker Boulevard, where his horse stood waiting.
"Hey!" an enforcer barked as he saw the stranger leading the hostage away. Neither he nor his companion got another word. Morris fired, reloaded, and fired again before either of them could touch their guns.
"Can you ride?" Morris asked casually.
Iris stared at the dead men, dumbfounded.
"Can you ride?" Morris asked more firmly.
"Are you kidding?" Iris asked, refocused, as he helped her onto the massive mount. "It's a damn sight easier than walking."
A whining howl split the street from the roof of Happy Print. Anubis glared down at them. His powerful chest was slick with blood, though there was no sign of the wound that caused them. He clutched the barbed half of a harpoon, snapped at the middle, and flung the bloodstained shaft to the road with an angry clatter.
Morris spoke rapidly, his voice just above a whisper. "Ride east. My colleague, Benedict, will meet up with you and help you lose him."
She nodded, her fear masked by a steely determination, as she flicked the reins.
Morris gave an encouraging smile as he pulled two round fire bombs from his pocket and hit the corklike tops together, engaging the sparker.
Iris kicked the horse into action and shot down the road.
"I set a trap for a bird, but caught a fly!" Anubis snapped in anger as he prepared to jump after Iris.
A round from Skye's Rifle in the taller building behind him sent the lich flailing through the air. Anubis hit the ground with a sickening snap. Purple smoke lifted from his body as his wounds healed. He looked up just as Morris' fire bombes rolled in front of him.
"Who was the fly?" Morris asked.
The fire bombs thundered in flame, engulfing the lich and setting fire to the printing shop. Anubis screamed as the blaze scorched his flesh, but after the initial blast, he picked himself up. Black-purple smoke bellowed, and his wounds seemed suddenly fine after an indiscernible moment. He pulled his headdress off his jackal’s head, which was encircled by flickering flame, and patted a small fire away from his skirt.
"You shouldn't have done that. I was going to go after the girl," he sneered as he cupped his hands together. A fire flashed, and dozens of tiles filled his hands. He leeched them and dropped the empty shells to the ground. After being drained, the spent tiles no longer emanated court writing. "But now, I'll get her after I kill you!"
Morris rolled two more fire bombs at Anubis, which he had primed behind his back while Anubis was talking.
Why do people always talk before they kill someone? he wondered. So amateur.
The fire bombs went off, a prelude to another set of screams.
Morris whipped out his pistol and sent slugs, round after round, into the lich. He flipped out old casings and fed in new shells as fast as he could, squeezing off a shot almost every second.
Anubis leaped and snarled at Morris, and Morris took a desperate side lunge, blowing out Anubis' knee as he did. Anubis snarled and whirled on the Nosmerian operator, but another firebomb rolled to his feet. Morris wasted no time, continuing to blast away at Anubis as the fire bomb exploded.
The lich shrieked as he found no respite from Morris' barrage of slugs pumped into him.
Finally, in a blur, Anubis snatched Morris by the throat.
Morris kipped up and hooked his legs around the lich's outstretched arm, snagging a standing arm bar. With a gag of exertion, Morris bucked his hips into Anubis' outstretched elbow.
The elbow cracked, and the Jackal shrieked.
Morris produced a knife and severed the tendons in Anubis' wrist, causing the fingers to open and drop him. Morris spun away and fired three more slugs at his enemy. Only one hit as he hacked and blinked tears from Anubis' brief grasp. Damn, he never missed.
Anubis hissed as he turned on Morris. "Stupid native!" He summoned a single handful of tiles and threw the spent casings aside. "You'll tire and wear down. You've doomed yourself!"
"You ever think your rage and burn for vengeance would be your downfall?" Morris wheezed, crossing his blade and pistol at the ready.
"What?" Anubis hissed.
"Girl's getting away." Morris pointed out. "Is payback more important to you than your hostage? The only hostage that can get Van Seur to give up his weapon?”
Anubis cursed as he saw the truth in Morris' words and spun to run after the horse, galloping in the distance.
Morris smiled. Anubis would get to the horse and discover that there was not Iris but a dummy on its back. Benedict had already made the switch.
Skye urged his horse around the corner and galloped towards Morris.
Morris wasted no time mounting behind his younger companion. "That was way too close," he confessed, rubbing his throat. "He got a hold of me for a second there."
Skye wasn't listening. He turned north and spurred the horse away from the infuriated lich. They did it. The first part of their plan was a success.
Commandant De Zwart stood behind his artillery line as the cannons shrieked their chorus of destruction. He wore his filtered mask as premernox artillery released dangerous amounts of fumes.
Feral ghouls snapped and snarled in the clearing ahead as they banished Rahashelian weapons. Geyser plumes of dirt erupted into the sky as shells bombarded the ground and ghouls got blasted to pieces. The Rahashelians charged in a chaotic stampede. The horde would have been much easier to target and destroy if it had remained in its ranks and marched like ordinary soldiers.
"Rifles!" De Zwart hollered, and a line of seventy or so riflemen lined up at the barricade.
"Aim for the heart, boys! Fire!"
A volley of rifles hissed, and to De Zwart's disappointment, not a single ghoul dropped. Such a volley would have absolutely devastated a line of humans, but the ghouls simply jerked awkwardly at the impact of the bullets ripped through them before continuing on.
The garrison commandant couldn't blame his men for missing a small organ at this distance, but the indifference with which the ghouls took fire caused a cold realization to seize him. They were about to be slaughtered.
De Zwart turned and saw a man watching them from behind. The stranger had olive-tan skin and straight black hair. He was a Dinnian. At least, some people thought his kind came from Dinn, but no one could be sure or prove that Dinn was even inhabited, since travel between the three worlds was impossible.
"Get back!” De Zwart barked. "This isn't a place for civilians!" Then he noticed the pair of short scimitars at his waist. The newcomer was prepared to fight.
" ... Or you could join the line?" De Zwart amended.
The Dinnian smiled and started forward but stopped as the gangly figure of a half-rotted vulture landed between them. Both men frowned at the exotic creature. The large bird spread its wind with a cry, and court writing was on its wings and body, glowing in vibrant purple. Commandant De Zwart didn't know about the strange bird, but he recognized the court's script and drew his pistol.
"Kill it!" he cried as he squeezed off a shot that fell short by two feet.
The Dinnian had the same thought and whipped out his blades to charge the vulture.
The air around the vulture shimmered in purple light. It exploded, a wash of violet fire rippling out in a wave, throwing the Dinnian back.
The light flashed, and the fire cleared, not scorching the earth, and in their place stood fifty ravenous mummified ghouls as if from thin air, armored and ready for battle, at their head. A Lioness-headed woman in armor.
Somehow, they had jumped the whole distance of the city's outskirts.
"We've been flanked!" De Zwart hollered at his riflemen, and he drew his saber.
The lioness lich let out a roar, and her ghouls charged them from behind.
They were surrounded.