Anduron had done his share of work that related to the city’s sprawling waterfront. It was the city’s main artery, after all. But he’d never been to this particular area of the South Yards. Not within the decades since its development, that is. He had walked this place when there were meadows.
Now he stuck to the darkest routes, which were of course also the dirtiest and ugliest, where the concrete was already failing and untended trash gathered. Faeler had had his three hours, one of which Anduron had simply spent resting in one of the sad little parks on the edge of the South Yards.
The effort he’d needed to push the sending off himself had been the sort to take several days to recover from. His limbs still felt stiff and weak, and rather like they’d been beaten with billy clubs.
But he had agility to spare, and remained confident that he was still swifter than most. Besides, his condition was irrelevant: He had to settle this matter as quickly as possible. The longer it dragged on, the better the chances of the police getting involved, and of Becker unleashing some fresh trouble his way.
He really didn’t dare guess at whether Hayes had contacted Becker about the destruction of the sending. His type was unpredictable. But if he hadn’t, then now was the perfect time to strike, as Becker assumed things were in hand. If he had, then Anduron needed to strike before the man took more drastic measures.
Either way, he could not reason his way out of this showdown. And he did not want to.
He touched the knife the priestess had entrusted to him, now attached to his belt. It was far larger than the legal limit. But the law made various exceptions for religious items. It was a beautiful little bonus in all of this.
Dock 8 was one of many like it; a lesser thing, living in the shadows of its far greater cousins. Perfect for minor businesses ventures, and illegal ones. Its immediate land-based neighbours were warehouses, some minor offices, and a couple of specialised workshops.
All were closed for the night. As Anduron stood in the plentiful darkness between street lamps, he heard no foot traffic or voices close enough to be a likely factor in what was about to go down. The moon provided just enough light for elven eyes to make out the unlit building that dominated the dock itself; a two-storey bulk that lay to the south, with a walk-and-docking area on either side of it.
It looked rather big to have been built as a harbour master’s headquarters, but perhaps it had originally doubled as a warehouse as well. Either way, this was now Frank Becker’s den. And he wasn’t alone.
A familiar mess of a car lay parked at the end of the dock, as did one other; a far newer and better maintained model. There was no reason, Anduron supposed, for Faeler’s distraction to have pulled Becker’s personal hit squad. Or the fellow who stood halfway between land and the house.
He simply stood there, unmoving, dimly seen by elven eyes, and so not at all by anyone else. He made no sound at all, and the only hints of movement came when the wind moved his coat. There was no way around him without being seen, unless Anduron was to find and steal a rowboat.
He would just have to be quiet, then.
Anduron did one last spin on his heel to check for any witnesses his ears might have missed for whatever reason. Finding none, he undid his coat belt with a quick pull, and tossed the garment open as he strode forth.
As expected, the moment he set foot on the actual pier, the corpse in front of him started charging. From what Anduron knew of the foul arts, instructions given to the dead were simple. Such as ‘kill anyone who steps onto the pier’.
It moved just as the sending had; with decent speed but rather poor coordination, coming straight at him without a hint of hesitation. Anduron knew he didn’t have it in him to overpower another animated corpse, not even for a moment. Those reserves would need time to replenish. He had exactly one change to get this right, and he made it count.
He timed his movements carefully, accounting for the corpse’s speed, so that when the moment arrived, he was balanced just right.
As the dead man lunged, Anduron drew the moonblade. The full moon shone in the perfect metal, illuminating both of them in its cold brilliance. As he dipped beneath the grasping arm that came his way, Anduron drove the blade into the dead man’s chest. There was no grunt of pain, no hiss of the otherworldly. Only a lightning-quick dimming of the moonlight, as the blade went in and back out.
The corpse staggered as it tried to turn on its feet. Anduron made it behind the thing, and drove the blade in again, into its upper back. Again he saw nothing, but he felt the foulness leave the dead flesh, as it was driven out by something far stronger than it.
With nothing to hold it up, the dead body simply went limp. Anduron caught it, and managed to lower it down to the planks without a thump. He then ripped the knife out, and sheathed it as fast as he could to hide the light.
There was no sound from within. He still had the advantage of surprise. So he kept on going.
There were windows that faced out towards the docks, but each one was covered from within. Given Becker’s proclivities, it was no surprise. Anduron thought again of the idea of evil destroying itself, and smiled grimly as he arrived at the house. He heard them within, faintly: Voices in quiet conversation, two, then three, and finally a fourth. He heard the distinctive gait of a dwarf, and the hum of only a very few electric bulbs.
Perhaps it was a meeting. Perhaps they were hunkering down, waiting for the sending to do its job. He cared not. Only that they did not seem to be expecting immediate trouble.
He snuck around the house, listening, checking for exits, and decided on a simple plan. It began with him climbing the front of the house. Nimble fingers and rubber-soled shoes found purchase without making any real noise, and Anduron reminded himself that there was no immediate hurry; he could afford a slow ascent.
Once firmly braced at the upper floor, Anduron used one free hand to take out his trusty wire and work it in through the crack of a window frame. Using the same patience he’d used in climbing, and disregarding the strain on already strained limbs, he undid the latch quietly.
Then came the moment where he simply had to gamble, against a factor over which he had no control. But the dice were on his side, and the hinges opened without a loud squeak. Anduron slid through, like a cat through a hole in a box, before closing the window behind. As a good guest should.
He was on a narrow walkway that went along the north wall. Down below was a large storage space, with a row of wooden cargo boxes along the west and east walls, and three additional rows on the floor. A few small electric lights burned, just enough for humans and dwarves to get around.
A larger walkway stood along the south wall, containing an office. The door stood ajar, releasing soft light and the conversation of two men.
Down near the stairs were Slim and Obnar, and further away stood yet another corpse.
Anduron had neglected to ask Hayes just how many dead bodies he’d delivered to Becker. Necromancy, by all accounts, was a tricky art that required going through some failures before arriving at a functioning servant. So he supposed the question would have done no good anyway. Perhaps the villain had another warehouse, where an entire platoon of unfeeling, unceasing killers stood in rows, stock-still and utterly patient, ready to be unleashed into the city’s underworld wars.
Anduron only had the one to worry about, and so he continued with his plan.
Slim and Obnar were playing cards standing up, using a cargo box as a table, speaking softly enough to not be overheard by their boss. It was general grumbling, from what Anduron could tell. About a shitty night, about Obnar’s nose and that bastard elf, about their unsettling companion, and about the latest sports news.
What mattered was that neither one was looking his way, and so, cloaked in darkness, Anduron dared swing his legs outside of the walkway and drop down. He landed without a sound, the grumbling continued, and the corpse remained as still and silent as it ought to be.
Anduron knew his way to the electrical panel; its hum had called to him from outside, and he found it by the north-east corner, handily hidden by the outer row of boxes. He took out his regular knife, then found the master switch and hit it.
The hum died, bringing happy relief to Anduron’s ears, which was immediately followed by surly grumbling from Obnar.
“Again,” the dwarf said. “Slim, go fix it.”
“Why me?” the human asked.
“Because you have those legs. And because I’m in a bad mood, scrawny.”
Slim’s exhale hinted at feelings he didn’t quite put into words, and he set off to do as he was told. Anduron waited, breath held, as still and silent as the animated corpse he was going to have to deal with, and listened to Slim amble over.
They were the mildly cautious steps of someone who couldn’t see where he was going, but knew the way, and Anduron kept careful track of them, until the moment came.
He rose to his full height the instant Slim came around the cargo box, and drove the knife into his upper chest in a quick flurry. The human gasped softly, the only sound he could make with punctured lungs. The strength fled his body almost immediately, and Anduron yanked him over and placed him up against the wall. Three more quick stabs targeted the heart, and Anduron let him slide down.
Then he left his cover, and went to the next row of boxes. He was just around it when Obnar got suspicious.
“Slim?”
“Get the lights already, you two,” a voice, presumably Becker’s, called from the office.
“Slim?” Obnar repeated. “SLIM!”
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Most of the boxes were a bit shorter than Anduron, and so he walked in a crouch as he carefully made his way forward.
“BOYS! Something’s wrong!” the dwarf shouted.
Anduron heard a click, and a beam of light shone down the row of boxes he’d just abandoned. He also heard the click of a pistol’s safety being flicked off.
Two men emerged from the office, out onto the walkway. One of them activated another electric light and started shining it about.
“SLIM!” Murnau shouted.
“He’s dead,” the dwarf growled. “Now help me deal with this.”
Murnau hurried down the stairs and brought his light with him. Anduron had hoped for just a little bit of stupidity, but the man chose to cover the next row over, as his comrade covered the one Slim had walked.
Anduron ducked into a narrow gap between boxes, just in time to evade the beam. They were now coming at him from either side; Obnar on his right and Murnau on his left. He tensed himself for springing out at the dwarf, but Obnar was still mostly focused on the end of the line, where Slim had fallen silent. He passed by without fully shining his light in Anduron’s direction.
Murnau was the one who passed closer by, and that was what made Anduron’s decision. And standing in a tight space as he was, Anduron could not risk giving the man a chance to pass him by. He sprang out the moment the human was in range.
Murnau had a past as a boxer; the hungry, hardscrabble sort. He’d been through the war, and had since established himself as an underworld killer of men. He had his gun out, and he was ready to use it. And yet, Anduron once again confirmed to himself that there was nothing as vital as alertness.
The human never had a chance. Anduron’s free hand knocked the gun arm wide enough to open it for a quick two-stab into the shoulder. The weapon fell from limp, shocked fingers, and a quick flurry into the neck and upper chest doomed Murnau.
He did manage a strangled cry, and even if he hadn’t, dwarves weren’t deaf.
“HEY!” Obnar shouted, as his beam shone in between two boxes.
Anduron bolted away and left Murnau to collapse to the floor, as two gunshots rang out.
“It’s him!” Obnar shouted. “It’s that elf!”
Becker ran back into his office, and Anduron heard Obnar force his stout torso in between the boxes.
Anduron wouldn’t make it to the end of the rows without a bullet in the back, and so he darted to the right and went in between another set of boxes. The corpse had taken notice of him; presumably its last orders included some variation of ‘kill everyone who enters’. Now it came at him, charging straight down the line of boxes as he finished squeezing through.
Anduron flipped the knife into his left hand and drew the moonblade. Again the moon’s brilliance shone, bathing this confined space in white. The corpse’s dead eyes squinted, and evading its wild swipe was fairly easy. Anduron drove the knife at its back with all his strength, and it pierced the heart. The corpse dropped, and Anduron sheathed the knife again.
“What was that, huh?!” Obnar shouted as he kept on moving, drawn towards the brief flash of light. “Are you playing games, gumshoe?!”
The dwarf wasn’t worried. He was angry. He wanted blood, and he wanted it now. Obnar’s own light served as a beacon, warning of his movements and line of sight. Anduron took a few steps, then hoisted himself up and rolled over the box row on his left. With a bit of help from the ringing Obnar had caused in his own ears with those gunshots, Anduron managed it silently.
“Oh, I have something special for you, elf!” Obnar shouted, and suddenly shifted direction, not searching, but going straight for something.
Anduron had a clear shot at the stairs, and he took it. He heard something going on from within that office; most likely Becker digging up a weapon, and that was best dealt with fast.
Rather than take the rickety-looking metal stairs, which would announce his exact location to Obnar and his firearm, Anduron leapt off a cargo box and caught the edge of the walkway. He pulled himself up, and the heat and rush of danger let him disregard the state of his arms.
He stood up about four metres away from the office door, and that was when a pair of feet rushed towards it.
Marcus burst out onto the walkway. Or his corpse, rather. No effort had been made to clean it up after the murder; it was heavily smeared with blood, from being wrapped up as it was still bleeding. And Becker had placed a wooden bat in its hand.
The now wide-open door spilled light out, and Obnar let out a viciously happy cry as he spotted Anduron. As the corpse charged, with the mindless drive of a sending, a spray of automatic gunfire hit the wall and the walkway. Anduron couldn’t help but flinch, as bullets missed him by inches, and that left him open for a strike.
The corpse swung, and Anduron only managed a partial dodge. The bat hit him in the upper left chest, and the regular knife fell from his fingers. The corpse immediately swung again, and only its relative clumsiness allowed Anduron to twist and dance out of the way. It left him up against the wall.
He heard Obnar stop after a quick sprint on his short legs, and took that as his signal to leap into a dive. Another spray of automatic fire riddled the general area where Anduron had been. Some of it probably hit the corpse, which it ignored. Its assigned target was right there, after all.
“Careful, Obnar!” Becker shouted from within his office.
“Almost got him!” the dwarf replied, and broke into another sprint.
Anduron rolled, which saved him from a downward blow that broke the bat on the walkway. It landed him almost at the door, and as he took a quick glance he saw Obnar coming towards the stairs. He had one of those Harrison submachine guns, with a cut-down stock to fit the dwarf’s frame, and a huge drum magazine.
Obnar stopped, raised the gun again, and Anduron dove through the door. Another roll saved him as bullets passed overhead, and then he turned and slammed the door shut.
Becker, seen in the light of a battery-powered lamp, was an unremarkable-looking man, with a big, round head and a bit of a paunch. At Anduron’s arrival he hurried over to the plain-looking desk.
There was a key in the inside of the door lock, and Anduron turned it a moment before Marcus’s corpse slammed into it. Then he bounded over to the desk, as Becker drew a semiautomatic pistol out of a drawer.
He caught the human’s arm with both hands just before he could fire, and the shot went into the wall. The bang was an agonising blow to his ears, and Becker wasn’t weak. They struggled over the weapon, as the corpse outside began the task of busting down the door, and Obnar hurried over the rest of the way.
Anduron found the magazine release, flicked it, and the magazine dropped out of the weapon. That still left one bullet in the chamber, and Anduron shifted his efforts slightly, until he was able to apply pressure to Becker’s trigger finger. The last shot hit the roof, and with that Anduron let go.
Becker grunted, and swung the empty weapon at him. Anduron dodged, as the little window in the office door shattered, and drew his switchknife. Another missed swing put Becker’s arm in prime stabbing position, and Anduron drove the blade in. The man screamed, and brought his other arm up to defend himself. Anduron drove the knife into that one as well, then jabbed his left fist into the man’s chin. The human fell up against some metal cabinets.
And then the corpse clumsily vaulted in through the window.
Anduron did his little switch again, tossing the bloodied knife into his left hand before drawing the moonblade.
“Obnar, fire from the shoulder!” Becker shouted from the floor.
Anduron dove down, as the dwarf swept a burst from his weapon through the office wall. Becker, already flat on the floor, escaped harm. Anduron just barely did as well. And the corpse was, of course, completely unaffected.
“Again!” Becker shouted. “Keep him down!”
Obnar did fire again, and splinters flew into the office in small clouds, as the corpse came at Anduron. Staying low was his only escape from the gunfire, but it was a lousy position to fight from. The corpse had discarded the bat, and simply tried stomping its foot down on him. Anduron twisted and rolled on the floor, escaping the foot, then the grasping hand that came down.
Another burst came through the wall and the door, making ever more of a mess of the latter. The bullets tore into the opposite wall, whizzing over Anduron’s head on their way.
“Keep it up, he’s almost done!” Becker shouted.
The awkward dodges were getting narrower, and Anduron wasn’t getting a chance to strike back with the moonblade. A downwards fist-strike clipped his head a little, as his latest roll got him around the desk. It didn’t look sturdy enough to absorb gunfire, and so Anduron had to keep going, making use of the half-second it took the corpse to chase him around the obstacle.
It was there, in an open cabinet on the desk, that he spotted the jars. The control jars. The light of his blade shone on the blood of dead people stored in each one, and on the necromantic sigils that covered the outside of the glass. And beneath the one nearest to him, was a familiar, hand-made scarf.
It was his. It was the scarf that had gone missing some time back.
The new sending caught his leg in a bruising, iron grip, but before it could yank, Anduron caught the jar. Just lifting it off the scarf caused a sudden stop in the corpse, and smashing it on the floor then sent a shudder of release through it.
Obnar fired his latest burst. Splinters from the back wall rained down into Anduron’s face, but he could still tell that some of them hit the corpse. It left Anduron and headed for the door. Free from a specific directive, the evil that made it move could react to an attack.
“NO!” Becker shouted, as his creation gripped the damaged door and began tearing it apart. “STOP! I COMMAND YOU TO STOP!”
Anduron got up, and seeing this, Becker awkwardly got up as well. He tried adopting a fighting pose, but with both arms injured he didn’t get far before Anduron kicked him in the privates. It bent him over perfectly for a kick to the head, and Becker fell up against the wall that Obnar had made such a mess of.
Outside, the dwarf was letting out yelps of alarm and pouring out the rest of his ammunition as Marcus’s corpse advanced on him.
“You’re sad about him?!” Becker asked, with outrage that powered through the pain. “You’re sad about that spineless little shit?! You know what he did?!”
“I know what you did,” Anduron told him.
With a double-handed downwards thrust behind it, the moonblade plunged into the necromancer’s skull. It was meant for battling evil, after all.
Anduron ripped it back out as the human died, and allowed himself to lean against a cabinet and take some relieved breaths as he listened to the dwarf die. Dozens of rounds of ammunition might have done some structural damage to the dead body, but they’d done nothing to drive the magic out of it. Judging by the sounds, what followed at the bottom of those stairs was a combination of strangulation and that sturdy head getting repeatedly smashed into the floor.
And so Obnar met his end at the hands of a man he’d helped murder. It was the sort of folk tale brand of justice that Anduron could appreciate. Of course, the body didn’t care about such things. And once Obnar expired, the evil within it only had one other nearby target.
Anduron took a strengthening breath as he listened to it ascend those stairs, on legs even more unsteady than before. He stepped into the middle of the room, and watched as Marcus stepped into the light of the moonblade. He… it… was quite a mess, but that unfeeling, tireless vigour still drove an immediate attack on Anduron.
“Damn it all, Marcus,” he said sadly, before sidestepping the strike.
The moonblade sank home, and Marcus became just another body on the floor.
That was that.
Anduron cleaned the blade thoroughly, using seltzer and alcohol he found in the desk. The moonblade was a holy item, after all. He also helped himself to a sip of rum. He took the scarf that had caused so much trouble and stuffed it in his coat pocket.
It seemed quite likely that Obnar’s one hundred gunshots would draw attention. If not from a passing squad car, then at least the men he’d gotten Faeler to distract. And failing that, some local who would run to find them. Still, he risked a quick, messy search of the office. Hidden in panels the likes of which Anduron was well familiar with were the necromantic secrets Becker had somehow gotten his hands on. They were not ancient, withered parchments, passed between dark brotherhoods through the ages. They were written on modern paper, with only a bit of crumpling hinting at age, or at least travel.
He smashed the already-smashed jar further, enough to obscure the necromantic sigils. He also gathered the other jars into a bag he found. The priestesses would know what to do with them, in case Becker had stashed other raised corpses somewhere. And finally, he gathered the pages on top of the desk and lit them on fire with matches.
He was not vain enough to imagine that he was perhaps tending to the final destruction of the foul art. It had proven as stubborn and resilient as evil itself. When pushed down for a bit it simply passed on to another generation, or perhaps changed slightly. But it did not die.
At least Anduron could do his part in hemming it in. He would have to satisfy himself with that. And after watching to be sure that papers were fully engulfed in the fire, he made his exit.