Exiles in Arms: Night of the Necrotech (22 page)

Still, Moritat was Azaam’s best chance to stave off the ravages of time and undo the mortal decay that sapped her. The cold caress of death tightened its bony hand about her every day. She couldn’t abandon the promise of being restored to the splendor of her prime. The necrotech could do this for her; he had promised it many times. He had prolonged the lives of several other associates he found useful.

Azaam gazed in revulsion at the squid-like creature hovering beside her. The iron lich overseer was horrendous, even to one accustomed to the creations of Cryx. Within it, the essences of three necromancers were merged into a single soul matrix, forming a gestalt consciousness, aware of its individual identities yet incapable of embracing any of them. This overseer, Caracalla, was independent enough to function on its own but not coherent enough to think ahead. It was, as Moritat had once expressed it, a trumpeter on the battlefield, relaying the general’s orders to his soldiers but never giving orders of its own.

The blood hag repressed a shudder as she looked upon the trio of skulls leering from the bulbous hull of the overseer. Each of those skulls still harbored the essence of one of Moritat’s former disciples, necromancers who had added their knowledge to the necrotech’s research. Their “lack of vision” that Moritat had once described for Lorca had simply been the moment they could offer nothing more to their master. Finding no further purpose in collaborating with them, Moritat had used his disciples as the raw resources for one of his experiments. Caracalla was the result.

Such an end wouldn’t be hers. Azaam was determined that Moritat would see the necessity of keeping her alive and keeping her identity and intellect intact, to assist him. She wouldn’t become a crazed thing like Caracalla.

The fighting on the launch was growing ever more furious. The Ordsmen had deployed a swivel gun against Moritat’s amphibious bonejacks, and a pair of soldiers at the prow with slug guns were likewise taking their toll on the machines. After the initial massacre, the humans looked like they might well rally, something Azaam didn’t intend to allow. Moritat had wanted a report on how his creations performed. Azaam was more interested in making sure none of the men on the launch survived.

“Loose the Scavengers,” she hissed at Caracalla.

“Yes, yes,” the monster’s left skull said. “Rip and tear little fleshlings!”

The right skull took up the theme. “So much skin to flay. So much blood to spill. I must thank Moritat for such an engaging performance.”

The center skull’s lower jaw distended, and from the depths of the overseer a groaning incantation issued, boiling about Caracalla in a spiral of glowing symbols.

Up from the open hold of the
Majestic
, a flock of abominable creatures took wing. They had the familiar curved spine and massive clawed legs of Moritat’s other bonejack designs, but the jaws that protruded from each were beaked rather than fanged, with razor-edged sheets of steel bolted to each jawbone’s outer facing. Metal armatures covered in sheets of flayed skin thrust out from each Scavenger’s back, forming massive wings. They took to the sky like a swarm of vultures, squawking and hissing as they circled above the doomed launch, preparing to dive.

Azaam licked her lips. Her breath came in short, excited gasps. There would be no escape for the watchmen. They were dead already, only too stupid to accept the fact.

“I am afflicted!” Caracalla’s left skull howled suddenly. The right head echoed the cry.

Sparks and smoke flashed from Caracalla’s hull. Azaam spun around, watching in shock as the creature flailed and thrashed in midair. A second bullet slammed into the overseer, and the witch could see the arcane energy swirling about the rune shot as it slammed home. She followed the bullet’s path back to its source, her face contorting when she saw three figures perched atop another cable car. The mercenary, the Toro, and the gun mage. She wasn’t sure what perverse twist of fate brought these three stumbling into Moritat’s plans for a third time, but as she reached up and touched the nub of her missing horn, she decided she was quite pleased to see the gun mage again.

Then Azaam noticed the massive hand cannon in the man’s hand. As the barrel of the weapon flared and loosed its heavy-caliber shot, the witch observed that he wasn’t aiming at Caracalla as the gun mage had.

He was shooting at her.

Rutger aimed his hand cannon. He didn’t have the luxury of magic to give his bullets the extra punch needed to penetrate the hull of something like an iron lich. He’d heard those things weren’t easy to take down. Against flesh and blood, however, he reasoned he could be much more useful. He left the grisly machine to Taryn and fired at the witch.

He thought he’d struck true, but then he saw the ring of arcane runes burning in the air around the hag. Her whole being had transformed, vaporizing into a red mist that possessed a vague semblance of her outline. Darker streaks in the cloud showed the hag’s veins, and a throbbing black knot indicated the blood-ridden phantom of her heart. There was no solidity about any of it; Rutger could almost imagine he saw his bullet flash harmlessly through the transmogrified witch.

Then, in what seemed the wink of an eye, Azaam was restored to wrinkled grey flesh robed in red. She shrieked at the hovering monster, snarling a command at it. Taryn’s shots had damaged the machine; he could see where the enchanted bullets were corroding patches of the monster’s hull. The damage, however, was too slight to be perilous to the iron lich. The runes swirling about it shifted and contorted. Rutger grabbed hold of Taryn as she was reloading and pushed her behind one of Rex’s massive legs.

He didn’t know what sort of magic the thing would unleash, but when Rutger realized its real purpose, he almost wished for some bolt of hellfire or storm of mephitic vapor. Their attack had given the watch a reprieve. The flying bonejacks that had been preparing to dive down and attack Parvolo’s men now turned and screamed up toward them.

“Well, that worked better than expected,” Taryn said as she closed the breech of one magelock and hurriedly packed powder into the other. With the wind rocking the cable car, it took an impressive combination of concentration and coordination to manage such a feat.

“At least we gave Parvolo some breathing room,” Rutger said. He looked up at Rex and ordered the Toro to loosen its hold on the cable. When the ’jack released its grip, the suspended car began to move again, slowly creeping along the line. He scowled at the car’s sluggish speed. It had not been designed to haul steamjacks on its roof.

“Think we can get beyond that thing’s range of control?” Taryn asked as she finished loading the other magelock. When they’d decided on this plan, they hadn’t figured on a swarm of flying bonejacks in the mix.

Rutger frowned, flipped open the breech of his hand cannon, and tossed out the spent cartridge. He was staring at the distance between the floating iron lich and the ships down in the channel, trying to translate that vertical elevation into horizontal range. He didn’t like the implication. The creature’s area of control looked to be far greater than that of the warcaster necrotech.

“We stand a better chance of holding them off than Parvolo,” Rutger said, slamming a fresh bullet into his gun and snapping the breech shut. “The watch already has their hands full.”

Considering that by his estimate, Parvolo didn’t have any chance at all once the Scavengers swooped down on him, Rutger appreciated how little reassurance there was in his words.

The aerial bonejacks came shrieking up, their tattered wings of flayed skin beating at the air as the exhaust of their soul furnaces propelled them forward. Taryn leaned out from behind Rex’s leg, sighted down the barrel of her magelock, and hissed, “Rot,” focusing the word into an image, the image into a spell. Runes blazed into life around the barrel as the rune bullet went tearing down at the oncoming Scavengers. It slammed into the shoulder joining the wing to the hull of one of the monsters, its corrosive enchantment instantly sizzling and smoking as it melted through the black-iron plating. The stricken Scavenger managed a few more beats of its wing before the injured shoulder snapped. The severed wing went spinning away. The bonejack plummeted into the channel far below.

The rest of the murderous flock ascended past the cable car, seeking the advantage of height before swooping down on their prey. Taryn held her remaining shot, waiting until the Scavengers made their dive. Ghastly sirens wailed as the bonejacks launched their attack, the terrifying screams escaping the glowing fires of their soul furnaces. Metal claws glistened in the rising sun, steel beaks gleamed, and skeletal wings snapped shut against metal hulls to speed their descent.

Rutger snapped an order to Rex. The hulking warjack released its hold on the cable and swung about to repel the Scavengers. The Toro’s armored arm swatted across one of the hurtling machines, sending it spinning off through the air, gears and fragments of bone falling away from its crumpled hull. A second Scavenger stabbed its claws into Rex’s shoulder, its velocity punching the talons deep into the warjack’s armor plate. The thing snapped at the ’jack with its razored beak, sparks flashing as the sharp steel grated across the top of Rex’s head.

The warjack reached a massive hand up, closing its fingers about the Scavenger’s metal neck. The tortured sound of twisting metal screeched above the din of battle as Rex wrenched the neck sideways and popped it from its socket. The Scavenger’s head flopped limp against its hull, held in place only by the bundles of cable and pipe leading back to its cortex and soul furnace. The bony jaws still snapped and gnashed, flailing about in a futile effort to bite the Toro.

While Rex was attending to the second Scavenger, Rutger fired his hand cannon into the head of a third. The bullet shattered part of the machine’s skeletal jaw but did nothing to stem its downward descent. Letting the hand cannon dangle from his arm by the tether he’d looped about its grip, Rutger drew Jackknife and quickly thumbed its activation stud. The runeplate bolted into the sword blazed to life, casting an arcane light across the blade as the mercenary brought it slashing upward. The mechanikal sword raked across the side of the bonejack, severing cables, snapping wires, and cutting pipes. The pistons behind the monster’s leg fell away in a mangled confusion of savaged iron, the limb dangling uselessly from the Scavenger’s underside. The havoc wrought by Rutger’s sword deflected the bonejack’s dive, sending it hurtling past the cable car.

Taryn, meanwhile, shifted her position, slipping behind the steam motor bolted to the roof of the car to provide impetus for the truck gripping the cable above. She wanted a better vantage to provide cover for Rutger, to keep the bonejacks from overwhelming him with numbers. While he lashed out at one of the monsters with his sword, the gun mage targeted a second Scavenger diving for him. It unfurled its wings and tried to change the angle of its descent. She sent a corrosive rune bullet slamming into it, her shot catching it at the vulnerable joint between wing and body.

The stricken Scavenger didn’t plummet to the channel below. Instead it twisted about, powering down at the cable car. The bonejack crashed against the side of the carriage. Taryn flung her arms around the mast connecting the steam engine to the truck above, holding on as the entire car lurched. Her first thought was for Rutger, but her partner had managed to seize Rex’s leg, keeping himself upright by clinging to a piston shaft.

Another of the bonejacks came swooping down at him with such single-mindedness that it was oblivious to the warjack towering over its intended prey. Rex’s fist smashed into the Scavenger as it dove within range, crumpling its hull and sending it spinning through the sky.