Exiles in Arms: Night of the Necrotech (10 page)

The jaded audiences of the Scrapyard had seen many savage spectacles, but none had prepared them for the thing that set upon a dazed attendant and bit him in half with one snap of its necrotic jaws. The arena became a pandemonium of fear as the mob descended into chaos.

The grisly Deathripper leaped from its first victim to drag down a second, indifferent to the panic raging around it. The murderous essence inside the bonejack was aware only of the irritating life energies shining around it—annoyances it was built to extinguish.

CHAPTER IV

B
edlam reigned within the Scrapyard. Through the rent in the wall, in the wake of the bonejack’s murderous advance, other undead horrors now stalked into the arena. Taryn recoiled at the sight of the risen, their flesh ripped and torn in the most unspeakable manner, their chests and foreheads mutilated with loathsome symbols that wept blood and burned with an unholy light. Mechanithralls, their desiccated bodies implanted with necromechanikal engines, their arms fused into monstrous gauntlets of steel, were not far behind.

While the Deathripper ravened about the floor of the arena and the risen hacked vindictively at those trying to escape, the mechanithralls hurled themselves at the lowest layer of tiered spectator platforms. They gouged handholds with their necrotite-powered claws and pulled themselves up the stone foundation like monstrous beetles. The crush of people trying to flee down into the arcade became a wild stampede. Spectators were trampled beneath the mob, and others shoved from the tiered seats plummeted to the arena floor far below. Those too paralyzed with fear to move were callously brushed aside, abandoned to face the advancing undead.

Kalder kept a tight grip on Taryn as he forced his way through the crowd. The bounty hunter made no pretense about the gun he’d smuggled into the Scrapyard, brandishing it openly now to intimidate the mob around him. Against the horrors of Cryx, however, there was only so much fear Kalder’s pistol could invoke. Trying to smash his way past a richly dressed Tordoran, the bounty hunter found himself staggering back as the merchant’s fist slammed into his jaw. Reflexively, Kalder shot the man, sending him pitching down to the next tier of seats.

The crack of Kalder’s pistol drove the mob back. The panicked spectators scattered ahead of Kalder, climbing over one another in their haste to clear a path for him.

Before Kalder could exploit that gap, Taryn drove her elbow into the killer’s throat. The bounty hunter reeled, gasping as he tried to draw a breath. Before he could aim his pistol at her, Taryn grabbed his wrist. She didn’t try to take Kalder’s weapon from him. She knew she couldn’t match Kalder’s brawn. Instead, she used herself as a fulcrum to turn his spin into a wild dive, releasing her grip and sending him crashing to the tier below.

Taryn didn’t look to see the bounty hunter’s fall. Before the mob could once again converge on the stairs, she was rushing past them, racing down. Panic lent speed to her legs, her feet barely lighting upon one step before she was leaping down to the next. It wasn’t fear for herself that made her heart hammer against her ribs, but fear for Rutger, helpless inside his cage. In the chaos and confusion, no one would spare a moment’s thought for the mercenary hanging above the fighting pit. If anyone were going to help him, it would have to be her.

To do that, she needed her magelocks back.

The arcade was choked with panicked humanity, shoving, pushing, desperate to reach a safety they didn’t know how to find. Taryn shook her head. There was no way through. If she were going to reach the main gate and the arsenal locked up beside it, she would have to take a different route.

She turned toward the lowest tier of spectator platforms. Anguished screams and moans of horror told her the mechanithralls had finished their murderous climb. The eldritch monstrosities were slaughtering the people who had been trapped in that ring of seats.

The cries emanating from the bottom tier only grew more terrible when Taryn bullied her way through the swarm of refugees filling the arcade. The short flight of steps leading down into what had been the choice seats in the Scrapyard was eerily devoid of life. Any who had been able to escape were already out. Only those marked for slaughter by the demons of Cryx were left.

Lights flickered in the ceiling, sending fitful, unsettling flashes across the shambles. The wreckage of benches and bodies was everywhere, streams of blood running down the sloped platform to drip to the arena below. Taryn felt a chill in her veins when she saw the huddle of survivors cowering in the tier’s far corner. Foot by foot, the steady, gruesome march of the mechanithralls pressed them back, like ghastly shepherds moving their flock.

Taryn forced herself to turn from the nightmarish scene. There was nothing she could do for those doomed souls; all she would accomplish trying to help them was her own death . . . and Rutger’s as well. Thinking of her friend and comrade, she scrambled down the platform where it overlooked the arena.

She risked a quick glance at the pit and the cages suspended above it. A sick feeling rose at the bottom of her stomach. One of the cages was gone, the snapped suspension cable swinging high above the arena floor. Taryn looked to the other cage, frantic to know if the man inside was Rutger or the other operator.

Her moment of distraction was nearly fatal. Taryn almost failed to notice the grisly, fleshless skull that peeped over the edge of the wall. The smoldering balefire glowing in the mechanithrall’s sockets blazed brighter when it spotted Taryn. The oversized steel gauntlet bolted to the thing’s arm closed across the top of the wall. There was a loud crack as its necrotite-powered talons pulverized the stone.

An instant’s hesitation and Taryn knew the undead horror would use its handhold to leap at her. She didn’t give the fiend the opportunity. Rushing forward, she flung herself out over the edge of the foundation wall. The mechanithrall glared malignantly at her as she dove past it. The drop from the platform to the arena floor was some fifteen feet. Taryn turned her dive into a roll as she landed, letting her tumble dull the impact of her fall. Her roll ended in a sprawl as she slammed against something lying on the ground.

Taryn shuddered when she saw she had struck the mauled body of a Scrapyard guard. Her revulsion turned to horror when she looked up and found herself staring into the rotted faces of three risen.

Before the undead could react to the warm, vital meat that had fallen into their laps, Taryn kicked out with her boot, shattering the rotten femur of one of the risen and sending its monstrous frame crashing into its companions. She leaped to her feet and was running toward the main gate before the creatures could untangle themselves.

The sight at the main gate froze Taryn midstride. Suddenly, she found sympathy for the intractable mess of humanity she’d left behind in the arcade. The massive gates had been broken down, driven inward by a tremendous force that still lingered near the destruction it had wrought.

A second Deathripper prowled about a charnel house of torn flesh and pulverized bone, pacing back and forth through the carnage. Ribbons of bloody skin dripped from the tusks that jutted from its lower jaw. Gobbets of meat clung to the bonejack’s fangs as it lunged for the bodies strewn about.

The Deathripper suddenly leaned back on its piston-driven legs, rearing like a bucking stallion. Its ghastly jaws snapped at the empty air. Though it had neither eyes nor optics, Taryn knew somehow the faceless machine was aware of her, its corrupt essence seemingly enraged by the nearness of living flesh.

Yet the bonejack made no move to charge her, not a single step toward the arena. Though its body rocked back and forth with unsettling monotony and it continued to gnash its fangs, the Deathripper didn’t rush to attack.

Taryn could imagine only one cause for the monster’s recalcitrance. The abominations of Cryx were in some ways like a steamjack. Their masters could direct imperatives to them that the creatures were incapable of disobeying. This horror, it appeared, had been ordered to guard the gate and prevent anyone from escaping through the broken portal.

Beyond the Deathripper, Taryn could see the broken doors to the arsenal. It seemed she hadn’t been the first to try and seize the weapons there. Judging by the bodies heaped around the doors, the bonejack had thwarted all previous efforts.

An idea occurred to Taryn, but it depended on her being right about the imperatives that ruled the Deathripper and how inviolate those rules were. Only the image of Rutger hanging in his cage gave her the courage to try it.

Whispering a prayer to any ascendant who might be listening, Taryn ran toward the gate at an angle. The Deathripper gnashed its jaws and turned to intercept her. She darted back toward the arena. The bonejack positioned itself parallel to her but made no move to leave the gate. Taryn had her answer. Now she only hoped her plan would work.

Nerving herself, Taryn turned back toward the gate, drawing the Deathripper once again on an intercept course. In the process, she led the bonejack away from the arsenal. At the last moment, just as she neared the unseen border that appeared to be the limit of the Deathripper’s range, she changed direction. This time she didn’t retreat but sprinted straight for the broken doors of the arsenal.

The Deathripper spun around with terrible speed, charging after Taryn with its gore-spattered jaws gaping wide. The bonejack’s necromechanikal talons pounded against the bloodied floor as it thundered after its prey.

Taryn reached the arsenal only a breath ahead of the bonejack. The beast’s jaws clamped down on the side of the doorway, punching through brick and mortar. It twisted its armature, tearing a great hole in the side of the doorway. Spitting clumps of brick, the monster turned back toward her.

She had only a few heartbeats before the bonejack came charging into the arsenal. The inside of the enclosure was narrow, too cramped to afford the Deathripper much mobility, and that tactical concern was likely the only thing making the monster hesitate. Before its essence decided the risk to itself was negligible, she needed to find her guns.

The enclosure was filled with racks and shelves of weapons of almost every variety, from slender rapiers to immense war cleavers, delicate holdout pistols, and bulky quad-irons. There was no time to search through the jumble, so Taryn tried strategy. They’d been late arriving at the Scrapyard, and her argument with the guards at the rear entrance had delayed them still further. It made sense that their weapons would have been among the last to be secured in the arsenal. That meant they’d likely be at the back.

The din of toppled shelves and trampled boxes warned Taryn that the Deathripper had charged. She turned from the rack at the back of the enclosure. She had Rutger’s belt with Jackknife and his hand cannon slung over her shoulder. In her hands, she held her magelocks.

She aimed the pistols at the charging bonejack. “Rot,” the gun mage hissed, channeling the arcane energies of her spell into her rune bullets. Mystic symbols swirled around the barrels of her magelocks as she fired into the oncoming Deathripper.

Rutger watched in horror as the undead streamed into the Scrapyard. It was a waking nightmare! Here, in the midst of a great city, to find the necromantic abominations of Cryx!

He turned away, staring back into the pit below. Rex stood over the unmoving wreck of Bruno. When Rutger had told the Toro to release its foe, the result was even more final than he expected. In crashing to the bottom of the pit, all the extra weight bolted onto the Nomad’s chassis had smashed its armature. Its own weight had collapsed its steam engine, leaving the warjack just a tangle of inert steel.