The shouting that woke Dagger at first seemed some vestige of a dream. She sat up in bed groggily rubbing her eyes as the sound worked its way through the fog of last night's drink. She still wasn't quite sure what she was hearing, but it didn't sound good. Her bedroom door slammed open and Powder entered.

"Better get up, captain. We're mildly fucked."

"Is there coffee?"

"Downstairs."

"That's something."

Dagger put on her leathers and picked up her hammer. She realized what she was hearing outside.

A mob.

In the common room of the inn the rest of the Armory stood tensely armed and peeking through the windows at the gathering crowd. Dagger chanced a quick look and saw an assembly of both city guards and workers.

"Mercenaries!" A captain of the guard shouted through a speaking horn borrowed from one of the strike leaders, "you've brought chaos and destruction! Come out quietly. You have my word you'll receive a fair trial."

"That rat fuck," Dagger muttered.

"I guess Roth sold us out," Powder said as she loaded her guns between sips of hot coffee.

"I want you all to leave," the innkeeper said, his voice quivering, even as he served coffee and laid out a tray with bread and cheese.

"Is there a back door?" Dagger asked him.

"There's a bunch of armed morons out there too," Saber said.

"There's your answer," she told the innkeeper as Saber handed her a cup of coffee.

"Mercenaries!" The shrill voice came again.

"A couple of these idiots actually have pitchforks," Pitch said from the window.

"Pretty standard mob fare, Pitch," Saber said, with a theatrical leer at the service girl as he bit into a piece of bread. She skittered away.

"Saber, this is a factory town. They're not farmers," Pitch said, "Why would they even have pitchforks?"

"There is a stable."

"Oh."

"Aren't you the smart one?" Saber grinned.

"Some problems are beneath me."

"It's okay, Pitch. I won't tell everybody."

"Powder," Dagger called. "I'm going out to talk to the mayor."

"I'm on it, captain," Powder said and picked up a long rifle. She dashed up the stairs to the roof.

"Sure that's a good idea, boss?" Saber asked.

"Where's Vice?" Dagger asked.

"Where do you think?" Pitch said. "Upstairs praying."

"Tell him to find out how many we need for an exit. We're coming in hot," Dagger said, swung her hammer up over her shoulder and walked out of the front door of the inn to face the mob.

"Fuck," Saber muttered and went upstairs. He found Vice on his knees, shirtless except for his scars.

"Vice?" Saber asked. "Don't suppose you can hear me in there?"

"Do not be an idiot, Saber."

"You might want to get ready. It's about to get hairy."

"To what end should I be ready? I scorn the physical. It is transient."

Saber rolled his eyes.

"Temporary," Vice said.

"I know what transient means, Vice. It's about to get temporary-er."

"That is not a word."

"Dagger says to find out how many."

"Is it certain, then?"

"How long were you up here with your head in the clouds?"

"My faith is..."

"Your faith can't be louder than half the town and all the guards screaming for our fucking heads, Vice. Get your shit together."

"I will ask," Vice said.

Dagger walked out into the square, the far side and most of the alleys were packed with screaming figures riding the rush of mob righteousness and numbers.

"Roth!" she called and stopped in the center of the street. She rested her hammer head down between her boots and folded her arms. The mayor stepped out from between the ranks of his guards, gesturing that a few should follow him. Five men walked to meet her.

"What is this, Roth?" Dagger asked, with a nod to the mob surrounding them. "You hired us for this job."

"You went too far, mercenary."

"Call me Dagger."

The mayor and the guards looked at the hammer between her feet.

"It's ironic," Dagger said.

"You don't seem afraid," the mayor said. "At a wave of my hand these people will tear you apart."

"Pay us. We'll leave."

"Pay you? For bombing buildings, murdering innocent community leaders and shooting my guards?"

"We didn't bomb anything," Dagger lied. "Your workers stole gunpowder from your factories and stored them like idiots. Take it up with them."

"You were hired to put down the strike, not destroy half the town! You made our divisions greater than ever."

Dagger looked around at the crowd. "Looks like you've got unity now. I'd say we did our job."

Roth smiled smugly. "When I explained that outside consultants created this issue, the union leaders expressed a willingness to bargain."

"Just pay us. Trust me, it'll be cheaper."

"Look around. I could let you walk free and that would be payment enough."

"The Armory always gets paid, Roth. Gold or souls."

"I don't even know what that means."

"Pay us and you never will."

"Throw down your weapons and surrender. I'll have my men escort you to the city gates."

"Roth, we were working in the shadows. You don't want us working in the daylight. You can't afford it."

"I could see to giving you a quarter of what you were promised."

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Dagger sighed and pretended to think it over. "Your terms are acceptable."

"Very wise. I am glad we could come to an agreement."

Dagger smiled thinly and leaned over in a deep, ironic bow.

Roth's head disappeared in a burst of red. The sound of a gunshot followed a fraction of a second later.

Dagger stood to her full height and picked up her hammer. To the music of the crowd's enraged, confused screaming, she shattered the little cluster of fighting men still fumbling at their weapons. The man who caught the brunt of her blow flew several feet, cartwheeling bonelessly with a square dent in his ribcage. Dagger stepped in and swung again, smashing a knee to pulp, then around in an arc to crush a man's head. She thrust with the head of her weapon and a guard stumbled back spitting teeth.

The last guard backed away. The crowd rushed forward.

Dagger turned and sprinted for the tavern while Powder covered her, dropping worker, guard and citizen alike from the roof. The mob's few, untrained guns sent little puffs of dust up around Dagger as she neared the door.

Pitch and Saber threw it open.

As the first of the mob closed the distance, Dagger dove through as Pitch heaved a thin glass jar over her. It shattered against the paving stones. The liquid inside sizzled when it hit the air and became a sickly yellow-and-pale-blue fog. The mob ran into it heedlessly as Pitch and Saber slammed and locked the door. A moment later the screams of rage and the meaty slam of fists hitting the door and walls of the tavern turned to howls of terror and demands to be let in and away from the terrifying visions that walked among them.

The Armory barricaded the door with a banquet table.

"I hate running," Dagger said, catching her breath. "What's our status?"

"Vice says twenty," Saber said.

"Twenty!? The price is going up."

"He might have told them we were in a hurry."

"Somebody needs to teach our holy man how to bargain."

"Do you get to do that with god?"

"If the god's dead and you're dealing with his fucking butler? Okay. Twenty. Anybody keeping count? I dropped two for sure. Another's on his way but gangrene will take too long. Powder?"

The sharpshooter was coming down the stairs. "I got five," she said, "and if anybody tries to come in through the hatch on the roof, we'll get another two. Three if we're lucky."

"You left a bomb up there?" Saber asked.

"Just a little one. Why? Did you want to guard the hatch?"

Dagger looked at Pitch. "That stuff you threw lethal?"

Pitch shrugged. "One or two might die of a heart attack."

"Next time throw poison."

"Sure, boss," Pitch said dryly, "next time I'll throw poison gas while you're still outside. Everybody get in close. Somebody get the monk."

"I'll get him," Saber said, pausing only long enough to stop by one of the street level windows and thrust his sword through the bars and into a workman fumbling at them with a pry bar. "Six!" he called and dashed upstairs.

"Fourteen left," Dagger muttered.

"What about them?" Pitch asked, pointing at the innkeeper and his staff, who were clumped in a corner with eyes like dinner plates. It was hard to know who they were more worried about, the mob outside mindlessly shooting at the walls of the inn, or the killers inside talking about the number of bodies that had to hit the ground. Dagger looked at them.

"It would be an easy ten," she mused.

"You sure, captain?" Powder said, even as she raised one of her scatterguns.

"We're in a bit of a bind, Powder. Case you didn't notice."

"It's a battlefield. Not a butcher shop."

Dagger swore. "Lock them in the basement."

"Let's go," Powder said and herded the inn's staff and owner ahead of her gun barrels to the basement steps. "You'll be safer down there."

"This is my inn, you can't just... we have..." the innkeeper said, but his feet knew their business even if his mouth was propping up his dignity.

"We can," Powder said. "We are. Blah, blah. Protest, whine, snivel. Menacing threat. Move the asses I just saved."

Vice clumped down the stairs. He shed his hooded robe, and his white beard seemed to blaze in the dim light. Dagger met him at the bottom.

"Twenty, Vice? Really?"

Vice shrugged. "The machinery of the heavens winds down, grows less efficient in its disrepair. We ask much and deliver little, such is the way of mortals when they provide sustenance to the gods. What can such short lives know of hunger that spans eons?"

Dagger rolled her eyes.

"Everybody gather close," Pitch said. "We can debate theological economics after we're dead."

The Armory stood in a tight circle and leaned in as Pitch took a vial from his rig, shook it thoroughly and pulled out the cork. Blue-tinted vapor wafted out and one by one they inhaled deep from the vial. The lights of the inn brightened. Their heartbeats slowed. The air caught fire. They could smell the sweat, fear and rusty steel of the slavering mob that battered the walls. Dagger leaned back, pinched the bridge of her nose and snorted hard into the back of her throat. Tension swept away on a chill, dispassionate calm. She looked at the others as their eyes and hands steadied.

"That burns," Dagger said. She smacked her lips. "Where did you find peaches?"

"Peach brandy," Pitch said with a grin. "It needed some flavor."

"Nice touch," Dagger said. "Pitch, lace the windows with evil shit. Powder, load up for close range. Saber put your dancing shoes on and ready your short blades. Vice, don't get killed first."

"That is in the hands of..."

"Just fucking don't, alright?"

"Yes, Dagger."

The door shuddered.

"They found a battering ram," Saber noted. "I wonder what they're using."

"Maybe Mayor Whatshisname's corpse," Pitch said.

"Too light," Dagger said. "especially without his head."

Pitch went to the door and rigged a sealed, paper thin jar above the jam, then spread a thin gel on the inside of the window frames. Powder checked and loaded four short-barreled pistols and holstered them around her body. She tucked her derringers into her belt. Dagger wrapped both hands around the haft of her hammer and stood a few feet from the door, waiting for the inevitable breach. Steel whined on stone as the workers pried away the bars over the windows. Overhead there was an explosion.

"They're inside," Saber said and dashed up the central stairs of the inn to hold the top, a short sword in one hand and a dagger in the other, the knuckle guards of both studded with sharp spikes to rake and puncture. A town guard and a worker stepped over the bodies killed in the blast. Saber ducked a club and slashed the inside of the man's arm, severing the arteries at the bend of his elbow. The worker staggered, fell and bled out as Saber raked his dagger guard across the face of the other man and ran him through. Downstairs, the front door screamed off its hinges and five workers jammed themselves in the doorway in a knot. The jar above the door fell and the thin glass shattered over their heads. Acid sizzled, eating through clothes and skin. They howled and rolled in vain to put out the invisible, hungry heat. The next workers and guards that came through, Dagger scattered with her hammer, shoving them back with a thrust of the massive steel head. Powder spun around Dagger's shoulder with a pistol in each hand and burned the invaders down, firing as they fell. Townsfolk that climbed in the windows touched Pitch's gel and choked and frothed at the mouth. Two fell dead, and two others were so distracted from drowning inside their own lungs that they fell easily to Vice's armored fists. Pitch tossed a clay sphere through the open window and a wall of white-hot fire rose up, burning unnaturally on the paving stones.

"Kitchen!" Dagger shouted, braining a worker with her hammer and reversing it to stab another with the sharp pike on the end. At the top of the stairs Saber ran through a worker kneed another in the balls and ran his dagger in a tight circle around the man's neck. Blood sprayed his boots and trousers. Saber leapt over the high railing and landed lightly, but slipped in the blood on the floor and fell. Dagger dragged him to his feet by his collar.

"That was graceful," she said.

"I am a jungle cat."

They backed into the kitchen through its big double doors as the townsfolk boiled into the common room and absorbed the ground the Armory could not hope to hold. The kitchen was a dead end, but with only one way in or out, they had a chance to bottleneck the assault and ruin its power of numbers.

"Pitch, burn the..." Dagger was calling as a clay jar sailed over her head and hit the top of the doorway, breaking and scattering flames across the wood.

"...door," Dagger finished with a satisfied nod. "Well done. What's the tally?"

"Eight that I am sure of," Vice said.

"Two from the stairs," Saber said, "four likely, but two already there."

"You felt them go?" Dagger asked Vice. "They're not just outside raving or waiting to die?"

"Saber is right. Ten."

"That leaves four more," Dagger said.

"Easy enough," Powder muttered as she fed her hungry guns.

"I've never killed a whole town before," Pitch muttered.

"What about the time with the reservoir?" Saber asked.

"I told you about that?"

"You were very stoned," Saber said, apologetically.

"That makes sense."

"We don't have to kill the whole town," Dagger said.

"Four more," Powder intoned and nodded when her guns were ready.

A shot rang from outside and half of Dagger's head vanished.

"Fuck," Saber muttered.

"Oh, now I'm pissed," Powder muttered.

"You can feel anger?" Pitch asked her.

"More the memory of the anger I know I should be feeling."

"Interesting. Remind me to take some detailed notes later."

"Science can wait," Saber said as he and Vice grabbed Dagger's body by the shoulders. The Armory moved as one and took cover behind the central prep table. Made of heavy wood and steel, it would provide cover from gunfire. Powder snapped off a shot from over the top and dropped a figure coming in through the door.

"Three," she called. "Do your thing, Vice!"

Vice knelt across Dagger's dead body and clasped his hands, muttering in a guttural language. Saber met the next cluster of townsfolk through the door and gutted the first under his clumsy swing. Pitch stood, put a slender tube to his mouth and puffed hard. A dart lodged in a man's cheek and he fell thrashing, his face as purple and swollen as a late summer plum. Powder opened up with her scatterguns and two more attackers vanished from the waist up. The walls were spattered with red. Vice prayed harder.

"One more," Saber whispered as townsfolk swarmed the room in a crouch as Pitch's flame barrier burned itself out. A bottle that trailed a flaming rag flew through the door and shattered against Pitch's head. He went up like a torch and Powder kicked him back from Vice. Pitch fell smoking, clawing and beating at himself weakly as the fire took his life. The townsfolk rushed them and smothered Powder under a pile of bodies, pummeling and kicked and swinging truncheons that crushed her skull even as they also hit each other. One man fell screaming around a shattered kneecap. Saber met their crush, tackled them away from Vice and fell back with two guards on top of him. He sank his knife into the man's gut and dug upwards, wriggling his hand like he was stirring a butter churn.

"You're the last one," Saber grated grin as the man sputtered and coughed warm red across his face. Saber tasted salt and grinned at the second guard who put a pistol under his chin and pulled the trigger, blowing out the top of his skull.

"Vigil, we are coming," Vice said with satisfaction as the townsfolk grabbed him, swarmed him under and beat him to death.

The last living member of the Armory died with an ecstatic, broken smile.