Bounty (23 page)

21:
F
ate
’
s
Edge

A
noise woke Godren in the night, where he lay beneath the sky on the ledges of the Ruins. Avoiding the edges that dropped away to either side of him, he rolled to his feet on the wall. Poised in a watchful crouch, he peered down through the dark. Finding nothing in the immediate alley, he tracked swiftly to the nearest cross-bridge and went to explore across the way. Over the next wall, he found the source of the disturbance.

Thrashing in a tangle of net on the alley floor was the wolf they had been trying to snare since Godren’s assault. It was thoroughly caught up in the web-like tangle that it had triggered to fall from above, but Godren knew the net would quickly go to tatters at the mercy of tearing claws and ripping teeth.

Descending quickly to the ground, Godren approached with caution. His scarring hand throbbed with the memory of the last time they had met, and he had no wish to risk any repetition of the assault.

Watching for an opening, Godren stood poised to pounce. When his opportunity presented itself, he launched onto the wolf’s back. There was a snarl of objection, but the net hampered down the animal’s defenses and blinded its keen sight. Godren quickly had the animal effectively wrapped up and tied off, pairing off and stilling its feet and tying shut its snout. Then, gathering the animal net and all in his arms, he took it to Mastodon.

“
Well, well,” the corrupt woman drawled, pleased. The cat on her desk flattened its ears and issued a highly uncomfortable, keening growl. With dagger-like raised hackles, it moaned and spat at the intruding predator, wide pupils glaring and glinting and rimmed with evil color. “Look what we have here.”

The wolf struggled, and the cat screamed.

“
Do you want it caged?” Godren asked, muscles tensing to keep the struggling animal contained.

“
My, my, I’m developing quite a zoo in my dungeon, aren’t I? Yes, I would very much like it contained. That fish-net of a shackle does not look like it will hold suitably.”

“
Might it respond better to all this if we fed it?” Godren asked in suggestion.

Yowling and hissing, the cat on Mastodon’s desk abruptly dashed off like a streak of black lightning.

“
Poonty did not like your suggestion,” Mastodon commented, watching after the cat. “But yes, you can use some of the bait from the raven cages.”

“
Then what?”

“
We’ll have to think of some way to use this fellow,” Mastodon answered, considering the wolf.

“
Angel. That’s his name.”

“
Angel. Hm.”

Just then Bastin burst through the doors. “What’s bloody, flaming wrong with all the bloody,
flaming
cats?” he demanded before the sight of Godren and the wolf could register.

“
Hello, Bastin. This is our new guest,” Mastodon said to him. “Angel.”

Bastin blinked, then drew on his composure. “Well
that
explains it,” he remarked. Scratching his head, he looked suddenly at a loss, as if the explanation had been decidedly anticlimactic after bursting dramatically through the doors ready to shoot something; namely all the cats, or whatever had had the nerve to set them all off – probably whichever he got to first.

“
We were just discussing Angel’s future,” Mastodon continued. “You don’t happen to have any suggestions as to how we might employ his services, do you?”

Blinking again, Bastin went and plopped down in the chair before Mastodon’s desk. “Take him to the edge of the Ruins and turn him loose, see if he tracks down his master and leads us to him.”

Glancing at Godren, Mastodon raised her eyebrows to ask what he thought.

“
Have him lead us to his master and follow indifferently along as he slaughters everyone in his path?”
We can’t just turn a wolf loose on the city.

Bastin shrugged. “It’s not like there are scads of well-to-do figures that would be missed between here and the equally shadowy haven Wolf is surely hiding in. Who are you going to miss?”

“
It could get out of control,” Godren pressed, intent on getting his point across yet cautious of appearing too condemningly compassionate.

“
Not our wolf – not our problem,” Bastin dismissed. It would be just like Mastodon’s men to see the risk of blame as the only possible factor Godren could be suggesting.

Realizing he couldn’t say anything else without harming the image he was struggling to uphold, Godren held his tongue. Seeing he had no further objection, Mastodon turned back to Bastin.

“
It’s settled, then,” she announced. “But, gods save you,
feed
him first. That way you might have a chance of getting away unscathed yourselves when you unleash him. I don’t envy you the close range experience you’ll get when you remove his restraining bonds.”

Godren wondered how they would draw straws for
that
job.

“
You should take multiple men,” Mastodon elaborated. “Everyone. Have them ready to follow at every angle so you don’t lose this fellow.” She nodded toward the wolf. “I realize we’ve had a shortage of men these past months, but Rand is due back tomorrow, so you can take Seth, Kane, and Ossen and leave us to catch up.”

“
Who’s Rand?” Godren asked.

“
One of my bruisers that you haven’t had the pleasure of meeting. He runs errands abroad for me when I need them done.”

Hearing of Rand, Godren had to wonder how many significant associates Mastodon had that he didn’t know about. He had always thought Kane and Bastin were it for her main force, because they were all he ever saw. But that was a silly assumption, he realized. After all, he didn’t see the ghosts. There could be countless others he was unaware of.

“
Tomorrow, then?” Bastin asked. “That’s when we’ll execute this?”

“
Yes,” Mastodon confirmed. “We want to ensure Angel feels like he has a full stomach.”

*

When Rand arrived, the rest of the company prepared to set out. Godren received a brief introduction, which basically consisted of Rand encountering him in the hall and appraising him with intense, knowing eyes and stating, “Godren.”, evidently unsurprised to see him here – to which Godren said, “Rand.”, and Rand was equally unsurprised to see that Godren had heard of him. Then they continued past each other and went about their personal business.

Equipped with dart guns, the five assigned to loosing the wolf snared the animal in the dungeon and took him out into the alleys. It was late evening. They made a quick trip through the Ruins, and then paused just without to get into position. Mounting nearby structures and perching safely above the potential routes Angel might take, the men waited for the wolf’s release.

It was Godren who had ended up the designated freer. It seemed only logical to the rest of them that, since he had brought the thing in, it was his responsibility. The classic scenario of Finders-Keepers. Not keen toward the task, but resigning himself to it, he collected himself and slowly approached it. The wolf trembled under his touch, rigid and poised to lunge like lightning if it got the chance. Full of respect for the animal’s instinctive bloodlust and savage ability, Godren moved slowly and calmly, trying to reduce the threat he posed. He would never trust the animal to restrain itself in honor of his endeavors, though, and knew simply releasing the wolf and hoping freedom would tempt it more than his throat was stupid. He only went as far as undoing the knots of the wolf’s bonds, and left them snugly tangled so he could retreat while the animal was working them loose.

Rising to his own post, he waited for the wolf to struggle loose. It swiftly did away with the ropes and heaved to its feet, eyes untrusting and full of warning still as it sensed the men surrounding it, but it couldn’t resist a good shake. Then, with shifty eyes and a flinching gait, it caught a whiff of something on the ground and slunk off in pursuit of it.

It went Seth’s direction. Wasting no time, the others caught up and closed in.

Like spiders, they followed the wolf as it tracked what they hoped would turn out to be its master. Over walls and rooftops, they kept the animal in sight and stayed out of range. Only once did they pass a potential victim for a casualty, but Angel steered clear of him, and Mastodon’s company swarmed by the alarmed man without a word, sticking close to their quarry.

Angel blazed a fairly steady, confident path until suddenly he acted torn between every direction at once.

“
We must be close,” Bastin said. “Looks like Wolf’s scent is positively splashed around the area – he must frequent the proximity.”

Sitting tight while Angel sorted out the scent, the men shared a mutual growing excitement as they hovered on the brink of pegging their victim. They could feel how close they were, and they all gripped their guns a little tighter in anticipation.

Then Angel struck gold. With sudden exuberant confidence, he broke into a lope and rushed away down the alley to the left. Mastodon’s men hurried to follow him, some of them forsaking the heights for the speed of keeping up on foot.

Angel disappeared around the next bend, and when they rounded it in pursuit, they were rewarded by the sight of their ultimate quarry – and another wolf.

Unsuspecting of the armed hunters on Angels’ tail, the bounty hunter cut his reunion with the lost wolf abruptly short upon spotting them, and swiftly averted to taking immediate flight. At least three guns were trained on him and fired, but he ducked through a broken gap in the wall and escaped the darts. They flew in vain, raining harmlessly to the ground as Mastodon’s men took up the chase.

The wolves, abandoned without a command, disappeared into the broken stonework as they fled after their master.

Mastodon’s men fanned out and spilled through the area at a reckless pace, intent on giving the bounty hunter no way out. As Godren cut through alleys and whisked by intersections, he caught flashing glimpses of his allies doing the same from their own angles. The swift shapes of the wolves breezed along as well, agile and evasive, weaving through the streets with their hackled shoulders pumping. Wolf was not as fleet on his feet as his pursuers, and soon he spawned the brilliant notion to enter some buildings and scale some walls, thinking he could cleverly lose them that way.

But that put them in their element, and they welcomed the challenge. The wolves were forgotten on the ground as the men burst intrudingly into the houses surrounding them, charging up the stairs and alighting on the rooftops. Godren emerged from a top-story window to the greeting of a knife flying into the sill next to his head. Startled, he regarded the protruding hilt before regaining his equanimity and hoisting himself up onto the roof to continue the chase. Wolf’s superior edge was clearly indicated in his namesake – his wolves – and Godren did not need to fear his grasp on weapons and conflict. At least – that’s what he told himself as he moved on and tried to shake the close-call with the blade from his mind.

The chase raged across the rooftops, until Wolf descended the back slope of one of the houses and was not rediscovered when Mastodon’s men overtook that point. They trailed to an untrusting halt, all on separate roofs, and vigilantly surveyed the area. The darkness, always a claimed ally, betrayed them as it kept their quarry’s hiding spot a secret. They could feel him out there somewhere, and they all shifted uneasily when his location remained a taunting secret. The silence grew taut, ready to break with the whistle of a knife and the cry of its tragically suspecting victim. They all expected something to jump out and take one of them down as they stood there vulnerable in the open, and their eyes roved quicker over the deceptively empty blackness, anxious to spot their prey before he turned the tables.

Only when a breeze stirred over the rooftops did Godren’s keen eyes spot the tattered end of a cloak billowing out from behind one of the chimneys. All it took was the urgency in which he fell behind the chimney on his own roof to alert his allies to his discovery, and they reactively ducked for cover before looking to him for direction. Jerking his head in the bearing of Wolf’s chimney, he let them look for themselves.

Locating him, Godren could see the wheels of their minds turning as they began calculating plans. Bastin and Seth rose and stealthily crept toward Wolf’s hiding place, maneuvering so they could force him out of hiding and back toward their waiting allies. Godren held his breath as he watched their shadowy figures move into place, willing their attempt to succeed. Ossen, on the roof next to his, came out from behind the chimney and knelt with an artful, deliberate bearing, raising his gun to an utterly precise, steady position next to his expert eye. Not one muscle moved as he waited, stone-like, for his target to emerge.

And then, with a bang and frenzied clatter of feet, Wolf burst from behind the chimney and dove down the near slope of the roof, Seth and Bastin topping the rise from the other side and hastily aiming their guns at him as he rolled away from them. Ossen’s gun went off without hesitation, the sullen twang of the released dart snapping through the air. The shot only punctured his target’s tangle of cloak, though, and the bounty hunter managed to seize the rapidly-approaching edge of the roof and vault off without any harm coming to him.